Told in the Hills: A Novel. Ryan Marah Ellis

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ been influenced by no one to have faith in him; still – someway —

      "Are you – are you ill, Mr. Genesee?" she asked at last.

      "Not that I know of."

      What a bear the man was! she thought; what need was there to answer a civil question in that tone. It made her just antagonistic enough not to care so much if his feelings had been hurt by Clara's remarks, and she asked bluntly:

      "Have you been here long?"

      "Some time."

      "Awake?"

      "Well, yes," and he made a queer sound in his throat, half grunt, half laugh; "I reckon I – was – awake."

      The slow, half-bitter words impelled her to continue:

      "Then you – you heard the – the conversation over there?"

      He looked at her, and she thought his eyes were pretty steady for a drunken man's.

      "Well, yes," he repeated, "I reckon – I – heard it."

      All her temper blazed up at the deliberate confession. If he had seemed embarrassed or wounded, she would have felt sorry; but this stoicism angered her, as the idea of drunkenness had done – perhaps because each set herself and her feelings aside – I do not know, but that may have been the reason; she was a woman.

      "And you deliberately lay there and listened," she burst out wrathfully, "and let us say all sorts of things, no doubt, when it was your place as a gentleman to let us know you were here? I – I would not have taken you for an eavesdropper, Mr. Jack Genesee!" And with this tirade she turned to make her way back through the laurel.

      "Here!"

      She obeyed the command in his voice, thinking, as she did so, how quick the man was to get on his feet. In a stride he was beside her, his hand outstretched to stop her; but it was not necessary, his tone had done that, and he thrust both hands into the pockets of his hunting coat.

      "Stop just where you are for a minute, Miss," he said, looking down at her; "and don't be so infernally quick about making a judge and jury of yourself – and you look just now as if you'd like to be sheriff, too. I make no pretense of being a gentleman of culture, so you can save yourself the trouble of telling me the duty of one. What little polish I ever had has been knocked off in ten years of hill life out here. I'm not used to talking to ladies, and my ways may seem mighty rough to you; but I want you to know I wasn't listening – I would have got away if I could, but I – was paralyzed."

      "What?" Her tone was coldly unbelieving.

      His manner was collected enough now. He was talking soberly, if rather brusquely; but – that strange look in his face at first? and the eyes that burned as if for the lack of tears? – those were things not yet understood.

      "Yes," he continued, "that's what I was, I reckon. I heard what she said; she is right, too, when she says I'm no fit company for a lady. I hadn't thought of it before, and it started me to thinking – thinking fast – and I just lay still there and forgot everything only those words; and then I heard the things you said – mighty kind they were, too, but I wasn't thinking of them much – only trying to see myself as people of your sort would see me if they knew me as I do, and I concluded I would pan out pretty small; then I heard something else that was good for me, but bitter to take. And then – " His voice grew uncertain; he was not looking at the girl, but straight ahead of him, his features softened, his eyes half closed at some memory.

      "And then what, Genesee?" She felt a little sorry for him as he was speaking – a little kinder since he had owned his own unworthiness. A touch of remorse even led her to lay a couple of fingers on the sleeve of his coat, to remind him of her presence as she repeated: "And then?"

      He glanced down at the fingers – the glance made the hand drop to her side very quickly – and then he coolly brushed his sleeve carefully with the other hand.

      "Then for a little bit I was let get a glimpse of what heaven on earth might mean to a man, if he hadn't locked the door against himself and dropped into hell instead. This is a blind trail I'm leading on, is it, Miss? – all tsolo. Well, it doesn't matter; you would have to drop into a pretty deep gulch yourself before you could understand, and you'll never do that – the Almighty forbid!" he added, energetically. "You belong to the mountains and the high places, and you're too sure-footed not to stay there. You can go now. I only stopped you to say that my listening mightn't have been in as mean a spirit as you judged. Judging things you don't understand is bad business anyway – let it alone."

      With that admonition he turned away, striding through the laurel growth and spruce, and on down the mountain, leaving Miss Hardy feeling more lectured and astonished than she had often been in her life.

      "Well, upon my word!"

      It is not an original exclamation – she was not equal to any original thought just then; but for some time after his disappearance that was all she could find to say, and she said it standing still there, bare-headed and puzzled; then, gathering up her faculties and her skirts, she made her way back through the low growth, and sat down where Clara and herself had sat only a little while before.

      "And Clara says he doesn't talk!" she soliloquized, with a faint smile about her lips. "Not talk! – he did not give me a chance to say a word, even if I had wanted to. I feel decidedly 'sat upon,' as Hen would say, and I suppose I deserved it."

      Then she missed her cap, and went to look for it; but it was gone. She remembered seeing it in his hand; he must have forgotten and taken it with him. Then she sat down again, and all the time his words, and the way he had said them, kept ringing in her head – "Judging things you don't understand is bad business."

      Of course he was right; but it seemed strange for her to be taken to task by a man like that on such a subject – an uncouth miner and hunter in the Indian hills. But was he quite uncouth? While he made her stop and listen, his earnestness had overleaped that slurred manner of speech that belongs to the ignorant of culture. His words had been clearer cut. There had been the ring of finished steel in his voice, not the thud of iron in the ore, and it had cut clear a path of revelations. The man, then, could do more than ride magnificently, and look a Launcelot in buckskin – he could think – how deeply and wildly had been shown by the haggard face she had seen. But the cause of it? Even his disjointed explanation had given her no clue.

      "Tsolo," she thought, repeating the Chinook word he had used; "that means to lose one's way – to wander in the dark. Well, he was right. That is what I am doing"; and then she laughed half mockingly at herself as she added: "And Mr. Jack Genesee has started me on the path – and started me bare-headed. Oh, dear, what a muddle! I wonder where my cap is, and I wonder where the man went to, and I wonder – I wonder what he meant by a glimpse of heaven. I haven't seen any signs of it."

      But she had seen it – seen it and laughed mockingly, unbelievingly, while the man had by the sight been touched into a great heart-ache of desolation. And yet it was a commonplace thing they had seen; only two lives bound together by the wish of their hearts and a wedding ring – an affection so honest that its fondness could be frankly shown to the world.

      That evening Genesee came back to camp looking tired, and told Ivans there was a grizzly waiting to be skinned in a gully not far off. He had had a hard tussle after it and was too tired to see to the pelt; and then he turned to Miss Hardy and drew her cap from his pocket.

      "I picked it up back there in the brush, and forgot to give it to you before going out," he said.

      That СКАЧАТЬ