Later we learn that she had been adopted into this Spanish family after her lover had abandoned her in the earlier chapters, and had been given her complexion by means of a vegetable stain. But there is still another lightning change. At the end of the book she becomes a Pike again and weakly marries the unrepentant rascal who earlier had betrayed her. In the words of Artemus Ward, "it is too much." It is not even good melodrama, for in melodrama the villain is punished at the end.
Bret Harte was the artist of impulse, the painter of single burning moments, the flashlight photographer who caught in lurid detail one dramatic episode in the life of a man or a community and left the rest in darkness.
VII
In his later years Harte's backgrounds became less sharp in outline. His methods grew more romantic; his atmospheres more mellow and golden. The old Spanish dream of the days of his early art possessed him again, and he added to his gallery of real creations—M'liss, Yuba Bill, Jack Hamlin, Tennessee's Partner—one that perhaps is the strongest of them all, Enriquez Saltillo, the last of a fading race. Nothing Harte ever did will surpass that creation of his old age. In Chu Chu, The Devotion of Enriquez, and The Passing of Enriquez we have the fitting close of the work of the romancer of the west coast. For once at least he saw into the heart of a man. Listen to Enriquez as he makes his defense:
Then they say, "Dry up, and sell out"; and the great bankers say, "Name your own price for your stock, and resign." And I say, "There is not gold enough in your bank, in your San Francisco, in the mines of California, that shall buy a Spanish gentleman. When I leave, I leave the stock at my back; I shall take it, nevarre!" Then the banker he say, "And you will go and blab, I suppose?" And then, Pancho, I smile, I pick up my mustache—so! and I say: "Pardon, señor, you haf mistake. The Saltillo haf for three hundred year no stain, no blot upon him. Eet is not now—the last of the race—who shall confess that he haf sit at a board of disgrace and dishonor!" And then it is that the band begin to play, and the animals stand on their hind legs and waltz, and behold, the row he haf begin.
It is the atmosphere of romance, for the mine which had caused all the trouble had been in the family three hundred years and it had become a part of the family itself. When it passed into the hands of the new régime, when his wife, who also was of the new régime, deserted him, then passed Enriquez. The earth that for three hundred years had borne his fathers opened at the earthquake and took him to herself. It was the conception of a true romancer. The work of Bret Harte opened and closed with a vision of romance, a vision worthy even of a Hawthorne.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bret Harte. (1839–1902.) The Lost Galleon and Other Tales [Poems], 1867; Condensed Novels and Other Papers, 1867; The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches, 1870; Plain Language from Truthful James, 1870; The Pliocene Skull, 1871; Poems, 1871; East and West Poems, 1871; The Heathen Chinee and Other Poems, 1871; Poetical Works, 1872; Mrs. Skagg's Husbands, 1873; M'liss: An Idyl of Red Mountain, 1873; Echoes of the Foot-Hills [Poems], 1875; Tales of the Argonauts, 1875; Gabriel Conroy, 1876; Two Men of Sandy Bar, 1876; Thankful Blossom, 1877; The Story of a Mine, 1878; Drift from Two Shores, 1878; The Twins of Table Mountain, 1879; Works in five volumes, 1882; Flip, and Found at Blazing Star, 1882; In the Carquinez Woods, 1884; On the Frontier, 1884; Maruja, 1885; By Shore and Sedge, 1885; Snow Bound at Eagle's, 1885; A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready, 1887; The Crusade of the Excelsior, 1887; The Argonauts of North Liberty, 1888; A Phyllis of the Sierras, 1888; Cressy, 1889; The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh, 1889; A Waif of the Plains, 1890; A Ward of the Golden Gate, 1890; A Sappho of Green Springs, 1891; Colonel Starbottle's Client, 1892; A First Family of Tasajara, 1892; Susy: a Story of the Plains, 1893; Sally Dows and Other Stories, 1893; A Protégé of Jack Hamlin's, 1894; The Bell-Ringer of Angel's, 1894; In a Hollow of the Hills, 1895; Clarence, 1895; Barker's Luck, 1896; Three Partners, 1897; Tales of Trail and Town, 1898; Stories in Light and Shadow, 1898; Mr. Jack Hamlin's Meditation, 1899; From Sandhill to Pine, 1900; Under the Redwoods, 1901; Openings in the Old Trail, 1902; Life of Bret Harte, by T. Edgar Pemberton, 1903; Bret Harte, by Henry W. Boynton, 1905; The Life of Bret Harte with Some Account of the California Pioneers, by Henry Childs Merwin, 1911.