As it was impossible for one of Gabriel's simple nature to keep his plans entirely secret, Olly was perfectly aware of his intention, and prepared for the formal announcement, which she knew would come in Gabriel's quaint serious way. In the critical attitude which the child had taken toward him, she was more or less irritated, as an older person might have been, with the grave cautiousness with which Gabriel usually explained that conduct and manner which was perfectly apparent and open from the beginning. It was during a long walk in which the pair had strayed among the evergreen woods, when they came upon the little dismantled cabin. Here Gabriel stopped. Olly glanced around the spot and shrugged her shoulders. Gabriel, more mindful of Olly's manner than he had ever been of any other of her sex, instantly understood it.
"It ain't a purty place, Olly," he began, rubbing his hands, "but we've had high ole times yer – you and me. Don't ye mind the nights I used to kem up from the gulch and pitch in to mendin' your gownds, Olly, and you asleep? Don't ye mind that – ar dress I copper fastened?" and Gabriel laughed loudly, and yet a little doubtfully.
Olly laughed too, but not quite so heartily as her brother, and cast her eyes down upon her own figure. Gabriel followed the direction of her glance. It was not perhaps easy to re-create in the figure before him the outré little waif who such a short time – such a long time – ago had sat at his feet in that very cabin. It is not alone that Olly was better dressed, and her hair more tastefully arranged, but she seemed in some way to have become more refined and fastidious – a fastidiousness that was plainly an out-growth of something that she possessed but he did not. As he looked at her, another vague hope that he had fostered – a fond belief that as she grew taller she would come to look like Grace, and so revive the missing sister in his memory – this seemed to fade away before him. Yet it was characteristic of the unselfishness of his nature, that he did not attribute this disappointment to her alone, but rather to some latent principle in human nature whereof he had been ignorant. He had even gone so far as to invite criticism on a hypothetical case from the sagacious Johnson. "It's the difference atween human natur and brute natur," that philosopher had answered promptly. "A purp's the same purp allez, even arter it's a grown dorg, but a child ain't – it's the difference atween reason and instink."
But Olly, to whom this scene recalled another circumstance, did not participate in Gabriel's particular reminiscence.
"Don't you remember, Gabe," she said, quickly, "the first night that sister July came here and stood right in that very door? Lord! how flabergasted we was to be sure! And if anybody'd told me, Gabe, that she was going to marry you– I'd, I'd a knocked 'em down," she blurted out, after hesitating for a suitable climax.
Gabriel, who in his turn did not seem to be particularly touched with Olly's form of reminiscence, rose instantly above all sentiment in a consideration of the proprieties. "Ye shouldn't talk o' knockin' people down, Olly – it ain't decent for a young gal," he said, quickly. "Not that I mind it," he added, with his usual apology, "but allowin' that some of them purty little friends o' yours or teacher now, should hear ye! Sit down for a spell, Olly. I've suthin' to tell ye."
He took her hand in his and made her sit beside him on the rude stone that served as the old doorstep of the cabin.
"Maybe ye might remember," he went on, lightly lifting her hand in his, and striking it gently across his knee to beget an easy confidential manner, "maybe ye might remember that I allers allowed to do two things ef ever I might make a strike – one was to give you a good schoolin' – the other was to find Grace, if so be as she was above the yearth. They waz many ways o' finding out – many ways o' settin' at it, but they warn't my ways. I allus allowed that ef thet child was in harkenin' distance o' the reach o' my call, she'd hear me. I mout have took other men to help me – men ez was sharp in them things, men ez was in that trade – but I didn't. And why?"
Olly intimated by an impatient shake of her head that she didn't know.
"Because she was that shy and skary with strangers. Ye disremember how shy she was, Olly, in them days, for ye was too young to notice. And then, not bein' shy yourself, but sorter peart, free and promisskiss, ready and able to keep up your end of a conversation with anybody, and allus ez chipper as a jay-bird – why, ye don't kinder allow that fur Gracy as I do. And thar was reasons why that purty chile should be shy – reasons ye don't understand now, Olly, but reasons pow'ful and strong to such a child as thet."
"Ye mean, Gabe," said the shamelessly direct Olly, "that she was bashful, hevin' ran away with her bo."
That perplexity which wiser students of human nature than Gabriel have experienced at the swift perception of childhood in regard to certain things left him speechless. He could only stare hopelessly at the little figure before him.
"Well, wot did you do, Gabe? Go on!" said Olly, impatiently.
Gabriel drew a long breath.
"Thar bein' certing reasons why Gracy should be thet shy – reasons consarning propperty o' her deceased parients," boldly invented Gabriel, with a lofty ignoring of Olly's baser suggestion, "I reckoned that she should get the first word from me and not from a stranger. I knowed she warn't in Californy, or she'd hev seen them handbills I issued five years ago. What did I do? Thar is a paper wot's printed in New York, called the Herald. Thar is a place in that thar paper whar they print notisses to people that is fur, fur away. They is precious words from fathers to their sons, from husbands to their wives, from brothers to sisters, ez can't find each other, from" —
"From sweethearts to thar bo's," said Olly, briskly; "I know."
Gabriel paused in speechless horror.
"Yes," continued Olly. "They calls 'em 'Personals.' Lord! I know all 'bout them. Gals get bo's by them, Gabe!"
Gabriel looked up at the bright, arching vault above him. Yet it did not darken nor split into fragments. And he hesitated. Was it worth while to go on? Was there anything he could tell this terrible child – his own sister – which she did not already know better than he?
"I wrote one o' them Pursonals," he went on to say, doggedly, "in this ways." He paused, and fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, finally drew out a well-worn newspaper slip, and straightening it with some care from its multitudinous enfoldings, read it slowly, and with that peculiar patronising self-consciousness which distinguishes the human animal in the rehearsal of its literary composition.
"Ef G. C. will communicate with sufferin' and anxious friends, she will confer a favour on ole Gabe. I will come and see her, and Olly will rise up and welcome her. Ef G. C. is sick or don't want to come she will write to G. C. G. C. is same as usual, and so is Olly. All is well. Address G. C., One Horse Gulch, Californy – till further notiss."
"Read it over again," said Olly.
Gabriel did so, readily.
"Ain't it kinder mixed up with them G. C.'s?" queried the practical Olly.
"Not for she," responded Gabriel, quickly, "that's just what July said when I showed her the 'Pursonal.' But I sed to her as I sez to you, it taint no puzzle to Gracy. She knows ez our letters is the same. And ef it 'pears queer to strangers, wots the odds? Thet's the idee ov a 'pursonal.' Howsomever, it's all right, Olly. Fur," he continued, lowering his voice confidentially, and drawing is sister closer to his side, "it's bin ansered!"
"By Grace?" asked Olly.
"No," said Gabriel, in some slight confusion, "not by Grace, exactly – that is – but yer's the anser." He drew from his bosom a small chamois-skin purse, such as miners used for their loose gold, and extracted the more precious slip. "Read it," he said to Olly, turning away his head.
Olly eagerly seized and read the paper.
"G. C. – Look no more for the missing one who will never return. Look at home. Be happy. – P. A."
Olly turned the slip over in her hands. "Is that all?" she asked, in a higher key, with a rising indignation in her pink cheeks.
"That's all," responded Gabriel; "short and shy – that's Gracy, all over."
"Then all I got to say is it's mean!" said Olly, bringing her brown fist down on her knee. "And that's wot I'd say to that thar P. A. – that Philip Ashley – if I met him."
A singular look, quite unlike the habitual placid, good-humoured expression of the man, crossed Gabriel's face as he quietly reached out and took the paper from Olly's hand.
"Thet's why I'm goin' off," he said, simply.
"Goin' off," repeated Olly.
"Goin' off – to the States. To New York," he responded, "July and me. July sez – and she's a peart sort o' woman in her way, ef not o' your kind, Olly," he interpolated, apologetically, "but pow'ful to argyfy and plan, and she allows ez New York 'ud nat'rally be the stampin' ground o' sich a high-toned feller ez him. And that's why I want to talk to ye, Olly. Thar's only two things ez 'ud ever part you and me, dear, and one on 'em ez this very thing – it's my dooty to Gracy, and the other ez my dooty to you. Et ain't to be expected that when you oughter be gettin' your edykation you'd be cavortin' round the world with me. And you'll stop yer at Sacramento in a A-1 first-class school, ontil I come back. Are ye hark'nin', dear?"
"Yes," said Olly, fixing her clear eyes on her brother.
"And ye ain't to worrit about me. And it 'ud be as well, Olly, ez you'd forget all 'bout this yer gulch, and the folks. Fur yer to be a lady, and in bein' thet brother Gabe don't want ennythin' to cross ye. And I want to say to thet feller, Olly, 'Ye ain't to jedge this yer fammerly by me, fur the men o' that fammerly gin'rally speakin' runs to size, and ain't, so to speak, strong up yer,'" continued Gabriel, placing his hands on his sandy curls; "'but thar's a little lady in school in Californy ez is jest what Gracy would hev bin if she'd had the schoolin'. And ef ye wants to converse with her she kin give you pints enny time' And then I brings you up, and nat'rally I reckon thet you ain't goin' back on brother Gabe – in 'stronomy, grammar, 'rithmetic and them things."
"But wot's the use of huntin' Grace if she says she'll never return?" said Olly, sharply.
"Ye musn't read them 'pursonals' ez ef they was square. They're kinder conundrums, ye know – puzzles. It says G. C. will never return. Well, s'pose G. C. has another name. Don't you see?"
"Married, maybe," said Olly, clapping her hands.
"Surely," said Gabriel, with a slight colour in his cheeks. "Thet's so."
"But s'pose it doesn't mean Grace after all?" persisted Olly.
Gabriel was for a moment staggered.
"But July sez it does," he answered, doubtfully.
Olly looked as if this evidence was not entirely satisfactory.
"But what does 'look at home' mean?" she continued.
"Thet's it," said Gabriel, eagerly. "Thet reads – 'Look at little Olly – ain't she there?' And thet's like Gracy – allus thinkin' o' somebody else."
"Well," said Olly, "I'll stop yer, and let you go. But wot are you goin' to do without me?"
Gabriel did not reply. The setting sun was so nearly level with his eyes that it dazzled them, and he was fain to hide them among the clustering curls of Olly, as he held the girl's head in both his hands. After a moment he said —
"Do ye want to know why I like this old cabin and this yer chimbly, Olly?"
"Yes," said Olly, whose eyes were also affected by the sun, and who was glad to turn them to the object indicated.
"It ain't because you and me hez sot there many and many a day, fur that's suthin' that we ain't goin' to think about any more. It's because, Olly, the first lick I ever struck with a pick on this hill was just yer. And I raised this yer chimbly with the rock. Folks thinks thet it was over yonder in the slope whar I struck the silver lead, thet I first druv a pick. But it warn't. And I sometimes think, Olly, that I've had as much square comfort outer thet first lick ez I'll ever get outer the lead yonder. But come, Olly, come! July will be wonderin' whar you is, and ther's a stranger yonder comin' up the road, and I reckon I ain't ez fine a lookin' bo ez a young lady ez you ez, orter to co-mand. Never mind, Olly, he needn't know ez you and me is any relashuns. Come!"
In spite of Gabriel's precautionary haste, the stranger, who was approaching by the only trail which led over the rocky hillside, perceived the couple, and turned toward them interrogatively. Gabriel was forced to stop, not, however, without first giving a slight reassuring pressure to Olly's hand.
"Can you tell me the way to the hotel – the Grand Conroy House I think they call it?" the traveller asked politely.
He would have been at any time an awe-inspiring and aggressive object to One Horse Gulch and to Gabriel, and at this particular moment he was particularly discomposing. He was elaborately dressed, buttoned and patent-leather booted in the extreme limit of some bygone fashion, and had the added effrontery of spotless ruffled linen. As he addressed Gabriel he touched a tall black hat, sacred in that locality to clergymen and gamblers. To add to Gabriel's discomfiture, at the mention of the Grand Conroy House he had felt Olly stiffen aggressively under his hand.
"Foller this yer trail to the foot of the hill, and ye'll strike Main Street; that'll fetch ye thar. I'd go with ye a piece, but I'm imployed," said Gabriel, with infinite tact and artfulness, accenting each word with a pinch of Olly's arm, "imployed by this yer young lady's friends to see her home, and bein' a partikler sort o' fammerly, they makes a row when I don't come reg'lar. Axin' your parding, don't they, Miss?" and to stop any possible retort from Olly before she could recover from her astonishment, he had hurried her into the shadows of the evergreen pines of Conroy Hill.
CHAPTER II.
TRANSIENT GUESTS AT THE GRAND CONROY
The Grand Conroy Hotel was new, and had the rare virtue of comparative cleanliness. As yet the odours of bygone dinners, and forgotten suppers, and long dismissed breakfasts had not possessed and permeated its halls and passages. There was no distinctive flavour of preceding guests in its freshly clothed and papered rooms. There was a certain virgin coyness about it, and even the active ministration of Mrs. Markle and Sal was delicately veiled from the public by the interposition of a bar-keeper and Irish waiter. Only to a few of the former habitués did these ladies appear with their former frankness and informality. There was a public parlour, glittering with gilt framed mirrors and gorgeous with red plush furniture, which usually froze the geniality of One Horse Gulch, and repressed its larger expression, but there was a little sitting-room beyond sacred to the widow and her lieutenant Sal, where visitors were occasionally admitted. Among the favoured few who penetrated this arcana was Lawyer Maxwell. He was a widower, and was supposed to have a cynical distrust of the sex that was at once a challenge to them and a source of danger to himself.
Mrs. Markle was of course fully aware that Mrs. Conroy had been Maxwell's client, and that it was while on a visit to him she had met with the accident that resulted in her meeting with Gabriel. Unfortunately Mrs. Markle was unable to entirely satisfy herself if there had been any previous acquaintance. Maxwell had declared to her that to the best of his knowledge there had been none, and that the meeting was purely accidental. He could do this without violating the confidence of his client, and it is fair to presume that upon all other matters he was loyally uncommunicative. That Madame Devarges had consulted him regarding a claim to some property was the only information he imparted. In doing this, however, he once accidentally stumbled, and spoke of Mrs. Devarges as "Grace Conroy." Mrs. Markle instantly looked up. "I mean Mrs. Conroy," he said hastily.
"Grace – that was his sister who was lost – wasn't it?"
"Yes," replied Maxwell, demurely, "did he ever talk much to you about her?"
"No-o," said Mrs. Markle, with great frankness, "he and me only talked on gin'ral topics; but from what Olly used to let on, I reckon that sister was the only woman he ever loved."
Lawyer Maxwell, who, with an amused recollection of his extraordinary interview with Gabriel in regard to the woman before him, was watching her mischievously, suddenly became grave. "I guess you'll find, Mrs. Markle, that his present wife amply fills the place of his lost sister," he said, more seriously than had intended.
"Never," said Mrs. Markle, quickly. "Not she – the designin', crafty hussy!"
"I am afraid you are not doing her justice," said Maxwell, wiping away a smile from his lips, after his characteristic habit; "but then it's not strange that two bright, pretty women are unable to admire each other. What reason have you to charge her with being designing?" he asked again, with a sudden return of his former seriousness.
"Why, her marryin' him," responded Mrs. Markle, frankly; "look at that simple, shy, bashful critter, do you suppose he'd marry her – marry any woman – that didn't throw herself at his head, eh?"
Mrs. Markle's pique was so evident that even a philosopher like Maxwell could not content himself with referring it to the usual weakness of the sex. No man cares to have a woman exhibit habitually her weakness for another man, even when he possesses the power of restraining it. He answered somewhat quickly as he raised his hand to his mouth to wipe away the smile that, however, did not come. "But suppose that you – and others – are mistaken in Gabriel's character. Suppose all this simplicity and shyness is a mask. Suppose he is one of the most perfect and successful actors on or off the stage. Suppose he should turn out to have deceived everybody – even his present wife!" – and Lawyer Maxwell stopped in time.
Mrs. Markle instantly fired. "Suppose fiddlesticks and flapjacks! I'd as soon think o' suspectin' thet child," she said, pointing to the unconscious Manty. "You lawyers are allus suspectin' what you can't understand!" She paused as Maxwell wiped his face again. "What do you mean anyway – why don't yer speak out? What do you know of him?"
"Oh, nothing! only it's as fair to say all this of him as of her – on about the same evidence. For instance, here's a simple, ignorant fellow" —
"He ain't ignorant," interrupted Mrs. Markle, sacrificing argument to loyalty.
"Well, this grown-up child! He discovers the biggest lead in One Horse Gulch, manages to get the shrewdest financier in California to manage it for him, and that too after he has snatched up an heiress and a pretty woman before the rest of 'em got a sight of her. That may be simplicity; but my experience of guilelessness is that, ordinarily, it isn't so lucky."
"They won't do him the least good, depend upon it," said Mrs. Markle, with the air of triumphantly closing the argument.
It is very possible that Mrs. Markle's dislike was sustained and kept alive by Sal's more active animosity, and the strict espionage that young woman kept over the general movements and condition of the Conroys. Gabriel's loneliness, his favourite haunt on the hillside, the number and quality of Mrs. Conroy's visitors, even fragments of conversation held in the family circle, were all known to Sal, and redelivered to Mrs. Markle with Sal's own colouring. It is possible that most of the gossip concerning Mrs. Conroy already hinted at, had its origin in the views and observations of this admirable young woman, who did not confine her confidences entirely to her mistress. And when one day a stranger and guest, staying at the Grand Conroy House, sought to enliven the solemnity of breakfast by social converse with Sal regarding the Conroys, she told him nearly everything that she had already told Mrs. Markle.
I am aware that it is alleged that some fascinating quality in this stranger's manner and appearance worked upon the susceptible nature and loosened the tongue of this severe virgin, but beyond a certain disposition to minister personally to his wants, to hover around him archly with a greater quantity of dishes than that usually offered the transient guest, and to occasionally expatiate on the excellence of some extra viand, there was really no ground for the report. Certainly, the guest was no ordinary man; was quite unlike the regular habitués of the house, and perhaps to some extent justified this favouritism. He was young, sallow-faced, with very white teeth and skin, yellow hands, and a tropical, impulsive manner, which Miss Sarah Clark generally referred to as "Eyetalian." I venture to transcribe something of his outward oral expression.
"I care not greatly for the flapjack, nor yet for the dried apples," said Victor, whom the intelligent reader has at once recognised, "but a single cup of coffee sweetened by those glances and offered by those fair hands – which I kiss! – are to me enough. And you think that the Meestrees Conroy does not live happily with her husband. Ah! you are wise, you are wise, Mees Clark, I would not for much money find myself under these criticism, eh?"
"Well, eyes bein' given to us to see with by the Lord's holy will, and it ain't for weak creeturs like us to misplace our gifts or magnify 'em," said Sal, in shrill, bashful confusion, allowing an underdone fried egg to trickle from the plate on the coat-collar of the unconscious Judge Beeswinger, "I do say when a woman sez to her husband, ez she's sworn to honour and obey, 'This yer's my house, and this yer's my land, and yer kin git,' thar ain't much show o' happiness thar. Ef it warn't for hearin' this with my own ears, bein' thar accidental like, and in a sogial way, I wouldn't hev believed it. And she allowin' to be a lady, and afeared to be civil to certain folks ez is ez good ez she and far better, and don't find it necessary to git married to git a position – and could hev done it a thousand times over ef so inclined. But folks is various and self praise is open disgrace. Let me recommend them beans. The pork, ez we allus kills ourselves fur the benefit o' transient gests, bein' a speciality."
"It is of your kindness, Mees Clark, I am already full. And of the pork I touch not, it is an impossibility," said Victor, showing every tooth in his head. "It is much painful to hear of this sad, sad affair. It is bad – and yet you say he has riches – this man. Ah! the what is the world. See, the great manner it has treated those! No, I will not more. I am sufficient now. Ah! eh! what have we here?"
He lowered his voice and eyes as a stranger – the antique dandy Gabriel had met on Conroy's hill the evening before – rose from some unnoticed seat at a side table, and unconcernedly moved away. Victor instantly recognised the card player of San Antonio, his former chance acquaintance of Pacific Street, and was filled with a momentary feeling of suspicion and annoyance. But Sal's sotto voce reply that the stranger was a witness attending court seemed to be a reasonable explanation, and the fact that the translator did not seem to recognise him promptly relieved his mind. When he had gone Sal returned to her confidences: "Ez to his riches, them ez knows best hez their own say o' that. Thar was a party yer last week – gents ez was free with their money, and not above exchanging the time o' day with working folk, and though it ain't often ez me or Sue Markle dips into conversation with entire strangers, yet," continued Sal with parenthetical tact and courtesy, "Eyetalians, – furriners in a strange land bein' an exception – and and them gents let on thet thet vein o' silver on Conroy's hill hed been surveyed and it wazent over a foot wide, and would be played out afore a month longer, and thet old Peter Dumphy knowed it, and hed sold out, and thet thet's the reason Gabriel Conroy was goin' off – jest to be out o' the way when the killapse comes."
"Gabriel! going away, Mees Sal? this is not possible!" ejaculated the fascinating guest, breathing very hard, and turning all his teeth in a single broadside upon the susceptible handmaid. At any other moment, it is possible that Sal might have been suspicious of the stranger's excitement, but the fascination of his teeth held and possessed this fluttering virgin.
