Stories in Light and Shadow by Bret Harte (100 best novels of all time TXT) 📖

the howl, the snap of the finger, the oath, the ‘Helen blazes,’ the ‘Wot the devil,’ the ‘That be d—d,’ the bad language; they themselves finger the revolver, advance the bowie-knife, throw off the coat, square off, and say ‘Come on.’ I remain as you see me now, little brother—tranquil.” He lighted another cigarette, made his position more comfortable in the hammock, and resumed: “The Professor Dobbs, who is the geologian of the company, made a report for which he got two thousand dollar. But thees report—look you, friend Pancho—he is not good for the mine. For in the hole in the ground the Professor Dobbs have found a ‘hoss.’”

“A what?” I asked.

“A hoss,” repeated Enriquez, with infinite gravity. “But not, leetle Pancho, the hoss that run, the hoss that buck-jump, but what the miner call a ‘hoss,’ a something that rear up in the vein and stop him. You pick around the hoss; you pick under him; sometimes you find the vein, sometimes you do not. The hoss rear up, and remain! Eet ees not good for the mine. The board say, ‘D– the hoss!’ ‘Get rid of the hoss.’ ‘Chuck out the hoss.’ Then they talk together, and one say to the Professor Dobbs: ‘Eef you cannot thees hoss remove from the mine, you can take him out of the report.’ He look to me, thees professor. I see nothing; I remain tranquil. Then the board say: ‘Thees report with the hoss in him is worth two thousand dollar, but WITHOUT the hoss he is worth five thousand dollar. For the stockholder is frighted of the rearing hoss. It is of a necessity that the stockholder should remain tranquil. Without the hoss the report is good; the stock shall errise; the director shall sell out, and leave the stockholder the hoss to play with.’ The professor he say, ‘Alright;’ he scratch out the hoss, sign his name, and get a check for three thousand dollar.”

“Then I errise—so!” He got up from the hammock, suiting the action to the word, and during the rest of his narrative, I honestly believe, assumed the same attitude and deliberate intonation he had exhibited at the board. I could even fancy I saw the reckless, cynical faces of his brother directors turned upon his grim, impassive features. “I am tranquil. I smoke my cigarette. I say that for three hundred year my family have held the land of thees mine; that it pass from father to son, and from son to son; it pass by gift, it pass by grant, but that NEVARRE THERE PASS A LIE WITH IT! I say it was a gift by a Spanish Christian king to a Christian hidalgo for the spread of the gospel, and not for the cheat and the swindle! I say that this mine was worked by the slave, and by the mule, by the ass, but never by the cheat and swindler. I say that if they have struck the hoss in the mine, they have struck a hoss IN THE LAND, a Spanish hoss; a hoss that have no bridle worth five thousand dollar in his mouth, but a hoss to rear, and a hoss that cannot be struck out by a Yankee geologian; and that hoss is Enriquez Saltillo!”

He paused, and laid aside his cigarette.

“Then they say, ‘Dry up,’ and ‘Sell out;’ and the great bankers say, ‘Name your own price for your stock, and resign.’ And I say, ‘There is not enough gold in your bank, in your San Francisco, in the mines of California, that shall buy a Spanish gentleman. When I leave, I leave the stock at my back; I shall take it, nevarre! Then the banker he say, ‘And you will go and blab, I suppose?’ And then, Pancho, I smile, I pick up my mustache—so! and I say: ‘Pardon, senor, you haf mistake, The Saltillo haf for three hundred year no stain, no blot upon him. Eet is not now—the last of the race—who shall confess that he haf sit at a board of disgrace and dishonor!’ And then it is that the band begin to play, and the animals stand on their hind leg and waltz, and behold, the row he haf begin!”

I ran over to him, and fairly hugged him. But he put me aside with a gentle and philosophical calm. “Ah, eet is nothing, Pancho. It is, believe me, all the same a hundred years to come, and where are you, then? The earth he turn round, and then come el temblor, the earthquake, and there you are! Bah! eet is not of the board that I have asked you to come; it is something else I would tell you. Go and wash yourself of thees journey, my leetle brother, as I have”— looking at his narrow, brown, well-bred hands—“wash myself of the board. Be very careful of the leetle old woman, Pancho; do not wink to her of the eye! Consider, my leetle brother, for one hundred and one year he haf been as a nun, a saint! Disturb not her tranquillity.”

Yes, it was the old Enriquez; but he seemed graver,—if I could use that word of one of such persistent gravity; only his gravity heretofore had suggested a certain irony rather than a melancholy which I now fancied I detected. And what was this “something else” he was to “tell me later”? Did it refer to Mrs. Saltillo? I had purposely waited for him to speak of her, before I should say anything of my visit to Carquinez Springs. I hurried through my ablutions in the hot water, brought in a bronze jar on the head of the centenarian handmaid; and even while I was smiling over Enriquez’s caution regarding this aged Ruth, I felt I was getting nervous to hear his news.

I found him in his sitting-room, or study,—a long, low apartment with small, deep windows like embrasures in the outer adobe wall, but glazed in lightly upon the veranda. He was sitting quite abstractedly, with a pen in his hand, before a table, on which a number of sealed envelopes were lying. He looked SO formal and methodical for Enriquez.

“You like the old casa, Pancho?” he said in reply to my praise of its studious and monastic gloom. “Well, my leetle brother, some day that is fair—who knows?—it may be at your disposicion; not of our politeness, but of a truth, friend Pancho. For, if I leave it to my wife”—it was the first time he had spoken of her—“for my leetle child,” he added quickly, “I shall put in a bond, an obligacion, that my friend Pancho shall come and go as he will.”

“The Saltillos are a long-lived race,” I laughed. “I shall be a gray-haired man, with a house and family of my own by that time.” But I did not like the way he had spoken.

“Quien sabe?” he only said, dismissing the question with the national gesture. After a moment he added: “I shall tell you something that is strrange, so strrange that you shall say, like the banker say, ‘Thees Enriquez, he ees off his head; he ees a crank, a lunatico;’ but it ees a FACT; believe me, I have said!”

He rose, and, going to the end of the room, opened a door. It showed a pretty little room, femininely arranged in Mrs. Saltillo’s refined taste. “Eet is pretty; eet is the room of my wife. Bueno! attend me now.” He closed the door, and walked back to the table. “I have sit here and write when the earthquake arrive. I have feel the shock, the grind of the walls on themselves, the tremor, the stagger, and—that—door—he swing open!”

“The door?” I said, with a smile that I felt was ghastly.

“Comprehend me,” he said quickly; “it ees not THAT which ees strrange. The wall lift, the lock slip, the door he fell open; it is frequent; it comes so ever when the earthquake come. But eet is not my wife’s room I see; it is ANOTHER ROOM, a room I know not. My wife Urania, she stand there, of a fear, of a tremble; she grasp, she cling to someone. The earth shake again; the door shut. I jump from my table; I shake and tumble to the door. I fling him open. Maravilloso! it is the room of my wife again. She is NOT there; it is empty; it is nothing!”

I felt myself turning hot and cold by turns. I was horrified, and— and I blundered. “And who was the other figure?” I gasped.

“Who?” repeated Enriquez, with a pause, a fixed look at me, and a sublime gesture. “Who SHOULD it be, but myself, Enriquez Saltillo?”

A terrible premonition that this was a chivalrous LIE, that it was NOT himself he had seen, but that our two visions were identical, came upon me. “After all,” I said, with a fixed smile, “if you could imagine you saw your wife, you could easily imagine you saw yourself too. In the shock of the moment you thought of HER naturally, for then she would as naturally seek your protection. You have written for news of her?”

“No,” said Enriquez quietly.

“No?” I repeated amazedly.

“You understand, Pancho! Eef it was the trick of my eyes, why should I affright her for the thing that is not? If it is the truth, and it arrive to ME, as a warning, why shall I affright her before it come?”

“Before WHAT comes? What is it a warning of?” I asked impetuously.

“That we shall be separated! That I go, and she do not.”

To my surprise, his dancing eyes had a slight film over them. “I don’t understand you,” I said awkwardly.

“Your head is not of a level, my Pancho. Thees earthquake he remain for only ten seconds, and he fling open the door. If he remain for twenty seconds, he fling open the wall, the hoose toomble, and your friend Enriquez is feenish.”

“Nonsense!” I said. “Professor—I mean the geologists—say that the centre of disturbance of these Californian earthquakes is some far-away point in the Pacific and there never will be any serious convulsions here.”

“Ah, the geologist,” said Enriquez gravely, “understand the hoss that rear in the mine, and the five thousand dollar, believe me, no more. He haf lif here three year. My family haf lif here three hundred. My grandfather saw the earth swallow the church of San Juan Baptista.”

I laughed, until, looking up, I was shocked to see for the first time that his dancing eyes were moist and shining. But almost instantly he jumped up, and declared that I had not seen the garden and the corral, and, linking his arm in mine, swept me like a whirlwind into the patio. For an hour or two he was in his old invincible spirits. I was glad I had said nothing of my visit to Carquinez Springs and of seeing his wife; I determined to avoid it as long as possible; and as he did not again refer to her, except in the past, it was not difficult. At last he infected me with his extravagance, and for a while I forgot even the strangeness of his conduct and his confidences. We walked and talked together as of old. I understood and enjoyed him perfectly, and it was not strange that in the end I began to believe that this strange revelation was a bit of his extravagant acting, got up to amuse me. The coincidence of his story with my own experience was not, after all, such a wonderful thing, considering what must have been the nervous and mental disturbance produced by the earthquake. We dined together, attended only by Pedro, an old half-caste body-servant. It was easy to see that the household was carried on economically, and, from a word or two casually