Essential Novelists - Bret Harte. Bret Harte
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with fresh curiosity to the central fact, and ignoring the Pleasures of Rejection as expounded by Gabriel.
"Well, I just up, and sez this: Susan Markle, sez I, the case is just this. Here's Olly and me up there on the hill, and jess you and Manty down there on the Gulch, and mountings wild and valleys deep two loving hearts do now divide, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be one family and one house, and that family and that house mine. And it's for you to say when. And then I kinder slung in a little more poetry, and sorter fooled around with that ring," said Gabriel, showing a heavy plain gold ring on his powerful little finger, "and jest kissed her agin, and chucked Sally under the chin, and that's all."
"And she wouldn't hev ye, Gabe," said Olly, thoughtfully, "after all that? Well, who wants her to? I don't."
"I'm glad to hear you say that, Olly," said Gabriel. "But ye mustn't let on a word of it to her. She talks o' coming up on the hill to build, and wants to buy that part of the old claim where I perspected last summer, so's to be near us, and look arter you. And, Olly," continued Gabriel, gravely, "ef she comes round yer foolin' around me ez she used to do, ye mustn't mind that—it's women's ways."
"I'd like to catch her at it," said Olly.
Gabriel looked at Olly with a guilty satisfaction, and drew her toward him. "And now that it's all over, Olly," said he, "it's all the better ez it is. You and me'll get along together ez comfortable as we kin. I talked with some of the boys the other day about sendin' for a schoolmarm from Marysville, and Mrs. Markle thinks it's a good idee. And you'll go to school, Olly. I'll run up to Marysville next week and get you some better clothes, and we'll be just ez happy ez ever. And then some day, Olly, afore you know it—them things come always suddent—I'll jest make a strike outer that ledge, and we'll be rich. Thar's money in that ledge, Olly, I've allus allowed that. And then we'll go—you and me—to San Francisco, and we'll hev a big house, and I'll jest invite a lot of little girls, the best they is in Frisco, to play with you, and you'll hev all the teachers you want, and women ez will be glad to look arter ye. And then maybe I might make it up with Mrs. Markle"——
"Never!" said Olly, passionately.
"Never it is!" said the artful Gabriel, with a glow of pleasure in his eyes, and a slight stirring of remorse in his breast. "But it's time that small gals like you was abed."
Thus admonished, Olly retired behind the screen, taking the solitary candle, and leaving her brother smoking his pipe by the light of the slowly dying fire. But Olly did not go to sleep, and half an hour later, peering out of the screen, she saw her brother still sitting by the fire, his pipe extinguished, and his head resting on his hand. She went up to him so softly that she startled him, shaking a drop of water on the hand that she suddenly threw round his neck.
"You ain't worrying about that woman, Gabe?"
"No," said Gabriel, with a laugh.
Olly looked down at her hand. Gabriel looked up at the roof. "There's a leak thar that's got to be stopped to-morrow. Go to bed, Olly, or you'll take your death."
CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH THE ARTFUL GABRIEL IS DISCOVERED.
Notwithstanding his assumed ease and a certain relief, which was real, Gabriel was far from being satisfied with the result of his visit to Mrs. Markle. Whatever may have actually occurred, not known to the reader except through Gabriel's own disclosure to Olly, Gabriel's manner hardly bore out the boldness and conclusiveness of his statement. For a day or two afterwards he resented any allusion to the subject from Olly, but on the third day he held a conversation with one of the Eureka Bar miners, which seemed to bear some remote reference to his experience.
"Thar's a good deal said lately in the papers," began Gabriel, cautiously, "in regard to breach o' promise trials. Lookin' at it, by and large, thar don't seem to be much show for a fellow ez hez been in enny ways kind to a gal, is thar?"
The person addressed, whom rumour declared to have sought One Horse Gulch as a place of refuge from his wife, remarked with an oath that women were blank fools anyway, and that on general principles they were not to be trusted.
"But thar must be a kind o' gin'ral law on the subject," urged Gabriel. "Now what would be your opinion if you was on a jury onto a case like this? It happened to a friend o' mine in Frisco," said Gabriel, with a marked parenthesis, "a man ez you don't know. Thar was a woman—we'll say a widder—ez had been kinder hangin' round him off and on for two or three year, and he hadn't allowed anything to her about marryin'. One day he goes down thar to her house, kinder easy-like, jest to pass the time o' day, and be sociable"——
"That's bad," interrupted the cynic.
"Yes," said Gabriel, doubtingly, "p'r'aps it does look bad, but you see he didn't mean anythin'."
"Well?" said the adviser.
"Well! thet's all," said Gabriel.
"All!" exclaimed his companion, indignantly.
"Yes, all. Now this woman kinder allows she'll bring a suit agin him to make him marry her."
"My opinion is," said the adviser, bluntly, "my opinion is, that the man was a fool, and didn't tell ye the truth nuther, and I'd give damages agin him, for being such a fool."
This opinion was so crushing to Gabriel that he turned hopelessly away. Nevertheless, in his present state of mind, he could not refrain from pushing his inquiries further, and in a general conversation which took place at Briggs's store, in the afternoon, among a group of smokers, Gabriel artfully introduced the subject of courtship and marriage.
"Thar's different ways of getting at the feelin's of a woman," said the oracular Johnson, after a graphic statement of his own method of ensnaring the affections of a former sweetheart, "thar's different ways jest as thar's different men and women in the world. One man's way won't do with some wimmen. But thar's one way ez is pretty sure to fetch 'em allers. That is, to play off indifferent—to never let on ye like 'em! To kinder look arter them in a gin'ral sort o' way, pretty much as Gabe thar looks arter the sick!—but not to say anythin' particler. To make them understand that they've got to do all the courtin', ef thar's enny to be done. What's the matter, Gabe, ye ain't goin'?"
Gabriel, who had risen in great uneasiness, muttered something about "its being time to go home," and then sat down again, looking at Johnson in fearful fascination.
"That kind o' thing is pretty sure to fetch almost enny woman," continued Johnson, "and a man ez does it orter be looked arter. It orter be put down by law. It's tamperin', don't yer see, with the holiest affections. Sich a man orter be spotted wharever found."
"But mebbe the man don't mean anythin'—mebbe it's jest his way," suggested Gabriel, ruefully, looking around in the faces of the party, "mebbe he don't take to wimmen and marriage nat'ral, and it's jest his way."
"Way be blowed!" said the irate Johnson, scornfully. "Ketch him, indeed! It's jest the artfullest kind o' artfulness. It's jest begging on a full hand."
Gabriel rose slowly, and, resisting any further attempts to detain him, walked to the door, and, after a remark on the threatening nature of the weather, delivered in a manner calculated to impress his audience with his general indifference to the subject then under discussion, melted dejectedly away into the driving rain that had all day swept over One Horse Gulch, and converted its one long narrow street into a ditch of turbulent yellow water.
"Thet Gabe seems to be out o' sorts to-day," said Johnson. "I heerd Lawyer Maxwell asking arter him this morning; I reckon thar's suthin' up! Gabe ain't a bad sort of chap. Hezen't got enny too much sabe about him, but he's mighty good at looking arter sick folks, and thet kind o' man's a power o' use in this camp. Hope thar ain't anything ez will interfere with his sphere o' usefulness."
"May be a woman scrape," suggested Briggs. "He seemed sort o' bound up in what you was saying about women jest now. Thar is folks round yer," said Briggs, dropping his voice and looking about him, "ez believes that that yer Olly, which he lets on to be his sister, to be actooally his own child. No man would tote round a child like that, and jest