By Shore and Sedge by Bret Harte (first e reader txt) đ
- Author: Bret Harte
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The girlâs eyes had wandered again to the pages of her book. Perhaps she was already familiar with the text of her fatherâs monologue. But recognizing an additional querulousness in his voice, she laid the book aside and patiently folded her hands in her lap.
âThatâs rightâfor Iâve suthinâ to tell ye. The fact is Sleight wants to buy the Pontiac out and out just ez she stands with the two fifty vara lots she stands on.â
âSleight wants to buy her? Sleight?â echoed Rosey incredulously.
âYou bet! Sleightâthe big financier, the smartest man in âFrisco.â
âWhat does he want to buy her for?â asked Rosey, knitting her pretty brows.
The apparently simple question suddenly puzzled Mr. Nott. He glanced feebly at his daughterâs face, and frowned in vacant irritation. âThatâs so,â he said, drawing a long breath; âthereâs suthinâ in that.â
âWhat did he SAY?â continued the young girl, impatiently.
âNot much. âYouâve got the Pontiac, Nott,â sez he. âYou bet!â sez I. âWhatâll you take for her and the lot she stands on?â sez he, short and sharp. Some fellers, Rosey,â said Nott, with a cunning smile, âwould hev blurted out a big figger and been cotched. That ainât my style. I just looked at him. âIâll wait fur your figgers until next steamer day,â sez he, and off he goes like a shot. Heâs awfully sharp, Rosey.â
âBut if he is sharp, father, and he really wants to buy the ship,â returned Rosey, thoughfully, âitâs only because he knows itâs valuable property, and not because he likes it as we do. He canât take that value away even if we donât sell it to him, and all the while we have the comfort of the dear old Pontiac, donât you see?â
This exhaustive commercial reasoning was so sympathetic to Mr. Nottâs instincts that he accepted it as conclusive. He, however, deemed it wise to still preserve his practical attitude. âBut that donât make it pay by the month, Rosey. Suthinâ must be done. Iâm thinking Iâll clean out that photographer.â
âNot just after heâs taken such a pretty view of the cabin front of the Pontiac from the street, father! No! heâs going to give us a copy, and put the other in a shop window in Montgomery Street.â
âThatâs so,â said Mr. Nott, musingly; âitâs no slouch of an advertisement. âThe Pontiac,â the property of A. Nott, Esq., of St. Jo, Missouri. Send it on to your Aunt Phoebe; sorter make the old folks open their eyesâoh? Well, seeinâ heâs been to some expense fittinâ up an entrance from the other street, weâll let him slide. But as to that dâ-d old Frenchman Ferrers, in the next loft, with his stuck-up airs and highfalutin style, we must get quit of him; heâs regularly gouged me in that ere horsehair spekilation.â
âHow can you say that, father!â said Rosey, with a slight increase of color. âIt was your own offer. You know those bales of curled horsehair were left behind by the late tenant to pay his rent. When Mr. de Ferrieres rented the room afterwards, you told him youâd throw them in in the place of repairs and furniture. It was your own offer.â
âYes, but I didnât reckon therâd ever be a big price per pound paid for the darned stuff for sofys and cushions and sich.â
âHow do you know HE knew it, father?â responded Rosey.
âThen why did he look so silly at first, and then put on airs when I joked him about it, eh?â
âPerhaps he didnât understand your joking, father. Heâs a foreigner, and shy and proud, andânot like the others. I donât think he knew what you meant then, any more than he believed he was making a bargain before. He may be poor, but I think heâs beenâaâ aâgentleman.â
The young girlâs animation penetrated even Mr. Nottâs slow comprehension. Her novel opposition, and even the prettiness it enhanced, gave him a dull premonition of pain. His small round eyes became abstracted, his mouth remained partly open, even his fresh color slightly paled.
âYou seem to have been takinâ stock of this yer man, Rosey,â he said, with a faint attempt at archness; âif he warnât ez old ez a crow, for all his young feathers, Iâd think he was makinâ up to you.â
But the passing glow had faded from her young cheeks, and her eyes wandered again to her book. âHe pays his rent regularly every steamer night,â she said, quietly, as if dismissing an exhausted subject, âand heâll be here in a moment, I dare say.â She took up her book, and leaning her head on her hand, once more became absorbed in its pages.
An uneasy silence followed. The rain beat against the windows, the ticking of a clock became audible, but still Mr. Nott sat with vacant eyes fixed on his daughterâs face, and the constrained smile on his lips. He was conscious that he had never seen her look so pretty before, yet he could not tell why this was no longer an unalloyed satisfaction. Not but that he had always accepted the admiration of others for her as a matter of course, but for the first time he became conscious that she not only had an interest in others, but apparently a superior knowledge of them. How did she know these things about this man, and why had she only now accidentally spoken of them? HE would have done so. All this passed so vaguely through his unreflective mind, that he was unable to retain any decided impression, but the far-reaching one that his lodger had obtained some occult influence over her through the exhibition of his baleful skill in the horsehair speculation. âThem tricks is likely to take a young girlâs fancy. I must look arter her,â he said to himself softly.
A slow regular step in the gangway interrupted his paternal reflections. Hastily buttoning across his chest the pea-jacket which he usually wore at home as a single concession to his nautical surroundings, he drew himself up with something of the assumption of a ship-master, despite certain bucolic suggestions of his boots and legs. The footsteps approached nearer, and a tall figure suddenly stood in the doorway.
It was a figure so extraordinary that even in the strange masquerade of that early civilization it was remarkable; a figure with whom father and daughter were already familiar without abatement of wonderâthe figure of a rejuvenated old man, padded, powdered, dyed, and painted to the verge of caricature, but without a single suggestion of ludicrousness or humor. A face so artificial that it seemed almost a mask, but, like a mask, more pathetic than amusing. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion of a dozen years before; his pearl gray trousers strapped tightly over his varnished boots, his voluminous satin cravat and high collar embraced his rouged cheeks and dyed whiskers, his closely-buttoned frock coat clinging to a waist that seemed accented by stays.
He advanced two steps into the cabin with an upright precision of motion that might have hid the infirmities of age, and said deliberately with a foreign accent:â
âYou-r-r ac-coumpt?â
In the actual presence of the apparition Mr. Nottâs dignified resistance wavered. But glancing uneasily at his daughter and seeing her calm eyes fixed on the speaker without embarrassment, he folded his arms stiffly, and with a lofty simulation of examining the ceiling, said,â
âAhem! Rosa! The gentlemanâs account.â
It was an infelicitous action. For the stranger, who evidently had not noticed the presence of the young girl before, started, took a step quickly forward, bent stiffly but profoundly over the little hand that held the account, raised it to his lips, and with âa thousand pardons, mademoiselle,â laid a small canvas bag containing the rent before the disorganized Mr. Nott and stiffly vanished.
That night was a troubled one to the simple-minded proprietor of the good ship Pontiac. Unable to voice his uneasiness by further discussion, but feeling that his late discomposing interview with his lodger demanded some marked protest, he absented himself on the plea of business during the rest of the evening, happily to his daughterâs utter obliviousness of the reason. Lights were burning brilliantly in counting-rooms and offices, the feverish life of the mercantile city was at its height. With a vague idea of entering into immediate negotiations with Mr. Sleight for the sale of the shipâas a direct way out of his present perplexity, he bent his steps towards the financierâs office, but paused and turned back before reaching the door. He made his way to the wharf and gazed abstractedly at the lights reflected in the dark, tremulous, jelly-like water. But wherever he went he was accompanied by the absurd figure of his lodgerâa figure he had hitherto laughed at or half pitied, but which now, to his bewildered comprehension, seemed to have a fateful significance. Here a new idea seized him, and he hurried back to the ship, slackening his pace only when he arrived at his own doorway. Here he paused a moment and slowly ascended the staircase. When he reached the passage he coughed slightly and paused again. Then he pushed open the door of the darkened cabin and called softly:â
âRosey!â
âWhat is it, father?â said Roseyâs voice from the little stateroom on the rightâRoseyâs own bower.
âNothing!â said Mr. Nott, with an affectation of languid calmness; âI only wanted to know if you was comfortable. Itâs an awful busy night in town.â
âYes, father.â
âI reckon tharâs tons oâ gold goinâ to the States tomorrow.â
âYes, father.â
âPretty comfortable, eh?â
âYes, father.â
âWell, Iâll browse round a spell, and turn in myself, soon.â
âYes father.â
Mr. Nott took down a hanging lantern, lit it, and passed out into the gangway. Another lamp hung from the companion hatch to light the tenants to the lower deck, whence he descended. This deck was divided fore and aft by a partitioned passage,âthe lofts or apartments being lighted from the ports, and one or two by a door cut through the shipâs side communicating with an alley on either side. This was the case with the loft occupied by Mr. Nottâs strange lodger, which, besides a door in the passage, had this independent communication with the alley. Nott had never known him to make use of the latter door; on the contrary, it was his regular habit to issue from his apartment at three oâclock every afternoon, dressed as he has been described, stride deliberately through the passage to the upper deck and thence into the street, where his strange figure was a feature of the principal promenade for two or three hours, returning as regularly at eight oâclock
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