Jeff Briggs's Love Story

Miss Mayfield did not leave her room that afternoon. The wind was getting up, and it was growing dark when Jeff, idly sitting on his porch, hoping for her appearance, was quite astounded at the apparition of Yuba Bill as a pedestrian, dusty and thirsty, making for his usual refreshment. Jeff brought out the bottle, but could not refrain from mixing his verbal astonishment with the conventional cocktail. Bill, partaking of his liquor and becoming once more a speaking animal, slowly drew off his heavy, baggy driving gloves. No one had ever seen Bill without them—he was currently believed to sleep in them—and when he laid them on the counter they still retained the grip of his hand, which gave them an entertaining likeness to two plethoric and overfed spiders.

“Ef I concluded to pass over my lines to a friend and take a pasear up yer this evening,” said Bill, eying Jeff sharply, “I don’t know ez thar’s any law agin it! Onless yer keepin’ a private branch o’ the Occidental Ho-tel, and on’y take in fash’n’ble fammerlies!”

Jeff, with a rising color, protested against such a supposition.

“Because ef ye ARE,” said Bill, lifting his voice, and crushing one of the overgrown spiders with his fist, “I’ve got a word or two to say to the son of Joe Briggs of Tuolumne. Yes, sir! Joe Briggs—yer father—ez blew his brains out for want of a man ez could stand up and say a word to him at the right time.”

“Bill,” said Jeff, in a low, resolute tone—that tone yielded up only from the smitten chords of despair and desperation—“thar’s a sick woman in the house. I’ll listen to anything you’ve got to say if you’ll say it quietly. But you must and SHALL speak low.”

Real men quickly recognize real men the world over; it is only your shams who fence and spar. Bill, taking in the voice of the speaker more than his words, dropped his own.

“I said I had a kepple of words to say to ye. Thar isn’t any time in the last fower months—ever since ye took stock in this old shanty, for the matter o’ that—that I couldn’t hev said them to ye. I’ve knowed all your doin’s. I’ve knowed all your debts, ‘spesh’ly that ye owe that sneakin’ hound Parker; and thar isn’t a time that I couldn’t and wouldn’t hev chipped in and paid ‘em for ye—for your father’s sake—ef I’d allowed it to be the square thing for ye. But I know ye, Jeff. I know what’s in your BLOOD. I knew your father—allus dreamin’, hopin,’ waitin’; I know YOU, Jeff, dreamin’, hopin’, waitin’ till the end. And I stood by, givin’ you a free rein, and let it come!”

Jeff buried his face in his hands.

“It ain’t your blame—it’s blood! It ain’t a week ago ez the kimpany passes me over a hoss. ‘Three-quarters Morgan,’ sez they. Sez I: ‘Wot’s the other quarter?’ Sez they: ‘A Mexican half-breed.’ Well, she was a fair sort of hoss. Comin’ down Heavytree Hill last trip, we meets a drove o’ Spanish steers. In course she goes wild directly. Blood!”

Bill raised his glass, softly swirled its contents round and round, tasted it, and set it down.

“The kepple o’ words I had to say to ye was this: Git up and git!”

Something like this had passed through Jeff’s mind the day before the Mayfields came. Something like it had haunted him once or twice since. He turned quickly upon the speaker.

“Ez how? you sez,” said Bill, catching at the hook. “I drives up yer some night, and you sez to me, ‘Bill, hev you got two seats over to the Divide for me and aunty—out on a pasear.’ And I sez, ‘I happen to hev one inside and one on the box with me.’ And you hands out yer traps and any vallybles ye don’t want ter leave, and you puts your aunt inside, and gets up on the box with me. And you sez to me, ez man to man, ‘Bill,’ sez you, ‘might you hev a kepple o’ hundred dollars about ye that ye could lend a man ez was leaving the county, dead broke?’ and I sez, ‘I’ve got it, and I know of an op’nin’ for such a man in the next county.’ And you steps into THAT op’nin’, and your creditors—‘spesh’ly Parker—slips into THIS, and in a week they offers to settle with ye ten cents on the dollar.”

Jeff started, flushed, trembled, recovered himself, and after a moment said, doggedly: “I can’t do it, Bill; I couldn’t.”

“In course,” said Bill, putting his hands slowly into his pockets, and stretching his legs out—“in course ye can’t because of a woman!”

Jeff turned upon him like a hunted bear. Both men rose, but Bill already had his hand on Jeff’s shoulder.

“I reckoned a minute ago there was a sick gal in the house! Who’s going to make a row now! Who’s going to stamp and tear round, eh?”

Jeff sank back on his chair.

“I said thar was a woman,” continued Bill; “thar allus is one! Let a man be hell-bent or heaven-bent, somewhere in his track is a woman’s feet. I don’t say anythin’ agin this gal, ez a gal. The best of ‘em, Jeff, is only guide-posts to p’int a fellow on his right road, and only a fool or a drunken man holds on to ‘em or leans agin em. Allowin’ this gal is all you think she is, how far is your guide-post goin’ with ye, eh? Is she goin’ to leave her father and mother for ye? Is she goin’ to give up herself and her easy ways and her sicknesses for ye? Is she willin’ to take ye for a perpetooal landlord the rest of her life? And if she is, Jeff, are ye the man to let her? Are ye willin’ to run on her errants, to fetch her dinners ez ye do? Thar ez men ez does it; not yer in Californy, but over in the States thar’s fellows is willing to take that situation. I’ve heard,” continued Bill, in a low, mysterious voice, as of one describing the habits of the Anthropophagi—“I’ve heard o’ fellows ez call themselves men, sellin’ of themselves to rich women in that way. I’ve heard o’ rich gals buyin’ of men for their shape; sometimes—but thet’s in furrin’ kintries—for their pedigree! I’ve heard o’ fellows bein’ in that business, and callin’ themselves men instead o’ hosses! Ye ain’t that kind o’ man, Jeff. ‘Tain’t in yer blood. Yer father was a fool about women, and in course they ruined him, as they allus do the best men. It’s on’y the fools and sneaks ez a woman ever makes anythin’ out of. When ye hear of a man a woman hez made, ye hears of a nincompoop. And when they does produce ‘em in the way o’ nater, they ain’t responsible for ‘em, and sez they’re the image o’ their fathers! Ye ain’t a man ez is goin’ to trust yer fate to a woman!”

“No,” said Jeff darkly.

“I reckoned not,” said Bill, putting his hands in his pockets again. “Ye might if ye was one o’ them kind o’ fellows as kem up from ‘Frisco with her to Sacramento. One o’ them kind o’ fellows ez could sling poetry and French and Latin to her—one of HER kind—but ye ain’t! No, sir!”

Unwise William of Yuba! In any other breast but Jeff’s that random shot would have awakened the irregular auxiliary of love—jealousy! But Jeff, being at once proud and humble, had neither vanity nor conceit, without which jealousy is impossible. Yet he winced a little, for he had feeling, and then said earnestly:

“Do you think that opening you spoke of would hold for a day or two longer?”

“I reckon.”

“Well, then, I think I can settle up matters here my own way, and go with you, Bill.”

He had risen, and yet hesitatingly kept his hand on the back of his chair. “Bill!”

“Jeff!”

“I want to ask you a question; speak up, and don’t mind me, but say the truth.”

Our crafty Ulysses, believing that he was about to be entrapped, ensconced himself in his pockets, cocked one eye, and said: “Go on, Jeff.”

“Was my father VERY bad?”

Bill took his hands from his pockets. “Thar isn’t a man ez crawls above his grave ez is worthy to lie in the same ground with him!”

“Thank you, Bill. Good night; I’m going to turn in!”

“Look yar, boy! G-d d—n it all, Jeff! what do ye mean?”

There were two tears—twin sisters of those in his sweetheart’s eyes that afternoon—now standing in Jeff’s!

Bill caught both his hands in his own. Had they been of the Latin race they would have, right honestly, taken each other in their arms, and perhaps kissed! Being Anglo-Saxons, they gripped each other’s hands hard, and one, as above stated, swore!

When Jeff ascended to his room that night he went directly to his trunk and took out Miss Mayfield’s slipper. Alack! during the day Aunt Sally had “put things to rights” in his room, and the trunk had been moved. This had somewhat disordered its contents, and Miss Mayfield’s slipper contained a dozen shot from a broken Eley’s cartridge, a few quinine pills, four postage stamps, part of a coral earring which Jeff—on the most apocryphal authority—fondly believed belonged to his mother, whom he had never seen, and a small silver school medal which Jeff had once received for “good conduct,” much to his own surprise, but which he still religiously kept as evidence of former conventional character. He colored a little, rubbed the medal and earring ruefully on his sleeve, replaced them in his trunk, and then hastily emptied the rest of the slipper’s contents on the floor. This done, he drew off his boots, and, gliding noiselessly down the stair, hung the slipper on the knob of Miss Mayfield’s door, and glided back again without detection.

Rolling himself in his blankets, he lay down on his bed. But not to sleep! Staringly wide awake, he at last felt the lulling of the wind that nightly shook his casement, and listened while the great, rambling, creaking, disjointed “Half-way House” slowly settled itself to repose. He thought of many things; of himself, of his past, of his future, but chiefly, I fear, of the pale proud face now sleeping contentedly in the chamber below him. He tossed with many plans and projects, more or less impracticable, and then began to doze. Whereat the moon, creeping in the window, laid a cold white arm across him, and eventually dried a few foolish tears upon his sleeping lashes.

IV

Aunt Sally was making pies in the kitchen the next morning when Jeff hesitatingly stole upon her. The moment was not a felicitous one. Pie-making was usually an aggressive pursuit with Aunt Sally, entered into severely, and prosecuted unto the bitter end. After watching her a few moments Jeff came up and placed his arms tenderly around her. People very much in love find relief, I am told, in this vicarious expression.

“Aunty.”

“Well, Jeff! Thar, now—yer gittin’ all dough!” Nevertheless, the hard face relaxed a little. Something of a smile stole round her mouth, showing what she might have been before theology and bitters had supplied the natural feminine longings.

“Aunty dear!”

“You—boy!”

It WAS a boy’s face—albeit bearded like the pard, with an extra fierceness in the mustaches—that looked upon hers. She could not help bestowing a grim floury kiss upon it.

“Well, what is it now?”

“I’m thinking, aunty, it’s high time you and me packed up our traps and ‘shook’ this yar shanty, and located somewhere else.” Jeff’s voice was ostentatiously cheerful, but his eyes were a little anxious.

“What for NOW?”

Jeff hastily recounted his ill luck, and the various reasons—excepting of course the dominant one—for his resolution.

“And when do you kalkilate to go?”

“If you’ll look arter things here,” hesitated Jeff, “I reckon I’ll go up along with Bill to-morrow, and look round a bit.”