Overland Part 47

"We will, if you please, go direct to my excellent relative's," was the reply.

Aunt Maria held her head straight up, as if stiff-neckedly refusing to go there, but made no opposition.

Coronado had meditated everything and decided everything. It would not do to go to a hotel, because that might lead to a suspicion that he knew all the while about the death of Munoz. His plan was to drive at once to the old man's place, demand him as if he expected to see him, express proper surprise and grief over the funereal response, put the estate as soon as possible into Clara's hands, become her man of affairs and trusted friend, and so climb to be her husband. He was anxious; during all his perils in the desert he had never been more so; but he bore the situation heroically, as he could bear; his face revealed nothing but its outside--a smile.

"My dear cousin," he presently said, "when I once fairly set you down in your home, you will owe me, in spite of all my blunders, a word of thanks."

"Coronado, I shall owe you more than I ever can repay," she replied frankly, without remembering that he wanted to marry her. The next instant she remembered it, and her face showed the first blush that had tinted it for two months. He saw the significant color, and turned away to conceal a joy which might have been perilous had she observed it.

Immediately on landing he proceeded to carry out his programme. He took a hack, drove the ladies direct to the house of Munoz, and there went decorously through the form of learning that the old man was dead. Then, consoling the sorrowful and anxious Clara, he hurried to the best hotel in the city and made arrangements for what he meant should be an impressive scene, the announcement of her fortune. He secured fine rooms for the ladies, and ordered them a handsome lunch, with wine, etc., all without regard to expense. The girl must be perfectly comfortable and under a sense of all sorts of obligations to him when she received his _coup de theatre_.

He was not so preoccupied but that he quarelled with his coachman about the hack hire and dismissed him with some disagreeable epithets in Spanish. Next he took a saddle-horse, as being the cheapest conveyance attainable, and cantered off to find the executors of Munoz, enjoying heartily such stares of admiration as he got for his splendid riding. In an hour he returned, found the ladies in their freshest dresses, and complimented them suitably. At this very moment his anguish of anxiety and suspense was terrible. When Clara should learn that she was a millionaire, what would she do? Would she throw off the air of friendliness which she had lately worn, and scout him as one whom she had long known as a scoundrel? Would all his plots, his labors, his perils, and his love prove in one moment to have been in vain? As he stood there smiling and flattering, he was on the cross.

"But I am talking trifles," he said at last, fairly catching his breath.

"Can you guess why I do it? I am prolonging a moment of intense pleasure."

Such was his control over himself that he looked really benign and n.o.ble as he drew from his pocket a copy of the will and held it out toward Clara.

"My dear cousin," he murmured, his dark eyes searching her face with intense anxiety, "you cannot imagine my joy in announcing to you that you are the sole heir of the good Pedro Munoz."

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

At the announcement that she was a millionaire Clara turned pale, took the proffered paper mechanically with trembling fingers, and then, without looking at it, said, "Oh, Coronado!"

It was a tone of astonishment, of perplexity, of regret, of protest; it seemed to declare, Here is a terrible injustice, and I will none of it.

Coronado was delighted; in a breath he recovered all his presence of mind; he recovered his voice, too, and spoke out cheerfully:

"Ah, you are surprised, my cousin. Well, it is your grandfather's will.

You, as well as all others, must submit to it."

Aunt Maria jumped up and walked or rather pranced about the room, saying loudly, "He must have been the best man in the whole world." After repeating this two or three times, she halted and added with even more emphasis, "Except _you_, Mr. Coronado!"

The Mexican bowed in silence; it was almost too much to be praised in that way, feeling as he did; he bowed twice and waved his hand, deprecating the compliment. The interview was a very painful one to him, although he knew that he was gaining admiration with every breath that he drew, and admiration just where it was absolutely necessary to him. Turning to Clara now, he begged, "Read it, if you please, my cousin."

The girl, by this time flushed from chin to forehead, glanced over the paper, and immediately said, "This should not be so. It must not be."

Coronado was overjoyed; she evidently thought that she owed him and Garcia a part of this fortune; even if she kept it, she would feel bound to consider his interests, and the result of her conscientiousness might be marriage.

"Let us have no contest with the dead," he replied grandly. "Their wishes are sacred."

"But Garcia and you are wronged, and I cannot have it so," persisted Clara.

"How wronged?" demanded Aunt Maria. "I don't see it. Mr. Garcia was only a cousin, and he is rich enough already."

Coronado, remembering that he and Garcia were bankrupt, wished he could throw the old lady out of a window.

"Wait," said Clara in a tone of vehement resolution. "Give me time. You shall see that I am not unjust or ungrateful."

"I beg that you will not bestow a thought upon me," implored the sublime hypocrite. "Garcia, it is true, may have had claims. I have none."

Aunt Maria walked up to him, squeezed both his hands, and came near hugging him. Once out of this trial, Coronado could bear no more, but kissed his fingers to the ladies, hastened to his own room, locked the door, and swore all the oaths that there are in Spanish, which is no small mult.i.tude.

In a few days after this terrible interview things were going swimmingly well with him. To keep Clara out of the hands of fortune-hunters, but ostensibly to enable her to pa.s.s her first mourning in decent retirement, he had induced her to settle in one of Munoz's haciendas, a few miles from the city, where he of course had her much to himself. He was her adviser; he was closeted frequently with the executors; he foresaw the time when he would be the sole manager of the estate; he began to trust that he would some day possess it. What woman could help leaning upon and confiding in a man who was so useful, so necessary as Coronado, and who had shown such unselfish, such magnanimous sentiments?

Meantime the girl was as admirable in reality as the man was in appearance. Unexpected inheritance of large wealth is almost sure to alter, at least for a time, and generally for the worse, the manner and morale of a young person, whether male or female. Conceit or haughtiness or extravagance or greediness, or some other vice, pretty surely enters into either deportment or conduct. If this girl was changed at all by her great good fortune, she was changed for the better. She had never been more modest, gentle, affable, and sensible than she was now. The fact shows a clearness of mind and a n.o.bleness of heart which place her very high among the wise and good. Such behavior under such circ.u.mstances is equal to heroism. We are conscious that in saying these things of Clara we are drawing largely upon the reader's faith. But either her present trial of character was peculiarly fitted to her, or she was one of those select spirits who are purified by temptation.

She remembered Garcia's claims upon her grandfather, and her own supposed obligations to Coronado. She informed the executors that she wished to make over half her property to the old man, trusteeing it so that it should descend to his nephew. Their reply, translated from roundabout and complimentary Spanish into plain English, was this: "You can't do it. The estate is not settled, and will not be for a year. Moreover, you have no power to part with it until you are of age, which will not be for three years. Finally, your proposition defies your grandfather's wishes, and it is altogether too generous."

Clara's simple and firm reply was, "Well, I must wait. But it would seem better if I could do it now."

There was one reason why Clara should be so calm and unselfish in her elevation; her sorrows served her as ballast. Why should she let riches turn her head when she found that they could not lighten her heart? There was a certain night in her past which gold could not illuminate; there had once been a precious life near her, which was gone now beyond the power of ransom. Thurstane! How she would have lavished this wealth upon him. He would have refused it; but she would have prayed and forced him to accept it; she would have been the meeker to him because of it. How n.o.ble he had been! not now to be brought back! gone forever! And his going had been like the going away of the sun, leaving no beautiful color in all nature, no guiding light for wandering footsteps. She exaggerated him, as love will exaggerate the lost.

Of course she did not always believe that he could be dead, and in her hours of hope she wrote letters inquiring about his fate. In other days he had told her much of himself, stories of his childhood and his battles, the number of his old regiment and his new one, t.i.tles of his superiors, names of comrades, etc. To which among all these unknown ones should she address herself? She fixed on the commander of his present regiment, and that awfully mysterious personage the Adjutant-General of the army, a t.i.tle which seemed to represent omniscience and omnipotence. To each of these gentlemen she sent an epistle recounting where, when, and how Lieutenant Ralph Thurstane had been ambushed by unknown Indians, supposed to be Apaches.

These letters she wrote and mailed without the knowledge of Coronado. This was not caution, but pity; she did not suspect that he would try to intercept them; only that it would pain him to learn how much she yet thought of his rival. Indeed, it would have been cruel to show them to him, for he would have seen that they were blurred with tears. You perceive that she had come to be tender of the feelings of this earnest and scoundrelly lover, believing in his sincerity and not in his villainy.

"Surely some of those people will know," thought Clara, with a trust in men and dignitaries which makes one say _sancta simplicitas_. "If they do not know," she added, with a prayer in her heart, "G.o.d will discover it to them."

But no answers came for months. The colonel was not with his regiment, but on detached service at New York, whither Clara's letter travelled to find him, being addressed to his name and not marked "Official business." What he did of course was to forward it to the Adjutant-General of the army at Was.h.i.+ngton. The Adjutant-General successively filed both communications, and sent a copy of each to headquarters at Santa Fe and San Francisco, with an endors.e.m.e.nt advising inquiries and suitable search. The mails were slow and circuitous, and the official routine was also slow and circuitous, so that it was long before headquarters got the papers and went to work.

Does any one marvel that Clara did not go directly to the military authorities in the city? It must be remembered that man has his own world, as woman has hers, and that each s.e.x is very ignorant of the spheres and missions of the other, the retired s.e.x being especially limited in its information. The girl had never been told that there was such a thing as district headquarters, or that soldiers in San Francisco had anything to do with soldiers at Fort Yuma. Nor was she in the way of learning such facts, being miles away from a uniform, and even from an American.

One day, when she was fuller of hope than usual, she dared to write to that ghost, Thurstane. Where should the letter be addressed? It cost her much reflection to decide that it ought to go to the station of his company, Fort Yuma. This gave her an idea, and she at once penned two other letters, one directed "To the Captain of Company I," and one to Sergeant Meyer. But unfortunately those three epistles were not sent off before it occurred to Coronado that he ought to overlook the packages that were sent from the hacienda to the city. By the way, he had from the first a.s.sumed a secret censors.h.i.+p over the mails which arrived.

Meantime he also had his anxiety and his correspondence. He feared lest Garcia should learn how things had been managed, and should hasten to San Francisco to act henceforward as his own special providence. In that case there would be awkward explanations, there would be complicated and perilous plottings, there might be stabbings or poisonings. Already, as soon as he reached the Mohave valley, he had written one cajoling letter to his uncle. Scattered through six pages on various affairs were underscored phrases and words, which, taken in sequence, read as follows:

"Things have gone well and ill. What was most desirable has not been fully accomplished. There have been perils and deaths, but not the one required.

The wisest plans have been foiled by unforeseen circ.u.mstances. The future rests upon slow poison. A few weeks more will suffice. Do not come here.

It would rouse suspicion. Trust all to me."

He now sent other letters, reporting the progress of the malady caused by the poison, urging Garcia to remain at a distance, a.s.suring him that all would be well, etc.

"There will be no will," declared one of these lying messengers. "If there is a will, you will be the inheritor. In all events, you will be safe.

Rely upon my judgment and fidelity."

It is curious, by the way, that such men as Coronado and Garcia, knowing themselves and each other to be liars, should nevertheless expect to be believed, and should frequently believe each other. One is inclined to admit the seeming paradox that rogues are more easily imposed upon than honest men.

No responses came from Garcia. But, by way of consolation, Coronado had Clara's correspondence to read. One day this hidalgo, securely locked in his room, held in his delicate dark fingers a letter addressed to Miss Clara Van Diemen, and postmarked in writing "Fort Yuma." Hot as the day was, there was a brazier by his side, and a kettle of water bubbling on the coals. He held the letter in the steam, softened the wafer to a pulp, opened the envelope carefully, threw himself on a sofa, scowled at the beating of his heart, and began to read.

Before he had glanced through the first line he uttered an exclamation, turned hastily to the signature, and then burst into a stream of whispered curses. After he had blasphemed himself into a certain degree of calmness, he read the letter twice through carefully, and learned it by heart. Then he thrust it deep into the coals of the brazier, watched it steadily until its slight flame had flickered away, lighted a cigarito, and meditated.

This epistle was not the only one that troubled him. He already knew that Clara was inquiring about this man of whom she never spoke, and conducting her inquiries with an intelligence and energy which showed that her heart was in the business. If things went on so, there might be trouble some day, and there might be punishment. For a time he was so disturbed that he felt somewhat as if he had a conscience, and might yet know what it is to be haunted by remorse.

As for Clara, he was furious with her, notwithstanding his love for her, and indeed because of it. It was outrageous that a woman whom he adored should seek to ferret out facts which might send him to State's Prison. It was abominable that she would not cease to care for that stupid officer after he had been so carefully put out of her way. Coronado felt that he was persecuted.