As Mrs. Tucker, erect, white, and rigid, drove away from the tienda, it seemed to her to sink again into the monotonous plain, with all its horrible realities. Except that there was now a new and heart-breaking significance to the solitude and loneliness of the landscape, all that had passed might have been a dream. But as the blood came back to her cheek, and little by little her tingling consciousness returned, it seemed as if her life had been the dream, and this last scene the awakening reality. With eyes smarting with the moisture of shame, the scarlet blood at times dyeing her very neck and temples, she muffled her lowered crest in her shawl and bent over the reins. Bit by bit she recalled, in Poindexter's mysterious caution and strange allusions, the corroboration of her husband's shame and her own disgrace. This was why she was brought hither—the deserted wife, and abandoned confederate! The mocking glitter of the concave vault above her, scoured by the incessant wind, the cold stare of the shining pools beyond, the hard outlines of the Coast Range, and the jarring accompaniment of her horse's hoofs and rattling buggy wheels alternately goaded and distracted her. She found herself repeating “No! no! no!” with the dogged reiteration of fever. She scarcely knew when or how she reached the hacienda. She was only conscious that as she entered the patio the dusty solitude that had before filled her with unrest now came to her like balm. A benumbing peace seemed to fall from the crumbling walls; the peace of utter seclusion, isolation, oblivion, death! Nevertheless, an hour later, when the jingle of spurs and bridle were again heard in the road, she started to her feet with bent brows and a kindling eye, and confronted Captain Poindexter in the corridor.
“I would not have intruded upon you so soon again,” he said gravely, “but I thought I might perhaps spare you a repetition of the scene of this morning. Hear me out, please,” he added, with a gentle, half-deprecating gesture, as she lifted the beautiful scorn of her eyes to his. “I have just heard that your neighbor, Don Jose Santierra, of Los Gatos, is on his way to this house. He once claimed this land, and hated your husband, who bought of the rival claimant, whose grant was confirmed. I tell you this,” he added, slightly flushing as Mrs. Tucker turned impatiently away, “only to show you that legally he has no rights, and you need not see him unless you choose. I could not stop his coming without perhaps doing you more harm than good; but when he does come, my presence under this roof as your legal counsel will enable you to refer him to me.” He stopped. She was pacing the corridor with short, impatient steps, her arms dropped, and her hands clasped rigidly before her. “Have I your permission to stay?”
She suddenly stopped in her walk, approached him rapidly, and fixing her eyes on his, said,—
“Do I know ALL, now—everything?”
He could only reply that she had not yet told him what she had heard.
“Well,” she said scornfully, “that my husband has been cruelly imposed upon—imposed upon by some wretched woman, who has made him sacrifice his property, his friends, his honor—everything but me?”
“Everything but whom?” gasped Poindexter.
“But ME!”
Poindexter gazed at the sky, the air, the deserted corridor, the stones of the patio itself, and then at the inexplicable woman before him. Then he said gravely, “I think you know everything.”
“Then if my husband has left me all he could—this property,” she went on rapidly, twisting her handkerchief between her fingers, “I can do with it what I like, can't I?”
“You certainly can.”
“Then sell it,” she said, with passionate vehemence. “Sell it—all! everything! And sell these.” She darted into her bedroom, and returned with the diamond rings she had torn from her fingers and ears when she entered the house. “Sell them for anything they'll bring, only sell them at once.”
“But for what?” asked Poindexter, with demure lips but twinkling eyes.
“To pay the debts that this—this—woman has led him into; to return the money she has stolen!” she went on rapidly, “to keep him from sharing her infamy! Can't you understand?”
“But, my dear madam,” began Poindexter, “even if this could be done—”
“Don't tell me 'if it could'—it MUST be done. Do you think I could sleep under this roof, propped up by the timbers of that ruined tienda? Do you think I could wear those diamonds again, while that termagant shop-woman can say that her money bought them? No. If you are my husband's friend you will do this—for—for his sake.” She stopped, locked and interlocked her cold fingers before her, and said, hesitating and mechanically, “You meant well, Captain Poindexter, in bringing me here, I know! You must not think that I blame you for it, or for the miserable result of it that you have just witnessed. But if I have gained anything by it, for God's sake let me reap it quickly, that I may give it to these people and go! I have a friend who can aid me to get to my husband or to my home in Kentucky, where Spencer will yet find me, I know. I want nothing more.” She stopped again. With another woman the pause would have been one of tears. But she kept her head above the flood that filled her heart, and the clear eyes fixed upon Poindexter, albeit pained, were undimmed.
“But this would require time,” said Poindexter, with a smile of compassionate explanation; “you could not sell now, nobody would buy. You are safe to hold this property while you are in actual possession, but you are not strong enough to guarantee it to another. There may still be litigation; your husband has other creditors than these people you have talked with. But while nobody could oust you—the wife who would have the sympathies of judge and jury—it might be a different case with any one who derived title from you. Any purchaser would know that you could not sell, or if you did, it would be at a ridiculous sacrifice.”
She listened to him abstractedly, walked to the end of the corridor, returned, and without looking up, said,—
“I suppose you know her?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“This woman. You have seen her?”
“Never, to my knowledge.”
“And you are his friend! That's strange.” She raised her eyes to his. “Well,” she continued impatiently, “who is she? and what is she? You know that surely?”
“I know no more of her than what I have said,” said Poindexter. “She is a notorious woman.”
The swift color came to Mrs. Tucker's face as if the epithet had been applied to herself. “I suppose,” she said in a dry voice, as if she were asking a business question, but with an eye that showed her rising anger,—“I suppose there is some law by which creatures of this kind can be followed and brought to justice—some law that would keep innocent people from suffering for their crimes?”
“I am afraid,” said Poindexter, “that arresting her would hardly help these people over in the tienda.”
“I am not speaking of them,” responded Mrs. Tucker, with a sudden sublime contempt for the people whose cause she had espoused: “I am talking of my husband.”
Poindexter bit his lip. “You'd hardly think of bringing back the strongest witness against him,” he said bluntly.
Mrs. Tucker dropped her eyes and was silent. A sudden shame suffused Poindexter's cheek; he felt as if he had struck that woman a blow. “I beg your pardon,” he said hastily, “I am talking like a lawyer to a lawyer.” He would have taken any other woman by the hand in the honest fullness of his apology, but something restrained him here. He only looked down gently on her lowered lashes, and repeated his question if he should remain during the coming interview with Don Jose: “I must beg you to determine quickly,” he added, “for I already hear him entering the gate.”
“Stay,” said Mrs. Tucker, as the ringing of spurs and clatter of hoofs came from the corral. “One moment.” She looked up suddenly, and said, “How long had he known her?” But before he could reply there was a step in the doorway, and the figure of Don Jose Santierra emerged from the archway.
He was a man slightly past middle age, fair and well shaven, wearing a black broadcloth serape, the deeply embroidered opening of which formed a collar of silver rays around his neck, while a row of silver buttons down the side seams of his riding trousers, and silver spurs, completed his singular equipment. Mrs. Tucker's swift feminine glance took in these details, as well as the deep salutation, more formal than the exuberant frontier politeness she was accustomed to, with which he greeted her. It was enough to arrest her first impulse to retreat. She hesitated and stopped as Poindexter stepped forward, partly interposing between them, acknowledging Don Jose's distant recognition of himself with an ironical accession of his usual humorous tolerance. The Spaniard did not seem to notice it, but remained gravely silent before Mrs. Tucker, gazing at her with an expression of intent and unconscious absorption.
“You are quite right, Don Jose,” said Poindexter, with ironical concern, “it is Mrs. Tucker. Your eyes do NOT deceive you. She will be glad to do the honors of her house,” he continued, with a simulation of appealing to her, “unless you visit her on business, when I need not say I shall be only too happy, to attend you, as before.”
Don Jose, with a slight lifting of the eyebrows, allowed himself to become conscious of the lawyer's meaning. “It is not of business that I come to kiss the Senora's hand to-day,” he replied, with a melancholy softness; “it is as her neighbor, to put myself at her disposition. Ah! the what have we here for a lady?” he continued, raising his eyes in deprecation of the surroundings; “a house of nothing, a place of winds and dry bones, without refreshments, or satisfaction, or delicacy. The Senora will not refuse to make us proud this day to send her of that which we have in our poor home at Los Gatos, to make her more complete. Of what shall it be? Let her make choice. Or if she would commemorate this day by accepting of our hospitality at Los Gatos, until she shall arrange herself the more to receive us here, we shall have too much honor.”
“The Senora would only find it the more difficult to return to this humble roof again, after once leaving it for Don Jose's hospitality,” said Poindexter, with a demure glance at Mrs. Tucker. But the innuendo seemed to lapse equally unheeded by his fair client and the stranger. Raising her eyes with a certain timid dignity which Don Jose's presence seemed to have called out, she addressed herself to him.
“You are very kind and considerate, Mister Santierra, and I thank you. I know that my husband”—she let the clear beauty of her translucent eyes rest full on both men—“would thank you too. But I shall not be here long enough to accept your kindness in this house or in your own. I have but one desire and object now. It is to dispose of this property, and indeed all I possess, to pay the debt of my husband. It is in your power, perhaps, to help me. I am told that you wish to possess Los Cuervos,” she went on, equally oblivious of the consciousness that appeared in Don Jose's face, and a humorous perplexity on the brow of Poindexter. “If you can arrange it with Mr. Poindexter, you will find me a liberal vendor. That much you can do, and I know you will believe I shall be grateful. You can do no more, unless it be to say to your friends that Mrs. Belle Tucker remains here only for that purpose, and to carry out what she knows to be the wishes of her husband.” She paused, bent her pretty crest, dropped a quaint curtsey to the superior age, the silver braid, and the gentlemanly bearing of Don Jose, and with the passing sunshine of a smile disappeared from the corridor.
The two men remained silent for a moment, Don Jose gazing abstractedly on the door through which she had vanished, until Poindexter, with a return of his tolerant smile, said, “You have heard the views of Mrs. Tucker. You know the situation as well as she does.”
“Ah, yes; possibly better.”
Poindexter darted a quick glance at the grave, sallow face of Don Jose, but detecting no unusual significance in his manner, continued, “As you see, she leaves this matter in my hands. Let us talk like business men. Have you any idea of purchasing this property?”
“Of purchasing, ah, no.”
Poindexter bent his brows, but quickly relaxed them with a smile of humorous forgiveness. “If you have any other idea, Don Jose, I ought to warn you, as Mrs. Tucker's lawyer, that she is in legal possession here, and that nothing but her own act can change that position.”
“Ah, so.”
Irritated at the shrug which accompanied this, Poindexter continued haughtily, “If I am to understand, you have nothing to say—”
“To say, ah, yes, possibly. But”—he glanced toward the door of Mrs. Tucker's room—“not here.” He stopped, appeared to recall himself, and with an apologetic smile and a studied but graceful gesture of invitation, he motioned to the gateway, and said, “Will you ride?”
“What can the fellow be up to?” muttered Poindexter, as with an assenting nod he proceeded to remount his horse. “If he wasn't an old hidalgo, I'd mistrust him. No matter! here goes!”
The Don also remounted his half-broken mustang; they proceeded in solemn silence through the corral, and side by side emerged on the open plain. Poindexter glanced around; no other being was in sight. It was not until the lonely hacienda had also sunk behind them that Don Jose broke the silence.
“You say just now we shall speak as business men. I say no, Don Marco; I will not. I shall speak, we shall speak, as gentlemen.”
“Go on,” said Poindexter, who was beginning to be amused.
“I say just now I will not purchase the rancho from the Senora. And why? Look you, Don Marco;” he reined in his horse, thrust his hand under his serape, and drew out a folded document: “this is why.”
With a smile, Poindexter took the paper from his hand and opened it. But the smile faded from his lips as he read. With blazing eyes he spurred his horse beside the Spaniard, almost unseating him, and said sternly, “What does this mean?”
“What does it mean?” repeated Don Jose, with equally flashing eyes, “I'll tell you. It means that your client, this man Spencer Tucker, is a Judas, a traitor! It means that he gave Los Cuervos to his mistress a year ago, and that she sold it to me—to me, you hear!—ME, Jose Santierra, the day before she left! It means that the coyote of a Spencer, the thief, who bought these lands of a thief, and gave them to a thief, has tricked you all. Look,” he said, rising in his saddle, holding the paper like a baton, and defining with a sweep of his arm the whole level plain, “all these lands were once mine, they are mine again to-day. Do I want to purchase Los Cuervos? you ask, for you will speak of the BUSINESS. Well, listen. I HAVE purchased Los Cuervos, and here is the deed.”
“But it has never been recorded,” said Poindexter, with a carelessness he was far from feeling.
“Of a verity, no. Do you wish that I should record it?” asked Don Jose, with a return of his simple gravity.
Poindexter bit his lip. “You said we were to talk like gentlemen,” he returned. “Do you think you have come into possession of this alleged deed like a gentleman?”
Don Jose shrugged his shoulders. “I found it tossed in the lap of a harlot. I bought it for a song. Eh, what would you?”
“Would you sell it again for a song?” asked Poindexter.
“Ah! what is this?” said Don Jose, lifting his iron-gray brows; “but a moment ago we would sell everything, for any money. Now we would buy. Is it so?”
“One moment, Don Jose,” said Poindexter, with a baleful light in his dark eyes. “Do I understand that you are the ally of Spencer Tucker and his mistress, that you intend to turn this doubly betrayed wife from the only roof she has to cover her?”
“Ah, I comprehend not. You heard her say she wished to go. Perhaps it may please ME to distribute largess to these cattle yonder, I do not say no. More she does not ask. But YOU, Don Marco, of whom are you advocate? You abandon your client's mistress for the wife, is it so?”
“What I may do you will learn hereafter,” said Poindexter, who had regained his composure, suddenly reining up his horse. “As our paths seem likely to diverge, they had better begin now. Good morning.”
“Patience, my friend, patience! Ah, blessed St. Anthony, what these Americans are! Listen. For what YOU shall do, I do not inquire. The question is to me what I”—he emphasized the pronoun by tapping himself on the breast—“I, Jose Santierra, will do. Well, I shall tell you. To-day, nothing. To-morrow, nothing. For a week, for a month, nothing! After, we shall see.”
Poindexter paused thoughtfully. “Will you give your word, Don Jose, that you will not press the claim for a month?”
“Truly, on one condition. Observe! I do not ask you for an equal promise, that you will not take this time to defend yourself.” He shrugged his shoulders. “No! It is only this. You shall promise that during that time the Senora Tucker shall remain ignorant of this document.”
Poindexter hesitated a moment. “I promise,” he said at last.
“Good. Adios, Don Marco.”
“Adios, Don Jose.”
The Spaniard put spurs to his mustang and galloped off in the direction of Los Gatos. The lawyer remained for a moment gazing on his retreating but victorious figure. For the first time the old look of humorous toleration with which Mr. Poindexter was in the habit of regarding all human infirmity gave way to something like bitterness. “I might have guessed it,” he said, with a slight rise of color. “He's an old fool; and she—well, perhaps it's all the better for her!” He glanced backwards almost tenderly in the direction of Los Cuervos, and then turned his head towards the embarcadero.
As the afternoon wore on, a creaking, antiquated ox-cart arrived at Los Cuervos, bearing several articles of furniture, and some tasteful ornaments from Los Gatos, at the same time that a young Mexican girl mysteriously appeared in the kitchen, as a temporary assistant to the decrepit Concha. These were both clearly attributable to Don Jose, whose visit was not so remote but that these delicate attentions might have been already projected before Mrs. Tucker had declined them, and she could not, without marked discourtesy, return them now. She did not wish to seem discourteous; she would like to have been more civil to this old gentleman, who still retained the evidences of a picturesque and decorous past, and a repose so different from the life that was perplexing her. Reflecting that if he bought the estate these things would be ready to his hand, and with a woman's instinct recognizing their value in setting off the house to other purchasers' eyes, she took a pleasure in tastefully arranging them, and even found herself speculating how she might have enjoyed them herself had she been able to keep possession of the property. After all, it would not have been so lonely if refined and gentle neighbors, like this old man, would have sympathized with her; she had an instinctive feeling that, in their own hopeless decay and hereditary unfitness for this new civilization, they would have been more tolerant of her husband's failure than his own kind. She could not believe that Don Jose really hated her husband for buying of the successful claimant, as there was no other legal title. Allowing herself to become interested in the guileless gossip of the new handmaiden, proud of her broken English, she was drawn into a sympathy with the grave simplicity of Don Jose's character, a relic of that true nobility which placed this descendant of the Castilians and the daughter of a free people on the same level.
In this way the second day of her occupancy of Los Cuervos closed, with dumb clouds along the gray horizon, and the paroxysms of hysterical wind growing fainter and fainter outside the walls; with the moon rising after nightfall, and losing itself in silent and mysterious confidences with drifting scud. She went to bed early, but woke past midnight, hearing, as she thought, her own name called. The impression was so strong upon her that she rose, and, hastily enwrapping herself, went to the dark embrasures of the oven-shaped windows, and looked out. The dwarfed oak beside the window was still dropping from a past shower, but the level waste of marsh and meadow beyond seemed to advance and recede with the coming and going of the moon. Again she heard her name called, and this time in accents so strangely familiar that with a slight cry she ran into the corridor, crossed the patio, and reached the open gate. The darkness that had, even in this brief interval, again fallen upon the prospect she tried in vain to pierce with eye and voice. A blank silence followed. Then the veil was suddenly withdrawn; the vast plain, stretching from the mountain to the sea, shone as clearly as in the light of day; the moving current of the channel glittered like black pearls, the stagnant pools like molten lead; but not a sign of life nor motion broke the monotony of the broad expanse. She must have surely dreamed it. A chill wind drove her back to the house again; she entered her bedroom, and in half an hour she was in a peaceful sleep.
The two men kept their secret. Mr. Poindexter convinced Mrs. Tucker that the sale of Los Cuervos could not be effected until the notoriety of her husband's flight had been fairly forgotten, and she was forced to accept her fate. The sale of her diamonds, which seemed to her to have realized a singularly extravagant sum, enabled her to quietly reinstate the Pattersons in the tienda and to discharge in full her husband's liabilities to the rancheros and his humbler retainers.
Meanwhile the winter rains had ceased. It seemed to her as if the clouds had suddenly one night struck their white tents and stolen away, leaving the unvanquished sun to mount the vacant sky the next morning alone, and possess it thenceforward unchallenged. One afternoon she thought the long sad waste before her window had caught some tint of gayer color from the sunset; a week later she found it a blazing landscape of poppies, broken here and there by blue lagoons of lupine, by pools of daisies, by banks of dog-roses, by broad outlying shores of dandelions that scattered their lavish gold to the foot of the hills, where the green billows of wild oats carried it on and upwards to the darker crest of pines. For two months she was dazzled and bewildered with color. She had never before been face to face with this spendthrift Californian Flora, in her virgin wastefulness, her more than goddess-like prodigality. The teeming earth seemed to quicken and throb beneath her feet; the few circuits of a plough around the outlying corral were enough to call out a jungle growth of giant grain that almost hid the low walls of the hacienda. In this glorious fecundity of the earth, in this joyous renewal of life and color, in this opulent youth and freshness of soil and sky, it alone remained, the dead and sterile Past, left in the midst of buoyant rejuvenescence and resurrection, like an empty churchyard skull upturned on the springing turf. Its bronzed adobe walls mocked the green vine that embraced them, the crumbling dust of its courtyard remained ungerminating and unfruitful; to the thousand stirring voices without, its dry lips alone remained mute, unresponsive and unchanged.
During this time Don Jose had become a frequent visitor at Los Cuervos, bringing with him at first his niece and sister in a stately precision of politeness that was not lost on the proud Blue Grass stranger. She returned their visit at Los Gatos, and there made the formal acquaintance of Don Jose's grandmother, a lady who still regarded the decrepit Concha as a giddy muchacha, and who herself glittered as with the phosphorescence of refined decay. Through this circumstance she learned that Don Jose was not yet fifty, and that his gravity of manner and sedateness was more the result of fastidious isolation and temperament than years. She could not tell why the information gave her a feeling of annoyance, but it caused her to regret the absence of Poindexter, and to wonder, also somewhat nervously, why he had lately avoided her presence. The thought that he might be doing so from a recollection of the innuendoes of Mrs. Patterson caused a little tremor of indignation in her pulses. “As if—” but she did not finish the sentence even to herself, and her eyes filled with bitter tears.
Yet she had thought of the husband who had so cruelly wronged her less feverishly, less impatiently than before. For she thought she loved him now the more deeply, because, although she was not reconciled to his absence, it seemed to keep alive the memory of what he had been before his one wild act separated them. She had never seen the reflection of another woman's eyes in his; the past contained no haunting recollection of waning or alienated affection; she could meet him again, and, clasping her arms around him, awaken as if from a troubled dream without reproach or explanation. Her strong belief in this made her patient; she no longer sought to know the particulars of his flight, and never dreamed that her passive submission to his absence was partly due to a fear that something in his actual presence at that moment would have destroyed that belief forever.
For this reason the delicate reticence of the people at Los Gatos, and their seclusion from the world which knew of her husband's fault, had made her encourage the visits of Don Jose, until from the instinct already alluded to she one day summoned Poindexter to Los Cuervos, on the day that Don Jose usually called. But to her surprise the two men met more or less awkwardly and coldly, and her tact as hostess was tried to the utmost to keep their evident antagonism from being too apparent. The effort to reconcile their mutual discontent, and some other feeling she did not quite understand, produced a nervous excitement which called the blood to her cheek and gave a dangerous brilliancy to her eyes, two circumstances not unnoticed nor unappreciated by her two guests. But instead of reuniting them, the prettier Mrs. Tucker became, the more distant and reserved grew the men, until Don Jose rose before the usual hour, and with more than usual ceremoniousness departed.
“Then my business does not seem to be with HIM?” said Poindexter, with quiet coolness, as Mrs. Tucker turned her somewhat mystified face towards him. “Or have you anything to say to me about him in private?”
“I am sure I don't know what you both mean,” she returned with a slight tremor of voice. “I had no idea you were not on good terms. I thought you were! It's very awkward.” Without coquetry and unconsciously she raised her blue eyes under her lids until the clear pupils coyly and softly hid themselves in the corners of the brown lashes, and added, “You have both been so kind to me.”
“Perhaps that is the reason,” said Poindexter, gravely. But Mrs. Tucker refused to accept the suggestion with equal gravity, and began to laugh. The laugh, which was at first frank, spontaneous, and almost child-like, was becoming hysterical and nervous as she went on, until it was suddenly checked by Poindexter.
“I have had no difficulties with Don Jose Santierra,” he said, somewhat coldly ignoring her hilarity, “but perhaps he is not inclined to be as polite to the friend of the husband as he is to the wife.”
“Mr. Poindexter!” said Mrs. Tucker quickly, her face becoming pale again.
“I beg your pardon!” said Poindexter, flushing; “but—”
“You want to say,” she interrupted coolly, “that you are not friends, I see. Is that the reason why you have avoided this house?” she continued gently.
“I thought I could be of more service to you elsewhere,” he replied evasively. “I have been lately following up a certain clue rather closely. I think I am on the track of a confidante of—of—that woman.”
A quick shadow passed over Mrs. Tucker's face. “Indeed!” she said coldly. “Then I am to believe that you prefer to spend your leisure moments in looking after that creature to calling here?”
Poindexter was stupefied. Was this the woman who only four months ago was almost vindictively eager to pursue her husband's paramour! There could be but one answer to it—Don Jose! Four months ago he would have smiled compassionately at it from his cynical pre-eminence. Now he managed with difficulty to stifle the bitterness of his reply.
“If you do not wish the inquiry carried on,” he began, “of course—”
“I? What does it matter to me?” she said coolly. “Do as you please.”
Nevertheless, half an hour later, as he was leaving, she said, with a certain hesitating timidity, “Do not leave me so much alone here, and let that woman go.”
This was not the only unlooked-for sequel to her innocent desire to propitiate her best friends. Don Jose did not call again upon his usual day, but in his place came Dona Clara, his younger sister. When Mrs. Tucker had politely asked after the absent Don Jose, Dona Clara wound her swarthy arms around the fair American's waist and replied, “But why did you send for the abogado Poindexter when my brother called?”
“But Captain Poindexter calls as one of my friends,” said the amazed Mrs. Tucker. “He is a gentleman, and has been a soldier and an officer,” she added with some warmth.
“Ah, yes, a soldier of the law, what you call an oficial de policia, a chief of gendarmes, my sister, but not a gentleman—a camarero to protect a lady.”
Mrs. Tucker would have uttered a hasty reply, but the perfect and good-natured simplicity of Dona Clara withheld her. Nevertheless, she treated Don Jose with a certain reserve at their next meeting, until it brought the simple-minded Castilian so dangerously near the point of demanding an explanation which implied too much that she was obliged to restore him temporarily to his old footing. Meantime she had a brilliant idea. She would write to Calhoun Weaver, whom she had avoided since that memorable day. She would say she wished to consult him. He would come to Los Cuervos; he might suggest something to lighten this weary waiting; at least she would show them all that she had still old friends. Yet she did not dream of returning to her Blue Grass home; her parents had died since she left; she shrank from the thought of dragging her ruined life before the hopeful youth of her girlhood's companions.
Mr. Calhoun Weaver arrived promptly, ostentatiously, oracularly, and cordially, but a little coarsely. He had—did she remember?—expected this from the first. Spencer had lost his head through vanity, and had attempted too much. It required foresight and firmness, as he himself—who had lately made successful “combinations” which she might perhaps have heard of—well knew. But Spencer had got the “big head.” “As to that woman—a devilish handsome woman too!—well, everybody knew that Spencer always had a weakness that way, and he would say—but if she didn't care to hear any more about her—well, perhaps she was right. That was the best way to take it.” Sitting before her, prosperous, weak, egotistical, incompetent, unavailable, and yet filled with a vague kindliness of intent, Mrs. Tucker loathed him. A sickening perception of her own weakness in sending for him, a new and aching sense of her utter isolation and helplessness, seemed to paralyze her.
“Nat'rally you feel bad,” he continued, with the large air of a profound student of human nature. “Nat'rally, nat'rally you're kept in an uncomfortable state, not knowing jist how you stand. There ain't but one thing to do. Jist rise up, quiet like, and get a divorce agin Spencer. Hold on! There ain't a judge or jury in California that wouldn't give it to you right off the nail, without asking questions. Why, you 'ld get it by default if you wanted to; you 'ld just have to walk over the course! And then, Belle,” he drew his chair still nearer her, “when you've settled down again—well!—I don't mind renewing that offer I once made ye, before Spencer ever came round ye—I don't mind, Belle, I swear I don't! Honest Injin! I'm in earnest, there's my hand!”
Mrs. Tucker's reply has not been recorded. Enough that half an hour later Mr. Weaver appeared in the courtyard with traces of tears on his foolish face, a broken falsetto voice, and other evidence of mental and moral disturbance. His cordiality and oracular predisposition remained sufficiently to enable him to suggest the magical words “Blue Grass” mysteriously to Concha, with an indication of his hand to the erect figure of her pale mistress in the doorway, who waved to him a silent but half-compassionate farewell.
At about this time a slight change in her manner was noticed by the few who saw her more frequently. Her apparently invincible girlishness of spirit had given way to a certain matronly seriousness. She applied herself to her household cares and the improvement of the hacienda with a new sense of duty and a settled earnestness, until by degrees she wrought into it not only her instinctive delicacy and taste, but part of her own individuality. Even the rude rancheros and tradesmen who were permitted to enter the walls in the exercise of their calling began to speak mysteriously of the beauty of this garden of the almarjal. She went out but seldom, and then accompanied by the one or the other of her female servants, in long drives on unfrequented roads. On Sundays she sometimes drove to the half-ruined mission church of Santa Inez, and hid herself, during mass, in the dim monastic shadows of the choir. Gradually the poorer people whom she met in these journeys began to show an almost devotional reverence for her, stopping in the roads with uncovered heads for her to pass, or making way for her in the tienda or plaza of the wretched town with dumb courtesy. She began to feel a strange sense of widowhood, that, while it at times brought tears to her eyes, was, not without a certain tender solace. In the sympathy and simpleness of this impulse she went as far as to revive the mourning she had worn for her parents, but with such a fatal accenting of her beauty, and dangerous misinterpreting of her condition to eligible bachelors strange to the country, that she was obliged to put it off again. Her reserve and dignified manner caused others to mistake her nationality for that of the Santierras, and in “Dona Bella” the simple Mrs. Tucker was for a while forgotten. At times she even forgot it herself. Accustomed now almost entirely to the accents of another language and the features of another race, she would sit for hours in the corridor, whose massive bronzed inclosure even her tasteful care could only make an embowered mausoleum of the Past, or gaze abstractedly from the dark embrasures of her windows across the stretching almarjal to the shining lagoon beyond that terminated the estuary. She had a strange fondness for this tranquil mirror, which under sun or stars always retained the passive reflex of the sky above, and seemed to rest her weary eyes. She had objected to one of the plans projected by Poindexter to redeem the land and deepen the water at the embarcadero, as it would have drained the lagoon, and the lawyer had postponed the improvement to gratify her fancy. So she kept it through the long summer unchanged save by the shadows of passing wings or the lazy files of sleeping sea-fowl.
On one of these afternoons she noticed a slowly moving carriage leave the high road and cross the almarjal skirting the edge of the lagoon. If it contained visitors for Los Cuervos they had evidently taken a shorter cut without waiting to go on to the regular road which intersected the highway at right angles a mile farther on. It was with some sense of annoyance and irritation that she watched the trespass, and finally saw the vehicle approach the house. A few moments later the servant informed her that Mr. Patterson would like to see her alone. When she entered the corridor, which in the dry season served as a reception hall, she was surprised to see that Patterson was not alone. Near him stood a well-dressed handsome woman, gazing about her with good-humored admiration of Mrs. Tucker's taste and ingenuity.
“It don't look much like it did two years ago,” said the stranger cheerfully. “You've improved it wonderfully.”
Stiffening slightly, Mrs. Tucker turned inquiringly to Mr. Patterson. But that gentleman's usual profound melancholy appeared to be intensified by the hilarity of his companion. He only sighed deeply and rubbed his leg with the brim of his hat in gloomy abstraction.
“Well! go on, then,” said the woman, laughing and nudging him. “Go on—introduce me—can't you? Don't stand there like a tombstone. You won't? Well, I'll introduce myself.” She laughed again, and then, with an excellent imitation of Patterson's lugubrious accents, said, “Mr. Spencer Tucker's wife that IS, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Spencer Tucker's sweetheart that WAS! Hold on! I said THAT WAS. For true as I stand here, ma'am—and I reckon I wouldn't stand here if it wasn't true—I haven't set eyes on him since the day he left you.”
“It's the Gospel truth, every word,” said Patterson, stirred into a sudden activity by Mrs. Tucker's white and rigid face. “It's the frozen truth, and I kin prove it. For I kin swear that when that there young woman was sailin' outer the Golden Gate, Spencer Tucker was in my bar room; I kin swear that I fed him, lickered him, give him a hoss and set him in his road to Monterey that very night.”
“Then, where is he now?” said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly facing them.
They looked at each other, and then looked at Mrs. Tucker. Then both together replied slowly and in perfect unison, “That's—what—we—want—to—know.” They seemed so satisfied with this effect that they as deliberately repeated, “Yes—that's—what—we—want—to—know.”
Between the shock of meeting the partner of her husband's guilt and the unexpected revelation to her inexperience, that in suggestion and appearance there was nothing beyond the recollection of that guilt that was really shocking in the woman—between the extravagant extremes of hope and fear suggested by their words, there was something so grotesquely absurd in the melodramatic chorus that she with difficulty suppressed a hysterical laugh.
“That's the way to take it,” said the woman, putting her own good-humored interpretation upon Mrs. Tucker's expression. “Now, look here! I'll tell you all about it.” She carefully selected the most comfortable chair, and sitting down, lightly crossed her hands in her lap. “Well, I left here on the 13th of last January on the ship Argo, calculating that your husband would join the ship just inside the Heads. That was our arrangement, but if anything happened to prevent him, he was to join me in Acapulco. Well! He didn't come aboard, and we sailed without him. But it appears now he did attempt to join the ship, but his boat was capsized. There, now, don't be alarmed! he wasn't drowned, as Patterson can swear to—no, catch HIM! not a hair of him was hurt; but I—I was bundled off to the end of the earth in Mexico, alone, without a cent to bless me. For true as you live, that hound of a captain, when he found, as he thought, that Spencer was nabbed, he just confiscated all his trunks and valuables and left me in the lurch. If I hadn't met a man down there that offered to marry me and brought me here, I might have died there, I reckon. But I did, and here I am. I went down there as your husband's sweetheart, I've come back as the wife of an honest man, and I reckon it's about square!”
There was something so startlingly frank, so hopelessly self-satisfied, so contagiously good-humored in the woman's perfect moral unconsciousness, that even if Mrs. Tucker had been less preoccupied her resentment would have abated. But her eyes were fixed on the gloomy face of Patterson, who was beginning to unlock the sepulchres of his memory and disinter his deeply buried thoughts.
“You kin bet your whole pile on what this Mrs. Capting Baxter—ez used to be French Inez of New Orleans—hez told ye. Ye kin take everything she's unloaded. And it's only doin' the square thing to her to say, she hain't done it out o' no cussedness, but just to satisfy herself, now she's a married woman and past such foolishness. But that ain't neither here nor there. The gist of the whole matter is that Spencer Tucker was at the tienda the day after she sailed and after his boat capsized.” He then gave a detailed account of the interview, with the unnecessary but truthful minutiae of his class, adding to the particulars already known that the following week he visited the Summit House and was surprised to find that Spencer had never been there, nor had he ever sailed from Monterey.
“But why was this not told to me before?” said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly. “Why not at the time? Why,” she demanded almost fiercely, turning from the one to the other, “has this been kept from me?”
“I'll tell ye why,” said Patterson, sinking with crushed submission into a chair. “When I found he wasn't where he ought to be, I got to lookin' elsewhere. I knew the track of the hoss I lent him by a loose shoe. I examined; and found he had turned off the high road somewhere beyond the lagoon, jist as if he was makin' a bee line here.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Tucker, breathlessly.
“Well,” said Patterson, with the resigned tone of an accustomed martyr, “mebbe I'm a God-forsaken idiot, but I reckon he DID come yer. And mebbe I'm that much of a habitooal lunatic, but thinking so, I calkilated you'ld know it without tellin'.”
With their eyes fixed upon her, Mrs. Tucker felt the quick blood rush to her cheeks, although she knew not why. But they were apparently satisfied with her ignorance, for Patterson resumed, yet more gloomily:—
“Then if he wasn't hidin' here beknownst to you, he must have changed his mind agin and got away by the embarcadero. The only thing wantin' to prove that idea is to know how he got a boat, and what he did with the hoss. And thar's one more idea, and ez that can't be proved,” continued Patterson, sinking his voice still lower, “mebbe it's accordin' to God's laws.”
Unsympathetic to her as the speaker had always been and still was, Mrs. Tucker felt a vague chill creep over her that seemed to be the result of his manner more than his words. “And that idea is . . . ?” she suggested with pale lips.
“It's this! Fust, I don't say it means much to anybody but me. I've heard of these warnings afore now, ez comin' only to folks ez hear them for themselves alone, and I reckon I kin stand it, if it's the will o' God. The idea is then—that—Spencer Tucker—WAS DROWNDED in that boat; the idea is”—his voice was almost lost in a hoarse whisper—“that it was no living man that kem to me that night, but a spirit that kem out of the darkness and went back into it! No eye saw him but mine—no ears heard him but mine. I reckon it weren't intended it should.” He paused, and passed the flap of his hat across his eyes. “The pie, you'll say, is agin it,” he continued in the same tone of voice,—“the whiskey is agin it—a few cuss words that dropped from him, accidental like, may have been agin it. All the same they mout have been only the little signs and tokens that it was him.”
But Mrs. Baxter's ready laugh somewhat rudely dispelled the infection of Patterson's gloom. “I reckon the only spirit was that which you and Spencer consumed,” she said, cheerfully. “I don't wonder you're a little mixed. Like as not you've misunderstood his plans.” Patterson shook his head. “He'll turn up yet, alive and kicking! Like as not, then, Poindexter knows where he is all the time.”
“Impossible! He would have told me,” said Mrs. Tucker, quickly.
Mrs. Baxter looked at Patterson without speaking. Patterson replied by a long lugubrious whistle.
“I don't understand you,” said Mrs. Tucker, drawing back with cold dignity.
“You don't?” returned Mrs. Baxter. “Bless your innocent heart! Why was he so keen to hunt me up at first, shadowing my friends and all that, and why has he dropped it now he knows I'm here, if he didn't know where Spencer was?”
“I can explain that,” interrupted Mrs. Tucker, hastily, with a blush of confusion. “That is—I—”
“Then mebbe you kin explain too,” broke in Patterson with gloomy significance, “why he has bought up most of Spencer's debts himself, and perhaps you're satisfied it ISN'T to hold the whip hand of him and keep him from coming back openly. Pr'aps you know why he's movin' heaven and earth to make Don Jose Santierra sell the ranch, and why the Don don't see it all.”
“Don Jose sell Los Cuervos! Buy it, you mean?” said Mrs. Tucker. “I offered to sell it to him.”
Patterson arose from the chair, looked despairingly around him, passed his hand sadly across his forehead, and said: “It's come! I knew it would. It's the warning! It's suthing betwixt jim-jams and doddering idjiocy. Here I'd hev been willin' to swear that Mrs. Baxter here told me SHE had sold this yer ranch nearly two years ago to Don Jose, and now you—”
“Stop!” said Mrs. Tucker, in a voice that chilled them.
She was standing upright and rigid, as if stricken to stone. “I command you to tell me what this means!” she said, turning only her blazing eyes upon the woman.
Even the ready smile faded from Mrs. Baxter's lips as she replied hesitatingly and submissively: “I thought you knew already that Spencer had given this ranch to me. I sold it to Don Jose to get the money for us to go away with. It was Spencer's idea—”
“You lie!” said Mrs. Tucker.
There was a dead silence. The wrathful blood that had quickly mounted to Mrs. Baxter's cheek, to Patterson's additional bewilderment, faded as quickly. She did not lift her eyes again to Mrs. Tucker's, but, slowly raising herself from her seat, said, “I wish to God I did lie; but it's true. And it's true that I never touched a cent of the money, but gave it all to him!” She laid her hand on Patterson's arm, and said, “Come! let us go,” and led him a few steps towards the gateway. But here Patterson paused, and again passed his hand over his melancholy brow. The necessity of coherently and logically closing the conversation impressed itself upon his darkening mind. “Then you don't happen to have heard anything of Spencer?” he said sadly, and vanished with Mrs. Baxter through the gate.
Left alone to herself, Mrs. Tucker raised her hands above her head with a little cry, interlocked her rigid fingers, and slowly brought her palms down upon her upturned face and eyes, pressing hard as if to crush out all light and sense of life before her. She stood thus for a moment motionless and silent, with the rising wind whispering without and flecking her white morning dress with gusty shadows from the arbor. Then, with closed eyes, dropping her hands to her breast, still pressing hard, she slowly passed them down the shapely contours of her figure to the waist, and with another cry cast them off as if she were stripping herself of some loathsome garment. Then she walked quickly to the gateway, looked out, returned to the corridor, unloosening and taking off her wedding-ring from her finger as she walked. Here she paused, then slowly and deliberately rearranged the chairs and adjusted the gay-colored rugs that draped them, and quietly re-entered her chamber.
Two days afterwards the sweating steed of Captain Poindexter was turned loose in the corral, and a moment later the captain entered the corridor. Handing a letter to the decrepit Concha, who seemed to be utterly disorganized by its contents, and the few curt words with which it was delivered, he gazed silently upon the vacant bower, still fresh and redolent with the delicacy and perfume of its graceful occupant, until his dark eyes filled with unaccustomed moisture. But his reverie was interrupted by the sound of jingling spurs without, and the old humor struggled back in his eyes as Don Jose impetuously entered. The Spaniard started back, but instantly recovered himself.
“So I find you here. Ah! it is well!” he said passionately, producing a letter from his bosom. “Look! Do you call this honor? Look how you keep your compact!”
Poindexter coolly took the letter. It contained a few words of gentle dignity from Mrs. Tucker, informing Don Jose that she had only that instant learned of his just claims upon Los Cuervos, tendering him her gratitude for his delicate intentions, but pointing out with respectful firmness that he must know that a moment's further acceptance of his courtesy was impossible.
“She has gained this knowledge from no word of mine,” said Poindexter, calmly. “Right or wrong, I have kept my promise to you. I have as much reason to accuse you of betraying my secret in this,” he added coldly, as he took another letter from his pocket and handed it to Don Jose.
It seemed briefer and colder, but was neither. It reminded Poindexter that as he had again deceived her she must take the government of her affairs in her own hands henceforth. She abandoned all the furniture and improvements she had put in Los Cuervos to him, to whom she now knew she was indebted for them. She could not thank him for what his habitual generosity impelled him to do for any woman, but she could forgive him for misunderstanding her like any other woman, perhaps she should say, like a child. When he received this she would be already on her way to her old home in Kentucky, where she still hoped to be able by her own efforts to amass enough to discharge her obligations to him.
“She does not speak of her husband, this woman,” said Don Jose, scanning Poindexter's face. “It is possible she rejoins him, eh?”
“Perhaps in one way she has never left him, Don Jose,” said Poindexter, with grave significance.
Don Jose's face flushed, but he returned carelessly, “And the rancho, naturally you will not buy it now?”
“On the contrary, I shall abide by my offer,” said Poindexter, quietly.
Don Jose eyed him narrowly, and then said, “Ah, we shall consider of it.”
He did consider it, and accepted the offer. With the full control of the land, Captain Poindexter's improvements, so indefinitely postponed, were actively pushed forward. The thick walls of the hacienda were the first to melt away before them; the low lines of corral were effaced, and the early breath of the summer trade winds swept uninterruptedly across the now leveled plain to the embarcadero, where a newer structure arose. A more vivid green alone marked the spot where the crumbling adobe walls of the casa had returned to the parent soil that gave it. The channel was deepened, the lagoon was drained, until one evening the magic mirror that had so long reflected the weary waiting of the Blue Grass Penelope lay dull, dead, lustreless, an opaque quagmire of noisome corruption and decay to be put away from the sight of man forever. On this spot the crows, the titular tenants of Los Cuervos, assembled in tumultuous congress, coming and going in mysterious clouds, or laboring in thick and writhing masses, as if they were continuing the work of improvement begun by human agency. So well had they done the work that by the end of a week only a few scattered white objects remained glittering on the surface of the quickly drying soil. But they were the bones of the missing outcast, Spencer Tucker!
The same spring a breath of war swept over a foul, decaying quagmire of the whole land, before which such passing deeds as these were blown as vapor. It called men of all rank and condition to battle for a nation's life, and among the first to respond were those into whose boyish hands had been placed the nation's honor. It returned the epaulets to Poindexter's shoulder with the addition of a double star, carried him triumphantly to the front, and left him, at the end of a summer's day and a hard-won fight, sorely wounded, at the door of a Blue Grass farmhouse. And the woman who sought him out and ministered to his wants said timidly, as she left her hand in his, “I told you I should live to repay you.”