Overland Part 56

"A million!" she scoffed, laughingly. "Do you believe all Coronado tells you?"

"What! isn't it true?" exclaimed Thurstane, reddening with joy. "Then you are not heir to your grandfather's fortune? It was one of _his_ lies? Oh, my little girl, I am forever happy."

She had not meant all this; but how could she undeceive him? The tempting thought came into her mind that she would marry him while he was in this ignorance, and so relieve him of his n.o.ble scruples about taking an heiress. It was one of those white lies which, it seems to us, must fade out of themselves from the record book, without even needing to be blotted by the tear of an angel.

"Are you glad?" she smiled, though anxious at heart, for deception alarmed her. "Really glad to find me poor?"

His only response was to cover her hands, and hair, and forehead with kisses.

At last came the question, When? Clara hesitated; her face and neck bloomed with blushes as dewy as flowers; she looked at him once piteously, and then her gaze fell in beautiful shame.

"When would you like?" she at last found breath to whisper.

"Now--here," was the answer, holding both her hands and begging with his blue-black eyes, as soft then as a woman's.

"Yes, at once," he continued to implore. "It is best everyway. It will save you from persecutions. My love, is it not best?"

Under the circ.u.mstances we cannot wonder that this should be just as she desired.

"Yes--it is--best," she murmured, hiding her face against his shoulder.

"What you say is true. It will save me trouble."

After a short heaven of silence he added, "I will go and see what is needed. I must find a priest."

As he was departing she caught him; it seemed to her just then that she could not be a wife so soon; but the result was that after another silence and a faint sobbing, she let him go.

Meantime Coronado, that persevering and audacious but unlucky conspirator, was in treble trouble. He was afraid that he would lose Clara; afraid that his plottings had been brought to light, and that he would be punished; afraid that his uncle would die and thus deprive him of all chance of succeeding to any part of the estate of Munoz. Garcia had been brought ash.o.r.e apparently at his last gasp, and he had not yet come out of his insensibility. For a time Coronado hoped that he was in one of his fits; but after eighteen hours he gave up that feeble consolation; he became terribly anxious about the old man; he felt as though he loved him. The people of Monterey universally admitted that they had never before known such an affectionate nephew and tender-hearted Christian as Coronado.

He tried to see Clara, meaning to make the most with her of Garcia's condition, and hoping that thus he could divert her a little from Thurstane. But somehow all his messages failed; the little house which held her repelled him as if it had been a nunnery; nor could he get a word or even a note from her. The truth is that Clara, fearing lest Coronado should tell more stories about her million to Thurstane, had taken the women of the family into her confidence and easily got them to lay a sly embargo on callers and correspondents.

On the second day Garcia came to himself for a few minutes, and struggled hard to say something to his nephew, but could give forth only a feeble jabber, after which he turned blank again. Coronado, in the extreme of anxiety, now made another effort to get at Clara. Reaching her house, he learned from a bystander that she had gone out to walk with the Americano, and then he thought he discovered them entering the distant church.

He set off at once in pursuit, asking himself with an anxiety which almost made him faint, "Are they to be married?"

CHAPTER XLII.

In those days the hymeneal laws of California were as easy as old shoes, and people could espouse each other about as rapidly as they might want to.

The consequence was that, although Ralph Thurstane and Clara Van Diemen had only been two days in Monterey and had gone through no forms of publication, they were actually being married when Coronado reached the village church.

Leaning against the wall, with eyes as fixed and face as livid as if he were a corpse from the neighboring cemetery, he silently witnessed a ceremony which it would have been useless for him to interrupt, and then, stepping softly out of a side door, lurked away.

He walked a quarter of a mile very fast, ran nearly another quarter of a mile, turned into a by-road, sought its thickest underbrush, threw himself on the ground, and growled. For once he had a heavier burden upon him than he could bear in human presence, or bear quietly anywhere. He must be alone; also he must weep and curse. He was in a state to tear his hair and to beat his head against the earth. Refined as Coronado usually was, admirably as he could imitate the tranquil gentleman of modern civilization, he still had in him enough of the natural man to rave. For a while he was as simple and as violent in his grief as ever was any Celtiberian cave-dweller of the stone age.

Jealousy, disappointed love, disappointed greed, plans balked, labor lost, perils incurred in vain! All the calamities that he could most dread seemed to have fallen upon him together; he was like a man sucked by the arms of a polypus, dying in one moment many deaths. We must, however, do him the justice to believe that the wound which tore the sharpest was that which lacerated his heart. At this time, when he realized that he had altogether and forever lost Clara, he found that he loved her as he had never yet believed himself capable of loving. Considering the n.o.bility of this pa.s.sion, we must grant some sympathy to Coronado.

Unfortunate as he was, another misfortune awaited him. When he returned to the house where Garcia lay, he found that the old man, his sole relative and sole friend, had expired. To Coronado this dead body was the carca.s.s of all remaining hope. The exciting drama of struggle and expectation which had so violently occupied him for the last six months, and which had seemed to promise such great success, was over. Even if he could have resolved to kill Clara, there was no longer anything to be gained by it, for her money would not descend to Coronado. Even if he should kill Thurstane, that would be a harm rather than a benefit, for his widow would hate Coronado. If he did any evil deed now, it must be from jealousy or from vindictiveness. Was murder of any kind worth while? For the time, whether it were worth while or not, he was furious enough to do it.

If he did not act, he must go; for as everything had miscarried, so much had doubtless been discovered, and he might fairly expect chastis.e.m.e.nt.

While he hesitated a glance into the street showed him something which decided him, and sent him far from Monterey before sundown. Half a dozen armed hors.e.m.e.n, three of them obviously Americans, rode by with a pinioned prisoner, in whom Coronado recognized Texas Smith. He did not stop to learn that his old bravo had committed a murder in the village, and that a vigilance committee had sent a deputation after him to wait upon him into the other world. The sight of that haggard, scarred, wicked face, and the thought of what confessions the brute might be led to if he should recognize his former employer, were enough to make Coronado buy a horse and ride to unknown regions.

Under the circ.u.mstances it would perhaps be unreasonable to blame him for leaving his uncle to be buried by Clara and Thurstane.

These two, we easily understand, were not much astonished and not at all grieved by his departure.

"He is gone," said Thurstane, when he learned the fact. "No wonder."

"I am so glad!" replied Clara.

"I suspect him now of being at the bottom of all our troubles."

"Don't let us talk of it, my love. It is too ugly. The present is so beautiful!"

"I must hurry back to San Francisco and try to get a leave of absence,"

said the husband, turning to pleasanter subjects. "I want full leisure to be happy."

"And you won't let them send you to San Diego?" begged the wife. "No more voyages now. If you do go, I shall go with you."

"Oh no, my child. I can't trust the sea with you again. Not after this,"

and he waved his hand toward the wreck of the brig.

"Then I will beg myself for your leave of absence."

Thurstane laughed; that would never do; no such condescension in _his_ wife!

They went by land to San Francisco, and Clara kept the secret of her million during the whole journey, letting her husband pay for everything out of his shallow pocket, precisely as if she had no money. Arrived in the city, he left her in a hotel and hurried to headquarters. Two hours later he returned smiling, with the news that a brother officer had volunteered to take his detail, and that he had obtained a honeymoon leave of absence for thirty days.

"Barclay is a trump," he said. "It is all the prettier in him to go that he has a wife of his own. The commandant made no objection to the exchange. In fact the old fellow behaved like a father to me, shook hands, patted me on the shoulder, congratulated me, and all that sort of thing.

Old boy, married himself, and very fond of his family. Upon my word, it seems to better a man's heart to marry him."

"Of course it does," chimed in Clara. "He is so much happier that of course he is better."

"Well, my little princess, where shall we go?"

"Go first to see Aunt Maria. There! don't make a face. She is very good in the long run. She will be sweet enough to you in three days."

"Of course I will go. Where is she?"

"Boarding at a hacienda a few miles from town. We can take horses, canter out there, and pa.s.s the night."

She was full of spirits; laughed and chattered all the way; laughed at everything that was said; chattered like a pleased child. Of course she was thinking of the surprise that she would give him, and how she had circ.u.mvented his sense of honor about marrying a rich girl, and how hard and fast she had him. Moreover the contrast between her joyous present and her anxious past was alone enough to make her run over with gayety. All her troubles had vanished in a pack; she had gone at one bound from purgatory to paradise.

At the hacienda Thurstane was a little struck by the respect with which the servants received Clara; but as she signed to them to be silent, not a word was uttered which could give him a suspicion of the situation. Mrs.

Stanley, moreover, was taking a siesta, and so there was another tell-tale mouth shut.