"It is of your kindness, Mees Clark, I am already full. And of the pork I touch not, it is an impossibility," said Victor, showing every tooth in his head. "It is much painful to hear of this sad, sad affair. It is bad—and yet you say he has riches—this man. Ah! the what is the world. See, the great manner it has treated those! No, I will not more. I am sufficient now. Ah! eh! what have we here?"
He lowered his voice and eyes as a stranger—the antique dandy Gabriel had met on Conroy's hill the evening before—rose from some unnoticed seat at a side table, and unconcernedly moved away. Victor instantly recognised the card player of San Antonio, his former chance acquaintance of Pacific Street, and was filled with a momentary feeling of suspicion and annoyance. But Sal'ssotto vocereply that the stranger was a witness attending court seemed to be a reasonable explanation, and the fact that the translator did not seem to recognise him promptly relieved his mind. When he had gone Sal returned to her confidences: "Ez to his riches, them ez knows best hez their own say o' that. Thar was a party yer last week—gents ez was free with their money, and not above exchanging the time o' day with working folk, and though it ain't often ez me orSue Markle dips into conversation with entire strangers, yet," continued Sal with parenthetical tact and courtesy, "Eyetalians,—furriners in a strange land bein' an exception—and and them gents let on thet thet vein o' silver on Conroy's hill hed been surveyed and it wazent over a foot wide, and would be played out afore a month longer, and thet old Peter Dumphy knowed it, and hed sold out, and thet thet's the reason Gabriel Conroy was goin' off—jest to be out o' the way when the killapse comes."
"Gabriel! going away, Mees Sal? this is not possible!" ejaculated the fascinating guest, breathing very hard, and turning all his teeth in a single broadside upon the susceptible handmaid. At any other moment, it is possible that Sal might have been suspicious of the stranger's excitement, but the fascination of his teeth held and possessed this fluttering virgin.
"Ef thar ever waz a man ez had an angelic smile," she intimated afterwards in confidence to Mrs. Markle, "it waz thet young Eyetalian." She handed him several dishes, some of them empty, in her embarrassment and rejoined with an affectation of arch indignation, "Thank ye fur sayin' 'I lie,'—and it's my pay fur bein' a gossip and ez good ez I send—but thar's Olympy Conroy packed away to school fur six months, and thar's the new superintendent ez is come up to take Gabriel's situation, and he a sittin' in a grey coat next to ye a minit ago! Eh? And ye won't take nothin' more? Appil or cranbear' pie?—our own make? I'm afeerd ye ain't made out a dinner!" But Victor had already risen hurriedly and departed, leaving Sal in tormenting doubt whether she had not in her coquettish indignation irritated the tropical nature of this sensitive Italian. "I orter allowed fur his bein' a furriner and not bin so free. Pore young man! I thought he did luk tukback when I jest allowed that he said I lied." And with a fixed intention of indicating her forgiveness and goodwill the next morning by an extra dish, Sal retired somewhat dejectedly to the pantry. She made a point, somewhat later, of dusting the hall in the vicinity of Victor's room, but was possibly disappointed to find the door open, and the tenant absent. Still later, she imparted some of this interview to Mrs. Markle with a certain air of fatigued politeness and a suggestion that, in the interest of the house solely, she had not repressed perhaps as far as maidenly pride and strict propriety demanded, the somewhat extravagant advances of the stranger. "I'm sure," she added, briskly, "why he kept a lookin' and a talkin' at me in that way, mind can't consave, and transients did notiss. And if he did go off mad, why, he kin git over it." Having thus delicately conveyed the impression of an ardent Southern nature checked in its exuberance, she became mysteriously reticent and gloomy.
It is probable that Miss Clark's theory of Gabriel's departure was not original with her, or entirely limited to her own experience. A very decided disapprobation of Gabriel's intended trip was prevalent in the gulches and bar-room. He quickly lost his late and hard-earned popularity; not a few questioned his moral right to leave One Horse Gulch until its property was put beyond a financial doubt in the future. The men who had hitherto ignored the proposition that he was in any way responsible for the late improvement in business, now openly condemned him for abandoning the position they declared he never had. TheSilveropolis Messengertalked vaguely of the danger of "changing superintendents" at such a moment, and hinted that the stock of the company would suffer. The rival paper—for it was found that the interests of the townrequired a separate and distinct expression—had an editorial on "absenteeism," and spoke, crushingly, of those men who, having enriched themselves out of the resources of One Horse Gulch, were now seeking to dissipate that wealth in the excesses of foreign travel.
Meanwhile, the humble object of this criticism, oblivious in his humility of any public interest in his movements or intentions, busied himself in preparations for his departure. He had refused the offer of a large rent for his house from the new superintendent, but had retained a trusty servant to keep it with a view to the possible return of Grace. "Ef thar mout ever come a young gal yet lookin' fur me," he said privately to his servant, "yer not to ax any questions, partiklaly ef she looks sorter shy and bashful, but ye'll gin her the best room in the house, and send to me by igspress, and ye needn't say anythin' to Mrs. Conroy about it." Observing the expression of virtuous alarm on the face of the domestic—she was a married woman of some comeliness who was not living with her husband on account of his absurdly jealous disposition—he added hastily, "She's a young woman o' proputty ez hez troubil about it, and wishes to be kep' secret," and, having in this way thoroughly convinced his handmaid of the vileness of his motives and the existence of a dark secret in the Conroy household, he said no more, but paid a flying visit to Olly, secretly, packed away all the remnants of his deceased mother's wardrobe, cut (God knows for what purpose) small patches from the few old dresses that Grace had worn that were still sacredly kept in his wardrobe, and put them in his pocket-book; wandered in his usual lonely way on the hillside, and spent solitary hours in his deserted cabin; avoided the sharp advances of Mrs. Markle, who once aggressively met him in his long post-prandial walks, as well as the shy propinquity of his wife, who would fain have delayed himin her bower, and so having after the fashion of his sex made the two women who loved him exceedingly uncomfortable, he looked hopefully forward to the time when he should be happy without either.
It was a hot day on the California coast. In the memory of the oldest American inhabitant its like had not been experienced, and although the testimony of the Spanish Californian was deemed untrustworthy where the interests of the American people were concerned, the statement that for sixty years there had been no such weather was accepted without question. The additional fact, vouchsafed by Don Pedro Peralta, that the great earthquake which shook down the walls of the Mission of San Juan Bautista had been preceded by a week of such abnormal meteorology, was promptly suppressed as being of a quality calculated to check immigration. Howbeit it was hot. The usual afternoon trade-winds had pretermitted their rapid, panting breath, and the whole coast lay, as it were, in the hush of death. The evening fogs that always had lapped the wind-abraded surfaces of the bleak seaward hills were gone too; the vast Pacific lay still and glassy, glittering, but intolerable. The outlying sand dunes, unmitigated by any breath of air, blistered the feet and faces of chance pedestrians. For once the broad verandahs, piazzas, and balconies of San Francisco cottage architecture were consistent and serviceable. People lingered upon them in shirt-sleeves, with all the exaggeration of a novel experience. French windows, that had always been barred against the fierce afternoon winds, were suddenly thrown open; that brisk,energetic step, with which the average San Franciscan hurried to business or pleasure, was changed to an idle, purposeless lounge. The saloons were crowded with thirsty multitudes, the quays and wharves with a people who had never before appreciated the tonic of salt air; the avenues leading over the burning sand-hills to the ocean all day were thronged with vehicles. The numerous streets and by-ways, abandoned by their great scavenger, the wind, were foul and ill-smelling. For twenty-four hours business was partly forgotten; as the heat continued and the wind withheld its customary tribute, there were some changes in the opinions and beliefs of the people; doubts were even expressed of the efficacy of the climate; a few heresies were uttered regarding business and social creeds, and Mr. Dumphy and certain other financial magnates felt vaguely that if the thermometer continued to advance the rates of interest must fall correspondingly.
Equal to even this emergency, Mr. Dumphy had sat in his office all the morning, resisting with the full strength of his aggressive nature any disposition on the part of his his customers to succumb financially to the unusual weather. Mr. Dumphy's shirt-collar was off; with it seemed to have departed some of his respectability, and he was perhaps, on the whole, a trifle less imposing than he had been. Nevertheless, he was still dominant, in the suggestion of his short bull neck, and two visitors who entered, observing thedéshabilléof this great man, felt that it was the proper thing for them to instantly unbutton their own waistcoats and loosen their cravats.
"It's hot," said Mr. Pilcher, an eminent contractor.
"You bet!" responded Mr. Dumphy. "Must be awful on the Atlantic coast! People dying by hundreds of sun-stroke; that's the style out there. Here there's nothing of the kind! A man stands things here that he couldn't there."
Having thus re-established the supremacy of the California climate, Mr. Dumphy came directly to business. "Bad news from One Horse Gulch!" he said, quickly.
As that was the subject his visitors came to speak about—a fact of which Mr. Dumphy was fully aware—he added, sharply, "What do you propose?"
Mr. Pilcher, who was a large stockholder in the Conroy mine, responded, hesitatingly, "We've heard that the lead opens badly."
"D——n bad!" interrupted Dumphy. "What do you propose?"
"I suppose," continued Mr. Pilcher, "the only thing to do is to get out of it before the news becomes known."
"No!" said Dumphy, promptly. The two men stared at each other. "No!" he continued, with a quick, short laugh, which was more like a logical expression than a mirthful emotion. "No, we must hold on, sir! Look yer! there's a dozen men as you and me know, that we could unload to to-morrow. Suppose we did? Well, what happens? They go in on four hundred thousand—that's about the figures we represent. Well. They begin to examine and look around; them men, Pilcher"—(in Mr. Dumphy's more inspired moods he rose above considerations of the English grammar)—"them men want to know what that four hundred thousand's invested in; they ain't goin' to take our word after we've got their money—that's human nature—and in twenty-four hours they find they're sold! That don't look well for me nor you—does it?"
There was not the least assumption of superior honour or integrity—indeed, scarcely any self-consciousness or sentiment of any kind, implied in this speech—yet it instantly affected both of these sharp business men, who might have been suspicious of sentiment, with an impression of being both honourable and manly. Mr. Pilcher's companion,Mr. Wyck, added a slight embarrassment to his reception of these great truths, which Mr. Dumphy noticed.
"No," he went on; "what we must do is this. Increase the capital stock just as much again. That will enable us to keep everything in our hands—news and all—and if it should leak out afterwards, we have half a dozen others with us to keep the secret. Six months hence will be time to talk of selling; just now buying is the thing! You don't believe it?—eh? Well, Wyck, I'll take yours at the figure you paid. What do you say?—quick!"
Mr. Wyck, more confused than appeared necessary, declared his intention of holding on; Mr. Pilcher laughed, Mr. Dumphy barked behind his hand.
"That offer's open for ninety days—will you take it? No! Well, then, that's all!" and Mr. Dumphy turned again to his desk. Mr. Pilcher took the hint, and drew Mr. Wyck away.
"Devilish smart chap, that Dumphy!" said Pilcher, as they passed out of the door.
"An honest man, by——!" responded Wyck.
When they had gone Mr. Dumphy rang his bell. "Ask Mr. Jaynes to come and see me at once. D——n it, go now! You must get there before Wyck does. Run!"
The clerk disappeared. In a few moments Mr. Jaynes, a sharp but very youthful looking broker, entered the office parlour. "Mr. Wyck will want to buy back that stock he put in your hands this morning, Jaynes. I thought I'd tell you, it's worth 50 advance now!"
The precocious youth grinned intelligently and departed. By noon of that day it was whispered that notwithstanding the rumours of unfavourable news from the Conroy mine, one of the heaviest stockholders had actually bought back, at an advance of $50 per share, some stock he had previously sold. More than that, it was believed that Mr.Dumphy had taken advantage of these reports, and was secretly buying. In spite of the weather, for some few hours there had been the greatest excitement.
Possibly from some complacency arising from this, possibly from some singular relaxing in the atmosphere, Mr. Dumphy at two o'clock shook off the cares of business and abandoned himself to recreation—refusing even to take cognisance of the card of one Colonel Starbottle, which was sent to him with a request for an audience. At half-past two he was behind a pair of fast horses, one of a carriage-load of ladies and gentlemen, rolling over the scorching sand-hills towards the Pacific, that lay calm and cool beyond. As the well-appointed equipage rattled up the Bush Street Hill, many an eye was turned with envy and admiration toward it. The spectacle of two pretty women among the passengers was perhaps one reason; the fact that everybody recognised in the showy and brilliant driver the celebrated Mr. Rollingstone, an able financier and rival of Mr. Dumphy's, was perhaps equally potent. For Mr. Rollingstone was noted for his "turnout," as well as for a certain impulsive South Sea extravagance and picturesque hospitality which Dumphy envied and at times badly imitated. Indeed, the present excursion was one of Mr. Rollingstone's famousfetes champetres, and the present company was composed of theéliteof San Francisco, and made self-complacent and appreciative by an enthusiastic Eastern tourist.
Their way lay over shifting sand dunes, now motionless and glittering in the cruel, white glare of a California sky, only relieved here and there by glimpses of the blue bay beyond, and odd marine-looking buildings, like shells scattered along the beach, as if they had been cast up and forgotten by some heavy tide. Farther on, their road skirted the base of a huge solitary hill, broken in outlineby an outcrop of gravestones, sacred to the memory of worthy pioneers who had sealed their devotion to the "healthiest climate in the world" with their lives. Occasionally these gravestones continued to the foot of the hill, where, struggling with the drifting sand, they suggested a half-exhumed Pompeii to the passing traveller. They were the skeletons at the feast of every San Francisco pleasure-seeker, thememento moriof every picnicing party, and were visible even from the broad verandahs of the suburban pavilions, where the gay and thoughtless citizen ate, drank, and was merry. Part of the way the busy avenue was parallel with another, up which, even at such times, occasionally crept the lugubrious procession of hearse and mourning coach to other pavilions, scarcely less crowded, where there were "funeral baked meats," and sorrow and tears. And beyond this again was the grey eternal sea, and at its edge, perched upon a rock, and rising out of the very jaws of the gushing breakers, a stately pleasure dome, decreed by some speculative and enterprising San Francisco landlord—the excuse and terminus of this popular excursion.
Here Rollingstone drew up, and, alighting, led his party into a bright, cheery room, whose windows gave upon the sea. A few other guests, evidently awaiting them, were mitigating their impatience by watching the uncouth gambols of the huge sea-lions, who, on the rocks beyond, offered a contrast to the engaging and comfortable interior that was at once pleasant and exciting. In the centre of the room a table overloaded with overgrown fruits and grossly large roses somewhat ostentatiously proclaimed the coming feast!
"Here we are!" said Mr. Dumphy, bustling into the room with that brisk, business-like manner which his friends fondly believed was frank cheerfulness, "and ontime, too!" he added, drawing out his watch. "Inside of thirty minutes—how's that, eh?" He clapped his nearest neighbour on the back, who, pleased with this familiarity from a man worth five or six millions, did not stop to consider the value of this celerity of motion in a pleasure excursion on a hot day.
"Well!" said Rollingstone, looking around him, "you all know each other, I reckon, or will soon. Mr. Dumphy, Mr. Poinsett, Mr. Pilcher, Mr. Dyce, Mr. Wyck, Mrs. Sepulvida and Miss Rosey Ringround, gentlemen; Mr. and Mrs. Raynor, of Boston. There, now, that's through! Dinner's ready. Sit down anywhere and wade in. No formality, gentlemen—this is California."
There was, perhaps, some advantage in this absence of ceremony. The guests almost involuntarily seated themselves according to their preferences, and Arthur Poinsett found himself beside Mrs. Sepulvida, while Mr. Dumphy placed Miss Ringround—a pretty though boyish-looking blonde, slangy in speech and fashionable in attire—on his right hand.
The dinner was lavish and luxurious, lacking nothing but restraint and delicacy. There was game in profusion, fat but flavourless. The fruits were characteristic. The enormous peaches were blowsy in colour and robust in fibre; the pears were prodigious and dropsical, and looked as if they wanted to be tapped; the strawberries were overgrown and yet immature—rather as if they had been arrested on their way to become pine-apples; with the exception of the grapes, which were delicate in colour and texture, the fruit might have been an ironical honouring by nature of Mr. Dumphy's lavish drafts.
It is probable, however, that the irony was lost on the majority of the company, who were inclined to echo the extravagant praise of Mr. Raynor, the tourist. "Wonderful!wonderful!" said that gentleman; "if I had not seen this I wouldn't have believed it. Why, that pear would make four of ours."
"That's the way we do things here," returned Dumphy, with the suggestion of being personally responsible for these abnormal growths. He stopped suddenly, for he caught Arthur Poinsett's eye. Mr. Dumphy ate little in public, but he was at that moment tearing the wing of a grouse with his teeth, and there was something so peculiar and characteristic in the manner that Arthur looked up with a sudden recollection in his glance. Dumphy put down the wing, and Poinsett resume his conversation with Mrs. Sepulvida. It was not of a quality that interruption seriously impaired; Mrs. Sepulvida was a charming but not an intellectual woman, and Mr. Poinsett took up the lost thread of his discourse quite as readily from her eyes as her tongue.
"To have been consistent, Nature should have left a race of giants here," said Mr. Poinsett, meditatively. "I believe," he added, more pointedly, and in a lower voice, "the late Don José was not a large man."
"Whatever he was, he thought a great deal of me!" pouted Mrs. Sepulvida.
Mr. Poinsett was hastening to say that if "taking thought" like that could add a "cubit to one's stature," he himself was in a fair way to become a son of Anak, when he was interrupted by Miss Rosey—
"What's all that about big men? There are none here. They're like the big trees. They don't hang around the coast much! You must go to the mountains for your Goliahs."
Emboldened quite as much by the evident annoyance of her neighbour as the amused look of Arthur Poinsett, she went on—
"I have seen the pre-historic man!—the originalathletic sharp! He is seven feet high, is as heavy as a sea-lion, and has shoulders like Tom Hyer. He slings an awful left. He's got blue eyes as tender as a seal's. He has hair like Samson before that woman went back on him. He's as brave as a lion and as gentle as a lamb. He blushes like a girl, or as girls used to; I wish I could start up such a colour on even double the provocation!"
Of course everybody laughed—it was the usual tribute of Miss Rosey's speech—the gentlemen frankly and fairly, the ladies perhaps a little doubtfully and fearfully. Mrs. Sepulvida, following the amused eyes of Arthur, asked Miss Rosey patronisingly where she had seen her phenomenon.
"Oh, it's no use, my dear, positively—no use. He's married. These phenomena always get married. No, I didn't see him in a circus, Mr. Dumphy, nor in a menagerie, Mr. Dyce, but in a girl's school!"
Everybody stared; a few laughed as if this were an amusing introduction to some possible joke from Miss Rosey.
"I was visiting an old schoolmate at Madame Eclair'sPensionat Sacramento; he was taking his little sister to the same school," she went on, coolly, "so he told me. I love my love with a G, for he is Guileless and Gentle. His name is Gabriel, and he lives in a Gulch."
"Our friend the superintendent—I'm blessed," said Dyce, looking at Dumphy.
"Yes; but not so very guileless," said Pilcher, "eh, Dyce?"
The gentlemen laughed; the ladies looked at each other and then at Miss Ringround. That fearless young woman was equal to the occasion.
"What have you got against my giant? Out with it!"
"Oh, nothing," said Mr. Pilcher; "only your guileless, simple friend has played the sharpest game on record in Montgomery Street."
"Go on!" said Miss Rosey.
"Shall I?" asked Pilcher of Dumphy.
Dumphy laughed his short laugh. "Go on."
Thus supported, Mr. Pilcher assumed the ease of a gracefulraconteur. "Miss Rosey's guileless friend, ladies and gentlemen, is the superintendent and shareholder in a certain valuable silver mine in which Dumphy is largely represented. Being about to leave the country, and anxious to realise on his stock, he contracted for the sale of a hundred shares at $1000 each, with our friend Mr. Dyce, the stocks to be delivered on a certain date—ten days ago. Instead of the stock, that day comes a letter from Conroy—a wonderful piece of art—simple, ill-spelled, and unbusiness-like, saying, that in consequence of recent disappointment in the character and extent of the lead, he shall not hold Dyce to his contract, but will release him. Dyce, who has already sold that identical stock at a pretty profit, rushes off to Dumphy's broker, and finds two hundred shares held at $1200. Dyce smells a large-sized rat, writes that he shall hold Gabriel to the performance of his contract, makes him hand over the stock, delivers it in time, and then loads up again with the broker's 200 at $1200for a rise. That rise don't come—won't come—for that sale wasGabriel's too—as Dumphy can tell you. There's guilelessness! There's simplicity! And it cleared a hundred thousand by the operation."
Of the party none laughed more heartily than Arthur Poinsett. Without analysing his feelings he was conscious of being greatly relieved by this positive evidence of Gabriel's shrewdness. And when Mrs. Sepulvida touched his elbow, and asked if this were not the squatter who held the forged grant, Arthur, without being conscious of any special meanness, could not help replying with unnecessary significance that it was.
"I believe the whole dreadful story that Donna Dolores told me," said she, "how he married the woman who personated his sister, and all that—the deceitful wretch."
"I've got that letter here," continued Mr. Pilcher, drawing from his pocket a folded piece of letter paper. "It's a curiosity. If you'd like to see the documentary evidence of your friend's guilelessness, here it is," he added, turning to Miss Ringround.
Miss Rosey took the paper defiantly, and unfolded it, as the others gathered round her, Mr. Dumphy availing himself of that opportunity to lean familiarly over the arm of her chair. The letter was written with that timid, uncertain ink, peculiar to the illiterate effort, and suggestive of an occasional sucking of the pen in intervals of abstraction or difficult composition. Saving that characteristic, it is reproduced literally below:—
"1, Hoss Gulch, Argus the 10th."Dear Sir,—On acount of thar heving ben bad Luck in the Leed witch has droped, I rite thes few lins hopping you air Well. I have to say we are disapinted in the Leed, it is not wut we thought it was witch is wy I rite thes few lins. now sir purheps you ixpict me to go on with our contrak, and furniss you with 100 shars at 1 Thousin dolls pur shar. It issint wuth no 1 Thousin dols pur shar, far frummit. No sir, it issint, witch is wy I rite you thes few lins, and it Woddent be Rite nor squar for me to tak it. This is to let you off Mister Dyce, and hopin it ant no trubbil to ye, fur I shuddint sell atal things lookin this bad it not bein rite nor squar, and hevin' tor up the contrak atween you and me. So no more at pressen from yours respectfuly.G. Conroy."P.S.—You might mind my sayin to you about my sister witch is loss sens 1849. If you happind to com acrost any Traks of hers, me bein' away, you can send the sam to me in Care of Wels Farko & Co., New York Citty, witch is a grate favor and will be pade sure. G. C."
"1, Hoss Gulch, Argus the 10th.
"Dear Sir,—On acount of thar heving ben bad Luck in the Leed witch has droped, I rite thes few lins hopping you air Well. I have to say we are disapinted in the Leed, it is not wut we thought it was witch is wy I rite thes few lins. now sir purheps you ixpict me to go on with our contrak, and furniss you with 100 shars at 1 Thousin dolls pur shar. It issint wuth no 1 Thousin dols pur shar, far frummit. No sir, it issint, witch is wy I rite you thes few lins, and it Woddent be Rite nor squar for me to tak it. This is to let you off Mister Dyce, and hopin it ant no trubbil to ye, fur I shuddint sell atal things lookin this bad it not bein rite nor squar, and hevin' tor up the contrak atween you and me. So no more at pressen from yours respectfuly.G. Conroy.
"P.S.—You might mind my sayin to you about my sister witch is loss sens 1849. If you happind to com acrost any Traks of hers, me bein' away, you can send the sam to me in Care of Wels Farko & Co., New York Citty, witch is a grate favor and will be pade sure. G. C."
"I don't care what you say, that's an honest letter," said Miss Rosey, with a certain decision of character new to the experience of her friends, "as honest and simple as ever was written. You can bet your pile on that."
No one spoke, but the smile of patronising superiority and chivalrous toleration was exchanged by all the gentlemen except Poinsett. Mr. Dumphy added to his smile his short characteristic bark. At the reference to the writer's sister, Mrs. Sepulvida shrugged her pretty shoulders and looked doubtingly at Poinsett. But to her great astonishment that gentleman reached across the table, took the letter, and having glanced over it, said positively, "You are right, Miss Rosey, it is genuine."
It was characteristic of Poinsett's inconsistency that this statement was as sincere as his previous assent to the popular suspicion. When he took the letter in his hand, he at once detected the evident sincerity of its writer, and as quickly recognised the quaint honesty and simple nature of the man he had known. It was Gabriel Conroy, all over. More than that, he even recalled an odd memory of Grace in this frank directness and utter unselfishness of the brother who so plainly had never forgotten her. That all this might be even reconcilable with the fact of his marriage to the woman who had personated the sister, Arthur easily comprehended. But that it was his own duty, after he had impugned Gabriel's character, to make any personal effort to clear it, was not so plain. Nevertheless, he did not answer Mrs. Sepulvida's look, but walked gravely to the window, and looked out upon the sea, Mr. Dumphy, who, with the instincts of jealousy, saw in Poinsett's remark only a desire to ingratiate himself with Miss Rosey, was quick to follow his lead.
"It's a clear case ofquien sabeanyway," he said to the young lady, "and maybe you're right. Joe, pass the champagne."
Dyce and Pilcher looked up inquiringly at their leader, who glanced meaningly towards the open-mouthed Mr. Raynor, whose astonishment at this sudden change in public sentiment was unbounded.
"But look here," said that gentleman, "bless my soul! if this letter is genuine, your friends here—these gentlemen—have lost a hundred thousand dollars! Don't you see? If this news is true, and this man's information is correct, the stock really isn't worth"——
He was interrupted by a laugh from Messrs. Dyce and Pilcher.
"That's so. It would be a devilish good thing on Dyce!" said the latter, good-humouredly. "And as I'm in myself about as much again, I reckon I should take the joke about as well as he."
"But," continued the mystified Mr. Raynor, "do you really mean to say that you have any idea this news is true?"
"Yes," responded Pilcher, coolly.
"Yes," echoed Dyce, with equal serenity.
"You do?"
"We do."
The astonished tourist looked from the one to the other with undisguised wonder and admiration, and then turned to his wife. Had she heard it? Did she fully comprehend that here were men accepting and considering an actual and present loss of nearly a quarter of a million of dollars, as quietly and indifferently as if it were a postage stamp! What superb coolness! What magnificent indifference! What supreme and royal confidence in their own resources. Was this not a country of gods? All of which was delivered in a voice that, although pitched to the key of matrimonial confidence, was still entirely audible to the gods themselves.
"Yes, gentlemen," continued Pilcher; "it's the fortune of war. T'other man's turn to-day, ours to-morrow. Can't afford time to be sorry in this climate. A man's born again here every day. Move along and pass the bottle."
What was that?
Nothing, apparently, but a rattling of windows and shaking of the glasses—the effect of a passing carriage or children running on the piazza without. But why had they all risen with a common instinct, and with faces bloodless and eyes fixed in horrible expectancy? These were the questions which Mr. and Mrs. Raynor asked themselves hurriedly, unconscious of danger, yet with a vague sense of alarm at the terror so plainly marked upon the countenances of these strange, self-poised people, who, a moment before, had seemed the incarnation of reckless self-confidence, and inaccessible to the ordinary annoyances of mortals. And why were these other pleasure-seekers rushing by the windows, and was not that a lady fainting in the hall? Arthur was the first to speak and tacitly answer the unasked question.
"It was from east to west," he said, with a coolness that he felt was affected, and a smile that he knew was not mirthful. "It's over now, I think." He turned to Mrs. Sepulvida, who was very white. "You are not frightened? Surely this is nothing new to you? Let me help you to a glass of wine."
Mrs. Sepulvida took it with a hysterical little laugh. Mrs. Raynor, who was now conscious of a slight feeling of nausea, did not object to the same courtesy from Mr. Pilcher, whose hand shook visibly as he lifted the champagne. Mr. Dumphy returned from the doorway, in which, to his own and everybody's surprise, he was found standing, and took his place at Miss Rosey's side. The young woman was first to recover her reckless hilarity.
"It was a judgment on you for slandering Nature's noblest specimen," she said, shaking her finger at the capitalist.
Mr. Rollingstone, who had returned to the head of his table, laughed.
"Butwhatwas it?" gasped Mr. Raynor, making himself at last heard above the somewhat pronounced gaiety of the party.
"An earthquake," said Arthur, quietly.
"An earthquake!" echoed Mr. Rollingstone, cheerfully, to his guests; "now you've had about everything we have to show. Don't be alarmed, madam," he continued to Mrs. Raynor, who was beginning to show symptoms of hysteria, "nobody ever was hurt by 'em."
"In two hundred years there hasn't been as many persons killed by earthquakes in California as are struck by lightning on your coast in a single summer," said Mr. Dumphy.
"Never have 'em any stronger than this," said Mr. Pilcher, with a comforting suggestion on there being an absolute limitation of Nature's freaks on the Pacific coast.
"Over in a minute, as you see," said Mr. Dumphy, "and—hello! what's that?"
In a moment they were on their feet, pale and breathless again. This time Mr. Raynor and his wife among the number. But it was only a carriage—driving away.
"Let us adjourn to the piazza," said Mr. Dumphy, offering his arm to Mrs. Raynor with the air of having risen solely for that purpose.
Mr. Dumphy led the way, and the party followed with some celerity. Mrs. Sepulvida hung back a moment with Arthur, and whispered—
"Take me back as soon as you can!"
"You are not seriously alarmed?" asked Arthur.
"We are too near the sea here," she replied, looking toward the ocean with a slight shudder. "Don't ask questions now," she added, a little sharply. "Don't you see these Eastern people are frightened to death, and they may overhear."
But Mrs. Sepulvida had not long to wait, for in spite of the pointed asseverations of Messrs. Pilcher, Dyce, and Dumphy, that earthquakes were not only harmless, but absolutely possessed a sanitary quality, the piazzas were found deserted by the usual pleasure-seekers, and even the eloquent advocates themselves betrayed some impatience to be once more on the open road.
A brisk drive of an hour put the party again in the highest spirits, and Mr. and Mrs. Raynor again into the condition of chronic admiration and enthusiasm.
Mrs. Sepulvida and Mr. Poinsett followed in an open buggy behind. When they were fairly upon their way, Arthur asked an explanation of his fair companion's fear of the sea.
"There is an old story," said Donna Maria, "that the Point of Pines—you know where it is, Mr. Poinsett—was once covered by a great wave from the sea that followed an earthquake. But tell me, do you really think that letter of this man Conroy is true?"
"I do," said Arthur, promptly.
"And that—there—is—a—prospect—that—the—stock of this big mine may—de—pre—ciate in value?"
"Well—possibly—yes!"
"And if you knew that I had been foolish enough to put a good deal of money in it, you would still talk to me as you did the other day—down there?"
"I should say," responded Arthur, changing the reins to his left hand that his right might be free for somepurpose—goodness knows what!—"I should say that I am more than ever convinced that you ought to have some person to look after you."
What followed this remarkable speech I really do not know how to reconcile with the statement that Mrs. Sepulvida made to the Donna Dolores a few chapters ago, and I therefore discreetly refrain from transcribing it here. Suffice it to say that the buggy did not come up with thechar-à-bancand the rest of the party until long after they had arrived at Mr. Dumphy's stately mansion on Rincon Hill, where another costly and elaborate collation was prepared. Mr. Dumphy evidently was in spirits, and had so far overcome his usual awe and distrust of Arthur, as well as the slight jealousy he had experienced an hour or so before, as to approach that gentleman with a degree of cheerful familiarity that astonished and amused the self-sustained Arthur—who perhaps at that time had more reason for his usual conceit than before. Arthur, who knew, or thought he knew, that Miss Ringround was only coquetting with Mr. Dumphy for the laudable purpose of making the more ambitious of her sex miserable, and that she did not care for his person or position, was a good deal amused at finding the young lady the subject of Mr. Dumphy's sudden confidences.
"You see, Poinsett, as a man of business I don't go as much into society as you do, but she seems to be a straight up and down girl, eh?" he queried, as they stood together in the vestibule after the ladies had departed. It is hardly necessary to say that Arthur was positive and sincere in his praise of the young woman. Mr. Dumphy by some obscure mental process, taking much of the praise to himself, was highly elated and perhaps tempted to a greater vinous indulgence than was his habit. Howbeit the last bottle of champagne seemed to have obliterated all past suspicionof Arthur, and he shook him warmly by the hand. "I tell ye what now, Poinsett, if there are any points I can give you don't you be afraid to ask for 'em. I can see what's up between you and the widow—honour, you know—all right, my boy—she's in the Conroy lode pretty deep, but I'll help her out and you too! You've got a good thing there—Poinsett—and I want you to realise. We understand each other, eh? You'll find me a square man with my friends, Poinsett. Pitch in—pitch in!—my advice to you is to just pitch in and marry the widow. She's worth it—you can realise on her. You see you and me's—so to speak—ole pards, eh? You rek'leck ole times on Sweetwater, eh? Well—if you mus' go, goo'-bi! I s'pose she's waitin' for ye. Look you, Poinsy, d'ye see this yer posy in my buttonhole? She give it to me. Rosey did! eh? ha! ha! Won't tak' nothin' drink? Lesh open n'or bo'll. No? Goori!" until struggling between disgust, amusement, and self-depreciation, Arthur absolutely tore himself away from the great financier and his degrading confidences.
When Mr. Dumphy staggered back into his drawing-room, a servant met him with a card.
"The gen'lman says it's very important business, and he must see you to-night," he said, hastily, anticipating the oath and indignant protest of his master. "He says it's your business, sir, and not his. He's been waiting here since you came back, sir."
Mr. Dumphy took the card. It bore the inscription in pencil, "Colonel Starbottle, Siskiyou, on important business." Mr. Dumphy reflected a moment. The magical word "business" brought him to himself. "Show him in—in the office," he said savagely, and retired thither.
Anybody less practical than Peter Dumphy would have dignified the large, showy room in which he entered as the library. The rich mahogany shelves were filled with aheterogeneous collection of recent books, very fresh, very new and glaring as to binding and subject; the walls were hung with files of newspapers and stock reports. There was a velvet-lined cabinet containing minerals—all of them gold or silver bearing. There was a map of an island that Mr. Dumphy owned—there was a marine view, with a representation of a steamship also owned by Mr. Dumphy. There was a momentary relief from these facts in a very gorgeous and badly painted picture of a tropical forest and sea-beach, until inquiry revealed the circumstance that the sugar-house in the corner under a palm-tree was "run" by Mr. Dumphy, and that the whole thing could be had for a bargain.
The stranger who entered was large and somewhat inclined to a corpulency that was, however, restrained in expansion by a blue frock coat, tightly buttoned at the waist, which had the apparent effect of lifting his stomach into the higher thoracic regions of moral emotion—a confusion to which its owner lent a certain intellectual assistance. The Colonel's collar was very large, open and impressive; his black silk neckerchief loosely tied around his throat, occupying considerable space over his shirt front, and expanding through the upper part of a gilt-buttoned white waistcoat, lent itself to the general suggestion that the Colonel had burst his sepals and would flower soon. Above this unfolding the Colonel's face, purple, aquiline-nosed, throttle-looking as to the eye, and moist and sloppy-looking as to the mouth, up-tilted above his shoulders. The Colonel entered with that tiptoeing celerity of step affected by men who are conscious of increasing corpulency. He carried a cane hooked over his forearm; in one hand a large white handkerchief, and in the other a broad-brimmed hat. He thrust the former gracefully in his breast, laid the latter on the desk where Mr. Dumphy was seated, and taking an unoffered chairhimself, coolly rested his elbow on his cane in an attitude of easy expectancy.
"Say you've got important business?" said Dumphy. "Hope it is, sir—hope it is! Then out with it. Can't afford to waste time any more here than at the Bank. Come! What is it?"
Not in the least affected by Mr. Dumphy's manner, whose habitual brusqueness was intensified to rudeness, Colonel Starbottle drew out his handkerchief, blew his nose, carefully returned apparently only about two inches of the cambric to his breast, leaving the rest displayed like a ruffled shirt, and began with an airy gesture of his fat white hand.
"I was here two hours ago, sir, when you were at the—er—festive board. I said to the boy, 'Don't interrupt your master. A gentleman worshipping at the shrine of Venus and Bacchus and attended by the muses and immortals, don't want to be interrupted.' Ged, sir, I knew a man in Louisiana—Hank Pinckney—shot his boy—a little yellow boy worth a thousand dollars—for interrupting him at a poker party—and no ladies present! And the boy only coming in to say that the gin house was in flames. Perhaps you'll say an extreme case. Know a dozen such. So I said, 'Don't interrupt him, but when the ladies have risen, and Beauty, sir, no longer dazzles and—er—gleams, and the table round no longer echoes the—er—light jest, then spot him! And over the deserted board, with—er—social glass between us, your master and I will have our little confab.'"
He rose, and before the astonished Dumphy could interfere, crossed over to a table where a decanter of whisky and a carafe of water stood, and filling a glass half-full of liquor, reseated himself and turned it off with an easy yet dignified inclination towards his host.
For once only Mr. Dumphy regretted the absence ofdignity in his own manner. It was quite evident that his usual brusqueness was utterly ineffective here, and he quickly recognised in the Colonel the representative of a class of men well known in California, from whom any positive rudeness would have provoked a demand for satisfaction. It was not a class of men that Mr. Dumphy had been in the habit of dealing with, and he sat filled with impotent rage, but wise enough to restrain its verbal expression, and thankful that none of his late guests were present to witness his discomfiture. Only one good effect was due to his visitor. Mr. Dumphy through baffled indignation and shame had become sober.
"No, sir," continued Colonel Starbottle, setting his glass upon his knee, and audibly smacking his large lips. "No, sir, I waited in the—er—ante-chamber until I saw you part with your guests—until you bade—er—adieu to a certain fair nymph—Ged, sir, I like your taste, and I call myself a judge of fine women—'Blank it all,' I said to myself, 'Blank it all, Star, you ain't goin' to pop out upon a man just as he's ministering to Beauty and putting a shawl upon a pair of alabaster shoulders like that!' Ha! ha! Ged, sir, I remembered myself that in '43 in Washington at a party at Tom Benton's I was in just such a position, sir. 'Are you never going to get that cloak on, Star?' she says to me—the most beautiful creature, the acknowledged belle of that whole winter—'43, sir—as a gentleman yourself you'll understand why I don't particularise—'If I had my way, madam,' I said, 'I never would!' I did, blank me. But you're not drinking, Mr. Dumphy, eh? A thimbleful, sir, to our better acquaintance."
Not daring to trust himself to speak, Mr. Dumphy shook his head somewhat impatiently, and Colonel Starbottle rose. As he did so it seemed as if his shoulders had suddenly become broader and his chest distended until hishandkerchief and white waistcoat protruded through the breast of his buttoned coat like a bursting grain of "pop corn." He advanced slowly and with deliberate dignity to the side of Dumphy.
"If I have intruded upon your privacy, Mr. Dumphy," he said, with a stately wave of his white hand, "if, as I surmise, from your disinclination, sir, to call it by no other name, to exchange the ordinary convivial courtesies common between gentlemen, sir,—you are disposed to resent any reminiscences of mine as reflecting upon the character of the young lady, sir, whom I had the pleasure to see in your company—if such be the case, sir, Ged!—I am ready to retire now, sir, and to give you to-morrow, or at any time, the satisfaction which no gentleman ever refuses another, and which Culpepper Starbottle has never been known to deny. My card, sir, you have already; my address, sir, is St. Charles Hotel, where I and my friend, Mr. Dumphy, will be ready to receive you."
"Look here," said Mr. Dumphy, in surly but sincere alarm, "I don't drink because I've been drinking. No offence, Mr. Starbottle. I was only waiting for you to open what you had on your mind in the way of business, to order up a bottle ofCliquotto enable us to better digest it. Take your seat, Colonel. Bring champagne and two glasses." He rose, and under pretence of going to the sideboard, added in a lower tone to the servant who entered, "Stay within call, and in about ten minutes bring me some important message from the Bank—you hear? A glass of wine with you, Colonel. Happy to make your acquaintance! Here we go!"
The Colonel uttered a slight cough as if to clear away his momentary severity, bowed with gracious dignity, touched the glass of his host, drew out his handkerchief, wiped his mouth, and seated himself once more.
"If my object," he began, with a wave of dignified depreciation, "were simply one of ordinary business, I should have sought you, sir, in the busy mart, and not among your Lares and Penates, nor in the blazing lights of the festive hall. I should have sought you at that temple which report and common rumour says that you, sir, as one of the favoured sons of Fortune, have erected to her worship. In my intercourse with the gifted John C. Calhoun I never sought him, sir, in the gladiatorial arena of the Senate, but rather with the social glass in the privacy of his own domicile. Ged, sir, in my profession, we recognise some quality in our relations even when professional with gentlemen that keep us from approaching them like a Yankee pedlar with goods to sell!"
"What's your profession?" asked Mr. Dumphy.
"Until elected by the citizens of Siskiyou to represent them in the legislative councils I practised at the bar. Since then I have been open occasionally to retainers in difficult and delicate cases. In the various intrigues that arise in politics, in the more complicated relations of the two sexes—in, I may say, the two great passions of mankind, Ambition and Love, my services have, I believe, been considered of value. It has been my office, sir, to help the steed of vaulting ambition—er—er—over the fence, and to dry the—er—tearful yet glowing cheek of Beauty. But for the necessity of honour and secrecy in my profession, sir, I could give you the names of some of the most elegant women, and some of the first—the very first men in the land as the clients of Culpepper Starbottle."
"Very sorry," began Mr. Dumphy, "but if you're expecting to put me among your list of clients, I"——
Without taking the least notice of Dumphy's half-returned sneer, Colonel Starbottle interrupted him coolly:
"Ged, sir!—it's out of the question, I'm retained on the other side."
The sneer instantly faded from Dumphy's face, and a look of genuine surprise took its place.
"What do you mean?" he said curtly.
Colonel Starbottle drew his chair beside Dumphy, and leaning familiarly over his desk took Mr. Dumphy's own penholder and persuasively emphasised the points of his speech upon Mr. Dumphy's arm with the blunt end. "Sir, when I say retained by the other side, it doesn't keep me from doing the honourable thing with the defendant—from recognising a gentleman and trying to settle this matter as between gentlemen."
"But what's all this about? Who is your plaintiff?" roared Dumphy, forgetting himself in his rage.
"Ged, sir—it's a woman—of course. Don't think I'm accusing you of any political ambition. Ha! ha! No, sir. You're like me! it's a woman—lovely woman—I saw it at a glance! Gentlemen like you and me don't go through to fifty years without giving some thought to these dear little creatures. Sir, I despise a man who did. It's the weakness of a great man, sir."
Mr. Dumphy pushed his chair back with the grim deliberation of a man who had at last measured the strength of his adversary and was satisfied to risk an encounter.
"Look here, Colonel Starbottle, I don't know or care who your plaintiff is. I don't know or care how she may have been deceived or wronged or disappointed or bamboozled, or what is the particular game that's up now. But you're a man of the world, you say, and as a man of the world and a man of sense, you know that no one in my position ever puts himself in any woman's power. I can't afford it! I don't pretend to be better than other men, butI ain't a fool. That's the difference between me and your clients!"
"Yes—but, my boy, thatisthe difference! Don't you see? In other cases the woman's a beautiful woman, a charming creature, you know. Ged, sometimes she's as proper and pious as a nun, but then the relations, you see, ain't legal! But hang it all, my boy, this is—YOUR WIFE!"
Mr. Dumphy, with colourless cheeks, tried to laugh a reckless scornful laugh. "My wife is dead!"
"A mistake—Ged, sir!—a most miserable mistake. Understand me. I don't say that she hadn't ought to be! Ged, sir, from the look that that little blue-eyed hussy gave you an hour ago—there ain't much use of another woman around, but the fact is that sheisliving. You thought she was dead, and left her up there in the snow. She goes so far as to say—you know how these women talk, Dumphy; Ged, sir, they'll say anything when they get down on a man—she says it ain't your fault if she wasn't dead! Eh? Sho?"
"A message, sir, business of the Bank, very important," said Dumphy's servant, opening the door.
"Get out!" said Dumphy, with an oath.
"But, sir, they told me, sir"——
"Get out! will you?" roared Dumphy.
The door closed on his astonished face. "It's all—a—mistake," said Dumphy, when he had gone. "They died of starvation—all of them—while I was away hunting help. I've read the accounts."
Colonel Starbottle slowly drew from some vast moral elevation in his breast pocket a well-worn paper. It proved when open to be a faded, blackened, and be-thumbed document in Spanish. "Here is the report of the Commander of the Presidio who sent out the expedition.You read Spanish? Well. The bodies of all the other women were identified except your wife's. Hang it, my boy, don't you see why she was excepted? She wasn't there."
The Colonel darted a fat forefinger at his host and then drew back, and settled his purpled chin and wattled cheeks conclusively in his enormous shirt collar. Mr. Dumphy sank back in his chair at the contact as if the finger of Fate had touched him.
The hot weather had not been confined to San Francisco. San Pablo Bay had glittered, and the yellow currents of the San Joaquin and Sacramento glowed sullenly with a dull sluggish lava-like flow. No breeze stirred the wild oats that drooped on the western slope of the Contra Costa hills; the smoke of burning woods on the eastern hillsides rose silently and steadily; the great wheat fields of the intermediate valleys clothed themselves humbly in dust and ashes. A column of red dust accompanied the Wingdam and One Horse Gulch stage-coach, a pillar of fire by day as well as by night, and made the fainting passengers look longingly toward the snow-patched Sierras beyond. It was hot in California; few had ever seen the like, and those who had were looked upon as enemies of their race. A rashly scientific man of Murphy's Camp who had a theory of his own, and upon that had prophesied a continuance of the probable recurrence of the earthquake shock, concluded he had better leave the settlement until the principles of meteorology were better recognised and established.
It was hot in One Horse Gulch—in the oven-like Gulch, on the burning sands and scorching bars of the river. It was hot even on Conroy's Hill, among the calm shadows of the dark-green pines—on the deep verandahs of the Conroycottage orné. Perhaps this was the reason why Mrs. Gabriel Conroy, early that morning after the departure of her husband for the mill, had evaded the varnished and white-leaded heats of her own house and sought the more fragrant odours of the sedate pines beyond the hilltop. I fear, however, that something was due to a mysterious note which had reached her clandestinely the evening before, and which, seated on the trunk of a prostrate pine, she was now reperusing.
I should like to sketch her as she sat there. A broad-brimmed straw hat covered her head, that although squared a little too much at the temples for shapeliness, was still made comely by the good taste with which—aided by a crimping-iron—she had treated her fine-spun electrical blonde hair. The heat had brought out a delicate dewy colour in her usually pale face, and had heightened the intense nervous brightness of her vivid grey eyes. From the same cause, probably, her lips were slightly parted, so that the rigidity that usually characterised their finely chiselled outlines was lost. She looked healthier; the long flowing skirts which she affected, after the fashion of mostpetitewomen, were gathered at a waist scarcely as sylph-like and unsubstantial as that which Gabriel first clasped after the accident in the fateful cañon. She seemed a trifle more languid—more careful of her personal comfort, and spent some time in adjusting herself to the inequalities of her uncouth seat with a certain pouting peevishness of manner that was quite as new to her character as it was certainly feminine and charming. She held the open note in her thin, narrow, white-tipped fingers,and glanced over it again with a slight smile. It read as follows:—
"At ten o'clock I shall wait for you at the hill near the Big Pine! You shall give me an interview if you know yourself well. I say beware! I am strong, for I am injured!—Victor."
"At ten o'clock I shall wait for you at the hill near the Big Pine! You shall give me an interview if you know yourself well. I say beware! I am strong, for I am injured!—Victor."
Mrs. Conroy folded the note again, still smiling, and placed it carefully in her pocket. Then she sat patient, her hands clasped lightly between her knees, the parasol open at her feet—the very picture of a fond, confiding tryst. Then she suddenly drew her feet under her, sideways, with a quick, nervous motion, and examined the ground carefully with sincere distrust of all artful lurking vermin who lie in wait for helpless womanhood. Then she looked at her watch.
It was five minutes past the hour. There was no sound in the dim, slumbrous wood, but the far-off sleepy caw of a rook. A squirrel ran impulsively halfway down the bark of the nearest pine, and catching sight of her tilted parasol, suddenly flattened himself against the bark, with outstretched limbs, a picture of abject terror. A bounding hare came upon it suddenly and had a palpitation of the heart that he thought he really never should get over. And then there was a slow crackling in the underbrush as of a masculine tread, and Mrs. Conroy, picking up her terrible parasol, shaded the cold fires of her grey eyes with it and sat calm and expectant.
A figure came slowly and listlessly up the hill. When within a dozen yards of her, she saw it wasnotVictor. But when it approached nearer she suddenly started to her feet with pallid cheeks and an exclamation upon her lips. It was the Spanish translator of Pacific Street. She would have flown, but on the instant he turned and recognised her with a cry, a start, and a passion equal to her own.For a moment they stood glaring at each other breathless but silent!
"Devarges!" said Mrs. Conroy, in a voice that was scarcely audible. "Good God!"
The stranger uttered a bitter laugh. "Yes! Devarges!—the man who ran away with you—Devarges the traitor! Devarges the betrayer of your husband. Look at me! You know me—Henry Devarges! Your husband's brother!—your old accomplice—your lover—your dupe!"
"Hush," she said, imploringly glancing around through the dim woods, "for God's sake, hush!"
"And who are you," he went on, without heeding her, "which of the Mesdames Devarges is it now? Or have you taken the name of the young sprig of an officer for whom you deserted me and maybe in turn married? Or did he refuse you even that excuse for your perfidy? Or is it the wife and accomplice of this feeble-minded Conroy? What name shall I call you? Tell me quick! Oh, I have much to say, but I wish to be polite, madame; tell me to whom I am to speak!"
Despite the evident reality of his passion and fury there was something so unreal and grotesque in his appearance—in his antique foppery, in his dyed hair, in his false teeth, in his padded coat, in his thin strapped legs, that this relentless woman cowered before him in very shame, not of her crime but of her accomplice! "Hush," she said, "call me your friend; I am always your friend, Henry. Call me anything, but let me go from here. For God's sake, do you hear? Not so loud! Another time and another place I will listen," and she drew slowly back, until, scarce knowing what he did, she had led him away from the place of rendezvous toward the ruined cabin. Here she felt that she was at least safe from the interruption of Victor. "How came you here? How did you find out what had becomeof me? Where have you been these long years?" she asked hastily.
Within the last few moments she had regained partially the strange power that she had always exerted over all men except Gabriel Conroy. The stranger hesitated, and then answered in a voice that had more of hopelessness than bitterness in its quality—
"I came here six years ago, a broken, ruined, and disgraced man. I had no ambition but to hide myself from all who had known me, from that brother whose wife I had stolen, and whose home I had broken up—from you—you, Julie! you and your last lover—from the recollection of your double treachery!" He had raised his voice here, but was checked by the unflinching eye and cautionary gesture of the woman before him. "When you abandoned me in St. Louis, I had no choice but death or a second exile. I could not return to Switzerland, I could not live in the sickening shadow of my crime and its bitter punishment. I came here. My education, my knowledge of the language stood me in good stead. I might have been a rich man, I might have been an influential one, but I only used my opportunities for the bare necessaries of life and the means to forget my trouble in dissipation. I became a drudge by day, a gambler by night. I was always a gentleman. Men thought me crazy, an enthusiast, but they learned to respect me. Traitor as I was in a larger trust, no one doubted my honour or dared to question my integrity. But bah! what is this to you? You!"
He would have turned from her again in very bitterness, but in the act he caught her eye, and saw in it if not sympathy, at least a certain critical admiration, that again brought him to her feet. For despicable as this woman was, she was pleased at this pride in the man she had betrayed, was gratified at the sentiment that lifted him above his dyedhair and his pitiable foppery, and felt a certain honourable satisfaction in the fact that, even after the lapse of years, he had proved true to her own intuitions of him.
"I had been growing out of my despair, Julie," he went on, sadly; "I was, or believed I was, forgetting my fault, forgetting evenyou, when there came to me the news of my brother's death—by starvation. Listen to me, Julie. One day there came to me for translation a document, revealing the dreadful death of him—your husband, my brother—do you hear?—by starvation! Driven from his home by shame, he had desperately sought to hide himself as I had—accepted the hardship of emigration—he, a gentleman and a man of letters—with the boors and rabble of the plains, had shared their low trials and their vulgar pains, and died among them, unknown and unrecorded."
"He died as he had lived," said Mrs. Conroy, passionately, "a traitor and a hypocrite; he died following the fortunes of his paramour, an uneducated, vulgar rustic, to whom, dying, he willed a fortune—this girl—Grace Conroy. Thank God, I have the record! Hush! what's that?"
Whatever it was—a falling bough or the passing of some small animal in the underbrush—it was past now. A dead silence enwrapped the two solitary actors; they might have been the first man and the first woman, so encompassed were they by Nature and solitude.
"No," she went on, hurriedly, in a lower tone, "it was the same old story—the story of that girl at Basle—the story of deceit and treachery which brought us first together, which made you, Henry, my friend, which turned our sympathies into a more dangerous passion. You have suffered. Ah, well, so have I. We are equal now."
Henry Devarges looked speechlessly upon his companion. Her voice trembled, there were tears in her eyes, that had replaced the burning light of womanly indignation.He had come there knowing her to have been doubly treacherous to her husband and himself. She had not denied it. He had come there to tax her with an infamous imposture, but had found himself within the last minute glowing with sympathetic condemnation of his own brother, and ready to accept the yet unoffered and perfectly explicable theory of that imposture. More than that, he began to feel that his own wrongs were slight in comparison with the injuries received by this superior woman. The woman who endeavours to justify herself to her jealous lover, always has a powerful ally in his own self-love, and Devarges was quite willing to believe that even if he had lost her love, he had never at least been deceived. And the answer to the morality of this imposture was before him. Here was she married to the surviving brother of the girl she had personated. Had he—had Dr. Devarges ever exhibited as noble trust, as perfect appreciation of her nature and sufferings? Had they not thrown away the priceless pearl of this woman's love through ignorance and selfishness? You and I, my dear sir, who are not in love with this most reprehensible creature, will be quick to see the imperfect logic of Henry Devarges, but when a man constitutes himself accuser, judge, and jury of the woman he loves, he is very apt to believe he is giving a verdict when he is only entering anolle prosequi. It is probably that Mrs. Conroy had noticed this weakness in her companion, even with her preoccupied fears of the inopportune appearance of Victor, whom she felt she could have accounted for much better in his absence. Victor was an impulsive person, and there are times when this quality, generally adored by a self-restrained sex, is apt to be confounding.
"Why did you come here to see me?" asked Mrs. Conroy, with a dangerous smile. "Only to abuse me?"
"There is another grant in existence for the same landthat you claim as Grace Conroy or Mrs. Conroy," returned Devarges, with masculine bluntness, "a grant given prior to that made to my brother Paul. A suspicion that some imposture has been practised is entertained by the party holding the grant, and I have been requested to get at the facts."
Mrs. Conroy's grey eyes lightened. "And how were these suspicions aroused?"
"By an anonymous letter."
"And you have seen it?"
"Yes; both it and the handwriting in portions of the grant are identical."
"And you know the hand?"
"I do; it is that of a man now here, an old Californian—Victor Ramirez!"
He fixed his eyes upon her; unabashed she turned her own clear glance on his, and asked, with a dazzling smile—
"But does not your client know that, whether this grant is a forgery or not, my husband's title is good?"
"Yes; but the sympathies of my client, as you callher, are interested in the orphan girl Grace."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Conroy, with the faintest possible sigh, "your client, for whom you have travelled—how many miles?—is a woman."
Half-pleased, but half-embarrassed, Devarges said "Yes."
"I understand," said Mrs. Conroy slowly. "A young woman, perhaps a good, aprettyone! And you have said, 'I will prove this Mrs. Conroy an impostor,' and you are here. Well, I do not blame you. You are a man. It is well perhaps it is so."
"But, Julie, hear me!" interrupted the alarmed Devarges.
"No more!" said Mrs. Conroy, rising, and waving her thin white hand, "I do not blame you. I could expect—I deserve—no more! Go back to your client, sir, tell herthat you have seen Julie Devarges, the impostor. Tell her to go and press her claim, and that you will assist her. Finish the work that the anonymous letter-writer has begun, and earn your absolution for your crime and my folly. Get your reward—you deserve it—but tell her to thank God for having raised up to her better friends than Julie Devarges ever possessed in the heyday of her beauty. Go! Farewell! No; let me go, Henry Devarges, I am going to my husband. He at least has known how to forgive and protect a friendless and erring woman."
Before the astonished man could recover his senses, elusive as a sunbeam she had slipped through his fingers and was gone. For a moment only he followed the flash of her white skirt through the dark aisles of the forest, and then the pillared trees, crowding in upon each other, hid her from view.
Perhaps it was well, for a moment later Victor Ramirez, flushed, wild-eyed, dishevelled, and panting, stumbled blindly upon the trail, and blundered into Devarges' presence. The two men eyed each other in silence.
"A hot day for a walk!" said Devarges, with an ill-concealed sneer.
"Vengeance of God! you are right, it is," returned Victor. "And you?"
"Oh, I have been fighting flies. Good-day!"
I am sorry to say that Mrs. Conroy's expression as she fled was not entirely consistent with the grieved and heart-broken manner with which she had just closed the interview with Henry Devarges. Something of a smile lurkedabout the corners of her thin lips as she tripped up the steps of her house, and stood panting a little with the exertion in the shadow of the porch. But here she suddenly found herself becoming quite faint, and entering the apparently empty house, passed at once to her boudoir, and threw herself exhaustedly on the lounge with a certain peevish discontent at her physical weakness. No one had seen her enter; the Chinese servants were congregated in the distant wash-house. Her housekeeper had taken advantage of her absence to ride to the town. The unusual heat was felt to be an apology for any domestic negligence.
She was very thoughtful. The shock she had felt on first meeting Devarges was past; she was satisfied she still retained an influence over him sufficient to keep him her ally against Ramirez, whom she felt she now had reason to fear. Hitherto his jealousy had only shown itself in vapouring and bravado; she had been willing to believe him capable of offering her physical violence in his insane fury, and had not feared it, but this deliberately planned treachery made her tremble. She would see Devarges again; she would recite the wrongs she had received from the dead brother and husband, and in Henry's weak attempt to still his own conscience with that excuse, she could trust to him to keep Ramirez in check, and withhold the exposure until she and Gabriel could get away. Once out of the country, she could laugh at them both; once away, she could devote herself to win the love of Gabriel, without which she had begun to feel her life and schemes had been in vain. She would hurry their departure at once. Since the report had spread affecting the value of the mine, Gabriel, believing it true, had vaguely felt it his duty to stand by his doubtful claim and accept its fortunes, and had delayed his preparations. She would make him believe that it was Dumphy's wish that he should go at once; shewould make Dumphy write him to that effect. She smiled as she thought of the power she had lately achieved over the fears of this financial magnate. She would do all this, but for her physical weakness. She ground her teeth as she thought of it: that at such a time she should be—and yet a moment later a sudden fancy flashed across her mind, and she closed her eyes that she might take in its delusive sweetness more completely. It might be that it wanted only this to touch his heart—some men were so strange—and if it were, O God!—she stopped.