The Bell-Ringer of Angel's Page #8

"The Bell-Ringer of Angel's" is a short story by Bret Harte that revolves around the life of a mysterious bell-ringer in the mining town of Angel's Camp. Set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush, the story explores themes of love, identity, and community. The protagonist, whose bell-ringing serves as a harbinger of events, becomes intertwined with the lives of the townspeople, revealing their dreams and struggles. Harte's vivid storytelling captures the spirit of the West while delving into the complexities of human relationships in a rapidly changing environment.

• Short story

								

I wasn't mad--no! no! and I only spoke about it now that you might be
more keerful before folks. You follow me? You understand what I mean?"

He turned and walked to the door, when he halted. "You follow me, don't
you? It ain't no cussedness o' mine, or want o' trustin', don't you see?
Mebbe I oughtened have spoken. I oughter remembered that times this
sort o' thing must be rather rough on you and her. You follow me? You
understand what I mean? Good-night."

He walked slowly down the path towards the river. Had Madison Wayne been
watching him, he would have noticed that his head was bent and his step
less free. But Madison Wayne was at that moment sitting rigidly in his
chair, nursing, with all the gloomy concentration of a monastic nature,
a single terrible suspicion.

CHAPTER IV.

Howbeit the sun shone cheerfully over the Bar the next morning and the
next; the breath of life and activity was in the air; the settlement
never had been more prosperous, and the yield from the opened placers
on the drained river-bed that week was enormous. The Brothers Wayne
were said to be "rolling in gold." It was thought to be consistent with
Madison Wayne's nature that there was no trace of good fortune in his
face or manner--rather that he had become more nervous, restless, and
gloomy. This was attributed to the joylessness of avarice as contrasted
with the spendthrift gayety of the more liberal Arthur, and he was
feared and RESPECTED as a miser. His long, solitary walks around the
promontory, his incessant watchfulness, his reticence when questioned,
were all recognized as the indications of a man whose soul was absorbed
in money-getting. The reverence they failed to yield to his religious
isolation they were willing to freely accord to his financial
abstraction. But Mr. McGee was not so deceived. Overtaking him one
day under the fringe of willows, he characteristically chided him
with absenting himself from Mrs. McGee and her house since their last
interview.

"I reckon you did not harbor malice in your Christianity," he said;
"but it looks mighty like ez if ye was throwing off on Safie and me on
account of what I said."

In vain Madison gloomily and almost sternly protested.

McGee looked him all over with his clear measuring eye, and for some
minutes was singularly silent. At last he said slowly: "I've been
thinkin' suthin' o' goin' down to 'Frisco, and I'd be a heap easier in
my mind ef you'd promise to look arter Safie now and then."

"You surely are not going to leave her here ALONE?" said Wayne roughly.

"Why not?"

For an instant Wayne hesitated. Then he burst out. "For a hundred
reasons! If she ever wanted your protection, before, she surely does
now. Do you suppose the Bar is any less heathen or more regenerated than
it was when you thought it necessary to guard her with your revolver?
Man! It is a hundred times worse than then! The new claims have
filled it with spying adventurers--with wolves like Hamlin and his
friends--idolaters who would set up Baal and Ashteroth here--and fill
your tents with the curses of Sodom!"

Perhaps it was owing to the Scriptural phrasing, perhaps it was from
some unusual authority of the man's manner, but a look of approving
relief and admiration came into McGee's clear eyes.

"And YOU'RE just the man to tackle 'em," he said, clapping his hand on
Wayne's shoulder. "That's your gait--keep it up! But," he added, in
a lower voice, "me and my revolver are played out." There was a
strangeness in the tone that arrested Wayne's attention. "Yes,"
continued McGee, stroking his beard slowly, "men like me has their day,
and revolvers has theirs; the world turns round and the Bar fills up,
and this yer river changes its course--and it's all in the day's work.
You understand what I mean--you follow me? And if anything should happen
to me--not that it's like to; but it's in the way o' men--I want you
to look arter Safie. It ain't every woman ez has two men, ez like and
unlike, to guard her. You follow me--you understand what I mean, don't
you?" With these words he parted somewhat abruptly from Wayne, turning
into the steep path to the promontory crest and leaving his companion
lost in gloomy abstraction. The next day Alexander McGee had departed on
a business trip to San Francisco.

In his present frame of mind, with his new responsibility and the
carrying out of a plan which he had vaguely conceived might remove the
terrible idea that had taken possession of him, Madison Wayne was even
relieved when his brother also announced his intention of going to
Angel's for a few days.

For since his memorable interview with McGee he had been convinced that
Safie had been clandestinely visited by some one. Whether it was the
thoughtless and momentary indiscretion of a willful woman, or the sequel
to some deliberately planned intrigue, did not concern him so much as
the falsity of his own position, and the conniving lie by which he had
saved her and her lover. That at this crucial moment he had failed to
"testify" to guilt and wickedness; that he firmly believed--such is the
inordinate vanity of the religious zealot--that he had denied Him in his
effort to shield HER; and that he had broken faith with the husband who
had entrusted to him the custody of his wife's honor, seemed to him more
terrible than her faithlessness. In his first horror he had dreaded
to see her, lest her very confession--he knew her reckless frankness
towards himself--should reveal to him the extent of his complicity. But
since then, and during her husband's absence, he had convinced himself
that it was his duty to wrestle and strive with her weak spirit, to
implore her to reveal her new intrigue to her husband, and then he would
help her to sue for his forgiveness. It was a part of the inconsistency
of his religious convictions; in his human passion he was perfectly
unselfish, and had already forgiven her the offense against himself. He
would see her at once!

But it happened to be a quiet, intense night, with the tremulous
opulence of a full moon that threw quivering shafts of light like summer
lightning over the blue river, and laid a wonderful carpet of intricate
lace along the path that wound through the willows to the crest. There
was the dry, stimulating dust and spice of heated pines from below; the
languorous odors of syringa; the faint, feminine smell of southernwood,
and the infinite mystery of silence. This silence was at times softly
broken with the tender inarticulate whisper of falling leaves, broken
sighs from the tree-tops, and the languid stretching of wakened and
unclasping boughs. Madison Wayne had not, alas! taken into account this
subtle conspiracy of Night and Nature, and as he climbed higher, his
steps began to falter with new and strange sensations. The rigidity
of purpose which had guided the hard religious convictions that always
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