Bret Harte

“ Listen to me, Dick. Do you remember one afternoon, when we were riding together, I got ahead of you, and dashed off to the casa. I don't know what possessed me, or WHY I did it. I only know I wanted to get home quickly, and get away from you. No, I was not angry, Dick, at YOU; it did not seem to be THAT; I—well, I confess I was FRIGHTENED—at something, I don't know what. When I wheeled round into the lane, I saw—a man—a young gentleman standing by the garden-wall. He was very picturesque-looking, in his red sash, velvet jacket, and round silver buttons; handsome, but oh, so pale and sad! ”

“ Kentigern were echoless and desolate, the consul heroically tore himself from the weak delight of basking in the sunshine, and followed the others.
He soon found himself settled at the furthest end of a long narrow loch, made longer and narrower by the steep hillside of rock and heather which flanked its chilly surface on either side, and whose inequalities were lost in the firs and larches that filled ravine and chasm. The fragrant road which ran sinuously through their shadowy depths was invisible from the loch; no protuberance broke the seemingly sheer declivity ”

“ All eyes were turned upon a fringe of laurel and butternut that encroached upon the road half a mile away, where it seemed that such of the inhabitants who were missing from the bluff were hidden to give warning or retard the approach of the posse. A gray haze, slowly rising between the fringe and the distant hillside, was recognized as the dust of a cavalcade passing along the invisible highway. In the hush of expectancy that followed, the irregular clatter of hoofs, the sharp crack of a rifle, and a sudden halt were faintly audible. ”

“ The deep, velvety eyes, fringed with long brown lashes, again looked into his with amused, childlike curiosity. He scouted the harsh criticisms of Aunt Viney, even while he shrank from proving to her her mistake in the quality of his mysterious visitant. Of course she was a lady—far superior to any of her race whom he had yet met. Yet how should he find WHO she was? His pride and a certain chivalry forbade his questioning the servants—before whom it was the rule of the household to avoid all reference to their neighbors. He would make the acquaintance of the old padre—perhaps HE might talk. ”

“ But here Donna Maria interposed. Ah! Santa Maria! What was all that! Was it not enough to talk old woman's gossip and tell vaqueros tales at home, without making uneasy the strangers? She would have none of it. “Vamos!”
Nevertheless Dona Felipa overcame her horror of the rose garden at infelicitous hours, so far as to permit herself to be conducted by the cousins into it, and to be installed like a rose queen on the stone bench, while Dick and Cecily threw themselves in submissive and imploring attitudes at her little feet. The young girl looked mischievously from one to the other. ”

“ From that day forward, Chu Chu and Consuelo were not only firm friends but daily companions. In my devotion I would have presented the horse to the young girl, but with flattering delicacy she preferred to call it mine. “I shall erride it for you, Pancho,” she said; “I shall feel,” she continued with exalted although somewhat vague poetry, “that it is of YOU! You lofe the beast—it is therefore of a necessity YOU, my Pancho! It is YOUR soul I shall erride like the wings of the wind—your lofe in this beast shall be my only cavalier for ever.” ”

“ Small wonder that, mounted on her fiery little mustang, untrammeled by her short gray riding-habit, free as the wind itself that blew through the folds of her flannel blouse, with her brown hair half-loosed beneath her slouched felt hat, she seemed to Dick a more beautiful and womanly figure than the stiff buckramed simulation of man's angularity and precision he had seen in the parks. ”

“ The human heart is at times strangely unappeasable. And as he sat that evening in the gathering shadows, the Book which should have yielded him balm and comfort lay unopened in his lap.
A step upon the gravel outside had become too familiar to startle him. It was Mr. McGee lounging into the cabin like a gaunt shadow. It must be admitted that the friendship of these strangely contrasted men, however sincere and sympathetic, was not cheerful. ”

“ To deal with the problem openly, yet without startling the consciousness of either Dick or Cecily; to allow them the privileges of children subject to the occasional restraints of childhood; to find certain household duties for the young girl that kept them naturally apart until certain hours of general relaxation; to calmly ignore the meaning of her retainers' smiles and glances, and yet to good-humoredly accept their interest as a kind of feudal loyalty, was part of Aunt Viney's deep diplomacy. ”

“ But Cecily, without raising her head, caught at his gesticulating hand.
“Oh, Dick, Dick! do you think he really did it? The horror of it, Dick! to be kissed by a—a—man who has been dead a hundred years!”
“A hundred fiddlesticks!” said Dick furiously. “We have been deceived! No,” he stammered, “I mean YOU have been deceived—insulted!”
“Hush! Aunty will hear you,” murmured the girl despairingly.
Dick, who had thrown away his cousin's hand, caught it again, and dragged her along the aisle of light to the window. The moon shone upon his flushed and angry face. ”

“ A faint moon was shimmering along the surface of Loch Dour in icy little ripples when they pulled out from the shadows of the hillside. By the accident of position, Gray, who was steering, sat beside Ailsa in the stern, while the consul and Mr. Callender were further forward, although within hearing. The faces of the young people were turned towards each other, yet in the cold moonlight the consul fancied they looked as impassive and unemotional as statues. ”

“ The consul slipped out softly. His smile had died away. That unlooked-for touch of human weakness seemed to purify the stuffy and evil-reeking cabin, and the recollection of its brutal past to drop with a deck-load of iniquity behind him to the bottom of the Clyde. It is to be feared that in his unofficial moments he was inclined to be sentimental, and it seemed to him that the good ship Skyscraper henceforward carried an innocent freight not mentioned in her manifest, and that a gentle, ever-smiling figure, not entered on her books, had invisibly taken a place at her wheel. ”

“ In that doubly stagnant air the odor of the roses was so suffocating and overpowering that she had to stop to take breath. The whole garden, except a near cluster of pear-trees, was brightly illuminated by the moonlight. No one was to be seen along the length of the broad allee, strewn an inch deep with scattered red and yellow petals—colorless in the moonbeams. She was turning away, when Dick's familiar voice, but with a strange accent of entreaty in it, broke the silence. It seemed to her vaguely to come from within the pear-tree shadow.
“But we must understand one another, my darling! ”

“ At any other time Dick would have been amused at this serene relegation of the lofty Estudillos and Peraltas to the caste of the Indian convert, but he was worried to think that perhaps Cecily was really being bored by the absence of neighbors. After dinner, when they sought the rose garden, he dropped upon the little lichen-scarred stone bench by her side. It was still warm from the sun; the hot musk of the roses filled the air; the whole garden, shielded from the cool evening trade winds by its high walls, still kept the glowing memory of the afternoon sunshine. ”

“ Perhaps this check to their daily intercourse was no less accelerating to his feelings than the vague motive that induced Cecily to withhold herself. He moped in the corridor; he rode out alone, bullying his mustang in proportion as he missed his cousin's gentle companionship, and circling aimlessly, but still unconsciously, around the hacienda as a centre of attraction. The sun at last was sinking to the accompaniment of a rising wind, which seemed to blow and scatter its broad rays over the shimmering plain until every slight protuberance was burnished into startling brightness ”

“ Dick turned his face homewards a little less adventurously, and it must be confessed, with a growing sense of his folly. The keen, dry morning air brushed away his fancies of the preceding night; the beautiful eyes that had lured him thither seemed to flicker and be blown out by its practical breath. He began to think remorsefully of his cousin, of his aunt,—of his treachery to that reserve which the little alien household had maintained towards their Spanish neighbors. He found Aunt Viney and Cecily at breakfast—Cecily, he thought, looking a trifle pale. Yet (or was it only his fancy?) ”

“ In vain Enriquez and myself joined in earnest entreaty: the horse was hardly broken for even a man's riding yet; the saints alone could tell what the nervous creature might do with a woman's skirt flapping at her side! We begged for delay, for reflection, for at least time to change the saddle—but with no avail! Consuelo was determined, indignant, distressingly reproachful! Ah, well! if Don Pancho (an ingenious diminutive of my Christian name) valued his horse so highly—if he were jealous of the evident devotion of the animal to herself, he would—but here I succumbed! ”

“ There it lay—its low whitewashed walls looking like a quartz outcrop of the long lazy hillside—unmistakably hot, treeless, and staring broadly in the uninterrupted Californian sunlight. Yet he knew that behind those blistering walls was a reposeful patio, surrounded by low-pitched verandas; that the casa was full of roomy corridors, nooks, and recesses, in which lurked the shadows of a century, and that hidden by the further wall was a lonely old garden, hoary with gnarled pear-trees, and smothered in the spice and dropping leaves of its baking roses. ”

“ But to my embarrassment Consuelo maintained a half scornful silence, and an inconsistent freshness of healthful indifference, as Enriquez approached her with an engaging smile. “Ah, yes, she have the headache, and the molligrubs. She will sit on the damp stone when the gentle dew is falling. I comprehend. Meet me in the lane when the clock strike nine! But,” in a lower voice, “of thees undress horse I comprehend nothing! Look you—it is sad and strange.”
He went off to fetch Chu Chu, leaving me and Consuelo alone. I do not think I ever felt so utterly abject and bewildered before in my life. ”

“ From that slight elevation there was a perfect view over the whole landscape and river below; the Bar stretched out as a map at her feet; in that clear, transparent air she could see every movement and gesture of Wayne's brother, all unconscious of that surveillance, at work on the Bar. For an instant Madison's sallow cheek reddened, he knew not why; a remorseful feeling that he ought to be there with Arthur came over him. Mrs. McGee's voice seemed to answer his thought. “You can see everything that's going on down there without being seen yourself. It's good fun for me sometimes. ”

“ Engagements, you know, are sometimes forced, unsuitable, or unequal, and are broken by circumstances. Callender is proud.”
Gray turned upon the consul the same look of gravity that he had worn on the yacht—the same look that the consul even fancied he had seen in Ailsa's eyes. “That's exactly where you're mistaken in her,” he said slowly. “A girl like that gives her word and keeps it. She waits, hopes, accepts what may come—breaks her heart, if you will, but not her word. Come, let's talk of something else. How did he—that man Gow—lose Callender's money?” ”

“ I want to live for one day like a gentleman, as I used to live before I came here. That's all! It isn't much, Tom. You can do it and say you require to do it to get evidence against me, or that you want to search the rooms.”
The expression of wonder which had come into the sheriff's face at the beginning of this speech deepened into his old look of surly dissatisfaction. “And that's all ye want?” he said gloomily. “Ye don't want no friends—no lawyer? For I tell you, straight out, major, there ain't no hope for ye, when the law once gets hold of ye in Sacramento.” ”