University of Virginia Library

42. CHAPTER XLII.

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

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

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

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

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

Unfortunate as he was, another misfortune awaited him. When he returned
to the house where Garcia lay, he found that the old man, his sole relative and
sole friend, had expired. To Coronado this dead body was the carcass of all remaining
hope. The exciting drama of struggle and expectation which had so
violently occupied him for the last six months, and which had seemed to promise
such great success, was over. Even if he could have resolved to kill Clara,
there was no longer anything to be gained by it, for her money would not descend
to Coronado. Even if he should kill Thurstane, that would be a harm

rather than a benefit, for his widow would hate Coronado. If he did any evil
deed now, it must be from jealousy or from vindictiveness. Was murder of any
kind worth while? For the time, whether it were worth while or not, he was furious
enough to do it.

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

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

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

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

“I am so glad!” replied Clara.

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

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

“I must hurry back to San Francisco and try to get a leave of absence,”
said the husband, turning to pleasanter subjects. “I want full leisure to be
happy.”

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

“Oh no, my child. I can't trust the sea with you again. Not after this,” and
he waved his hand toward the wreck of the brig.

“Then I will beg myself for your leave of absence.”

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

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

“Barclay is a trump,” he said. “It is all the prettier in him to go that he
has a wife of his own. The commandant made no objection to the exchange.
In fact the old fellow behaved like a father to me, shook hands, patted me on the
shoulder, congratulated me, and all that sort of thing. Old boy, married himself,
and very fond of his family. Upon my word, it seems to better a man's heart to
marry him.”

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

“Well, my little princess, where shall we go?”

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

“Of course I will go. Where is she?”

“Boarding at a hacienda a few miles from town. We can take horses, canter
out there, and pass the night.”

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

At the hacienda Thurstane was a little struck by the respect with which the
servants received Clara; but as she signed to them to be silent, not a word was
uttered which could give him a suspicion of the situation. Mrs. Stanley, moreover,
was taking a siesta, and so there was another tell-tale mouth shut.

“Nobody seems to be at home,” said Clara, bursting into a merry laugh over
her trick as they entered the house. “Where can the master and mistress
be?”

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

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

She fronted him for a few seconds, watching his wondering face, hesitating,
blushing, and laughing. Suddenly she bounded forward, threw her arms around
his shoulders and cried excitedly, hysterically, “My love! my husband! all this
is yours. Oh, how happy I am!”

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

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

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

“You don't mean—?”

“Yes, darling.”

“It can't be that—?”

“Yes, darling.”

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

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

“Yes, yes, yes,” laughed and chattered Clara. “Great Scott and great
Thurstane! All yours. Three hundred thousand. Half a million. A million.
I don't know how much. All I know is that it is all yours. Oh, my darling!
oh, my darling! How I have fooled you! Are you angry with me? Say, are
you angry? What will you do to me?”

We must excuse Thurstane for finding no other chastisement than to squeeze
her in his arms and choke her with kisses. Next he held her from him, set her

down upon a sofa, fell back a pace and stared at her much as if she were a totally
new discovery, something in the way of an arrival from the moon. He was
in a state of profound amazement at the dexterity with which she had taken his
destiny out of his own hands into hers, without his knowledge. He had not supposed
that she was a tenth part so clever. For the first time he perceived that
she was his match, if indeed she were not the superior nature; and it is a remarkable
fact, though not a dark one if one looks well into it, that he respected
her the more for being too much for him.

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

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

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

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

Furthermore, she was capable, that is, in certain favored moments, of confessing
error. “My dear,” she said to Clara, some weeks after the marriage, “I
have made one great mistake since I came to these countries. I believed that
Mr. Coronado was the right man and Mr. Thurstane the wrong one. Oh, that
smooth tongued, shiny-eyed, meeching, bowing, complimenting hypocrite! I
see at last what a villain he was. I see it,” she emphasized, as if nobody else
had discovered it. “To think that a person who was so right on the main question
[female suffrage] could be so wrong on everything else! The contradiction
adds to his guilt. Well, I have had my lesson. Every one must make her mistake.
I shall never be so humbugged again.”

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

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

“To New York,” replied Mrs. Stanley. “I can accomplish nothing here.
This miserable Legislature will take no notice of my petitions for female suffrage.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“An' what” (“fwat” he pronounced it) “the divil have ye been up to?” demanded
Sweeny. “Ye're a purty sailor, buttoned up in a long-tail coat, wid a
white hankerchy round yer neck. Have ye been foolin' paple wid makin' 'em
think ye're a Protestant praste?”

“I've been blowin' glass, Sweeny,” replied the sniffling voice of Phineas
Glover.

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

“Yes, blowin' glass,” returned the Fair Havener in a tone of agreeable reminiscence,
as if it had been a not unprofitable occupation. “Found there
wasn't a glass-blower in all Californy. Bought 'n old machine, put up to the
mines with it, blew all sorts 'f jigmarigs 'n' thingumbobs, 'n' sold 'em to the miners
'n' Injuns. Them critters is jest like sailors ashore; they'll buy anything
they set eyes on. Besides, I sounded my horn; advertised big, so to speak;
got up a sensation. Used to mount a stump 'n' make a speech; told 'em I'd
blow Yankee Doodle in glass, any color they wanted; give 'em that sort 'f gospel,
ye know.”

“An' could ye do it?” inquired the Paddy, confounded by the idea of blowing
a glass tune.

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

“I don't belave that nuther,” asseverated Sweeny, anxious to clear himself
from the charge of credulity.

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

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

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

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

“Twenty thousan' dollars in bank,” added Glover. “All by blowin' 'n' tradin'.
Goin' hum in the next steamer. Anythin' I can do for ye, old messmate?
Say how much.”

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

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

“Come in, Captain Glover,” at this moment called Clara through the blinds.
“Come in, Sweeny. Let us all have a talk together about the old times and the
new ones.”

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

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

“Kelly is first sergeant,” stated Thurstane, “and Meyer is quartermaster-sergeant,
with a good chance of being quartermaster. He is capable of it and
deserves it. He ought to have been promoted years ago for his gallantry and
services during the war. I hope every day to hear that he has got his commission
as lieutenant.”

“Wal, God bless 'em, 'n' God bless the hull army!” said Glover, so gratified
that he felt pious. “An' now, good-by. Got to be movin'.”

“Stay over night with us,” urged Thurstane. “Stay a week. Stay as long
as you will.”

“Do,” begged Clara. “You can go geologizing with my husband. You can
start Sweeny on his farm.”

“Och, he's a thousin' times welkim,” put in Sweeny, “though I'm afeard av
him. He'd tache the cattle to trade their skins wid ache other, an slather me
wid lies till I wouldn't know which was the baste an' which was Sweeny.”

Glover grinned with an air of being flattered, but replied, “Like to stay first
rate, but can't work it. Passage engaged for to-morrow mornin'.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Aunt Maria, agreeably surprised by an idea.

And the result was that she went to New York under the care of Captain
Glover.

As for Clara and Thurstane, they are surely in a state which ought to satisfy
their friends, and we will therefore say no more of them.