successful man in business, but we can see that he was equally successful in his relations to at least one of the fastidious sex,” said Brace, maliciously glancing at Don Ramon.
Mrs. Brimmer received the innuendo with invulnerable simplicity.
“Mr. Brimmer is, I am happy to say, NOT a business man. He entered into certain contracts having more or less of a political complexion, and carrying with them the genius but not the material results of trade. That he is not a business man–and a successful one–my position here at the present time is a sufficient proof,” she said triumphantly. “And I must also protest,” she added, with a faint sigh, “against Mr. Brimmer being spoken of in the past tense by anybody. It is painfully premature and ominous!”
She drew her mantilla across her shoulders with an expression of shocked sensitiveness which completed the humiliation of Brace and the subjugation of Don Ramon. But, unlike most of her sex, she was wise in the moment of victory. She cast a glance over her fan at Brace, and turned languidly to Dona Isabel.
“Mr. Brace must surely want some refreshment after his long ride. Why don’t you seize this opportunity to show him the garden and let him select for himself the herbs he requires for that dreadful American drink; Miss Chubb and your sister will remain with me to receive the Comandante’s secretary and the Doctor when they come.”
“She’s more than my match,” whispered Brace to Dona Isabel, as they left the corridor together. “I give in. I don’t understand her: she frightens me.”
“That is of your conscience! It is that you would understand the Dona Leonor–your dear Miss Keene–better! Ah! silence, imbecile! this Dona Barbara is even as thou art–a talking parrot. She will have that the Comandante’s secretary, Manuel, shall marry Mees Chubb, and that the Doctor shall marry my sister. But she knows not that Manuel–listen so that you shall get sick at your heart and swallow your moustachio!–that Manuel loves the beautiful Leonor, and that Leonor loves not him, but Don Diego; and that my sister loathes the little Doctor. And this Dona Barbara, that makes your liver white, would be a feeder of chickens with such barley as this! Ah! come along!”
The arrival of the Doctor and the Comandante’s secretary created another diversion, and the pairing off of the two couples indicated by Dona Isabel for a stroll in the garden, which was now beginning to recover from the still heat of mid-day. This left Don Ramon and Mrs. Brimmer alone in the corridor; Mrs. Brimmer’s indefinite languor, generally accepted as some vague aristocratic condition of mind and body, not permitting her to join them.
There was a moment of dangerous silence; the voices of the young people were growing fainter in the distance. Mrs. Brimmer’s eyes, in the shadow of her fan, were becoming faintly phosphorescent. Don Ramon’s melancholy face, which had grown graver in the last few moments, approached nearer to her own.
“You are unhappy, Dona Barbara. The coming of this young cavalier, your countryman, revives your anxiety for your home. You are thinking of this husband who comes not. Is it not so?”
“I am thinking,” said Mrs. Brimmer, with a sudden revulsion of solid Boston middle-class propriety, shown as much in the dry New England asperity of voice that stung even through her drawling of the Castilian speech, as in anything she said,–“I am thinking that, unless Mr. Brimmer comes soon, I and Miss Chubb shall have to abandon the hospitality of your house, Don Ramon. Without looking upon myself as a widow, or as indefinitely separated from Mr. Brimmer, the few words let fall by Mr. Brace show me what might be the feelings of my countrymen on the subject. However charming and considerate your hospitality has been–and I do not deny that it has been MOST grateful to ME–I feel I cannot continue to accept it in those equivocal circumstances. I am speaking to a gentleman who, with the instincts and chivalrous obligations of his order, must sympathize with my own delicacy in coming to this conclusion, and who will not take advantage of my confession that I do it with pain.”
She spoke with a dry alacrity and precision so unlike her usual languor and the suggestions of the costume, and even the fan she still kept shading her faintly glowing eyes, that the man before her was more troubled by her manner than her words, which he had but imperfectly understood.
“You will leave here–this house?” he stammered.
“It is necessary,” she returned.
“But you shall listen to me first!” he said hurriedly. “Hear me, Dona Barbara–I have a secret–I will to you confess”–
“You must confess nothing,” said Mrs. Brimmer, dropping her feet from the hammock, and sitting up primly, “I mean–nothing I may not hear.”
The Alcalde cast a look upon her at once blank and imploring.
“Ah, but you will hear,” he said, after a pause. “There is a ship coming here. In two weeks she will arrive. None know it but myself, the Comandante, and the Padre. It is a secret of the Government. She will come at night; she will depart in the morning, and no one else shall know. It has ever been that she brings no one to Todos Santos, that she takes no one from Todos Santos. That is the law. But I swear to you that she shall take you, your children, and your friend to Acapulco in secret, where you will be free. You will join your husband; you will be happy. I will remain, and I will die.”
It would have been impossible for any woman but Mrs. Brimmer to have regarded the childlike earnestness and melancholy simplicity of this grown-up man without a pang. Even this superior woman experienced a sensible awkwardness as she slipped from the hammock and regained an upright position.
“Of course,” she, began, “your offer is exceedingly generous; and although I should not, perhaps, take a step of this kind without the sanction of Mr. Brimmer, and am not sure that he would not regard it as rash and premature, I will talk it over with Miss Chubb, for whom I am partially responsible. Nothing,” she continued, with a sudden access of feeling, “would induce me, for any selfish consideration, to take any step that would imperil the future of that child, towards whom I feel as a sister.” A slight suffusion glistened under her pretty brown lashes. “If anything should happen to her, I would never forgive myself; if I should be the unfortunate means of severing any ties that SHE may have formed, I could never look her in the face again. Of course, I can well understand that our presence here must be onerous to you, and that you naturally look forward to any sacrifice–even that of the interests of your country, and the defiance of its laws–to relieve you from a position so embarrassing as yours has become. I only trust, however, that the ill effects you allude to as likely to occur to yourself after our departure may be exaggerated by your sensitive nature. It would be an obligation added to the many that we owe you, which Mr. Brimmer would naturally find he could not return–and that, I can safely say, he would not hear of for a single moment.”
While speaking, she had unconsciously laid aside her fan, lifted her mantilla from her head with both hands, and, drawing it around her shoulders and under her lifted chin, had crossed it over her bosom with a certain prim, automatic gesture, as if it had been the starched kerchief of some remote Puritan ancestress. With her arms still unconsciously crossed, she stooped rigidly, picked up her fan with three fingers, as if it had been a prayer-book, and, with a slight inclination of her bared head, with its accurately parted brown hair, passed slowly out of the corridor.
Astounded, bewildered, yet conscious of some vague wound, Don Ramon remained motionless, staring after her straight, retreating figure. Unable to follow closely either the meaning of her words or the logic of her reasoning, he nevertheless comprehended the sudden change in her manner, her voice, and the frigid resurrection of a nature he had neither known nor suspected. He looked blankly at the collapsed hammock, as if he expected to find in its depths those sinuous graces, languid fascinations, and the soft, half sensuous contour cast off by this vanishing figure of propriety.
In the eight months of their enforced intimacy and platonic seclusion he had learned to love this naive, insinuating woman, whose frank simplicity seemed equal to his own, without thought of reserve, secrecy, or deceit. He had gradually been led to think of the absent husband with what he believed to be her own feelings–as of some impalpable, fleshless ancestor from whose remote presence she derived power, wealth, and importance, but to whom she owed only respect and certain obligations of honor equal to his own. He had never heard her speak of her husband with love, with sympathy, with fellowship, with regret. She had barely spoken of him at all, and then rather as an attractive factor in her own fascinations than a bar to a free indulgence in them. He was as little in her way as–his children. With what grace she had adapted herself to his–Don Ramon’s–life–she who frankly confessed she had no sympathy with her husband’s! With what languid enthusiasm she had taken up the customs of HIS country, while deploring the habits of her own! With what goddess-like indifference she had borne this interval of waiting! And yet this woman–who had seemed the embodiment of romance–had received the announcement of his sacrifice–the only revelation he allowed himself to make of his hopeless passion–with the frigidity of a duenna! Had he wounded her in some other unknown way? Was she mortified that he had not first declared his passion–he who had never dared to speak to her of love before? Perhaps she even doubted it! In his ignorance of the world he had, perhaps, committed some grave offense! He should not have let her go! He should have questioned, implored her– thrown himself at her feet! Was it too late yet?
He passed hurriedly into the formal little drawing-room, whose bizarre coloring was still darkened by the closed blinds and dropped awnings that had shut out the heat of day. She was not there. He passed the open door of her room; it was empty. At the end of the passage a faint light stole from a door opening into the garden that was still ajar. She must have passed out that way. He opened it, and stepped out into the garden.
The sound of voices beside a ruined fountain a hundred yards away indicated the vicinity of the party; but a single glance showed him that she was not among them. So much the better–he would find her alone. Cautiously slipping beside the wall of the house, under the shadow of a creeper, he gained the long avenue without attracting attention. She was not there. Had she effectively evaded contact with the others by leaving the garden through the little gate in the wall that entered the Mission enclosure? It was partly open, as if some one had just passed through. He followed, took a few steps, and stopped abruptly. In the shadow of one of the old pear- trees a man and woman were standing. An impulse of wild jealousy seized him; he was about to leap forward, but the next moment the measured voice of the Comandante, addressing Mrs. Markham, fell upon his ear. He drew back with a sudden flush upon his face. The Comandante of Todos Santos, in grave, earnest accents, was actually offering to Mrs. Markham the same proposal that he, Don Ramon, had made to Mrs. Brimmer but a moment ago!
“No one,” said the Comandante sententiously, “will know it but myself. You will leave the ship at Acapulco; you will rejoin your husband in good time; you will be happy, my child; you will forget the old man who drags out the few years of loneliness still left to him in Todos Santos.”
Forgetting himself, Don Ramon leaned breathlessly forward to hear Mrs. Markham’s reply. Would she answer the Comandante as Dona Barbara had answered HIM? Her words rose distinctly in the evening air.
“You’re a gentleman, Don Miguel Briones; and the least respect I can show a man of your kind is not to pretend that I don’t understand the sacrifice you’re making. I shall always remember it as about the biggest compliment I ever received, and the biggest risk that any man–except one–ever ran for me. But as the man who ran that bigger risk isn’t here to speak for himself, and generally trusts his wife, Susan Markham, to speak for him–it’s all the same as if HE thanked you. There’s my hand, Don Miguel: shake it. Well–if you prefer it–kiss it then. There–don’t be a fool–but let’s go back to Miss Keene.”
CHAPTER IV.
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE.
While these various passions had been kindled by her compatriots in the peaceful ashes of Todos Santos, Eleanor Keene had moved among them indifferently and, at times, unconsciously. The stranding of her young life on that unknown shore had not drawn her towards her fellow-exiles, and the circumstances which afterwards separated her from daily contact with them completed the social estrangement. She found herself more in sympathy with the natives, to whom she had shown no familiarity, than with her own people, who had mixed with them more or less contemptuously. She found the naivete of Dona Isabel more amusing than the doubtful simplicity of that married ingenue Mrs. Brimmer, although she still met the young girl’s advances with a certain reserve. She found herself often pained by the practical brusqueness with which Mrs. Markham put aside the Comandante’s delicate attentions, and she was moved with a strange pity for his childlike trustfulness, which she knew was hopeless. As the months passed, on the few occasions that she still met the Excelsior’s passengers she was surprised to find how they had faded from her memory, and to discover in them the existence of qualities that made her wonder how she could have ever been familiar with them. She reproached herself with this fickleness; she wondered if she would have felt thus if they had completed their voyage to San Francisco together; and she recalled, with a sad smile, the enthusiastic plans they had formed during the passage to perpetuate their fellowship by anniversaries and festivals. But she, at last, succumbed, and finally accepted their open alienation as preferable to the growing awkwardness of their chance encounters.
For a few weeks following the flight of Captain Bunker and her acceptance of the hospitality and protection of the Council, she became despondent. The courage that had sustained her, and the energy she had shown in the first days of their abandonment, suddenly gave way, for no apparent reason. She bitterly regretted the brother whom she scarcely remembered; she imagined his suspense and anguish on her account, and suffered for both; she felt the dumb pain of homesickness for a home she had never known. Her loneliness became intolerable. Her condition at last affected Mrs. Markham, whose own idleness had been beguiled by writing to her husband an exhaustive account of her captivity, which had finally swelled to a volume on Todos Santos, its resources, inhabitants, and customs. “Good heavens!” she said, “you must do something, child, to occupy your mind–if it is only a flirtation with that conceited Secretary.” But this terrible alternative was happily not required. The Comandante had still retained as part of the old patriarchal government of the Mission the Presidio school, for the primary instruction of the children of the soldiers,–dependants of the garrison. Miss Keene, fascinated by several little pairs of beady black eyes that had looked up trustingly to hers from the playground on the glacis, offered to teach English to the Comandante’s flock. The offer was submitted to the spiritual head of Todos Santos, and full permission given by Padre Esteban to the fair heretic. Singing was added to the Instruction, and in a few months the fame of the gracious Dona Leonor’s pupils stirred to emulation even the boy choristers of the Mission.
Her relations with James Hurlstone during this interval were at first marked by a strange and unreasoning reserve. Whether she resented the singular coalition forced upon them by the Council and felt the awkwardness of their unintentional imposture when they met, she did not know, but she generally avoided his society. This was not difficult, as he himself had shown no desire to intrude his confidences upon her; and even in her shyness she could not help thinking that if he had treated the situation lightly or humorously–as she felt sure Mr. Brace or Mr. Crosby would have done–it would have been less awkward and unpleasant. But his gloomy reserve seemed to the high-spirited girl to color their innocent partnership with the darkness of conspiracy.
“If your conscience troubles you, Mr. Hurlstone, in regard to the wretched infatuation of those people,” she had once said, “undeceive them, if you can, and I will assist you. And don’t let that affair of Captain Bunker worry you either. I have already confessed to the Comandante that he escaped through my carelessness.”
“You could not have done otherwise without sacrificing the poor Secretary, who must have helped you,” Hurlstone returned quietly.
Miss Keene bit her lip and dropped the subject. At their next meeting Hurlstone himself resumed it.
“I hope you don’t allow that absurd decree of the Council to disturb you; I imagine they’re quite convinced of their folly. I know that the Padre is; and I know that he thinks you’ve earned a right to the gratitude of the Council in your gracious task at the Presidio school that is far beyond any fancied political service.”
“I really haven’t thought about it at all,” said Miss Keene coolly. “I thought it was YOU who were annoyed.”
“I? not at all,” returned Hurlstone quickly. “I have been able to assist the Padre in arranging the ecclesiastical archives of the church, and in suggesting some improvement in codifying the ordinances of the last forty years. No; I believe I’m earning my living here, and I fancy they think so.”
“Then it isn’t THAT that troubles you?” said Miss Keene carelessly, but glancing at him under the shade of her lashes.
“No,” he said coldly, turning away.
Yet unsatisfactory as these brief interviews were, they revived in Miss Keene the sympathizing curiosity and interest she had always felt for this singular man, and which had been only held in abeyance at the beginning of their exile; in fact, she found herself thinking of him more during the interval when they seldom saw each other, and apparently had few interests in common, than when they were together on the Excelsior. Gradually she slipped into three successive phases of feeling towards him, each of them marked with an equal degree of peril to her peace of mind. She began with a profound interest in the mystery of his secluded habits, his strange abstraction, and a recognition of the evident superiority of a nature capable of such deep feeling–uninfluenced by those baser distractions which occupied Brace, Crosby, and Winslow. This phase passed into a settled conviction that some woman was at the root of his trouble, and responsible for it. With an instinctive distrust of her own sex, she was satisfied that it must be either a misplaced or unworthy attachment, and that the unknown woman was to blame. This second phase–which hovered between compassion and resentment–suddenly changed to the latter– the third phase of her feelings. Miss Keene became convinced that Mr. Hurlstone had a settled aversion to HERSELF. Why and wherefore, she did not attempt to reason, yet she was satisfied that from the first he disliked her. His studious reserve on the Excelsior, compared with the attentions of the others, ought then to have convinced her of the fact; and there was no doubt now that his present discontent could be traced to the unfortunate circumstances that brought them together. Having given herself up to that idea, she vacillated between a strong impulse to inform him that she knew his real feelings and an equally strong instinct to avoid him hereafter entirely. The result was a feeble compromise. On the ground that Mr. Hurlstone could “scarcely be expected to admire her inferior performances,” she declined to invite him with Father Esteban to listen to her pupils. Father Esteban took a huge pinch of snuff, examined Miss Keene attentively, and smiled a sad smile. The next day he begged Hurlstone to take a volume of old music to Miss Keene with his compliments. Hurlstone did so, and for some reason exerted himself to be agreeable. As he made no allusion to her rudeness, she presumed he did not know of it, and speedily forgot it herself. When he suggested a return visit to the boy choir, with whom he occasionally practiced, she blushed and feared she had scarcely the time. But she came with Mrs. Markham, some consciousness, and a visible color!
And then, almost without her knowing how or why, and entirely unexpected and unheralded, came a day so strangely and unconsciously happy, so innocently sweet and joyous, that it seemed as if all the other days of her exile had only gone before to create it, and as if it–and it alone–were a sufficient reason for her being there. A day full of gentle intimations, laughing suggestions, childlike surprises and awakenings; a day delicious for the very incompleteness of its vague happiness. And this remarkable day was simply marked in Mrs. Markham’s diary as follows:–“Went with E. to Indian village; met Padre and J. H. J. H. actually left shell and crawled on beach with E. E. chatty.”
The day itself had been singularly quiet and gracious, even for that rare climate of balmy days and recuperating nights. At times the slight breath of the sea which usually stirred the morning air of Todos Santos was suspended, and a hush of expectation seemed to arrest land and water. When Miss Keene and Mrs. Markham left the Presidio, the tide was low, and their way lay along the beach past the Mission walls. A walk of two or three miles brought them to the Indian village–properly a suburban quarter of Todos Santos–a collection of adobe huts and rudely cultivated fields. Padre Esteban and Mr. Hurlstone were awaiting them in the palm-thatched veranda of a more pretentious cabin, that served as a school-room. “This is Don Diego’s design,” said the Padre, beaming with a certain paternal pride on Hurlstone, “built by himself and helped by the heathen; but look you: my gentleman is not satisfied with it, and wishes now to bring his flock to the Mission school, and have them mingle with the pure-blooded races on an equality. That is the revolutionary idea of this sans culotte reformer,” continued the good Father, shaking his yellow finger with gentle archness at the young man. “Ah, we shall yet have a revolution in Todos Santos unless you ladies take him in hand. He has already brought the half-breeds over to his side, and those heathens follow him like dumb cattle anywhere. There, take him away and scold him, Dona Leonor, while I speak to the Senora Markham of the work that her good heart and skillful fingers may do for my poor muchachos.”
Eleanor Keene lifted her beautiful eyes to Hurlstone with an artless tribute in their depths that brought the blood faintly into his cheek. She was not thinking of the priest’s admonishing words; she was thinking of the quiet, unselfish work that this gloomy misanthrope had been doing while his companions had been engaged in lower aims and listless pleasures, and while she herself had been aimlessly fretting and diverting herself. What were her few hours of applauded instruction with the pretty Murillo-like children of the Fort compared to his silent and unrecognized labor! Yet even at this moment an uneasy doubt crossed her mind.
“I suppose Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb interest themselves greatly in your–in the Padre’s charities?”
The first playful smile she had seen on Hurlstone’s face lightened in his eyes and lips, and was becoming.
“I am afraid my barbarians are too low and too near home for Mrs. Brimmer’s missionary zeal. She and Miss Chubb patronize the Mexican school with cast-off dresses, old bonnets retrimmed, flannel petticoats, some old novels and books of poetry–of which the Padre makes an auto-da-fe–and their own patronizing presence on fete days. Providence has given them the vague impression that leprosy and contagious skin-disease are a peculiarity of the southern aborigine, and they have left me severely alone.”
“I wish you would prevail upon the Padre to let ME help you,” said Miss Keene, looking down.
“But you already have the Commander’s chickens–which you are bringing up as swans, by the way,” said Hurlstone mischievously. “You wouldn’t surely abandon the nest again?”
“You are laughing at me,” said Miss Keene, putting on a slight pout to hide the vague pleasure that Hurlstone’s gayer manner was giving her. “But, really, I’ve been thinking that the Presidio children are altogether too pretty and picturesque for me, and that I enjoy them too much to do them any good. It’s like playing with them, you know!”
Hurlstone laughed, but suddenly looking down upon her face he was struck with its youthfulness. She had always impressed him before– through her reserve and independence–as older, and more matured in character. He did not know how lately she was finding her lost youth as he asked her, quite abruptly, if she ever had any little brothers and sisters.
The answer to this question involved the simple story of Miss Keene’s life, which she gave with naive detail. She told him of her early childhood, and the brother who was only an indistinct memory; of her school days, and her friendships up to the moment of her first step into the great world that was so strangely arrested at Todos Santos. He was touched with the almost pathetic blankness of this virgin page. Encouraged by his attention, and perhaps feeling a sympathy she had lately been longing for, she confessed to him the thousand little things which she had reserved from even Mrs. Markham during her first apathetic weeks at Todos Santos.
“I’m sure I should have been much happier if I had had any one to talk to,” she added, looking up into his face with a naivete of faint reproach; “it’s very different for men, you know. They can always distract themselves with something. Although,” she continued hesitatingly, “I’ve sometimes thought YOU would have been happier if you had had somebody to tell your troubles to–I don’t mean the Padre; for, good as he is, he is a foreigner, you know, and wouldn’t look upon things as WE do–but some one in sympathy with you.”
She stopped, alarmed at the change of expression in his face. A quick flush had crossed his cheek; for an instant he had looked suspiciously into her questioning eyes. But the next moment the idea of his quietly selecting this simple, unsophisticated girl as the confidant of his miserable marriage, and the desperation that had brought him there, struck him as being irresistibly ludicrous and he smiled. It was the first time that the habitual morbid intensity of his thoughts on that one subject had ever been disturbed by reaction; it was the first time that a clear ray of reason had pierced the gloom in which he had enwrapped it. Seeing him smile, the young girl smiled too. Then they smiled together vaguely and sympathetically, as over some unspoken confidence. But, unknown and unsuspected by himself, that smile had completed his emancipation and triumph. The next moment, when he sought with a conscientious sigh to reenter his old mood, he was half shocked to find it gone. Whatever gradual influence–the outcome of these few months of rest and repose–may have already been at work to dissipate his clouded fancy, he was only vaguely conscious that the laughing breath of the young girl had blown it away forever.
The perilous point passed, unconsciously to both of them, they fell into freer conversation, tacitly avoiding the subject of Mr. Hurlstone’s past reserve only as being less interesting. Hurlstone did not return Miss Keene’s confidences–not because he wished to deceive her, but that he preferred to entertain her; while she did not care to know his secret now that it no longer affected their sympathy in other things. It was a pleasant, innocent selfishness, that, however, led them along, step by step, to more uncertain and difficult ground.
In their idle, happy walk they had strayed towards the beach, and had come upon a large stone cross with its base half hidden in sand, and covered with small tenacious, sweet-scented creepers, bearing a pale lilac blossom that exhaled a mingled odor of sea and shore. Hurlstone pointed out the cross as one of the earliest outposts of the Church on the edge of the unclaimed heathen wilderness. It was hung with strings of gaudy shells and feathers, which Hurlstone explained were votive offerings in which their pagan superstitions still mingled with their new faith.
“I don’t like to worry that good old Padre,” he continued, with a light smile, “but I’m afraid that they prefer this cross to the chapel for certain heathenish reasons of their own. I am quite sure that they still hold some obscure rites here under the good Father’s very nose, and that, in the guise of this emblem of our universal faith, they worship some deity we have no knowledge of.”
“It’s a shame,” said Miss Keene quickly.
To her surprise, Hurlstone did not appear so shocked as she, in her belief of his religious sympathy with the Padre, had imagined.
“They’re a harmless race,” he said carelessly. “The place is much frequented by the children–especially the young girls; a good many of these offerings came from them.”
The better to examine these quaint tributes, Miss Keene had thrown herself, with an impulsive, girlish abandonment, on the mound by the cross, and Hurlstone sat down beside her. Their eyes met in an innocent pleasure of each other’s company. She thought him very handsome in the dark, half official Mexican dress that necessity alone had obliged him to assume, and much more distinguished- looking than his companions in their extravagant foppery; he thought her beauty more youthful and artless than he had imagined it to be, and with his older and graver experiences felt a certain protecting superiority that was pleasant and reassuring.
Nevertheless, seated so near each other, they were very quiet. Hurlstone could not tell whether it was the sea or the flowers, but the dress of the young girl seemed to exhale some subtle perfume of her own freshness that half took away his breath. She had scraped up a handful of sand, and was allowing it to escape through her slim fingers in a slender rain on the ground. He was watching the operation with what he began to fear was fatuous imbecility.
“Miss Keene?–I beg your pardon”–
“Mr. Hurlstone?–Excuse me, you were saying”–
They had both spoken at the same moment, and smiled forgivingly at each other. Hurlstone gallantly insisted upon the precedence of her thought–the scamp had doubted the coherency of his own.
“I used to think,” she began–“you won’t be angry, will you?”
“Decidedly not.”
“I used to think you had an idea of becoming a priest.”
“Why?”
“Because–you are sure you won’t be angry–because I thought you hated women!”
“Father Esteban is a priest,” said Hurlstone, with a faint smile, “and you know he thinks kindly of your sex.”
“Yes; but perhaps HIS life was never spoiled by some wicked woman like–like yours.”
For an instant he gazed intently into her eyes.
“Who told you that?”
“No one.”
She was evidently speaking the absolute truth. There was no deceit or suppression in her clear gaze; if anything, only the faintest look of wonder at his astonishment. And he–this jealously guarded secret, the curse of his whole wretched life, had been guessed by this simple girl, without comment, without reserve, without horror! And there had been no scene, no convulsion of Nature, no tragedy; he had not thrown himself into yonder sea; she had not fled from him shrinking, but was sitting there opposite to him in gentle smiling expectation, the golden light of Todos Santos around them, a bit of bright ribbon shining in her dark hair, and he, miserable, outcast, and recluse, had not even changed his position, but was looking up without tremulousness or excitement, and smiling, too.
He raised himself suddenly on his knee.
“And what if it were all true?” he demanded.
“I should be very sorry for you, and glad it were all over now,” she said softly.
A faint pink flush covered her cheek the next moment, as if she had suddenly become aware of another meaning in her speech, and she turned her head hastily towards the village. To her relief she discerned that a number of Indian children had approached them from behind and had halted a few paces from the cross. Their hands were full of flowers and shells as they stood hesitatingly watching the couple.
“They are some of the school-children,” said Hurlstone, in answer to her inquiring look; “but I can’t understand why they come here so openly.”
“Oh, don’t scold them!” said Eleanor, forgetting her previous orthodox protest; “let us go away, and pretend we don’t notice them.”
But as she was about to rise to her feet the hesitation of the little creatures ended in a sudden advance of the whole body, and before she comprehended what they were doing they had pressed the whole of their floral tributes in her lap. The color rose again quickly to her laughing face as she looked at Hurlstone.
“Do you usually get up this pretty surprise for visitors?” she said hesitatingly.
“I assure you I have nothing to do with it,” he answered, with frank amazement; “it’s quite spontaneous. And look–they are even decorating ME.”
It was true; they had thrown a half dozen strings of shells on Hurlstone’s unresisting shoulders, and, unheeding the few words he laughingly addressed them in their own dialect, they ran off a few paces, and remained standing, as if gravely contemplating their work. Suddenly, with a little outcry of terror, they turned, fled wildly past them, and disappeared in the bushes.
Miss Keene and Hurlstone rose at the same moment, but the young girl, taking a step forward, suddenly staggered, and was obliged to clasp one of the arms of the cross to keep herself from falling. Hurlstone sprang to her side.
“Are you ill?” he asked hurriedly. “You are quite white. What is the matter?”
A smile crossed her colorless face.
“I am certainly very giddy; everything seems to tremble.”
“Perhaps it is the flowers,” he said anxiously. “Their heavy perfume in this close air affects you. Throw them away, for Heaven’s sake!”
But she clutched them tighter to her heart as she leaned for a moment, pale yet smiling, against the cross.
“No, no!” she said earnestly; “it was not that. But the children were frightened, and their alarm terrified me. There, it is over now.”
She let him help her to her seat again as he glanced hurriedly around him. It must have been sympathy with her, for he was conscious of a slight vertigo himself. The air was very close and still. Even the pleasant murmur of the waves had ceased.
“How very low the tide is!” said Eleanor Keene, resting her elbow on her knees and her round chin upon her hand. “I wonder if that could have frightened those dear little midgets?” The tide, in fact, had left the shore quite bare and muddy for nearly a quarter of a mile to seaward.
Hurlstone arose, with grave eyes, but a voice that was unchanged.
“Suppose we inquire? Lean on my arm, and we’ll go up the hill towards the Mission garden. Bring your flowers with you.”
The color had quite returned to her cheek as she leant on his proffered arm. Yet perhaps she was really weaker than she knew, for he felt the soft pressure of her hand and the gentle abandonment of her figure against his own as they moved on. But for some preoccupying thought, he might have yielded more completely to the pleasure of that innocent contact and have drawn her closer towards him; yet they moved steadily on, he contenting himself from time to time with a hurried glance at the downcast fringes of the eyes beside him. Presently he stopped, his attention disturbed by what appeared to be the fluttering of a black-winged, red-crested bird, in the bushes before him. The next moment he discovered it to be the rose-covered head of Dona Isabel, who was running towards them. Eleanor withdrew her arm from Hurlstone’s.
“Ah, imbecile!” said Dona Isabel, pouncing upon Eleanor Keene like an affectionate panther. “They have said you were on the seashore, and I fly for you as a bird. Tell to me quick,” she whispered, hastily putting her own little brown ear against Miss Keene’s mouth, “immediatamente, are you much happy?”
“Where is Mr. Brace?” said Miss Keene, trying to effect a diversion, as she laughed and struggled to get free from her tormentor.
“He, the idiot boy! Naturally, when he is for use, he comes not. But as a maniac–ever! I would that I have him no more. You will to me presently give your–brother! I have since to-day a presentimiento that him I shall love! Ah!”
She pressed her little brown fist, still tightly clutching her fan, against her low bodice, as if already transfixed with a secret and absorbing passion.
“Well, you shall have Dick then,” said Miss Keene, laughing; “but was it for THAT you were seeking me?”
“Mother of God! you know not then what has happened? You are a blind–a deaf–to but one thing all the time? Ah!” she said quickly, unfolding her fan and modestly diving her little head behind it, “I have ashamed for you, Miss Keene.”
“But WHAT has happened?” said Hurlstone, interposing to relieve his companion. “We fancied something”–
“Something! he says something!–ah, that something was a temblor! An earthquake! The earth has shaken himself. Look!”
She pointed with her fan to the shore, where the sea had suddenly returned in a turbulence of foam and billows that was breaking over the base of the cross they had just quitted.
Miss Keene drew a quick sigh. Dona Isabel had ducked again modestly behind her fan, but this time dragging with her other arm Miss Keene’s head down to share its discreet shadow as she whispered,–
“And–infatuated one!–you two never noticed it!”
CHAPTER V.
CLOUDS AND CHANGE.
The earthquake shock, although the first experienced by the Americans, had been a yearly phenomenon to the people of Todos Santos, and was so slight as to leave little impression upon either the low adobe walls of the pueblo or the indolent population. “If it’s a provision of Nature for shaking up these Rip Van Winkle Latin races now and then, it’s a dead failure, as far as Todos Santos is concerned,” Crosby had said, with a yawn. “Brace, who’s got geology on the brain ever since he struck cinnabar ore, says he isn’t sure the Injins ain’t right when they believe that the Pacific Ocean used to roll straight up to the Presidio, and there wasn’t any channel–and that reef of rocks was upheaved in their time. But what’s the use of it? it never really waked them up.” “Perhaps they’re waiting for another kind of earthquake,” Winslow had responded sententiously.
In six weeks it had been forgotten, except by three people–Miss Keene, James Hurlstone, and Padre Esteban. Since Hurlstone had parted with Miss Keene on that memorable afternoon he had apparently lapsed into his former reserve. Without seeming to avoid her timid advances, he met her seldom, and then only in the presence of the Padre or Mrs. Markham. Although uneasy at the deprivation of his society, his present shyness did not affect her as it had done at first: she knew it was no longer indifference; she even fancied she understood it from what had been her own feelings. If he no longer raised his eyes to hers as frankly as he had that day, she felt a more delicate pleasure in the consciousness of his lowered eyelids when they met, and the instinct that told her when his melancholy glance followed her unobserved. The sex of these lovers–if we may call them so who had never exchanged a word of love–seemed to be changed. It was Miss Keene who now sought him with a respectful and frank admiration; it was Hurlstone who now tried to avoid it with a feminine dread of reciprocal display. Once she had even adverted to the episode of the cross. They were standing under the arch of the refectory door, waiting for Padre Esteban, and looking towards the sea.
“Do you think we were ever in any real danger, down there, on the shore–that day?” she said timidly.
“No; not from the sea,” he replied, looking at her with a half defiant resolution.
“From what then?” she asked, with a naivete that was yet a little conscious.
“Do you remember the children giving you their offerings that day?” he asked abruptly.
“I do,” she replied, with smiling eyes.
“Well, it appears that it is the custom for the betrothed couples to come to the cross to exchange their vows. They mistook us for lovers.”
All the instinctive delicacy of Miss Keene’s womanhood resented the rude infelicity of this speech and the flippant manner of its utterance. She did not blush, but lifted her clear eyes calmly to his.
“It was an unfortunate mistake,” she said coldly, “the more so as they were your pupils. Ah! here is Father Esteban,” she added, with a marked tone of relief, as she crossed over to the priest’s side.
When Father Esteban returned to the refectory that evening, Hurlstone was absent. When it grew later, becoming uneasy, the good Father sought him in the garden. At the end of the avenue of pear-trees there was a break in the sea-wall, and here, with his face to the sea, Hurlstone was leaning gloomily. Father Esteban’s tread was noiseless, and he had laid his soft hand on the young man’s shoulder before Hurlstone was aware of his presence. He started slightly, his gloomy eyes fell before the priest’s.
“My son,” said the old man gravely, “this must go on no longer.”
“I don’t understand you,” Hurlstone replied coldly.
“Do not try to deceive yourself, nor me. Above all, do not try to deceive HER. Either you are or are not in love with this countrywoman of yours. If you are not, my respect for her and my friendship for you prompts me to save you both from a foolish intimacy that may ripen into a misplaced affection; if you are already in love with her”–
“I have never spoken a word of love to her!” interrupted Hurlstone quickly. “I have even tried to avoid her since”–
“Since you found that you loved her! Ah, foolish boy! and you think that because the lips speak not, the passions of the heart are stilled! Do you think your silence in her presence is not a protestation that she, even she, child as she is, can read, with the cunning of her sex?”
“Well–if I am in love with her, what then?” said Hurlstone doggedly. “It is no crime to love a pure and simple girl. Am I not free? You yourself, in yonder church, told me”–
“Silence, Diego,” said the priest sternly. “Silence, before you utter the thought that shall disgrace you to speak and me to hear!”
“Forgive me, Father Esteban,” said the young man hurriedly, grasping both hands of the priest. “Forgive me–I am mad– distracted–but I swear to you I only meant”–
“Hush!” interrupted the priest more gently. “So; that will do.” He stopped, drew out his snuff-box, rapped the lid, and took a pinch of snuff slowly. “We will not recur to that point. Then you have told her the story of your life?”
“No; but I will, She shall know all–everything–before I utter a word of love to her,”
“Ah! bueno! muy bueno!” said the Padre, wiping his nose ostentatiously. “Ah! let me see! Then, when we have shown her that we cannot possibly marry her, we will begin to make love to her! Eh, eh! that is the American fashion. Ah, pardon!” he continued, in response to a gesture of protestation from Hurlstone; “I am wrong. It is when we have told her that we cannot marry her as a Protestant, that we will make love as a Catholic. Is that it?”
“Hear me,” said Hurlstone passionately. “You have saved me from madness and, perhaps, death. Your care–your kindness–your teachings have given me life again. Don’t blame me, Father Esteban, if, in casting off my old self, you have given me hopes of a new and fresher life–of”–
“A newer and fresher love, you would say,” said the Padre, with a sad smile. “Be it so. You will at least do justice to the old priest, when you remember that he never pressed you to take vows that would have prevented this forever.”
“I know it,” said Hurlstone, taking the old man’s hand. “And you will remember, too, that I was happy and contented before this came upon me. Tell me what I shall do. Be my guide–my friend, Father Esteban. Put me where I was a few months ago–before I learned to love her.”
“Do you mean it, Diego?” said the old man, grasping his hand tightly, and fixing his eyes upon him.
“I do.”
“Then listen to me, for it is my turn to speak. When, eight months ago, you sought the shelter of that blessed roof, it was for refuge from a woman that had cursed your life. It was given you. You would leave it now to commit an act that would bring another woman, as mad as yourself, clamoring at its doors for protection from YOU. For what you are proposing to this innocent girl is what you accepted from the older and wickeder woman. You have been cursed because a woman divided for you what was before God an indivisible right; and you, Diego, would now redivide that with another, whom you dare to say you LOVE! You would use the opportunity of her helplessness and loneliness here to convince her; you would tempt her with sympathy, for she is unhappy; with companionship, for she has no longer the world to choose from–with everything that should make her sacred from your pursuit.”
“Enough,” said Hurlstone hoarsely; “say no more. Only I implore you tell me what to do now to save her. I will–if you tell me to do it–leave her forever.”
“Why should YOU go?” said the priest quietly. “HER absence will be sufficient.”
“HER absence?” echoed Hurlstone.
“Hers alone. The conditions that brought YOU here are unchanged. You are still in need of an asylum from the world and the wife you have repudiated. Why should you abandon it? For the girl, there is no cause why she should remain–beyond yourself. She has a brother whom she loves–who wants her–who has the right to claim her at any time. She will go to him.”
“But how?”
“That has been my secret, and will be my sacrifice to you, Diego, my son. I have foreseen all this; I have expected it from the day that girl sent you her woman’s message, that was half a challenge, from her school–I have known it from the day you walked together on the sea-shore. I was blind before that–for I am weak in my way, too, and I had dreamed of other things. God has willed it otherwise.” He paused, and returning the pressure of Hurlstone’s hand, went on. “My secret and my sacrifice for you is this. For the last two hundred years the Church has had a secret and trusty messenger from the See at Guadalajara–in a ship that touches here for a few hours only every three years. Her arrival and departure is known only to myself and my brothers of the Council. By this wisdom and the provision of God, the integrity of the Holy Church and the conversion of the heathen have been maintained without interruption and interference. You know now, my son, why your comrades were placed under surveillance; why it was necessary that the people should believe in a political conspiracy among yourselves, rather than the facts as they existed, which might have bred a dangerous curiosity among them. I have given you our secret, Diego–that is but a part of my sacrifice. When that ship arrives, and she is expected daily, I will secretly place Miss Keene and her friend on board, with explanatory letters to the Archbishop, and she will be assisted to rejoin her brother. It will be against the wishes of the Council; but my will,” continued the old man, with a gesture of imperiousness, “is the will of the Church, and the law that overrides all.”
He had stopped, with a strange fire in his eyes. It still continued to burn as he went on rapidly,–
“You will understand the sacrifice I am making in telling you this, when you know that I could have done all that I propose without your leave or hindrance. Yes, Diego; I had but to stretch out my hand thus, and that foolish fire-brand of a heretic muchacha would have vanished from Todos Santos forever. I could have left you in your fool’s paradise, and one morning you would have found her gone. I should have condoled with you, and consoled you, and you would have forgotten her as you did the other. I should not have hesitated; it is the right of the Church through all time to break through those carnal ties without heed of the suffering flesh, and I ought to have done so. This, and this alone, would have been worthy of Las Casas and Junipero Serra! But I am weak and old–I am no longer fit for His work. Far better that the ship which takes her away should bring back my successor and one more worthy Todos Santos than I.”
He stopped, his eyes dimmed, he buried his face in his hands.
“You have done right, Father Esteban,” said Hurlstone, gently putting his arm round the priest’s shoulders, “and I swear to you your secret is as safe as if you had never revealed it to me. Perhaps,” he added, with a sigh, “I should have been happier if I had not known it–if she had passed out of my life as mysteriously as she had entered it; but you will try to accept my sacrifice as some return for yours. I shall see her no more.”
“But will you swear it?” said the priest eagerly. “Will you swear that you will not even seek her to say farewell; for in that moment the wretched girl may shake your resolution?”
“I shall not see her,” repeated the young man slowly.
“But if she asks an interview,” persisted the priest, “on the pretense of having your advice?”
“She will not,” returned Hurlstone, with a half bitter recollection of their last parting. “You do not know her pride.”
“Perhaps,” said the priest musingly. “But I have YOUR word, Diego. And now let us return to the Mission, for there is much to prepare, and you shall assist me.”
Meantime, Hurlstone was only half right in his estimate of Miss Keene’s feelings, although the result was the same. The first shock to her delicacy in his abrupt speech had been succeeded by a renewal of her uneasiness concerning his past life or history. While she would, in her unselfish attachment for him, have undoubtingly accepted any explanation he might have chosen to give her, his continued reserve and avoidance of her left full scope to her imaginings. Rejecting any hypothesis of his history except that of some unfortunate love episode, she began to think that perhaps he still loved this nameless woman. Had anything occurred to renew his affection? It was impossible, in their isolated condition, that he would hear from her. But perhaps the priest might have been a confidant of his past, and had recalled the old affection in rivalry of her? Or had she herself been unfortunate through any idle word to reopen the wound? Had there been any suggestion?–she checked herself suddenly at a thought that benumbed and chilled her!–perhaps that happy hour at the cross might have reminded him of some episode with another? That was the real significance of his rude speech. With this first taste of the poison of jealousy upon her virgin lips, she seized the cup and drank it eagerly. Ah, well–he should keep his blissful recollections of the past undisturbed by her. Perhaps he might even see–though SHE had no past–that her present life might be as disturbing to him! She recalled, with a foolish pleasure, his solitary faint sneer at the devotion of the Commander’s Secretary. Why shouldn’t she, hereafter, encourage that devotion as well as that sneer from this complacently beloved Mr. Hurlstone? Why should he be so assured of her past? The fair and gentle reader who may be shocked at this revelation of Eleanor Keene’s character will remember that she has not been recorded as an angel in these pages–but as a very human, honest, inexperienced girl, for the first time struggling with the most diplomatic, Machiavellian, and hypocritical of all the passions.
In pursuance of this new resolution, she determined to accept an invitation from Mrs. Markham to accompany her and the Commander to a reception at the Alcalde’s house–the happy Secretary being of the party. Mrs. Markham, who was under promise to the Comandante not to reveal his plan for the escape of herself and Miss Keene until the arrival of the expected transport, had paid little attention to the late vagaries of her friend, and had contented herself by once saying, with a marked emphasis, that the more free they kept themselves from any entanglements with other people, the more prepared they would be for A CHANGE.
“Perhaps it’s just as well not to be too free, even with those Jesuits over at the Mission. Your brother, you know, might not like it.”
“THOSE JESUITS!” repeated Miss Keene indignantly. “Father Esteban, to begin with, is a Franciscan, and Mr. Hurlstone is as orthodox as you or I.”
“Don’t be too sure of that, my dear,” returned Mrs. Markham sententiously. “Heaven only knows what disguises they assume. Why, Hurlstone and the priest are already as thick as two peas; and you can’t make me believe they didn’t know of each other before we came here. He was the first one ashore, you remember, before the mutiny; and where did he turn up?–at the Mission, of course! And have you forgotten that sleepwalking affair–all Jesuitical! Why, poor dear Markham used to say we were surrounded by ramifications of that society–everywhere. The very waiter at your hotel table might belong to the Order.”
The hour of the siesta was just past, and the corridor and gardens of the Alcalde’s house were grouped with friends and acquaintances as the party from the Presidio entered. Mrs. Brimmer, who had apparently effected a temporary compromise with her late instincts of propriety, was still doing the honors of the Alcalde’s house, and had once more assumed the Mexican dishabille, even to the slight exposure of her small feet, stockingless, in white satin slippers. The presence of the Comandante and his Secretary guaranteed the two ladies of their party a reception at least faultless in form and respect, whatever may have been the secret feelings of the hostess and her friends. The Alcalde received Mrs. Markham and Miss Keene with unruffled courtesy, and conducted them to the place of honor beside him.
As Eleanor Keene, slightly flushed and beautiful in her unwonted nervous excitement, took her seat, a flutter went around the corridor, and, with the single exception of Dona Isabel, an almost imperceptible drawing together of the other ladies, in offensive alliance. Miss Keene had never abandoned her own style of dress; and that afternoon her delicate and closely-fitting white muslin, gathered in at the waist with a broad blue belt of ribbon, seemed to accentuate somewhat unflatteringly the tropical neglige of Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb. Brace, who was in attendance, with Crosby, on the two Ramirez girls, could not help being uneasily conscious of this, in addition to the awkwardness of meeting Miss Keene after the transfer of his affections elsewhere. Nor was his embarrassment relieved by Crosby’s confidences to him, in a half audible whisper,–
“I say, old man, after all, the regular straight-out American style lays over all their foreign flops and fandoodles. I wonder what old Brimmer would say to his wife’s full-dress nightgown–eh?”
But at this moment the long-drawn, slightly stridulous utterances of Mrs. Brimmer rose through the other greetings like a lazy east wind.
“I shall never forgive the Commander for making the Presidio so attractive to you, dear Miss Keene, that you cannot really find time to see your own countrymen. Though, of course, you’re not to blame for not coming to see two frights as we must look–not having been educated to be able to do up our dresses in that faultless style–and perhaps not having the entire control over an establishment like you; yet, I suppose that, even if the Alcalde did give us carte blanche of the laundry HERE, we couldn’t do it, unaided even by Mrs. Markham. Yes, dear; you must let me compliment you on your skill, and the way you make things last. As for me and Miss Chubb, we’ve only found our things fit to be given away to the poor of the Mission. But I suppose even that charity would look as shabby to you as our clothes, in comparison with the really good missionary work you and Mr. Hurlstone–or is it Mr. Brace?–I always confound your admirers, my dear–are doing now. At least, so says that good Father Esteban.”
But with the exception of the Alcalde and Miss Chubb, Mrs. Brimmer’s words fell on unheeding ears, and Miss Keene did not prejudice the triumph of her own superior attractions by seeming to notice Mrs. Brimmer’s innuendo. She answered briefly, and entered into lively conversation with Crosby and the Secretary, holding the hand of Dona Isabel in her own, as if to assure her that she was guiltless of any design against her former admirer. This was quite unnecessary, as the gentle Isabel, after bidding Brace, with a rap on the knuckles, to “go and play,” contented herself with curling up like a kitten beside Miss Keene, and left that gentleman to wander somewhat aimlessly in the patio.
Nevertheless, Miss Keene, whose eyes and ears were nervously alert, and who had indulged a faint hope of meeting Padre Esteban and hearing news of Hurlstone, glanced from time to time towards the entrance of the patio. A singular presentiment that some outcome of this present visit would determine her relations with Hurlstone had already possessed her. Consequently she was conscious, before it had attracted the attention of the others, of some vague stirring in the plaza beyond. Suddenly the clatter of hoofs was heard before the gateway. There was a moment’s pause of dismounting, a gruff order given in Spanish, and the next moment three strangers entered the patio.
They were dressed in red shirts, their white trousers tucked in high boots, and wore slouched hats. They were so travel-stained, dusty, and unshaven, that their features were barely distinguishable. One, who appeared to be the spokesman of the party, cast a perfunctory glance around the corridor, and, in fluent Spanish, began with the mechanical air of a man repeating some formula,–
“We are the bearers of a despatch to the Comandante of Todos Santos from the Governor of Mazatlan. The officer and the escort who came with us are outside the gate. We have been told that the Comandante is in this house. The case is urgent, or we would not intrude”–
He was stopped by the voice of Mrs. Markham from the corridor. “Well, I don’t understand Spanish much–I may be a fool, or crazy, or perhaps both–but if that isn’t James Markham’s VOICE, I’ll bet a cooky!”
The three strangers turned quickly toward the corridor. The next moment the youngest of their party advanced eagerly towards Miss Keene, who had arisen with a half frightened joy, and with the cry of “Why, it’s Nell!” ran towards her. The third man came slowly forward as Mrs. Brimmer slipped hastily from the hammock and stood erect.
“In the name of goodness, Barbara,” said Mr. Brimmer, closing upon her, in a slow, portentous whisper, “where ARE your stockings?”
CHAPTER VI.
A MORE IMPORTANT ARRIVAL.
The Commander was the first to recover his presence of mind. Taking the despatch from the hands of the unlooked-for husband of the woman he loved, he opened it with an immovable face and habitual precision. Then, turning with a military salute to the strangers, he bade them join him in half an hour at the Presidio; and, bowing gravely to the assembled company, stepped from the corridor. But Mrs. Markham was before him, stopped him with a gesture, and turned to her husband.
“James Markham–where’s your hand?”
Markham, embarrassed but subjugated, disengaged it timidly from his wife’s waist.
“Give it to that gentleman–for a gentleman he is, from the crown of his head to the soles of his boots! There! Shake his hand! You don’t get such a chance every day. You can thank him again, later.”
As the two men’s hands parted, after this perfunctory grasp, and the Commander passed on, she turned again to her husband.
“Now, James, I am ready to hear all about it. Perhaps you’ll tell me where you HAVE been?”
There was a moment of embarrassing silence. The Doctor and Secretary had discreetly withdrawn; the Alcalde, after a brief introduction to Mr. Brimmer, and an incomprehensible glance from the wife, had retired with a colorless face. Dona Isabel had lingered last to blow a kiss across her fan to Eleanor Keene that half mischievously included her brother. The Americans were alone.
Thus appealed to, Mr. Markham hastily began his story. But, as he progressed, a slight incoherency was noticeable: he occasionally contradicted himself, and was obliged to be sustained, supplemented, and, at times, corrected, by Keene and Brimmer. Substantially, it appeared that they had come from San Francisco to Mazatlan, and, through the influence of Mr. Brimmer on the Mexican authorities, their party, with an escort of dragoons, had been transported across the gulf and landed on the opposite shore, where they had made a forced march across the desert to Todos Santos. Literally interpreted, however, by the nervous Markham, it would seem that they had conceived this expedition long ago, and yet had difficulties because they only thought of it the day before the steamer sailed; that they had embarked for the isthmus of Nicaragua, and yet had stopped at Mazatlan; that their information was complete in San Francisco, and only picked up at Mazatlan; that “friends”– sometimes contradictorily known as “he” and “she”–had overpowering influence with the Mexican Government, and alone had helped them, and yet that they were utterly dependent upon the efforts of Senor Perkins, who had compromised matters with the Mexican Government and everybody.
“Do you mean to say, James Markham, that you’ve seen Perkins, and it was he who told you we were here?”
“No–not HIM exactly.”
“Let me explain,” said Mr. Brimmer hastily. “It appears,” he corrected his haste with practical businesslike precision, “that the filibuster Perkins, after debarking you here, and taking the Excelsior to Quinquinambo, actually established the Quinquinambo Government, and got Mexico and the other confederacies to recognize its independence. Quinquinambo behaved very handsomely, and not only allowed the Mexican Government indemnity for breaking the neutrality of Todos Santos by the seizure, but even compromised with our own Government their claim to confiscate the Excelsior for treaty violation, and paid half the value of the vessel, besides giving information to Mexico and Washington of your whereabouts. We consequently represent a joint commission from both countries to settle the matter and arrange for your return.”
“But what I want to know is this: Is it to Senor Perkins that we ought to be thankful for seeing you here at all?” asked Mrs. Markham impatiently.
“No, no–not that, exactly,” stammered Markham. “Oh, come now, Susannah”–
“No,” said Richard Keene earnestly; “by Jove! some thanks ought to go to Belle Montgomery”–He checked himself in sudden consternation.
There was a chilly silence. Even Miss Keene looked anxiously at her brother, as the voice of Mrs. Brimmer for the first time broke the silence.
“May we be permitted to know who is this person to whom we owe so great an obligation?”
“Certainly,” said Brimmer, “She was–as I have already intimated–a friend; possibly, you know,” he added, turning lightly to his companions, as if to corroborate an impression that had just struck him, “perhaps a–a–a sweetheart of the Senor Perkins.”
“And how was she so interested in us, pray?” said Mrs. Markham,
“Well, you see, she had an idea that a former husband was on board of the Excelsior.”
He stopped suddenly, remembering from the astonished faces of Keene and Markham that the secret was not known to them, while they, impressed with the belief that the story was a sudden invention of Brimmer’s, with difficulty preserved their composure. But the women were quick to notice their confusion, and promptly disbelieved Brimmer’s explanation.
“Well, as there’s no Mister Montgomery here, she’s probably mistaken,” said Mrs. Markham, with decision, “though it strikes ME that she’s very likely had the same delusion on board of some other ship. Come along, James; perhaps after you’ve had a bath and some clean clothes, you may come out a little more like the man I once knew. I don’t know how Mrs. Brimmer feels, but I feel more as if I required to be introduced to you–than your friend’s friend, Mrs. Montgomery. At any rate, try and look and behave a little more decent when you go over to the Presidio.”
With these words she dragged him away. Mr. Brimmer, after a futile attempt to appear at his ease, promptly effected the usual marital diversion of carrying the war into the enemy’s camp.
“For heaven’s sake, Barbara,” he said, with ostentatious indignation, “go and dress yourself properly. Had you neither money nor credit to purchase clothes? I declare I didn’t know you at first; and when I did, I was shocked; before Mrs. Markham, too!”
“Mrs. Markham, I fear, has quite enough to occupy her now,” said Mrs. Brimmer shortly, as she turned away, with hysterically moist eyes, leaving her husband to follow her.
Oblivious of this comedy, Richard Keene and Eleanor had already wandered back, hand in hand, to their days of childhood. But even in the joy that filled the young girl’s heart in the presence of her only kinsman, there was a strange reservation. The meeting that she had looked forward to with eager longing had brought all she expected; more than that, it seemed to have been providentially anticipated at the moment of her greatest need, and yet it was incomplete. She was ashamed that after the first recognition, a wild desire to run to Hurlstone and tell HIM her happiness was her only thought. She was shocked that the bright joyous face of this handsome lovable boy could not shut out the melancholy austere features of Hurlstone, which seemed to rise reproachfully between them. When, for the third and fourth time, they had recounted their past history, exchanged their confidences and feelings, Dick, passing his arm around his sister’s waist, looked down smilingly in her eyes.
“And so, after all, little Nell, everybody has been good to you, and you have been happy!”
“Everybody has been kind to me, Dick, far kinder than I deserved. Even if I had really been the great lady that little Dona Isabel thought I was, or the important person the Commander believed me to be, I couldn’t have been treated more kindly. I have met with nothing but respect and attention. I have been very happy, Dick, very happy.”
And with a little cry she threw herself on her brother’s neck and burst into a childlike flood of inconsistent tears.
Meantime the news of the arrival of the relief-party had penetrated even the peaceful cloisters of the Mission, and Father Esteban had been summoned in haste to the Council. He returned with an eager face to Hurlstone, who had been anxiously awaiting him. When the Padre had imparted the full particulars of the event to his companion, he added gravely,–
“You see, my son, how Providence, which has protected you since you first claimed the Church’s sanctuary, has again interfered to spare me the sacrifice of using the power of the Church in purely mundane passions. I weekly accept the rebuke of His better-ordained ways, and you, Diego, may comfort yourself that this girl is restored directly to her brother’s care, without any deviousness of plan or human responsibility. You do not speak, my son!” continued the priest anxiously; “can it be possible that, in the face of this gracious approval of Providence to your resolution, you are regretting it?”
The young man replied, with a half reproachful gesture:
“Do you, then, think me still so weak? No, Father Esteban; I have steeled myself against my selfishness for her sake. I could have resigned her to the escape you had planned, believing her happier for it, and ignorant of the real condition of the man she had learnt to–to–pity. But,” he added, turning suddenly and almost rudely upon the priest, “do you know the meaning of this irruption of the outer world to ME? Do you reflect that these men probably know my miserable story?–that, as one of the passengers of the Excelsior, they will be obliged to seek me and to restore me,” he added, with a bitter laugh, “to MY home, MY kindred–to the world I loathe?”
“But you need not follow them. Remain here.”
“Here!–with the door thrown open to any talebearer OR PERHAPS TO MY WIFE HERSELF? Never! Hear me, Father,” he went on hurriedly: “these men have come from San Francisco–have been to Mazatlan. Can you believe that it is possible that they have never heard of this woman’s search for me? No! The quest of hate is as strong as the quest of love, and more merciless to the hunted.”
“But if that were so, foolish boy, she would have accompanied them.”
“You are wrong! It would have been enough for her to have sent my exposure by them–to have driven me from this refuge.”
“This is but futile fancy, Diego,” said Father Esteban, with a simulated assurance he was far from feeling. “Nothing has yet been said–nothing may be said. Wait, my child.”
“Wait!” he echoed bitterly. “Ay, wait until the poor girl shall hear–perhaps from her brother’s lips–the story of my marriage as bandied about by others; wait for her to know that the man who would have made her love him was another’s, and unworthy of her respect? No! it is I who must leave this place, and at once.”
“YOU?” echoed the Padre. “How?”
“By the same means you would have used for her departure. I must take her place in that ship you are expecting. You will give ME letters to your friends. Perhaps, when this is over, I may return– if I still live.”
Padre Esteban became thoughtful.
“You will not refuse me?” said the young man, taking the Padre’s hand. “It is for the best, believe me. I will remain secret here until then. You will invent some excuse–illness, or what you like–to keep them from penetrating here. Above all, to spare me from the misery of ever reading my secret in her face.”
Father Esteban remained still absorbed in thought.
“You will take a letter from me to the Archbishop, and put yourself under his care?” he asked at last, after a long pause. “You will promise me that?”
“I do!”
“Then we shall see what can be done. They talk, those Americanos,” continued the priest, “of making their way up the coast to Punta St. Jago, where the ship they have already sent for to take them away can approach the shore; and the Comandante has orders to furnish them escort and transport to that point. It is a foolish indiscretion of the Government, and I warrant without the sanction of the Church. Already there is curiosity, discontent, and wild talk among the people. Ah! thou sayest truly, my son,” said the old man, gloomily; “the doors of Todos Santos are open. The Comandante will speed these heretics quickly on their way; but the doors by which they came and whence they go will never close again. But God’s will be done! And if the open doors bring thee back, my son, I shall not question His will!”
It would seem, however, as if Hurlstone’s fears had been groundless. For in the excitement of the succeeding days, and the mingling of the party from San Antonio with the new-comers, the recluse had been forgotten. So habitual, had been his isolation from the others, that, except for the words of praise and gratitude hesitatingly dropped by Miss Keene to her brother, his name was not mentioned, and it might have been possible for the relieving party to have left him behind–unnoticed. Mr. Brimmer, for domestic reasons, was quite willing to allow the episode of Miss Montgomery’s connection with their expedition to drop for the present. Her name was only recalled once by Miss Keene. When Dick had professed a sudden and violent admiration for the coquettish Dona Isabel, Eleanor had looked up in her brother’s face with a half troubled air.
“Who was this queer Montgomery woman, Dick?” she said.
Dick laughed–a frank, reassuring, heart-free laugh.
“Perfectly stunning, Nell. Such a figure in tights! You ought to have seen her dance–my!”
“Hush! I dare say she was horrid!”
“Not at all! She wasn’t such a bad fellow, if you left out her poetry and gush, which I didn’t go in for much,–though the other fellows”–he stopped, from a sudden sense of loyalty to Brimmer and Markham. “No; you see, Nell, she was regularly ridiculously struck after that man Perkins,–whom she’d never seen,–a kind of schoolgirl worship for a pirate. You know how you women go in for those fellows with a mystery about ’em.”
“No, I don’t!” said Miss Keene sharply, with a slight rise of color; “and I don’t see what that’s got to do with you and her.”
“Everything! She was in correspondence with Perkins, and knows about the Excelsior affair, and wants to help him get out of it with clean hands, don’t you see! That’s why she made up to us. There, Nell; she ain’t your style, of course; but you owe a heap to her for giving us points as to where you were. But that’s all over now; she left us at Mazatlan, and went on to Nicaragua to meet Perkins somewhere there–for the fellow has always got some Central American revolution on hand, it appears. Until they garrote or shoot him some day, he’ll go on in the liberating business forever.”
“Then there wasn’t any Mr. Montgomery, of course?” said Eleanor.
“Oh, Mr. Montgomery,” said Dick, hesitating. “Well, you see, Nell, I think that, knowing how correct and all that sort of thing Brimmer is, she sort of invented the husband to make her interest look more proper.”
“It’s shameful!” said Miss Keene indignantly.
“Come, Nell; one would think you had a personal dislike to her. Let her go; she won’t trouble you–nor, I reckon, ANYBODY, much longer.”
“What do you mean, Dick?”
“I mean she has regularly exhausted and burnt herself out with her hysterics and excitements, and the drugs she’s taken to subdue them–to say nothing of the Panama fever she got last spring. If she don’t go regularly crazy at last she’ll have another attack of fever, hanging round the isthmus waiting for Perkins.”
Meanwhile, undisturbed by excitement or intrusion of the outer world, the days had passed quietly at the Mission. But one evening, at twilight, a swift-footed, lightly-clad Indian glided into the sacristy as if he had slipped from the outlying fog, and almost immediately as quietly glided away again and disappeared. The next moment Father Esteban’s gaunt and agitated face appeared at Hurlstone’s door.
“My son, God has been merciful, and cut short your probation. The signal of the ship has just been made. Her boat will be waiting on the beach two leagues from here an hour hence. Are you ready? and are you still resolved?”
“I am,” said Hurlstone, rising. “I have been prepared since you first assented.”
The old man’s lips quivered slightly, and the great brown hand laid upon the table trembled for an instant; with a strong effort he recovered himself, and said hurriedly,–
“Concho’s mule is saddled and ready for you at the foot of the garden. You will follow the beach a league beyond the Indians’ cross. In the boat will await you the trusty messenger of the Church. You will say to him, ‘Guadalajara,’ and give him these letters. One is to the captain. You will require no other introduction.” He laid the papers on the table, and, turning to Hurlstone, lifted his tremulous hands in the air. “And now, my son, may the grace of God”–
He faltered and stopped, his uplifted arms falling helplessly on Hurlstone’s shoulders. For an instant the young man supported him in his arms, then placed him gently in the chair he had just quitted, and for the first time in their intimacy dropped upon his knee before him. The old man, with a faint smile, placed his hand upon his companion’s head. A breathless pause followed; Father Esteban’s lips moved silently. Suddenly the young man rose, pressed his lips hurriedly to the Father’s hand, and passed out into the night.
The moon was already suffusing the dropping veil of fog above him with that nebulous, mysterious radiance he had noticed the first night he had approached the Mission. When he reached the cross he dismounted, and gathering a few of the sweet-scented blossoms that crept around its base, placed them in his breast. Then, remounting, he continued his way until he came to the spot designated by Concho as a fitting place to leave his tethered mule. This done, he proceeded on foot about a mile further along the hard, wet sand, his eyes fixed on the narrow strip of water and shore before him that was yet uninvaded by the fog on either side.
The misty, nebulous light, the strange silence, broken only by the occasional low hurried whisper of some spent wave that sent its film of spume across his path, or filled his footprints behind him, possessed him with vague presentiments and imaginings. At times he fancied he heard voices at his side; at times indistinct figures loomed through the mist before him. At last what seemed to be his own shadow faintly impinged upon the mist at one side impressed him so strongly that he stopped; the apparition stopped too. Continuing a few hundred paces further, he stopped again; but this time the ghostly figure passed on, and convinced him that it was no shadow, but some one actually following him. With an angry challenge he advanced towards it. It quickly retreated inland, and was lost. Irritated and suspicious he turned back towards the water, and was amazed to see before him, not twenty yards away, the object of his quest–a boat, with two men in it, kept in position by the occasional lazy dip of an oar. In the pursuit of his mysterious shadow he had evidently overlooked it. As his own figure emerged from the fog, the boat pulled towards him. The priest’s password was upon his lips, when he perceived that the TWO men were common foreign sailors; the messenger of the Church was evidently not there. Could it have been he who had haunted him? He paused irresolutely. “Is there none other coming?” he asked. The two men looked at each other. One said, “Quien sabe!” and shrugged his shoulders. Hurlstone without further hesitation leaped aboard.
The same dull wall of vapor–at times thickening to an almost impenetrable barrier, and again half suffocating him in its soft embrace–which he had breasted on the night he swam ashore, carried back his thoughts to that time, now so remote and unreal. And when, after a few moments’ silent rowing, the boat approached a black hulk that seemed to have started forward out of the gloom to meet them, his vague recollection began to take a more definite form. As he climbed up the companion-ladder and boarded the vessel, an inexplicable memory came over him. A petty officer on the gangway advanced silently and ushered him, half dazed and bewildered, into the cabin. He glanced hurriedly around: the door of a state-room opened, and disclosed the indomitable and affable Senor Perkins! A slight expression of surprise, however, crossed the features of the Liberator of Quinquinambo as he advanced with outstretched hand.
“This is really a surprise, my dear fellow! I had no idea that YOU were in this affair. But I am delighted to welcome you once more to the Excelsior!”
CHAPTER VII.
THE RETURN OF THE EXCELSIOR.
Amazed and disconcerted, Hurlstone, nevertheless, retained his presence of mind.
“There must be some mistake,” he said coolly; “I am certainly not the person you seem to be expecting.”
“Were you not sent here by Winslow?” demanded Perkins.
“No. The person you are looking for is probably one I saw on the shore. He no doubt became alarmed at my approach, and has allowed me quite unwittingly to take his place in the boat.”
Perkins examined Hurlstone keenly for a moment, stepped to the door, gave a brief order, and returned.
“Then, if you did not intend the honor of this visit for me,” he resumed, with a smile, “may I ask, my dear fellow, whom you expected to meet, and on what ship? There are not so many at Todos Santos, if my memory serves me right, as to create confusion.”
“I must decline to answer that question,” said Hurlstone curtly.
The Senor smiled, with an accession of his old gentleness.
“My dear young friend,” he said, “have you forgotten that on a far more important occasion to YOU, I showed no desire to pry into your secret?” Hurlstone made a movement of deprecation. “Nor have I any such desire now. But for the sake of our coming to an understanding as friends, let me answer the question for you. You are here, my dear fellow, as a messenger from the Mission of Todos Santos to the Ecclesiastical Commission from Guadalajara, whose ship touches here every three years. It is now due. You have mistaken this vessel for theirs.”
Hurlstone remained silent.
“It is no secret,” continued Senor Perkins blandly; “nor shall I pretend to conceal MY purpose here, which is on the invitation of certain distressed patriots of Todos Santos, to assist them in their deliverance from the effete tyranny of the Church and its Government. I have been fortunate enough to anticipate the arrival of your vessel, as you were fortunate enough to anticipate the arrival of my messenger. I am doubly fortunate, as it gives me the pleasure of your company this evening, and necessitates no further trouble than the return of the boat for the other gentleman–which has already gone. Doubtless you may know him.”
“I must warn you again, Senor Perkins,” said Hurlstone sternly, “that I have no connection with any political party; nor have I any sympathy with your purpose against the constituted authorities.”
“I am willing to believe that you have no political affinities at all, my dear Mr. Hurlstone,” returned Perkins, with unruffled composure, “and, consequently, we will not argue as to what is the constituted authority of Todos Santos. Perhaps to-morrow it may be on board THIS SHIP, and I may still have the pleasure of making you at home here!”
“Until then,” said Hurlstone dryly, “at least you will allow me to repair my error by returning to the shore.”
“For the moment I hardly think it would be wise,” replied Perkins gently. “Allowing that you escaped the vigilance of my friends on the shore, whose suspicions you have aroused, and who might do you some injury, you would feel it your duty to inform those who sent you of the presence of my ship, and thus precipitate a collision between my friends and yours, which would be promotive of ill- feeling, and perhaps bloodshed. You know my peaceful disposition, Mr. Hurlstone; you can hardly expect me to countenance an act of folly that would be in violation of it.”
“In other words, having decoyed me here on board your ship, you intend to detain me,” said Hurlstone insultingly.
“‘Decoy,'” said Perkins, in gentle deprecation, “‘decoy’ is hardly the word I expected from a gentleman who has been so unfortunate as to take, unsolicited and of his own free will, another person’s place in a boat. But,” he continued, assuming an easy argumentative attitude, “let us look at it from your view-point. Let us imagine that YOUR ship had anticipated mine, and that MY messenger had unwittingly gone on board of HER. What do you think they would have done to him?”
“They would have hung him at the yard-arm, as he deserved,” said Hurlstone unflinchingly.
“You are wrong,” said Perkins gently. “They would have given him the alternative of betraying his trust, and confessing everything– which he would probably have accepted. Pardon me!–this is no insinuation against you,” he interrupted,–“but I regret to say that my experience with the effete Latin races of this continent has not inspired me with confidence in their loyalty to trust. Let me give you an instance,” he continued, smiling: “the ship you are expecting is supposed to be an inviolable secret of the Church, but it is known to me–to my friends ashore–and even to you, my poor friend, a heretic! More than that, I am told that the Comandante, the Padre, and Alcalde are actually arranging to deport some of the American women by this vessel, which has been hitherto sacred to the emissaries of the Church alone. But you probably know this–it is doubtless part of your errand. I only mention it to convince you that I have certainly no need either to know your secrets, to hang you from the yard-arm if you refused to give them up, or to hold you as hostage for my messenger, who, as I have shown you, can take care of himself. I shall not ask you for that secret despatch you undoubtedly carry next your heart, because I don’t want it. You are at liberty to keep it until you can deliver it, or drop it out of that port-hole into the sea–as you choose. But I hear the boat returning,” continued Perkins, rising gently from his seat as the sound of oars came faintly alongside, “and no doubt with Winslow’s messenger. I am sorry you won’t let me bring you together. I dare say he knows all about you, and it really need not alter your opinions.”
“One moment,” said Hurlstone, stunned, yet incredulous of Perkins’s revelations. “You said that both the Comandante and Alcalde had arranged to send away certain ladies–are you not mistaken?”
“I think not,” said Perkins quietly, looking over a pile of papers on the table before him. “Yes, here it is,” he continued, reading from a memorandum: “‘Don Ramon Ramirez arranged with Pepe for the secret carrying off of Dona Barbara Brimmer.’ Why, that was six weeks ago, and here we have the Comandante suborning one Marcia, a dragoon, to abduct Mrs. Markham–by Jove, my old friend!–and Dona Leonor–our beauty, was she not? Yes, here it is: in black and white. Read it, if you like,–and pardon me for one moment, while I receive this unlucky messenger.”
Left to himself, Hurlstone barely glanced at the memorandum, which seemed to be the rough minutes of some society. He believed Perkins; but was it possible that the Padre could be ignorant of the designs of his fellow-councilors? And if he were not–if he had long before been in complicity with them for the removal of Eleanor, might he not also have duped him, Hurlstone, and sent him on this mission as a mere blind; and–more infamously–perhaps even thus decoyed him on board the wrong ship? No–it was impossible! His honest blood quickly flew to his cheek at that momentary disloyal suspicion.
Nevertheless, the Senor’s bland revelations filled him with vague uneasiness. SHE was safe with her brother now; but what if he and the other Americans were engaged in this ridiculous conspiracy, this pot-house rebellion that Father Esteban had spoken of, and which he had always treated with such contempt? It seemed strange that Perkins had said nothing of the arrival of the relieving party from the Gulf, and its probable effect on the malcontents. Did he know it? or was the news now being brought by this messenger whom he, Hurlstone, had supplanted? If so, when and how had Perkins received the intelligence that brought him to Todos Santos? The young man could scarcely repress a bitter smile as he remembered the accepted idea of Todos Santos’ inviolability–that inaccessible port that had within six weeks secretly summoned Perkins to its assistance! And it was there he believed himself secure! What security had he at all? Might not this strange, unimpassioned, omniscient man already know HIS secret as he had known the others’?
The interview of Perkins with the messenger in the next cabin was a long one, and apparently a stormy one on the part of the newcomer. Hurlstone could hear his excited foreign voice, shrill with the small vehemence of a shallow character; but there was no change in the slow, measured tones of the Senor. He listlessly began to turn over the papers on the table. Presently he paused. He had taken up a sheet of paper on which Senor Perkins had evidently been essaying some composition in verse. It seemed to have been of a lugubrious character. The titular line at the top of the page, “Dirge,” had been crossed out for the substituted “In Memoriam.” He read carelessly:
“O Muse unmet–but not unwept–
I seek thy sacred haunt in vain. Too late, alas! the tryst is kept–
We may not meet again!
“I sought thee ‘midst the orange bloom, To find that thou hadst grasped the palm Of martyr, and the silent tomb
Had hid thee in its calm.
“By fever racked, thou languishest On Nicaragua’s”–
Hurlstone threw the paper aside. Although he had not forgotten the Senor’s reputation for sentimental extravagance, and on another occasion might have laughed at it, there was something so monstrous in this hysterical, morbid composition of the man who was even then contemplating bloodshed and crime, that he was disgusted. Like most sentimental egotists, Hurlstone was exceedingly intolerant of that quality in others, and he turned for relief to his own thoughts of Eleanor Keene and his own unfortunate passion. HE could not have written poetry at such a moment!
But the cabin-door opened, and Senor Perkins appeared. Whatever might have been the excited condition of his unknown visitor, the Senor’s round, clean-shaven face was smiling and undisturbed by emotion. As his eye fell on the page of manuscript Hurlstone had just cast down, a slight shadow crossed his beneficent expanse of forehead, and deepened in his soft dark eyes; but the next moment it was chased away by his quick recurring smile. Even thus transient and superficial was his feeling, thought Hurlstone.
“I have some news for you,” said Perkins affably, “which may alter your decision about returning. My friends ashore,” he continued, “judging from the ingenuous specimen which has just visited me, are more remarkable for their temporary zeal and spasmodic devotion than for prudent reserve or lasting discretion. They have submitted a list to me of those whom they consider dangerous to Mexican liberty, and whom they are desirous of hanging. I regret to say that the list is illogical, and the request inopportune. Our friend Mr. Banks is put down as an ally of the Government and an objectionable business rival of that eminent patriot and well- known drover, Senor Martinez, who just called upon me. Mr. Crosby’s humor is considered subversive of a proper respect for all patriotism; but I cannot understand why they have added YOUR name as especially ‘dangerous.'”
Hurlstone made a gesture of contempt.
“I suppose they pay me the respect of considering me a friend of the old priest. So be it! I hope they will let the responsibility fall on me alone.”
“The Padre is already proscribed as one of the Council,” said Senor Perkins quietly.
“Do you mean to say,” said Hurlstone impetuously, “that you will permit a hair of that innocent old man’s head to be harmed by those wretches?”
“You are generous but hasty, my friend,” said Senor Perkins, in gentle deprecation. “Allow me to put your question in another way. Ask me if I intend to perpetuate the Catholic Church in Todos Santos by adding another martyr to its roll, and I will tell you– No! I need not say that I am equally opposed to any proceedings against Banks, Crosby, and yourself, for diplomatic reasons, apart from the kindly memories of our old associations on this ship. I have therefore been obliged to return to the excellent Martinez his little list, with the remark that I should hold HIM personally responsible if any of you are molested. There is, however, no danger. Messrs. Banks and Crosby are with the other Americans, whom we have guaranteed to protect, at the Mission, in the care of your friend the Padre. You are surprised! Equally so was the Padre. Had you delayed your departure an hour you would have met them, and I should have been debarred the pleasure of your company.
“By to-morrow,” continued Perkins, placing the tips of his fingers together reflectively, “the Government of Todos Santos will have changed hands, and without bloodshed. You look incredulous! My dear young friend, it has been a part of my professional pride to show the world that these revolutions can be accomplished as peacefully as our own changes of administration. But for a few infelicitous accidents, this would have been the case of the late liberation of Quinquinambo. The only risk run is to myself–the leader, and that is as it should be. But all this personal explanation is, doubtless, uninteresting to you, my young friend. I meant only to say that, if you prefer not to remain here, you can accompany me when I leave the ship at nine o’clock with a small reconnoitring party, and I will give you safe escort back to your friends at the Mission.”
This amicable proposition produced a sudden revulsion of feeling in Hurlstone. To return to those people from whom he was fleeing, in what was scarcely yet a serious emergency, was not to be thought of! Yet, where could he go? How could he be near enough to assist HER without again openly casting his lot among them? And would they not consider his return an act of cowardice? He could not restrain a gesture of irritation as he rose impatiently to his feet.
“You are agitated, my dear fellow. It is not unworthy of your youth; but, believe me, it is unnecessary,” said Perkins, in his most soothing manner. “Sit down. You have an hour yet to make your decision. If you prefer to remain, you will accompany the ship to Todos Santos and join me.”
“I don’t comprehend you,” interrupted Hurlstone suspiciously.
“I forgot,” said Perkins, with a bland smile, “that you are unaware of our plan of campaign. After communicating with the insurgents, I land here with a small force to assist them. I do this to anticipate any action and prevent the interference of the Mexican coaster, now due, which always touches here through ignorance of the channel leading to the Bay of Todos Santos and the Presidio. I then send the Excelsior, that does know the channel, to Todos Santos, to appear before the Presidio, take the enemy in flank, and cooperate with us. The arrival of the Excelsior there is the last move of this little game, if I may so call it: it is ‘checkmate to the King,’ the clerical Government of Todos Santos.”
A little impressed, in spite of himself, with the calm forethought and masterful security of the Senor, Hurlstone thanked him with a greater show of respect than he had hitherto evinced. The Senor looked gratified, but unfortunately placed that respect the next moment in peril.
“You were possibly glancing over these verses,” he said, with a hesitating and almost awkward diffidence, indicating the manuscript Hurlstone had just thrown aside. “It is merely the first rough draft of a little tribute I had begun to a charming friend. I sometimes,” he interpolated, with an apologetic smile, “trifle with the Muse. Perhaps I ought not to use the word ‘trifle’ in connection with a composition of a threnodial and dirge-like character,” he continued deprecatingly. “Certainly not in the presence of a gentleman as accomplished and educated as yourself, to whom recreation of this kind is undoubtedly familiar. My occupations have been, unfortunately, of a nature not favorable to the indulgence of verse. As a college man yourself, my dear sir, you will probably forgive the lucubrations of an old graduate of William and Mary’s, who has forgotten his ‘ars poetica.’ The verses you have possibly glanced at are crude, I am aware, and perhaps show the difficulty of expressing at once the dictates of the heart and the brain. They refer to a dear friend now at peace. You have perhaps, in happier and more careless hours, heard me speak of Mrs. Euphemia M’Corkle, of Illinois?”
Hurlstone remembered indistinctly to have heard, even in his reserved exclusiveness on the Excelsior, the current badinage of the passengers concerning Senor Perkins’ extravagant adulation of this unknown poetess. As a part of the staple monotonous humor of the voyage, it had only disgusted him. With a feeling that he was unconsciously sharing the burlesque relief of the passengers, he said, with a polite attempt at interest,
“Then the lady is–no more?”
“If that term can be applied to one whose work is immortal,” corrected Senor Perkins gently. “All that was finite of this gifted woman was lately forwarded by Adams’s Express Company from San Juan, to receive sepulture among her kindred at Keokuk, Iowa.”
“Did she say she was from that place?” asked Hurlstone, with half automatic interest.
“The Consul says she gave that request to the priest.”
“Then you were not with her when she died?” said Hurlstone absently.
“I was NEVER with her, neither then nor before,” returned Senor Perkins gravely. Seeing Hurlstone’s momentary surprise, he went on, “The late Mrs. M’Corkle and I never met–we were personally unknown to each other. You may have observed the epithet ‘unmet’ in the first line of the first stanza; you will then understand that the privation of actual contact with this magnetic soul would naturally impart more difficulty into elegiac expression.”
“Then you never really saw the lady you admire?” said Hurlstone vacantly.
“Never. The story is a romantic one,” said Perkins, with a smile that was half complacent and yet half embarrassed. “May I tell it to you? Thanks. Some three years ago I contributed some verses to the columns of a Western paper edited by a friend of mine. The subject chosen was my favorite one, ‘The Liberation of Mankind,’ in which I may possibly have expressed myself with some poetic fervor on a theme so dear to my heart. I may remark without vanity, that it received high encomiums–perhaps at some more opportune moment you may be induced to cast your eyes over a copy I still retain– but no praise touched me as deeply as a tribute in verse in another journal from a gifted unknown, who signed herself ‘Euphemia.’ The subject of the poem, which was dedicated to myself, was on the liberation of women–from–er–I may say certain domestic shackles; treated perhaps vaguely, but with grace and vigor. I replied a week later in a larger poem, recording more fully my theories and aspirations regarding a struggling Central American confederacy, addressed to ‘Euphemia.’ She rejoined with equal elaboration and detail, referring to a more definite form of tyranny in the relations of marriage, and alluding with some feeling to uncongenial experiences of her own. An instinct of natural delicacy, veiled under the hyperbole of ‘want of space,’ prevented my editorial friend from encouraging the repetition of this charming interchange of thought and feeling. But I procured the fair stranger’s address; we began a correspondence, at once imaginative and sympathetic in expression, if not always poetical in form. I was called to South America by the Macedonian cry of ‘Quinquinambo!’ I still corresponded with her. When I returned to Quinquinambo I received letters from her, dated from San Francisco. I feel that my words could only fail, my dear Hurlstone, to convey to you the strength and support I derived from those impassioned breathings of aid and sympathy at that time. Enough for me to confess that it was mainly due to the deep womanly interest that SHE took in the fortunes of the passengers of the Excelsior that I gave the Mexican authorities early notice of their whereabouts. But, pardon me,”–he stopped hesitatingly, with a slight flush, as he noticed the utterly inattentive face and attitude of Hurlstone,– “I am boring you. I am forgetting that this is only important to myself,” he added, with a sigh. “I only intended to ask your advice in regard to the disposition of certain manuscripts and effects of hers, which are unconnected with our acquaintance. I thought, perhaps, I might entrust them to your delicacy and consideration. They are here, if you choose to look them over; and here is also what I believe to be a daguerreotype of the lady herself, but in which I fail to recognize her soul and genius.”
He laid a bundle of letters and a morocco case on the table with a carelessness that was intended to hide a slight shade of disappointment in his face–and rose.
“I beg your pardon,” said Hurlstone, in confused and remorseful apology; “but I frankly confess that my thoughts WERE preoccupied. Pray forgive me. If you will leave these papers with me, I promise