Gabriel Conroy Part 38

CHAPTER I.

IN WHICH GABRIEL RECOGNISES THE PROPRIETIES.

After the visit of Mr. Peter Dumphy, One Horse Gulch was not surprised at the news of any stroke of good fortune. It was enough that he, the great capitalist, the successful speculator, had been there! The information that a company had been formed to develop a rich silver mine recently discovered on Conroy's Hill was received as a matter of course.

Already the theories of the discovery were perfectly well established.

That it was simply a grand speculative _coup_ of Dumphy's--that upon a boldly conceived plan this man intended to build up the town of One Horse Gulch--that he had invented "the lead" and backed it by an ostentatious display of capital in mills and smelting works solely for a speculative purpose; that five years before he had selected Gabriel Conroy as a simple-minded tool for this design; that Gabriel's Two and One Half Millions was merely an exaggerated form of expressing the exact wages--One Thousand dollars a year, which was all Dumphy had paid him for the use of his name, and that it was the duty of every man to endeavour to realise quickly on the advance of property before this enormous bubble burst--this was the theory of one-half the people of One Horse Gulch. On the other hand, there was a large party who knew exactly the reverse. That the whole thing was purely accidental; that Mr. Peter Dumphy being called by other business to One Horse Gulch, while walking with Gabriel Conroy one day had picked up a singular piece of rock on Gabriel's claim, and had said, "This looks like silver;" that Gabriel Conroy had laughed at the suggestion, whereat Mr. Peter Dumphy, who never laughed, had turned about curtly and demanded in his usual sharp business way, "Will you take Seventeen Millions for all your right and t.i.tle to this claim?" That Gabriel--"you know what a blank fool Gabe is!"--had a.s.sented, "and this way, sir, actually disposed of a property worth, on the lowest calculation, One Hundred and Fifty Millions." This was the generally accepted theory of the other and more imaginative portion of One Horse Gulch.

Howbeit within the next few weeks following the advent of Mr. Dumphy, the very soil seemed to have quickened through that sunshine, and all over the settlement pieces of plank and scantling--thin blades of new dwellings--started up under that beneficent presence. On the bleak hill sides the more extensive foundations of the Conroy Smelting Works were laid. The modest boarding-house and restaurant of Mrs. Markle was found inadequate to the wants and inconsistent with the greatness of One Horse Gulch, and a new hotel was erected. But here I am antic.i.p.ating another evidence of progress--namely, the daily newspaper, in which these events were reported with a combination of ease and elegance one may envy yet never attain. Said the _Times_:--

"The Grand Conroy House, now being inaugurated, will be managed by Mrs. Susan Markle, whose talents as a _chef de cuisine_ are as well known to One Horse Gulch as her rare social graces and magnificent personal charms. She will be aided by her former accomplished a.s.sistant, Miss Sarah Clark. As hash-slinger, Sal can walk over anything of her weight in Plumas."

With these and other evidences of an improvement in public taste, the old baleful t.i.tle of "One Horse Gulch" was deemed incongruous. It was proposed to change that name to "Silveropolis," there being, in the figurative language of the Gulch, "more than one horse could draw."

Meanwhile, the nominal and responsible position of Superintendent of the new works was filled by Gabriel, although the actual business and executive duty was performed by a sharp, snappy young fellow of about half Gabriel's size, supplied by the Company. This was in accordance with the wishes of Gabriel, who could not bear idleness; and the Company, although distrusting his administrative ability, wisely recognised his great power over the workmen through the popularity of his easy democratic manners, and his disposition always to lend his valuable physical a.s.sistance in cases of emergency. Gabriel had become a great favourite with the men ever since they found that prosperity had not altered his simple nature. It was pleasant to them to be able to point out to a stranger this plain, unostentatious, powerful giant, working like themselves, and with themselves, with the added information that he owned half the mine, and was worth Seventeen Millions! Always a shy and rather lonely man, his wealth seemed to have driven him, by its very oppressiveness, to the society of his humble fellows for relief. A certain deprecatoriness of manner whenever his riches were alluded to, strengthened the belief of some in that theory that he was merely the creature of Dumphy's speculation.

Although Gabriel was always a.s.signed a small and insignificant part in the present prosperity of One Horse Gulch, it was somewhat characteristic of the peculiar wrongheadedness of this community that no one ever suspected his wife of any complicity in it. It had been long since settled that her superiority to her husband was chiefly the feminine charm of social grace and physical attraction. That, warmed by the sunshine of affluence, this b.u.t.terfly would wantonly flit from flower to flower, and eventually quit her husband and One Horse Gulch for some more genial clime, was never doubted. "She'll make them millions fly ef she hez to fly with it," was the tenor of local criticism. A pity, not unmixed with contempt, was felt for Gabriel's apparent indifference to this prophetic outlook; his absolute insensibility to his wife's ambiguous reputation was looked upon as the hopelessness of a thoroughly deceived man. Even Mrs. Markle, whose attempts to mollify Olly had been received coldly by that young woman--even she was a convert to the theory of the complete domination of the Conroy household by this alien and stranger.

But despite this baleful prophecy, Mrs. Conroy did not fly nor show any inclination to leave her husband. A new house was built, with that rapidity of production that belonged to the climate, among the pines of Conroy's Hill, which on the hottest summer day still exuded the fresh sap of its green timbers and exhaled a woodland spicery. Here the good taste of Mrs. Conroy flowered in chintz, and was always fresh and feminine in white muslin curtains and pretty carpets, and here the fraternal love of Gabriel brought a grand piano for the use of Olly, and a teacher. Hither also came the best citizens of the county--even the notabilities of the State, feeling that Mr. Dumphy had, to a certain extent, made One Horse Gulch respectable, soon found out also that Mrs.

Conroy was attractive; the Hon. Blank had dined there on the occasion of his last visit to his const.i.tuents of the Gulch; the Hon. Judge Beeswinger had told in her parlour several of his most effective stories. Colonel Starbottle's manly breast had dilated over her dish-covers, and he had carried away with him not only a vivid appreciation of her charms capable of future eloquent expression, but an equally vivid idea of his own fascinations, equally incapable of concealment. Gabriel himself rarely occupied the house except for the exigencies of food and nightly shelter. If decoyed there at other times by specious invitations of Olly, he compromised by sitting on the back porch in his shirt sleeves, alleging as a reason his fear of the contaminating influence of his short black pipe.

"Don't ye mind _me_, July," he would say, when his spouse with anxious face and deprecatory manner would waive her native fastidiousness and aver that "she liked it." "Don't ye mind me, I admire to sit out yer.

I'm a heap more comfortable outer doors, and allus waz. I reckon the smell might get into them curtings, and then--and then," added Gabriel, quietly ignoring the look of pleased expostulation with which Mrs.

Conroy recognised this fancied recognition of her tastes, "and then _Olly's friends and thet teacher_, not being round like you and me allez and used to it, _they_ mightn't like it. And I've heerd that the smell of n.i.g.g.e.r-head terbacker do git inter the strings of a pianner and kinder stops the music. A pianner's a mighty cur'us thing. I've heerd say they're as dilikit and ailin' ez a child. Look in 'em and see them little strings a twistin' and crossin' each other like the reins of a six mule team, and it 'tain't no wonder they gets mixed up often."

It was not Gabriel's way to notice his wife's manner very closely, but if he had at that moment he might have fancied that there were other instruments whose fine chords were as subject to irritation and discordant disturbance. Perhaps only vaguely conscious of some womanish sullenness on his wife's part, Gabriel would at such times disengage himself as being the possible disorganising element, and lounge away.

His favourite place of resort was his former cabin, now tenantless and in rapid decay, but which he had refused to dispose of, even after the erection of his two later dwellings rendered it an unnecessary and unsightly enc.u.mbrance of his lands. He loved to linger by the deserted hearth and smoke his pipe in solitude, not from any sentiment, conscious or unconscious, but from a force of habit, that was in this lonely man almost as pathetic.

He may have become aware at this time that a certain growing disparity of sentiment and taste which he had before noticed with a vague pain and wonder, rendered his gradual separation from Olly a necessity of her well-doing. He had indeed revealed this to her on several occasions with that frankness which was natural to him. He had apologised with marked politeness to her music teacher, who once invited him to observe Olly's proficiency, by saying in general terms that he "took no stock in chunes. I reckon it's about ez easy, Miss, if ye don't ring me in. Thet chile's got to get on without thinkin' o' me--or my 'pinion--allowin' it was wuth thinkin' on." Once meeting Olly walking with some older and more fashionable school friends whom she had invited from Sacramento, he had delicately avoided them with a sudden and undue consciousness of his great bulk, and his slow moving intellect, painfully sensitive to what seemed to him to be the preternatural quickness of the young people, and turned into a by-path.

On the other hand, it is possible that with the novelty of her new situation, and the increased importance that wealth brought to Olly, she had become more and more oblivious of her brother's feelings, and perhaps less persistent in her endeavours to draw him toward her. She knew that he had attained an equal importance among his fellows from this very wealth, and also a certain evident, palpable, superficial respect which satisfied her. With her restless ambition and the new life that was opening before her, his slower old-fashioned methods, his absolute rusticity--that day by day appeared more strongly in contrast to his surroundings--began to irritate where it had formerly only touched her sensibilities. From this irritation she at last escaped by the unfailing processes of youth and the fascination of newer impressions. And so, day by day and hour by hour, they drifted slowly apart. Until one day Mrs. Conroy was pleasantly startled by an announcement from Gabriel, that he had completed arrangements to send Olly to boarding-school in Sacramento. It was understood, also, that this was only a necessary preliminary to the departure of herself and husband for a long-promised tour of Europe.

As it was impossible for one of Gabriel's simple nature to keep his plans entirely secret, Olly was perfectly aware of his intention, and prepared for the formal announcement, which she knew would come in Gabriel's quaint serious way. In the critical att.i.tude which the child had taken toward him, she was more or less irritated, as an older person might have been, with the grave cautiousness with which Gabriel usually explained that conduct and manner which was perfectly apparent and open from the beginning. It was during a long walk in which the pair had strayed among the evergreen woods, when they came upon the little dismantled cabin. Here Gabriel stopped. Olly glanced around the spot and shrugged her shoulders. Gabriel, more mindful of Olly's manner than he had ever been of any other of her s.e.x, instantly understood it.

"It ain't a purty place, Olly," he began, rubbing his hands, "but we've had high ole times yer--you and me. Don't ye mind the nights I used to kem up from the gulch and pitch in to mendin' your gownds, Olly, and you asleep? Don't ye mind that--ar dress I copper fastened?" and Gabriel laughed loudly, and yet a little doubtfully.

Olly laughed too, but not quite so heartily as her brother, and cast her eyes down upon her own figure. Gabriel followed the direction of her glance. It was not perhaps easy to re-create in the figure before him the outre little waif who such a short time--such a long time--ago had sat at his feet in that very cabin. It is not alone that Olly was better dressed, and her hair more tastefully arranged, but she seemed in some way to have become more refined and fastidious--a fastidiousness that was plainly an out-growth of something that she possessed but _he_ did not. As he looked at her, another vague hope that he had fostered--a fond belief that as she grew taller she would come to look like Grace, and so revive the missing sister in his memory--this seemed to fade away before him. Yet it was characteristic of the unselfishness of his nature, that he did not attribute this disappointment to her alone, but rather to some latent principle in human nature whereof he had been ignorant. He had even gone so far as to invite criticism on a hypothetical case from the sagacious Johnson. "It's the difference atween human natur and brute natur," that philosopher had answered promptly. "A purp's the same purp allez, even arter it's a grown dorg, but a child ain't--it's the difference atween reason and instink."

But Olly, to whom this scene recalled another circ.u.mstance, did not partic.i.p.ate in Gabriel's particular reminiscence.

"Don't you remember, Gabe," she said, quickly, "the first night that sister July came here and stood right in that very door? Lord! how flabergasted we was to be sure! And if anybody'd told me, Gabe, that _she_ was going to marry _you_--I'd, I'd a knocked 'em down," she blurted out, after hesitating for a suitable climax.

Gabriel, who in his turn did not seem to be particularly touched with Olly's form of reminiscence, rose instantly above all sentiment in a consideration of the proprieties. "Ye shouldn't talk o' knockin' people down, Olly--it ain't decent for a young gal," he said, quickly. "Not that I mind it," he added, with his usual apology, "but allowin' that some of them purty little friends o' yours or teacher now, should hear ye! Sit down for a spell, Olly. I've suthin' to tell ye."

He took her hand in his and made her sit beside him on the rude stone that served as the old doorstep of the cabin.

"Maybe ye might remember," he went on, lightly lifting her hand in his, and striking it gently across his knee to beget an easy confidential manner, "maybe ye might remember that I allers allowed to do two things ef ever I might make a strike--one was to give you a good schoolin'--the other was to find Grace, if so be as she was above the yearth. They waz many ways o' finding out--many ways o' settin' at it, but they warn't _my_ ways. I allus allowed that ef thet child was in harkenin' distance o' the reach o' my call, she'd hear me. I mout have took other men to help me--men ez was sharp in them things, men ez was in that trade--but I didn't. And why?"

Olly intimated by an impatient shake of her head that she didn't know.

"Because she was that shy and skary with strangers. Ye disremember how shy she was, Olly, in them days, for ye was too young to notice. And then, not bein' shy yourself, but sorter peart, free and promisskiss, ready and able to keep up your end of a conversation with anybody, and allus ez chipper as a jay-bird--why, ye don't kinder allow that fur Gracy as I do. And thar was reasons why that purty chile should be shy--reasons ye don't understand now, Olly, but reasons pow'ful and strong to such a child as thet."

"Ye mean, Gabe," said the shamelessly direct Olly, "that she was bashful, hevin' ran away with her bo."

That perplexity which wiser students of human nature than Gabriel have experienced at the swift perception of childhood in regard to certain things left him speechless. He could only stare hopelessly at the little figure before him.

"Well, wot did _you_ do, Gabe? Go on!" said Olly, impatiently.

Gabriel drew a long breath.

"Thar bein' certing reasons why Gracy should be thet shy--reasons consarning propperty o' her deceased parients," boldly invented Gabriel, with a lofty ignoring of Olly's baser suggestion, "I reckoned that she should get the first word from _me_ and not from a stranger. I knowed she warn't in Californy, or she'd hev seen them handbills I issued five years ago. What did I do? Thar is a paper wot's printed in New York, called the _Herald_. Thar is a place in that thar paper whar they print notisses to people that is fur, fur away. They is precious words from fathers to their sons, from husbands to their wives, from brothers to sisters, ez can't find each other, from"----

"From sweethearts to thar bo's," said Olly, briskly; "I know."

Gabriel paused in speechless horror.

"Yes," continued Olly. "They calls 'em 'Personals.' Lord! I know all 'bout them. Gals get bo's by them, Gabe!"

Gabriel looked up at the bright, arching vault above him. Yet it did not darken nor split into fragments. And he hesitated. Was it worth while to go on? Was there anything he could tell this terrible child--his own sister--which she did not already know better than he?

"I wrote one o' them Pursonals," he went on to say, doggedly, "in this ways." He paused, and fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, finally drew out a well-worn newspaper slip, and straightening it with some care from its mult.i.tudinous enfoldings, read it slowly, and with that peculiar patronising self-consciousness which distinguishes the human animal in the rehearsal of its literary composition.

"Ef G. C. will communicate with sufferin' and anxious friends, she will confer a favour on ole Gabe. I will come and see her, and Olly will rise up and welcome her. Ef G. C. is sick or don't want to come she will write to G. C. G. C. is same as usual, and so is Olly. All is well. Address G. C., One Horse Gulch, Californy--till further notiss."

"Read it over again," said Olly.

Gabriel did so, readily.

"Ain't it kinder mixed up with them G. C.'s?" queried the practical Olly.

"Not for she," responded Gabriel, quickly, "that's just what July said when I showed her the 'Pursonal.' But I sed to her as I sez to you, it taint no puzzle to Gracy. _She_ knows ez our letters is the same. And ef it 'pears queer to strangers, wots the odds? Thet's the idee ov a 'pursonal.' Howsomever, it's all right, Olly. Fur," he continued, lowering his voice confidentially, and drawing is sister closer to his side, "_it's bin ansered_!"

"By Grace?" asked Olly.

"No," said Gabriel, in some slight confusion, "not by Grace, exactly--that is--but yer's the anser." He drew from his bosom a small chamois-skin purse, such as miners used for their loose gold, and extracted the more precious slip. "Read it," he said to Olly, turning away his head.

Olly eagerly seized and read the paper.

"G. C.--Look no more for the missing one who will never return.

Look at home. Be happy.--P. A."

Olly turned the slip over in her hands. "Is that all?" she asked, in a higher key, with a rising indignation in her pink cheeks.

"That's all," responded Gabriel; "short and shy--that's Gracy, all over."

"Then all I got to say is it's mean!" said Olly, bringing her brown fist down on her knee. "And that's wot I'd say to that thar P. A.--that Philip Ashley--if I met him."