In those days the hymeneal laws of California were as easy as old shoes,
and people could espouse each other about as rapidly as they might want
to.
The consequence was that, although Ralph Thurstane and Clara Van Diemen
had only been two days in Monterey and had gone through no forms of
publication, they were actually being married when Coronado reached the
village church.
Leaning against the wall, with eyes as fixed and face as livid as if he
were a corpse from the neighboring cemetery, he silently witnessed a
ceremony which it would have been useless for him to interrupt, and then,
stepping softly out of a side door, lurked away.
He walked a quarter of a mile very fast, ran nearly another quarter of a
mile, turned into a by-road, sought its thickest underbrush, threw himself
on the ground, and growled. For once he had a heavier burden upon him than
he could bear in human presence, or bear quietly anywhere. He must be
alone; also he must weep and curse. He was in a state to tear his hair and
to beat his head against the earth. Refined as Coronado usually was,
admirably as he could imitate the tranquil gentleman of modern
civilization, he still had in him enough of the natural man to rave. For a
while he was as simple and as violent in his grief as ever was any
Celtiberian cave-dweller of the stone age.
Jealousy, disappointed love, disappointed greed, plans balked, labor lost,
perils incurred in vain! All the calamities that he could most dread
seemed to have fallen upon him together; he was like a man sucked by the
arms of a polypus, dying in one moment many deaths. We must, however, do
him the justice to believe that the wound which tore the sharpest was that
which lacerated his heart. At this time, when he realized that he had
altogether and forever lost Clara, he found that he loved her as he had
never yet believed himself capable of loving. Considering the nobility of
this passion, we must grant some sympathy to Coronado.
Unfortunate as he was, another misfortune awaited him. When he returned to
the house where Garcia lay, he found that the old man, his sole relative
and sole friend, had expired. To Coronado this dead body was the carcass
of all remaining hope. The exciting drama of struggle and expectation
which had so violently occupied him for the last six months, and which had
seemed to promise such great success, was over. Even if he could have
resolved to kill Clara, there was no longer anything to be gained by it,
for her money would not descend to Coronado. Even if he should kill
Thurstane, that would be a harm rather than a benefit, for his widow would
hate Coronado. If he did any evil deed now, it must be from jealousy or
from vindictiveness. Was murder of any kind worth while? For the time,
whether it were worth while or not, he was furious enough to do it.
If he did not act, he must go; for as everything had miscarried, so much
had doubtless been discovered, and he might fairly expect chastisement.
While he hesitated a glance into the street showed him something which
decided him, and sent him far from Monterey before sundown. Half a dozen
armed horsemen, three of them obviously Americans, rode by with a pinioned
prisoner, in whom Coronado recognized Texas Smith. He did not stop to
learn that his old bravo had committed a murder in the village, and that a
vigilance committee had sent a deputation after him to wait upon him into
the other world. The sight of that haggard, scarred, wicked face, and the
thought of what confessions the brute might be led to if he should
recognize his former employer, were enough to make Coronado buy a horse
and ride to unknown regions.
Under the circumstances it would perhaps be unreasonable to blame him for
leaving his uncle to be buried by Clara and Thurstane.
These two, we easily understand, were not much astonished and not at all
grieved by his departure.
"He is gone," said Thurstane, when he learned the fact. "No wonder."
"I am so glad!" replied Clara.
"I suspect him now of being at the bottom of all our troubles."
"Don't let us talk of it, my love. It is too ugly. The present is so
beautiful!"
"I must hurry back to San Francisco and try to get a leave of absence,"
said the husband, turning to pleasanter subjects. "I want full leisure to
be happy."
"And you won't let them send you to San Diego?" begged the wife. "No more
voyages now. If you do go, I shall go with you."
"Oh no, my child. I can't trust the sea with you again. Not after this,"
and he waved his hand toward the wreck of the brig.
"Then I will beg myself for your leave of absence."
Thurstane laughed; that would never do; no such condescension in _his_
wife!
They went by land to San Francisco, and Clara kept the secret of her
million during the whole journey, letting her husband pay for everything
out of his shallow pocket, precisely as if she had no money. Arrived in
the city, he left her in a hotel and hurried to headquarters. Two hours
later he returned smiling, with the news that a brother officer had
volunteered to take his detail, and that he had obtained a honeymoon leave
of absence for thirty days.
"Barclay is a trump," he said. "It is all the prettier in him to go that
he has a wife of his own. The commandant made no objection to the
exchange. In fact the old fellow behaved like a father to me, shook hands,
patted me on the shoulder, congratulated me, and all that sort of thing.
Old boy, married himself, and very fond of his family. Upon my word, it
seems to better a man's heart to marry him."
"Of course it does," chimed in Clara. "He is so much happier that of
course he is better."
"Well, my little princess, where shall we go?"
"Go first to see Aunt Maria. There! don't make a face. She is very good in
the long run. She will be sweet enough to you in three days."
"Of course I will go. Where is she?"
"Boarding at a hacienda a few miles from town. We can take horses, canter
out there, and pass the night."
She was full of spirits; laughed and chattered all the way; laughed at
everything that was said; chattered like a pleased child. Of course she
was thinking of the surprise that she would give him, and how she had
circumvented his sense of honor about marrying a rich girl, and how hard
and fast she had him. Moreover the contrast between her joyous present and
her anxious past was alone enough to make her run over with gayety. All
her troubles had vanished in a pack; she had gone at one bound from
purgatory to paradise.
At the hacienda Thurstane was a little struck by the respect with which
the servants received Clara; but as she signed to them to be silent, not a
word was uttered which could give him a suspicion of the situation. Mrs.
Stanley, moreover, was taking a siesta, and so there was another tell-tale
mouth shut.
"Nobody seems to be at home," said Clara, bursting into a merry laugh over
her trick as they entered the house. "Where can the master and mistress
be?"
They were now in a large and handsomely furnished room, which was the
parlor of the hacienda.
"Don't sit down," cried Clara, her eyes sparkling with joy. "Stand just
there as you are. Let me look at you a moment. Wait till I tell you
something."
She fronted him for a few seconds, watching his wondering face,
hesitating, blushing, and laughing. Suddenly she bounded forward, threw
her arms around his shoulders and cried excitedly, hysterically, "My love!
my husband! all this is yours. Oh, how happy I am!"
The next moment she burst into tears on the shoulder to which she was
clinging.
"What is the matter?" demanded Thurstane in some alarm; for he did not
know that women can tremble and weep with gladness, and he thought that
surely his wife was sick if not deranged.
"What! don't you guess it?" she asked, drawing back with a little more
calmness, and looking tenderly into his puzzled eyes.
"You don't mean--?"
"Yes, darling."
"It can't be that--?"
"Yes, darling."
He began to comprehend the trick that had been played upon him, although
as yet he could not fully credit it. What mainly bewildered him was that
Clara, whom he had always supposed to be as artless as a child--Clara,
whom he had cared for as an elder and a father--should have been able to
keep a secret and devise a plot and carry out a mystification.
"Great ---- Scott!" he gasped in his stupefaction, using the name of the
then commander-in-chief for an oath, as officers sometimes did in those
days.
"Yes, yes, yes," laughed and chattered Clara. "Great Scott and great
Thurstane! All yours. Three hundred thousand. Half a million. A million. I
don't know how much. All I know is that it is all yours. Oh, my darling!
oh, my darling! How I have fooled you! Are you angry with me? Say, are you
angry? What will you do to me?"
We must excuse Thurstane for finding no other chastisement than to squeeze
her in his arms and choke her with kisses. Next he held her from him, set
her down upon a sofa, fell back a pace and stared at her much as if she
were a totally new discovery, something in the way of an arrival from the
moon. He was in a state of profound amazement at the dexterity with which
she had taken his destiny out of his own hands into hers, without his
knowledge. He had not supposed that she was a tenth part so clever. For
the first time he perceived that she was his match, if indeed she were not
the superior nature; and it is a remarkable fact, though not a dark one if
one looks well into it, that he respected her the more for being too much
for him.
"It beats Hannibal," he said at last. "Who would have expected such
generalship in you? I am as much astonished as if you had turned into a
knight in armor. Well, how much it has saved me! I should have hesitated
and been miserable; and I should have married you all the same; and then
been ashamed of marrying money, and had it rankle in me for years. And
now--oh, you wise little thing!--all I can say is, I worship you."
"Yes, darling," replied Clara, walking gravely up to him, putting her
hands on his shoulders, and looking him thoughtfully in the eyes. "It was
the wisest thing I ever did. Don't be afraid of me. I never shall be so
clever again. I never shall be so tempted to be clever."
We must pass over a few months. Thurstane soon found that he had the Muñoz
estate in his hands, and that, for the while at least, it demanded all his
time and industry. Moreover, there being no war and no chance of martial
distinction, it seemed absurd to let himself be ordered about from one hot
and cramped station to another, when he had money enough to build a
palace, and a wife who could make it a paradise. Finally, he had a taste
for the natural sciences, and his observations in the Great Cañon and
among the other marvels of the desert had quickened this inclination to a
passion, so that he craved leisure for the study of geology, mineralogy,
and chemistry. He resigned his commission, established himself in San
Francisco, bought all the scientific books he could hear of, made
expeditions to the California mountains, collected garrets full of
specimens, and was as happy as a physicist always is.
Perhaps his happiness was just a little increased when Mrs. Stanley
announced her intention of returning to New York. The lady had been
amiable on the whole, as she meant always to be; but she could not help
daily taking up her parable concerning the tyranny and stupidity of man
and the superior virtue of woman; and sometimes she felt it her duty to
put it to Thurstane that he owed everything to his wife; all of which was
more or less wearing, even to her niece. At the same time she was such a
disinterested, well-intentioned creature that it was impossible not to
grant her a certain amount of admiration. For instance, when Clara
proposed to make her comfortable for life by settling upon her fifty
thousand dollars, she replied peremptorily that it was far too much for an
old woman who had decided to turn her back on the frivolities of society,
and she could with difficulty be brought to accept twenty thousand.
Furthermore, she was capable, that is, in certain favored moments, of
confessing error. "My dear," she said to Clara, some weeks after the
marriage, "I have made one great mistake since I came to these countries.
I believed that Mr. Coronado was the right man and Mr. Thurstane the wrong
one. Oh, that smooth-tongued, shiny-eyed, meeching, bowing, complimenting
hypocrite! I see at last what a villain he was. _I_ see it," she
emphasized, as if nobody else had discovered it. "To think that a person
who was so right on the main question [female suffrage] could be so wrong
on everything else! The contradiction adds to his guilt. Well, I have had
my lesson. Every one must make her mistake. I shall never be so humbugged
again."
Some little time after Thurstane had received the acceptance of his
resignation and established himself in his handsome city house, Aunt Maria
observed abruptly, "My dears, I must go back."
"Go back where? To the desert and turn hermit?" asked Clara, who was
accustomed to joke her relative about "spheres and missions."
"To New York," replied Mrs. Stanley. "I can accomplish nothing here. This
miserable Legislature will take no notice of my petitions for female
suffrage."
"Oh, that is because you sign them alone," laughed the younger lady.
"I can't get anybody else to sign them," said Aunt Maria with some
asperity. "And what if I do sign them alone? A house full of men ought to
have gallantry enough to grant one lady's request. California is not ripe
for any great and noble measure. I can't remain where I find so little
sympathy and collaboration. I must go where I can be of use. It is my
duty."
And go she did. But before she shook off her dust against the Pacific
coast there was an interview with an old acquaintance.
It must be understood that the fatigues and sufferings of that terrible
pilgrimage through the desert had bothered the constitution of little
Sweeny, and that, after lying in garrison hospital at San Francisco for
several months, he had been discharged from the service on "certificate of
physical disability." Thurstane, who had kept track of him, immediately
took him to his house, first as an invalid hanger-on, and then as a jack
of all work.
As the family were sitting at breakfast Sweeny's voice was heard in the
veranda outside, "colloguing" with another voice which seemed familiar.
"Listen," whispered Clara. "That is Captain Glover. Let us hear what they
say. They are both so queer!"
"An' what" ("fwat" he pronounced it) "the divil have ye been up to?"
demanded Sweeny. "Ye're a purty sailor, buttoned up in a long-tail coat,
wid a white hankerchy round yer neck. Have ye been foolin' paple wid
makin' 'em think ye're a Protestant praste?"
"I've been blowin' glass, Sweeny," replied the sniffling voice of Phineas
Glover.
"Blowin' glass! Och, yees was always powerful at blowin'. But I niver
heerd ye blow glass. It was big lies mostly whin I was a listing."
"Yes, blowin' glass," returned the Fair Havener in a tone of agreeable
reminiscence, as if it had been a not unprofitable occupation. "Found
there wasn't a glass-blower in all Californy. Bought 'n old machine, put
up to the mines with it, blew all sorts 'f jigmarigs 'n' thingumbobs, 'n'
sold 'em to the miners 'n' Injuns. Them critters is jest like sailors
ashore; they'll buy anything they set eyes on. Besides, I sounded my horn;
advertised big, so to speak; got up a sensation. Used to mount a stump 'n'
make a speech; told 'em I'd blow Yankee Doodle in glass, any color they
wanted; give 'em that sort 'f gospel, ye know."
"An' could ye do it?" inquired the Paddy, confounded by the idea of
blowing a glass tune.
"Lord, Sweeny! you're greener 'n the miners. When ye swaller things that
way, don't laugh 'r ye'll choke yerself to death, like the elephant did
when he read the comic almanac at breakfast."
"I don't belave that nuther," asseverated Sweeny, anxious to clear himself
from the charge of credulity.
"Don't believe that!" exclaimed Glover. "He did it twice."
"Och, go way wid ye. He couldn't choke himself afther he was dead. I
wouldn't belave it, not if I see him turn black in the face. It's
yerself'll get choked some day if yees don't quit blatherin'. But what did
ye get for yer blowin'? Any more'n the clothes ye're got to yer back?"
For answer Glover dipped into his pockets, took out two handfuls of gold
pieces and chinked them under the Irishman's nose.
"Blazes! ye're lousy wid money," commented Sweeny. "Ye want somebody to
scratch yees."
"Twenty thousan' dollars in bank," added Glover. "All by blowin' 'n'
tradin'. Goin' hum in the next steamer. Anythin' I can do for ye, old
messmate? Say how much."
"It's the liftinant is takin' care av me. He's made a betther livin' nor
yees, a thousand times over, by jist marryin' the right leddy. An' he's
going to put me in charrge av a farrum that they call the hayshindy, where
I'll sell the cattle for myself, wid half to him, an' make slathers o'
money."
"Thunder, Sweeny! You'll end by ridin' in a coach. What'll ye take for yer
chances? Wal, I'm glad to hear ye're doin' so well. I am so, for old
times' sake."
"Come in, Captain Glover," at this moment called Clara through the blinds.
"Come in, Sweeny. Let us all have a talk together about the old times and
the new ones."
So there was a long talk, miscellaneous and delightful, full of
reminiscences and congratulations and good wishes.
"Wal, we're a lucky lot," said Glover at last. "Sh'd like to hear 'f some
good news for the sergeant and Mr. Kelly. Sh'd go back hum easier for it."
"Kelly is first sergeant," stated Thurstane, "and Meyer is
quartermaster-sergeant, with a good chance of being quartermaster. He is
capable of it and deserves it. He ought to have been promoted years ago
for his gallantry and services during the war. I hope every day to hear
that he has got his commission as lieutenant."
"Wal, God bless 'em, 'n' God bless the hull army!" said Glover, so
gratified that he felt pious. "An' now, good-by. Got to be movin'."
"Stay over night with us," urged Thurstane. "Stay a week. Stay as long as
you will."
"Do," begged Clara. "You can go geologizing with my husband. You can start
Sweeny on his farm."
"Och, he's a thousin' times welkim," put in Sweeny, "though I'm afeard av
him. He'd tache the cattle to trade their skins wid ache other, an slather
me wid lies till I wouldn't know which was the baste an' which was
Sweeny."
Glover grinned with an air of being flattered, but replied, "Like to stay
first rate, but can't work it. Passage engaged for to-morrow mornin'."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Aunt Maria, agreeably surprised by an idea.
And the result was that she went to New York under the care of Captain
Glover.
As for Clara and Thurstane, they are surely in a state which ought to
satisfy their friends, and we will therefore say no more of them.