education than both your other sisters together ever cost me; and now
here comes this young fellow and tells me, as coolly as you please, that
you are engaged to him, and the like nonsense. Engaged, indeed; you are
not eighteen yet, and he hasn't got a cent to his name. I thought I had
brought up my children to love me at least, if I cannot compel them to
obedience; and if you, Lola, go off and leave me in my old age--go away
from my house with a beggar--you who have been petted and spoiled; you
on whom I had built the hopes of my declining years, you will never
darken my doors again, but live a beggar and an outcast forever away
from your parents' home."
Mrs. Wheaton had approached the group, and Charlie turned to her.
"It is not as a poor man that I claim your daughter for my bride; see, I
am rich--worth a hundred thousand this moment," he drew a package of
papers from his pocket; "and I have the ambition and the power to amass
a fortune, and place your daughter where she will never miss the
comforts and luxuries of her childhood's home."
He stepped over to where Mr. Wheaton stood listening in incredulous
silence to what the young man said.
"And may I ask from where this fabulous wealth springs so suddenly?" he
asked, breaking the silence.
"I own to having tried my luck, against the strict advice and wish of my
employers, in mining speculations. The venture has proved successful. I
say nothing in extenuation of the fault--if fault I have
committed--save that I wanted to offer to Lola a home which should not
be too great a contrast to her father's house. Old Bingham--"
"Old Bingham," interrupted Mr. Wheaton, purple in the face; "and the
name of the mine?"
"The Golden Lamp," answered Charlie, proudly, holding up for Mr.
Wheaton's inspection the papers he had drawn from his pocket.
"Lola!" shouted Mr. Wheaton in his shrillest tones, seizing the girl by
the arm and dragging her away from Charlie's side, as if the young man
had been afflicted with a sudden leprosy, "come to me, my child. He's a
beggar, I tell you--a beggar and worse; for all his friends will turn
from him for his indiscretion. The whole thing is a gull; there isn't
gold enough in the mine to show the color. Here's the paper. Where did
you have your eyes this morning?"
Charlie stood like one paralyzed; his fingers clutched tighter the roll
of papers in his hand, and he gazed with a strange, bewildered stare
into Lola's eyes, as though trying hard to understand what the dreadful
things he heard meant. Lola seemed to comprehend quicker, and the look
she bent on Charlie was full of tender pity, as she watched the lines
that black, hopeless despair was writing on his face. Mrs. Wheaton had
snatched the paper from her husband's hand and was reading:
"The chosen few who thought that for once they could fleece the golden
lamb driven quietly into a little corner for their own benefit, have
come out leaving their own wool behind. We are speaking of the Golden
Lamb Mine, which was to have been paraded in the market about the first
of January, to lead astray with its deceptive glitter all who were
foolish enough to believe without seeing. The few shares that had
already been disposed of 'to strictly confidential friends,' by the
shrewd managers of the concern, have gone down from five hundred dollars
to five dollars, at which figure they went begging late in the afternoon
yesterday, no one having confidence in a swindle so promptly and
completely exposed."
"Lola," it was Charles's voice, but so changed and broken that Mrs.
Wheaton dropped the paper to look into his face.
Lola sprang to his side, and he groped for her hand as though its
slender strength could uphold the man who but an hour before looked able
to move mountains from their place. Blindness seemed to have fallen on
his eyes, for he repeated the call when the girl stood close beside him.
"My darling," she murmured, seizing the hand that was still seeking
hers, and, heedless of her mother's presence or her father's wild
gestures, she pressed the icy fingers to her lips, breathing broken
words of love and comfort into Charlie's ear.
"Lola!" the name again rang through the room; it was her mother's cry,
and the sharp terror in it struck like a knife to the girl's heart,
"your father--quick! Would you kill him? Do you not see--he is dying!
Oh, my child, my child, cast off everything, but do not load your soul
with his death! God help me to guide you." There was something in the
woman's eye that spoke of more than alarm at the symptoms of an
approaching attack, such as she had always feared for the father of her
children.
She had never loved this man with the absorbing passion of which her
heart was capable; but as she knelt by his side, giving him every aid in
her power in a frenzied, hurried manner, so different from her usual
placid ways, her wide-opened eyes seemed to look back through the
shadows and mists of long, dreary years, and she spoke wildly and
rapidly to her child.
"Oh, Lola! don't blacken your soul with this crime--I too loaded the
curse on me; I have borne it for years--and all the useless remorse,
the vain, bitter regrets. Give up all you hold dear in life, but do not,
do not try to find your way to happiness over the stricken form of your
father!"
Lola shook like a reed in the storm, and breaking away from Charlie she
knelt by her mother's side.
"Father!" she pleaded, "father, speak to me--call me your pet
again--your dearest child; see me--I will never, never leave you,
father, only speak to me once again."
No one heeded Charlie, and he staggered from the house, muttering
between his clinched teeth:
"So they will all turn from me--and she was the first."
Hours passed ere the old man found speech and consciousness again; and
the physician who had been summoned shook his head warningly. "It was a
narrow escape," he said; "careful, old man, careful. What is it the
Bible, or some other good book says--'let not your angry passions rise?'
Who's been vexing you?"
Lola, his special favorite, whose eyes he had seen opening on the light
of this world, was not present, or her ghastly face might have prevented
him from asking the question.
Mrs. Wheaton was again the quiet, sad-faced woman, solicitous only for
the comfort and well-doing of the man who had been to her the most
indulgent of husbands. It was hard to say what was passing in her heart;
perhaps the crater had long since burned out, and the silver threads
running through her raven hair was the snow that had gathered on the
cold ashes. For Lola there was neither rest nor sleep, and she insisted
on watching through the night by her father's bedside, though assured
that there was no necessity for keeping watch.
Early the next morning she went out, not clandestinely, but with a
determined step and an expression in her eye than which nothing could be
more sad and hopeless. She returned after many hours, and though her
eyes had lost none of their dreary expression, there seemed to be some
purpose written in them that could also be traced in the lines drawn
since yesterday about the firmly closed mouth. Her mother, concealed by
the heavy curtains drawn back from the window, watched her gloomily as
she passed through the room gathering up some music that lay scattered
on the piano, as though she meant never to touch its ivory keys again.
"Ah, me!" she sighed, "she is young to learn the bitter lesson: that
those who have a heart must crush out its love before they can go
through life in peace! Dolores--it seemed like an atonement to call her
so; but would I had not given her the fatal name. God will help her to
forget--as He has given me peace."
The darkening eyes, straying far out over the waters, seemed for a
moment ready to belie the boast of her lips, so restless and uneasy was
their light; but the discipline of half a lifetime asserted its power,
and she went from the room, calm and self-possessed as ever.
Little did she dream of the cause of what she deemed Lola's
uncomplaining resignation. The girl had seen her lover, and, unspeakably
wretched as he was, she could say no word to comfort him, but held his
hand in hers, with all the love her heart contained beaming from her
glorious eyes. Only once did he clasp her to his heart in a passionate
embrace: she had sealed the promise to be his, with a kiss. They would
enter on their new life together at the beginning of the year. They
would be wedded to each other on New-Year day--but the priest who
received their vows should be Death, and their marriage-bed the bottom
of the bay.
Charlie's name was never mentioned in the Wheaton mansion; the events of
Christmas morning seemed banished from the memory of the three people
who had participated in them. There was nothing to indicate that a
change of any kind had taken place or was likely to take place. Once
only in the course of the week Miss Fanny remarked laughingly, that she
thought Lola was preparing to elope, because all her books, dresses, and
trinkets were so neatly packed together. But as no one seemed to join in
Miss Fanny's pleasantry, the young lady betook herself to her usual
pastime--the novel and the lounge.
During the week the weather changed, and heavy storms swept over land
and sea, stirring to the depths the waters on which Lola gazed for many
a half hour with a kind of stony satisfaction. She had not seen Charlie
since the first day of the week, and she often muttered to herself, "Far
better death than a life without my love."
At last New-Year's morning dawned clear and bright, like a morning in
early spring. At an early hour the Wheaton mansion became the scene of
great rejoicing. There was a vigorous pull at the bell, and when the
door was opened a robust young fellow made his way very unceremoniously
into the breakfast-room, and a fresh Irish voice with its rich brogue
burst out:
"Plaize, mam, and it's a splendid b'y; and nurse says I'm not to stay a
minit, but you're to come right aff."
Mr. Wheaton threatened to go off with joy this time, his face turned so
red.
"A boy, mother--think of that!" he shouted, forgetting for once in his
life what he deemed his dignity, and for the first time calling his wife
anything but Mrs. Wheaton in the presence of strangers or servants.
"Pat, my boy, here's something to drink his health [Thank'ee, sur;--and
it's a half aigle, shure], but not now; mind you, go right back and stay
there till I come, or I'll skin you alive."
After this unprecedentedly familiar and jocular speech, he turned Pat
out of doors, kissed his wife frantically and rushed up-stairs to dress,
as though the boy's life and safety depended on his taking immediate
charge of him. In the meantime the door-bell had been rung again, and
Mr. Wheaton stopped when halfway up the stairs, there was something so
frightened and excited in the manner of the lady who entered the
hall-door.
"Miss Lola is at home, I think," said the servant in answer to her
question; and Mrs. Wheaton, crossing the hall at this moment, turned to
look at the strange woman.
A little scream, and Miss Myrick--for it was she--asked of Lola, who
stood white and ghostly in the doorway, "Is that your mother, Lola? Oh,
then I understand it all. Poor Charlie? The woman who could--"
Mrs. Wheaton stepped quickly forward. "Stop, Augusta Myrick; not one
word more before my child."
Mr. Wheaton had descended the stairs, and sprung to his wife, who seemed
ready to sink, but Lola, unheeding both, clutched Miss Myrick's arm.
"Charlie?" she gasped.
"Oh, Lola! he's gone; his room is empty and all his papers have been
stolen or destroyed. My poor, poor boy."
"Gone--to his death without me! How cruel--but I am coming, Charlie; I
will follow you."
Her eyes were wandering, and she broke from Miss Myrick's grasp.
"Hold her," cried Miss Myrick, "hold her. Charlie is dead and she is
crazed. Help!"
Mr. Wheaton was beside himself, and Mrs. Wheaton flung her arms about
Lola, who was struggling to free herself. At last her father's strong
hands bore her to a sofa in the nearest room, and as he laid her down
the weary eyes closed and the fainting head drooped back.
"Not dead," he groaned. "Oh, God, not dead!" and as the mother and the
strange woman bent low over the prostrate girl, a tall, manly form broke
into the room, as though led there by an unerring instinct.
"Oh, my darling," and he knelt beside the sofa, chafing her hands and
kissing her cold brow; "wake up; you are mine, and we will not die, but
live together. Open your eyes, darling; nothing more will part us now.
See, I am rich once more, and no one shall come between us. Look up,
darling. Come back to me."
Slowly his kisses brought a faint color to her brow and cheek; and when
she opened her eyes and he pressed warm kisses on her lips, there was
none to say him nay. Papa Wheaton was occupied with his handkerchief--he
seemed suffering from a fresh-caught cold, and Mrs. Wheaton stood with
clasped hands watching her daughter's motionless form.
Miss Myrick alone had noticed the graybearded, sun-burned man who had
come into the house with Charlie. The stranger had gazed silently on
Mrs. Wheaton till a mist gathered in his eyes, and he said softly to
himself, "_Dolorosa!_" Then the name has been a prophecy, and my poor
Annie went through life--Dolores.
Lola moved at last, and as Charlie lifted her tenderly in his arms, no
one stepped forward to separate them.
"She is mine now!" he cried exultingly, and he held up to Mr. Wheaton's
view a morning paper. "It was false about the Golden Lamb, and I am
worth a hundred thousand to-day."
"And besides," the stranger introduced himself with a courteous bow to
Mr. Wheaton, "Charles Somervale is my nephew and will be my heir. I am a
total stranger to you, so I beg to refer you to the house of Daniel
Meyer & Co."
At the sound of the voice Mrs. Wheaton had hastily scanned his features;
then she staggered against the wall with a look on her face that spoke
so plainly of a life-long sorrow, of a pain for which there is no remedy
on earth, that Miss Myrick, forgetting all the hard feelings she had
shown at first, sprang forward and passed her arm around the falling
woman.
"The excitement has been too much for her," she said; "leave the room,
all of you, and I will bring her to herself."
But Mrs. Wheaton's was a strong nature.
"It is nothing," she said, and she turned slowly to the stranger. "Let
your coming to this house on a New-Year's morning--though you knew not
who its inmates were--be an earnest of your kind feeling for them, and
let us be united in the wish for the happiness of my child and the child
of your dead sister."
The stranger had advanced and raised Mrs. Wheaton's hand for a moment to
his lips.
"To-morrow I take ship to return to the far Indies; but my wishes and
prayers shall always be for the happiness of these children, and--the
peace of mind of Annie--my Dolores loved and lost."
The last words were spoken in a husky whisper, and none saw the tear
that fell on Mrs. Wheaton's ice-cold hand. Her own eyes were dry; and
though she had not lowered them, she _felt_ the tear burning its way
into her very soul.
Mr. Wheaton's cheery voice roused her.
"The boy, children--have you all forgotten about the boy? Matilda's son,
sir," shaking Charlie by the hand, "a fine, healthy boy. One of the
family now, Charlie--come and see."
But who can blame Charlie for declining to go? His uncle had left the
house, and Aunt Myrick had gone with Mrs. Wheaton up-stairs, there to
renew the friendship broken off years ago, because of the lonely man who
was standing at this moment, gazing far out on the restless,
ever-changing sea.
We could not be indiscreet enough to play eavesdropper after everybody
but Lola and Charlie had left the parlor, but we have it on good
authority that Uncle Barton is to be present at the wedding ceremony
before taking ship again for the far Indies.
_IT OCCURRED AT TUCSON._
Well, perhaps it isn't much of a place, after you get there, though
harder to describe than many a town of fifty times its size and
importance. But it is the capital of Arizona, and a fair representation
of the whole Territory. Could you be lifted from the midst of
civilization, and "let down" in Tucson over night, you would know at
once what the rest of Arizona is.
How like a _fata morgana_ it looks when you first see it in this
enchanted atmosphere: the intensely blue sky overhead, the plain about
it covered with sparse grass and fantastic cactus, that hide the sand
and make the earth look verdant; the low, white dome and the picturesque
buildings clustering about it; the _adobe_ garden-walls, with arched
gateways, sometimes whitened, sometimes left in their native mud color,
toned down by age and the glare of the sun; a tall mesquite-tree or a
group of cotton-woods striving heavenward from among the _adobe_ houses;
Saddle Mountain, with its ever-changing tints and its strong lights and
shades in the far distance, and Sugar-loaf or Sentinel Hill to the
immediate left. On the plain between town and the Sugar-loaf, the ruins
of what, in any other country, I should pronounce to have been a
monastery, lift themselves from the fresh, dewy green--venerable, gray,
and stately--some wild vine creeping stealthily in at the frameless
window, and out again at the roofless top.
Having purposely avoided a close inspection of this spot, for fear of
being compelled to see that the ruins were only coarse mud-walls,
standing in a wilderness of hideous sand and clay, flecked with stiff
bunch-grass, the contemplation of it, with my mind's eye, is one of the
pleasures of memory to me, even at this day. Could I have avoided
passing through the streets of Tucson, perhaps I could think of it, too,
as a charming and delightful place. There are gardens down on our left,
as we come in from this side, that "blossom as the rose," and are
overshadowed by just such beautiful, waving trees as we see in among the
houses yonder; and, from these "indications," we are justified in
supposing that we will find _parterres_ of flowers in the gardens
surrounded by those high walls. But we have forgotten to take into
account that a stream of water flows along those fields; that gardens
don't flourish here without water, and that water in the town can only
be had by digging deep down into the hard ground.
The _élite_ of the Spanish population pride themselves on their
gardens--flower-beds in the inclosed court-yards; flower-beds raised
some three or four feet from the ground and walled around with
stones--but if the flowers that grow on these elevations are "few and
far between," they make up in color and fragrance what they lack in
numbers. The court-yard is usually flagged, like the best room in the
house, and the whole is kept cool and fresh by continual sprinkling and
irrigating. This, however, is correct only of a very few houses; the
average Mexican, even though his family consist of twenty head, lives in
a single dark _adobe_ room, without window or fireplace--the hard, dry,
yellow clay within a continuation of the hard, dry, yellow clay
without--not divided even by a jealous door. In summer, the family live
inside the house, rolling around on the bare floor, or the straw matting
spread in one corner--careful not to venture into the sun that bakes the
barren ground by their _casa_ harder and harder every day. In winter,
the day is passed on the outside, the different members of the family
shifting their position with the sun--huddling together, flat on the
ground, with their backs against the wall that is warmest from its rays.
What they do for a living, I don't know: could they harvest nectar and
ambrosia, instead of wine and bread, from the land surrounding their
miserable houses, they could not be induced to till it; and, as for
trade or handicraft, they have never flourished in Tucson. The only
thing that swarthy, black-eyed lad there will ever learn, is to lasso
his starved _bronco_, or shoulder his lockless gun, and start out with
the pack-train, just loading for Sonora, in front of the largest store
in town. If he returns from there without losing his scalp, he will
never rest till the last _paso_ has been spent with his _compadres_, at
the _baila_, or the new American bar and billiard saloon at the corner.
Nor will he begrudge his sister, or any other lass to whom he is
attached, the many-colored shawl in the show-window of the American
dry-goods store at the other corner; and, should anything be left then,
he will conscientiously devote it toward promoting the bull-fight that
is to come off next Sunday.
"Miserable people, a miserable place, and a miserable life!" came from
between the set, white teeth of a little personage at the window of a
house lying on something of an eminence, in the "fashionable" quarter of
the town, as she absently gazed on the fields, bright and alive with the
stir and the sun of this pleasant July afternoon.
The fact of the house having windows, and the windows being set with
glass, marks it as one of the "aristocratic" houses, though the man who
built it, only two years ago, had come empty-handed and broken in heart
and spirit from scenes of desolation and wretchedness in the Southern
States. If ever a man buried hope, ambition, and life-energy with the
Lost Cause, that man was Oray Granville. Even before the rebellion broke
out, he had lost his all through the North (as he reasoned); for all
that life seemed worth living for, was the woman he had loved. A
wealthy Northern man had led to the altar the queenly form which to him
had been an embodiment of all that is graceful and divine. The form,
life, and soul seemed to have fled from the eyes into which he had gazed
just once after the binding words had been spoken.
When the war broke out, he was among the first in the field; and, though
fighting for what he deemed his rights, he asked, at the end of each
bloody affray--as did St. Arnaud at the Crimea--"And is there no bullet
for me?" And after each such day did the look he had caught from those
sad, black orbs settle down deeper into the shadows of his own gray
eyes. Returning to the home of his youth once more, before starting out
on his dangerous journey over the plains to Arizona--where he was to
join an older brother--he found domiciled at his father's house his
cousin, a young girl of eighteen.
In Miss Jenny's eyes, the vague rumor that Cousin Ray had been "crossed
in love" lent an additional charm to his handsome presence, and the
melancholy, half-reserved air that made him almost unapproachable.
Though there was apparently little in common between the world-weary,
disappointed man and the little elfish creature that looked so joyfully
out upon the world with her light-blue eyes, he unconsciously fell under
the influence of her restless, but most cheerful spirit. Not that her
temper was always sunny and even--far from it: but too often her eyes
would flash fire, and the quivering flanks of the fine-chiselled nose
distend and almost flatten in the hot, flushed face. Just so her Cousin
Ray's nostrils were wont to spread when angered or excited--only that
his face would grow white and more marble-like than usual.
On what ground these two spirits met, I cannot say; but when Oray
Granville finally left his southern home, it was in company with his
wife, Mrs. Jenny. Nor can I recount, at length, how love worked
wonders, and the petted, white-fingered little lady learned to take
thought for the morrow and the comfort of her lord and master; and
though often flying into one of her sudden fits of passion, when a batch
of "sad" bread was the reward for all her pains and patience, or a burn
on her wrist or fingers, she never once breathed a word of regret at
having come with her husband. Her husband never attempted to subdue her
temper or soothe her ruffled feelings; but if, when worn out with the
day's toil (of which he bore his honest share), she crept up beside him,
he had most always a kind word for her; or, if more chary of words than
usual, a soft pressure of the little hand that had stolen into his, told
her that her affection was felt and appreciated.