The news of the assignment of Dr. West's property to Mrs. Saltonstall
was followed by the still more astonishing discovery that the Doctor's
will further bequeathed to her his entire property, after payment of
his debts and liabilities. It was given in recognition of her talents
and business integrity during their late association, and as an
evidence of the confidence and "undying affection" of the testator.
Nevertheless, after the first surprise, the fact was accepted by the
community as both natural and proper under that singular instinct of
humanity which acquiesces without scruple in the union of two large
fortunes, but sharply questions the conjunction of poverty and
affluence, and looks only for interested motives where there is
disparity of wealth. Had Mrs. Saltonstall been a poor widow instead of
a rich one; had she been the Doctor's housekeeper instead of his
business friend, the bequest would have been strongly criticised--if
not legally tested. But this combination, which placed the entire
valley of San Antonio in the control of a single individual, appeared
to be perfectly legitimate. More than that, some vague rumor of the
Doctor's past and his early entanglements only seemed to make this
eminently practical disposition of his property the more respectable,
and condoned for any moral irregularities of his youth.
The effect upon the collateral branches of the Guitierrez family and
the servants and retainers was even more impressive. For once, it
seemed that the fortunes and traditions of the family were changed; the
female Guitierrez, instead of impoverishing the property, had augmented
it; the foreigner and intruder had been despoiled; the fate of La
Mision Perdida had been changed; the curse of Koorotora had proved a
blessing; his prophet and descendant, Pereo, the mayordomo, moved in an
atmosphere of superstitious adulation and respect among the domestics
and common people. This recognition of his power he received at times
with a certain exaltation of grandiloquent pride beyond the conception
of any but a Spanish servant, and at times with a certain dull, pained
vacancy of perception and an expression of frightened bewilderment
which also went far to establish his reputation as an unconscious seer
and thaumaturgist. "Thou seest," said Sanchez to the partly skeptical
Faquita, "he does not know more than an infant what is his power. That
is the proof of it." The Dona Maria alone did not participate in this
appreciation of Pereo, and when it was proposed that a feast or
celebration of rejoicing should be given under the old pear-tree by the
Indian's mound, her indignation was long remembered by those that
witnessed it. "It is not enough that we have been made ridiculous in
the past," she said to Maruja, "by the interference of this solemn
fool, but that the memory of our friend is to be insulted by his
generosity being made into a triumph of Pereo's idiotic ancestor. One
would have thought those coyotes and Koorotora's bones had been buried
with the cruel gossip of your relations"--(it had been the recent habit
of Dona Maria to allude to "the family" as being particularly related
to Maruja alone)--"over my poor friend. Let him beware that his
ancestor's mound is not uprooted with the pear-tree, and his heathenish
temple destroyed. If, as the engineer says, a branch of the new
railroad can be established for La Mision Perdida, I agree with him
that it can better pass at that point with less sacrifice to the
domain. It is the one uncultivated part of the park, and lies at the
proper angle."
"You surely would not consent to this, my mother?" said Maruja, with a
sudden impression of a newly found force in her mother's character.
"Why not, child?" said the relict of Mr. Saltonstall and the mourner of
Dr. West, coldly. "I admit it was discreet of thee in old times to
have thy sentimental passages there with caballeros who, like the
guests of the hidalgo that kept a skeleton at his feast, were reminded
of the mutability of their hopes by Koorotora's bones and the legend.
But with the explosion of this idea of a primal curse, like Eve's, on
the property," added the Dona Maria, with a slight bitterness, "thou
mayest have thy citas--elsewhere. Thou canst scarcely keep this
Captain Carroll any longer at a distance by rattling those bones of
Koorotora in his face. And of a truth, child, since the affair of the
letters, and his discreet and honorable conduct since, I see not why
thou shouldst. He has thy mother's reputation in his hands."
"He is a gentleman, my mother," said Maruja, quietly.
"And they are scarce, child, and should be rewarded and preserved. That
is what I meant, silly one; this Captain is not rich--but then, thou
hast enough for both."
"But it was Amita that first brought him here," said Maruja, looking
down with an air of embarrassed thoughtfulness, which Dona Maria chose
to instantly accept as exaggerated coyness.
"Do not think to deceive me or thyself, child, with this folly. Thou
art old enough to know a man's mind, if not thine own. Besides, I do
not know that I shall object to her liking for Raymond. He is very
clever, and would be a relief to some of thy relatives. He would be
invaluable to us in the emergencies that may grow out of these
mechanical affairs that I do not understand--such as the mill and the
railroad."
"And you propose to take a few husbands as partners in the business?"
said Maruja, who had recovered her spirits. "I warn you that Captain
Carroll is as stupid as a gentleman could be. I wonder that he has not
blundered in other things as badly as he has in preferring me to Amita.
He confided to me only last night, that he had picked up a pocket-book
belonging to the Doctor and given it to Aladdin, without a witness or
receipt, and evidently of his own accord."
"A pocket-book of the Doctor's?" repeated Dona Maria.
"Ay; but it contained nothing of thine," said Maruja. "The poor child
had sense enough to think of that. But I am in no hurry to ask your
consent and your blessing yet, little mother. I could even bear that
Amita should precede me to the altar, if the exigencies of thy
'business' require it. It might also secure Captain Carroll for me.
Nay, look not at me in that cheapening, commercial way--with compound
interest in thine eyes. I am not so poor an investment, truly, of thy
original capital."
"Thou art thy father's child," said her mother, suddenly kissing her;
"and that is saying enough, the Blessed Virgin knows. Go now," she
continued, gently pushing her from the room, "and send Amita hither."
She watched the disappearance of Maruja's slightly rebellious
shoulders, and added to herself, "And this is the child that Amita
really believes is pining with lovesickness for Carroll, so that she
can neither sleep nor eat. This is the girl that Faquita would have me
think hath no longer any heart in her dress or in her finery! Soul of
Joseph Saltonstall!" ejaculated the widow, lifting her shoulders and
her eyes together, "thou hast much to account for."
Two weeks later she again astonished her daughter. "Why dost thou not
join the party that drives over to see the wonders of Aladdin's Palace
to-day? It would seem more proper that thou shouldst accompany thy
guests than Raymond and Amita."
"I have never entered his doors since the day he was disrespectful to
my mother's daughter," said Maruja, in surprise.
"Disrespectful!" repeated Dona Maria, impatiently. "Thy father's
daughter ought to know that such as he may be ignorant and vulgar, but
can not be disrespectful to her. And there are offenses, child, it is
much more crushing to forget than to remember. As long as he has not
the presumption to APOLOGIZE, I see no reason why thou mayst not go.
He has not been here since that affair of the letters. I shall not
permit him to be uncivil over THAT--dost thou understand? He is of use
to me in business. Thou mayst take Carroll with thee; he will
understand that."
"But Carroll will not go," said Maruja. "He will not say what passed
between them, but I suspect they quarreled."
"All the better, then, that thou goest alone. He need not be reminded
of it. Fear not but that he will be only too proud of thy visit to
think of aught else."
Maruja, who seemed relieved at this prospect of being unaccompanied by
Captain Carroll, shrugged her shoulders and assented.
When the party that afternoon drove into the courtyard of Aladdin's
Palace, the announcement that its hospitable proprietor was absent, and
would not return until dinner, did not abate either their pleasure or
their curiosity. As already intimated to the reader, Mr. Prince's
functions as host were characteristically irregular; and the servant's
suggestion, that Mr. Prince's private secretary would attend to do the
honors, created little interest, and was laughingly waived by Maruja.
"There really is not the slightest necessity to trouble the gentleman,"
she said, politely. "I know the house thoroughly, and I think I have
shown it once or twice before for your master. Indeed," she added,
turning to her party, "I have been already complimented on my skill as
a cicerone." After a pause, she continued, with a slight exaggeration
of action and in her deepest contralto, "Ahem, ladies and gentlemen,
the ball and court in which we are now standing is a perfect copy of
the Court of Lions at the Alhambra, and was finished in fourteen days
in white pine, gold, and plaster, at a cost of ten thousand dollars. A
photograph of the original structure hangs on the wall: you will
observe, ladies and gentlemen, that the reproduction is perfect. The
Alhambra is in Granada, a province of Spain, which it is said in some
respects to resemble California, where you have probably observed the
Spanish language is still spoken by the old settlers. We now cross the
stable-yard on a bridge which is a facsimile in appearance and
dimensions of the Bridge of Sighs at Venice, connecting the Doge's
Palace with the State Prison. Here, on the contrary, instead of being
ushered into a dreary dungeon, as in the great original, a fresh
surprise awaits us. Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, to precede you for
the surprise. We open a door thus--and--presto!"--
She stopped, speechless, on the threshold; the fan fell from her
gesticulating hand.
In the centre of a brilliantly-lit conservatory, with golden columns, a
young man was standing. As her fan dropped on the tessellated
pavement, he came forward, picked it up, and put it in her rigid and
mechanical fingers. The party, who had applauded her apparently
artistic climax, laughingly pushed by her into the conservatory,
without noticing her agitation.
It was the same face and figure she remembered as last standing before
her, holding back the crowding grain in the San Antonio field. But
here he was appareled and appointed like a gentleman, and even seemed
to be superior to the garish glitter of his new surroundings.
"I believe I have the pleasure of speaking to Miss Saltonstall," he
said, with the faintest suggestion of his former manner in his
half-resentful sidelong glance. "I hear that you offered to dispense
with my services, but I knew that Mr. Prince would scarcely be
satisfied if I did not urge it once more upon you in person. I am his
private secretary."
At the same moment, Amita and Raymond, attracted by the conversation,
turned towards him. Their recognition of the man they had seen at Dr.
West's was equally distinct. The silence became embarrassing. Two
pretty girls of the party pressed to Amita's side, with half-audible
whispers. "What is it?" "Who's your handsome and wicked-looking
friend?" "Is this the surprise?"
At the sound of their voices, Maruja recovered herself coldly.
"Ladies," she said, with a slight wave of her fan, "this is Mr.
Prince's private secretary. I believe it is hardly fair to take up his
valuable time. Allow me to thank you, sir, FOR PICKING UP MY FAN."
With a single subtle flash of the eye she swept by him, taking her
companions to the other end of the conservatory. When she turned, he
was gone.
"This was certainly an unexpected climax," said Raymond, mischievously.
"Did you really arrange it beforehand? We leave a picturesque tramp at
the edge of a grave; we pass over six weeks and a Bridge of Sighs, and
hey, presto! we find a private secretary in a conservatory! This is
quite the regular Aladdin business."
"You may laugh," said Maruja, who had recovered her spirits, "but if
you were really clever you'd find out what it all means. Don't you see
that Amita is dying of curiosity?"
"Let us fly at once and discover the secret, then," said Raymond,
slipping Amita's arm through his. "We will consult the oracle in the
stables. Come."
The others followed, leaving Maruja for an instant alone. She was
about to rejoin them when she heard footsteps in the passage they had
just crossed, and then perceived that the young stranger had merely
withdrawn to allow the party to precede him before he returned to the
other building through the conservatory, which he was just entering.
In turning quickly to escape, the black lace of her over-skirt caught
in the spines of a snaky-looking cactus. She stopped to disengage
herself with feverish haste in vain. She was about to sacrifice the
delicate material, in her impatience, when the young man stepped
quietly to her side.
"Allow me. Perhaps I have more patience, even if I have less time," he
said, stooping down. Their ungloved hands touched. Maruja stopped in
her efforts and stood up. He continued until he had freed the luckless
flounce, conscious of the soft fire of her eyes on his head and neck.
"There," he said, rising, and encountering her glance. As she did not
speak, he continued: "You are thinking, Miss Saltonstall, that you have
seen me before, are you not? Well--you HAVE; I asked you the road to
San Jose one morning when I was tramping by your hedge."
"And as you probably were looking for something better--which you seem
to have found--you didn't care to listen to MY directions," said
Maruja, quickly.
"I found a man--almost the only one who ever offered me a gratuitous
kindness--at whose grave I afterwards met you. I found another man who
befriended me here--where I meet you again."
She was beginning to be hysterically nervous lest any one should return
and find them together. She was conscious of a tingling of vague
shame. Yet she lingered. The strange fascination of his half-savage
melancholy, and a reproachfulness that seemed to arraign her, with the
rest of the world, at the bar of his vague resentment, held the
delicate fibres of her sensitive being as cruelly and relentlessly as
the thorns of the cactus had gripped her silken lace. Without knowing
what she was saying, she stammered that she "was glad he connected her
with his better fortune," and began to move away. He noticed it with
his sidelong lids, and added, with a slight bitterness:--
"I don't think I should have intruded here again, but I thought you had
gone. But I--I--am afraid you have not seen the last of me. It was the
intention of my employer, Mr. Prince, to introduce me to you and your
mother. I suppose he considers it part of my duties here. I must warn
you that, if you are here when he returns, he will insist upon it, and
upon your meeting me with these ladies at dinner."
"Perhaps so--he is my mother's friend," said Maruja; "but you have the
advantage of us--you can always take to the road, you know."
The smile with which she had intended to accompany this speech did not
come as readily in execution as it had in conception, and she would
have given worlds to have recalled her words. But he said, "That's
so," quietly, and turned away, as if to give her an opportunity to
escape. She moved hesitatingly towards the passage and stopped. The
sound of the returning voices gave her a sudden courage.
"Mr.--"
"Guest," said the young man.
"If we do conclude to stay to dinner as Mr. Prince has said nothing of
introducing you to my sister, you must let ME have that pleasure."
He lifted his eyes to hers with a sudden flush. But she had fled.
She reached her party, displaying her torn flounce as the cause of her
delay, and there was a slight quickness in her breathing and her speech
which was attributed to the same grave reason. "But, only listen,"
said Amita, "we've got it all out of the butler and the grooms. It's
such a romantic story!"
"What is?" said Maruja, suddenly.
"Why, the private tramp's."
"The peripatetic secretary," suggested Raymond.
"Yes," continued Amita, "Mr. Prince was so struck with his gratitude to
the old Doctor that he hunted him up in San Jose, and brought him here.
Since then Prince has been so interested in him--it appears he was
somebody in the States, or has rich relations--that he has been
telegraphing and making all sorts of inquiries about him, and has even
sent out his own lawyer to hunt up everything about him. Are you
listening?"
"Yes."
"You seem abstracted."
"I am hungry."
"Why not dine here; it's an hour earlier than at home. Aladdin would
fall at your feet for the honor. Do!"
Maruja looked at them with innocent vagueness, as if the possibility
were just beginning to dawn upon her.
"And Clara Wilson is just dying to see the mysterious unknown again.
Say yes, little Maruja."
Little Maruja glanced at them with a large maternal compassion. "We
shall see."
Mr. Prince, on his return an hour later, was unexpectedly delighted
with Maruja's gracious acceptance of his invitation to dinner. He was
thoroughly sensible of the significance which his neighbors had
attached to the avoidance by the Saltonstall heiress of his various
parties and gorgeous festivities ever since a certain act of
indiscretion--now alleged to have been produced by the exaltation of
wine--had placed him under ban. Whatever his feelings were towards her
mother, he could not fail to appreciate fully this act of the daughter,
which rehabilitated him. It was with more than his usual
extravagance--shown even in a certain exaggeration of respect towards
Maruja--that he welcomed the party, and made preparations for the
dinner. The telegraph and mounted messengers were put into rapid
requisition. The bridal suite was placed at the disposal of the young
ladies for a dressing-room. The attendant genii surpassed themselves.
The evening dresses of Maruja, Amita, and the Misses Wilson, summoned
by electricity from La Mision Perdida, and dispatched by the fleetest
conveyances, were placed in the arms of their maids, smothered with
bouquets, an hour before dinner. An operatic concert troupe, passing
through the nearest town, were diverted from their course by the slaves
of the ring to discourse hidden music in the music-room during dinner.
"Bite my finger, Sweetlips," said Miss Clara Wilson, who had a neat
taste for apt quotation, to Maruja, "that I may see if I am awake. It's
the Arabian Nights all over again!"
The dinner was a marvel, even in a land of gastronomic marvels; the
dessert a miracle of fruits, even in a climate that bore the products
of two zones. Maruja, from her seat beside her satisfied host, looked
across a bank of yellow roses at her sister and Raymond, and was
timidly conscious of the eyes of young Guest, who was seated at the
other end of the table, between the two Misses Wilson. With a strange
haunting of his appearance on the day she first met him, she stole
glances of half-frightened curiosity at him while he was eating, and
was relieved to find that he used his knife and fork like the others,
and that his appetite was far from voracious. It was his employer who
was the first to recall the experiences of his past life, with a
certain enthusiasm and the air of a host anxious to contribute to the
entertainment of his guests. "You'd hardly believe, Miss Saltonstall,
that that young gentleman over there walked across the Continent--and
two thousand odd miles, wasn't it?--all alone, and with not much more
in the way of traps than he's got on now. Tell 'em, Harry, how the
Apaches nearly gobbled you up, and then let you go because they thought
you as good an Injun as any one of them, and how you lived a week in
the desert on two biscuits as big as that." A chorus of entreaty and
delighted anticipation followed the suggestion. The old expression of
being at bay returned for an instant to Guest's face, but, lifting his
eyes, he caught a look of almost sympathetic anxiety from Maruja's, who
had not spoken.
"It became necessary for me, some time ago," said Guest, half
explanatorily, to Maruja, "to be rather explicit in the details of my
journey here, and I told Mr. Prince some things which he seems to think
interesting to others. That is all. To save my life on one occasion,
I was obliged to show myself as good as an Indian, in his own way, and
I lived among them and traveled with them for two weeks. I have been
hungry, as I suppose others have on like occasions, but nothing more."
Nevertheless, in spite of his evident reticence, he was obliged to give
way to their entreaties, and, with a certain grim and uncompromising
truthfulness of statement, recounted some episodes of his journey. It
was none the less thrilling that he did it reluctantly, and in much the
same manner as he had answered his father's questions, and as he had
probably responded to the later cross-examination of Mr. Prince. He
did not tell it emotionally, but rather with the dogged air of one who
had been subjected to a personal grievance for which he neither asked
nor expected sympathy. When he did not raise his eyes to Maruja's, he
kept them fixed on his plate.
"Well," said Prince, when a long-drawn sigh of suspended emotion among
the guests testified to his powers as a caterer to their amusement,
"what do you say to some music with our coffee to follow the story?"
"It's more like a play," said Amita to Raymond. "What a pity Captain
Carroll, who knows all about Indians, isn't here to have enjoyed it.
But I suppose Maruja, who hasn't lost a word, will tell it to him."
"I don't think she will," said Raymond, dryly, glancing at Maruja, who,
lost in some intricate pattern of her Chinese plate, was apparently
unconscious that her host was waiting her signal to withdraw.
At last she raised her head, and said, gently but audibly, to the
waiting Prince,--
"It is positively a newer pattern; the old one had not that delicate
straw line in the arabesque. You must have had it made for you."
"I did," said the gratified Prince, taking up the plate. "What eyes
you have, Miss Saltonstall. They see everything."
"Except that I'm keeping you all waiting," she returned, with a smile,
letting the eyes in question fall with a half-parting salutation on
Guest as she rose. It was the first exchange of a common instinct
between them, and left them as conscious as if they had pressed hands.
The music gave an opportunity for some desultory conversation, in which
Mr. Prince and his young friend received an invitation from Maruja to
visit La Mision, and the party, by common consent, turned into the
conservatory, where the genial host begged them each to select a flower
from a few especially rare exotics. When Maruja received hers, she
said, laughingly, to Prince, "Will you think me very importunate if I
ask for another?" "Take what you like--you have only to name it," he
replied, gallantly. "But that's just what I can't do," responded the
young girl, "unless," she added, turning to Guest, "unless you can
assist me. It was the plant I was examining to-day." "I think I can
show it to you," said Guest, with a slight increase of color, as he
preceded her towards the memorable cactus near the door, "but I doubt
if it has any flower."
Nevertheless, it had. A bright red blossom, like a spot of blood drawn
by one of its thorns. He plucked it for her, and she placed it in her
belt.
"You are forgiving," he said, admiringly.
"YOU ought to know that," she returned, looking down.
"I?--why?"
"You were rude to me twice."
"Twice!"
"Yes--once at the Mision of La Perdida; once in the road at San
Antonio."
His eyes became downcast and gloomy. "At the Mision that morning, I, a
wretched outcast, only saw in you a beautiful girl intent on overriding
me with her merciless beauty. At San Antonio I handed the fan I picked
up to the man whose eyes told me he loved you."
She started impatiently. "You might have been more gallant, and found
more difficulty in the selection," she said, pertly. "But since when
have you gentlemen become so observant and so punctilious? Would you
expect him to be as considerate of others?"
"I have few claims that any one seems bound to respect," he returned,
brusquely. Then, in a softer voice, he added, looking at her, gently,--
"You were in mourning when you came here this afternoon, Miss
Saltonstall."
"Was I? It was for Dr. West--my mother's friend."
"It was very becoming to you."
"You are complimenting me. But I warn you that Captain Carroll said
something better than that; he said mourning was not necessary for me.
I had only to 'put my eye-lashes at half-mast.' He is a soldier you
know."
"He seems to be as witty as he is fortunate," said Guest, bitterly.
"Do you think he is fortunate?" said Maruja, raising her eyes to his.
There was so much in this apparently simple question that Guest looked
in her eyes for a suggestion. What he saw there for an instant made
his heart stop beating. She apparently did not know it, for she began
to tremble too.
"Is he not?" said Guest, in a low voice.
"Do you think he ought to be?" she found herself whispering.
A sudden silence fell upon them. The voices of their companions seemed
very far in the distance; the warm breath of the flowers appeared to be
drowning their senses; they tried to speak, but could not; they were so
near to each other that the two long blades of a palm served to hide
them. In the midst of this profound silence a voice that was like and
yet unlike Maruja's said twice, "Go! go!" but each time seemed hushed
in the stifling silence. The next moment the palms were pushed aside,
the dark figure of a young man slipped like some lithe animal through
the shrubbery, and Maruja found herself standing, pale and rigid, in
the middle of the walk, in the full glare of the light, and looking
down the corridor toward her approaching companions. She was furious
and frightened; she was triumphant and trembling; without thought,
sense, or reason, she had been kissed by Henry Guest, and--had returned
it.
The fleetest horses of Aladdin's stud that night could not carry her
far enough or fast enough to take her away from that moment, that
scene, and that sensation. Wise and experienced, confident in her
beauty, secure in her selfishness, strong over others' weaknesses,
weighing accurately the deeds and words of men and women, recognizing
all there was in position and tradition, seeing with her father's clear
eyes the practical meaning of any divergence from that conventionality
which as a woman of the world she valued, she returned again and again
to the trembling joy of that intoxicating moment. She though of her
mother and sisters, of Raymond and Garnier, of Aladdin--she even forced
herself to think of Carroll--only to shut her eyes, with a faint smile,
and dream again the brief but thrilling dream of Guest that began and
ended in their joined and parted lips. Small wonder that, hidden and
silent in her enwrappings, as she lay back in the carriage, with her
pale face against the cold starry sky, two other stars came out and
glistened and trembled on her passion-fringed lashes.