Paul Ralston

by Mary Jane Holmes

He was in the habit of writing similar good resolutions after every drunken debauch, and this last was in his pocket when he reached the miners’ camp at Deep Gulch, hoping to retrieve his fortune. He had taken the name John Pennington because he was tired of Jack Percy, who had played him false so many times, and represented so much that was bad.

“A new name is like new clothes, and makes me feel respectable,” he said to the friend in Denver to whom he confided his plans, and who was to receive his mail and forward it to Samona.

At Helena, where he stopped on his journey, he found two of his comrades, who invited him to a champagne supper, with the result that at its close the three were on the floor. Jack, who was easily affected, especially by champagne, went down first and was taken to his room in a state of stupidity, followed by delirium tremens, the first attack he ever had, and the last, he swore, when able to be up and recall the horror of the days and nights when writhing snakes, with red, beady eyes, were twisting themselves around his body and devils breathing blue flame from nostrils and mouth were beckoning to him from every corner of the room. Weak and shaky, he reached Deep Gulch and went to work with a will. Nature, however, who exacts payment for abuse, exacted it of him, and with no apparent cause he was visited a second time by his enemies, the devils and the snakes, and was put into Stokes’s cabin, where Elithe found him. He heard the miners speak of Mr. Hansford, and that he was from the vicinity of Boston. Cudgelling his brain to recall something he had forgotten, he remembered at last that Miss Phebe Hansford had a relative in the far West, who was a clergyman. This, no doubt, was he, and when Lizy Ann asked if he would like to see him he answered with an oath that he would not.

“He would undoubtedly worry me as the old woman used to do, telling me that I was the worst boy the Lord ever made. Now, if she had told me once in a while that I was a good boy, or if anybody had, I believe, my soul, I should have tried to be one,” he was thinking, when he fell into the sleep from which he woke to find Elithe sitting by him.

It was a long time since he had seen a face as sweet and fresh as the one looking at him with pitying eyes, which said they knew his infirmity, and were sorry for him. All the best of his manhood was wakened to life by the sight of her. She was so different from the girls he had known,—different from Clarice, whose pet name, Mignon, given her by him when she was a baby, had escaped him in his sleep. He had never cared particularly for any of the fashionable young ladies of his acquaintance, although he had flirted with many of them, but his heart went out to Elithe at once, and it was not long before he knew that he loved her as he could never love any one again. Then began the struggle to conceal his love until such time as he had proved himself worthy of her, should that time ever come. He knew her father was watching him and respected him for it, and knew, too, that in Elithe’s mind there was no suspicion of his real feeling for her. Two or three times he came near betraying it and his identity, and the night before she left home he wrote to Clarice, telling her of his attachment to Elithe and asking her to be kind to her for his sake. This letter he tore up, deciding to let matters drift. Then he wrote the note which, with the ring, he gave to Elithe when he reached Helena.

“That will keep me in her mind,” he thought, half expecting some acknowledgment of the gift and word to say that she remembered him.

But none came and the weeks went by and he only heard from her through the letters sent to her father and mother. Of these he had pretty full accounts from Rob, and from him and the Boston Herald he heard of Clarice’s approaching marriage and felt humiliated and angry that the news should first reach him in this way. He did not deserve much at his sister’s hands, he knew, but he had written her twice that his debt to her should be paid, sending his letters to Denver, from which place they had been forwarded to her by his friend and confidant. She had not answered them, but he knew she must have received them, and, thinking he had made sufficient atonement for the past, he resented her neglect of him.

“I’ll write her again, telling her where I am and that I have heard of her wedding and am going to it,” he thought, and he wrote the letter, which was prompted more by a desire to see Elithe than to be present at the marriage.

Very anxiously he waited for Clarice’s answer, which was directed to Denver and then forwarded to him at Samona.

“Something for you,” the P. M. said to him one morning, handing him the letter in which he recognized the handwriting of his Denver friend.