Читать бесплатно онлайн

The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories

Автор Bret Harte

personВсе книги автора

Удобнее читать в приложении

Читать в Telegram Читать в MAX Читать в VK Читать в WEB

menu_bookЧитать здесь

AI-разбор доступен после входа

Суть книги, пересказ, главный конфликт, ключевые идеи, вывод, кому полезна, главные темы, персонажи и цитаты можно получить после входа в BookRa.

auto_awesomeПолучить AI-разбор

О книге

Дата написания1970-01-01

Язык книгиen

Возрастное ограничение0+

Жанры

зарубежная классика зарубежная старинная литература зарубежная фантастика литература 19 века

Читать онлайн

Страница 2 из 36

“You’re workin’ too many hours in the shaft,” continued Rand. “You’re always up to some such d—n fool business when I’m not yer.”

“I dipped a little west to-day,” Ruth went on, without heeding the brotherly remonstrance, “and struck quartz and pyrites.”

“Thet’s you!—allers dippin’ west or east for quartz and the color, instead of keeping on plumb down to the ‘cement’!” 1

“We’ve been three years digging for cement,” said Ruth, more in abstraction than in reproach,—“three years!”

“And we may be three years more,—may be only three days. Why, you couldn’t be more impatient if—if—if you lived in a valley.”

Delivering this tremendous comparison as an unanswerable climax, Rand applied himself once more to his repast. Ruth, after a moment’s pause, without speaking or looking up, disengaged his hand from under his chin, and slid it along, palm uppermost, on the table beside his brother. Thereupon Rand slowly reached forward his left hand, the right being engaged in conveying victual to his mouth, and laid it on his brother’s palm. The act was evidently an habitual, half mechanical one; for in a few moments the hands were as gently disengaged, without comment or expression. At last Rand leaned back in his chair, laid down his knife and fork, and, complacently loosening the belt that held his revolver, threw it and the weapon on his bed. Taking out his pipe, and chipping some tobacco on the table, he said carelessly, “I came a piece through the woods with Mornie just now.”

The face that Ruth turned upon his brother was very distinct in its expression at that moment, and quite belied the popular theory that the twins could not be told apart. “Thet gal,” continued Rand, without looking up, “is either flighty, or—or suthin’,” he added in vague disgust, pushing the table from him as if it were the lady in question. “Don’t tell me!”

Ruth’s eyes quickly sought his brother’s, and were as quickly averted, as he asked hurriedly, “How?”

“What gets me,” continued Rand in a petulant non sequitur, “is that YOU, my own twin-brother, never lets on about her comin’ yer, permiskus like, when I ain’t yer, and you and her gallivantin’ and promanadin’, and swoppin’ sentiments and mottoes.”

Ruth tried to contradict his blushing face with a laugh of worldly indifference.

“She came up yer on a sort of pasear.”

“Oh, yes!—a short cut to the creek,” interpolated Rand satirically.

“Last Tuesday or Wednesday,” continued Ruth, with affected forgetfulness.

“Oh, in course, Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday! You’ve so many folks climbing up this yer mountain to call on ye,” continued the ironical Rand, “that you disremember; only you remembered enough not to tell me. SHE did. She took me for you, or pretended to.”

The color dropped from Ruth’s cheek.

“Took you for me?” he asked, with an awkward laugh.

“Yes,” sneered Rand; “chirped and chattered away about OUR picnic, OUR nose-gays, and lord knows what! Said she’d keep them blue-jay’s wings, and wear ‘em in her hat. Spouted poetry, too,—the same sort o’ rot you get off now and then.”

Ruth laughed again, but rather ostentatiously and nervously.

“Ruth, look yer!”

Ruth faced his brother.

“What’s your little game? Do you mean to say you don’t know what thet gal is? Do you mean to say you don’t know thet she’s the laughing-stock of the Ferry; thet her father’s a d–d old fool, and her mother’s a drunkard and worse; thet she’s got any right to be hanging round yer? You can’t mean to marry her, even if you kalkilate to turn me out to do it, for she wouldn’t live alone with ye up here. ‘Tain’t her kind. And if I thought you was thinking of—”

“What?” said Ruth, turning upon his brother quickly.

“Oh, thet’s right! holler; swear and yell, and break things, do! Tear round!” continued Rand, kicking his boots off in a corner, “just because I ask you a civil question. That’s brotherly,” he added, jerking his chair away against the side of the cabin, “ain’t it?”

“She’s not to blame because her mother drinks, and her father’s a shyster,” said Ruth earnestly and strongly. “The men who make her the laughing-stock of the Ferry tried to make her something worse, and failed, and take this sneak’s revenge on her. ‘Laughing-stock!’ Yes, they knew she could turn the tables on them.”

“Of course; go on! She’s better than me. I know I’m a fratricide, that’s what I am,” said Rand, throwing himself on the upper of the two berths that formed the bedstead of the cabin.

“I’ve seen her three times,” continued Ruth.

“And you’ve known me twenty years,” interrupted his brother.

Ruth turned on his heel, and walked towards the door.

“That’s right; go on! Why don’t you get the chalk?”

Ruth made no reply. Rand descended from the bed, and, taking a piece of chalk from the shelf, drew a line on the floor, dividing the cabin in two equal parts.

“You can have the east half,” he said, as he climbed slowly back into bed.

This mysterious rite was the usual termination of a quarrel between the twins. Each man kept his half of the cabin until the feud was forgotten. It was the mark of silence and separation, over which no words of recrimination, argument, or even explanation, were delivered, until it was effaced by one or the other. This was considered equivalent to apology or reconciliation, which each were equally bound in honor to accept.

It may be remarked that the floor was much whiter at this line of demarcation, and under the fresh chalk-line appeared the faint evidences of one recently effaced.

Without apparently heeding this potential ceremony, Ruth remained leaning against the doorway, looking upon the night, the bulk of whose profundity and blackness seemed to be gathered below him. The vault above was serene and tranquil, with a few large far-spaced stars; the abyss beneath, untroubled by sight or sound. Stepping out upon the ledge, he leaned far over the shelf that sustained their cabin, and listened. A faint rhythmical roll, rising and falling in long undulations against the invisible horizon, to his accustomed ears told him the wind was blowing among the pines in the valley. Yet, mingling with this familiar sound, his ear, now morbidly acute, seemed to detect a stranger inarticulate murmur, as of confused and excited voices, swelling up from the mysterious depths to the stars above, and again swallowed up in the gulfs of silence below. He was roused from a consideration of this phenomenon by a faint glow towards the east, which at last brightened, until the dark outline of the distant walls of the valley stood out against the sky. Were his other senses participating in the delusion of his ears? for with the brightening light came the faint odor of burning timber.

Страница 2 из 36

Назад 1 2 3…36 Далее