第3章

"We hear with regret of the death of Philip Atherly, Esq., of Rough and Ready, California.Mr.Atherly will be remembered by some of our readers as the hero of the romantic elopement of Miss Sallie Magregor, daughter of Colonel 'Bob' Magregor, which created such a stir in well-to-do circles some thirty years ago.It was known vaguely that the young couple had 'gone West,'--a then unknown region,--but it seems that after severe trials and tribulations on the frontier with savages, they emigrated early to Oregon, and then, on the outbreak of the gold fever, to California.But it will be a surprise to many to know that it has just transpired that Mr.Atherly was the second son of Sir Ashley Atherly, an English baronet, and by the death of his brother might have succeeded to the property and title."He remained for some moments looking fixedly at the paper, until the commonplace paragraph imprinted itself upon his brain as no line of sage or poet had ever done, and then he folded it up and put it in his pocket.In his exaltation he felt that even the mother he had never loved was promoted to a certain respect as his father's wife, although he was equally conscious of a new resentment against her for her contemptuous allusions to HISfather, and her evident hopeless inability to comprehend his position.His mother, he feared, was indeed low!--but HE was his father's son! Nevertheless, he gave her a funeral at Atherly, long remembered for its barbaric opulence and display.Thirty carriages, procured from Sacramento at great expense, were freely offered to his friends to join in the astounding pageant.Awonderful casket of iron and silver, brought from San Francisco, held the remains of the ex-washerwoman of Rough and Ready.But a more remarkable innovation was the addition of a royal crown to the other ornamentation of the casket.Peter Atherly's ideas of heraldry were very vague,--Sacramento at that time offered him no opportunity of knowing what were the arms of the Atherlys,--and the introduction of the royal crown seemed to satisfy Peter's mind as to what a crest MIGHT be, while to the ordinary democratic mind it simply suggested that the corpse was English! Political criticism being thus happily averted, Mrs.Atherly's body was laid in the little cemetery, not far away from certain rude wooden crosses which marked the burial-place of wanderers whose very names were unknown, and in due time a marble shaft was erected over it.But when, the next day, the county paper contained, in addition to the column-and-a-half description of the funeral, the more formal announcement of the death of "Mrs.Sallie Atherly, wife of the late Philip Atherly, second son of Sir Ashley Atherly, of England,"criticism and comment broke out.The old pioneers of Rough and Ready felt that they had been imposed upon, and that in some vague way the unfortunate woman had made them the victims of a huge practical joke during all these years.That she had grimly enjoyed their ignorance of her position they did not doubt."Why, Iremember onct when I was sorter bullyraggin' her about mixin' up my duds with Doc Simmons's, and sendin' me Whiskey Dick's old rags, she turned round sudden with a kind of screech, and ran out into the brush.I reckoned, at the time, that it was either 'drink' or feelin's, and could hev kicked myself for being sassy to the old woman, but I know now that all this time that air critter--that barrownet's daughter-in-law--was just laughin' herself into fits in the brush! No, sir, she played this yer camp for all it was worth, year in and out, and we just gave ourselves away like speckled idiots! and now she's lyin' out thar in the bone yard, and keeps on p'intin' the joke, and a-roarin' at us in marble."Even the later citizens in Atherly felt an equal resentment against her, but from different motives.That her drinking habits and her powerful vocabulary were all the effect of her aristocratic alliance they never doubted.And, although it brought the virtues of their own superior republican sobriety into greater contrast, they felt a scandal at having been tricked into attending this gilded funeral of dissipated rank.Peter Atherly found himself unpopular in his own town.The sober who drank from his free "Waterworks," and the giddy ones who imbibed at his "Gin Mill,"equally criticised him.He could not understand it; his peculiar predilections had been accepted before, when they were mere presumptions; why should they not NOW, when they were admitted facts? He was conscious of no change in himself since the funeral!