Gabriel Conroy Part 58

Perhaps it was this discovery, perhaps it was some instinct stronger than this; but when Arthur had satisfied himself of this fact he left the direct road, which would have brought him to the Mission, and diverged upon the open plain towards the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity.

A fierce wind from the sea swept the broad _llano_ and seemed to oppose him, step by step--a wind so persistent and gratuitous that it appeared to Arthur to possess a moral quality, and as such was to be resisted and overcome by his superior will. Here, at least, all was unchanged; here was the dead, flat monotony of land and sky. Here was the brittle, harsh stubble of the summer fields, sun-baked and wind-dried; here were the long stretches of silence, from which even the harrying wind made no opposition nor complaint; here were the formless specks of slowly-moving cattle, even as he remembered them before. A momentary chill came over him as he recalled his own perilous experience on these plains, a momentary glow suffused his cheek as he thought of his rescue by the lovely but cold recluse. Again he heard the name of "Philip" softly whispered in his ears, again he felt the flood of old memories sweep over him as he rode, even as he had felt them when he lay that day panting upon the earth. And yet Arthur had long since convinced his mind that he was mistaken in supposing that Donna Dolores had addressed him at that extreme moment as "Philip;" he had long since believed it was a trick of his disordered and exhausted brain; the conduct of Dolores towards himself, habitually restrained by grave courtesy, never justified him in directly asking the question, nor suggested any familiarity that might have made it probable. She had never alluded to it again--but had apparently forgotten it. Not so Arthur! He had often gone over that memorable scene, with a strange, tormenting pleasure that was almost a pain. It was the one incident of his life, for whose poetry he was not immediately responsible--the one genuine heart-thrill whose sincerity he had not afterwards stopped to question in his critical fashion, the one enjoyment that had not afterwards appeared mean and delusive. And now the heroine of this episode was missing, and he might never perhaps see her again! And yet when he first heard the news he was conscious of a strange sense of relief--rather let me say of an awakening from a dream, that though delicious, had become dangerous and might unfit him for the practical duties of his life. Donna Dolores had never affected him as a real personage--at least the interest he felt in her was, he had always considered, due to her relations to some romantic condition of his mind, and her final disappearance from the plane of his mental vision was only the exit of an actress from the mimic stage. It seemed only natural that she should disappear as mysteriously as she came. There was no shock even to the instincts of his ordinary humanity--it was no catastrophe involving loss of life or even suffering to the subject or spectator.

Such at least was Mr. Poinsett's a.n.a.lysis of his own mental condition on the receipt of Donna Maria's telegram. It was the cool self-examination of a man who believed himself cold-blooded and selfish, superior to the weakness of ordinary humanity, and yet was conscious of neither pride nor disgrace in the belief. Yet when he diverged from his direct road to the Mission, and turned his horse's head toward the home of Donna Dolores, he was conscious of a new impulse and anxiety that was stronger than his reason. Unable as he was to resist it, he still took some satisfaction in believing that it was nearly akin to that feeling which years before had driven him back to Starvation Camp in quest of the survivors. Suddenly his horse recoiled with a bound that would have unseated a less skilful rider. Directly across his path stretched a chasm in the level plain--thirty feet broad and as many feet in depth, and at its bottom in undistinguishable confusion lay the wreck of the corral of the Blessed Trinity!

Except for the enormous size and depth of this fissure Arthur might have mistaken it for the characteristic cracks in the sunburnt plain, which the long dry summer had wrought upon its surface, some of which were so broad as to task the agility of his horse. But a second glance convinced him of the different character of the phenomenon. The earth had not cracked asunder nor separated, but had sunk. The width of the chasm below was nearly equal to the width above; the floor of this valley in miniature was carpeted by the same dry, brittle herbs and gra.s.ses which grew upon the plain around him.

In the pre-occupation of the last hour he had forgotten the distance he had traversed. He had evidently ridden faster than he had imagined. But if this was really the corral, the walls of the Rancho should now be in sight at the base of the mountain! He turned in that direction. Nothing was to be seen! Only the monotonous plain stretched before him, vast and unbroken. Between the chasm where he stood and the _falda_ of the first low foot-hills neither roof nor wall nor ruin rose above the dull, dead level!

An ominous chill ran through his veins, and for an instant the reins slipped through his relaxed fingers. Good G.o.d! Could this have been what Donna Maria meant, or had there been a later convulsion of Nature? He looked around him. The vast, far-stretching plain, desolate and trackless as the shining ocean beyond, took upon itself an awful likeness to that element! Standing on the brink of the revealed treachery of that yawning chasm, Arthur Poinsett read the fate of the Rancho. In the storm that had stirred the depths of this motionless level, the Rancho and its miserable inmates had _foundered_ and gone down!

Arthur's first impulse was to push on towards the scene of the disaster, in the vague hope of rendering some service. But the chasm before him was impa.s.sable, and seemed to continue to the sea beyond. Then he reflected that the catastrophe briefly told in Donna Maria's despatch had happened twenty-four hours before, and help was perhaps useless now.

He cursed the insane impulse that had brought him here, aimlessly and without guidance, and left him powerless even to reach the object of his quest. If he had only gone first to the Mission, asked the advice and a.s.sistance of Father Felipe, or learned at least the full details of the disaster! He uttered an oath, rare to his usual calm expression, and wheeling his horse, galloped fiercely back towards the Mission.

Night had deepened over the plain. With the going down of the sun a fog that had been stealthily encompa.s.sing the coast-line stole with soft step across the shining beach, dulled its l.u.s.tre, and then moved slowly and solemnly upon the plain, blotting out the Point of Pines, at first salient with its sparkling Lighthouse, but now undistinguishable from the grey sea above and below, until it reached the galloping horse and its rider, and then, as it seemed to Arthur, isolated them from the rest of the world--from even the pencilled outlines of the distant foot-hills, that it at last sponged from the blue-grey slate before him.

At times the far-off tolling of a fog-bell came faintly to his ear, but all sound seemed to be blotted out by the fog; even the rapid fall of his horse's hoofs was m.u.f.fled and indistinct. By degrees the impression that he was riding in a dream overcame him, and was accepted by him without questioning or deliberation.

It seemed to be a consistent part of the dream or vision when he rode--or rather as it seemed to him, was borne by the fog--into the outlying fields and lanes of the Mission. A few lights, with a nimbus of fog around them, made the narrow street of the town appear still more ghostly and unreal as he plunged through its obscurity towards the plaza and church. Even by the dim grey light he could see that one of the towers had fallen, and that the eastern wing and Refectory were a ma.s.s of shapeless ruin. And what would at another time have excited his surprise now only struck him as a natural part of his dream,--the church a blaze of light and filled with thronging worshippers! Still possessed by his strange fancy, Arthur Poinsett dismounted, led his horse beneath the shed beside the remaining tower, and entered the building. The body and nave of the church were intact; the outlandish paintings still hung from the walls; the waxen effigies of the Blessed Virgin and the saints still leaned from their niches, yellow and lank, and at the high altar Father Felipe was officiating. As he entered a dirge broke from the choir; he saw that the altar and its offerings were draped in black, and in the first words uttered by the priest Arthur recognised the ma.s.s for the dead! The feverish impatience that had filled his breast and heightened the colour of his cheeks for the last hour was gone. He sunk upon a bench beside one of the worshippers and buried his face in his hands. The voice of the organ rose again faintly; the quaint-voiced choir awoke, the fumes of incense filled the church, and the monotonous accents of the priest fell soothingly upon his ear, and Arthur seemed to sleep. I say seemed to sleep, for ten minutes later he came to himself with a start as if awakening from a troubled dream, with the voice of Padre Felipe in his ear, and the soft, caressing touch of Padre Felipe on his shoulder. The worshippers had dispersed, the church was dark save a few candles still burning on the high altar, and for an instant he could not recall himself.

"I knew you would come, son," said Padre Felipe; "but where is she? Did you bring her with you?"

"Who?" asked Arthur, striving to recall his scattered senses.

"Who? Saints preserve us, Don Arturo! She who sent for you--Donna Maria!

Did you not get her message?"

Arthur replied that he had only just arrived, and had at once hastened to the Mission. For some reason that he was ashamed to confess he did not say that he had tried to reach the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity, nor did he admit that he had forgotten for the last two hours even the existence of Donna Maria. "You were having a ma.s.s for the dead, Father Felipe?--you have then suffered here?"

He paused anxiously, for in his then confused state of mind he doubted how much of his late consciousness had been real or visionary.

"Mother of G.o.d," said Father Felipe, eyeing Arthur curiously. "You know not then for whom was this ma.s.s? You know not that a saint has gone--that Donna Dolores has at last met her reward?"

"I have heard--that is, Donna Maria's despatch said--that she was missing," stammered Arthur, feeling, with a new and unsupportable disbelief in himself, that his face was very pale and his voice uncertain.

"Missing!" echoed Father Felipe, with the least trace of impatience in his voice. "Missing! She will be found when the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity is restored--when the ruins of the _casa_, sunk fifty feet below the surface, are brought again to the level of the plain. Missing, Don Arturo!--ah!--missing indeed!--for ever! always, entirely!"

Moved perhaps by something in Arthur's face, Padre Felipe sketched in a few graphic pictures the details of the catastrophe already forecast by Arthur. It was a repet.i.tion of the story of the sunken corral. The earthquake had not only levelled the walls of the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity, but had opened a grave-like chasm fifty feet below it, and none had escaped to tell the tale. The faithful _vaqueros_ had rushed from the trembling and undulating plain to the Rancho, only to see it topple into a yawning abyss that opened to receive it. Don Juan, Donna Dolores, the faithful Manuela, and Alejandro, the _major domo_, with a dozen peons and retainers, went down with the crumbling walls. No one had escaped. Was it not possible to dig in the ruins for the bodies? Mother of G.o.d! had not Don Arturo been told that the earth at the second shock had closed over the sunken ruins, burying beyond mortal resurrection all that the Rancho contained? They were digging, but hopelessly--a dozen men. They might--weeks hence--discover the bodies--but who knows?

The meek, fatalistic way that Father Felipe accepted the final doom of Donna Dolores exasperated Arthur beyond bounds. In San Francisco a hundred men would have been digging night and day in the mere chance of recovering the buried family. Here--but Arthur remembered the sluggish, helpless retainers of Salvatierra, the dreadful fatalism which affected them on the occurrence of this mysterious catastrophe, even as shown in the man before him, their accepted guide and leader--and shuddered.

Could anything be done? Could he not, with Dumphy's a.s.sistance, procure a gang of men from San Francisco? And then came the instinct of caution, always powerful with a nature like Arthur's. If these people, most concerned in the loss of their friends, their relations, accepted it so hopelessly, what right had he--a mere stranger--to interfere?

"But come, my son," said Padre Felipe, laying his large soft hand, parentally, on Arthur's shoulder. "Come, come with me to my rooms.

Thanks to the Blessed Virgin I have still shelter and a roof to offer you. Ah!" he added, stroking Arthur's riding-coat, and examining critically as if he had been a large child, "what have we--what is this, eh? You are wet with this heretic fog--eh? Your hands are cold, and your cheeks hot. You have fatigue! Possibly--most possibly, hunger! No! No!

It is so. Come with me, come!" and drawing Arthur's pa.s.sive arm through his own, he opened the vestry door, and led him across the little garden, choked with debris and plaster of the fallen tower, to a small adobe building that had been the Mission schoolroom. It was now hastily fitted up as Padre Felipe's own private apartment and meditative cell. A bright fire burned in the low, oven-like hearth. Around the walls hung various texts ill.u.s.trating the achievement of youthful penmanship with profound religious instruction. At the extremity of the room there was a small organ. Midway and opposite the hearth was a deep embrasured window--the window at which two weeks before, Mr. Jack Hamlin had beheld the Donna Dolores. "She spent much of her time here, dear child, in the instruction of the young," said Father Felipe, taking a huge pinch of snuff, and applying a large red bandana handkerchief to his eyes and nose. "It is her best monument! Thanks to her largess--and she was ever free-handed, Don Arturo, to the Church--the foundation of the Convent of our Lady of Sorrows, her own patron saint, thou seest here.

Thou knowest, possibly--most possibly as her legal adviser--that long ago, by her will, the whole of the Salvatierra Estate is a benefaction to the Holy Church, eh?"

"No, I don't!" said Arthur, suddenly, awakening with a glow of Protestant and heretical objection that was new to him, and eyeing Padre Felipe with the first glance of suspicion he had ever cast upon that venerable ecclesiastic. "No, sir, I never heard any intimation or suggestion of the kind from the late Donna Dolores. On the contrary, I was engaged"----

"Pardon--pardon me, my son," interrupted Father Felipe, taking another large pinch of snuff. "It is not now, scarce twenty-four hours since the dear child was translated--not in her ma.s.ses and while her virgin strewments are not yet faded--that we will talk of this" (he blew his nose violently). "No! All in good time--thou shalt see! But I have something here," he continued, turning over some letters and papers in his desk. "Something for you--possibly, most possibly, more urgent. It is a telegraphic despatch for you, to my care."

He handed a yellow envelope to Arthur. But Poinsett's eyes were suddenly fixed upon a card which lay upon Padre Felipe's table, and which the Padre's search for the despatch had disclosed. Written across its face was the name of Colonel Culpepper Starbottle of Siskiyou! "Do you know that man?" asked Poinsett, holding the despatch unopened in his hand, and pointing to the card.

Father Felipe took another pinch of snuff. "Possibly--most possibly! A lawyer, I think--I think! Some business of the Church property! I have forgotten. But your despatch, Don Arturo. What says it? It does not take you from us? And you--only an hour here?"

Father Felipe paused, and looking up innocently, found the eyes of Arthur regarding him gravely. The two men examined each other intently.

Arthur's eyes, at last, withdrew from the clear, unshrinking glance of Padre Felipe, unabashed but unsatisfied. A sudden recollection of the thousand and one scandals against the Church, and wild stories of its far-reaching influence--a swift remembrance of the specious craft and cunning charged upon the religious order of which Padre Felipe was a member--scandals that he had hitherto laughed at as idle--flashed through his mind. Conscious that he was now putting himself in a guarded att.i.tude before the man with whom he had always been free and outspoken, Arthur, after a moment's embarra.s.sment that was new to him, turned for relief to the despatch and opened it. In an instant it drove all other thoughts from his mind. Its few words were from Dumphy and ran, characteristically, as follows: "Gabriel Conroy arrested for murder of Victor Ramirez. What do you propose? Answer."

Arthur rose to his feet. "When does the up-stage pa.s.s through San Geronimo?" he asked, hurriedly.

"At midnight!" returned Padre Felipe. "Surely, my son, you do not intend"----

"And it is now nine o'clock," continued Arthur, consulting his watch.

"Can you procure me a fresh horse? It is of the greatest importance, Father," he added, recovering his usual frankness.

"Ah! it is urgent!--it is a matter"----suggested the Padre, gently.

"Of life and death!" responded Arthur gravely.

Father Felipe rang a bell and gave some directions to a servant, while Arthur, seating himself at the table, wrote an answer to the despatch.

"I can trust you to send it as soon as possible to the telegraph office," he said, handing it to Father Felipe.

The Padre took it in his hand, but glanced anxiously at Arthur. "And Donna Maria?" he said, hesitatingly; "you have not seen her yet! Surely you will stop at the Blessed Fisherman, if only for a moment, eh?"

Arthur drew his riding-coat and cape over his shoulders with a mischievous smile. "I am afraid not, Father; I shall trust to you to explain that I was recalled suddenly, and that I had not time to call; knowing the fascinations of your society, Father, she will not begrudge the few moments I have spent with you."

Before Father Felipe could reply the servant entered with the announcement that the horse was ready.

"Good-night, Father Felipe," said Arthur, pressing the priest's hands warmly, with every trace of his former suspiciousness gone. "Good night.

A thousand thanks for the horse. In speeding the parting guest," he added, gravely, "you have perhaps done more for the health of my soul than you imagine--good-night. _Adios!_"

With a light laugh in his ears, the vision of a graceful, erect figure, waving a salute from a phantom steed, an inward rush of the cold grey fog, and m.u.f.fled clatter of hoofs over the mouldy and mossy marbles in the churchyard, Father Felipe parted from his guest. He uttered a characteristic adjuration, took a pinch of snuff, and closing the door, picked up the card of the gallant Colonel Starbottle and tossed it into the fire.

But the perplexities of the holy Father ceased not with the night. At an early hour in the morning, Donna Maria Sepulvida appeared before him at breakfast, suspicious, indignant, and irate.

"Tell me, Father Felipe," she said, hastily, "did the Don Arturo pa.s.s the night here?"

"Truly no, my daughter," answered the Padre, cautiously. "He was here but for a little"----

"And he went away when?" interrupted Donna Maria.

"At nine."

"And where?" continued Donna Maria, with a rising colour.

"To San Francisco, my child; it was business of great importance--but sit down, sit, little one! This impatience is of the devil, daughter, you must calm yourself."

"And do you know, Father Felipe, that he went away without coming _near me_?" continued Donna Maria, in a higher key, scarcely heeding her ghostly confessor.

"Possibly, most possibly! But he received a despatch--it was of the greatest importance."