Gabriel Conroy Part 26

"Let them wait. You shall write that important business keeps you here, and Diego shall ride my own horse to reach the _embarcadero_ for the steamer to-night. To-morrow he will be in San Francisco."

Before he could stay her hand she had rung a small bronze bell that stood beside her.

"But, Donna Dolores"----Arthur began, hastily.

"I understand," interrupted Donna Dolores. "Diego," she continued rapidly, as a servant entered the room, "saddle Jovita instantly and make ready for a journey. Then return here. Pardon!" she turned to Arthur. "You would say your time is valuable. A large sum depends upon your presence! Good! Write to your partners that I will pay all--that no one else can afford to give as large a sum for your services as myself.

Write that here you must stay."

Annoyed and insulted as Arthur felt, he could not help gazing upon her with an admiring fascination. The imperious habit of command; an almost despotic control of a hundred servants; a certain barbaric contempt for the unlimited revenues at her disposal that prompted the act, became her wonderfully. In her impatience the quick blood glanced through her bronzed cheek, her little slipper tapped the floor imperiously, and her eyes flashed in the darkness Suddenly she stopped, looked at Arthur, and hesitated.

"Pardon me; I have done wrong. Forgive me, Don Arturo. I am a spoiled woman who for five years has had her own way. I am apt to forget there is any world beyond my little kingdom here. Go, since it must be so, go at once."

She sank back on the sofa, half veiled her face with her fan, and dropped the long fringes of her eyes with a deprecating and half languid movement.

Arthur stood for a moment irresolute and hesitating, but only for a moment.

"Let me thank you for enabling me to fulfil a duty without foregoing a pleasure. If your messenger is trustworthy and fleet it can be done. I will stay."

She turned towards him suddenly and smiled. A smile apparently so rare to that proud little mouth and those dark, melancholy eyes; a smile that disclosed the smallest and whitest of teeth in such dazzling contrast to the shadow of her face; a smile that even after its brightness had pa.s.sed still left its memory in a dimple in either nut-brown cheek, and a glistening moisture in the dark eyes--that Arthur felt the warm blood rise to his face.

"There are writing materials in the other room. Diego will find you there," said Donna Dolores, "and I will rejoin you soon. Thanks."

She held out the smallest and brownest of hands. Arthur bent over it for a single moment, and then withdrew with a quickened pulse to the outer room. As the door closed upon him, Donna Dolores folded her fan, threw herself back upon the sofa, and called, in a quick whisper--

"Manuela!"

The old woman reappeared with an anxious face and ran towards the sofa.

But she was loo late; her mistress had fainted.

CHAPTER VII.

A LEAF OUT OF THE PAST.

Arthur's letter to his partners was a brief explanation of his delay, and closed with the following sentence--

"Search the records for any deed or transfer of the grant from Dr. Devarges."

He had scarcely concluded before Diego entered ready for the journey.

When he had gone, Arthur waited with some impatience the reappearance of Donna Dolores. To his disappointment, however, only the solemn major-domo strode grimly into the room like a dark-complexioned ghost, and, as it seemed to Arthur, with a strong suggestion of the Commander in "Don Giovanni" in his manner, silently beckoned him to follow to the apartment set aside for his reception. In keeping with the sun-evading instincts of Spanish Californian architecture the room was long, low, and half lighted; the two barred windows on either side of the doorway gave upon the corridor and courtyard below; the opposite wall held only a small narrow, deeply-embrasured loop-hole, through which Arthur could see the vast, glittering, sun-illumined plain beyond. The hard, monotonous, unwinking glare without did not penetrate the monastic gloom of this chamber; even the insane, incessant restlessness of the wind that perpetually beset the bleak walls was unheard and unfelt in the grave, contemplative solitude of this religious cell.

Mingled with this grateful asceticism was the quaint contrast of a peculiar Spanish luxuriousness. In a curtained recess an immense mahogany bedstead displayed a yellow satin coverlet profusely embroidered with pink and purple silk flowers. The borders of the sheets and cases of the satin pillows were deeply edged with the finest lace.

Beside the bed and before a large armchair heavy rugs of barbaric colours covered the dark wooden floor, and in front of the deep oven-like hearth lay an immense bear-skin. About the hearth hung an ebony and gold crucifix, and, mingled with a few modern engravings, the usual Catholic saints and martyrs occupied the walls. It struck Arthur's observation oddly that the subjects of the secular engravings were snow landscapes. The Hospice of St. Bernard in winter, a pa.s.s in the Austrian Tyrol, the Steppes of Russia, a Norwegian plain, all to Arthur's fancy brought the temperature, of the room down considerably. A small water-colour of an Alpine flower touched him so closely that it might have blossomed from his recollection.

Dinner, which was prefaced by a message from Donna Dolores excusing herself through indisposition, was served in solemn silence. A cousin of the late Don Jose Salvatierra represented the family, and pervaded the meal with a mild flavour of stale cigaritos and dignified criticism of remote events. Arthur, disappointed at the absence of the Donna, found himself regarding this gentleman with some degree of asperity, and a disposition to resent any reference to his client's business as an unwarrantable impertinence. But when the dinner was over, and he had smoked a cigar on the corridor without further communication with Donna Dolores, he began to be angry with himself for accepting her invitation, and savagely critical of the motives that impelled him to it. He was meditating an early retreat--even a visit to Mrs. Sepulvida--when Manuela entered.

Would Don Arturo grant the Donna his further counsel and presence?

Don Arturo was conscious that his cheek was flushing, and that his counsel at the present moment would not have been eminently remarkable for coolness or judiciousness, but he followed the Indian woman with a slight inclination of the head. They entered the room where he had first met the Donna. She might not have moved from the position she had occupied that morning on the couch, so like was her att.i.tude and manner.

As he approached her respectfully, he was conscious of the same fragrance, and the same mysterious magnetism that seemed to leap from her dark eyes, and draw his own resisting and unwilling gaze toward her.

"You will despise me, Don Arturo--you, whose country-women are so strong and active--because I am so little and weak, and,--Mother of G.o.d!--so lazy! But I am an invalid, and am not yet quite recovered. But then I am accustomed to it. I have lain here for days, Don Arturo, doing nothing.

It is weary-eh? You think? This watching, this waiting!--day after day--always the same!"

There was something so delicately plaintive and tender in the cadence of her speech--a cadence that might, perhaps, have been attributed to the characteristic intonation of the Castilian feminine speech, but which Arthur could not help thinking was peculiar to herself, that at the moment he dared not lift his eyes to her, although he was conscious she was looking at him. But by an impulse of safety he addressed himself to the fan.

"You have been an invalid then--Donna Dolores?"

"A sufferer, Don Arturo."

"Have you ever tried the benefit of change of scene--of habits of life?

Your ample means, your freedom from the cares of family or kinship, offer you such opportunities," he continued, still addressing the fan.

But the fan, as if magnetised by his gaze, became coquettishly conscious; fluttered, faltered, drooped, and then languidly folded its wings. Arthur was left helpless.

"Perhaps," said Donna Dolores: "who knows?"

She paused for an instant, and then made a sign to Manuela. The Indian woman rose and left the room.

"I have something to tell you, Don Arturo," she continued, "something I should have told you this morning. It is not too late now. But it is a secret. It is only that I have questioned my right to tell it--not that I have doubted your honour, Don Arturo, that I withheld it then."

Arthur raised his eyes to hers. It was her turn to evade his glance.

With her long lashes drooped, she went on--

"It is five years ago, and my father--whom may the Saints a.s.soil--was alive. Came to us then at the Presidio of San Geronimo, a young girl--an American, a stranger and helpless. She had escaped from a lost camp in the snowy mountains where her family and friends were starving. That was the story she told my father. It was a probable one--was it not?"

Arthur bowed his head, but did not reply.

"But the name that she gave was not a true one, as it appeared. My father had sent an _Expedicion_ to relieve these people, and they had found among the dead the person whom this young girl--the stranger--a.s.sumed to be. That was their report. The name of the young girl who was found dead and the name of the young girl who came to us was the same. It was Grace Conroy."

Arthur's face did not move a muscle, nor did he once take his eyes from the drooping lids of his companion.

"It was a grave matter--a very grave matter. And it was the more surprising because the young girl had at first given another name--the name of Grace Ashley--which she afterwards explained was the name of the young man who helped her to escape, and whose sister she at first a.s.sumed to be. My father was a good man, a kind man--a saint, Don Arturo. It was not for him to know if she were Grace Ashley or Grace Conroy--it was enough for him to know that she was alive, weak, helpless, suffering. Against the advice of his officers, he look her into his own house, into his own family, into his own fatherly heart, to wait until her brother, or this Philip Ashley, should return. He never returned. In six months she was taken ill--very ill--a little child was born--Don Arturo--but in the same moment it died and the mother died--both, you comprehend--both died--in my arms!"

"That was bad," said Arthur, curtly.

"I do not comprehend," said Donna Dolores.

"Pardon. Do not misunderstand me. I say it was bad, for I really believe that this girl, the mysterious stranger, with the _alias_, was really Grace Conroy."

Donna Dolores raised her eyes and stared at Arthur.

"And why?"

"Because the identification of the bodies by the _Expedicion_ was hurried and imperfect."