Tales of the Argonauts by Bret Harte (digital ebook reader .txt) 📖

“Just like this in ‘52, and again in ‘60. It’s always been my opinion that these dry seasons come reg’lar. I’ve said it afore. I say it again. It’s jist as I said about going home, you know,” he added with desperate recklessness.

“Thar’s a man,” said Abner Dean lazily, ez sez you never went home. Thar’s a man ez sez you’ve been three years in Sonora. Thar’s a man ez sez you hain’t seen your wife and daughter since ‘49. Thar’s a man ez sez you’ve been playin’ this camp for six months.”

There was a dead silence. Then a voice said quite as quietly,—

“That man lies.”

It was not the old man’s voice. Everybody turned as Henry York slowly rose, stretching out his six feet of length, and, brushing away the ashes that had fallen from his pipe upon his breast, deliberately placed himself beside Plunkett, and faced the others.

“That man ain’t here,” continued Abner Dean, with listless indifference of voice, and a gentle pre-occupation of manner, as he carelessly allowed his right hand to rest on his hip near his revolver. “That man ain’t here; but, if I’m called upon to make good what he says, why, I’m on hand.”

All rose as the two men—perhaps the least externally agitated of them all—approached each other. The lawyer stepped in between them.

“Perhaps there’s some mistake here. York, do you KNOW that the old man has been home?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know it?”

York turned his clear, honest, frank eyes on his questioner, and without a tremor told the only direct and unmitigated lie of his life. “Because I’ve seen him there.”

The answer was conclusive. It was known that York had been visiting the East during the old man’s absence. The colloquy had diverted attention from Plunkett, who, pale and breathless, was staring at his unexpected deliverer. As he turned again toward his tormentors, there was something in the expression of his eye that caused those that were nearest to him to fall back, and sent a strange, indefinable thrill through the boldest and most reckless. As he made a step forward, the physician, almost unconsciously, raised his hand with a warning gesture; and old man Plunkett, with his eyes fixed upon the red-hot stove, and an odd smile playing about his mouth, began,—

“Yes—of course you did. Who says you didn’t? It ain’t no lie. I said I was goin’ home—and I’ve been home. Haven’t I? My God! I have. Who says I’ve been lyin’? Who says I’m dreamin’? Is it true—why don’t you speak? It is true, after all. You say you saw me there: why don’t you speak again? Say, say!—is it true? It’s going now. O my God! it’s going again. It’s going now. Save me!” And with a fierce cry he fell forward in a fit upon the floor.

When the old man regained his senses, he found himself in York’s cabin. A flickering fire of pine-boughs lit up the rude rafters, and fell upon a photograph tastefully framed with fir-cones, and hung above the brush whereon he lay. It was the portrait of a young girl. It was the first object to meet the old man’s gaze; and it brought with it a flush of such painful consciousness, that he started, and glanced quickly around. But his eyes only encountered those of York,—clear, gray, critical, and patient,— and they fell again.

“Tell me, old man,” said York not unkindly, but with the same cold, clear tone in his voice that his eye betrayed a moment ago,—“tell me, is THAT a lie too?” and he pointed to the picture.

The old man closed his eyes, and did not reply. Two hours before, the question would have stung him into some evasion or bravado. But the revelation contained in the question, as well as the tone of York’s voice, was to him now, in his pitiable condition, a relief. It was plain, even to his confused brain, that York had lied when he had indorsed his story in the bar-room; it was clear to him now that he had not been home, that he was not, as he had begun to fear, going mad. It was such a relief, that, with characteristic weakness, his former recklessness and extravagance returned. He began to chuckle, finally to laugh uproariously.

York, with his eyes still fixed on the old man, withdrew the hand with which he had taken his.

“Didn’t we fool ‘em nicely; eh, Yorky! He, he! The biggest thing yet ever played in this camp! I always said I’d play ‘em all some day, and I have—played ‘em for six months. Ain’t it rich?—ain’t it the richest thing you ever seed? Did you see Abner’s face when he spoke ‘bout that man as seed me in Sonora? Warn’t it good as the minstrels? Oh, it’s too much!” and, striking his leg with the palm of his hand, he almost threw himself from the bed in a paroxysm of laughter,—a paroxysm that, nevertheless, appeared to be half real and half affected.

“Is that photograph hers?” said York in a low voice, after a slight pause.

“Hers? No! It’s one of the San Francisco actresses. He, he! Don’t you see? I bought it for two bits in one of the bookstores. I never thought they’d swaller THAT too; but they did! Oh, but the old man played ‘em this time didn’t he—eh?” and he peered curiously in York’s face.

“Yes, and he played ME too,” said York, looking steadily in the old man’s eye.

“Yes, of course,” interposed Plunkett hastily; “but you know, Yorky, you got out of it well! You’ve sold ‘em too. We’ve both got em on a string now—you and me—got to stick together now. You did it well, Yorky: you did it well. Why, when you said you’d seen me in York City, I’m d–-d if I didn’t”—

“Didn’t what?” said York gently; for the old man had stopped with a pale face and wandering eye.

“Eh?”

“You say when I said I had seen you in New York you thought”—

“You lie!” said the old man fiercely. “I didn’t say I thought any thing. What are you trying to go back on me for, eh?” His hands were trembling as he rose muttering from the bed, and made his way toward the hearth.

“Gimme some whiskey,” he said presently “and dry up. You oughter treat anyway. Them fellows oughter treated last night. By hookey, I’d made ‘em—only I fell sick.”

York placed the liquor and a tin cup on the table beside him, and, going to the door, turned his back upon his guest, and looked out on the night. Although it was clear moonlight, the familiar prospect never to him seemed so dreary. The dead waste of the broad Wingdam highway never seemed so monotonous, so like the days that he had passed, and were to come to him, so like the old man in its suggestion of going sometime, and never getting there. He turned, and going up to Plunkett put his hand upon his shoulder, and said,—

“I want you to answer one question fairly and squarely.”

The liquor seemed to have warmed the torpid blood in the old man’s veins, and softened his acerbity; for the face he turned up to York was mellowed in its rugged outline, and more thoughtful in expression, as he said,—

“Go on, my boy.”

“Have you a wife and—daughter?”

“Before God I have!”

The two men were silent for a moment, both gazing at the fire. Then Plunkett began rubbing his knees slowly.

“The wife, if it comes to that, ain’t much,” he began cautiously, “being a little on the shoulder, you know, and wantin’, so to speak a liberal California education, which makes, you know, a bad combination. It’s always been my opinion, that there ain’t any worse. Why, she’s as ready with her tongue as Abner Dean is with his revolver, only with the difference that she shoots from principle, as she calls it; and the consequence is, she’s always layin’ for you. It’s the effete East, my boy, that’s ruinin’ her. It’s them ideas she gets in New York and Boston that’s made her and me what we are. I don’t mind her havin’ ‘em, if she didn’t shoot. But, havin’ that propensity, them principles oughtn’t to be lying round loose no more’n firearms.”

“But your daughter?” said York.

The old man’s hands went up to his eyes here, and then both hands and head dropped forward on the table. “Don’t say any thing ‘bout her, my boy, don’t ask me now.” With one hand concealing his eyes, he fumbled about with the other in his pockets for his handkerchief— but vainly. Perhaps it was owing to this fact, that he repressed his tears; for, when he removed his hand from his eyes, they were quite dry. Then he found his voice.

“She’s a beautiful girl, beautiful, though I say it; and you shall see her, my boy,—you shall see her sure. I’ve got things about fixed now. I shall have my plan for reducin’ ores perfected a day or two; and I’ve got proposals from all the smeltin’ works here” (here he hastily produced a bundle of papers that fell upon the floor), “and I’m goin’ to send for ‘em. I’ve got the papers here as will give me ten thousand dollars clear in the next month,” he added, as he strove to collect the valuable documents again. “I’ll have ‘em here by Christmas, if I live; and you shall eat your Christmas dinner with me, York, my boy,—you shall sure.”

With his tongue now fairly loosened by liquor and the suggestive vastness of his prospects, he rambled on more or less incoherently, elaborating and amplifying his plans, occasionally even speaking of them as already accomplished, until the moon rode high in the heavens, and York led him again to his couch. Here he lay for some time muttering to himself, until at last he sank into a heavy sleep. When York had satisfied himself of the fact, he gently took down the picture and frame, and, going to the hearth, tossed them on the dying embers, and sat down to see them burn.

The fir-cones leaped instantly into flame; then the features that had entranced San Francisco audiences nightly, flashed up and passed away (as such things are apt to pass); and even the cynical smile on York’s lips faded too. And then there came a supplemental and unexpected flash as the embers fell together, and by its light York saw a paper upon the floor. It was one that had fallen from the old man’s pocket. As he picked it up listlessly, a photograph slipped from its folds. It was the portrait of a young girl; and on its reverse was written in a scrawling hand, “Melinda to father.”

It was at best a cheap picture, but, ah me! I fear even the deft graciousness of the highest art could not have softened the rigid angularities of that youthful figure, its self-complacent vulgarity, its cheap finery, its expressionless ill-favor. York did not look at it a second time. He turned to the letter for relief.

It was misspelled; it was unpunctuated; it was almost illegible; it was fretful in tone, and selfish in sentiment. It was not, I fear, even original in the story of its woes. It was the harsh recital of poverty, of suspicion, of mean makeshifts and compromises, of low pains and lower longings, of sorrows that were degrading, of a grief that was pitiable. Yet it was sincere in a certain kind of vague yearning for the presence of the degraded man to whom it was written,—an affection that was more like a confused instinct than a sentiment.

York folded it again carefully, and placed it beneath the old man’s pillow. Then he returned