Overland Part 50

Clara had been taken ill while waiting on the unconscious Garcia, and the attack had been so violent as to drive her at once to her room and bed.

The first person whom Coronado met when he reached the house was Aunt Maria, oscillating from one invalid to the other in such fright and confusion that she did not know whether she was strong-minded or not; but thus far chiefly troubled about Garcia, who seemed to her to be in a dying state.

"Your uncle!" she exclaimed, beckoning wildly to Coronado as he rushed in at the door.

"I know," he answered hastily. "A servant told me. How is Clara?"

He was as pale as a man of his dark complexion could be. Aunt Maria caught his alarm, and, forgetting at once all about Garcia, ran on with him to Clara's room. The girl was just then in one of her spasms, her features contracted and white, and her forehead covered with a cold sweat.

"What is it?" whispered Mrs. Stanley, clutching Coronado by the arm and staring eagerly at his anxious eyes.

"It is--fever," he returned, making a great effort to control his rage and terror. "Give her warm water to drink. My G.o.d! give her something."

He sent three servants in succession to search for three different physicians swearing at them violently while they made their preparations, telling them to ride like the devil, to kill their horses, etc. When he returned to Clara's room she had come out of her paroxysm, and was feebly trying to smile away Aunt Maria's terrors.

"My cousin!" he whispered in unmistakable anguish of spirit.

"I am better," she replied. "Thank you, Coronado. How is Garcia?"

Coronado looked as if he were devoting some one to the infernal furies; but he suppressed his emotion and replied in a smothered voice, "I will go and see."

Hurrying to his uncle's room, he motioned out the attendants, closed the door, locked it, and then, with a scowl of rage and alarm, advanced upon the invalid, who by this time was perfectly conscious.

"What have you given her?" demanded Coronado, in a hoa.r.s.e mutter.

"I don't know what you mean," stammered the old man. He shut his one eye, not because he could not keep it open, but to evade the conflict which was coming upon him.

Taking quick advantage of the closed eye, Coronado turned to a dressing-table, pulled out a drawer, seized a key, and opened Garcia's trunk. Before the old man could interfere, the younger one held in his hand a paper containing two ounces or so of white powder.

"Did you give her this?" demanded Coronado.

Garcia stared at the paper with such a scared and guilty face, that it was equivalent to a confession.

Coronado turned away to hide his face. There was a strange smile upon it; at first it was a joy which made him half angelic; then it became amus.e.m.e.nt. He tottered to a chair, threw himself into it with the air of a thoroughly wearied man who finds rest delicious, put a grain of the powder on his tongue, and then drew a long sigh, a sigh of entire relief.

We must explain. The inner history of this scene is not a tragedy, but a farce. For two weeks or more Coronado had been watching his uncle day and night, and at last had found in his trunk a paper of powder which he suspected to be a.r.s.enic. A blunderer would have destroyed or hidden it, thereby warning Garcia that he was being looked after, and causing him to be more careful about his hiding places. Coronado emptied the paper, snapped off every grain of the powder with his finger, wiped it clean with his handkerchief, and refilled it with another powder. The selection of this second powder was another piece of cleverness. He had at hand both flour and finely pulverized sugar; but he wanted to learn whether Garcia would really dose the girl, and he wanted a chance to frighten him; so he chose a substance which would be harmless, and yet would cause illness.

"You will be hung," said Coronado, staring sternly at his uncle.

"I don't know what you mean," mumbled the old man, trembling all over.

"What a fool you were to use a poison so easily detected as a.r.s.enic! I have sent for doctors. They will recognize her symptoms. You prepared the chocolate. Here is the a.r.s.enic in your trunk. You will be hung."

"Give me that paper," whimpered Garcia, rising from his bed and staggering toward Coronado. "Give it to me. It is mine."

Coronado put the package behind him with one hand and held off his uncle with the other.

"You must go," he persisted. "She won't live two hours. Be off before you are arrested. Take horse for San Francisco. If there is a steamer, get aboard of it. Never mind where it sails to."

"Give me the paper," implored Garcia, going down on his knees. "O Madre de Dios! My head, my head! Oh, what extremities! Give me the paper. Carlos, it was all for your sake."

"Are you going?" demanded Coronado.

"Oh yes. Madre de Dios! I am going."

"Come along. By the back way. Do you want to pa.s.s _her_ room? Do you want to see your work? I will send your trunk to the bankers. Quit California at the first chance. Quit it at once, if you go to China."

As Coronado looked after the flying old man he heard himself called by Mrs. Stanley, who was by this time in great terror about Clara, trotting hither and thither after help and counsel.

"Oh, Mr. Coronado, do come!" she urged. Then, catching sight of the galloping Garcia, "But what does that mean? Has he gone mad?"

"Nearly," said Coronado. "I brought him news of pressing business. How is my cousin?"

"Oh dear! I am terribly alarmed. Do look at her. Will those doctors never come!"

Coronado, who had been a little in advance of Mrs. Stanley as they hurried toward Clara's room, suddenly stopped, wheeled about with a smile, seized her hands, and shook them heartily.

"I have it," he exclaimed with a fine imitation of joyful astonishment.

"There is no danger. I can explain the whole trouble. My poor uncle has these attacks, and he is extravagantly fond of chocolate. To relieve the attacks he always carries a paper of medicine in one of his vest pockets.

To sweeten his chocolate he carries a paper of sugar in the companion pocket. You may be sure that he has made a mistake between the two. He has dosed Clara with his physic. There is no danger."

He laughed in the most natural manner conceivable; then he checked himself and said: "My poor little cousin! It is no joke for her."

"Certainly not," snapped Aunt Maria, relieved and yet angry. "How excessively stupid! Here is Clara as sick as can be, and I frightened out of my senses. Men ought not to meddle with cookery. They are such botches, even in their own business!"

But presently, after she had given Coronado's explanation to Clara, and the girl had laughed heartily over it and declared herself much better, Aunt Maria recovered her good humor and began to pity that poor, sick, driven Garcia.

"The brave old creature!" she said. "Out of his fits and off on his business. I must say he is a wonder. Let us hope he will come out all right, and soon return to us. But really he ought to be seen to. He may fall off his horse in a fit, or he may dose somebody dreadfully with his chocolate and get taken up for poisoning. Mr. Coronado, you ought to ride into town to-morrow and look after him."

"Certainly," replied Coronado. He did so, and returned with the news that Garcia had sailed to San Diego, having been summoned back to Santa Fe by the state of his affairs. That day and the night following he slept fourteen hours, making up the arrears of rest which he had lost in watching his uncle. Henceforward he was easier; he had a pretty clear field before him; there was no one present to poison Clara; no one but himself to court her. And the courtship went forward with a better prospect of success than is quite agreeable to contemplate.

Coronado and Clara were Adam and Eve; they were the only man and woman in this paradise. People thus situated are claimed by a being whom most call a G.o.ddess, and some a demon. She is protean; she is at once an invariable formula and an individual caprice; she is a law governing the universal mult.i.tude, and a pa.s.sion swaying the unit. She seems to be under an impression that, where a couple are left alone together, they are the last relics of the human race, and that if they do not marry the type will perish. Indifferent to all considerations but one, she pushes them toward each other.

There is comparative safety from her in a crowd. Bachelors and maidens who mingle by hundreds may remain bachelors and maidens. But pair them off in lonely places and see if the result is not amazingly hymeneal. A fellow who has run the gauntlet of seven years of parties in New York will marry the first agreeable girl whom he meets in Alaska. There is such a thing as leaving the haunts of men and repairing to waste places to find a husband.

We are told that English girls have reduced this to a system, and that fair archers who have failed at Brighton go out to hunt successfully in India.

Well, Coronado had the favoring chances of solitude, propinquity, and daily opportunity. Seldom away from Clara for a day together, he was in condition to take advantage of any of those moods which lay woman open to courtship, such as grat.i.tude for attentions, a disgust with loneliness, a desire for something to love. It was a great thing for him that there was work about the hacienda which no woman could easily do; that there were men servants to govern, horses to be herded, valued, and sold, and lands to be cultivated. All these male mysteries were soon handed over to Coronado, subject to the advice of Aunt Maria and the final judgment of Clara. The result was that _he_ and _she_ got into a way of frequently discussing many things which threatened to habituate her to the idea of being at one with him through life.

Have you ever watched two specks floating in a vessel of water? For a long time they approach each other so slowly that the movement is imperceptible but at last they are within range of each other's magnetism; there is a start, a swift rush, and they are together. Thus it was that Clara was gently, very gently, and unconsciously to herself, approaching Coronado. A mote on the wave of life, she was subject to attraction, as all of us motes are, and this man was the only tractor at hand. Aunt Maria did not count, for woman cannot absorb woman. As to Thurstane, he not only was not there, but he was not anywhere, as she at last believed.

Not a word from him or about him, except one letter from the Adjutant-General, which somehow evaded Coronado's brazier, gave her a moment of choking hope and fear, opened its white, official lips, acknowledged her "communication," and stopped there. The unseen tragedies in which souls suffer are numberless. Here was one. The girl had written with tears and heart-beats, and then with tears and heart-beats had waited. At last came the words, "I have the honor to acknowledge, etc., very respectfully, etc." It was one of the business-like facts of life unknowingly trampling upon a bleeding sentiment.

Imagine Clara's agitations during this long suspense; her plans and hopes and despairs would furnish matter for a library. There was not a day, if indeed there was an hour, during which her mind was not the theatre of a dozen dramas whereof Thurstane was the hero, either triumphant or perishing. They were horribly fragmentary; they broke off and pieced on to each other like nightmares; one moment he was rescued, and the next tomahawked. And this last fancy, despite all her struggles to hope, was for the most part victorious. Meantime Coronado, guessing her sufferings, and suffering horribly himself with jealousy, talked much and sympathetically to her of Thurstane. So much did this man bear, and with such outward sweetness did he bear it, that one half longs to consider him a martyr and saint. Pity that his goodness should not bear dissection; that it should have no more life in it than a stuffed mannikin; that it should be just fit to scare crows with.

But hypocrite as Coronado was, he was clever enough to win every day more of Clara's confidence; and perhaps she might have walked into this whited sepulchre in due time had it not been for an accident. Cantering into San Francisco to hold a consultation with her lawyer, she was saluted in the street by a United States officer, also on horseback. She instinctively drew rein, her pulse throbbing at sight of the uniform, and wild hopes beating at her heart.

"Miss Van Diemen, I believe," said the officer, a dark, stout, bold-looking trooper. "I am glad to see that you reached here in safety.