Bret Harte
Jeff Briggs's Love Story
II
It was not yet daylight when he awoke with an idea that brought him hurriedly to his feet. Quickly dressing himself, he began to count the money in his pocket. Apparently the total was not satisfactory, as he endeavored to augment it by loose coins fished from the pockets of his other garments, and from the corner of his washstand drawer. Then he cautiously crept downstairs, seized his gun, and stole out of the still sleeping house. The wind had gone down, the rain had ceased, a few stars shone steadily in the north, and the shapeless bulk of the coach, its lamps extinguished, loomed high and dry above the lessening water, in the twilight. With a swinging tread Jeff strode up the hill and was soon upon the highway and stage road. A half-hour’s brisk walk brought him to the summit, and the first rosy flashes of morning light. This enabled him to knock over half-a-dozen early quail, lured by the proverb, who were seeking their breakfast in the chaparral, and gave him courage to continue on his mission, which his perplexed face and irresolute manner had for the last few moments shown to be an embarrassing one. At last the white fences and imposing outbuildings of the “Summit Hotel” rose before him, and he uttered a deep sigh. There, basking in the first rays of the morning sun, stood his successful rival! Jeff looked at the well-built, comfortable structure, the commanding site, and the air of serene independence that seemed to possess it, and no longer wondered that the great world passed him by to linger and refresh itself there.
He was relieved to find the landlord was not present in person, and so confided his business to the bar-keeper. At first it appeared that that functionary declined interference, and with many head-shakings and audible misgivings was inclined to await the coming of his principal, but a nearer view of Jeff’s perplexed face, and an examination of Jeff’s gun, and the few coins spread before him, finally induced him to produce certain articles, which he packed in a basket and handed to Jeff, taking the gun and coins in exchange. Thus relieved, Jeff set his face homewards, and ran a race with the morning into the valley, reaching the “Half-way House” as the sun laid waste its bare, bleak outlines, and relentlessly pointed out its defects one by one. It was cruel to Jeff at that moment, but he hugged his basket close and slipped to the back door and the kitchen, where his aunt was already at work.
“I didn’t know ye were up yet, aunty,” said Jeff submissively. “It isn’t more than six o’clock.”
“Thar’s four more to feed at breakfast,” said his aunt severely, “and yer’s the top blown off the kitchen chimbly, and the fire only just got to go.”
Jeff saw that he was in time. The ordinary breakfast of the “Half-way House,” not yet prepared, consisted of codfish, ham, yellow-ochre biscuit, made after a peculiar receipt of his aunt’s, and potatoes.
“I got a few fancy fixin’s up at the Summit this morning, aunty,” he began apologetically, “seein’ we had sick folks, you know—you and the young lady—and thinkin’ it might save you trouble. I’ve got ‘em here,” and he shyly produced the basket.
“If ye kin afford it, Jeff,” responded his aunt resignedly, “I’m thankful.”
The reply was so unexpectedly mild for Aunt Sally, that Jeff put his arms around her and kissed her hard cheek. “And I’ve got some quail, aunty, knowin’ you liked em.”
“I reckoned you was up to some such foolishness,” said Aunt Sally, wiping her cheek with her apron, “when I missed yer gun from the hall.” But the allusion was a dangerous one, and Jeff slipped away.
He breakfasted early with Yuba Bill that morning; the latter gentleman’s taciturnity being intensified at such moments through a long habit of confining himself strictly to eating in the limited time allowed his daily repasts, and it was not until they had taken the horses from the stable and were harnessing them to the coach that Jeff extracted from his companion some facts about his guests. They were Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield, Eastern tourists, who had been to the Sandwich Islands for the benefit of their daughter’s health, and before returning to New York, intended, under the advice of their physician, to further try the effects of mountain air at the “Summit Hotel,” on the invalid. They were apparently rich people, the coach had been engaged for them solely—even the mail and express had been sent on by a separate conveyance, so that they might be more independent. It is hardly necessary to say that this fact was by no means palatable to Bill—debarring him not only the social contact and attentions of the “Express Agent,” but the selection of a box-seated passenger who always “acted like a man.”
“Ye kin kalkilate what kind of a pardner that ‘ar yaller-livered Mayfield would make up on that box, partik’ly ez I heard before we started that he’d requested the kimpany’s agent in Sacramento to select a driver ez didn’t cuss, smoke, or drink. He did, sir, by gum!”
“I reckon you were very careful, then, Bill,” said Jeff.
“In course,” returned Bill, with a perfectly diabolical wink. “In course! You know that ‘Blue Grass,’” pointing out a spirited leader; “she’s a fair horse ez horses go, but she’s apt to feel her oats on a down grade, and takes a pow’ful deal o’ soothin’ and explanation afore she buckles down to her reg’lar work. Well, sir, I exhorted and labored in a Christian-like way with that mare to that extent that I’m cussed if that chap didn’t want to get down afore we got to the level!”
“And the ladies?” asked Jeff, whose laugh—possibly from his morning’s experience—was not as ready as formerly.
“The ladies! Ef you mean that ‘ar livin’ skellington I packed up to yer house,” said Bill promptly, “it’s a pair of them in size and color, and ready for any first-class undertaker’s team in the kintry. Why, you remember that curve on Break Neck hill, where the leaders allus look as if they was alongside o’ the coach and faced the other way? Well, that woman sticks her skull outer the window, and sez she, confidential-like to old yaller-belly, sez she, ‘William Henry,’ sez she, ‘tell that man his horses are running away!’”
“You didn’t get to see the—the—daughter, Bill, did you?” asked Jeff, whose laugh had become quite uneasy.
“No, I didn’t,” said Bill, with sudden and inexplicable vehemence, “and the less you see of her, Jefferson Briggs, the better for you.”
Too confounded and confused by Bill’s manner to question further, Jeff remained silent until they drew up at the door of the “Half-way House.” But here another surprise awaited him. Mr. Mayfield, erect and dignified, stood upon the front porch as the coach drove up.
“Driver!” began Mr. Mayfield.
There was no reply.
“Driver,” said Mr. Mayfield, slightly weakening under Bill’s eye, “I shall want you no longer. I have”—
“Is he speaking to me?” said Bill audibly to Jeff, “‘cause they call me ‘Yuba Bill’ yer abouts.”
“He is,” said Jeff hastily.
“Mebbee he’s drunk,” said Bill audibly; “a drop or two afore breakfast sometimes upsets his kind.”
“I was saying, Bill,” said Mr. Mayfield, becoming utterly limp and weak again under Bill’s cold gray eyes, “that I’ve changed my mind, and shall stop here awhile. My daughter seems already benefited by the change. You can take my traps from the boot and leave them here.”
Bill laid down his lines resignedly, coolly surveyed Mr. Mayfield, the house, and the half-pleased, half-frightened Jeff, and then proceeded to remove the luggage from the boot, all the while whistling loud and offensive incredulity. Then he climbed back to his box. Mr. Mayfield, completely demoralized under this treatment, as a last resort essayed patronage.
“You can say to the Sacramento agents, Bill, that I am entirely satisfied, and”—
“Ye needn’t fear but I’ll give ye a good character,” interrupted Bill coolly, gathering up his lines. The whip snapped, the six horses dashed forward as one, the coach plunged down the road and was gone.
With its disappearance, Mr. Mayfield stiffened slightly again. “I have just told your aunt, Mr. Briggs,” he said, turning upon Jeff, “that my daughter has expressed a desire to remain here a few days; she has slept well, seems to be invigorated by the air, and although we expected to go on to the ‘Summit,’ Mrs. Mayfield and myself are willing to accede to her wishes. Your house seems to be new and clean. Your table—judging from the breakfast this morning—is quite satisfactory.”
Jeff, in the first flush of delight at this news, forgot what that breakfast had cost him—forgot all his morning’s experience, and, I fear, when he did remember it, was too full of a vague, hopeful courage to appreciate it. Conscious of showing too much pleasure, he affected the necessity of an immediate interview with his aunt, in the kitchen. But his short cut round the house was arrested by a voice and figure. It was Miss Mayfield, wrapped in a shawl and seated in a chair, basking in the sunlight at one of the bleakest and barest angles of the house. Jeff stopped in a delicious tremor.
As we are dealing with facts, however, it would be well to look at the cause of this tremor with our own eyes and not Jeff’s. To be plain, my dear madam, as she basked in that remorseless, matter-of-fact California sunshine, she looked her full age-twenty-five, if a day! There were wrinkles in the corners of her dark eyes, contracted and frowning in that strong, merciless light; there was a nervous pallor in her complexion; but being one of those “fast colored” brunettes, whose dyes are a part of their temperament, no sickness nor wear could bleach it out. The red of her small mouth was darker than yours, I wot, and there were certain faint lines from the corners of her delicate nostrils indicating alternate repression and excitement under certain experiences, which are not found in the classic ideals. Now Jeff knew nothing of the classic ideal—did not know that a thousand years ago certain sensual idiots had, with brush and chisel, inflicted upon the world the personification of the strongest and most delicate, most controlling and most subtle passion that humanity is capable of, in the likeness of a thick-waisted, idealess, expressionless, perfectly contented female animal; and that thousands of idiots had since then insisted upon perpetuating this model for the benefit of a world that had gone on sighing for, pining for, fighting for, and occasionally blowing its brains out over types far removed from that idiotic standard.
Consequently Jeff saw only a face full of possibilities and probabilities, framed in a small delicate oval, saw a slight woman’s form—more than usually small—and heard a low voice, to him full of gentle pride, passion, pathos, and human weakness, and was helpless.
“I only said ‘Good-morning,’” said Miss Mayfield, with that slight, arch satisfaction in the observation of masculine bashfulness, which the best of her sex cannot forego.
“Thank you, miss; good-morning. I’ve been wanting to say to you that I hope you wasn’t mad, you know,” stammered Jeff, desperately intent upon getting off his apology.
“It is so lovely this morning—such a change!” continued Miss Mayfield.
“Yes, miss! You know I reckoned—at least what your father said, made me kalkilate that you”—
Miss Mayfield, still smiling, knitted her brows and went on: “I slept so well last night,” she said gratefully, “and feel so much better this morning, that I ventured out. I seem to be drinking in health in this clear sunlight.”
“Certainly miss. As I was sayin’, your father says his daughter is in the coach; and Bill says, says he to me, ‘I’ll pack—I’ll carry the old—I’ll bring up Mrs. Mayfield, if you’ll bring up the daughter;’ and when we come to the coach I saw you asleep—like in the corner, and bein’ small, why miss, you know how nat’ral it is, I”—
“Oh, Mr. Jeff! Mr. Briggs!” said Miss Mayfield plaintively, “don’t, please—don’t spoil the best compliment I’ve had in many a year. You thought I was a child, I know, and—well, you find,” she said audaciously, suddenly bringing her black eyes to bear on him like a rifle, “you find—well?”
What Jeff thought was inaudible but not invisible. Miss Mayfield saw enough of it in his eye to protest with a faint color in her cheek. Thus does Nature betray itself to Nature the world over.
The color faded. “It’s a dreadful thing to be so weak and helpless, and to put everybody to such trouble, isn’t it, Mr. Jeff? I beg your pardon—your aunt calls you Jeff.”
“Please call me Jeff,” said Jeff, to his own surprise rapidly gaining courage. “Everybody calls me that.”
Miss Mayfield smiled. “I suppose I must do what everybody does. So it seems that we are to give you the trouble of keeping us here until I get better or worse?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Therefore I won’t detain you now. I only wanted to thank you for your gentleness last night, and to assure you that the bear-skin did not give me my death.”
She smiled and nodded her small head, and wrapped her shawl again closely around her shoulders, and turned her eyes upon the mountains, gestures which the now quick-minded Jeff interpreted as a gentle dismissal, and flew to seek his aunt.
Here he grew practical. Ready money was needed; for the “Half-way House” was such a public monument of ill-luck, that Jeff had no credit. He must keep up the table to the level of that fortunate breakfast—to do which he had $1.50 in the till, left by Bill, and $2.50 produced by his Aunt Sally from her work-basket.
“Why not ask Mr. Mayfield to advance ye suthin?” said Aunt Sally.
The blood flew to Jeff’s face. “Never! Don’t say that again, aunty.”
The tone and manner were so unlike Jeff that the old lady sat down half frightened, and taking the corners of her apron in her hands began to whimper.
“Thar now, aunty! I didn’t mean nothin’,—only if you care to have me about the place any longer, and I reckon it’s little good I am any way,” he added, with a new-found bitterness in his tone, “ye’ll not ask me to do that.”
“What’s gone o’ ye, Jeff?” said his aunt lugubriously; “ye ain’t nat’ral like.”
Jeff laughed. “See here, aunty; I’m goin’ to take your advice. You know Rabbit?”
“The mare?”
“Yes; I’m going to sell her. The blacksmith offered me a hundred dollars for her last week.”
“Ef ye’d done that a month ago, Jeff, ez I wanted ye to, instead o’ keeping the brute to eat ye out o’ house and home, ye’d be better off.” Aunt Sally never let slip an opportunity to “improve the occasion,” but preferred to exhort over the prostrate body of the “improved.” “Well, I hope he mayn’t change his mind.”
Jeff smiled at such suggestion regarding the best horse within fifty miles of the “Half-way House.” Nevertheless he went briskly to the stable, led out and saddled a handsome grey mare, petting her the while, and keeping up a running commentary of caressing epithets to which Rabbit responded with a whinny and playful reaches after Jeff’s red flannel sleeve. Whereat Jeff, having loved the horse until it was displaced by another mistress, grew grave and suddenly threw his arms around Rabbit’s neck, and then taking Rabbit’s nose, thrust it in the bosom of his shirt and held it there silently for a moment. Rabbit becoming uneasy, Jeff’s mood changed too, and having caparisoned himself and charger in true vaquero style, not without a little Mexican dandyism as to the set of his doeskin trousers, and the tie of his red sash, put a sombrero rakishly on his curls and leaped into the saddle.
Jeff was a fair rider in a country where riding was understood as a natural instinct, and not as a purely artificial habit of horse and rider, consequently he was not perched up, jockey fashion, with a knee-grip for his body, and a rein-rest for his arms on the beast’s mouth, but rode with long, loose stirrups, his legs clasping the barrel of his horse, his single rein lying loose upon her neck, leaving her head free as the wind. After this fashion he had often emerged from a cloud of dust on the red mountain road, striking admiration into the hearts of the wayfarers and coach-passengers, and leaving a trail of pleasant incense in the dust behind him. It was therefore with considerable confidence in himself, and a little human vanity, that he dashed round the house, and threw his mare skilfully on her haunches exactly a foot before Miss Mayfield—himself a resplendent vision of flying riata, crimson scarf, fawn-colored trousers, and jingling silver spurs.
“Kin I do anythin’ for ye, miss, at the Forks?”
Miss Mayfield looked up quietly. “I think not,” she said indifferently, as if the flaming-Jeff was a very common occurrence.
Jeff here permitted the mare to bolt fifty yards, caught her up sharply, swung her round on her off hind heel, permitted her to paw the air once or twice with her white-stockinged fore-feet, and then, with another dash forward, pulled her up again just before she apparently took Miss Mayfield and her chair in a running leap.
“Are you sure, miss?” asked Jeff, with a flushed face and a rather lugubrious voice.
“Quite so, thank you,” she said coldly, looking past this centaur to the wooded mountain beyond.
Jeff, thoroughly crushed, was pacing meekly away when a childlike voice stopped him.
“If you are going near a carpenter’s shop you might get a new shutter for my window; it blew away last night.”
“It did, miss?”
“Yes,” said the shrill voice of Aunt Sally, from the doorway, “in course it did! Ye must be crazy, Jeff, for thar it stands in No. 8, whar ye must have put it after ye picked it up outside.”
Jeff, conscious that Miss Mayfield’s eyes were on his suffused face, stammered “that he would attend to it,” and put spurs to the mare, eager only to escape.
It was not his only discomfiture; for the blacksmith, seeing Jeff’s nervousness and anxiety, was suspicious of something wrong, as the world is apt to be, and appeased his conscience after the worldly fashion, by driving a hard bargain with the doubtful brother in affliction—the morality of a horse trade residing always with the seller. Whereby Master Jeff received only eighty dollars for horse and outfit—worth at least two hundred—and was also mulcted of forty dollars, principal and interest for past service of the blacksmith. Jeff walked home with forty dollars in his pocket—capital to prosecute his honest calling of innkeeper; the blacksmith retired to an adjoining tavern to discuss Jeff’s affairs, and further reduce his credit. Yet I doubt which was the happier—the blacksmith estimating his possible gains, and doubtful of some uncertain sequence in his luck, or Jeff, temporarily relieved, boundlessly hopeful, and filled with the vague delights of a first passion. The only discontented brute in the whole transaction was poor Rabbit, who, missing certain attentions, became indignant, after the manner of her sex, bit a piece out of her crib, kicked a hole in her box, and receiving a bad character from the blacksmith, gave a worse one to her late master.
Jeff’s purchases were of a temporary and ornamental quality, but not always judicious as a permanent investment. Overhearing some remark from Miss Mayfield concerning the dangerous character of the two-tined steel fork, which was part of the table equipage of the “Half-way House,” he purchased half a dozen of what his aunt was pleased to specify as “split spoons,” and thereby lost his late good standing with her. He not only repaired the window-shutter, but tempered the glaring window itself with a bit of curtain; he half carpeted Miss Mayfield’s bed-room with wild-cat skins and the now historical bear-skin, and felt himself overpaid when that young lady, passing the soft tabbyskins across her cheek, declared they were “lovely.” For Miss Mayfield, deprecating slaughter in the abstract, accepted its results gratefully, like the rest of her sex, and while willing to “let the hart ungalled play,” nevertheless was able to console herself with its venison. The woods, besides yielding aid and comfort of this kind to the distressed damsel, were flamboyant with vivid spring blossoms, and Jeff lit up the cold, white walls of her virgin cell with demonstrative color, and made—what his aunt, a cleanly soul, whose ideas of that quality were based upon the absence of any color whatever, called—“a litter.”
The result of which was to make Miss Mayfield, otherwise lanquid and ennuye, welcome Jeff’s presence with a smile; to make Jeff, otherwise anxious, eager, and keenly attentive, mute and silent in her presence. Two symptoms bad for Jeff.
Meantime Mr. Mayfield’s small conventional spirit pined for fellowship, only to be found in larger civilizations, and sought, under plea of business, a visit to Sacramento, where a few of the Mayfield type, still surviving, were to be found.
This was a relief to Jeff, who only through his regard for the daughter, was kept from open quarrel with the father. He fancied Miss Mayfield felt relieved too, although Jeff had noticed that Mayfield had deferred to his daughter more often than his wife—over whom your conventional small autocrat is always victorious. It takes the legal matrimonial contract to properly develop the first-class tyrant, male or female.
On one of these days Jeff was returning through the woods from marketing at the Forks, which, since the sale of Rabbit, had became a foot-sore and tedious business. He had reached the edge of the forest, and through the wider-spaced trees, the bleak sunlit plateau of his house was beginning to open out, when he stopped instantly. I know not what Jeff had been thinking of, as he trudged along, but here, all at once, he was thrilled and possessed with the odor of some faint, foreign perfume. He flushed a little at first, and then turned pale. Now the woods were as full of as delicate, as subtle, as grateful, and, I wot, far healthier and purer odors than this; but this represented to Jeff the physical contiguity of Miss Mayfield, who had the knack—peculiar to some of her sex—of selecting a perfume that ideally identified her. Jeff looked around cautiously; at the foot of a tree hard by lay one of her wraps, still redolent of her. Jeff put down the bag which, in lieu of a market basket, he was carrying on his shoulder, and with a blushing face hid it behind a tree. It contained her dinner!
He took a few steps forwards with an assumption of ease and unconsciousness. Then he stopped, for not a hundred yards distant sat—Miss Mayfield on a mossy boulder, her cloak hanging from her shoulders, her hands clasped round her crossed knees, and one little foot out—an exasperating combination of Evangeline and little Red Riding Hood in everything, I fear, but credulousness and self-devotion. She looked up as he walked towards her (non constat that the little witch had not already seen him half a mile away!) and smiled sweetly as she looked at him. So sweetly, indeed, that poor Jeff felt like the hulking wolf of the old world fable, and hesitated—as that wolf did not. The California faunae have possibly depreciated.
“Come here!” she cried, in a small head voice, not unlike a bird’s twitter.
Jeff lumbered on clumsily. His high boots had become suddenly very heavy.
“I’m so glad to see you. I’ve just tired poor mother out—I’m always tiring people out—and she’s gone back to the house to write letters. Sit down, Mr. Jeff, do, please!”
Jeff, feeling uncomfortably large in Miss Mayfield’s presence, painfully seated himself on the edge of a very low stone, which had the effect of bringing his knees up on a level with his chin, and affected an ease glaringly simulated.
“Or lie down, there, Mr. Jeff—it is so comfortable.”
Jeff, with a dreadful conviction that he was crashing down like a falling pine-tree, managed at last to acquire a recumbent position at a respectful distance from the little figure.
“There, isn’t it nice?”
“Yes, Miss Mayfield.”
“But, perhaps,” said Miss Mayfield, now that she had him down, “perhaps you too have got something to do. Dear me! I’m like that naughty boy in the story-book, who went round to all the animals, in turn, asking them to play with him. He could only find the butterfly who had nothing to do. I don’t wonder he was disgusted. I hate butterflies.”
Love clarifies the intellect! Jeff, astonished at himself, burst out, “Why, look yer, Miss Mayfield, the butterfly only hez a day or two to—to—to live and—be happy!”
Miss Mayfield crossed her knees again, and instantly, after the sublime fashion of her sex, scattered his intellect by a swift transition from the abstract to the concrete. “But you’re not a butterfly, Mr. Jeff. You’re always doing something. You’ve been hunting.”
“No-o!” said Jeff, scarlet, as he thought of his gun in pawn at the “Summit.”
“But you do hunt; I know it.”
“How?”
“You shot those quail for me the morning after I came. I heard you go out—early—very early.”
“Why, you allowed you slept so well that night, Miss Mayfield.”
“Yes; but there’s a kind of delicious half-sleep that sick people have sometimes, when they know and are gratefully conscious that other people are doing things for them, and it makes them rest all the sweeter.”
There was a dead silence. Jeff, thrilling all over, dared not say anything to dispel his delicious dream. Miss Mayfield, alarmed at his readiness with the butterfly illustration, stopped short. They both looked at the prospect, at the distant “Summit Hotel”—a mere snow-drift on the mountain—at the clear sunlight on the barren plateau, at the bleak, uncompromising “Half-way House,” and said nothing.
“I ought to be very grateful,” at last began Miss Mayfield, in quite another voice, and a suggestion that she was now approaching real and profitable conversation, “that I’m so much better. This mountain air has been like balm to me. I feel I am growing stronger day by day. I do not wonder that you are so healthy and so strong as you are, Mr. Jeff.”
