Gabriel Conroy

"But not toward San Francisco," said the Padre. "Listen! Your wish of yesterday has been attained. You are to have your desired interview with the fair invisible. Do you comprehend? Donna Dolores has sent for you."

Arthur looked up in surprise. Perhaps his face did not express as much pleasure as Father Felipe expected, who lifted his eyes to the ceiling, took a philosophical pinch of snuff, and muttered —

"Ah, lo que es el mudo!– Now that he has his wish – it is nothing, Mother of God!"

"This is your kindness, Father."

"God forbid!" returned Padre Felipe, hastily. "Believe me, my son, I know nothing. When the Donna left here before the Angelus yesterday, she said nothing of this. Perhaps it is the office of your friend, Mrs. Sepulvida."

"Hardly, I think," said Arthur; "she was so well prepared with all the facts as to render an interview with Donna Dolores unnecessary. Bueno, be it so! I will go."

Nevertheless, he was ill at ease. He ate little, he was silent. All the fears he had argued away with such self-satisfied logic the day before, returned to him again with greater anxiety. Could there have been any further facts regarding this inopportune grant that Mrs. Sepulvida had not disclosed? Was there any particular reason why this strange recluse, who had hitherto avoided his necessary professional presence, should now desire a personal interview which was not apparently necessary? Could it be possible that communication had already been established with Gabriel or Grace, and that the history of their previous life had become known to his client? Had his connexion with it been in any way revealed to the Donna Dolores?

If he had been able to contemplate this last possibility with calmness and courage yesterday when Mrs. Sepulvida first repeated the name of Gabriel Conroy, was he capable of equal resignation now? Had anything occurred since then? – had any new resolution entered his head to which such a revelation would be fatal? Nonsense! And yet he could not help commenting, with more or less vague uneasiness of mind, on his chance meeting of Donna Dolores at the Point of Pines yesterday and the summons of this morning. Would not his foolish attitude with Donna Maria, aided, perhaps, by some indiscreet expression from the well-meaning but senile Padre Felipe, be sufficient to exasperate his fair client had she been cognizant of his first relations with Grace? It is not mean natures alone that are the most suspicious. A quick, generous imagination, feverishly excited, will project theories of character and intention far more ridiculous and uncomplimentary to humanity than the lowest surmises of ignorance and imbecility. Arthur was feverish and edited; with all the instincts of a contradictory nature, his easy sentimentalism dreaded, while his combative principles longed for, this interview. Within an hour of the time appointed by Donna Dolores, he had thrown himself on his horse, and was galloping furiously toward the "Rancho of the Holy Trinity."

It was inland and three leagues away under the foot-hills. But as he entered upon the level plain, unrelieved by any watercourse; and baked and cracked by the fierce sun into narrow gaping chasms and yawning fissures, he unconsciously began to slacken pace. Nothing could be more dreary, passionless, and resigned than the vast, sunlit, yet joyless waste. It seemed as if it might be some illimitable, desolate sea, beaten flat by the north-westerly gales that spent their impotent fury on its unopposing levels. As far as the eye could reach, its dead monotony was unbroken; even the black cattle that in the clear distance seemed to crawl over its surface, did not animate it; rather by contrast brought into relief its fixed rigidity of outline. Neither wind, sky, nor sun wrought any change over its blank, expressionless face. It was the symbol of Patience – a hopeless, weary, helpless patience – but a patience that was Eternal.

He had ridden for nearly an hour, when suddenly there seemed to spring up from the earth, a mile away, a dark line of wall, terminating in an irregular, broken outline against the sky. His first impression was that it was the valda or a break of the stiff skirt of the mountain as it struck the level plain. But he presently saw the dull red of tiled roofs over the dark adobe wall, and as he dashed down into the dry bed of a vanished stream and up again on the opposite bank, he passed the low walls of a corral, until then unnoticed, and a few crows, in a rusty, half-Spanish, half-clerical suit, uttered a croaking welcome to the Rancho of the Holy Trinity, as they rose from the ground before him. It was the first sound that for an hour had interrupted the monotonous jingle of his spurs or the hollow beat of his horse's hoofs. And then, after the fashion of the country, he rose slightly in his stirrups, dashed his spurs into the sides of his mustang, swung the long, horsehair, braided thong of his bridle-rein, and charged at headlong speed upon the dozen lounging, apparently listless vaqueros, who, for the past hour, had nevertheless been watching and waiting for him at the courtyard gate. As he rode toward them, they separated, drew up each side of the gate, doffed their glazed, stiff-brimmed, black sombreros, wheeled, put spurs to their horses, and in another instant were scattered to the four winds. When Arthur leaped to the brick pavement of the courtyard, there was not one in sight.

An Indian servant noiselessly led away his horse. Another peon as mutely led the way along a corridor over whose low railings serapes and saddle blankets were hung in a barbaric confusion of colouring, and entered a bare-walled ante-room, where another Indian – old, grey-headed, with a face like a wrinkled tobacco leaf – was seated on a low wooden settle in an attitude of patient expectancy. To Arthur's active fancy he seemed to have been sitting there since the establishment of the Mission, and to have grown grey in waiting for him. As Arthur entered he rose, and with a few grave Spanish courtesies, ushered him into a larger and more elaborately furnished apartment, and again retired with a bow. Familiar as Arthur was with these various formalities, at present they seemed to have an undue significance, and he turned somewhat impatiently as a door opened at the other end of the apartment. At the same moment a subtle strange perfume – not unlike some barbaric spice or odorous Indian herb – stole through the door, and an old woman, brown-faced, murky-eyed, and decrepit, entered with a respectful curtsey.

"It is Don Arturo Poinsett?" Arthur bowed.

"The Donna Dolores has a little indisposition, and claims your indulgence if she receives you in her own room."

Arthur bowed assent.

"Bueno! This way."

She pointed to the open door. Arthur entered by a narrow passage cut through the thickness of the adobe wall into another room beyond, and paused on the threshold.

Even the gradual change from the glaring sunshine of the courtyard to the heavy shadows of the two rooms he had passed through was not sufficient to accustom his eyes to the twilight of the apartment he now entered. For several seconds he could not distinguish anything but a few dimly outlined objects. By degrees he saw that there were a bed, a prie-dieu, and a sofa against the opposite wall. The scant light of two windows – mere longitudinal slits in the deep walls – at first permitted him only this. Later he saw that the sofa was occupied by a half-reclining figure, whose face was partly hidden by a fan, and the white folds of whose skirt fell in graceful curves to the floor.

"You speak Spanish, Don Arturo?" said an exquisitely modulated voice from behind the fan, in perfect Castilian.

Arthur turned quickly toward the voice with an indescribable thrill of pleasure in his nerves.

"A little."

He was usually rather proud of his Spanish, but for once the conventional polite disclaimer was quite sincere.

"Be seated, Don Arturo."

He advanced to a chair indicated by the old woman within a few feet of the sofa and sat down. At the same instant the reclining figure, by a quick, dexterous movement, folded the large black fan that had partly hidden her features, and turned her face toward him.

Arthur's heart leaped with a sudden throb, and then, as it seemed to him, for a few seconds stopped beating. The eyes that met his were large, lustrous, and singularly beautiful; the features were small, European, and perfectly modelled; the outline of the small face was a perfect oval, but the complexion was of burnished copper! Yet even the next moment he found himself halting among a dozen comparisons – a golden sherry, a faintly dyed meerschaum, an autumn leaf, the inner bark of the madroño. Of only one thing was he certain – she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen!

It is possible that the Donna read this in his eyes, for she opened her fan again quietly, and raised it slowly before her face. Arthur's eager glance swept down the long curves of her graceful figure to the little foot in the white satin slipper below. Yet her quaint dress, except for its colour, might have been taken for a religious habit, and had a hood or cape descending over her shoulders not unlike a nun's.

"You have surprise, Don Arturo," she said, after a pause, "that I have sent for you, after having before consulted you by proxy. Good! But I have changed my mind since then! I have concluded to take no steps for the present toward perfecting the grant."

In an instant Arthur was himself again – and completely on his guard. The Donna's few words had recalled the past that he had been rapidly forgetting; even the perfectly delicious cadence of the tones in which it was uttered had now no power to fascinate him or lull his nervous anxiety. He felt a presentiment that the worst was coming. He turned toward her, outwardly calm, but alert, eager, and watchful.

"Have you any newly discovered evidence that makes the issue doubtful?" he asked.

"No," said Donna Dolores.

"Is there anything? – any fact that Mrs. Sepulvida has forgotten?" continued Arthur. "Here are, I believe, the points she gave me," he added, and, with the habit of a well-trained intelligence, he put before Donna Dolores, in a few well-chosen words, the substance of Mrs. Sepulvida's story. Nor did his manner in the least betray a fact of which he was perpetually cognisant – namely, that his fair client, between the sticks of her fan, was studying his face with more than feminine curiosity. When he paused she said —

"Bueno! That is what I told her."

"Is there anything more?" – "Perhaps!"

Arthur folded his arms and looked attentive. Donna Dolores began to go over the sticks of her fan one by one, as if it were a rosary.

"I have become acquainted with some facts in this case which may not interest you as a lawyer, Don Arturo, but which affect me as a woman. When I have told you them, you will tell me – who knows? – that they do not alter the legal aspect of my – my father's claim. You will perhaps laugh at me for my resolution. But I have given you so much trouble, that it is only fair you should know it is not merely caprice that governs me – that you should know why your visit here is a barren one; why you – the great advocate – have been obliged to waste your valuable time with my poor friend, Donna Maria, for nothing."

Arthur was too much pre-occupied to notice the peculiarly feminine significance with which the Donna dwelt upon this latter sentence – a fact that would not otherwise have escaped his keen observation. He slightly stroked his brown moustache, and looked out of the window with masculine patience.

"It is not caprice, Don Arturo. But I am a woman and on orphan! You know my history! The only friend I had has left me here alone the custodian of these vast estates. Listen to me, Don Arturo, and you will understand, or at least forgive, my foolish interest in the people who contest this claim. For what has happened to them, to her, might have happened to me, but for the blessed Virgin's mediation."

"To her– who is she?" asked Arthur, quietly.

"Pardon! I had forgotten you do not know. Listen. You have heard that this grant is occupied by a man and his wife – a certain Gabriel Conroy. Good! You have heard that they have made no claim to a legal title to the land, except through pre-emption. Good. That is not true, Don Arturo!"

Arthur turned to her in undisguised surprise.

"This is new matter; this is a legal point of some importance."

"Who knows?" said Donna Dolores, indifferently. "It is not in regard of that that I speak. The claim is this. The Dr. Devarges, who also possesses a grant for the same land, made a gift of it to the sister of this Gabriel. Do you comprehend?" She paused, and fixed her eyes on Arthur.

"Perfectly," said Arthur, with his gaze still fixed on the window; "it accounts for the presence of this Gabriel on the land. But is she living? Or, if not, is he her legally constituted heir? That is the question, and – pardon me if I suggest again – a purely legal and not a sentimental question. Was this woman who has disappeared – this sister – this sole and only legatee – a married woman – had she a child? Because that is the heir."

The silence that followed this question was so protracted that Arthur turned towards Donna Dolores. She had apparently made some sign to her aged waiting-woman, who was bending over her, between Arthur and the sofa. In a moment, however, the venerable handmaid withdrew, leaving them alone.

"You are right, Don Arturo," continued Donna Dolores, behind her fan. "You see that, after all, your advice is necessary, and what I began as an explanation of my folly may be of business importance; who knows? It is good of you to recall me to that. We women are foolish. You are sagacious and prudent. It was well that I saw you!"

Arthur nodded assent, and resumed his professional attitude of patient toleration – that attitude which the world over has been at once the exasperation and awful admiration of the largely injured client.

"And the sister, the real heiress, is gone – disappeared! No one knows where! All trace of her is lost. But now comes to the surface an impostor! a woman who assumes the character and name of Grace Conroy, the sister!"

"One moment," said Arthur, quietly, "how do you know that it is an impostor?"

"How – do – I – know – it?"

"Yes, what are the proofs?"

"I am told so!"