Gabriel Conroy Part 22

"Well, I suppose this means that I am to look over the papers with you alone. _Bueno!_ Have them out, and let us get over this business as soon as possible."

"_Poco tiempo_," said Father Felipe, with a smile. Then more gravely, "But what is this? You do not seem to have that interest in your profession that one might expect of the rising young advocate--the junior partner of the great firm you represent. Your heart is not in your work--eh?"

Arthur laughed.

"Why not? It is as good as any."

"But to right the oppressed? To do justice to the unjustly accused, eh?

To redress wrongs--ah, my son! _that_ is n.o.ble. That, Don Arturo--it is _that_ has made you and your colleagues dear to me--dear to those who have been the helpless victims of your courts--your _corregidores_."

"Yes, yes," interrupted Arthur, hastily, shedding the Father's praise with an habitual deft ease that was not so much the result of modesty as a certain conscious pride that resented any imperfect tribute. "Yes, I suppose it pays as well, if not better, in the long run. 'Honesty is the best policy,' as our earliest philosophers say."

"Pardon?" queried the Padre.

Arthur, intensely amused, made a purposely severe and literal translation of Franklin's famous apothegm, and then watched Father Felipe raise his eyes and hands to the ceiling in pious protest and mute consternation.

"And these are your American ethics?" he said at last.

"They are, and in conjunction with manifest destiny, and the star of Empire, they have brought us here, and--have given me the honour of your acquaintance," said Arthur in English.

Father Felipe looked at his friend in hopeless bewilderment. Arthur instantly became respectful and Spanish. To change the subject and relieve the old man's evident embarra.s.sment, he at once plunged into a humorous description of his adventure of the morning. The diversion was only partially successful. Father Felipe became at once interested, but did not laugh. When the young man had concluded he approached him, and laying his soft hand on Arthur's curls, turned his face upward toward him with a parental gesture that was at once habitual and professional, and said--

"Look at me here. I am an old man, Don Arturo. Pardon me if I think I have some advice to give you that may be worthy your hearing. Listen, then! You are one of those men capable of peculiarly affecting and being affected by women. So! Pardon," he continued, gently, as a slight flush rose into Arthur's cheek, despite the smile that came as quickly to his face. "Is it not so? Be not ashamed, Don Arturo! It is not here," he added, with a poetical gesture toward the wall of the refectory, where hung the painted effigy of the blessed St Anthony; "it is not here that I would undervalue or speak lightly of their influence. The widow is rich, eh?--handsome, eh? impulsive? You have no heart in the profession you have chosen. What then? You have some in the instincts--what shall I say--the accomplishments and graces you have not considered worthy of a practical end! You are a natural lover. Pardon! You have the four S's--'_Sano_, _solo_, _solicito_, _y secreto_.' Good! Take an old man's advice, and make good use of them. Turn your weaknesses--eh? perhaps it _is_ too strong a word!--the frivolities and vanities of your youth into a power for your old age! Eh?"

Arthur smiled a superior smile. He was thinking of the horror with which the old man had received the axiom he had recently quoted. He threw himself back in his chair in an att.i.tude of burlesque sentiment, and said, with simulated heroics--

"But what, O my Father! what if a devoted, exhausting pa.s.sion for somebody else already filled my heart? You would not advise me to be false to that? Perish the thought!"

Father Felipe did not smile. A peculiar expression pa.s.sed over his broad, brown, smoothly shaven face, and the habitual look of childlike simplicity and deferential courtesy faded from it. He turned his small black eyes on Arthur, and said--

"Do you think you are capable of such a pa.s.sion, my son? Have you had an attachment that was superior to novelty or self-interest?"

Arthur rose a little stiffly.

"As we are talking of one of my clients and one of your parishioners, are we not getting a little too serious, Father? At all events, save me from a.s.suming a bashful att.i.tude towards the lady with whom I am to have a business interview to-morrow. And now about the papers, Father,"

continued Arthur, recovering his former ease. "I suppose the invisible fair one has supplied you with all the necessary doc.u.ments and the fullest material for a brief. Go on. I am all attention."

"You are wrong again, son," said Father Felipe. "It is a matter in which she has shown even more than her usual disinclination to talk. I believe but for my interference, she would have even refused to press the claim.

As it is, I imagine she wishes to make some compromise with the thief--pardon me!--the what do you say? eh? the pre-emptor! But I have nothing to do with it. All the papers, all the facts are in the possession of your friend, Mrs. Sepulvida. You are to see her. Believe me, my friend, if you have been disappointed in not finding your Indian client, you will have a charming subst.i.tute--and one of your own race and colour--in the Donna Maria. Forget, if you can, what I have said--but you will not. Ah, Don Arturo! I know you better than yourself!

Come. Let us walk in the garden. You have not seen the vines. I have a new variety of grape since you were here before."

"I find nothing better than the old Mission grape, Father," said Arthur, as they pa.s.sed down the branching avenue of olives.

"Ah! Yet the aborigines knew it not and only valued it when found wild for the colouring matter contained in its skin. From this, with some mordant that still remains a secret with them, they made a dye to stain their bodies and heighten their copper hue. You are not listening, Don Arturo, yet it should interest you, for it is the colour of your mysterious client, the Donna Dolores."

Thus chatting, and pointing out the various objects that might interest Arthur, from the overflowing boughs of a venerable fig tree to the crack made in the adobe wall of the church by the last earthquake, Father Felipe, with characteristic courteous formality, led his young friend through the ancient garden of the Mission. By degrees, the former ease and mutual confidence of the two friends returned, and by the time that Father Felipe excused himself for a few moments to attend to certain domestic arrangements on behalf of his new guest perfect sympathy had been restored.

Left to himself, Arthur strolled back until opposite the open chancel door of the church. Here he paused, and, in obedience to a sudden impulse, entered. The old church was unchanged--like all things in San Antonio--since the last hundred years; perhaps there was little about it that Arthur had not seen at the other Missions. There were the old rafters painted in barbaric splendour of red and brown stripes; there were the hideous, waxen, gla.s.s-eyed saints, leaning forward helplessly and rigidly from their niches; there was the Virgin Mary in a white dress and satin slippers, carrying the infant Saviour in the opulence of lace long-clothes; there was the Magdalen in the fashionable costume of a Spanish lady of the last century. There was the usual quant.i.ty of bad pictures; the portrait, full length, of the patron saint himself, so hideously and gratuitously old and ugly that his temptation by any self-respecting woman appeared more miraculous than his resistance; the usual martyrdoms in terrible realism; the usual "Last Judgments" in frightful accuracy of detail.

But there was one picture under the nave which attracted Arthur's listless eyes. It was a fanciful representation of Junipero Serra preaching to the heathen. I am afraid that it was not the figure of that most admirable and heroic missionary which drew Arthur's gaze; I am quite certain that it was not the moral sentiment of the subject, but rather the slim, graceful, girlish, half-nude figure of one of the Indian converts who knelt at Father Junipero Serra's feet, in childlike but touching awe and contrition. There was such a depth of penitential supplication in the young girl's eyes--a penitence so pathetically inconsistent with the absolute virgin innocence and helplessness of the exquisite little figure, that Arthur felt his heart beat quickly as he gazed. He turned quickly to the other picture--look where he would, the eyes of the little acolyte seemed to follow and subdue him.

I think I have already intimated that his was not a reverential nature.

With a quick imagination and great poetic sensibility nevertheless, the evident intent of the picture, or even the sentiment of the place, did not touch his heart or brain. But he still half-unconsciously dropped into a seat, and, leaning both arms over the screen before him, bowed his head against the oaken panel. A soft hand laid upon his shoulder suddenly aroused him.

He looked up sharply and met the eyes of the Padre looking down on him with a tenderness that both touched and exasperated him.

"Pardon!" said Padre Felipe, gently. "I have broken in upon your thoughts, child!"

A little more brusquely than was his habit with the Padre, Arthur explained that he had been studying up a difficult case.

"So!" said the Padre, softly, in response. "With tears in your eyes, Don Arturo? Not so!" he added to himself, as he drew the young man's arm in his own and the two pa.s.sed slowly out once more into the sunlight.

CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH THE DONNA MARIA MAKES AN IMPRESSION.

The Rancho of the Blessed Fisherman looked seaward as became its t.i.tle.

If the founder of the rancho had shown a religious taste in the selection of the site of the dwelling, his charming widow had certainly shown equal practical taste, and indeed a profitable availing of some advantages that the founder did not contemplate, in the adornment of the house. The low-walled square adobe dwelling had been relieved of much of its hard practical outline by several feminine additions and suggestions. The tiled roof had been carried over a very broad verandah, supported by vine-clad columns, and the lounging corridor had been, in defiance of all Spanish custom, transferred from the inside of the house to the outside. The interior courtyard no longer existed. The sombreness of the heavy Mexican architecture was relieved by bright French chintzes, delicate lace curtains, and fresh-coloured hangings.

The broad verandah was filled with the latest novelties of Chinese bamboo chairs and settees, and a striped Venetian awning shaded the glare of the seaward front. Nevertheless, Donna Maria, out of respect to the local opinion, which regarded these changes as ominous of, if not a symbolical putting off the weeds of widowhood, still clung to a few of the local traditions. It is true that a piano occupied one side of her drawing-room, but a harp stood in the corner. If a freshly-cut novel lay open on the piano, a breviary was conspicuous on the marble centre-table. If, on the mantel, an elaborate French clock with bronze shepherdesses trifled with Time, on the wall above it an iron crucifix spoke of Eternity.

Mrs. Sepulvida was at home that morning expecting a guest. She was lying in a Manilla hammock, swung between two posts of the verandah, with her face partially hidden by the netting, and the toe of a little shoe just peeping beyond. Not that Donna Maria expected to receive her guest thus; on the contrary, she had given orders to her servants that the moment a stranger _caballero_ appeared on the road she was to be apprised of the fact. For I grieve to say that, far from taking Arthur's advice, the details of the adventure at the Point of Pines had been imparted by her own lips to most of her female friends, and even to the domestics of her household. In the earlier stages of a woman's interest in a man she is apt to be exceedingly communicative; it is only when she becomes fully aware of the gravity of the stake involved that she begins to hedge before the public. The morning after her adventure Donna Maria was innocently full of its hero and unreservedly voluble.

I have forgotten whether I have described her. Certainly I could not have a better opportunity than the present. In the hammock she looked a little smaller, as women are apt to when their length is rigidly defined. She had the average quant.i.ty of brown hair, a little badly treated by her habit of wearing it flat over her temples--a tradition of her boarding-school days, fifteen years ago. She had soft brown eyes, with a slight redness of the eyelid not inconsistent nor entirely unbecoming to widowhood; a small mouth depressed at the corners with a charming, childlike discontent; white regular teeth, and the eloquence of a complexion that followed unvaryingly the spirits of her physical condition. She appeared to be about thirty, and had that unmistakable "married" look which even the most amiable and considerate of us, my dear sir, are apt to impress upon the one woman whom we choose to elect to years of exclusive intimacy and attention. The late Don Jose Sepulvida's private mark--as well defined as the brand upon his cattle--was a certain rigid line, like a grave accent, from the angle of this little woman's nostril to the corners of her mouth, and possibly to an increased peevishness of depression at those corners. It bore witness to the fondness of the deceased for bear-baiting and bull-fighting, and a possible weakness for a certain Senora X. of San Francisco, whose reputation was none of the best, and was not increased by her distance from San Antonio and the surveillance of Donna Maria.

When an hour later "Pepe" appeared to his mistress, bearing a salver with Arthur Poinsett's business card and a formal request for an interview, I am afraid Donna Maria was a little disappointed. If he had suddenly scaled the verandah, evaded her servants, and appeared before her in an impulsive, forgivable way, it would have seemed consistent with his character as a hero, and perhaps more in keeping with the general tenor of her reveries when the servitor entered. Howbeit, after heaving an impatient little sigh, and bidding "Pepe" show the gentleman into the drawing-room, she slipped quietly down from the hammock in a deft womanish way, and whisked herself into her dressing-room.

"He couldn't have been more formal if Don Jose had been alive," she said to herself as she walked to her gla.s.s and dressing-table.

Arthur Poinsett entered the vacant drawing-room not in the best of his many humours. He had read in the eyes of the lounging _vaqueros_, in the covert glances of the women servants, that the story of his adventure was known to the household. Habitually petted and spoiled as he had been by the women of his acquaintance, he was half inclined to attribute this reference and a.s.signment of his client's business to the hands of Mrs.

Sepulvida, as the result of a plan of Father Felipe's, or absolute collusion between the parties. A little sore yet, and irritated by his recollection of the Padre's counsel, and more impatient of the imputation of a weakness than anything else, Arthur had resolved to limit the interview to the practical business on hand, and in so doing had, for a moment, I fear, forgotten his native courtesy. It did not tend to lessen his irritation and self-consciousness when Mrs. Sepulvida entered the room without the slightest evidence of her recent disappointment visible in her perfectly easy, frank self-possession, and after a conventional, half Spanish solicitousness regarding his health since their last interview, without any further allusions to their adventure, begged him to be seated. She herself took an easy chair on the opposite of the table, and a.s.sumed at once an air of respectful but somewhat indifferent attention.

"I believe," said Arthur, plunging at once into his subject to get rid of his embarra.s.sment and the slight instinct of antagonism he was beginning to feel toward the woman before him, "I believe--that is, I am told--that besides your own business, you are intrusted with some doc.u.ments and facts regarding a claim of the Donna Dolores Salvatierra.

Which shall we have first? I am entirely at your service for the next two hours, but we shall proceed faster and with less confusion by taking up one thing at a time."

"Then let us begin with Donna Dolores, by all means," said Donna Maria; "my own affairs can wait. Indeed," she added, languidly, "I daresay one of your clerks could attend to it as well as yourself. If your time is valuable--as indeed it must be--I can put the papers in his hands and make him listen to all my foolish, irrelevant talk. He can sift it for you, Don Arturo. I really am a child about business, really."

Arthur smiled, and made a slight gesture of deprecation. In spite of his previous resolution, Donna Maria's tone of slight pique pleased him. Yet he gravely opened his note-book, and took up his pencil without a word.

Donna Maria observed the movements, and said more seriously--

"Ah yes! how foolish! Here I am talking about my own affairs, when I should be speaking of Donna Dolores! Well, to begin. Let me first explain why she has put this matter in my hands. My husband and her father were friends, and had many business interests in common. As you have doubtless heard, she has always been very quiet, very reserved, very religious--almost a nun. I daresay she was driven into this isolation by reason of the delicacy of her position here, for you know--do you not?--that her mother was an Indian. It is only a few years ago that the old Governor, becoming a widower and childless, bethought himself of this Indian child, Dolores. He found the mother dead, and the girl living somewhere at a distant Mission as an acolyte. He brought her to San Antonio, had her christened, and made legally his daughter and heiress. She was a mere slip of a thing, about fourteen or fifteen.

She might have had a pretty complexion, for some of these half-breeds are nearly white, but she had been stained when an infant with some barbarous and indelible dye, after the savage custom of her race. She is now a light copper colour, not unlike those bronze shepherdesses on yonder clock. In spite of all this I call her pretty. Perhaps it is because I love her and am prejudiced. But you gentlemen are so critical about complexion and colour--no wonder that the poor child refuses to see anybody, and never goes into society at all. It is a shame!

But--pardon, Mr. Poinsett, here am I gossiping about your client's looks, when I should be stating her grievances."

"No, no!" said Arthur, hastily, "go on--in your own way."