readenglishbook.com » Western » Devil's Ford, Bret Harte [e book reader free TXT] 📗

Book online «Devil's Ford, Bret Harte [e book reader free TXT] 📗». Author Bret Harte



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 14
Go to page:
effect of banishing his assumed playfulness, which made his serious explanation the more irritating.

“Well, I rather thought that—that young Kearney was paying considerable attention to—to—to Jessie,” replied her father, with hesitating gravity.

“What! that boy?”

“Young Kearney is one of the original locators, and an equal partner in the mine. A very enterprising young fellow. In fact, much more advanced and bolder in his conceptions than the others. I find no difficulty with him.”

At another time Christie would have questioned the convincing quality of this proof, but she was too much shocked at her father’s first suggestion, to think of anything else.

“You don’t mean to say, father, that you are talking seriously of these men—your friends—whom we see every day—and our only company?”

“No, no!” said Mr. Carr hastily; “you misunderstand. I don’t suppose that Jessie or you—”

“Or ME! Am I included?”

“You don’t let me speak, Christie. I mean, I am not talking seriously,” continued Mr. Carr, with his most serious aspect, “of you and Jessie in this matter; but it may be a serious thing to these young men to be thrown continually in the company of two attractive girls.”

“I understand—you mean that we should not see so much of them,” said Christie, with a frank expression of relief so genuine as to utterly discompose her father. “Perhaps you are right, though I fail to discover anything serious in the attentions of young Kearney to Jessie—or—whoever it may be—to me. But it will be very easy to remedy it, and see less of them. Indeed, we might begin to-day with some excuse.”

“Yes—certainly. Of course!” said Mr. Carr, fully convinced of his utter failure, but, like most weak creatures, consoling himself with the reflection that he had not shown his hand or committed himself. “Yes; but it would perhaps be just as well for the present to let things go on as they were. We’ll talk of it again— I’m in a hurry now,” and, edging himself through the door, he slipped away.

“What do you think is father’s last idea?” said Christie, with, I fear, a slight lack of reverence in her tone, as her sister reentered the room. “He thinks George Kearney is paying you too much attention.”

“No!” said Jessie, replying to her sister’s half-interrogative, half-amused glance with a frank, unconscious smile.

“Yes, and he says that Fairfax—I think it’s Fairfax—is equally fascinated with ME.”

Jessie’s brow slightly contracted as she looked curiously at her sister.

“Of all things,” she said, “I wonder if any one has put that idea into his dear old head. He couldn’t have thought it himself.”

“I don’t know,” said Christie musingly; “but perhaps it’s just as well if we kept a little more to ourselves for a while.”

“Did father say so?” said Jessie quickly.

“No, but that is evidently what he meant.”

“Ye-es,” said Jessie slowly, “unless—”

“Unless what?” said Christie sharply. “Jessie, you don’t for a moment mean to say that you could possibly conceive of anything else?”

“I mean to say,” said Jessie, stealing her arm around her sister’s waist demurely, “that you are perfectly right. We’ll keep away from these fascinating Devil’s Forders, and particularly the youngest Kearney. I believe there has been some ill-natured gossip. I remember that the other day, when we passed the shanty of that Pike County family on the slope, there were three women at the door, and one of them said something that made poor little Kearney turn white and pink alternately, and dance with suppressed rage. I suppose the old lady—M’Corkle, that’s her name—would like to have a share of our cavaliers for her Euphemy and Mamie. I dare say it’s only right; I would lend them the cherub occasionally, and you might let them have Mr. Munroe twice a week.”

She laughed, but her eyes sought her sister’s with a certain watchfulness of expression.

Christie shrugged her shoulders, with a suggestion of disgust.

“Don’t joke. We ought to have thought of all this before.”

“But when we first knew them, in the dear old cabin, there wasn’t any other woman and nobody to gossip, and that’s what made it so nice. I don’t think so very much of civilization, do you?” said the young lady pertly.

Christie did not reply. Perhaps she was thinking the same thing. It certainly had been very pleasant to enjoy the spontaneous and chivalrous homage of these men, with no further suggestion of recompense or responsibility than the permission to be worshipped; but beyond that she racked her brain in vain to recall any look or act that proclaimed the lover. These men, whom she had found so relapsed into barbarism that they had forgotten the most ordinary forms of civilization; these men, even in whose extravagant admiration there was a certain loss of self-respect, that as a woman she would never forgive; these men, who seemed to belong to another race—impossible! Yet it was so.

“What construction must they have put upon her father’s acceptance of their presents—of their company—of her freedom in their presence? No! they must have understood from the beginning that she and her sister had never looked upon them except as transient hosts and chance acquaintances. Any other idea was preposterous. And yet—”

It was the recurrence of this “yet” that alarmed her. For she remembered now that but for their slavish devotion they might claim to be her equal. According to her father’s account, they had come from homes as good as their own; they were certainly more than her equal in fortune; and her father had come to them as an employee, until they had taken him into partnership. If there had only been sentiment of any kind connected with any of them! But they were all alike, brave, unselfish, humorous—and often ridiculous. If anything, Dick Mattingly was funniest by nature, and made her laugh more. Maryland Joe, his brother, told better stories (sometimes of Dick), though not so good a mimic as the other Kearney, who had a fairly sympathetic voice in singing. They were all good-looking enough; perhaps they set store on that—men are so vain.

And as for her own rejected suitor, Fairfax Munroe, except for a kind of grave and proper motherliness about his protecting manner, he absolutely was the most indistinctive of them all. He had once brought her some rare tea from the Chinese camp, and had taught her how to make it; he had cautioned her against sitting under the trees at nightfall; he had once taken off his coat to wrap around her. Really, if this were the only evidence of devotion that could be shown, she was safe!

“Well,” said Jessie, “it amuses you, I see.”

Christie checked the smile that had been dimpling the cheek nearest Jessie, and turned upon her the face of an elder sister.

“Tell me, have YOU noticed this extraordinary attention of Mr. Munroe to me?”

“Candidly?” asked Jessie, seating herself comfortably on the table sideways, and endeavoring, to pull her skirt over her little feet. “Honest Injun?”

“Don’t be idiotic, and, above all, don’t be slangy! Of course, candidly.”

“Well, no. I can’t say that I have.”

“Then,” said Christie, “why in the name of all that’s preposterous, do they persist in pairing me off with the least interesting man of the lot?”

Jessie leaped from the table.

“Come now,” she said, with a little nervous laugh, “he’s not so bad as all that. You don’t know him. But what does it matter now, as long as we’re not going to see them any more?”

“They’re coming here for the ride to-day,” said Christie resignedly. “Father thought it better not to break it off at once.”

“Father thought so!” echoed Jessie, stopping with her hand on the door.

“Yes; why do you ask?”

But Jessie had already left the room, and was singing in the hall.

CHAPTER IV

The afternoon did not, however, bring their expected visitors. It brought, instead, a brief note by the hands of Whiskey Dick from Fairfax, apologizing for some business that kept him and George Kearney from accompanying the ladies. It added that the horses were at the disposal of themselves and any escort they might select, if they would kindly give the message to Whiskey Dick.

The two girls looked at each other awkwardly; Jessie did not attempt to conceal a slight pout.

“It looks as if they were anticipating us,” she said, with a half-forced smile. “I wonder, now, if there really has been any gossip? But no! They wouldn’t have stopped for that, unless—” She looked curiously at her sister.

“Unless what?” repeated Christie; “you are horribly mysterious this morning.”

“Am I? It’s nothing. But they’re wanting an answer. Of course you’ll decline.”

“And intimate we only care for their company! No! We’ll say we’re sorry they can’t come, and—accept their horses. We can do without an escort, we two.”

“Capital!” said Jessie, clapping her hands. “We’ll show them—”

“We’ll show them nothing,” interrupted Christie decidedly. “In our place there’s only the one thing to do. Where is this—Whiskey Dick?”

“In the parlor.”

“The parlor!” echoed Christie. “Whiskey Dick? What—is he—”

“Yes; he’s all right,” said Jessie confidently. “He’s been here before, but he stayed in the hall; he was so shy. I don’t think you saw him.”

“I should think not—Whiskey Dick!”

“Oh, you can call him Mr. Hall, if you like,” said Jessie, laughing. “His real name is Dick Hall. If you want to be funny, you can say Alky Hall, as the others do.”

Christie’s only reply to this levity was a look of superior resignation as she crossed the hall and entered the parlor.

Then ensued one of those surprising, mystifying, and utterly inexplicable changes that leave the masculine being so helpless in the hands of his feminine master. Before Christie opened the door her face underwent a rapid transformation: the gentle glow of a refined woman’s welcome suddenly beamed in her interested eyes; the impulsive courtesy of an expectant hostess eagerly seizing a long-looked-for opportunity broke in a smile upon her lips as she swept across the room, and stopped with her two white outstretched hands before Whiskey Dick.

It needed only the extravagant contrast presented by that gentleman to complete the tableau. Attired in a suit of shining black alpaca, the visitor had evidently prepared himself with some care for a possible interview. He was seated by the French window opening upon the veranda, as if to secure a retreat in case of an emergency. Scrupulously washed and shaven, some of the soap appeared to have lingered in his eyes and inflamed the lids, even while it lent a sleek and shining lustre, not unlike his coat, to his smooth black hair. Nevertheless, leaning back in his chair, he had allowed a large white handkerchief to depend gracefully from his fingers—a pose at once suggesting easy and elegant langour.

“How kind of you to give me an opportunity to make up for my misfortune when you last called! I was so sorry to have missed you. But it was entirely my fault! You were hurried, I think—you conversed with others in the hall—you—”

She stopped to assist him to pick up the handkerchief that had fallen, and the Panama hat that had rolled from his lap towards the window when he had started suddenly to his feet at the apparition of grace and beauty. As he still nervously retained the two hands he had grasped, this would have been a difficult feat, even had he not endeavored at the same moment, by a backward furtive kick, to propel the hat out of the window, at which she laughingly broke from his grasp and flew to the rescue.

“Don’t mind it, miss,” he said hurriedly. “It is not worth your demeaning yourself to touch it. Leave it outside thar, miss. I wouldn’t have toted it in, anyhow, if some

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 14
Go to page:

Free e-book «Devil's Ford, Bret Harte [e book reader free TXT] 📗» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment