By Shore and Sedge by Bret Harte (first e reader txt) đ
- Author: Bret Harte
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âEf you mean ME when you say HIM, and ez thar ainât any other man around, I reckon you doââyes!ââ
âAnd he asks meâheâthis man of the feet and the daughterâasks meâde Ferrieresâwhat I will take,â continued de Ferrieres, buttoning his coat. âNo! it is a dream!â He walked stiffly to the corner where his portmanteau lay, lifted it, and going to the outer door, a cut through the shipâs side that communicated with the alley, unlocked it and flung it open to the night. A thick mist like the breath of the ocean flowed into the room.
âYou ask me what I shall take to go,â he said as he stood on the threshold. âI shall take what YOU cannot give, Monsieur, but what I would not keep if I stood here another moment. I take my Honor, Monsieur, andâI take my leave!â
For a moment his grotesque figure was outlined in the opening, and then disappeared as if he had dropped into an invisible ocean below. Stupefied and disconcerted at this complete success of his overtures, Abner Nott remained speechless, gazing at the vacant space until a cold influx of the mist recalled him. Then he rose and shuffled quickly to the door.
âHi! Ferrers! Look yerâSay! Wotâs your hurry, pardner?â
But there was no response. The thick mist, which hid the surrounding objects, seemed to deaden all sound also. After a momentâs pause he closed the door, but did not lock it, and retreating to the centre of the room remained blinking at the two candles and plucking some perplexing problem from his beard. Suddenly an idea seized him. Rosey! Where was she? Perhaps it had been a preconcerted plan, and she had fled with him. Putting out the lights, he stumbled hurriedly through the passage to the gangway above. The cabin-door was open; there was the sound of voicesâRenshawâs and Roseyâs. Mr. Nott felt relieved but not unembarrassed. He would have avoided his daughterâs presence that evening. But even while making this resolution with characteristic infelicity he blundered into the room. Rosey looked up with a slight start; Renshawâs animated face was changed to its former expression of inward discontent.
âYou came in so like a ghost, father,â said Rosey with a slight peevishness that was new to her. âAnd I thought you were in town. Donât go, Mr. Renshaw.â
But Mr. Renshaw intimated that he had already trespassed upon Miss Nottâs time, and that no doubt her father wanted to talk with her. To his surprise and annoyance, however, Mr. Nott insisted on accompanying him to his room, and without heeding Renshawâs cold âGood-night,â entered and closed the door behind him.
âPârapâs,â said Mr. Nott with a troubled air, âyou disremember that when you first kem here you asked me if you could hev that âer loft that the Frenchman had down stairs.â
âNo, I donât remember it,â said Renshaw almost rudely. âBut,â he added, after a pause, with an air of a man obliged to revive a stale and unpleasant memory, âif I didâwhat about it?â
âNuthinâ, only that you kin hev it tomorrow, ez that âere Frenchman is movinâ out,â responded Nott. âI thought you was sorter keen about it when you first kem.â
âUmph! weâll talk about it tomorrow.â Something in the look of wearied perplexity with which Mr. Nott was beginning to regard his own mal a propos presence, arrested the young manâs attention. âWhatâs the reason you didnât sell this old ship long ago, take a decent house in the town, and bring up your daughter like a lady?â he asked with a sudden blunt good humor. But even this implied blasphemy against the habitation he worshiped did not prevent Mr. Nott from his usual misconstruction of the question.
âI reckon, now, Roseyâs got high-flown ideas of livinâ in a castle with ruins, eh?â he said cunningly.
âHavenât heard her say,â returned Renshaw abruptly. âGood-night.â
Firmly convinced that Rosey had been unable to conceal from Mr. Renshaw the influence of her dreams of a castellated future with de Ferrieres, he regained the cabin. Satisfying himself that his daughter had retired, he sought his own couch. But not to sleep. The figure of de Ferrieres, standing in the ship side and melting into the outer darkness, haunted him, and compelled him in dreams to rise and follow him through the alleys and by-ways of the crowded city. Again, it was a part of his morbid suspicion that he now invested the absent man with a potential significance and an unknown power. What deep-laid plans might he not form to possess himself of Rosey, of which he, Abner Nott, would be ignorant? Unchecked by the restraint of a fatherâs roof he would now give full license to his power. âSaid heâd take his Honor with him,â muttered Abner to himself in the dim watches of the night; âlookinâ at that sayinâ in its right light, it looks bad.â
VThe elaborately untruthful account which Mr. Nott gave his daughter of de Ferrieresâs sudden departure was more fortunate than his usual equivocations. While it disappointed and slightly mortified her, it did not seem to her inconsistent with what she already knew of him. âSaid his doctor had ordered him to quit town under an hour, owing to a cominâ attack of hay fever, and he had a friend from furrin parts waitinâ him at the Springs, Rosey,â explained Nott, hesitating between his desire to avoid his daughterâs eyes and his wish to observe her countenance.
âWas he worse?âI mean did he look badly, father?â inquired Rosey thoughtfully.
âI reckon not exackly bad. Kinder looked ez if he mout be worse soon ef he didnât hump hisself.â
âDid you see him?âin his room?â asked Rosey anxiously. Upon the answer to this simple question depended the future confidential relations of father and daughter. If her father had himself detected the means by which his lodger existed, she felt that her own obligations to secrecy had been removed. But Mr. Nottâs answer disposed of this vain hope. It was a response after his usual fashion to the question he IMAGINED she artfully wished to ask, i. e. if he had discovered their rendezvous of the previous night. This it was part of his peculiar delicacy to ignore. Yet his reply showed that he had been unconscious of the one miserable secret that he might have read easily.
âI was there an hour or soâhim and me aloneâdiscussinâ trade. I reckon heâs got a good thing outer that curled horse hair, for I see heâs got in an invoice oâ cushions. Iâve stored âem all in the forrard bulkhead until he sends for âem, ez Mr. Renshaw hez taken the loft.â
But although Mr. Renshaw had taken the loft, he did not seem in haste to occupy it. He spent part of the morning in uneasily pacing his room, in occasional sallies into the street from which he purposelessly returned, and once or twice in distant and furtive contemplation of Rosey at work in the galley. This last observation was not unnoticed by the astute Nott, who at once conceiving that he was nourishing a secret and hopeless passion for Rosey, began to consider whether it was not his duty to warn the young man of her preoccupied affections. But Mr. Renshawâs final disappearance obliged him to withhold his confidence till morning.
This time Mr. Renshaw left the ship with the evident determination of some settled purpose. He walked rapidly until he reached the counting-house of Mr. Sleight, when he was at once shown into a private office. In a few moments Mr. Sleight, a brusque but passionless man, joined him.
âWell,â said Sleight, closing the door carefully. âWhat news?â
âNone,â said Renshaw bluntly. âLook here, Sleight,â he added, turning to him suddenly. âLet me out of this game. I donât like it.â
âDoes that mean youâve found nothing?â asked Sleight, sarcastically.
âIt means that I havenât looked for anything, and that I donât intend to without the full knowledge of that dâ-d fool who owns the ship.â
âYouâve changed your mind since you wrote that letter,â said Sleight coolly, producing from a drawer the note already known to the reader. Renshaw mechanically extended his hand to take it. Mr. Sleight dropped the letter back into the drawer, which he quietly locked. The apparently simple act dyed Mr. Renshawâs cheek with color, but it vanished quickly, and with it any token of his previous embarrassment. He looked at Sleight with the convinced air of a resolute man who had at last taken a disagreeable step but was willing to stand by the consequences.
âI HAVE changed my mind,â he said coolly. âI found out that it was one thing to go down there as a skilled prospector might go to examine a mine that was to be valued according to his report of the indications, but that it was entirely another thing to go and play the spy in a poor devilâs house in order to buy something he didnât know he was selling and wouldnât sell if he did.â
âAnd something that the man HE bought of didnât think of selling; something HE himself never paid for, and never expected to buy,â sneered Sleight.
âBut something that WE expect to buy from our knowledge of all this, and it is that which makes all the difference.â
âBut you knew all this before.â
âI never saw it in this light before! I never thought of it until I was living there face to face with the old fool I was intending to overreach. I never was SURE of it until this morning, when he actually turned out one of his lodgers that I might have the very room I required to play off our little game in comfortably. When he did that, I made up my mind to drop the whole thing, and Iâm here to do it.â
âAnd let somebody else take the responsibilityâwith the percentageâunless youâve also felt it your duty to warn Nott too,â said Sleight with a sneer.
âYou only dare say that to me, Sleight,â said Renshaw quietly, âbecause you have in that drawer an equal evidence of my folly and my confidence; but if you are wise you will not presume too far on either. Let us see how we stand. Through the yarn of a drunken captain and a mutinous sailor you became aware of an unclaimed shipment of treasure, concealed in an unknown ship that entered this harbor. You are enabled, through me, to corroborate some facts and identify the ship. You proposed to me, as a speculation, to identify the treasure if possible before you purchased the ship. I accepted the offer without consideration; on consideration I now decline it, but without prejudice or loss to any one but myself. As to your insinuation I need not remind you that my presence here to-day refutes it. I would not require your permission to make a much better bargain with a good natured fool like Nott than I could with you. Or if I did not care for the business I could have warned the girlââ
âThe girlâwhat girl?â
Renshaw bit his lip but answered boldly, âThe old manâs daughterâa poor girlâwhom this act would rob as well as her father.â
Sleight looked at his companion attentively. âYou might have said so at first, and let up on this camp-meetinâ exhortation. Well thenâadmitting youâve got the old man and the young girl on the same string, and that youâve played it pretty low down in the short time youâve been thereâI suppose, Dick Renshaw, Iâve got to see your bluff. Well, how much is it! Whatâs the figure you and she have settled on?â
For an instant Mr. Sleight was in physical danger. But before he had finished speaking Renshawâs quick sense of the ludicrous had so far overcome his first indignation as to enable him
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