Short Stories Old and New - Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
So far well: but, four days after the operation, my patient had a sudden
and long shivering, a "groosin'," as she called it. I saw her soon
after; her eyes were too bright, her cheek colored; she was restless,
and ashamed of being so; the balance was lost; mischief had begun. On
looking at the wound, a blush of red told the secret: her pulse was
rapid, her breathing anxious and quick, she wasn't herself, as she said,
and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what we could; James did
everything, was everywhere; never in the way, never out of it; Rab
subsided under the table into a dark place, and was motionless, all but
his eye, which followed every one. Ailie got worse; began to wander in
her mind, gently; was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in
her questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, and said, "She was
never that way afore; no, never." For a time she knew her head was
wrong, and was always asking our pardon--the dear, gentle old woman:
then delirium set in strong, without pause. Her brain gave way, and then
came that terrible spectacle,--
The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on its dim and perilous way,
she sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the
Psalms of David and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely
odds and ends and scraps of ballads.
Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I
ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch
voice,--the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the
bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares,
something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a
"fremyt" voice, and he starting up surprised, and slinking off as if he
were to blame somehow, or had been dreaming he heard; many eager
questions and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and
on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It
was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James
hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read
to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and
metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing
great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doating
over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain bonnie wee
dawtie!"
The end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver cord
was fast being loosed--that _animula blandula, vagula, hospes,
comesque_[*] was about to flee. The body and the soul--companions for
sixty years--were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking
alone, through the valley of that shadow, into which one day we must all
enter,--and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod and staff were
comforting her.
[* "Little, gentle, wandering soul, guest and comrade."--Hadrian's
"Address to his Soul"]
One night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped, asleep; her eyes were
shut. We put down the gas, and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in
bed, and taking a bed-gown which was lying on it rolled up, she held it
eagerly to her breast,--to the right side. We could see her eyes bright
with a surprising tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of
clothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking child; opening out her
night-gown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it, and
murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his mother comforteth,
and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her
wasted dying look, keen and yet vague--her immense love.
"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving way. And then she rocked back and
forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her
infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor; I declare she's thinkin' it's that
bairn." "What bairn?" "The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and
she's in the Kingdom, forty years and mair." It was plainly true: the
pain in the breast, telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined
brain, was misread and mistaken; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a
breast full of milk, and then the child; and so again once more they
were together, and she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom.
This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but, as she
whispered, she was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before the final
darkness. After having for some time lain still--her eyes shut, she said
"James!" He came close to her, and lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful
eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked
for Rab but could not see him, then turned to her husband again, as if
she would never leave off looking, shut her eyes, and composed herself.
She lay for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently that,
when we thought she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the
mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was
breathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the blank
clear darkness of the mirror without a stain. "What is our life? it is
even a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth
away."
Rab all this time had been full awake and motionless; he came forward
beside us: Ailie's hand, which James had held, was hanging down; it was
soaked with his tears; Rab licked it all over carefully, looked at her,
and returned to his place under the table.
James and I sat, I don't know how long, but for some time,--saying
nothing: he started up abruptly, and with some noise went to the table,
and putting his right fore and middle fingers each into a shoe, pulled
them out, and put them on, breaking one of the leather latchets, and
muttering in anger, "I never did the like o' that afore!"
I believe he never did; nor after either. "Rab!" he said roughly, and
pointing with his thumb to the bottom of the bed. Rab leapt up, and
settled himself; his head and eye to the dead face. "Maister John, ye'll
wait for me," said the carrier; and disappeared in the darkness,
thundering down-stairs in his heavy shoes. I ran to a front window;
there he was, already round the house, and out at the gate, fleeing like
a shadow.
I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid; so I sat down beside Rab,
and being wearied, fell asleep. I awoke from a sudden noise outside. It
was November, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. Rab was _in statu
quo_; he heard the noise too, and plainly knew it, but never moved. I
looked out; and there, at the gate, in the dim morning--for the sun was
not up--was Jess and the cart,--a cloud of steam rising from the old
mare. I did not see James; he was already at the door, and came up the
stairs, and met me. It was less than three hours since he left, and he
must have posted out--who knows how?--to Howgate, full nine miles off;
yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He had an armful of
blankets, and was streaming with perspiration. He nodded to me, spread
out on the floor two pairs of clean old blankets having at their
corners, "A.G., 1794," in large letters in red worsted. These were the
initials of Alison Graeme, and James may have looked in at her from
without--himself unseen but not unthought of--when he was "wat, wat, and
weary," and after having walked many a mile over the hills, may have
seen her sitting, while "a' the lave were sleepin':" and by the
firelight working her name on the blankets, for her ain James's bed.
He motioned Rab down, and taking his wife in his arms, laid her in the
blankets, and happed her carefully and firmly up, leaving the face
uncovered; and then lifting her, he nodded again sharply to me, and with
a resolved but utterly miserable face, strode along the passage, and
down-stairs, followed by Rab. I followed with a light; but he didn't
need it. I went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in the calm
frosty air; we were soon at the gate. I could have helped him, but I saw
he was not to be meddled with, and he was strong, and did not need it.
He laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he had lifted her out ten
days before--as tenderly as when he had her first in his arms when she
was only "A.G.,"--sorted her, leaving that beautiful sealed face open to
the heavens; and then taking Jess by the head, he moved away. He did not
notice me, neither did Rab, who presided behind the cart.
I stood till they passed through the long shadow of the College, and
turned up Nicolson Street. I heard the solitary cart sound through the
streets, and die away and come again; and I returned, thinking of that
company going up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the morning
light touching the Pentlands and making them like on-looking ghosts,
then down the hill through Auchindinny woods, past "haunted
Woodhouselee;" and as daybreak came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs,
and fell on his own door, the company would stop, and James would take
the key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on her own bed, and, having
put Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door.
James buried his wife, with his neighbors mourning, Rab inspecting the
solemnity from a distance. It was snow, and that black ragged hole would
look strange in the midst of the swelling spotless cushion of white.
James looked after everything; then rather suddenly fell ill, and took
to bed; was insensible when the doctor came, and soon died. A sort of
low fever was prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, his
exhaustion, and his misery made him apt to take it. The grave was not
difficult to reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made all things
white and smooth; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable.
* * * * *
And what of Rab? I asked for him next week of the new carrier who got
the goodwill of James's business, and was now master of Jess and her
cart. "How's Rab?" He put me off, and said rather rudely, "What's _your_
business wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so put off. "Where's Rab?" He,
getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, "Deed,
sir, Rab's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he,
getting redder, "he did na exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain
him wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss
wi' the mear, and wad na come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but
he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was
aye gur gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make
awa wi' the auld dowg, his like was na atween this and Thornhill,--but,
'deed, sir, I could do naething else." I believed him. Fit end for Rab,
quick and complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep
the peace, and be civil?
VIII. THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT[*] (1869)
[* Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton
Mifflin Company, publishers of Bret Harte's Works.]
BY BRET HARTE (1836-1902)
[_Setting_. The group tragedy enacted in this story took place between
November 23 and December 7, 1850, on the road from Poker Flat to Sandy
Bar, in Sierra County, California. The time and place are those that
Bret Harte has made peculiarly his own. The austerity and wildness of
the scenery seem somehow to favor the intimate revelation of character
that the story displays. There is no intervention of cities, crops,
fashions, or conventions between the different members of the character
group or between the group as a whole and the reader. All is bare like a
white mountain peak. Notice also how the background of a common peril
draws the characters together and brings out at last the best in each.
_Plot_. The story sets forth and interprets a dramatic situation. The
plot is staged so as to answer the question, "Do not the people whom
society regards as outcasts have yet some redeeming virtue?" Notice
especially how a sense of common fellowship is developed in these
outcasts. First, they are subjected to a common humiliation in being
driven from Poker Flat by persons whom the outcasts consider no whit
better than themselves. Next, they are exposed to a common danger, a
danger that leads the stronger to care instinctively for the weaker, and
the weaker to recognize that it is nobler to give than to receive. At
last, in the unexpected entrance of the innocent Tom Simson and the
guileless Piney Woods, the outcasts find a common challenge to the
native goodness that had long lain dormant within them. Innocence and
guilelessness may be laughed at, as they are here, but their appeal is
often stronger than the appeal of disciplined virtue or of
self-conscious superiority. When Bret Harte was charged with confusing
the boundary lines of vice and virtue he replied that his plots
"conformed to the rules laid down by a Great Poet who created the
parable of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan."
_Characters_. Oakhurst, who is always called "Mr." Oakhurst, is of
course the dominant character. The story begins with him and ends with
him. He is "the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker
Flat,"--strong while there was anything to be done, weak even to suicide
when he had only to wait for the inevitable end. He was a brave,
desperate, solitary man, whose thought and speech and action, however,
were always those of the professional gambler. Bret Harte, who has put
him into several stories, says of him in another place: "Go where he
would and with whom, he was always a notable man in ten thousand." The
admiration that we yield to such a man, though it is only a qualified
admiration, is doubtless the admiration of power which, we cannot help
thinking, might be used beneficently if it could only be harnessed to a
noble cause.
But if Oakhurst is the dominant character, Piney Woods is, I think, the
central character. She is central in this story just as little Aglaia is
central in Tennyson's "Princess," or Eppie in George Eliot's "Silas
Marner," or the baby offspring of Cherokee Sal in "The Luck of Roaring
Camp." Bret Harte had just written the last-named story when he began
the composition of "The Outcasts of Poker Flat." The same great theme,
the radiating and redeeming power of innocence and purity, was carried
over from the first story to the second. The ministry of the baby and
the ministry of the fifteen-year-old bride is the same in both. Like the
Great Stone Face in Hawthorne's story or like little Pippa in Browning's
poem, they awaken the better nature of those about them. They restore
hopes that had become but memories and memories that had almost ceased
to be hopes.]
As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker
Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was
conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night.
Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he
approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull
in the air, which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked
ominous.
Mr. Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these
indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause, was
another question. "I reckon they're after somebody," he reflected;
"likely it's me." He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which
he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat
boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.
In point of fact, Poker Flat was "after somebody." It had lately
suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and
a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction,
quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked
it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper
persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then
hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in
the banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to
say that some of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however,
to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in
such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to
sit in judgment.
Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this
category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible
example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of
the sums he had won from them. "It's agin justice," said Jim Wheeler,
"to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp--an entire stranger--carry
away our money." But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts
of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst
overruled this narrower local prejudice.
Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the
less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was
too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an
uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the
dealer.
A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to
the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to
be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort
was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman
familiarly known as "The Duchess"; another, who had won the title of
"Mother Shipton"; and "Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-robber and
confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the
spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch
which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader
spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at
the peril of their lives.
As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few
hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother
Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The
philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother
Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements
of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths
that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the
easy good-humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging
his own riding-horse, "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess
rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy.
The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble,
faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of "Five Spot" with
malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party in one sweeping
anathema.
The road to Sandy Bar--a camp that, not having as yet experienced the
regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some
invitation to the emigrants--lay over a steep mountain range. It was
distant a day's severe travel. In that advanced season, the party soon
passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foot-hills into the
dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and
difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the
ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and the party
halted.
The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheatre,
surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped
gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley.
It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been
advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy
Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned for
delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a
philosophic commentary on the folly of "throwing up their hand before
the game was played out." But they were furnished with liquor, which in
this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience.
In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or
less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose
state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton
snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock,
calmly surveying them.
Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which
required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own
language, he "couldn't afford it." As he gazed at his recumbent
fellow-exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah-trade, his habits
of life, his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him. He
bestirred himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and
face, and other acts characteristic of his studiously neat habits, and
for a moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of deserting his weaker
and more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could
not help feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough,
was most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious.
He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the
circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley
below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard
his own name called.
A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the
new-comer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as "The
Innocent" of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over a "little
game," and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire
fortune--amounting to some forty dollars--of that guileless youth. After
the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind
the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a good little man, but
you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed
him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a
devoted slave of Tom Simson.
There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting
of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek
his fortune. "Alone?" No, not exactly alone; in fact (a giggle), he had
run away with Piney Woods. Didn't Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney? She that
used to wait on the table at the Temperance House? They had been engaged
a long time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away,
and were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And they
were tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and
company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout,
comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine-tree, where she
had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her lover.
Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with
propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not fortunate.
He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle
Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough
to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power that would not bear
trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying
further, but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that there was no
provision, nor means of making a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met
this objection by assuring the party that he was provided with an extra
mule loaded with provisions, and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a
log-house near the trail. "Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst," said the
Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, "and I can shift for myself."
Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from
bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire
up the canon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the
joke to the tall pine-trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of
his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he
found them seated by a fire--for the air had grown strangely chill and
the sky overcast--in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was
actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who
was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many
days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to
Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into
amiability. "Is this yer a d----d picnic?" said Uncle Billy, with inward
scorn, as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the
tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the
alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular
nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist
into his mouth.
As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked the
tops of the pine-trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles.
The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine-boughs, was set apart
for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a
kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the
swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were
probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity,
and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the
men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes were asleep.