“‘And why should you not?’
“Had she recoiled, had she shown any fear or contrition, had she essayed an explanation or apology, Mr. Oakhurst would have looked upon it as an evidence of guilt. But there is no quality that courage recognizes so quickly as courage, there is no condition that desperation bows before but desperation; and Mr. Oakhurst’s power of analysis was not so keen as to prevent him from confounding her courage with a moral quality. Even in his fury he could not help admiring this dauntless invalid.”[75]
Jack Hamlin’s power of analysis was far more keen; and Mrs. Decker would never have deceived him.
The two men were equally brave, equally desperate, but perhaps Oakhurst was the more heroic. The simplicity of his nature was more akin to heroism than was the dashing, mercurial, laughter-loving temperament of Jack Hamlin. Hamlin is almost always represented with companions, male or female, but Oakhurst was a solitary man in life as in death. His dignity, his reserve, even his want of humor tended to isolate him. Bret Harte, it will be noticed, almost always speaks of him as “Mr.” Oakhurst. Though he was numbered among the outcasts of Poker Flat, he was far from being one of them.
There is a classic simplicity, not only in Bret Harte’s account of Oakhurst, but in the whole telling of the story, and a depth of feeling which is more than classic. Every line of that marvellous tale seems to thrill with anticipation of the tragedy in which it closes; and every incident is described in the tense language of real emotion. “Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave it,—snow!”
Then comes the catastrophe of the snow-storm. We may condemn Oakhurst, on this or that ground, for his act of self-destruction, but we cannot regard it as weak or cowardly. To be capable of real despair is the mark of a strong character. A weaker man will shuffle, disguise the truth in his own mind, and hope not only against hope but against reason. Oakhurst, when he saw that the cards were absolutely against him, having done all that he could do for his helpless companions, decorously withdrew, and, in the awful solitude of the forest and the storm, forever renounced that game of life which he had played with so much courage and skill, and yet with so little success.
Jack Hamlin figures much more extensively than Oakhurst in the stories, and he would probably be regarded by most readers of Bret Harte as the Author’s best creation, surpassing even Colonel Starbottle;—and, as Mr. Chesterton exclaims, “How terrible it is to speak of any character as surpassing Colonel Starbottle!” His traits are now almost as familiar as those of George Washington; but the type was a new one, and it completely revolutionized the ideal of the gambler which had long obtained both in fiction and on the stage. As a London critic very neatly said, “With this dainty and delicate California desperado, Bret Harte vanquished forever the turgid villains of Ainsworth and Lytton.”
In his Bohemian Days in San Francisco Bret Harte gives an account of the real person who was undoubtedly Jack Hamlin’s prototype. He speaks of his handsome face, his pale Southern look, his slight figure, the scrupulous elegance and neatness of his dress,—his genial manner, and the nonchalance with which he set out for the duel that ended in his death.
In the representation of Jack Hamlin there are some seeming discrepancies. Such, for instance, is Hamlin’s arrogant treatment of the ostler in Brown of Calaveras, and still more his conduct toward Jenkinson, the tavern-keeper, whom Don José Sepulvida, with contrasting Spanish courtesy, described as “our good Jenkinson, our host, our father.” The barkeeper in A Sappho of Green Springs fares no better at his hands; and in Gabriel Conroy, Bret Harte, falling into the manner of Dickens at his very worst, represents Jack Hamlin as concluding a tirade against a servant by “intimating that he would forcibly dislodge certain vital and necessary organs from the porter’s body.” Even less excusable is his retort to the country youth in The Convalescence of Jack Hamlin; and in one story he is actually guilty of rudeness to a woman, the unfortunate Heiress of Red Dog.
In these passages Bret Harte might be accused of admiring Jack Hamlin in the wrong place. But was he not rather consciously depicting the bad points of what would seem to have been his favorite character? Hamlin had several imperfections. Bret Harte does not even represent him as a gentleman, but only as an approach to one. In the story which first brings us face to face with him, the gambler is described as lounging up and down “with that listless and grave indifference of his class which was perhaps the next thing to good breeding.”