Overland Part 57

"n.o.body seems to be at home," said Clara, bursting into a merry laugh over her trick as they entered the house. "Where can the master and mistress be?"

They were now in a large and handsomely furnished room, which was the parlor of the hacienda.

"Don't sit down," cried Clara, her eyes sparkling with joy. "Stand just there as you are. Let me look at you a moment. Wait till I tell you something."

She fronted him for a few seconds, watching his wondering face, hesitating, blus.h.i.+ng, and laughing. Suddenly she bounded forward, threw her arms around his shoulders and cried excitedly, hysterically, "My love!

my husband! all this is yours. Oh, how happy I am!"

The next moment she burst into tears on the shoulder to which she was clinging.

"What is the matter?" demanded Thurstane in some alarm; for he did not know that women can tremble and weep with gladness, and he thought that surely his wife was sick if not deranged.

"What! don't you guess it?" she asked, drawing back with a little more calmness, and looking tenderly into his puzzled eyes.

"You don't mean--?"

"Yes, darling."

"It can't be that--?"

"Yes, darling."

He began to comprehend the trick that had been played upon him, although as yet he could not fully credit it. What mainly bewildered him was that Clara, whom he had always supposed to be as artless as a child--Clara, whom he had cared for as an elder and a father--should have been able to keep a secret and devise a plot and carry out a mystification.

"Great ---- Scott!" he gasped in his stupefaction, using the name of the then commander-in-chief for an oath, as officers sometimes did in those days.

"Yes, yes, yes," laughed and chattered Clara. "Great Scott and great Thurstane! All yours. Three hundred thousand. Half a million. A million. I don't know how much. All I know is that it is all yours. Oh, my darling!

oh, my darling! How I have fooled you! Are you angry with me? Say, are you angry? What will you do to me?"

We must excuse Thurstane for finding no other chastis.e.m.e.nt than to squeeze her in his arms and choke her with kisses. Next he held her from him, set her down upon a sofa, fell back a pace and stared at her much as if she were a totally new discovery, something in the way of an arrival from the moon. He was in a state of profound amazement at the dexterity with which she had taken his destiny out of his own hands into hers, without his knowledge. He had not supposed that she was a tenth part so clever. For the first time he perceived that she was his match, if indeed she were not the superior nature; and it is a remarkable fact, though not a dark one if one looks well into it, that he respected her the more for being too much for him.

"It beats Hannibal," he said at last. "Who would have expected such generals.h.i.+p in you? I am as much astonished as if you had turned into a knight in armor. Well, how much it has saved me! I should have hesitated and been miserable; and I should have married you all the same; and then been ashamed of marrying money, and had it rankle in me for years. And now--oh, you wise little thing!--all I can say is, I wors.h.i.+p you."

"Yes, darling," replied Clara, walking gravely up to him, putting her hands on his shoulders, and looking him thoughtfully in the eyes. "It was the wisest thing I ever did. Don't be afraid of me. I never shall be so clever again. I never shall be so tempted to be clever."

We must pa.s.s over a few months. Thurstane soon found that he had the Munoz estate in his hands, and that, for the while at least, it demanded all his time and industry. Moreover, there being no war and no chance of martial distinction, it seemed absurd to let himself be ordered about from one hot and cramped station to another, when he had money enough to build a palace, and a wife who could make it a paradise. Finally, he had a taste for the natural sciences, and his observations in the Great Canon and among the other marvels of the desert had quickened this inclination to a pa.s.sion, so that he craved leisure for the study of geology, mineralogy, and chemistry. He resigned his commission, established himself in San Francisco, bought all the scientific books he could hear of, made expeditions to the California mountains, collected garrets full of specimens, and was as happy as a physicist always is.

Perhaps his happiness was just a little increased when Mrs. Stanley announced her intention of returning to New York. The lady had been amiable on the whole, as she meant always to be; but she could not help daily taking up her parable concerning the tyranny and stupidity of man and the superior virtue of woman; and sometimes she felt it her duty to put it to Thurstane that he owed everything to his wife; all of which was more or less wearing, even to her niece. At the same time she was such a disinterested, well-intentioned creature that it was impossible not to grant her a certain amount of admiration. For instance, when Clara proposed to make her comfortable for life by settling upon her fifty thousand dollars, she replied peremptorily that it was far too much for an old woman who had decided to turn her back on the frivolities of society, and she could with difficulty be brought to accept twenty thousand.

Furthermore, she was capable, that is, in certain favored moments, of confessing error. "My dear," she said to Clara, some weeks after the marriage, "I have made one great mistake since I came to these countries.

I believed that Mr. Coronado was the right man and Mr. Thurstane the wrong one. Oh, that smooth-tongued, s.h.i.+ny-eyed, meeching, bowing, complimenting hypocrite! I see at last what a villain he was. _I_ see it," she emphasized, as if n.o.body else had discovered it. "To think that a person who was so right on the main question [female suffrage] could be so wrong on everything else! The contradiction adds to his guilt. Well, I have had my lesson. Every one must make her mistake. I shall never be so humbugged again."

Some little time after Thurstane had received the acceptance of his resignation and established himself in his handsome city house, Aunt Maria observed abruptly, "My dears, I must go back."

"Go back where? To the desert and turn hermit?" asked Clara, who was accustomed to joke her relative about "spheres and missions."

"To New York," replied Mrs. Stanley. "I can accomplish nothing here. This miserable Legislature will take no notice of my pet.i.tions for female suffrage."

"Oh, that is because you sign them alone," laughed the younger lady.

"I can't get anybody else to sign them," said Aunt Maria with some asperity. "And what if I do sign them alone? A house full of men ought to have gallantry enough to grant one lady's request. California is not ripe for any great and n.o.ble measure. I can't remain where I find so little sympathy and collaboration. I must go where I can be of use. It is my duty."

And go she did. But before she shook off her dust against the Pacific coast there was an interview with an old acquaintance.

It must be understood that the fatigues and sufferings of that terrible pilgrimage through the desert had bothered the const.i.tution of little Sweeny, and that, after lying in garrison hospital at San Francisco for several months, he had been discharged from the service on "certificate of physical disability." Thurstane, who had kept track of him, immediately took him to his house, first as an invalid hanger-on, and then as a jack of all work.

As the family were sitting at breakfast Sweeny's voice was heard in the veranda outside, "colloguing" with another voice which seemed familiar.

"Listen," whispered Clara. "That is Captain Glover. Let us hear what they say. They are both so queer!"

"An' what" ("fwat" he p.r.o.nounced it) "the divil have ye been up to?"

demanded Sweeny. "Ye're a purty sailor, b.u.t.toned up in a long-tail coat, wid a white hankerchy round yer neck. Have ye been foolin' paple wid makin' 'em think ye're a Protestant praste?"

"I've been blowin' gla.s.s, Sweeny," replied the sniffling voice of Phineas Glover.

"Blowin' gla.s.s! Och, yees was always powerful at blowin'. But I niver heerd ye blow gla.s.s. It was big lies mostly whin I was a listing."

"Yes, blowin' gla.s.s," returned the Fair Havener in a tone of agreeable reminiscence, as if it had been a not unprofitable occupation. "Found there wasn't a gla.s.s-blower in all Californy. Bought 'n old machine, put up to the mines with it, blew all sorts 'f jigmarigs 'n' thingumbobs, 'n'

sold 'em to the miners 'n' Injuns. Them critters is jest like sailors ash.o.r.e; they'll buy anything they set eyes on. Besides, I sounded my horn; advertised big, so to speak; got up a sensation. Used to mount a stump 'n'

make a speech; told 'em I'd blow Yankee Doodle in gla.s.s, any color they wanted; give 'em that sort 'f gospel, ye know."

"An' could ye do it?" inquired the Paddy, confounded by the idea of blowing a gla.s.s tune.

"Lord, Sweeny! you're greener 'n the miners. When ye swaller things that way, don't laugh 'r ye'll choke yerself to death, like the elephant did when he read the comic almanac at breakfast."

"I don't belave that nuther," a.s.severated Sweeny, anxious to clear himself from the charge of credulity.

"Don't believe that!" exclaimed Glover. "He did it twice."

"Och, go way wid ye. He couldn't choke himself afther he was dead. I wouldn't belave it, not if I see him turn black in the face. It's yerself'll get choked some day if yees don't quit blatherin'. But what did ye get for yer blowin'? Any more'n the clothes ye're got to yer back?"

For answer Glover dipped into his pockets, took out two handfuls of gold pieces and c.h.i.n.ked them under the Irishman's nose.

"Blazes! ye're lousy wid money," commented Sweeny. "Ye want somebody to scratch yees."

"Twenty thousan' dollars in bank," added Glover. "All by blowin' 'n'

tradin'. Goin' hum in the next steamer. Anythin' I can do for ye, old messmate? Say how much."

"It's the liftinant is takin' care av me. He's made a betther livin' nor yees, a thousand times over, by jist marryin' the right leddy. An' he's going to put me in charrge av a farrum that they call the hays.h.i.+ndy, where I'll sell the cattle for myself, wid half to him, an' make slathers o'

money."

"Thunder, Sweeny! You'll end by ridin' in a coach. What'll ye take for yer chances? Wal, I'm glad to hear ye're doin' so well. I am so, for old times' sake."

"Come in, Captain Glover," at this moment called Clara through the blinds.

"Come in, Sweeny. Let us all have a talk together about the old times and the new ones."

So there was a long talk, miscellaneous and delightful, full of reminiscences and congratulations and good wishes.

"Wal, we're a lucky lot," said Glover at last. "Sh'd like to hear 'f some good news for the sergeant and Mr. Kelly. Sh'd go back hum easier for it."