Tales of Trail and Town - Bret Harte (best short novels of all time .TXT) 📗

beautiful and free country? Yes! it was a “go-a-‘ed” country—you “bet-your-lif’.” One had reason to say so: there was your electricity—your street cars—your “steambots”—ah! such steambots—and your “r-rail-r-roads.” Ah! observe! compare your r-rail-r-roads and the buffet of the Pullman with the line from Paris, for example—and where is one? Nowhere! Actually, positively, without doubt, nowhere!

Later, at an appetizing breakfast—at which, to Dick’s great satisfaction, the good man had permitted and congratulated himself to sit at table with a free-born American—he was even more loquacious. For what then, he would ask, was this incompetence, this imbecility, of France? He would tell. It was the vile corruption of Paris, the grasping of capital and companies, the fatal influence of the still clinging noblesse, and the insidious Jesuitical power of the priests. As for example, Monsieur “the Booflo-bil” had doubtless noticed the great gates of the park before the cafe? It was the preserve,—the hunting-park of one of the old grand seigneurs, still kept up by his descendants, the Comtes de Fontonelles—hundreds of acres that had never been tilled, and kept as wild waste wilderness,—kept for a day’s pleasure in a year! And, look you! the peasants starving around its walls in their small garden patches and pinched farms! And the present Comte de Fontonelles cascading gold on his mistresses in Paris; and the Comtesse, his mother, and her daughter living there to feed and fatten and pension a brood of plotting, black-cowled priests. Ah, bah! where was your Republican France, then? But a time would come. The “Booflo-bil” had, without doubt, noticed, as he came along the road, the breaches in the wall of the park?

Dick, with a slight dry reserve, “reckoned that he had.”

“They were made by the scythes and pitchforks of the peasants in the Revolution of ‘93, when the count was emigre, as one says with reason ‘skedadelle,’ to England. Let them look the next time that they burn not the chateau,—‘bet your lif’!’”

“The chateau,” said Dick, with affected carelessness. “Wot’s the blamed thing like?”

It was an old affair,—with armor and a picture-gallery,—and bricabrac. He had never seen it. Not even as a boy,—it was kept very secluded then. As a man—you understand—he could not ask the favor. The Comtes de Fontonelles and himself were not friends. The family did not like a cafe near their sacred gates,—where had stood only the huts of their retainers. The American would observe that he had not called it “Cafe de Chateau,” nor “Cafe de Fontonelles,”—the gold of California would not induce him. Why did he remain there? Naturally, to goad them! It was a principle, one understood. To GOAD them and hold them in check! One kept a cafe,—why not? One had one’s principles,—one’s conviction,—that was another thing! That was the kind of “‘air-pin”—was it not?— that HE, Gustav Ribaud, was like!

Yet for all his truculent socialism, he was quick, obliging, and charmingly attentive to Dick and his needs. As to Dick’s horse, he should have the best veterinary surgeon—there was an incomparable one in the person of the blacksmith—see to him, and if it were an affair of days, and Dick must go, he himself would be glad to purchase the beast, his saddle, and accoutrements. It was an affair of business,—an advertisement for the cafe! He would ride the horse himself before the gates of the park. It would please his customers. Ha! he had learned a trick or two in free America.

Dick’s first act had been to shave off his characteristic beard and mustache, and even to submit his long curls to the village barber’s shears, while a straw hat, which he bought to take the place of his slouched sombrero, completed his transformation. His host saw in the change only the natural preparation of a voyager, but Dick had really made the sacrifice, not from fear of detection, for he had recovered his old swaggering audacity, but from a quick distaste he had taken to his resemblance to the portrait. He was too genuine a Westerner, and too vain a man, to feel flattered at his resemblance to an aristocratic bully, as he believed the ancestral De Fontonelles to be. Even his momentary sensation as he faced the Cure in the picture-gallery was more from a vague sense that liberties had been taken with his, Dick’s, personality, than that he had borrowed anything from the portrait.

But he was not so clear about the young girl. Her tender, appealing voice, although he knew it had been addressed only to a vision, still thrilled his fancy. The pluck that had made her withstand her fear so long—until he had uttered that dreadful word—still excited his admiration. His curiosity to know what mistake he had made—for he knew it must have been some frightful blunder—was all the more keen, as he had no chance to rectify it. What a brute she must have thought him—or DID she really think him a brute even then?—for her look was one more of despair and pity! Yet she would remember him only by that last word, and never know that he had risked insult and ejection from her friends to carry her to her place of safety. He could not bear to go across the seas carrying the pale, unsatisfied face of that gentle girl ever before his eyes! A sense of delicacy—new to Dick, but always the accompaniment of deep feeling—kept him from even hinting his story to his host, though he knew—perhaps BECAUSE he knew—that it would gratify his enmity to the family. A sudden thought struck Dick. He knew her house, and her name. He would write her a note. Somebody would be sure to translate it for her.

He borrowed pen, ink, and paper, and in the clean solitude of his fresh chintz bedroom, indited the following letter:—

 

DEAR MISS FONTONELLES,—Please excuse me for having skeert you. I hadn’t any call to do it, I never reckoned to do it—it was all jest my derned luck; I only reckoned to tell you I was lost—in them blamed woods—don’t you remember?—“lost”—PERDOO!—and then you up and fainted! I wouldn’t have come into your garden, only, you see, I’d just skeered by accident two of your helps, reg’lar softies, and I wanted to explain. I reckon they allowed I was that man that that picture in the hall was painted after. I reckon they took ME for him—see? But he ain’t MY style, nohow, and I never saw the picture at all until after I’d toted you, when you fainted, up to your house, or I’d have made my kalkilations and acted according. I’d have laid low in the woods, and got away without skeerin’ you. You see what I mean? It was mighty mean of me, I suppose, to have tetched you at all, without saying, “Excuse me, miss,” and toted you out of the garden and up the steps into your own parlor without asking your leave. But the whole thing tumbled so suddent. And it didn’t seem the square thing for me to lite out and leave you lying there on the grass. That’s why! I’m sorry I skeert that old preacher, but he came upon me in the picture hall so suddent, that it was a mighty close call, I tell you, to get off without a shindy. Please forgive me, Miss Fontonelles. When you get this, I shall be going back home to America, but you might write to me at Denver City, saying you’re all right. I liked your style; I liked your grit in standing up to me in the garden until you had your say, when you thought I was the Lord knows what— though I never understood a word you got off—not knowing French. But it’s all the same now. Say! I’ve got your rose!

Yours very respectfully,

RICHARD FOUNTAINS.

 

Dick folded the epistle and put it in his pocket. He would post it himself on the morning before he left. When he came downstairs he found his indefatigable host awaiting him, with the report of the veterinary blacksmith. There was nothing seriously wrong with the mustang, but it would be unfit to travel for several days. The landlord repeated his former offer. Dick, whose money was pretty well exhausted, was fain to accept, reflecting that SHE had never seen the mustang and would not recognize it. But he drew the line at the sombrero, to which his host had taken a great fancy. He had worn it before HER!

Later in the evening Dick was sitting on the low veranda of the cafe, overlooking the white road. A round white table was beside him, his feet were on the railing, but his eyes were resting beyond on the high, mouldy iron gates of the mysterious park. What he was thinking of did not matter, but he was a little impatient at the sudden appearance of his host—whom he had evaded during the afternoon—at his side. The man’s manner was full of bursting loquacity and mysterious levity.

Truly, it was a good hour when Dick had arrived at Fontonelles,— “just in time.” He could see now what a world of imbeciles was France. What stupid ignorance ruled, what low cunning and low tact could achieve,—in effect, what jugglers and mountebanks, hypocritical priests and licentious and lying noblesse went to make up existing society. Ah, there had been a fine excitement, a regular coup d’theatre at Fontonelles,—the chateau yonder; here at the village, where the news was brought by frightened grooms and silly women! He had been in the thick of it all the afternoon! He had examined it,—interrogated them like a juge d’instruction,— winnowed it, sifted it. And what was it all? An attempt by these wretched priests and noblesse to revive in the nineteenth century— the age of electricity and Pullman cars—a miserable mediaeval legend of an apparition, a miracle! Yes; one is asked to believe that at the chateau yonder was seen last night three times the apparition of Armand de Fontonelles!

Dick started. “Armand de Fontonelles!” He remembered that she had repeated that name.

“Who’s he?” he demanded abruptly.

“The first Comte de Fontonelles! When monsieur knows that the first comte has been dead three hundred years, he will see the imbecility of the affair!”

“Wot did he come back for?” growled Dick.

“Ah! it was a legend. Consider its artfulness! The Comte Armand had been a hard liver, a dissipated scoundrel, a reckless beast, but a mighty hunter of the stag. It was said that on one of these occasions he had been warned by the apparition of St. Hubert; but he had laughed,—for, observe, HE always jeered at the priests too; hence this story!—and had declared that the flaming cross seen between the horns of the sacred stag was only the torch of a poacher, and he would shoot it! Good! the body of the comte, dead, but without a wound, was found in the wood the next day, with his discharged arquebus in his hand. The Archbishop of Rouen refused his body the rites of the Church until a number of masses were said every year and—paid for! One understands! one sees their ‘little game;’ the count now appears,—he is in purgatory! More masses,— more money! There you are. Bah! One understands, too, that the affair takes place, not in a cafe like this,—not in a public place,—but at a chateau of the noblesse, and is seen by”—the proprietor checked the characters on his fingers—TWO retainers; one young demoiselle of the noblesse, daughter of the chatelaine herself; and, my faith, it goes without saying, by a fat priest, the Cure! In effect, two interested ones! And the priest,—his lie is magnificent! Superb! For he saw the comte in the picture-gallery,—in effect, stepping into his frame!”

“Oh, come off the roof,” said Dick impatiently; “they must have seen SOMETHING, you know. The young lady wouldn’t lie!”

Monsieur Ribaud