Bret Harte

“ In the various intrigues that arise in politics, in the more complicated relations of the two sexes—in, I may say, the two great passions of mankind, Ambition and Love, my services have, I believe, been considered of value. It has been my office, sir, to help the steed of vaulting ambition—er—er—over the fence, and to dry the—er—tearful yet glowing cheek of Beauty. But for the necessity of honour and secrecy in my profession, sir, I could give you the names of some of the most elegant women, and some of the first—the very first men in the land as the clients of Culpepper Starbottle. ”

“ I will make him love me yet if I sacrifice you, everybody, my own life, to do it! Do you hear that, Victor Ramirez, you dog!—you Spanish mongrel!—you half-breed. Oh, grit your teeth there in the darkness—I know you—grit your teeth as you did to-day when Gabriel held you squirming under his thumb! It was a fine sight, Victor—worthy of the manly Secretary who stole a dying girl's papers!—worthy of the valiant soldier who abandoned his garrison to a Yankee pedlar and his mule! Oh, I know you, sir, and have known you from the first day I made you my tool—my dupe! ”

“ Grace Conroy paused and raised her dark eyes to his.
"You spoke of my brother's pre-occupation with—with the woman for whom he would have sacrificed anything—me—his very life! I can—I am a woman—I can understand that! You have forgotten, Don Arturo, you have forgotten—pardon me—I am not finding fault—it is not for me to find fault—but you have forgotten—Donna Maria Sepulvida!" ”

“ Here Gabriel knew he was safe until daybreak, and gathered together some withered pine boughs and its fragrant tassels for a couch for his helpless companion. And here, as he feared, fever set in; the respiration of the wounded man grew quick and hurried; he began to talk rapidly and incoherently, of Olly, of Ramirez, of the beautiful girl whose picture hung upon his breast, of Gabriel himself, and finally of a stranger who was, as it seemed to him, his sole auditor, the gratuitous coinage of his excited fancy. ”

“ It was Sal—perdition! Might the devil fly away with her! But she turned to the right with the trail that wound toward Gabriel's hut and the cottage beyond, and Victor breathed, or rather panted, more freely. And then a voice at his very side thrilled him to his smallest fibre, and he turned quickly. It was Mrs. Conroy, white, erect, and truculent.
"What are you doing here?" she said, with a sharp, quick utterance.
"Hush!" said Ramirez, trembling with the passion called up by the figure before him. "Hush! There is one who has just come up the trail." ”

“ Nearly every room and all the piazzas were dim with the yellow haze of burning cigaritos. There were light brown stains on the shirt sleeves of the men, there were yellowish streaks on the otherwise spotless skirts of the women; every masculine and feminine forefinger and thumb was steeped to its first joint with yellow. The fumes of burnt paper and tobacco permeated the whole house like some religious incense, through which occasionally struggled an inspiration of red peppers and garlic.
Two or three of the loungers addressed Ramirez in terms of grave recognition. ”

“ Devarges. My advice is to fight. If the right does not always succeed, my experience is that the Right, at least, is apt to play its best card, and put forward its best skill. And until it does that, it might as well be the Wrong, you know."
"You are wise, Don Arturo. But you lawyers are so often only advocates. Pardon, I mean no wrong. But if it were Grace—the sister, you understand—what would be your advice?"
"The same. Fight it out! If I could overthrow your grant, I should do it. The struggle, understand me, is there, and not with this wife and sister. ”

“ I've a devilish good mind to send you to a foundling hospital for the good of the babies and yourself. Find out some poor ranchero with a dozen children, and teach 'em singing. Don't mind what you eat, as long as you eat regularly. I'd have more hopes of you, Jack, if I'd dragged you out of Starvation Camp, in the Sierras, as I did a poor fellow six years ago, than finding you here in these luxurious quarters. Come! Do as I say, and I'll stop that weariness, dissipate that giddiness, get rid of that pain, lower that pulse, and put you back where you were. I don't like your looks, Jack, at all. ”

“ Grace, what do you know of that man?"
Neither the contact of daily familiarity, the quality of suffering, nor the presence of approaching death, could subdue the woman's nature in Grace. She instantly raised her shield. From behind it she began to fence feebly with the dying man.
"Why, what we all know of him, sir—a true friend; a man to whose courage, intellect, and endurance we owe so much. And so unselfish, sir!" ”

“ And then Olly awoke her companions. They struggled back into consciousness with characteristic expression. Gabriel slowly and apologetically, as of one who had overslept himself; Jack Hamlin violently and aggressively, as if some unfair advantage had been taken of his human weakness that it was necessary to combat at once. I am sorry to say that his recognition of Pete was accompanied by a degree of profanity and irreverence that was dangerous to his own physical weakness. ”

“ She is now a light copper colour, not unlike those bronze shepherdesses on yonder clock. In spite of all this I call her pretty. Perhaps it is because I love her and am prejudiced. But you gentlemen are so critical about complexion and colour—no wonder that the poor child refuses to see anybody, and never goes into society at all. It is a shame! But—pardon, Mr. Poinsett, here am I gossiping about your client's looks, when I should be stating her grievances."
"No, no!" said Arthur, hastily, "go on—in your own way."
Mrs Sepulvida lifted her forefinger archly.
"Ah! is it so, Don Arturo? ”

“ God was good to us, Señor, and after a weary tramp of many days we found a trapper's hut, and food and shelter. Philip, my brother, went back alone to succour them. He has not returned. Oh, sir, he may be dead; they all may be dead—God only knows! It is three weeks ago since he left me; three weeks! It is a long time to be alone, Señor, a stranger in a strange land. The trapper was kind, and sent me here to you for assistance. You will help me? I know you will. You will find them, my friends, my little sister, my brother! ”

“ He was kinder than he meant, and in two years, Carámba! made a richer widow of the Donna."
If Vincente had not been quite thrown by his potations, he would have seen an undue eagerness in Victor's mouth and eyes.
"And she is pretty—tall and slender like the Americans, eh?—large eyes, a sweet mouth?"
"An angel. Ravishing!"
"And Don Arturo—from legal adviser turns a lover!"
"It is said," responded Vincente, with drunken cunning and exceeding archness; "but thou and I, Victor, know better. Love comes not with a brief! Eh? Look, it is an old flame, believe me. ”

“ You're not such a fool as to believe that this Mrs. Conroy won't try to help her husband, that she evidently loves, by every means in her power—that she won't make use of any secret she may have that concerns you to save him and herself. No, Mr. Peter Dumphy," said Arthur significantly; "no, you're too much of a business man not to see that." As he spoke he noted the alternate flushing and paling of Mr. Dumphy's face, and read—I fear with the triumphant and instinctive consciousness of a superior intellect—that Mr. Dumphy had been precisely such a fool, and had failed! ”

“ People who could be strong only in proportion to their physical strength, and losing everything with the loss of that? There have been selfishness, cruelty—God knows—perhaps murder done here!"
"Yes, yes," said Philip, hastily; "but you were speaking of this girl, Grace Conroy; what do you know of her?"
"Nothing, except that she was found lying there dead with her name on her clothes and her sister's blanket in her arms, as if the wretches had stolen the dying child from the dead girl's arms. But you, Arthur, how chanced you to be here in this vicinity? Are you stationed here?" ”

“ To tell the truth, I was glad of an excuse to see our fair client, or, at least, be disappointed, as my partners have been, in obtaining a glimpse of the mysterious Donna Dolores."
"Ah, my dear Don Arturo," said the Padre, with a slightly deprecatory movement of his brown hands, "I fear you will be no more fortunate than others. It is a penitential week with the poor child, and at such times she refuses to see any one, even on business. Believe me, my dear boy, you, like the others—more than the others—permit your imagination to run away with your judgment. ”

“ When Arthur leaped to the brick pavement of the courtyard, there was not one in sight.
An Indian servant noiselessly led away his horse. Another peon as mutely led the way along a corridor over whose low railings serapes and saddle blankets were hung in a barbaric confusion of colouring, and entered a bare-walled ante-room, where another Indian—old, grey-headed, with a face like a wrinkled tobacco leaf—was seated on a low wooden settle in an attitude of patient expectancy. ”

“ Arthur rose with a superior smile.
"May I ask you further, without impertinence, if it is upon this evidence that you propose to abandon your claim to a valuable property?"
"I have told you before that it is not a legal question, Don Arturo," said Donna Dolores, waving her fan a little more rapidly.
"Good! let us take it in the moral or sentimental aspect—since you have purposed to honour me with a request for my counsel. To begin, you have a sympathy for the orphan, who does not apparently exist." ”

“ The long shadow of Reservoir Ridge fell upon Conroy's Hill, and seemed to cut down the tall pine that a moment before had risen redly in the sunlight. The sounds of human labour slowly died out of the Gulch below, the far-off whistle of teamsters in the Wingdam road began to fail. One by one the red openings on the wooded hillside opposite went out, as if Nature were putting up the shutters for the day. With the gathering twilight Ramirez became more intensely alert [Pg 309] and watchful. ”

“ In the defence of what he believed to be an intellectual truth, in the interests of his pride or his self-love, or in a moment of passion, he would have faced death with unbroken fortitude and calmness. But to be the victim of an accident; to be the lamentable sequel of a logical succession of chances, without motive or purpose; to be sacrificed for nothing—without proving or disproving anything; to be trampled to death by idiotic beasts, who had not even the instincts of passion or revenge to justify them ”

“ In speeding the parting guest," he added, gravely, "you have perhaps done more for the health of my soul than you imagine—good-night. Adios!"
With a light laugh in his ears, the vision of a graceful, erect figure, waving a salute from a phantom steed, an inward rush of the cold grey fog, and muffled clatter of hoofs over the mouldy and mossy marbles in the churchyard, Father Felipe parted from his guest. He uttered a characteristic adjuration, took a pinch of snuff, and closing the door, picked up the card of the gallant Colonel Starbottle and tossed it into the fire. ”

“ Be not ashamed, Don Arturo! It is not here," he added, with a poetical gesture toward the wall of the refectory, where hung the painted effigy of the blessed St Anthony; "it is not here that I would undervalue or speak lightly of their influence. The widow is rich, eh?—handsome, eh? impulsive? You have no heart in the profession you have chosen. What then? You have some in the instincts—what shall I say—the accomplishments and graces you have not considered worthy of a practical end! You are a natural lover. ”

“ From admiring a tree, a flower, or a gleam of sunshine, to the entertainment of a dangerous sentimentalism in regard to the other sex, is, I fear, but a facile step to some natures, whose only safety is in continuous practicality. Wherefore, Gabriel, as he approached the cottage of Mrs. Markle, was induced to look from Nature up to—Nature's goddess—Mrs. Markle, as her strong bright face appeared above the dishes she was washing by the kitchen window. ”

“ Markle and Sal was delicately veiled from the public by the interposition of a bar-keeper and Irish waiter. Only to a few of the former habitués did these ladies appear with their former frankness and informality. There was a public parlour, glittering with gilt framed mirrors and gorgeous with red plush furniture, which usually froze the geniality of One Horse Gulch, and repressed its larger expression, but there was a little sitting-room beyond sacred to the widow and her lieutenant Sal, where visitors were occasionally admitted. ”

“ But there would be a trial, publicity, and the possible exposure of certain things by a man whom danger might make reckless. And could he count upon Mrs. Conroy's absence or neutrality? He was conscious that her feeling for her husband was stronger than he had supposed, and she might dare everything to save him. What had a woman of that kind to do with such weakness? Why hadn't she managed it so as to kill Gabriel too? There was an evident want of practical completeness in this special Providence that, as a business man, Mr. Dumphy felt he could have regulated. ”

“ Why not let her remain?"
"No, no;" said Gabriel, now feeling perfectly convinced in the depths of his conscience-stricken soul that Maxwell was here as the legal adviser of the indignant Mrs. Markle. "No! Olly, run out and get some chips in the wood-house agin to-morrow morning's fire. Run!"
Olly ran. Maxwell cast a look after the child, wiped his mouth, and leaning his elbow on the table, fixed his eyes on Gabriel. "I have called to-night, Gabriel, to see if we can arrange a certain matter without trouble, and even—as I am employed against you—with as little talk as possible. ”

“ There was, moreover, that sense of novelty which Nature always brings with the dawn in deep forests; a fancy that during the night the earth had been created anew, and was fresh from the Maker's hand, as yet untried by burden or tribulation, and guiltless of a Past. And so it seemed to the little caravan—albeit fleeing from danger and death—that yesterday and its fears were far away, or had, in some unaccountable way, shrunk behind them in the west with the swiftly dwindling night. Olly once or twice strayed from the trail to pick an opening flower or lingering berry ”

“ Dumphy at this moment presented only the commonplace spectacle of an absorbed man of business; no lurid light gleamed from his pale blue eyes; no Satanic smile played around the corners of his smoothly shaven mouth; no feverish exclamation stirred his moist, cool lips. He wrote methodically and briskly, without deliberation or undue haste. When he had written half-a-dozen letters he folded and sealed them, and without summoning his clerk, took them himself into the outer office and thence into the large counting-room. The news of the murder had evidently got abroad ”

“ It was the Spanish translator of Pacific Street. She would have flown, but on the instant he turned and recognised her with a cry, a start, and a passion equal to her own. [Pg 294] For a moment they stood glaring at each other breathless but silent!
"Devarges!" said Mrs. Conroy, in a voice that was scarcely audible. "Good God!"
The stranger uttered a bitter laugh. "Yes! Devarges!—the man who ran away with you—Devarges the traitor! Devarges the betrayer of your husband. Look at me! You know me—Henry Devarges! Your husband's brother!—your old accomplice—your lover—your dupe!" ”