THE FINDING OF ANTONIO
For Jessica Trent there followed weeks of a quieter life than she had
lived even at isolated Sobrante. "The behavior," which was to be a
test of her stay, proved so pleasing to the hospital residents that some
of them wondered how they had ever gotten along without her helpful,
happy presence.
Very quickly she lost her first vague fear of the place and learned
to hear in the once alarming ambulance gong the signal of relief to
somebody. She modulated her voice to the prevailing quietude of the
house and her footfalls were as light as the nurses themselves. To
many a sufferer, coming there in dread and foreboding, the sight of
a child familiar and happy about the great building brought a feeling of
comfort and homelikeness which nothing else could have given. She was so
apt and imitative that Ephraim often declared:
"All you need, Lady Jess, is a cap and apron to make you a regular
professional. Take care of me better'n any of 'em, you do; and I'll
be a prime experience for you, that's a fact. Another of the good things
come out of my fool riding, I s'pose. You'll be able to nurse the
whole parcel of us, when you get back to Sobrante. Beat Aunt Sally all
hollow, 'cause you trust a bit to nature and not all to--picra."
"But you're not ill, Ephraim Marsh. You're just broken. So you don't
need medicine. All you need is patience. And your nourishments, regular."
"I get them all right; but--_patience!_ Atlantic!"
The old man sighed. It was weary work for him, the hardest he had ever
done, to lie so motionless while he was so anxious to be active. He
really suffered little and he had the best of care. Still, he sighed
again, and, unfortunately, Jessica echoed the sigh. Then he looked at
her keenly and spoke the thought which had been in his mind for a long
time:
"Captain, you must go home. There's twenty to need bossing there and
only one poor old carcass here."
Poor Lady Jess! She tried to answer brightly as was her habit, but that
day homesickness was strong upon her, and at mention of Sobrante her
courage failed. She forgot that she was a "nurse"; forgot the good
"behavior," forgot everything, indeed, but her mother's face and
Ned's mischievous affection. She dropped to her knees and buried her
face in the old man's pillow while she sobbed aloud:
"Oh, 'Forty-niner,' shall we ever see that home again?"
Weak and unstrung, the patient moaned in sympathy, while tears fell from
his own eyes; and it was upon this dismal tableau that Mr. Hale walked
in, unannounced.
"Hurrah, here! What's amiss? Been quarreling? Just when I've come to
bring you good news, too."
"Quarreling, indeed! Ephraim and I could never quarrel. Never.
But--but--this isn't Sobrante, and we're--I guess we're awful
homesick."
"That's a disease can be cured, you know. One of you, at least, can
go home. If you wish, Jessica, I will put you on a train and arrange for
one of your 'boys' to meet you at the railway terminus. But----"
"Hello, everybody!" called a cheery voice, and there in the doorway
was Ninian Sharp, smiling, nodding, and embracing all three with one
inspiring look. "What's that I overheard about 'home'? Been telling
state secrets, Hale? My plan beats yours, altogether. We're all going
'home' to Sobrante, in a bunch, one of these fine days. _The Lancet_
never fails!"
Jessica sprang to him and caught his hand to kiss it. He had not been
to see them for some days and she had missed him sadly. Far more than
Mr. Hale he made her feel that the mystery surrounding "that missing New
York money," as she called it, would certainly be explained. It was he
who, by questions innumerable, had recalled to her and to Ephraim the
names of persons with whom Mr. Trent had ever done business. Incidents
which to her seemed trifling had been of moment in his judgment. With
the slight clews they had given him, as the first link in the chain, he
had gone on unraveling the knots which followed with infinite patience
and perseverance. He kept Mrs. Trent informed of the welfare of her
daughter, and, without neglecting his legitimate business, did the
thousand and one things which only the busiest of persons can have time
to do. For it's always the indolent who are overcrowded.
"Oh! Mr. Sharp! Have you found it all out?"
"Not I. Hale, here, has found out some things, himself. But he's a
lawyer, which means, a--beg pardon--a snail. If newspapers were as slow
as the law--h-m-m--we might all take a nap. Look here, Miss Sunshine,
you've been crying."
Jessica blushed as guiltily as if she had been accused of some crime.
"I know it. I'm sorry."
"So am I. I know why. Because you're shut up here like a dormouse when
you've lived like a lark. On with your little red Tam and come with
me. Our work is getting on famously, famously. If I could get hold of
one person that I've hunted this and every other city near for I'd
have the matter in a nut shell and the guilty man in--a prison. I've
found--three or four more of those links I mentioned, Hale, and every
man of them is another witness to the uprightness of one, Cassius Trent,
late of Sobrante. I began this job for little Jess, but I confess I'm
finishing it for the sake of a man I never saw. He was a trump, that
fellow. One of the great-hearted, impracticable creatures that keep my
faith in humanity. If we could only find that Antonio!"
"Yes. _If!_ But when he rode away from Sobrante that day he seems to
have ridden out of the world, so far as any trace he left behind. I'm
getting discouraged, for without him all the rest falls to the ground."
"Well, discouraged? We'll just step out and find him, won't we, Lady
Jess?"
She had hastened to ask permission to go out with her friend and had
come back radiant, now, at prospect even of so brief an outing. It was
quite as the reporter had judged; the close confinement of the hospital,
after the out-of-door life at Sobrante, was half the cause of Jessica's
depression, and she was ready now to fall in with the gay mood of Ninian
Sharp and answered, promptly:
"Oh, yes. We'll find 'him,' since you wish it. But I don't happen to
know which 'him' you want?"
"Why, our fine Senor Bernal. Who else?"
"Then let us go to the old Spanish quarter."
"I've been, many times. Sent others also. No. He's a wise chap and
if he is in this town frequents no haunt where he'll be looked for so
surely. No matter. It's a picturesque corner of the town and maybe a
sight of some old adobes would do your homesick eyes good."
"Or harm," suggested Mr. Hale.
But they did not stop to hear his objections and were speedily on the
car which would take them nearest to the district Jessica had heard of,
both from Antonio at home and now from others here. A relic of the old
California, whose history she loved to hear from the lips of Pedro, Fra
Mateo, or even "Forty-niner" himself.
But once arrived there she was disappointed. They were old adobes,
true enough, and the people who lived in them had the same dark,
Spanish cast of face which she remembered of Antonio. Yet there the
resemblance ended. This was the home of squalor, of poverty that was not
self-respecting enough to be clean, and of an indolence which had
brought about a wretched state of affairs.
"Oh! is this it? But it can't be. Antonio's 'quarter' was a splendid
place. The old grandees lived there, keeping up a sort of court and
all the customs of a hundred years ago. It was 'a picture, a romance, a
dream,' he said. Of an evening he would describe it all to us at home
till I felt as if it were the one spot in the world I most wished to
see. But--_this!_"
"Turn not up your pretty nose, for '_this_,' my dear little
unenlightened maiden, is also a dream--a nightmare. Nevertheless, the
very ground your lost hero boasted and embellished with his fancy. The
more I hear of this versatile Antonio the greater becomes my longing
to behold him. In any case, since we're here, we must not go away
without entering some of these shops. You shall buy a trinket or two
and present one of them as a keepsake to this fine senor, when you
find him. Oh! that I had your familiar knowledge of his features,
this absent 'grandee,' that if by accident I met him I might know
him on the instant. See. This 'bazaar' is somewhat tidier than its
neighbors, as well as larger, and there are some really beautiful Navajo
blankets in the window. Unfortunately the pocketbook of a reporter
isn't quite equal to more than a dozen of these, at fifty dollars
apiece. Something more modest, Lady Jess, and I'll oblige you!"
She looked up to protest and saw that he was teasing, and exclaimed, with
an air of mock injury:
"Those or nothing! But when shall I learn to understand your jest from
earnest?"
"When you produce me your Antonio!"
"Upon the instant, then," she retorted, gayly.
Upon the instant, indeed, there were hurrying footsteps behind them, the
sound of some one breathing rapidly and of angrily muttered sentences,
that were a jumble of Spanish and English, and in a voice which made
Jessica Trent start and turn aside, clutching her companion's hand.
He turned, also, throwing his arm about her shoulders, lest the rush of
the man approaching should force her from the narrow sidewalk. But she
darted from him, straight into the path of this wild-looking person and
seized him with both hands, while she cried out:
"It's he! It is Antonio! I've found him--Antonio Bernal!"
"Whew! A case of the 'unexpected,' indeed! The merest jest and the
absolute fact. Hi! I'd rather this than--than be struck by lightning,
and it's on about the same order of things, for it is he, as she
claimed. He's more staggered than I am," considered this lively
newspaper man. Then he thought it time to step forward, and remark:
"Please present me to your friend, Miss Trent," and lifted his hat,
courteously.
Antonio bowed, after his own exaggerated fashion, and with his hand
upon his heart; but though his eyes rested keenly on Ninian's face he
kept tight hold of Jessica's hand and his torrent of words did not
cease for an instant. Now and then he lifted the little hand and kissed
it, whereupon Lady Jess would snatch it away and coolly wipe it on her
skirt, only to have it recaptured and caressed; till, seeing he would
neither give over the hateful action nor stop talking, she folded her
arms behind her and interrupted with:
"That's enough, Senor Bernal. This isn't Sobrante, but I'm your
captain here, same as there. You come tell your story to Mr. Hale and
this gentleman. See Ephraim Marsh, too. He's here in hospital with a
broken leg. I'm in Los Angeles, also, as you see; and likely to find
the same man you say has cheated you. That's what he's telling, Mr.
Sharp," she exclaimed.
Antonio hesitated. He had frowned at her tone of command, but now, to
the reporter's amazement, seemed eager to obey it.
"As the senorita will. That gentleman, who came last to Sobrante, was
one lawyer, no? So the senora said. Fool! fool! that I was that I did
not then and at that moment so disclose the secrets of my heart as was
moved, yes. Let the senorita and the handsome friend lead on. I follow.
I, Antonio."
Five minutes earlier, had Ninian Sharp been asked what he should do if
he did find this strange person, he would have promptly answered:
"Put him under lock and key, where he can do no harm and be handy to
get at."
Now he found himself as certain that the fellow needed no restraint
of the law, at present. That he was dreadfully unhappy and had become
as humble as he had before been arrogant. What could so have altered
him? And was it thus that the Lady Jess had all her "boys" in leading
strings?
"I must look out for myself or I'll fall under a like spell," he
laughed, as with the air of one who knows it all, though she had been
over that way but once, Jessica explained to her late manager:
"This car will take us straight back to the hospital. We've not been
away long and I think Mr. Hale will still be there. He'll be glad to
see you. _Very glad._ He and Mr. Sharp have been looking for you. I think
you can tell them something they're anxious to know. Ephraim is there,
anyhow. He, poor fellow, can't go away, even if he wishes--yet."
Mr. Hale was still in "Forty-niner's" room and recognized Antonio with
such an outburst of surprise that Ephraim opened his eyes, for he had
been dozing, and fixed them on the newcomer, inquiringly.
"What! You, you snake! _you here?_"
"But certainly, yes. I, I, Antonio, at your service. Hast the broken
leer? This is bad. Old bones are slow to heal. You will not shoot again
at dear Sobrante, you."
"Won't? Well, I rather guess it'll take somebody stronger 'n you to
stop it."
Antonio shrugged his shoulders in a manner deemed offensive by the
patient, who struggled to rise, but was prevented by Jessica's quick
movement.
"Ephraim! Antonio! Don't quarrel, this very first minute. One of you
is sick and the other half frantic with some trouble. Please, Antonio,
go away now with Mr. Hale and Mr. Sharp. One must never make a noise in a
hospital," said this wise maiden of eleven.
"Ah! so? But it is the lawyer I want, yet. The lawyer who will make a
villain return the great money I have given. _Caramba!_ If I had him in
my hands this minute!"
Jessica lifted a warning finger and the manager lowered his voice.
He even made an attempt at soothing Ephraim, but chose an unfortunate
argument.
"Take peace to yourself, 'Forty-niner.' All must be told some day.
_Adios._"
"_Adios_, you foreign serpent! Old? Old! he calls me--me--old! Why,
I'm a babe in arms to Pedro, or Fra Mateo, or even fat Brigida, who
washes for us 'boys.' Old! A man but just turned eighty! Snake, I'll
outlive you yet. I'll get well, to spite you; and I'll be on hand,
when they let you out the lockup, to give you the neatest horsewhippin'
you ever see. Old! Get out!"
Fearful of further excitement, the gentlemen hurried Antonio away, yet
kept a keen watch upon his movements for, at that word "lockup," the
man's dark face had turned to an ashen hue.
As they left the hospital the every-busy ambulance rolled past them
toward the accident ward. The others averted their eyes, but the Spaniard
peered curiously within, and, instantly a shuddering groan burst from
his lips. Inside that van lay the solution to all their difficulties;
though Antonio alone had comprehended it.