



Produced by Donald Lainson





A SAPPHO OF GREEN SPRINGS


By Bret Harte




CONTENTS


A SAPPHO OF GREEN SPRINGS

THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE

THROUGH THE SANTA CLARA WHEAT

A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC <DW72>





A SAPPHO OF GREEN SPRINGS


CHAPTER I


"Come in," said the editor.

The door of the editorial room of the "Excelsior Magazine" began to
creak painfully under the hesitating pressure of an uncertain and
unfamiliar hand. This continued until with a start of irritation the
editor faced directly about, throwing his leg over the arm of his chair
with a certain youthful dexterity. With one hand gripping its back,
the other still grasping a proof-slip, and his pencil in his mouth, he
stared at the intruder.

The stranger, despite his hesitating entrance, did not seem in the least
disconcerted. He was a tall man, looking even taller by reason of the
long formless overcoat he wore, known as a "duster," and by a long
straight beard that depended from his chin, which he combed with two
reflective fingers as he contemplated the editor. The red dust which
still lay in the creases of his garment and in the curves of his soft
felt hat, and left a dusty circle like a precipitated halo around his
feet, proclaimed him, if not a countryman, a recent inland importation
by coach. "Busy?" he said, in a grave but pleasant voice. "I kin wait.
Don't mind ME. Go on."

The editor indicated a chair with his disengaged hand and plunged again
into his proof-slips. The stranger surveyed the scant furniture and
appointments of the office with a look of grave curiosity, and then,
taking a chair, fixed an earnest, penetrating gaze on the editor's
profile. The editor felt it, and, without looking up, said--

"Well, go on."

"But you're busy. I kin wait."

"I shall not be less busy this morning. I can listen."

"I want you to give me the name of a certain person who writes in your
magazine."

The editor's eye glanced at the second right-hand drawer of his desk.
It did not contain the names of his contributors, but what in the
traditions of his office was accepted as an equivalent,--a revolver.
He had never yet presented either to an inquirer. But he laid aside his
proofs, and, with a slight darkening of his youthful, discontented face,
said, "What do you want to know for?"

The question was so evidently unexpected that the stranger's face
 slightly, and he hesitated. The editor meanwhile, without
taking his eyes from the man, mentally ran over the contents of the last
magazine. They had been of a singularly peaceful character. There seemed
to be nothing to justify homicide on his part or the stranger's. Yet
there was no knowing, and his questioner's bucolic appearance by no
means precluded an assault. Indeed, it had been a legend of the office
that a predecessor had suffered vicariously from a geological hammer
covertly introduced into a scientific controversy by an irate professor.

"As we make ourselves responsible for the conduct of the magazine,"
continued the young editor, with mature severity, "we do not give up the
names of our contributors. If you do not agree with their opinions"--

"But I DO," said the stranger, with his former composure, "and I reckon
that's why I want to know who wrote those verses called 'Underbrush,'
signed 'White Violet,' in your last number. They're pow'ful pretty."

The editor flushed slightly, and glanced instinctively around for any
unexpected witness of his ludicrous mistake. The fear of ridicule was
uppermost in his mind, and he was more relieved at his mistake not being
overheard than at its groundlessness.

"The verses ARE pretty," he said, recovering himself, with a critical
air, "and I am glad you like them. But even then, you know, I could not
give you the lady's name without her permission. I will write to her and
ask it, if you like."

The actual fact was that the verses had been sent to him anonymously
from a remote village in the Coast Range,--the address being the
post-office and the signature initials.

The stranger looked disturbed. "Then she ain't about here anywhere?" he
said, with a vague gesture. "She don't belong to the office?"

The young editor beamed with tolerant superiority: "No, I am sorry to
say."

"I should like to have got to see her and kinder asked her a
few questions," continued the stranger, with the same reflective
seriousness. "You see, it wasn't just the rhymin' o' them verses,--and
they kinder sing themselves to ye, don't they?--it wasn't the chyce o'
words,--and I reckon they allus hit the idee in the centre shot every
time,--it wasn't the idees and moral she sort o' drew out o' what she
was tellin',--but it was the straight thing itself,--the truth!"

"The truth?" repeated the editor.

"Yes, sir. I've bin there. I've seen all that she's seen in the
brush--the little flicks and checkers o' light and shadder down in
the brown dust that you wonder how it ever got through the dark of the
woods, and that allus seems to slip away like