Essential Novelists - Bret Harte. Bret Harte
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a word," said Maxwell, examining Gabriel curiously.
"No talk—nothin' in the newspapers?" continued Gabriel.
"Your conduct toward her and your attitude in this whole affair will be kept a profound secret, unless you happen to betray it yourself and that is my one reason for advising you to leave here."
"I'll do it—to-morrow," said Gabriel, rubbing his hands. "Wouldn't you like to have me sign some bit o' paper?"
"No, no," said the lawyer, wiping his mouth with his hand, and looking at Gabriel as if he belonged to some entirely new species. "Let me advise you, as a friend, to sign no paper that might be brought against you hereafter. Your simple abandonment of the claim and house is sufficient for our purposes. I will make out no papers in the case until Thursday; by that time I expect to find no one to serve them on. You understand?"
Gabriel nodded, and wrung the lawyer's hand warmly.
Maxwell walked toward the door, still keeping his glance fixed on Gabriel's clear, honest eyes. On the threshold he paused, and leaning against it, wiped his mouth with a slow gesture, and said—"From all I can hear, Gabriel, you are a simple, honest fellow, and I frankly confess to you, but for the admission you have made to me, I would have thought you incapable of attempting to wrong a woman. I should have supposed it some mistake. I am not a judge of the motives of men; I am too old a lawyer, and too familiar with things of this kind to be surprised at men's motives, or even to judge their rights or wrongs by my own. But now that we understand each other, would you mind telling me what was your motive for this peculiar and monstrous form of deception? Understand me; it will not alter my opinion of you, which is, that you are not a bad man. But I am curious to know how you could deliberately set about to wrong this woman; what was the motive?"
Gabriel's face flushed deeply. Then he lifted his eyes and pointed to the screen. The lawyer followed the direction of his finger, and saw Olly standing in the doorway.
Lawyer Maxwell smiled. "It is the sex, anyway," he said to himself; "perhaps a little younger than I supposed; of course, his own child." He nodded again, smiled at Olly, and with the consciousness of a professional triumph, blent with a certain moral satisfaction that did not always necessarily accompany his professional success, he passed out into the night.
Gabriel avoided conversation with Olly until late in the evening. When she had taken her accustomed seat at his feet before the fire, she came directly to the point. "What did he want, Gabe?"
"Nothing partickler," said Gabriel, with an affectation of supreme indifference. "I was thinking, Olly, that I'd tell you a story. It's a long time since I told one." It had been Gabriel's habit to improve these precious moments by relating the news of the camp, or the current topics of the day, artfully imparted as pure fiction; but since his pre-occupation with Mrs. Markle, he had lately omitted it.
Olly nodded her head, and Gabriel went on—
"Once upon a time they lived a man ez hed lived and would live—for thet was wot was so sing'ler about him—all alone, 'cept for a little sister ez this man hed, wot he loved very dearly. They was no one ez this man would ever let ring in, so to speak, between him and this little sister, and the heaps o' private confidence, and the private talks about this and thet, thet this yer man hed with this little sister, was wonderful to behold."
"Was it a real man—a pure man?" queried Olly.
"The man was a real man, but the little sister, I oughter say, was a kind o' fairy, you know, Olly, ez hed a heap o' power to do good to this yer man, unbeknownst to him and afore his face. They lived in a sorter paliss in the woods, this yer man and his sister. And one day this yer man hed a heap o' troubil come upon him that was sich ez would make him leave this beautiful paliss, and he didn't know how to let on to his little sister about it; and so he up, and he sez to her, sez he, 'Gloriana'—thet was her name—'Gloriana,' sez he, 'we must quit this beautiful paliss and wander into furrin parts, and the reason why is a secret ez I can't tell ye.' And this yer little sister jest ups and sez, 'Wot's agreeable to you, brother, is agreeable to me, for we is everything to each other the wide world over, and variety is the spice o' life, and I'll pack my traps to-morrow.' And she did. For why, Olly? Why, don't ye see, this yer little sister was a fairy, and knowed it all without bein' told. And they went away to furrin parts and strange places, war they built a more beautiful paliss than the other was, and they lived thar peaceful like and happy all the days o' their life."
"And thar wasn't any old witch of a Mrs. Markle to bother them. When are ye goin', Gabe?" asked the practical Olly.
"I thought to-morrow," said Gabriel, helplessly abandoning all allegory, and looking at his sister in respectful awe, "thet ez, I reckoned, Olly, to get to Casey's in time to take the arternoon stage up to Marysville."
"Well," said Oily, "then I'm goin' to bed now."
"Olly," said Gabriel reproachfully, as he watched the little figure disappear behind the canvas, "ye didn't kiss me fur good-night."
Olly came back. "You ole Gabe—you!" she said patronisingly, as she ran her fingers through his tangled curls, and stooped to bestow a kiss on his forehead from an apparently immeasurable moral and intellectual height—"You old big Gabe, what would you do without me, I'd like to know?"
The next morning Gabriel was somewhat surprised at observing Olly, immediately after the morning meal, proceed gravely to array herself in the few more respectable garments that belonged to her wardrobe. Over a white muslin frock, yellow and scant with age, she had tied a scarf of glaring cheap pink ribbon, and over this again she had secured, by the aid of an enormous tortoiseshell brooch, a large black and white check shawl of her mother's, that even repeated folding could not reduce in size. She then tied over her yellow curls a large straw hat trimmed with white and yellow daisies and pale-green ribbon, and completed her toilet by unfurling over her shoulder a small yellow parasol. Gabriel, who had been watching these preparations in great concern, at last ventured to address the bizarre but pretty little figure before him.
"War you goin', Olly?"
"Down the gulch to say good-bye to the Reed gals. 'Taint the square thing to vamose the ranch without lettin' on to folks."
"Ye ain't goin' near Mrs. Markle's, are ye?" queried Gabriel, in deprecatory alarm.
Oily turned a scornful flash of her clear blue eye upon her brother, and said curtly, "Ketch me!"
There was something so appalling in her quickness, such a sudden revelation of quaint determination in the lines of her mouth and eyebrows, that Gabriel could say no more. Without a word he watched the yellow sunshade and flapping straw hat with its streaming ribbons slowly disappear down the winding descent of the hill. And then a sudden and grotesque sense of dependence upon the child—an appreciation of some reserved quality in her nature hitherto unsuspected by him—something that separated them now, and in the years to come would slowly widen the rift between them—came upon him with such a desolating sense of loneliness that it seemed unendurable. He did not dare to re-enter or look back upon the cabin, but pushed on vaguely toward his claim on the hillside. On his way thither he had to pass a solitary red-wood tree that he had often noticed, whose enormous bulk belittled the rest of the forest; yet, also, by reason of its very isolation had acquired a certain lonely pathos that was far beyond the suggestion of its heroic size. It seemed so imbecile, so gratuitously large, so unproductive of the good that might be expected of its bulk, so unlike the smart spruces and pert young firs and larches that stood beside it, that Gabriel instantly accepted it as a symbol of himself, and could not help wondering if there were not some other locality where everything else might be on its own plane of existence. "If I war to go thar," said Gabriel to himself, "I wonder if I might not suit better than I do yer, and be of some sarvice to thet child." He pushed his way through the underbrush, and stood upon the ledge that he had first claimed on his arrival at One Horse Gulch. It was dreary—it was unpromising—a vast stony field high up in air, covered with scattered boulders of dark iron-grey rock. Gabriel smiled bitterly. "Any other man but me couldn't hev bin sich a fool as to preëmpt sich a claim fur gold. P'r'aps it's all for the best that I'm short of it now," said Gabriel,