第6章

"what should I be takin' on for? Look how much taller I am than you!" she said, suddenly lifting herself up to the extreme of her superb figure.Then rubbing his head rapidly with both hands, as if she were anointing his hair with some rare unguent, she patted him on the back, and returned to her room.The result of this and one or two other equally sympathetic interviews was to produce a change in Mr.McClosky's manner, which was, if possible, still more discomposing.He grew unjustifiably hilarious, cracked jokes with the servants, and repeated to Jenny humorous stories, with the attitude of facetiousness carefully preserved throughout the entire narration, and the point utterly ignored and forgotten.Certain incidents reminded him of funny things, which invariably turned out to have not the slightest relevancy or application.He occasionally brought home with him practical humorists, with a sanguine hope of setting them going, like the music-box, for his daughter's edification.He essayed the singing of melodies with great freedom of style, and singular limitation of note.He sang "Come haste to the Wedding, Ye Lasses and Maidens," of which he knew a single line, and that incorrectly, as being peculiarly apt and appropriate.Yet away from the house and his daughter's presence, he was silent and distraught.His absence of mind was particularly noted by his workmen at the Empire Quartz Mill."Ef the old man don't look out and wake up," said his foreman, "he'll hev them feet of his yet under the stamps.When he ain't givin' his mind to 'em, they is altogether too promiskuss."A few nights later, Miss Jenny recognized her father's hand in a timid tap at the door.She opened it, and he stood before her, with a valise in his hand, equipped as for a journey."I takes the stage to-night, Jinny dear, from Four Forks to 'Frisco.Maybe Imay drop in on Jack afore I go.I'll be back in a week.Good-by.""Good-by." He still held her hand.Presently he drew her back into the room, closing the door carefully, and glancing around.

There was a look of profound cunning in his eye as he said slowly,--"Bear up, and keep dark, Jinny dear, and trust to the old man.

Various men has various ways.Thar is ways as is common, and ways as is uncommon; ways as is easy, and ways as is oneasy.Bear up, and keep dark." With this Delphic utterance he put his finger to his lips, and vanished.

It was ten o'clock when he reached Four Forks.A few minutes later, he stood on the threshold of that dwelling described by the Four Forks "Sentinel" as "the palatial residence of John Ashe," and known to the local satirist as the "ash-box." "Hevin' to lay by two hours, John," he said to his prospective son-in-law, as he took his hand at the door, "a few words of social converse, not on business, but strictly private, seems to be about as nat'ral a thing as a man can do." This introduction, evidently the result of some study, and plainly committed to memory, seemed so satisfactory to Mr.McClosky, that he repeated it again, after John Ashe had led him into his private office, where, depositing his valise in the middle of the floor, and sitting down before it, he began carefully to avoid the eye of his host.John Ashe, a tall, dark, handsome Kentuckian, with whom even the trifles of life were evidently full of serious import, waited with a kind of chivalrous respect the further speech of his guest.Being utterly devoid of any sense of the ridiculous, he always accepted Mr.McClosky as a grave fact, singular only from his own want of experience of the class.

"Ores is running light now," said Mr.McClosky with easy indifference.

John Ashe returned that he had noticed the same fact in the receipts of the mill at Four Forks.

Mr.McClosky rubbed his beard, and looked at his valise, as if for sympathy and suggestion.

"You don't reckon on having any trouble with any of them chaps as you cut out with Jinny?"John Ashe, rather haughtily, had never thought of that."I saw Rance hanging round your house the other night, when I took your daughter home; but he gave me a wide berth," he added carelessly.

"Surely," said Mr.McClosky, with a peculiar winking of the eye.

After a pause, he took a fresh departure from his valise.

"A few words, John, ez between man and man, ez between my daughter's father and her husband who expects to be, is about the thing, I take it, as is fair and square.I kem here to say them.

They're about Jinny, my gal."

Ashe's grave face brightened, to Mr.McClosky's evident discomposure.

"Maybe I should have said about her mother; but, the same bein' a stranger to you, I says naterally, 'Jinny.'"Ashe nodded courteously.Mr.McClosky, with his eyes on his valise, went on,--"It is sixteen year ago as I married Mrs.McClosky in the State of Missouri.She let on, at the time, to be a widder,--a widder with one child.When I say let on, I mean to imply that I subsekently found out that she was not a widder, nor a wife; and the father of the child was, so to speak, onbeknowst.Thet child was Jinny--my gal."With his eyes on his valise, and quietly ignoring the wholly-crimsoned face and swiftly-darkening brow of his host, he continued,--"Many little things sorter tended to make our home in Missouri onpleasant.A disposition to smash furniture, and heave knives around; an inclination to howl when drunk, and that frequent; a habitooal use of vulgar language, and a tendency to cuss the casooal visitor,--seemed to pint," added Mr.McClosky with submissive hesitation "that--she--was--so to speak--quite onsuited to the marriage relation in its holiest aspeck.""Damnation! Why didn't"--burst out John Ashe, erect and furious.