Jeff Briggs's Love Story

“And how long do you reckon that gal would stay here after yar gone?”

This was a new and startling idea to Jeff. But in his humility he saw nothing in it to flatter his conceit. Rather the reverse. He colored, and then said apologetically,—

“I thought that you and Jinny could get along without me. The butcher will pack the provisions over from the Fork.”

Laying down her rolling-pin, Aunt Sally turned upon Jeff with ostentatious deliberation. “Ye ain’t,” she began slowly, “ez taking a man with wimmen ez your father was—that’s a fact, Jeff Briggs! They used to say that no woman as he went for could get away from him. But ye don’t mean to say yer think yer not good enough—such as ye are—for this snip of an old maid, ez big as a gold dollar, and as yaller?”

“Aunty,” said Jeff, dropping his boyish manner, and his color as suddenly, “I’d rather ye wouldn’t talk that way of Miss Mayfield. Ye don’t know her; and there’s times,” he added, with a sigh, “ez I reckon ye don’t quite know ME either. That young lady, bein’ sick, likes to be looked after. Any one can do that for her. She don’t mind who it is. She don’t care for me except for that, and,” added Jeff humbly, “it’s quite natural.”

“I didn’t say she did,” returned Aunt Sally viciously; “but seeing ez you’ve got an empty house yer on yer hands, and me a-slavin’ here on jist nothin’, if this gal, for the sake o’ gallivantin’ with ye for a spell, chooses to stay here and keep her family here, and pay high for it, I don’t see why it ain’t yer duty to Providence and me to take advantage of it.”

Jeff raised his eyes to his aunt’s face. For the first time it struck him that she might be his father’s sister and yet have no blood in her veins that answered to his. There are few shocks more startling and overpowering to original natures than this sudden sense of loneliness. Jeff could not speak, but remained looking fiercely at her.

Aunt Sally misinterpreted his silence, and returned to her work on the pies. “The gal ain’t no fool,” she continued, rolling out the crust as if she were laying down broad propositions. “SHE reckons on it too, ez if it was charged in the bill with the board and lodging. Why, didn’t she say to me, last night, that she kalkilated afore she went away to bring up some friends from ‘Frisco for a few days’ visit? and didn’t she say, in that pipin’, affected voice o’ hers, ‘I oughter make some return for yer kindness and yer nephew’s kindness, Aunt Sally, by showing people that can help you, and keep your house full, how pleasant it is up here.’ She ain’t no fool, with all her faintin’s and dyin’s away! No, Jeff Briggs. And if she wants to show ye off agin them city fellows ez she knows, and ye ain’t got spunk enough to stand up and show off with her—why”—she turned her head impatiently, but he was gone.

If Jeff had ever wavered in his resolution he would have been steady enough NOW. But he had never wavered; the convictions and resolutions of suddenly awakened character are seldom moved by expediency. He was eager to taste the bitter dregs of his cup at once. He began to pack his trunk, and make his preparations for departure. Without avoiding Miss Mayfield in this new excitement, he no longer felt the need of her presence. He had satisfied his feverish anxieties by placing his trunk in the hall beside his open door, and was sitting on his bed, wrestling with a faded and overtasked carpet-bag that would not close and accept his hard conditions, when a small voice from the staircase thrilled him. He walked to the corridor, and, looking down, beheld Miss Mayfield midway on the steps of the staircase.

She had never looked so beautiful before! Jeff had only seen her in those soft enwrappings and half-deshabille that belong to invalid femininity. Always refined and modest thus, in her present walking-costume there was added a slight touch of coquettish adornment. There was a brightness of color in her cheek and eye, partly the result of climbing the staircase, partly the result of that audacious impulse that had led her—a modest virgin—to seek a gentleman in this personal fashion. Modesty in a young girl has a comfortable satisfying charm, recognized easily by all humanity; but he must be a sorry knave or a worse prig who is not deliciously thrilled when Modesty puts her charming little foot just over the threshold of Propriety.

“The mountain would not come to Mohammed, so Mohammed must come to the mountain,” said Miss Mayfield. “Mother is asleep, Aunt Sally is at work in the kitchen, and here am I, already dressed for a ramble in this bright afternoon sunshine, and no one to go with me. But, perhaps, you, too, are busy?”

“No, miss. I will be with you in a moment.”

I wish I could say that he went back to calm his pulses, which the dangerous music of Miss Mayfield’s voice had set to throbbing, by a few moments’ calm and dispassionate reflection. But he only returned to brush his curls out of his eyes and ears, and to button over his blue flannel shirt a white linen collar, which he thought might better harmonize with Miss Mayfield’s attire.

She was sitting on the staircase, poking her parasol through the balusters. “You need not have taken that trouble, Mr. Jeff,” she said pleasantly. “YOU are a part of this mountain picture at all times; but I am obliged to think of dress.”

“It was no trouble, miss.”

Something in the tone of his voice made her look in his face as she rose. It was a trifle paler, and a little older. The result, doubtless, thought Miss Mayfield, of his yesterday’s experience with the deputy-sheriff.

Such was her rapid deduction. Nevertheless, after the fashion of her sex, she immediately began to argue from quite another hypothesis.

“You are angry with me, Mr. Jeff.”

“What, I—Miss Mayfield?”

“Yes, you!”

“Miss Mayfield!”

“Oh yes, you are. Don’t deny it?”

“Upon my soul—”

“Yes! You give me punishments and—penances!”

Jeff opened his blue eyes on his tormentor. Could Aunt Sally have been saying anything?

“If anybody, Miss Mayfield—” he began.

“Nobody but you. Look here!”

She extended her little hand with a smile. In the centre of her palm lay four shining double B SHOT.

“There! I found those in my slipper this morning!” Jeff was speechless.

“Of course YOU did it! Of course it was YOU who found my slipper!” said Miss Mayfield, laughing. “But why did you put shot in it, Mr. Jeff? In some Catholic countries, when people have done wrong, the priests make them do penance by walking with peas in their shoes! What have I ever done to you? And why SHOT? They’re ever so much harder than peas.”

Seeing only the mischievous, laughing face before him, and the open palm containing the damning evidence of the broken Eley’s cartridge, Jeff stammered out the truth.

“I found the slipper in the bear-skin, Miss Mayfield. I put it in my trunk to keep, thinking yer wouldn’t miss it, and it’s being a kind of remembrance after you’re gone away—of—of the night you came here. Somebody moved the trunk in my room,” and he hung his head here. “The things inside all got mixed up.”

“And that made you change your mind about keeping it?” said Miss Mayfield, still smiling.

“No, miss.”

“What was it, then?”

“I gave it back to you, Miss Mayfield, because I was going away.”

“Indeed! Where?”

“I’m going to find another location. Maybe you’ve noticed,” he continued, falling back into his old apologetic manner in spite of his pride of resolution—“maybe you’ve noticed that this place here has no advantages for a hotel.”

“I had not, indeed. I have been very comfortable.”

“Thank you, miss.”

“When do you go?”

“To-night.”

For all his pride and fixed purpose he could not help looking eagerly in her face. Miss Mayfield’s eyes met his pleasantly and quietly.

“I’m sorry to part with you so soon,” she said, as she stepped back a pace or two with folded hands. “Of course every moment of your time now is occupied. You must not think of wasting it on me.”

But Jeff had recovered his sad composure. “I’d like to go with you, Miss Mayfield. It’s the last time, you know,” he added simply.

Miss Mayfield did not reply. It was a tacit assent, however, although she moved somewhat stiffly at his side as they walked towards the door. Quite convinced that Jeff’s resolution came from his pecuniary troubles, Miss Mayfield was wondering if she had not better assure him of his security from further annoyance from Dodd. Wonderful complexity of female intellect! she was a little hurt at his ingratitude to her for a kindness he could not possibly have known. Miss Mayfield felt that in some way she was unjustly treated. How many of our miserable sex, incapable of divination, have been crushed under that unreasonable feminine reproof, “You ought to have known!”

The afternoon sun was indeed shining brightly as they stepped out before the bleak angle of the “Half-way House”; but it failed to mitigate the habitually practical austerity of the mountain breeze—a fact which Miss Mayfield had never before noticed. The house was certainly bleak and exposed; the site by no means a poetical one. She wondered if she had not put a romance into it, and perhaps even into the man beside her, which did not belong to either. It was a moment of dangerous doubt.

“I don’t know but that you’re right, Mr. Jeff,” she said finally, as they faced the hill, and began the ascent together. “This place is a little queer, and bleak, and—unattractive.”

“Yes, miss,” said Jeff, with direct simplicity, “I’ve always wondered what you saw in it to make you content to stay, when it would be so much prettier, and more suitable for you at the ‘Summit.’”

Miss Mayfield bit her lip, and was silent. After a few moments’ climbing she said, almost pettishly, “Where is this famous ‘Summit’?”