His first impulse was to go East to meet his young daughter upon her return from abroad. The memory of her had become a beautiful dream to him. From that dream he was most anxious to awake and enjoy the reality. Her mother's wishes had been very explicit in the matter. She left the little girl to the guardianship of an aunt, with provisions in her will calculated to curtail the young girl's best interests in case her father took her. Over and over we thrashed the matter out between us. He had the law of the land on his side.
Persuaded at last that the only restitution he could make the mother for anything she had endured because of him, was through the child, he wrote his daughter asking her desire in the matter. Upon her replying that she wanted to carry out her mother's wishes, much against his will, Mr. Saltus yielded.
There was another thing he yielded also. Against my firm refusal to go to the altar or the courthouse until a proper time elapsed, he talked in vain.
"Contending with you is like biting into granite," he said with annoyance, "and my poor teeth are being worn away."
"It is harder to be the granite," I told him. "I would be so much happier transformed into pliable putty."
"Why not try it for a pleasant change?" he inquired.
"Because, for your sake, I cannot. You are not granite to me,--you are a piece of marble out of which I am trying with chisel in my hand to release the something concealed there."
"Your chisel is sharp and the process is a painful one."
"So it is," I admitted, "and I do not know to which of us it is the more so. Shall I put it down and rest?"
"No, little Puss. You are the instrument of karma. Keep on chiseling. You believe in me, and if you think there is something worth while, awaiting release--do not falter. Only the one who sees it can set it free."
Made irritable by the state of his health, accentuated by the delay in his plans, Mr. Saltus was in a mood to fly off at a fleabite. One does not realize the underlying cause of things at the time they occur. It takes perspective to throw them into relief.
Los Angeles, which never does anything by halves or in a small way, was undergoing one of its periodical hydrophobia scares. As a matter of fact, this disease is almost non-existent in the State of California. No matter about that. Some poor half-starved, beaten and abused animal driven to extremity had turned in self-protection upon a tormentor, and the cry went up that a mad dog had bitten a child. That was enough. The papers, always on the lookout for a sensation, took it up, piling on the agony, till in twenty-four hours they had created a monster out of a myth.