The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales

by Harte, Bret

  "What are victuals to a wounded spirit?" asked the young man dramatically. He had reached the side of M'liss during this dialogue, and had taken her unresisting hand. He was too wise to notice his victory, however; and drawing Melissa's note from his pocket, opened it before her.

  "Couldn't you find any paper in the schoolhouse without tearing a leaf out of my memorandum book, Melissa?" he asked.

  "It ain't out of your memorandum book," responded M'liss fiercely.

  "Indeed," said the master, turning to the lines in pencil; "I thought it was my handwriting."

  M'liss, who had been looking over his shoulder, suddenly seized the paper and snatched it out of his hand.

  "It's father's writing!" she said, after a pause, in a softer tone.

  "Where did you get it, M'liss?"

  "Aristides gave it to me."

  "Where did he get it?"

  "Don't know. He had the book in his pocket when I told him I was going to write to you, and he tore the leaf out. There now—don't bother me any more." M'liss had turned her face away, and the black hair had hid her downcast eyes.

  Something in her gesture and expression reminded him of her father. Something, and more that was characteristic to her at such moments, made him fancy another resemblance, and caused him to ask impulsively, and less cautiously than was his wont:—

  "Do you remember your mother, M'liss?"

  "No."

  "Did you never see her?"

  "No—didn't I tell you not to bother, and you're a-goin' and doin' it," said M'liss savagely.

  The master was silent a moment. "Did you ever think you would like to have a mother, M'liss?" he asked again,

  "No-o-o-o!"

  The master rose; M'liss looked up.

  "Does Aristides come to school to-day?"

  "I don't know."

  "Are you going back? You'd better," she said.

  "Well!—perhaps I may. Good-by!"

  He had proceeded a few steps when, as he expected, she called him back. He turned. She was standing by the tree, with tears glistening in her eyes. The master felt the right moment had come. Going up to her, he took both her hands in his, and looking in her tearful eyes, said gravely:—

  "M'liss, do you remember the first evening you came to see me?"

  M'liss remembered.

  "You asked me if you might come to school, and I said—"

  "Come!" responded the child softly.

  "If I told you I was lonely without my little scholar, and that I wanted her to come, what would you say?"

  The child hung her head in silence. The master waited patiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the couple, and raising her bright eyes and velvet fore paws, gazed at them fearlessly. A squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and there stopped.

  "We are waiting, Lissy," said the master in a whisper, and the child smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked, and a slanting sunbeam stole through their interlaced boughs and fell on the doubting face and irresolute little figure. But a step in the dry branches and a rustling in the underbrush broke the spell.

  A man dressed as a miner, carrying a long-handled shovel, came slowly through the woods. A red handkerchief tied around his head under his hat, with the loose ends hanging from beneath, did not add much favor to his unprepossessing face. He did not perceive the master and M'liss until he was close upon them. When he did, he stopped suddenly and gazed at them with an expression of lowering distrust. M'liss drew nearer to the master.

  "Good-mornin'—picknickin', eh?" he asked, with an attempt at geniality that was more repulsive than his natural manner.

  "How are you—prospecting, eh?" said the master quietly, after the established colloquial formula of Red Mountain.

  "Yes—a little in that way."

  The stranger still hesitated, apparently waiting for them to go first, a matter which M'liss decided by suddenly taking the master's hand in her quick way. What she said was scarcely audible, but the master, parting her hair over her forehead, kissed her, and so, hand in hand, they passed out of the damp aisles and forest odors into the open sunlit road. But M'liss, looking back, saw that her old seat was occupied by the hopeful prospector, and fancied that in the shadows of her former throne something of a gratified leer overspread his face. "He'll have to dig deep to find the crab apples," said the child to the master, as they came to the Red Mountain road.

  When Aristides came to school that day he was confronted by M'liss. But neither threats nor entreaties could extract from that reticent youth the whereabout of the memorandum book nor where he got it. Two or three days afterward, during recess, he approached M'liss, and beckoned her one side.

  "Well," said M'liss impatiently.

  "Did you ever read the story of 'Ali Baba'?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you believe it?"

  "No."

  "Well," said that sage infant, wheeling around on his stout legs, "it's true!"

  CHAPTER IV

  WHICH HAS A GOOD MORAL TENDENCY

  Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with the other scholars, M'liss still retained an offensive attitude toward Clytemnestra. Perhaps the jealous element was not entirely stilled in her passionate little breast. Perhaps it was that Clytemnestra's round curves and plump outlines afforded an extensive pinching surface. But while these ebullitions were under the master's control, her enmity occasionally took a new and irresponsible form.

  In his first estimate of the child's character he could not conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like many other professed readers of character, was safer in a posteriori than a priori reasoning, for M'liss had a doll. But then it was a peculiar doll,—a frightful perversion of wax and sawdust,—a doll fearfully and wonderfully made,—a smaller edition of M'liss. Its unhappy existence had been a secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Morpher. It had been the oldtime companion of M'liss's wanderings, and bore evident marks of suffering. Its original complexion was long since washed away by the weather, and anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked very much as M'liss had in days past. Its one gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged as hers had been. M'liss had never been known to apply to it any childish term of endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of other children. It was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the schoolhouse, and only allowed exercise during M'liss's rambles. Fulfilling a stern duty to her doll—as she would to herself—it knew no luxuries.

  Now, Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another doll and gave it to M'liss. The child received it gravely and curiously. The master, on looking at it one day, fancied he saw a slight resemblance in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became evident before long that M'liss had also noticed the same resemblance. Accordingly she hammered its waxen head on the rocks when she was alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck to and from school. At other times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion of its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's excellencies upon her; or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the rites of certain other heathens, and indulging in that "fetich" ceremony imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now consider.

  In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help noticing in her different tasks the workings of a quick, restless, and vigorous perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood. Her answers in class were always slightly dashed with audacity. Of course she was not infallible. But her courage and daring in venturing beyond her own depth and that of the floundering little swimmers around her, in their minds outweighed all errors of judgment. Children are no better than grown people in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the little red hand flashed above her desk, there was a wondering silence, and even the master was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own e
xperience and judgment.

  Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and entertained his fancy began to affect him with grave doubts. He could not but see that M'liss was revengeful, irreverent, and willful. But there was one better quality which pertained to her semi-savage disposition—the faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another—though not always an attribute of the noble savage—truth. M'liss was both fearless and sincere—perhaps in such a character the adjectives were synonymous.

  The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and had arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think sincerely, that he was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when he determined to call on the Rev. Mr. McSnagley for advice. This decision was somewhat humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. But he thought of M'liss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps with a pardonable superstition that it was not chance alone that had guided her willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a complacent consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked back his dislike and went to McSnagley.

  The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed that the master was looking "peartish" and hoped he had got over the "neuralgy" and "rheumatiz." He himself had been troubled with a dumb "ager" since last conference. But he had learned to "rastle and pray."

  Pausing a moment to enable the master to write this certain method of curing the dumb "ager" upon the book and volume of his brain, Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. "She is an adornment to Chris_tew_anity, and has a likely, growin' young family," added Mr. McSnagley; "and there is that mannerly young gal—so well behaved—Miss Clytie." In fact, Clytie's perfections seemed to affect him to such an extent that he dwelt for several minutes upon them. The master was doubly embarrassed. In the first place, there was an enforced contrast with poor M'liss in all this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there was something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of speaking of Morpher's earliest born. So that the master, after a few futile efforts to say something natural, found it convenient to recall another engagement and left without asking the information required, but in his after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley the full benefit of having refused it.

  But the master obtained the advice in another and unexpected direction.

  The resident physician of Smith's Pocket was a Dr. Duchesne, or as he was better known to the locality, "Dr. Doochesny." Of a naturally refined nature and liberal education, he had steadily resisted the aggressions and temptations of Smith's Pocket, and represented to the master a kind of connecting link between his present life and the past. So that an intimacy sprang up between the two men, involving prolonged interviews in the doctor's little back shop, often to the exclusion of other suffering humanity and their physical ailments. It was in one of these interviews that the master mentioned the coincidence of the date of the memoranda on the back of M'liss's letter and the day of Smith's suicide.

  "If it were Smith's own handwriting, as the child says it is," said the master, "it shows a queer state of mind that could contemplate suicide and indite private memoranda within the same twenty-four hours."

  Dr. Duchesne removed his cigar from his lips and looked attentively at his friend.

  "The only hypothesis," continued the master, "is that Smith was either drunk or crazy, and the fatal act was in a measure unpremeditated."

  "Every man who commits suicide," returned the doctor gravely, "is in my opinion insane, or, what is nearly the same thing, becomes through suffering an irresponsible agent. In my professional experience I have seen most of the forms of mental and physical agony, and know what sacrifices men will make to preserve even an existence that to me seemed little better than death, so long as their intellect remained unclouded. When you come to reflect on the state of mind that chooses death as a preferable alternative, you generally find an exaltation and enthusiasm that differs very little from the ordinary diagnosis of delirium. Smith was not drunk," added the doctor in his usual careless tone; "I saw his body."

  The master remained buried in reflection. Presently the doctor removed his cigar.

  "Perhaps I might help you to explain the coincidence you speak of."

  "How?"

  "Very easily. But this is a professional secret, you understand."

  "Yes, I understand," said the master hastily, with an ill-defined uneasiness creeping over him.

  "Do you know anything of the phenomena of death by gunshot wounds?"

  "No!"

  "Then you must take certain facts as granted. Smith, you remember, was killed instantly! The nature of his wound and the manner of his death were such as would have caused an instantaneous and complete relaxation of all the muscles. Rigidity and contraction would have supervened of course, but only after life was extinct and consciousness fled. Now Smith was found with his hand tightly grasping a pistol."

  "Well?"

  "Well, my dear boy, he must have grasped it after he was dead, or have prevailed on some friend to stiffen his fingers round it."

  "Do you mean that he was murdered?"

  Dr. Duchesne rose and closed the door. "We have different names for these things in Smith's Pocket. I mean to say that he didn't kill himself—that's all." "But, doctor," said the master earnestly; "do you think you have done right in concealing this fact? Do you think it just—do you think it consistent with your duty to his orphan child?"

  "That's why I have said nothing about it," replied the doctor coolly, —"because of my consideration for his orphan child."

  The master breathed quickly, and stared at the doctor.

  "Doctor! you don't think that M'liss"—

  "Hush!—don't get excited, my young friend. Remember I am not a lawyer—only a doctor."

  "But M'liss was with me the very night he must have been killed. We were walking together when we heard the report—that is—a report— which must have been the one"—stammered the master.

  "When was that?"

  "At half past eleven. I remember looking at my watch."

  "Humph!—when did you meet her first?"

  "At half past eight. Come, doctor, you have made a mistake here at least," said the young man with an assumption of ease he was far from feeling. "Give M'liss the benefit of the doubt."

  Dr. Duchesne replied by opening a drawer of his desk. After rummaging among the powders and mysterious looking instruments with which it was stored, he finally brought forth a longitudinal slip of folded white paper. It was appropriately labeled "Poison."

  "Look here," said the doctor, opening the paper. It contained two or three black coarse hairs. "Do you know them?"

  "No."

  "Look again!"

  "It looks something like Melissa's hair," said the master, with a fathomless sinking of the heart.

  "When I was called to look at the body," continued the doctor with the deliberate cautiousness of a professional diagnosis, "my suspicions were aroused by the circumstance I told you of. I managed to get possession of the pistol, and found these hairs twisted around the lock as though they had been accidentally caught and violently disentangled. I don't think that any one else saw them. I removed them without observation, and—they are at your service."

  The master sank back in his seat and pressed his hand to his forehead. The image of M'liss rose before him with flashing eye and long black hair, and seemed to beat down and resist defiantly the suspicion that crept slowly over his heart.

  "I forbore to tell you this, my friend," continued the doctor slowly and gravely, "because when I learned that you had taken this strange child under your protection I did not wish to tell you that which— though I contend does not alter her claims to man's sympathy and kindness—still might have prejudiced her in your eyes. Her improvement under your care has proven my position correct. I have, as you know, peculiar ideas of the extent to which humanity is responsible. I find in my heart—looking back over that child's career—no s
entiment but pity. I am mistaken in you if I thought this circumstance aroused any other feeling in yours."

  Still the figure of M'liss stood before the master as he bent before the doctor's words, in the same defiant attitude, with something of scorn in the great dark eyes, that made the blood tingle in his cheeks, and seemed to make the reasoning of the speaker but meaningless and empty words. At length he rose. As he stood with his hand on the latch he turned to Dr. Duchesne, who was watching him with careful solicitude.

  "I don't know but that you have done well to keep this from me. At all events it has not—cannot, and should not alter my opinion toward M'liss. You will of course keep it a secret. In the mean time you must not blame me if I cling to my instincts in preference to your judgment. I still believe that you are mistaken in regard to her."

  "Stay, one moment," said the doctor; "promise me you will not say anything of this, nor attempt to prosecute the matter further till you have consulted with me."

  "I promise. Good-night."

  "Good-night;" and so they parted.

  True to that promise and his own instinctive promptings the master endeavored to atone for his momentary disloyalty by greater solicitude for M'liss. But the child had noticed some change in the master's thoughtful manner, and in one of their long post-prandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting a stump, looked full in his face with big searching eyes.

  "You ain't mad?" said she, with an interrogative shake of the black braids.

  "No."

  "Nor bothered?"

  "No."

  "Nor hungry?" (Hunger was to M'liss a sickness that might attack a person at any moment.)

  "No."

  "Nor thinking of her?"

  "Of whom, Lissy?"

  "That white girl." (This was the latest epithet invented by M'liss, who was a very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.)

  "No."

  "Upon your word?" (A substitute for "Hope you 'll die!" proposed by the master.)

  "Yes."

  "And sacred honor?"

  "Yes."

  Then M'liss gave him a fierce little kiss, and hopping down, fluttered off. For two or three days after that she condescended to appear like other children and be, as she expressed it, "good."