Идилия красной гулчи

В которую он упал несколько часов назад. Как долго он пролежал там, он не мог сказать, да и не заботился; Как долго он должен там лежать, было вопросом столь же неопределенным и нерешенным. Безмятежная философия, рожденная его физическим состоянием, наполнила и пропитала его моральное существо. Зрелище пьяного человека, и в особенности этого пьяного человека, не было, к сожалению, достаточно новинкой в ;;Красном ущелье, чтобы привлечь внимание. Ранее в тот же день какой-то местный сатирик установил над головой Сэнди временную надгробную плиту с надписью «Эффект от виски Маккоркла - убивает сорок прутьев» с рукой, указывающей на салон Маккоркла. Но это, я полагаю, было, как и большинство местной сатиры, личным; И был отражением несправедливости процесса, а не комментарием неприемлемости результата. За исключением этого шуточного исключения, Сэнди не беспокоило. Бродячий мул, выпущенный из своей стаи, коснулся скудной травы рядом с ним и с любопытством обнюхал поверженного мужчину; Бродячая собака, с той глубокой симпатией, которую этот вид испытывает к пьяным, облизала его пыльные сапоги, свернулась калачиком у его ног и лежала там, моргая одним глазом на солнечном свете, с изобретательной и хитроумной симуляцией рассеивания. Собачья в ее подразумеваемой лести бессознательному человеку рядом с ним. Тем временем тени сосен медленно кружились, пока они не перешли дорогу, и их стволы заслоняли открытый луг гигантскими черными и желтыми параллелями. Маленькие клубы красной пыли, поднятые копытами проезжающих групп, рассыпались грязным дождем на лежащего человека. Солнце садилось все ниже и ниже; И все же Сэнди не шевелился. А затем покой этого философа, как и других философов, был нарушен вторжением нефилософского пола. «Мисс Мэри», как ее называли маленькое стадо, которое она только что выгнала из бревенчатой ;;школы за соснами, совершала дневную прогулку. Наблюдая за необычайно прекрасным цветком на кусте азалии напротив, она перешла дорогу, чтобы сорвать его - пробираясь сквозь красную пыль, не без некоторой яростной дрожи отвращения и некоторой кошачьей болтливости. А потом она внезапно наткнулась на Сэнди! Конечно, она издала отрывистый крик своего пола. Но когда она отдала дань своей физической слабости, она стала слишком смелой и остановилась на мгновение - по крайней мере, в шести футах от этого поверженного чудовища - с белыми юбками, собранными в руке, готовая к бегству. Но из куста не доносилось ни звука, ни движения. Затем одной ножкой она перевернула сатирическое изголовье и пробормотала «Звери!» - эпитет, который, вероятно, в тот момент удобно классифицировал в ее сознании все мужское население Красного Ущелья. Поскольку мисс Мэри, обладая определенными собственными суровыми представлениями, возможно, не оценила должным образом демонстративную галантность, за которую калифорнийца так справедливо прославляли его братья калифорнийцы, и, будучи новичком, возможно, заслужила репутацию. Быть «заносчивым». Стоя там, она заметила также, что наклонные солнечные лучи нагревают голову Сэнди до температуры, которая, по ее мнению, была нездоровой, и что его шляпа бесполезно валялась рядом с ним. Поднять его и накрыть своим лицом было работой, требующей некоторого мужества, особенно с учетом того, что его глаза были открыты. И все же она сделала это и хорошо отступила. Но, оглядываясь назад, она была несколько обеспокоена, увидев, что шляпа снята и что Сэнди сидит и что-то говорит. Правда заключалась в том, что в спокойной глубине разума Сэнди был удовлетворен тем, что солнечные лучи были полезны и полезны; Что с детства возражал против того, чтобы лечь в шляпе; Что ни один народ, кроме осужденных глупцов, прошедших искупление, никогда не носил шляпы; И что его право отказаться от них, когда ему угодно, было неотъемлемым. Это было заявлением его внутреннего сознания. К сожалению, его внешнее выражение было расплывчатым и ограничивалось повторением следующей формулы: «Su'shine all ri '! Вассер маар, а? Да ладно тебе, привет? Мисс Мэри остановилась и, набравшись смелости из-за своего преимущества на расстоянии, спросила его, есть ли что-нибудь, что ему нужно. «С ума сойти? Вассер маар? Продолжала Сэнди в очень высоком ключе. «Вставай, мерзкий человек!» Сказала мисс Мэри, теперь полностью рассерженная; «Вставай и иди домой». Сэнди с трудом поднялся на ноги. Он был шести футов ростом, и мисс Мэри дрожала. Он сделал несколько шагов вперед и остановился. «За что я пойду домой?» - внезапно спросил он с большой серьезностью. «Иди и прими ванну», - ответила мисс Мэри, глядя на его грязное лицо с большим недовольством. К ее нескончаемому ужасу, Сэнди внезапно снял пальто и жилет, швырнул их на землю, скинул ботинки и, дико рванувшись вперед, стремглав бросился через холм в сторону реки. «Боже мой! - утонет человек!» Сказала мисс Мэри; А потом, с женской непоследовательностью, она побежала обратно в школу.
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
Sandy was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea bush, in pretty much the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before. How long he had been lying there he could not tell, and didn't care; how long he should lie there was a matter equally indefinite and unconsidered. A tranquil philosophy, born of his physical condition, suffused and saturated his moral being.

The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken man in particular, was not, I grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red Gulch to attract attention. Earlier in the day some local satirist had erected a temporary tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the inscription, “Effects of McCorkle's whisky—kills at forty rods,” with a hand pointing to McCorkle's saloon. But this, I imagine, was, like most local satire, personal; and was a reflection upon the unfairness of the process rather than a commentary upon the impropriety of the result. With this facetious exception, Sandy had been undisturbed. A wandering mule, released from his pack, had cropped the scant herbage beside him, and sniffed curiously at the prostrate man; a vagabond dog, with that deep sympathy which the species have for drunken men, had licked his dusty boots, and curled himself up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one eye in the sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was ingenious and doglike in its implied flattery of the unconscious man beside him.

Meanwhile the shadows of the pine trees had slowly swung around until they crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open meadow with gigantic parallels of black and yellow. Little puffs of red dust, lifted by the plunging hoofs of passing teams, dispersed in a grimy shower upon the recumbent man. The sun sank lower and lower; and still Sandy stirred not. And then the repose of this philosopher was disturbed, as other philosophers have been, by the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex.

“Miss Mary,” as she was known to the little flock that she had just dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was taking her afternoon walk. Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on the azalea bush opposite, she crossed the road to pluck it—picking her way through the red dust, not without certain fierce little shivers of disgust and some feline circumlocution. And then she came suddenly upon Sandy!

Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her sex. But when she had paid that tribute to her physical weakness she became overbold, and halted for a moment—at least six feet from this prostrate monster—with her white skirts gathered in her hand, ready for flight. But neither sound nor motion came from the bush. With one little foot she then overturned the satirical headboard, and muttered “Beasts!”—an epithet which probably, at that moment, conveniently classified in her mind the entire male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being possessed of certain rigid notions of her own, had not, perhaps, properly appreciated the demonstrative gallantry for which the Californian has been so justly celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as a newcomer, perhaps fairly earned the reputation of being “stuck-up.”

As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sunbeams were heating Sandy's head to what she judged to be an unhealthy temperature, and that his hat was lying uselessly at his side. To pick it up and to place it over his face was a work requiring some courage, particularly as his eyes were open. Yet she did it, and made good her retreat. But she was somewhat concerned, on looking back, to see that the hat was removed, and that Sandy was sitting up and saying something.

The truth was, that in the calm depths of Sandy's mind he was satisfied that the rays of the sun were beneficial and healthful; that from childhood he had objected to lying down in a hat; that no people but condemned fools, past redemption, ever wore hats; and that his right to dispense with them when he pleased was inalienable. This was the statement of his inner consciousness. Unfortunately, its outward expression was vague, being limited to a repetition of the following formula—“Su'shine all ri'! Wasser maar, eh? Wass up, su'shine?”

Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh courage from her vantage of distance, asked him if there was anything that he wanted.

“Wass up? Wasser maar?” continued Sandy, in a very high key.

“Get up, you horrid man!” said Miss Mary, now thoroughly incensed; “get up, and go home.”

Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six feet high, and Miss Mary trembled. He started forward a few paces and then stopped.

“Wass I go home for?” he suddenly asked, with great gravity.

“Go and take a bath,” replied Miss Mary, eying his grimy person with great disfavor.

To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his coat and vest, threw them on the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plunging wildly forward, darted headlong over the hill, in the direction of the river.

“Goodness heavens!—the man will be drowned!” said Miss Mary; and then, with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse and locked herself in.

That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, the blacksmith's wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely, if her husband ever got drunk. “Abner,” responded Mrs. Stidger, reflectively, “let's see: Abner hasn't been tight since last 'lection.” Miss Mary would have liked to ask if he preferred lying in the sun on these occasions, and if a cold bath would have hurt him; but this would have involved an explanation, which she did not then care to give. So she contented herself with opening her gray eyes widely at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger—a fine specimen of Southwestern efflorescence—and then dismissed the subject altogether. The next day she wrote to her dearest friend, in Boston: “I think I find the intoxicated portion of this community the least objectionable. I refer, my dear, to the men, of course. I do not know anything that could make the women tolerable.”

In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this episode, except that her afternoon walks took thereafter, almost unconsciously, another direction. She noticed, however, that every morning a fresh cluster of azalea blossoms appeared among the flowers on her desk. This was not strange, as her little flock were aware of her fondness for flowers, and invariably kept her desk bright with anemones, syringas, and lupines; but, on questioning them, they one and all professed ignorance of the azaleas. A few days later, Master Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest to the window, was suddenly taken with spasms of apparently gratuitous laughter that threatened the discipline of the school. All that Miss Mary could get from him was, that someone had been “looking in the winder.” Irate and indignant, she sallied from her hive to do battle with the intruder. As she turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came plump upon the quondam drunkard—now perfectly sober, and inexpressibly sheepish and guilty-looking.

These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of, in her present humor. But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also, that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was amiable-looking—in fact, a kind of blond Samson whose corn-colored, silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation. And then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all unconsciously very happy.

It was on a hot day—and not long after this—that two short-legged boys came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of water, which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that Miss Mary compassionately seized the pail and started for the spring herself. At the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a blue-shirted arm dexterously but gently relieved her of her burden. Miss Mary was both embarrassed and angry. “If you carried more of that for yourself,” she said, spitefully, to the blue arm, without deigning to raise her lashes to its owner, “you'd do better.” In the submissive silence that followed she regretted the speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the door that he stumbled. Which caused the children to laugh again—a laugh in which Miss Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek. The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.

Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions. “Profane Bill,” driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in the newspapers for his “gallantry” in invariably offering the box seat to the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention, on the ground that he had a habit of “cussin' on upgrades,” and gave her half the coach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The overdressed mother of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to worship the priestess from afar.

With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue skies, glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights passed over Red Gulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the sedate and proper woods. Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors of the firs “did her chest good,” for certainly her slight cough was less frequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had learned the unending lesson which the patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedful or listless ears. And so, one day, she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill, and took the children with her. Away from the dusty road, the straggling shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless engines, the cheap finery of shop windows, the deeper glitter of paint and colored glass, and the thin veneering which barbarism takes upon itself in such localities—what infinite