“That man lies.”
It was not the old man's voice. Everybody turned as Henry York slowly
rose, stretching out his six feet of length, and, brushing away the
ashes that had fallen from his pipe upon his breast, deliberately placed
himself beside Plunkett, and faced the others.
“That man ain't here,” continued Abner Dean, with listless indifference
of voice, and a gentle pre-occupation of manner, as he carelessly
allowed his right hand to rest on his hip near his revolver. “That man
ain't here; but, if I'm called upon to make good what he says, why, I'm
on hand.”
All rose as the two men--perhaps the least externally agitated of them
all--approached each other. The lawyer stepped in between them.
“Perhaps there's some mistake here. York, do you KNOW that the old man
has been home?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know it?”
York turned his clear, honest, frank eyes on his questioner, and without
a tremor told the only direct and unmitigated lie of his life. “Because
I've seen him there.”
The answer was conclusive. It was known that York had been visiting the
East during the old man's absence. The colloquy had diverted attention
from Plunkett, who, pale and breathless, was staring at his unexpected
deliverer. As he turned again toward his tormentors, there was something
in the expression of his eye that caused those that were nearest to him
to fall back, and sent a strange, indefinable thrill through the boldest
and most reckless. As he made a step forward, the physician, almost
unconsciously, raised his hand with a warning gesture; and old man
Plunkett, with his eyes fixed upon the red-hot stove, and an odd smile
playing about his mouth, began,--
“Yes--of course you did. Who says you didn't? It ain't no lie. I said I
was goin' home--and I've been home. Haven't I? My God! I have. Who says
I've been lyin'? Who says I'm dreamin'? Is it true--why don't you speak?
It is true, after all. You say you saw me there: why don't you speak
again? Say, say!--is it true? It's going now. O my God! it's going
again. It's going now. Save me!” And with a fierce cry he fell forward
in a fit upon the floor.
When the old man regained his senses, he found himself in York's cabin.
A flickering fire of pine-boughs lit up the rude rafters, and fell upon
a photograph tastefully framed with fir-cones, and hung above the brush
whereon he lay. It was the portrait of a young girl. It was the first
object to meet the old man's gaze; and it brought with it a flush of
such painful consciousness, that he started, and glanced quickly around.
But his eyes only encountered those of York,--clear, gray, critical, and
patient,--and they fell again.
“Tell me, old man,” said York not unkindly, but with the same cold,
clear tone in his voice that his eye betrayed a moment ago,--“tell me,
is THAT a lie too?” and he pointed to the picture.
The old man closed his eyes, and did not reply. Two hours before, the
question would have stung him into some evasion or bravado. But the
revelation contained in the question, as well as the tone of York's
voice, was to him now, in his pitiable condition, a relief. It was
plain, even to his confused brain, that York had lied when he had
indorsed his story in the bar-room; it was clear to him now that he had
not been home, that he was not, as he had begun to fear, going mad.
It was such a relief, that, with characteristic weakness, his former
recklessness and extravagance returned. He began to chuckle, finally to
laugh uproariously.
York, with his eyes still fixed on the old man, withdrew the hand with
which he had taken his.
“Didn't we fool 'em nicely; eh, Yorky! He, he! The biggest thing yet
ever played in this camp! I always said I'd play 'em all some day, and
I have--played 'em for six months. Ain't it rich?--ain't it the richest
thing you ever seed? Did you see Abner's face when he spoke 'bout that
man as seed me in Sonora? Warn't it good as the minstrels? Oh, it's too
much!” and, striking his leg with the palm of his hand, he almost
threw himself from the bed in a paroxysm of laughter,--a paroxysm that,
nevertheless, appeared to be half real and half affected.
“Is that photograph hers?” said York in a low voice, after a slight
pause.
“Hers? No! It's one of the San Francisco actresses. He, he! Don't you
see? I bought it for two bits in one of the bookstores. I never thought
they'd swaller THAT too; but they did! Oh, but the old man played 'em
this time didn't he--eh?” and he peered curiously in York's face.
“Yes, and he played ME too,” said York, looking steadily in the old
man's eye.
“Yes, of course,” interposed Plunkett hastily; “but you know, Yorky, you
got out of it well! You've sold 'em too. We've both got em on a string
now--you and me--got to stick together now. You did it well, Yorky: you
did it well. Why, when you said you'd seen me in York City, I'm d----d
if I didn't”--
“Didn't what?” said York gently; for the old man had stopped with a pale
face and wandering eye.
“Eh?”
“You say when I said I had seen you in New York you thought”--
“You lie!” said the old man fiercely. “I didn't say I thought any thing.
What are you trying to go back on me for, eh?” His hands were trembling
as he rose muttering from the bed, and made his way toward the hearth.
“Gimme some whiskey,” he said presently “and dry up. You oughter treat
anyway. Them fellows oughter treated last night. By hookey, I'd made
'em--only I fell sick.”
York placed the liquor and a tin cup on the table beside him, and,
going to the door, turned his back upon his guest, and looked out on the
night. Although it was clear moonlight, the familiar prospect never to
him seemed so dreary. The dead waste of the broad Wingdam highway never
seemed so monotonous, so like the days that he had passed, and were to
come to him, so like the old man in its suggestion of going sometime,
and never getting there. He turned, and going up to Plunkett put his
hand upon his shoulder, and said,--
“I want you to answer one question fairly and squarely.”
The liquor seemed to have warmed the torpid blood in the old man's
veins, and softened his acerbity; for the face he turned up to York was
mellowed in its rugged outline, and more thoughtful in expression, as he
said,--
“Go on, my boy.”
“Have you a wife and--daughter?”
“Before God I have!”
The two men were silent for a moment, both gazing at the fire. Then
Plunkett began rubbing his knees slowly.
“The wife, if it comes to that, ain't much,” he began cautiously, “being
a little on the shoulder, you know, and wantin', so to speak a liberal
California education, which makes, you know, a bad combination. It's
always been my opinion, that there ain't any worse. Why, she's as
ready with her tongue as Abner Dean is with his revolver, only with
the difference that she shoots from principle, as she calls it; and the
consequence is, she's always layin' for you. It's the effete East, my
boy, that's ruinin' her. It's them ideas she gets in New York and Boston
that's made her and me what we are. I don't mind her havin' 'em, if she
didn't shoot. But, havin' that propensity, them principles oughtn't to
be lying round loose no more'n firearms.”
“But your daughter?” said York.
The old man's hands went up to his eyes here, and then both hands and
head dropped forward on the table. “Don't say any thing 'bout her, my
boy, don't ask me now.” With one hand concealing his eyes, he fumbled
about with the other in his pockets for his handkerchief--but vainly.
Perhaps it was owing to this fact, that he repressed his tears; for,
when he removed his hand from his eyes, they were quite dry. Then he
found his voice.
“She's a beautiful girl, beautiful, though I say it; and you shall see
her, my boy,--you shall see her sure. I've got things about fixed now.
I shall have my plan for reducin' ores perfected a day or two; and
I've got proposals from all the smeltin' works here” (here he hastily
produced a bundle of papers that fell upon the floor), “and I'm goin'
to send for 'em. I've got the papers here as will give me ten thousand
dollars clear in the next month,” he added, as he strove to collect the
valuable documents again. “I'll have 'em here by Christmas, if I live;
and you shall eat your Christmas dinner with me, York, my boy,--you
shall sure.”
With his tongue now fairly loosened by liquor and the suggestive
vastness of his prospects, he rambled on more or less incoherently,
elaborating and amplifying his plans, occasionally even speaking of them
as already accomplished, until the moon rode high in the heavens, and
York led him again to his couch. Here he lay for some time muttering
to himself, until at last he sank into a heavy sleep. When York had
satisfied himself of the fact, he gently took down the picture and
frame, and, going to the hearth, tossed them on the dying embers, and
sat down to see them burn.
The fir-cones leaped instantly into flame; then the features that had
entranced San Francisco audiences nightly, flashed up and passed away
(as such things are apt to pass); and even the cynical smile on York's
lips faded too. And then there came a supplemental and unexpected flash
as the embers fell together, and by its light York saw a paper upon
the floor. It was one that had fallen from the old man's pocket. As he
picked it up listlessly, a photograph slipped from its folds. It was the
portrait of a young girl; and on its reverse was written in a scrawling
hand, “Melinda to father.”
It was at best a cheap picture, but, ah me! I fear even the deft
graciousness of the highest art could not have softened the rigid
angularities of that youthful figure, its self-complacent vulgarity, its
cheap finery, its expressionless ill-favor. York did not look at it a
second time. He turned to the letter for relief.
It was misspelled; it was unpunctuated; it was almost illegible; it
was fretful in tone, and selfish in sentiment. It was not, I fear, even
original in the story of its woes. It was the harsh recital of poverty,
of suspicion, of mean makeshifts and compromises, of low pains and lower
longings, of sorrows that were degrading, of a grief that was pitiable.
Yet it was sincere in a certain kind of vague yearning for the presence
of the degraded man to whom it was written,--an affection that was more
like a confused instinct than a sentiment.
York folded it again carefully, and placed it beneath the old man's
pillow. Then he returned to his seat by the fire. A smile that had been
playing upon his face, deepening the curves behind his mustache, and
gradually overrunning his clear gray eyes, presently faded away. It was
last to go from his eyes; and it left there, oddly enough to those who
did not know him, a tear.
He sat there for a long time, leaning forward, his head upon his hands.
The wind that had been striving with the canvas roof all at once lifted
its edges, and a moonbeam slipped suddenly in, and lay for a moment
like a shining blade upon his shoulder; and, knighted by its touch,
straightway plain Henry York arose, sustained, high-purposed and
self-reliant.
The rains had come at last. There was already a visible greenness on the
slopes of Heavytree Hill; and the long, white track of the Wingdam road
was lost in outlying pools and ponds a hundred rods from Monte Flat. The
spent water-courses, whose white bones had been sinuously trailed over
the flat, like the vertebrae of some forgotten saurian, were full again;
the dry bones moved once more in the valley; and there was joy in the
ditches, and a pardonable extravagance in the columns of “The Monte Flat
Monitor.” “Never before in the history of the county has the yield
been so satisfactory. Our contemporary of 'The Hillside Beacon,' who
yesterday facetiously alluded to the fact (?) that our best citizens
were leaving town in 'dugouts,' on account of the flood, will be glad
to hear that our distinguished fellow-townsman, Mr. Henry York, now on a
visit to his relatives in the East, lately took with him in his 'dugout'
the modest sum of fifty thousand dollars, the result of one week's
clean-up. We can imagine,” continued that sprightly journal, “that no
such misfortune is likely to overtake Hillside this season. And yet we
believe 'The Beacon' man wants a railroad.” A few journals broke out
into poetry. The operator at Simpson's Crossing telegraphed to “The
Sacramento Universe” “All day the low clouds have shook their garnered
fulness down.” A San Francisco journal lapsed into noble verse, thinly
disguised as editorial prose: “Rejoice: the gentle rain has come, the
bright and pearly rain, which scatters blessings on the hills, and sifts
them o'er the plain. Rejoice,” &c. Indeed, there was only one to whom
the rain had not brought blessing, and that was Plunkett. In some
mysterious and darksome way, it had interfered with the perfection of
his new method of reducing ores, and thrown the advent of that invention
back another season. It had brought him down to an habitual seat in the
bar-room, where, to heedless and inattentive ears, he sat and discoursed
of the East and his family.
No one disturbed him. Indeed, it was rumored that some funds had been
lodged with the landlord, by a person or persons unknown, whereby his
few wants were provided for. His mania--for that was the charitable
construction which Monte Flat put upon his conduct--was indulged, even
to the extent of Monte Flat's accepting his invitation to dine with his
family on Christmas Day,--an invitation extended frankly to every one
with whom the old man drank or talked. But one day, to everybody's
astonishment, he burst into the bar-room, holding an open letter in his
hand. It read as follows:--
“Be ready to meet your family at the new cottage on Heavytree Hill on
Christmas Day. Invite what friends you choose.
“HENRY YORK.”
The letter was handed round in silence. The old man, with a look
alternating between hope and fear, gazed in the faces of the group.
The doctor looked up significantly, after a pause. “It's a forgery
evidently,” he said in a low voice. “He's cunning enough to conceive it
(they always are); but you'll find he'll fail in executing it. Watch his
face!--Old man,” he said suddenly, in a loud peremptory tone, “this is
a trick, a forgery, and you know it. Answer me squarely, and look me in
the eye. Isn't it so?”
The eyes of Plunkett stared a moment, and then dropped weakly. Then,
with a feebler smile, he said, “You're too many for me, boys. The Doc's
right. The little game's up. You can take the old man's hat;” and so,
tottering, trembling, and chuckling, he dropped into silence and his
accustomed seat. But the next day he seemed to have forgotten this
episode, and talked as glibly as ever of the approaching festivity.
And so the days and weeks passed until Christmas--a bright, clear day,
warmed with south winds, and joyous with the resurrection of springing
grasses--broke upon Monte Flat. And then there was a sudden commotion in
the hotel bar-room; and Abner Dean stood beside the old man's chair,
and shook him out of a slumber to his feet. “Rouse up, old man. York is
here, with your wife and daughter, at the cottage on Heavytree. Come,
old man. Here, boys, give him a lift;” and in another moment a dozen
strong and willing hands had raised the old man, and bore him in triumph
to the street up the steep grade of Heavytree Hill, and deposited him,
struggling and confused, in the porch of a little cottage. At the same
instant two women rushed forward, but were restrained by a gesture from
Henry York. The old man was struggling to his feet. With an effort at
last, he stood erect, trembling, his eye fixed, a gray pallor on his
cheek, and a deep resonance in his voice.
“It's all a trick, and a lie! They ain't no flesh and blood or kin o'
mine. It ain't my wife, nor child. My daughter's a beautiful girl--a
beautiful girl, d'ye hear? She's in New York with her mother, and I'm
going to fetch her here. I said I'd go home, and I've been home: d'ye
hear me? I've been home! It's a mean trick you're playin' on the old
man. Let me go: d'ye hear? Keep them women off me! Let me go! I'm
going--I'm going--home!”
His hands were thrown up convulsively in the air, and, half turning
round, he fell sideways on the porch, and so to the ground. They picked
him up hurriedly, but too late. He had gone home.