From Sand Hill to Pine. Bret Harte
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her warning hint of the attentions to which she was subjected, and he became singularly appreciative of Snapshot Harry’s proficiency as a marksman. Then, cruelest of all, for your impassioned lover is no lover at all if not cruel in his imaginings, he remembered how she had evaded her uncle’s espionage with HIM; could she not equally with ANOTHER? Perhaps that was why she had hurried him away,—why she had prevented his returning to her uncle. Following this came another week of disappointment and equally miserable cynical philosophy, in which he persuaded himself he was perfectly satisfied with his material advancement, that it was the only outcome of his adventure to be recognized; and he was more miserable than ever.
A month had passed, when one morning he received a small package by post. The address was in a handwriting unknown to him, but opening the parcel he was surprised to find only a handkerchief neatly folded. Examining it closely, he found it was his own,—the one he had given her, the rent made by her uncle’s bullet so ingeniously and delicately mended as to almost simulate embroidery. The joy that suddenly filled him at this proof of her remembrance showed him too plainly how hollow had been his cynicism and how lasting his hope! Turning over the wrapper eagerly, he discovered what he had at first thought was some business card. It was, indeed, printed and not engraved, in some common newspaper type, and bore the address, “Hiram Tarbox, Land and Timber Agent, 1101 California Street.” He again examined the parcel; there was nothing else,—not a line from HER! But it was a clue at last, and she had not forgotten him! He seized his hat, and ten minutes later was breasting the steep sand hill into which California Street in those days plunged, and again emerged at its crest, with a few struggling houses.
But when he reached the summit he could see that the outline of the street was still plainly marked along the distance by cottages and new suburban villa-like blocks of houses. No. 1101 was in one of these blocks, a small tenement enough, but a palace compared to Mr. Tarbox’s Sierran cabin. He impetuously rang the bell, and without waiting to be announced dashed into the little drawing-room and Mr. Tarbox’s presence. That had changed too; Mr. Tarbox was arrayed in a suit of clothes as new, as cheaply decorative, as fresh and, apparently, as damp as his own drawing room.
“Did you get my letter? Did you give her the one I inclosed? Why didn’t you answer?” burst out Brice, after his first breathless greeting.
Mr. Tarbox’s face here changed so suddenly into his old dejected doggedness that Brice could have imagined himself back in the Sierran cabin. The man straightened and bowed himself at Brice’s questions, and then replied with bold, deliberate emphasis:
“Yes, I DID get your letter. I DIDN’T give no letter o’ yours to her. And I didn’t answer your letter BEFORE, for I didn’t propose to answer it AT ALL.”
“Why?” demanded Brice indignantly.
“I didn’t give her your letter because I didn’t kalkilate to be any go-between ‘twixt you and Snapshot Harry’s niece. Look yar, Mr. Brice. Sense I read that ‘ar paragraph in that paper you gave me, I allowed to myself that it wasn’t the square thing for me to have any more doin’s with him, and I quit it. I jest chucked your letter in the fire. I didn’t answer you because I reckoned I’d no call to correspond with ye, and when I showed ye that trail over to Harry’s camp, it was ended. I’ve got a house and business to look arter, and it don’t jibe with keepin’ company with ‘road agents.’ That’s what I got outer that paper you gave me, Mr. Brice.”
Rage and disgust filled Brice at the man’s utter selfishness and shameless desertion of his kindred, none the less powerfully that he remembered the part he himself had played in concocting the paragraph. “Do you mean to say,” he demanded passionately, “that for the sake of that foolish paragraph you gave up your own kindred? That you truckled to the mean prejudices of your neighbors and kept that poor, defenseless girl from the only honest roof she could find refuge under? That you dared to destroy my letter to her, and made her believe I was as selfish and ungrateful as yourself?”
“Young feller,” said Mr. Tarbox still more deliberately, yet with a certain dignity that Brice had never noticed before, “what’s between you and Flo, and what rights she has fer thinkin’ ye ‘ez selfish’ and ‘ez ongrateful’ ez me—ef she does, I dunno!—but when ye talk o’ me givin’ up my kindred, and sling such hogwash ez ‘ongrateful’ and ‘selfish’ round this yer sittin’-room, mebbe it mout occur to ye that Harry Dimwood might hev HIS opinion o’ what was ‘ongrateful’ and ‘selfish’ ef I’d played in between his niece and a young man o’ the express company, his nat’ral enemy. It’s one thing to hev helped ye to see her in her uncle’s own camp, but another to help ye by makin’ a clandecent post-offis o’ my cabin. Ef, instead o’ writin’, you’d hev posted yourself by comin’ to me, you mout hev found out that when I broke with Harry I offered to take Flo with me for good and all—ef he’d keep away from us. And that’s the kind o’ ‘honest roof’ that that thar ‘poor defenseless girl’ got under when her crippled mother died three weeks ago, and left Harry free. It was by ‘trucklin’’ to them ‘mean prejudices,’ and readin’ that thar ‘foolish paragraph,’ that I settled this thing then and thar!”
Brice’s revulsion of sentiment was so complete, and the gratitude that beamed in his eyes was so sincere, that Mr. Tarbox hardly needed the profuse apologies which broke from him. “Forgive me!” he continued to stammer, “I have wronged you, wronged HER—everybody. But as you know, Mr. Tarbox, how I have felt over this, how deeply—how passionately”—
“It DOES make a man loony sometimes,” said Mr. Tarbox, relaxing into demure dryness again, “so I reckon you DID! Mebbe she reckoned so, too, for she asked me to give you the handkercher I sent ye. It looked as if she’d bin doin’ some fancy work on it.”
Brice glanced quickly at Mr. Tarbox’s face. It was stolid and imperturbable. She had evidently kept the secret of what passed in the hollow to herself. For the first time he looked around the room curiously. “I didn’t know you were a land agent before,” he said.
“No more I was! All that kem out o’ that paragraph, Mr. Brice. That man Heckshill, who was so mighty perlite that night, wrote to me afterwards that he didn’t know my name till he’d seed that paragraph, and he wanted to know ef, ez a ‘well-known citizen,’ I could recommend him some timber lands. I recommended him half o’ my own quarter section, and he took it. He’s puttin’ up a mill thar, and that’s another reason why we want peace and quietness up thar. I’m tryin’ (betwixt and between us, Mr. Brice) to get Harry to cl’ar out and sell his rights in the valley and the water power on the Fork to Heckshill and me. I’m opening a business here.”
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