Nowhere had the long season of flowers brought such glory as to the
broad plains and slopes of Robles Rancho. By some fortuitous chance of
soil, or flood, or drifting pollen, the three terraces had each taken a
distinct and separate blossom and tint of color. The straggling line of
corral, the crumbling wall of the old garden, the outlying chapel, and
even the brown walls of the casa itself, were half sunken in the tall
racemes of crowding lupines, until from the distance they seemed to be
slowly settling in the profundity of a dark-blue sea. The second terrace
was a league-long flow of gray and gold daisies, in which the cattle
dazedly wandered mid-leg deep. A perpetual sunshine of yellow dandelions
lay upon the third. The gentle slope to the dark-green canada was a
broad cataract of crimson poppies. Everywhere where water had stood,
great patches of color had taken its place. It seemed as if the rains
had ceased only that the broken heavens might drop flowers.
Never before had its beauty--a beauty that seemed built upon a cruel,
youthful, obliterating forgetfulness of the past--struck Clarence as
keenly as when he had made up his mind that he must leave the place
forever. For the tale of his mischance and ill-fortune, as told by
Hopkins, was unfortunately true. When he discovered that in his desire
to save Peyton's house by the purchase of the Sisters' title he himself
had been the victim of a gigantic fraud, he accepted the loss of the
greater part of his fortune with resignation, and was even satisfied by
the thought that he had at least effected the possession of the property
for Mrs. Peyton. But when he found that those of his tenants who had
bought under him had acquired only a dubious possession of their
lands and no title, he had unhesitatingly reimbursed them for their
improvements with the last of his capital. Only the lawless Gilroy had
good-humoredly declined. The quiet acceptance of the others did
not, unfortunately, preclude their settled belief that Clarence had
participated in the fraud, and that even now his restitution was making
a dangerous precedent, subversive of the best interests of the State,
and discouraging to immigration. Some doubted his sanity. Only one,
struck with the sincerity of his motive, hesitated to take his money,
with a look of commiseration on his face.
“Are you not satisfied?” asked Clarence, smiling.
“Yes, but”--
“But what?”
“Nothin'. Only I was thinkin' that a man like you must feel awful
lonesome in Calforny!”
Lonely he was, indeed; but his loneliness was not the loss of fortune
nor what it might bring. Perhaps he had never fully realized his wealth;
it had been an accident rather than a custom of his life, and when it
had failed in the only test he had made of its power, it is to be feared
that he only sentimentally regretted it. It was too early yet for him
to comprehend the veiled blessings of the catastrophe in its merciful
disruption of habits and ways of life; his loneliness was still the
hopeless solitude left by vanished ideals and overthrown idols. He was
satisfied that he had never cared for Susy, but he still cared for the
belief that he had.
After the discovery of Pedro's body that fatal morning, a brief but
emphatic interview between himself and Mrs. McClosky had followed. He
had insisted upon her immediately accompanying Susy and himself to
Mrs. Peyton in San Francisco. Horror-stricken and terrified at the
catastrophe, and frightened by the strange looks of the excited
servants, they did not dare to disobey him. He had left them with Mrs.
Peyton in the briefest preliminary interview, during which he spoke only
of the catastrophe, shielding the woman from the presumption of having
provoked it, and urging only the importance of settling the question
of guardianship at once. It was odd that Mrs. Peyton had been less
disturbed than he imagined she would be at even his charitable version
of Susy's unfaithfulness to her; it even seemed to him that she had
already suspected it. But as he was about to withdraw to leave her to
meet them alone, she had stopped him suddenly.
“What would you advise me to do?”
It was his first interview with her since the revelation of his own
feelings. He looked into the pleading, troubled eyes of the woman he now
knew he had loved, and stammered:--
“You alone can judge. Only you must remember that one cannot force an
affection any more than one can prevent it.”
He felt himself blushing, and, conscious of the construction of his
words, he even fancied that she was displeased.
“Then you have no preference?” she said, a little impatiently.
“None.”
She made a slight gesture with her handsome shoulders, but she only
said, “I should have liked to have pleased you in this,” and turned
coldly away. He had left without knowing the result of the interview;
but a few days later he received a letter from her stating that she had
allowed Susy to return to her aunt, and that she had resigned all claims
to her guardianship.
“It seemed to be a foregone conclusion,” she wrote; “and although I
cannot think such a change will be for her permanent welfare, it is her
present WISH, and who knows, indeed, if the change will be permanent?
I have not allowed the legal question to interfere with my judgment,
although her friends must know that she forfeits any claim upon the
estate by her action; but at the same time, in the event of her suitable
marriage, I should try to carry out what I believe would have been Mr.
Peyton's wishes.”
There were a few lines of postscript: “It seems to me that the change
would leave you more free to consult your own wishes in regard to
continuing your friendship with Susy, and upon such a footing as may
please you. I judge from Mrs. McClosky's conversation that she believed
you thought you were only doing your duty in reporting to me, and that
the circumstances had not altered the good terms in which you all three
formerly stood.”
Clarence had dropped the letter with a burning indignation that seemed
to sting his eyes until a scalding moisture hid the words before him.
What might not Susy have said? What exaggeration of his affection was
she not capable of suggesting? He recalled Mrs. McClosky, and remembered
her easy acceptance of him as Susy's lover. What had they told Mrs.
Peyton? What must be her opinion of his deceit towards herself? It was
hard enough to bear this before he knew he loved her. It was intolerable
now! And this is what she meant when she suggested that he should
renew his old terms with Susy; it was for HIM that this ill-disguised,
scornful generosity in regard to Susy's pecuniary expectations was
intended. What should he do? He would write to her, and indignantly deny
any clandestine affection for Susy. But could he do that, in honor,
in truthfulness? Would it not be better to write and confess all?
Yes,--EVERYTHING.
Fortunately for his still boyish impulsiveness, it was at this time that
the discovery of his own financial ruin came to him. The inquest on the
body of Pedro Valdez and the confession of his confidant had revealed
the facts of the fraudulent title and forged testamentary documents.
Although it was correctly believed that Pedro had met his death in an
escapade of gallantry or intrigue, the coroner's jury had returned a
verdict of “accidental death,” and the lesser scandal was lost in the
wider, far-spreading disclosure of fraud. When he had resolved to assume
all the liabilities of his purchase, he was obliged to write to Mrs.
Peyton and confess his ruin. But he was glad to remind her that it did
not alter HER status or security; he had only given her the possession,
and she would revert to her original and now uncontested title. But as
there was now no reason for his continuing the stewardship, and as he
must adopt some profession and seek his fortune elsewhere, he begged her
to relieve him of his duty. Albeit written with a throbbing heart and
suffused eyes, it was a plain, business-like, and practical letter. Her
reply was equally cool and matter of fact. She was sorry to hear of his
losses, although she could not agree with him that they could logically
sever his present connection with the rancho, or that, placed upon
another and distinctly business footing, the occupation would not be as
remunerative to him as any other. But, of course, if he had a preference
for some more independent position, that was another question, although
he would forgive her for using the privilege of her years to remind
him that his financial and business success had not yet justified his
independence. She would also advise him not to decide hastily, or, at
least, to wait until she had again thoroughly gone over her husband's
papers with her lawyer, in reference to the old purchase of the Sisters'
title, and the conditions under which it was bought. She knew that Mr.
Brant would not refuse this as a matter of business, nor would that
friendship, which she valued so highly, allow him to imperil the
possession of the rancho by leaving it at such a moment. As soon as she
had finished the examination of the papers, she would write again. Her
letter seemed to leave him no hope, if, indeed, he had ever indulged
in any. It was the practical kindliness of a woman of business, nothing
more. As to the examination of her husband's papers, that was a
natural precaution. He alone knew that they would give no record of
a transaction which had never occurred. He briefly replied that his
intention to seek another situation was unchanged, but that he would
cheerfully await the arrival of his successor. Two weeks passed. Then
Mr. Sanderson, Mrs. Peyton's lawyer, arrived, bringing an apologetic
note from Mrs. Peyton. She was so sorry her business was still delayed,
but as she had felt that she had no right to detain him entirely at
Robles, she had sent to Mr. Sanderson to TEMPORARILY relieve him, that
he might be free to look around him or visit San Francisco in reference
to his own business, only extracting a promise from him that he would
return to Robles to meet her at the end of the week, before settling
upon anything.
The bitter smile with which Clarence had read thus far suddenly changed.
Some mysterious touch of unbusiness-like but womanly hesitation, that
he had never noticed in her previous letters, gave him a faint sense of
pleasure, as if her note had been perfumed. He had availed himself of
the offer. It was on this visit to Sacramento that he had accidentally
discovered the marriage of Susy and Hooker.
“It's a great deal better business for her to have a husband in the
'profesh' if she's agoin' to stick to it,” said his informant, Mrs.
McClosky, “and she's nothing if she ain't business and profesh, Mr.
Brant. I never see a girl that was born for the stage--yes, you might
say jess cut out o' the boards of the stage--as that girl Susy is! And
that's jest what's the matter; and YOU know it, and I know it, and there
you are!”
It was with these experiences that Clarence was to-day reentering the
wooded and rocky gateway of the rancho from the high road of the canada;
but as he cantered up the first slope, through the drift of scarlet
poppies that almost obliterated the track, and the blue and yellow
blooms of the terraces again broke upon his view, he thought only of
Mrs. Peyton's pleasure in this changed aspect of her old home. She had
told him of it once before, and of her delight in it; and he had once
thought how happy he should be to see it with her.
The servant who took his horse told him that the senora had arrived that
morning from Santa Inez, bringing with her the two Senoritas Hernandez
from the rancho of Los Canejos, and that other guests were expected. And
there was the Senor Sanderson and his Reverence Padre Esteban. Truly an
affair of hospitality, the first since the padron died. Whatever dream
Clarence might have had of opportunities for confidential interview was
rudely dispelled. Yet Mrs. Peyton had left orders to be informed at once
of Don Clarencio's arrival.
As he crossed the patio and stepped upon the corridor he fancied he
already detected in the internal arrangements the subtle influence of
Mrs. Peyton's taste and the indefinable domination of the mistress. For
an instant he thought of anticipating the servant and seeking her in the
boudoir, but some instinct withheld him, and he turned into the study
which he had used as an office. It was empty; a few embers glimmered on
the hearth. At the same moment there was a light step behind him,
and Mrs. Peyton entered and closed the door behind her. She was
very beautiful. Although paler and thinner, there was an odd sort of
animation about her, so unlike her usual repose that it seemed almost
feverish.
“I thought we could talk together a few moments before the guests
arrive. The house will be presently so full, and my duties as hostess
commence.”
“I was--about to seek you--in--in the boudoir,” hesitated Clarence.
She gave an impatient shiver.
“Good heavens, not there! I shall never go there again. I should fancy
every time I looked out of the window that I saw the head of that man
between the bars. No! I am only thankful that I wasn't here at the time,
and that I can keep my remembrance of the dear old place unchanged.” She
checked herself a little abruptly, and then added somewhat irrelevantly
but cheerfully, “Well, you have been away? What have you done?”
“Nothing,” said Clarence.
“Then you have kept your promise,” she said, with the same nervous
hilarity.
“I have returned here without making any other engagement,” he said
gravely; “but I have not altered my determination.”
She shrugged her shoulders again, or, as it seemed, the skin of her
tightly fitting black dress above them, with the sensitive shiver of a
highly groomed horse, and moved to the hearth as if for warmth; put her
slim, slippered foot upon the low fender, drawing, with a quick hand,
the whole width of her skirt behind her until it clingingly accented the
long, graceful curve from her hip to her feet. All this was so unlike
her usual fastidiousness and repose that he was struck by it. With her
eyes on the glowing embers of the hearth, and tentatively advancing her
toe to its warmth and drawing it away, she said:--
“Of course, you must please yourself. I am afraid I have no right except
that of habit and custom to keep you here; and you know,” she added,
with an only half-withheld bitterness, “that they are not always very
effective with young people who prefer to have the ordering of their own
lives. But I have something still to tell you before you finally decide.
I have, as you know, been looking over my--over Mr. Peyton's papers very
carefully. Well, as a result, I find, Mr. Brant, that there is no record
whatever of his wonderfully providential purchase of the Sisters' title
from you; that he never entered into any written agreement with you, and
never paid you a cent; and that, furthermore, his papers show me that
he never even contemplated it; nor, indeed, even knew of YOUR owning
the title when he died. Yes, Mr. Brant, it was all to YOUR foresight and
prudence, and YOUR generosity alone, that we owe our present possession
of the rancho. When you helped us into that awful window, it was YOUR
house we were entering; and if it had been YOU, and not those wretches,
who had chosen to shut the doors on us after the funeral, we could never
have entered here again. Don't deny it, Mr. Brant. I have suspected it a
long time, and when you spoke of changing YOUR position, I determined to
find out if it wasn't I who had to leave the house rather than you. One
moment, please. And I did find out, and it WAS I. Don't speak, please,
yet. And now,” she said, with a quick return to her previous nervous
hilarity, “knowing this, as you did, and knowing, too, that I would know
it when I examined the papers,--don't speak, I'm not through yet,--don't
you think that it was just a LITTLE cruel for you to try to hurry me,
and make me come here instead of your coming to ME in San Francisco,
when I gave you leave for that purpose?”
“But, Mrs. Peyton,” gasped Clarence.
“Please don't interrupt me,” said the lady, with a touch of her old
imperiousness, “for in a moment I must join my guests. When I found you
wouldn't tell me, and left it to me to find out, I could only go away
as I did, and really leave you to control what I believed was your own
property. And I thought, too, that I understood your motives, and, to be
frank with you, that worried me; for I believed I knew the disposition
and feelings of a certain person better than yourself.”
“One moment,” broke out Clarence, “you MUST hear me, now. Foolish and
misguided as that purchase may have been, I swear to you I had only one
motive in making it,--to save the homestead for you and your husband,
who had been my first and earliest benefactors. What the result of it
was, you, as a business woman, know; your friends know; your lawyer will
tell you the same. You owe me nothing. I have given you nothing but the
repossession of this property, which any other man could have done, and
perhaps less stupidly than I did. I would not have forced you to come
here to hear this if I had dreamed of your suspicions, or even if I had
simply understood that you would see me in San Francisco as I passed
through.”
“Passed through? Where were you going?” she said quickly.
“To Sacramento.”
The abrupt change in her manner startled him to a recollection of Susy,
and he blushed. She bit her lips, and moved towards the window.
“Then you saw her?” she said, turning suddenly towards him. The inquiry
of her beautiful eyes was more imperative than her speech.
Clarence recognized quickly what he thought was his cruel blunder in
touching the half-healed wound of separation. But he had gone too far to
be other than perfectly truthful now.
“Yes; I saw her on the stage,” he said, with a return of his boyish
earnestness; “and I learned something which I wanted you to first
hear from me. She is MARRIED,--and to Mr. Hooker, who is in the same
theatrical company with her. But I want you to think, as I honestly do,
that it is the best for her. She has married in her profession, which is
a great protection and a help to her success, and she has married a man
who can look lightly upon certain qualities in her that others might
not be so lenient to. His worst faults are on the surface, and will wear
away in contact with the world, and he looks up to her as his superior.
I gathered this from her friend, for I did not speak with her myself; I
did not go there to see her. But as I expected to be leaving you soon,
I thought it only right that as I was the humble means of first bringing
her into your life, I should bring you this last news, which I suppose
takes her out of it forever. Only I want you to believe that YOU have
nothing to regret, and that SHE is neither lost nor unhappy.”
The expression of suspicious inquiry on her face when he began changed
gradually to perplexity as he continued, and then relaxed into a faint,
peculiar smile. But there was not the slightest trace of that pain,
wounded pride, indignation, or anger, that he had expected to see upon
it.
“That means, I suppose, Mr. Brant, that YOU no longer care for her?”
The smile had passed, yet she spoke now with a half-real, half-affected
archness that was also unlike her.
“It means,” said Clarence with a white face, but a steady voice, “that
I care for her now as much as I ever cared for her, no matter to what
folly it once might have led me. But it means, also, that there was no
time when I was not able to tell it to YOU as frankly as I do now”--
“One moment, please,” she interrupted, and turned quickly towards
the door. She opened it and looked out. “I thought they were calling
me,--and--I--I--MUST go now, Mr. Brant. And without finishing my
business either, or saying half I had intended to say. But wait”--she
put her hand to her head in a pretty perplexity, “it's a moonlight
night, and I'll propose after dinner a stroll in the gardens, and you
can manage to walk a little with me.” She stopped again, returned, said,
“It was very kind of you to think of me at Sacramento,” held out her
hand, allowed it to remain for an instant, cool but acquiescent, in his
warmer grasp, and with the same odd youthfulness of movement and gesture
slipped out of the door.
An hour later she was at the head of her dinner table, serene,
beautiful, and calm, in her elegant mourning, provokingly inaccessible
in the sweet deliberation of her widowed years; Padre Esteban was at
her side with a local magnate, who had known Peyton and his wife, while
Donna Rosita and a pair of liquid-tongued, childlike senoritas were near
Clarence and Sanderson. To the priest Mrs. Peyton spoke admiringly of
the changes in the rancho and the restoration of the Mission Chapel, and
together they had commended Clarence from the level of their superior
passionless reserve and years. Clarence felt hopelessly young and
hopelessly lonely; the naive prattle of the young girls beside him
appeared infantine. In his abstraction, he heard Mrs. Peyton allude to
the beauty of the night, and propose that after coffee and chocolate
the ladies should put on their wraps and go with her to the old garden.
Clarence raised his eyes; she was not looking at him, but there was
a slight consciousness in her face that was not there before, and
the faintest color in her cheek, still lingering, no doubt, from the
excitement of conversation.
It was a cool, tranquil, dewless night when they at last straggled out,
mere black and white patches in the colorless moonlight. The brilliancy
of the flower-hued landscape was subdued under its passive, pale
austerity; even the gray and gold of the second terrace seemed dulled
and confused. At any other time Clarence might have lingered over this
strange effect, but his eyes followed only a tall figure, in a long
striped burnous, that moved gracefully beside the soutaned priest. As he
approached, it turned towards him.
“Ah! here you are. I just told Father Esteban that you talked of leaving
to-morrow, and that he would have to excuse me a few moments while you
showed me what you had done to the old garden.”
She moved beside him, and, with a hesitation that was not unlike a more
youthful timidity, slipped her hand through his arm. It was for the
first time, and, without thinking, he pressed it impulsively to his
side. I have already intimated that Clarence's reserve was at times
qualified by singular directness.
A few steps carried them out of hearing; a few more, and they seemed
alone in the world. The long adobe wall glanced away emptily beside
them, and was lost; the black shadows of the knotted pear-trees were
beneath their feet. They began to walk with the slight affectation of
treading the shadows as if they were patterns on a carpet. Clarence was
voiceless, and yet he seemed to be moving beside a spirit that must be
first addressed.
But it was flesh and blood nevertheless.
“I interrupted you in something you were saying when I left the office,”
she said quietly.
“I was speaking of Susy,” returned Clarence eagerly; “and”--
“Then you needn't go on,” interrupted Mrs. Peyton quickly. “I understand
you, and believe you. I would rather talk of something else. We have not
yet arranged how I can make restitution to you for the capital you sank
in saving this place. You will be reasonable, Mr. Brant, and not leave
me with the shame and pain of knowing that you ruined yourself for the
sake of your old friends. For it is no more a sentimental idea of mine
to feel in this way than it is a fair and sensible one for you to imply
that a mere quibble of construction absolves me from responsibility. Mr.
Sanderson himself admits that the repossession you gave us is a fair and
legal basis for any arrangement of sharing or division of the property
with you, that might enable you to remain here and continue the work you
have so well begun. Have you no suggestion, or must it come from ME, Mr.
Brant?”
“Neither. Let us not talk of that now.”
She did not seem to notice the boyish doggedness of his speech, except
so far as it might have increased her inconsequent and nervously pitched
levity.
“Then suppose we speak of the Misses Hernandez, with whom you scarcely
exchanged a word at dinner, and whom I invited for you and your fluent
Spanish. They are charming girls, even if they are a little stupid.
But what can I do? If I am to live here, I must have a few young people
around me, if only to make the place cheerful for others. Do you know I
have taken a great fancy to Miss Rogers, and have asked her to visit me.
I think she is a good friend of yours, although perhaps she is a little
shy. What's the matter? You have nothing against her, have you?”
Clarence had stopped short. They had reached the end of the pear-tree
shadows. A few steps more would bring them to the fallen south wall
of the garden and the open moonlight beyond, but to the right an olive
alley of deeper shadow diverged.
“No,” he said, with slow deliberation; “I have to thank Mary Rogers for
having discovered something in me that I have been blindly, foolishly,
and hopelessly struggling with.”
“And, pray, what was that?” said Mrs. Peyton sharply.
“That I love you!”
Mrs. Peyton was fairly startled. The embarrassment of any truth is
apt to be in its eternal abruptness, which no deviousness of tact or
circumlocution of diplomacy has ever yet surmounted. Whatever had been
in her heart, or mind, she was unprepared for this directness. The bolt
had dropped from the sky; they were alone; there was nothing between the
stars and the earth but herself and this man and this truth; it could
not be overlooked, surmounted, or escaped from. A step or two more would
take her out of the garden into the moonlight, but always into this
awful frankness of blunt and outspoken nature. She hesitated, and turned
the corner into the olive shadows. It was, perhaps, more dangerous;
but less shameless, and less like truckling. And the appallingly direct
Clarence instantly followed.
“I know you will despise me, hate me; and, perhaps, worst of all,
disbelieve me; but I swear to you, now, that I have always loved
you,--yes, ALWAYS! When first I came here, it was not to see my old
playmate, but YOU, for I had kept the memory of you as I first saw
you when a boy, and you have always been my ideal. I have thought of,
dreamed of, worshiped, and lived for no other woman. Even when I found
Susy again, grown up here at your side; even when I thought that I
might, with your consent, marry her, it was that I might be with YOU
always; that I might be a part of YOUR home, your family, and have a
place with her in YOUR heart; for it was you I loved, and YOU only.
Don't laugh at me, Mrs. Peyton, it is the truth, the whole truth, I am
telling you. God help me!”
If she only COULD have laughed,--harshly, ironically, or even mercifully
and kindly! But it would not come. And she burst out:--
“I am not laughing. Good heavens, don't you see? It is ME you are making
ridiculous.”
“YOU ridiculous?” he said in a momentarily choked, half-stupefied voice.
“You--a beautiful woman, my superior in everything, the mistress
of these lands where I am only steward--made ridiculous, not by my
presumption, but by my confession? Was the saint you just now admired in
Father Esteban's chapel ridiculous because of the peon clowns who were
kneeling before it?”
“Hush! This is wicked! Stop!”
She felt she was now on firm ground, and made the most of it in voice
and manner. She must draw the line somewhere, and she would draw it
between passion and impiety.
“Not until I have told you all, and I MUST before I leave you. I loved
you when I came here,--even when your husband was alive. Don't be angry,
Mrs. Peyton; HE would not, and need not, have been angry; he would have
pitied the foolish boy, who, in the very innocence and ignorance of his
passion, might have revealed it to him as he did to everybody but ONE.
And yet, I sometimes think you might have guessed it, had you thought of
me at all. It must have been on my lips that day I sat with you in the
boudoir. I know that I was filled with it; with it and with you; with
your presence, with your beauty, your grace of heart and mind,--yes,
Mrs. Peyton, even with your own unrequited love for Susy. Only, then, I
knew not what it was.”
“But I think I can tell you what it was then, and now,” said Mrs.
Peyton, recovering her nervous little laugh, though it died a moment
after on her lips. “I remember it very well. You told me then that
I REMINDED YOU OF YOUR MOTHER. Well, I am not old enough to be your
mother, Mr. Brant, but I am old enough to have been, and might have
been, the mother of your wife. That was what you meant then; that
is what you mean now. I was wrong to accuse you of trying to make me
ridiculous. I ask your pardon. Let us leave it as it was that day in the
boudoir, as it is NOW. Let me still remind you of your mother,--I know
she must have been a good woman to have had so good a son,--and when
you have found some sweet young girl to make you happy, come to me for
a mother's blessing, and we will laugh at the recollection and
misunderstanding of this evening.”
Her voice did not, however, exhibit that exquisite maternal tenderness
which the beatific vision ought to have called up, and the persistent
voice of Clarence could not be evaded in the shadow.
“I said you reminded me of my mother,” he went on at her side, “because
I knew her and lost her only as a child. She never was anything to me
but a memory, and yet an ideal of all that was sweet and lovable in
woman. Perhaps it was a dream of what she might have been when she was
as young in years as you. If it pleases you still to misunderstand me,
it may please you also to know that there is a reminder of her even
in this. I have no remembrance of a word of affection from her, nor a
caress; I have been as hopeless in my love for her who was my mother, as
of the woman I would make my wife.”
“But you have seen no one, you know no one, you are young, you scarcely
know your own self! You will forget this, you will forget ME! And
if--if--I should--listen to you, what would the world say, what would
YOU yourself say a few years hence? Oh, be reasonable. Think of it,--it
would be so wild,--so mad! so--so--utterly ridiculous!”
In proof of its ludicrous quality, two tears escaped her eyes in
the darkness. But Clarence caught the white flash of her withdrawn
handkerchief in the shadow, and captured her returning hand. It was
trembling, but did not struggle, and presently hushed itself to rest in
his.
“I'm not only a fool but a brute,” he said in a lower voice. “Forgive
me. I have given you pain,--you, for whom I would have died.”
They had both stopped. He was still holding her sleeping hand. His arm
had stolen around the burnous so softly that it followed the curves
of her figure as lightly as a fold of the garment, and was presumably
unfelt. Grief has its privileges, and suffering exonerates a
questionable situation. In another moment her fair head MIGHT have
dropped upon his shoulder. But an approaching voice uprose in the
adjoining broad allee. It might have been the world speaking through the
voice of the lawyer Sanderson.
“Yes, he is a good fellow, and an intelligent fellow, too, but a perfect
child in his experience of mankind.”
They both started, but Mrs. Peyton's hand suddenly woke up and grasped
his firmly. Then she said in a higher, but perfectly level tone:--
“Yes, I think with you we had better look at it again in the sunlight
to-morrow. But here come our friends; they have probably been waiting
for us to join them and go in.”
* * * * *
The wholesome freshness of early morning was in the room when Clarence
awoke, cleared and strengthened. His resolution had been made. He would
leave the rancho that morning, to enter the world again and seek his
fortune elsewhere. This was only right to HER, whose future it should
never be said he had imperiled by his folly and inexperience; and if, in
a year or two of struggle he could prove his right to address her again,
he would return. He had not spoken to her since they had parted in the
garden, with the grim truths of the lawyer ringing in his ears, but he
had written a few lines of farewell, to be given to her after he
had left. He was calm in his resolution, albeit a little pale and
hollow-eyed for it.
He crept downstairs in the gray twilight of the scarce-awakened house,
and made his way to the stables. Saddling his horse, and mounting,
he paced forth into the crisp morning air. The sun, just risen, was
everywhere bringing out the fresh color of the flower-strewn terraces,
as the last night's shadows, which had hidden them, were slowly beaten
back. He cast a last look at the brown adobe quadrangle of the quiet
house, just touched with the bronzing of the sun, and then turned his
face towards the highway. As he passed the angle of the old garden he
hesitated, but, strong in his resolution, he put the recollection of
last night behind him, and rode by without raising his eyes.
“Clarence!”
It was HER voice. He wheeled his horse. She was standing behind the
grille in the old wall as he had seen her standing on the day he had
ridden to his rendezvous with Susy. A Spanish manta was thrown over her
head and shoulders, as if she had dressed hastily, and had run out to
intercept him while he was still in the stable. Her beautiful face was
pale in its black-hooded recess, and there were faint circles around her
lovely eyes.
“You were going without saying 'goodby'!” she said softly.
She passed her slim white hand between the grating. Clarence leaped to
the ground, caught it, and pressed it to his lips. But he did not let it
go.
“No! no!” she said, struggling to withdraw it. “It is better as it
is--as--as you have decided it to be. Only I could not let you go
thus,--without a word. There now,--go, Clarence, go. Please! Don't you
see I am behind these bars? Think of them as the years that separate
us, my poor, dear, foolish boy. Think of them as standing between us,
growing closer, heavier, and more cruel and hopeless as the years go
on.”
Ah, well! they had been good bars a hundred and fifty years ago, when it
was thought as necessary to repress the innocence that was behind them
as the wickedness that was without. They had done duty in the convent
at Santa Inez, and the monastery of Santa Barbara, and had been brought
hither in Governor Micheltorrenas' time to keep the daughters of Robles
from the insidious contact of the outer world, when they took the air
in their cloistered pleasance. Guitars had tinkled against them in vain,
and they had withstood the stress and storm of love tokens. But, like
many other things which have had their day and time, they had retained
their semblance of power, even while rattling loosely in their sockets,
only because no one had ever thought of putting them to the test, and,
in the strong hand of Clarence, assisted, perhaps, by the leaning
figure of Mrs. Peyton, I grieve to say that the whole grille suddenly
collapsed, became a frame of tinkling iron, and then clanked, bar by
bar, into the road. Mrs. Peyton uttered a little cry and drew back, and
Clarence, leaping the ruins, caught her in his arms.
For a moment only, for she quickly withdrew from them, and although
the morning sunlight was quite rosy on her cheeks, she said gravely,
pointing to the dismantled opening:--
“I suppose you MUST stay now, for you never could leave me here alone
and defenseless.”
He stayed. And with this fulfillment of his youthful dreams the romance
of his young manhood seemed to be completed, and so closed the second
volume of this trilogy. But what effect that fulfillment of youth
had upon his maturer years, or the fortunes of those who were nearly
concerned in it, may be told in a later and final chronicle.
End of Project Gutenberg's Susy, A Story of the Plains, by Bret Harte