INTO HER OWN
Spring was well advanced and the Casa de Limas was a veritable paradise
of tender virginal green and delicate mystically perfumed blossoms,
when Willa, a frail shadow of herself, ventured for the first time to
the veranda, on Sallie Bailey's sturdy arm.
The protracted strain and final tragedy of her triumph had proved too
much for even her robust vitality, and when the news came that Starr
Wiley had killed himself in his garrison prison rather than face the
firing squad, the inevitable collapse occurred.
For weeks she had lain helpless and inert with a low fever sapping her
last ounce of strength and no incentive to take up her life again,
until one day she had chanced to overhear a remark of Sallie Bailey's
which brought a new light and glow to her world.
"I declare!" announced Sallie to her husband. "I don't know what to
say to that young Thode every day when he comes ridin' in with his
heart in his eyes to ask if she's better. I never see such devotion in
my born days! He's worn to a shadder with the worry over her, and it
hurts, I can tell you, to send him away lookin' like I'd hit him a blow
when I tell him there's no change. Love's a pretty-fierce thing
sometimes, ain't it?"
Love! Willa buried her face in the pillow and a little creeping warmth
stole through her veins. It was good to be alive, after all.
But he was still ignorant of the truth about that letter! At the
thought Willa's heart contracted and the quick, scalding tears of
weakness came to her eyes. He still believed that she had wantonly led
him on and trampled him beneath her feet in sheer joy of conquest. Oh,
she must become strong enough to tell him how sorry she was, to make
amends!
Now as she lay back in her chair, awaiting his coming in the cool of
the soft spring evening, the events of the past few months seemed very
far away and unreal, almost as though they might have been a dream born
of her fever. She could scarcely believe that she had ever left
Limasito; the climacteric weeks in New York, the trip to Topaz Gulch
and the later scene in Jim Baggott's hotel had alike faded into a
vague, nebulous shadow without substance or coherence, and she herself
seemed drifting. . . .
Again it was Sallie who brought her back to earth with a matter-of-fact
remark.
"I don't s'pose you know, or care either, that the Lost Souls is
producin' thousands of barrels a day since they struck that gusher.
You'll never miss the stock now that you gave to Mr. North and them
Halsteads to make up for what they lost on their own hook in the fake
company, though I did think you were a little fool at the time, Billie.
Served 'em good and right after the way they treated you."
Willa shook her head wearily.
"They were pretty decent, Sallie, and both Ripley Halstead and Mr.
North were always kind. I couldn't have let them suffer for a
mistake.--How is Tia Juana? You must let me see her the next time she
comes."
Sallie chuckled.
"She's buildin' a chapel to the lost souls who was drowned in that
pool, and she's bought a big, bright-yeller automobile! José's
learning from Dan how to drive it for her, when Dan gets time enough
off from his work with Mr. Thode. Since you gave him that stock in the
new Murdaugh-Reyes Company you can't hardly pry Dan Morrissey loose
from the oil business to eat.--Say, honey!" Her tone dropped
persuasively. "There's something that's not quite clear in my mind
yet. I've been bursting to ask you, but you were too sick. Where does
young Mr. Thode come in on this and how did you find out that old Rosa
Mendez was the one who signed Tia Juana's name to that false deed?"
"I didn't. It was Mr. Thode who found that out for me," Willa
explained. "You see, when I met him out in Topaz Gulch I told him I
was coming down here and he said he'd be here, too; his presence would
have been necessary, anyway, to prove that I was really Willa Murdaugh.
Dan's sister was taking care of Tia Juana and José for me in
Philadelphia, where those who were fighting me wouldn't think of
searching.
"When I settled up my affairs out West, I wired Dan, and he brought Tia
Juana and José down to Victoria to meet me. There I found Mr. Thode
again. He had suspected trickery and fraud in connection with the
making over of the lease, and when the Notary Public described the
woman who had appeared before him as Tia Juana with--with Starr
Wiley----" Her voice sank at mention of the name which had cast such a
shadow over her for many days. "Mr. Thode knew it was an impostor. He
realized that Wiley would not have selected a woman from either
Victoria or Limasito to play the part for she might have been
recognized, so he scouted around in the neighborhood of the Lost Souls'
Pool itself, and found that a poor, old, half-witted creature, who had
lived all her days in a wretched hovel near the Trevino hacienda, had
suddenly come into money from a mysterious source, and moved away.
That was Rosa Mendez.
"When he talked to her closest associates in the poor quarter where she
lived, Mr. Thode found that Rosa had had a fair education, but all the
money she could earn or scrape together went for hootch."
"I remember her from the time we lived out that way," Sallie remarked.
"I hired her to help in the cook-house when we had extra hands on for
the pickin', and she stole all the pots she could carry off."
"Mr. Thode found out, too, that for the last few days before she went
away she shut herself up in her hut and wouldn't let anybody in, but
one of the neighbor women peeped in through a window, and saw her
writing something over and over on scraps of paper and burning them
carefully in the stove." Willa went on. "That must have been Tia
Juana's signature. Then when he heard that she was seen talking to a
man who answered to Wiley's description, he was sure. He traced her to
Palmillas and when he confronted her she broke down and confessed
without a show of fight. He brought her back to Victoria and was
waiting for me when I came."
"He's a smart one!" Sallie vociferated admiringly. "You'd go far,
Billie, to find a regular he-man in all that crowd you've been
traveling with that could beat him! But you might have let me in on
that party over to Baggott's! He sent hot-foot for Hen, but little I
thought you was in it or I'd have come, invite or no! How'd you fix
that up?"
"I sent Tia Juana and José and Rosa Mendez on ahead to confront the
others if necessary----"
"Yes, and they tried to kill each other all the way down----old Rosa
and Tia Juana, I mean," interrupted the other. "Them Federal officers
told Hen they'd rather have had charge o' two wild cats! Them and the
other government fellers got there while that bunch o' robbers was out
on a trip inspecting the oil well."
Willa nodded.
"I knew they'd return that morning, and I arranged the affair with Jim
Baggott and the officials. It was a terrible business, Sallie, and I
wanted to get it all over with at once."
"Well, you did it!" Sallie chuckled. "You took the wind out o' the
sails o' them relatives o' your'n, too. They've been milling around
these parts like nothin' was good enough for 'em, and it give 'em a
pain to hear your name mentioned, but it was different after you showed
up with your powder-blast, I can fell you! When they found you was
goin' to let byegones be byegones, and give 'em a chance to get back
the money they'd lost, it would have done you good to see the way they
came around here, trying to do something for their dear young relation!"
Willa smiled faintly.
"I wish I might have seen my cousins before they went North."
Sallie endeavored to maintain a discreet silence, but the effort proved
too much for her.
"Well, if you ask me, you're just as well off! The menfolks may be all
right, but that Mrs. Halstead wouldn't have let you call your soul your
own; wanted me to put ice-bags on you and all manner of outlandish
things, and told me to my face that my house wasn't sanitary! I soon
sent her about her business.--There! I declare if that
good-for-nothin' Chevalita isn't callin' me again!"
She retired precipitately into the house, and her ruse was apparent;
her quick ears had caught, not the voice of her criada, but the sound
of a pinto's hoofs on the road, and she recognized its portent as did
the girl in the shadows.
A pale young moon had risen, and in its light the drive lay like a
curving white ribbon, the approaching figures of pony and man melting
together, yet sharply distinct. Willa waited until the rider had
dismounted, then bolstered herself upright and held out a thin little
hand.
"Willa! It is really you, at last!"
He sank down on the steps beside her and somehow forgot to relinquish
her hand.
"Yes, it is really I!" she smiled. "Mrs. Bailey told me of your
never-failing calls and inquiries. You have been very kind----"
"Kind? Did you think that I could help myself, that I could have
stayed away?" He broke off, his voice hoarse with pent-up feeling.
"Forgive me! I did not mean to annoy you again, but the sight of you
after so many days, lying here so white and frail and crushed----"
"I'm not!" She laughed nervously. "But you don't annoy me! I love to
hear you say that you have wanted to see me, that you could not stay
away!"
"Oh, don't, please!" He turned away with a gesture of pain. "Don't
play with me again, Willa, girl! I can't quite bear it!"
"Kearn!" her voice thrilled, low and surpassingly sweet in his ears.
"I never played with you, never! I told you in Topaz Gulch that I had
much to explain and you much to forgive. I was deliberately misled, my
mind poisoned against you, but the fault was mine, in being so easily
influenced against the real truth. I knew it in my heart, but I was in
such a maze of difficulties and cross-purposes that I did not know
which way to turn, and I shut my ears to the dictates of my own belief.
Do you remember that night in the conservatory?"
"I am not likely to forget it." His tones were shaking and he had
turned his head away.
"Someone was listening, someone who hated us both, and acting under the
impulse of a blind infatuation, had become a tool in stronger, more
ruthless hands. When I reached home that night, a letter in your
handwriting was put before me; a letter which seemed to prove that
you--you had known before ever Mr. North came to Limasito who I was and
that you had planned to marry me.--Oh, can't you understand?"
"A letter in my handwriting?" he repeated slowly. "It could not be----"
"But it was!" Willa laughed, but there was a little running sob
through her words. "You told me the truth about it yourself, out in
Topaz Gulch."
"I?" Thode turned to her, amazed.
"Yes. Don't you remember the letter you wrote to Mr. Larkin, telling
him you had found Tia Juana, but nobody knew who she really was--her
last name, I mean--and it wouldn't matter if they did? A page of that
very letter with the top torn off was put in my hands and as you didn't
mention Tia Juana by name I thought it referred to me. That was the
inference I was supposed to gather from it, and like a credulous little
fool I believed! The bottom of the page ended with: 'She is the
undoubted owner of almost boundless wealth and when I have gone after
her, and won her consent----'"
"Good heavens, of course!" Thode jumped to his feet. "I remember it
all now. That was one of the letters that was stolen from Larkin's
desk by a clerk we found to be in the secret employ of Chase and Wiley!
They'd corrupted him in an effort to keep tabs on the progress we were
making down here. We didn't prosecute him because of the notoriety,
but we made him leave the East when we discovered his operations. It
never occurred to me that any of the stolen letters could be put to
such a use!"
"Or that I could be so ready to believe the worst of you?" she asked
sadly.
"You! My poor little Willa!" He dropped on his knees beside her chair
and gathered her hands again in his. "I thought you were heartless,
intoxicated with admiration and trying your power wilfully on everyone
who came within your reach. Half the men in your set were at your
feet, and it drove me a little mad, I think! And all the time you were
beset by enemies, making your brave fight alone, and even our
friendship turned to something low and base! Oh, my dear, I have
nothing to forgive, but there is much that I must teach you to forget."
"Unworthy things are soon forgotten!" She gazed with shining eyes into
his. "Only the real, true, beautiful things remain, Kearn, and
they--why, they are all before us!"
He looked away, straight ahead of him into the moon-lit darkness.
"When I come back," he said. "Much has happened while you lay ill,
dear. We've gone into the big fight at last, we're going to help set
the world free from barbarism, and I must do my share. I ran up to New
York long enough to get a commission again in my old regiment, and I'm
listed to sail for France with the first army the government sends. I
couldn't stay behind, Willa; I'm sure you wouldn't have me wait when
the call has come."
"No," Willa responded quietly; "I wouldn't. Not for all the world must
you miss your chance to help. It's a sacred privilege, Kearn. I
shouldn't wonder if all of us, men and women, will have to put our
shoulder to the wheel, but if we can only help to get the world out of
this hideous rut of wholesale oppression and savagery it will be
gloriously worth it all. No, I wouldn't keep you back if I could, but
I'm glad, somehow, to feel that I couldn't, anyway."
"And you will be with my sister," he reminded her. "She's coming
to-morrow, you know, to take you back with her as soon as you are able
to travel. She liked you from the start, dear, and when I tell her
what is going to be, some day, she will take you quite to her heart."
"I shall be so glad to see her again!" Willa sighed happily. "It is
dear of her to offer to take me into her home. The Ripley Halsteads
suggested, of course, that I should go back to them, but I couldn't
think of it! It would recall too much that I must try to forget, and
poor Angie's face would give me no peace. I know that in her heart she
must blame me still for the tragic end of her romance."
"Angie is no longer there," Kearn remarked. "She is taking a
nursing-course in some hospital, preparatory for work in France, and
Vernon writes me that she seems earnest and sincere for the first time
in her life. Verne himself is off for Plattsburg, and Winthrop North
is already across the water, driving an ambulance on the western front.
My sister will put you to rolling bandages as soon as you can lift your
hands. Life is getting pretty serious for all of us."
"And wonderful, too," Willa amended. "It is as if we were all just
finding ourselves, isn't it? As if this supreme struggle were to bring
out all our hidden strength, the deepest, most-enduring, best part of
us!--And isn't it strange, too, that I should be going to make my home
with your sister, after all? That was what you first suggested to
me--do you remember?--when you thought me just Gentleman Geoff's
Billie, before ever Mr. North came."
"Yes, dear." He pressed his lips to her hand. "Everything works out
all right in time. And when I come back----"
"There is every indication that I'll be over myself before then,
nursing or something. I'm not the kind to sit at home when there's
work to be done. But, Kearn----?"
"What, Billie?"
"I don't mean to complain, for everyone has been wonderfully good to me
since I was a wee bit of a thing, but do you suppose anyone was ever
more buffeted about by Fate than I? Orphaned and thrown out upon the
world at four, orphaned again last year, made an heiress, then an
outcast, and finally reinstated again! I--I'm getting awfully tired of
not really belonging to anyone!" She drew a deep breath. "Kearn,
dear, do you suppose you could manage to marry me before you go to war?"
"You darling!" He hugged her close, pillows and all. "I didn't dare
ask you that now, but, oh, I wanted to! If I could feel that you
really did belong to me, dear, I'd go with a far-lighter heart and
surer courage to meet whatever comes, and with ten times the strength,
too, for I should go to fight for my own!--And then, you are such a
changeling, you know! I love Willa Murdaugh, but I have always loved
Gentleman Geoff's Billie since the day I met her coming from the Blue
Chip, and I think that I love her best, after all! Gentleman Geoff's
Billie, _my_ Billie, will you be my wife, soon, _soon_?"
There was a pause, while a little breeze stirred the starry,
perfume-laden branches about them, shimmering mistily in the moon's
haze. Then, far away, a night bird called eagerly, tenderly to its
mate, and Willa lifted tired, happy arms and placed them about the head
bent above her, drawing it down.
"I thought you were never, in all the world, going to ask me!" she
sighed.