Tales of the Argonauts

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TALES OF THE ARGONAUTS


By Bret Harte




CONTENTS


THE ROSE OF TUOLUMNE

A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF MR. JOHN OAKHURST

WAN LEE, THE PAGAN

HOW OLD MAN PLUNKETT WENT HOME

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS

BABY SYLVESTER

AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN

A JERSEY CENTENARIAN




THE ROSE OF TUOLUMNE


CHAPTER I


It was nearly two o'clock in the morning. The lights were out in
Robinson's Hall, where there had been dancing and revelry; and the moon,
riding high, painted the black windows with silver. The cavalcade, that
an hour ago had shocked the sedate pines with song and laughter, were
all dispersed. One enamoured swain had ridden east, another west,
another north, another south; and the object of their adoration, left
within her bower at Chemisal Ridge, was calmly going to bed.

I regret that I am not able to indicate the exact stage of that process.
Two chairs were already filled with delicate inwrappings and white
confusion; and the young lady herself, half-hidden in the silky threads
of her yellow hair, had at one time borne a faint resemblance to a
partly-husked ear of Indian corn. But she was now clothed in that
one long, formless garment that makes all women equal; and the round
shoulders and neat waist, that an hour ago had been so fatal to the
peace of mind of Four Forks, had utterly disappeared. The face above
it was very pretty: the foot below, albeit shapely, was not small. "The
flowers, as a general thing, don't raise their heads MUCH to look after
me," she had said with superb frankness to one of her lovers.

The expression of the "Rose" to-night was contentedly placid. She walked
slowly to the window, and, making the smallest possible peephole through
the curtain, looked out. The motionless figure of a horseman still
lingered on the road, with an excess of devotion that only a coquette,
or a woman very much in love, could tolerate. The "Rose," at that
moment, was neither, and, after a reasonable pause, turned away, saying
quite audibly that it was "too ridiculous for any thing." As she came
back to her dressing-table, it was noticeable that she walked steadily
and erect, without that slight affectation of lameness common to people
with whom bare feet are only an episode. Indeed, it was only four years
ago, that without shoes or stockings, a long-limbed, colty girl, in a
waistless calico gown, she had leaped from the tailboard of her father's
emigrant-wagon when it first drew up at Chemisal Ridge. Certain wild
habits of the "Rose" had outlived transplanting and cultivation.

A knock at the door surprised her. In another moment she had leaped into
bed, and with darkly-frowning eyes, from its secure recesses demanded
"Who's there?"

An apologetic murmur on the other side of the door was the response.

"Why, father!--is that you?"

There were further murmurs, affirmative, deprecatory, and persistent.

"Wait," said the "Rose." She got up, unlocked the door, leaped nimbly
into bed again, and said, "Come."

The door opened timidly. The broad, stooping shoulders, and grizzled
head, of a man past the middle age, appeared: after a moment's
hesitation, a pair of large, diffident feet, shod with canvas slippers,
concluded to follow. When the apparition was complete, it closed the
door softly, and stood there,--a very shy ghost indeed,--with apparently
more than the usual spiritual indisposition to begin a conversation.
The "Rose" resented this impatiently, though, I fear, not altogether
intelligibly.

"Do, father, I declare!"

"You was abed, Jinny," said Mr. McClosky slowly, glancing, with a
singular mixture of masculine awe and paternal pride, upon the two
chairs and their contents,--"you was abed and ondressed."

"I was."

"Surely," said Mr. McClosky, seating himself on the extreme edge of the
bed, and painfully tucking his feet away under it,--"surely." After
a pause, he rubbed a short, thick, stumpy beard, that bore a general
resemblance to a badly-worn blacking-brush, with the palm of his hand,
and went on, "You had a good time, Jinny?"

"Yes, father."

"They was all there?"

"Yes, Rance and York and Ryder and Jack."

"And Jack!" Mr. McClosky endeavored to throw an expression of arch
inquiry into his small, tremulous eyes; but meeting the unabashed,
widely-opened lid of his daughter, he winked rapidly, and blushed to the
roots of his hair.

"Yes, Jack was there," said Jenny, without change of color, or the least
self-consciousness in her great gray eyes; "and he came home with me."
She paused a moment, locking her two hands under her head, and assuming
a more comfortable position on the pillow. "He asked me that same
question again, father, and I said, 'Yes.' It's to be--soon. We're going
to live at Four Forks, in his own house; and next winter we're going to
Sacramento. I suppose it's all right, father, eh?" She emphasized the
question with a slight kick through the bed-clothes, as the parental
McClosky had fallen into an abstract revery.

"Yes, surely," said Mr. McClosky, recovering himself with some
confusion. After a pause, he looked down at the bed-clothes, and,
patting them tenderly, continued, "You couldn't have done better,
Jinny. They isn't a girl in Tuolumne ez could strike it ez rich as
you hev--even if they got the chance." He paused again, and then said,
"Jinny?"

"Yes, father."

"You'se in bed, and ondressed?"

"Yes."

"You couldn't," said Mr. McClosky, glancing hopelessly at the two
chairs, and slowly rubbing his chin,--"you couldn't dress yourself again
could yer?"

"Why, father!"

"Kinder get yourself into them things again?" he added hastily. "Not all
of 'em, you know, but some of 'em. Not if I helped you--sorter stood by,
and lent a hand now and then with a strap, or a buckle, or a necktie, or
a shoestring?" he continued, still looking at the chairs, and evidently
trying to boldly familiarize himself with their contents.

"Are you crazy, father?" demanded Jenny suddenly sitting up with a
portentous switch of her yellow mane. Mr. McClosky rubbed one side of
his beard, which already had the appearance of having been quite worn
away by that process, and faintly dodged the question.

"Jinny," he said, tenderly stroking the bedclothes as he spoke, "this
yer's what's the matter. Thar is a stranger down stairs,--a stranger to
you, lovey, but a man ez I've knowed a long time. He's been here about
an hour; and he'll be here ontil fower o'clock, when the up-stage
passes. Now I wants ye, Jinny dear, to get up and come down stairs, and
kinder help me pass the time with him. It's no use, Jinny," he went on,
gently raising his hand to deprecate any interruption, "it's no use! He
won't go to bed; he won't play keerds; whiskey don't take no effect on
him. Ever since I knowed him, he was the most onsatisfactory critter to
hev round"--

"What do you have him round for, then?" interrupted Miss Jinny sharply.

Mr. McClosky's eyes fell. "Ef he hedn't kem out of his way to-night to
do me a good turn, I wouldn't ask ye, Jinny. I wouldn't, so help me! But
I thought, ez I couldn't do any thing with him, you might come down, and
sorter fetch him, Jinny, as you did the others."

Miss Jenny shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"Is he old, or young?"

"He's young enough, Jinny; but he knows a power of things."

"What does he do?"

"Not much, I reckon. He's got money in the mill at Four Forks. He
travels round a good deal. I've heard, Jinny that he's a poet--writes
them rhymes, you know." Mr. McClosky here appealed submissively but
directly to his daughter. He remembered that she had frequently been
in receipt of printed elegaic couplets known as "mottoes," containing
enclosures equally saccharine.

Miss Jenny slightly curled her pretty lip. She had that fine contempt
for the illusions of fancy which belongs to the perfectly healthy young
animal.

"Not," continued Mr. McClosky, rubbing his head reflectively, "not ez
I'd advise ye, Jinny, to say any thing to him about poetry. It ain't
twenty minutes ago ez I did. I set the whiskey afore him in the
parlor. I wound up the music-box, and set it goin'. Then I sez to him,
sociable-like and free, 'Jest consider yourself in your own house, and
repeat what you allow to be your finest production,' and he raged. That
man, Jinny, jest raged! Thar's no end of the names he called me. You
see, Jinny," continued Mr. McClosky apologetically, "he's known me a
long time."

But his daughter had already dismissed the question with her usual
directness. "I'll be down in a few moments, father," she said after a
pause, "but don't say any thing to him about it--don't say I was abed."

Mr. McClosky's face beamed. "You was allers a good girl, Jinny," he
said, dropping on one knee the better to imprint a respectful kiss on
her forehead. But Jenny caught him by the wrists, and for a moment held
him captive. "Father," said she, trying to fix his shy eyes with the
clear, steady glance of her own, "all the girls that were there to-night
had some one with them. Mame Robinson had her aunt; Lucy Rance had her
mother; Kate Pierson had her sister--all, except me, had some other
woman. Father dear," her lip trembled just a little, "I wish mother
hadn't died when I was so small. I wish there was some other woman in
the family besides me. I ain't lonely with you, father dear; but if
there was only some one, you know, when the time comes for John and
me"--

Her voice here suddenly gave out, but not her brave eyes, that were
still fixed earnestly upon his face. Mr. McClosky, apparently tracing
out a pattern on the bedquilt, essayed words of comfort.

"Thar ain't one of them gals ez you've named, Jinny, ez could do what
you've done with a whole Noah's ark of relations, at their backs! Thar
ain't 'one ez wouldn't sacrifice her nearest relation to make the strike
that you hev. Ez to mothers, maybe, my dear you're doin' better without
one." He rose suddenly, and walked toward the door. When he reached it,
he turned, and, in his old deprecating manner, said, "Don't be long,
Jinny," smiled, and vanished from the head downward, his canvas slippers
asserting themselves resolutely to the last.

When Mr. McClosky reached his parlor again, his troublesome guest was
not there. The decanter stood on the table untouched; three or four
books lay upon the floor; a number of photographic views of the Sierras
were scattered over the sofa; two sofa-pillows, a newspaper, and a
Mexican blanket, lay on the carpet, as if the late occupant of the room
had tried to read in a recumbent position. A French window opening
upon a veranda, which never before in the history of the house had been
unfastened, now betrayed by its waving lace curtain the way that the
fugitive had escaped. Mr. McClosky heaved a sigh of despair. He looked
at the gorgeous carpet purchased in Sacramento at a fabulous price, at
the crimson satin and rosewood furniture unparalleled in the history
of Tuolumne, at the massively-framed pictures on the walls, and looked
beyond it, through the open window, to the reckless man, who, fleeing
these sybaritic allurements, was smoking a cigar upon the moonlit road.
This room, which had so often awed the youth of Tuolumne into filial
respect, was evidently a failure. It remained to be seen if the "Rose"
herself had lost her fragrance. "I reckon Jinny will fetch him yet,"
said Mr. McClosky with parental faith.

He stepped from the window upon the veranda; but he had scarcely done
this, before his figure was detected by the stranger, who at once
crossed the road. When within a few feet of McClosky, he stopped. "You
persistent old plantigrade!" he said in a low voice, audible only to the
person addressed, and a face full of affected anxiety, "why don't you go
to bed? Didn't I tell you to go and leave me here alone? In the name of
all that's idiotic and imbecile, why do you continue to shuffle about
here? Or are you trying to drive me crazy with your presence, as you
have with that wretched music-box that I've just dropped under yonder
tree? It's an hour and a half yet before the stage passes: do you think,
do you imagine for a single moment, that I can tolerate you until then,
eh? Why don't you speak? Are you asleep? You don't mean to say that you
have the audacity to add somnambulism to your other weaknesses? you're
not low enough to repeat yourself under any such weak pretext as that,
eh?"

A fit of nervous coughing ended this extraordinary exordium; and half
sitting, half leaning against the veranda, Mr. McClosky's guest turned
his face, and part of a slight elegant figure, toward his host. The
lower portion of this upturned face wore an habitual expression of
fastidious discontent, with an occasional line of physical suffering.
But the brow above was frank and critical; and a pair of dark, mirthful
eyes, sat in playful judgment over the super-sensitive mouth and its
suggestion.

"I allowed to go to bed, Ridgeway," said Mr. McClosky meekly; "but my
girl Jinny's jist got back from a little tear up at Robinson's, and
ain't inclined to turn in yet. You know what girls is. So I thought we
three would jist have a social chat together to pass away the time."

"You mendacious old hypocrite! She got back an hour ago," said Ridgeway,
"as that savage-looking escort of hers, who has been haunting the house
ever since, can testify. My belief is, that, like an enterprising idiot
as you are, you've dragged that girl out of her bed, that we might
mutually bore each other."

Mr. McClosky was too much stunned by this evidence of Ridgeway's
apparently superhuman penetration to reply. After enjoying his host's
confusion for a moment with his eyes, Ridgeway's mouth asked grimly,--

"And who is this girl, anyway?"

"Nancy's."

"Your wife's?"

"Yes. But look yar, Ridgeway," said McClosky, laying one hand
imploringly on Ridgeway's sleeve, "not a word about her to Jinny. She
thinks her mother's dead--died in Missouri. Eh!"

Ridgeway nearly rolled from the veranda in an excess of rage. "Good God!
Do you mean to say that you have been concealing from her a fact that
any day, any moment, may come to her ears? That you've been letting
her grow up in ignorance of something that by this time she might have
outgrown and forgotten? That you have been, like a besotted old ass,
all these years slowly forging a thunderbolt that any one may crush her
with? That"--but here Ridgeway's cough took possession of his voice,
and even put a moisture into his dark eyes, as he looked at McClosky's
aimless hand feebly employed upon his beard.

"But," said McClosky, "look how she's done! She's held her head as high
as any of 'em. She's to be married in a month to the richest man in the
county; and," he added cunningly, "Jack Ashe ain't the kind o' man to
sit by and hear any thing said of his wife or her relations, you bet!
But hush--that's her foot on the stairs. She's cummin'."

She came. I don't think the French window ever held a finer view than
when she put aside the curtains, and stepped out. She had dressed
herself simply and hurriedly, but with a woman's knowledge of her
best points; so that you got the long curves of her shapely limbs, the
shorter curves of her round waist and shoulders, the long sweep of her
yellow braids, the light of her gray eyes, and even the delicate rose of
her complexion, without knowing how it was delivered to you.

The introduction by Mr. McClosky was brief. When Ridgeway had got over
the fact that it was two o'clock in the morning, and that the cheek of
this Tuolumne goddess nearest him was as dewy and fresh as an infant's,
that she looked like Marguerite, without, probably, ever having heard
of Goethe's heroine, he talked, I dare say, very sensibly. When Miss
Jenny--who from her childhood had been brought up among the sons of
Anak, and who was accustomed to have the supremacy of our noble sex
presented to her as a physical fact--found herself in the presence of a
new and strange power in the slight and elegant figure beside her, she
was at first frightened and cold. But finding that this power, against
which the weapons of her own physical charms were of no avail, was
a kindly one, albeit general, she fell to worshipping it, after the
fashion of woman, and casting before it the fetishes and other idols of
her youth. She even confessed to it. So that, in half an hour, Ridgeway
was in possession of all the facts connected with her life, and a great
many, I fear, of her fancies--except one. When Mr. McClosky found the
young people thus amicably disposed, he calmly went to sleep.

It was a pleasant time to each. To Miss Jenny it had the charm of
novelty; and she abandoned herself to it, for that reason, much more
freely and innocently than her companion, who knew something more of the
inevitable logic of the position. I do not think, however, he had any
intention of love-making. I do not think he was at all conscious of
being in the attitude. I am quite positive he would have shrunk from the
suggestion of disloyalty to the one woman whom he admitted to himself
he loved. But, like most poets, he was much more true to an idea than
a fact, and having a very lofty conception of womanhood, with a
very sanguine nature, he saw in each new face the possibilities of a
realization of his ideal. It was, perhaps, an unfortunate thing for the
women, particularly as he brought to each trial a surprising freshness,
which was very deceptive, and quite distinct from the 'blase'
familiarity of the man of gallantry. It was this perennial virginity of
the affections that most endeared him to the best women, who were prone
to exercise toward him a chivalrous protection,--as of one likely to go
astray, unless looked after,--and indulged in the dangerous combination
of sentiment with the highest maternal instincts. It was this quality
which caused Jenny to recognize in him a certain boyishness that
required her womanly care, and even induced her to offer to accompany
him to the cross-roads when the time for his departure arrived. With her
superior knowledge of woodcraft and the locality, she would have kept
him from being lost. I wot not but that she would have protected him
from bears or wolves, but chiefly, I think, from the feline fascinations
of Mame Robinson and Lucy Rance, who might be lying in wait for this
tender young poet. Nor did she cease to be thankful that Providence had,
so to speak, delivered him as a trust into her hands.

It was a lovely night. The moon swung low, and languished softly on
the snowy ridge beyond. There were quaint odors in the still air; and a
strange incense from the woods perfumed their young blood, and seemed
to swoon in their pulses. Small wonder that they lingered on the white
road, that their feet climbed, unwillingly the little hill where they
were to part, and that, when they at last reached it, even the saving
grace of speech seemed to have forsaken them.

For there they stood alone. There was no sound nor motion in earth, or
woods, or heaven. They might have been the one man and woman for whom
this goodly earth that lay at their feet, rimmed with the deepest azure,
was created. And, seeing this, they turned toward each other with a
sudden instinct, and their hands met, and then their lips in one long
kiss.

And then out of the mysterious distance came the sound of voices, and
the sharp clatter of hoofs and wheels, and Jenny slid away--a white
moonbeam--from the hill. For a moment she glimmered through the trees,
and then, reaching the house, passed her sleeping father on the veranda,
and, darting into her bedroom, locked the door, threw open the window,
and, falling on her knees beside it, leaned her hot cheeks upon her
hands, and listened. In a few moments she was rewarded by the sharp
clatter of hoofs on the stony road; but it was only a horseman, whose
dark figure was swiftly lost in the shadows of the lower road. At
another time she might have recognized the man; but her eyes and ears
were now all intent on something else. It came presently with dancing
lights, a musical rattle of harness, a cadence of hoof-beats, that
set her heart to beating in unison--and was gone. A sudden sense of
loneliness came over her; and tears gathered in her sweet eyes.

She arose, and looked around her. There was the little bed, the
dressing-table, the roses that she had worn last night, still fresh
and blooming in the little vase. Every thing was there; but every thing
looked strange. The roses should have been withered, for the party
seemed so long ago. She could hardly remember when she had worn this
dress that lay upon the chair. So she came back to the window, and sank
down beside it, with her cheek a trifle paler, leaning on her hand, and
her long braids reaching to the floor. The stars paled slowly, like her
cheek; yet with eyes that saw not, she still looked from her window for
the coming dawn.

It came, with violet deepening into purple, with purple flushing
into rose, with rose shining into silver, and glowing into gold. The
straggling line of black picket-fence below, that had faded away with
the stars, came back with the sun. What was that object moving by
the fence? Jenny raised her head, and looked intently. It was a man
endeavoring to climb the pickets, and falling backward with each
attempt. Suddenly she started to her feet, as if the rosy flushes of the
dawn had crimsoned her from forehead to shoulders; then she stood, white
as the wall, with her hands clasped upon her bosom; then, with a single
bound, she reached the door, and, with flying braids and fluttering
skirt, sprang down the stairs, and out to the garden walk. When within a
few feet of the fence, she uttered a cry, the first she had given,--the
cry of a mother over her stricken babe, of a tigress over her mangled
cub; and in another moment she had leaped the fence, and knelt beside
Ridgeway, with his fainting head upon her breast.

"My boy, my poor, poor boy! who has done this?"

Who, indeed? His clothes were covered with dust; his waistcoat was torn
open; and his handkerchief, wet with the blood it could not stanch, fell
from a cruel stab beneath his shoulder.

"Ridgeway, my poor boy! tell me what has happened."

Ridgeway slowly opened his heavy blue-veined lids, and gazed upon her.
Presently a gleam of mischief came into his dark eyes, a smile stole
over his lips as he whispered slowly,--

"It--was--your kiss--did it, Jenny dear. I had forgotten--how
high-priced the article was here. Never mind, Jenny!"--he feebly raised
her hand to his white lips,--"it was--worth it," and fainted away.

Jenny started to her feet, and looked wildly around her. Then, with a
sudden resolution, she stooped over the insensible man, and with one
strong effort lifted him in her arms as if he had been a child. When her
father, a moment later, rubbed his eyes, and awoke from his sleep upon
the veranda, it was to see a goddess, erect and triumphant, striding
toward the house with the helpless body of a man lying across that
breast where man had never lain before,--a goddess, at whose imperious
mandate he arose, and cast open the doors before her. And then, when
she had laid her unconscious burden on the sofa, the goddess fled; and a
woman, helpless and trembling, stood before him,--a woman that cried out
that she had "killed him," that she was "wicked, wicked!" and that, even
saying so, staggered, and fell beside her late burden. And all that
Mr. McClosky could do was to feebly rub his beard, and say to himself
vaguely and incoherently, that "Jinny had fetched him."


CHAPTER II


Before noon the next day, it was generally believed throughout Four
Forks that Ridgeway Dent had been attacked and wounded at Chemisal Ridge
by a highwayman, who fled on the approach of the Wingdam coach. It is to
be presumed that this statement met with Ridgeway's approval, as he did
not contradict it, nor supplement it with any details. His wound was
severe, but not dangerous. After the first excitement had subsided,
there was, I think, a prevailing impression common to the provincial
mind, that his misfortune was the result of the defective moral quality
of his being a stranger, and was, in a vague sort of a way, a warning to
others, and a lesson to him. "Did you hear how that San Francisco feller
was took down the other night?" was the average tone of introductory
remark. Indeed, there was a general suggestion that Ridgeway's presence
was one that no self-respecting, high-minded highwayman, honorably
conservative of the best interests of Tuolumne County, could for a
moment tolerate.

Except for the few words spoken on that eventful morning, Ridgeway was
reticent of the past. When Jenny strove to gather some details of
the affray that might offer a clew to his unknown assailant, a subtle
twinkle in his brown eyes was the only response. When Mr. McClosky
attempted the same process, the young gentleman threw abusive epithets,
and, eventually slippers, teaspoons, and other lighter articles within
the reach of an invalid, at the head of his questioner. "I think he's
coming round, Jinny," said Mr. McClosky: "he laid for me this morning
with a candlestick."