Gabriel Conroy

  CHAPTER V.

  MRS. CONROY HAS AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR.

  The hot weather had not been confined to San Francisco. San Pablo Bayhad glittered, and the yellow currents of the San Joaquin and Sacramentoglowed sullenly with a dull sluggish lava-like flow. No breeze stirredthe wild oats that drooped on the western slope of the Contra Costahills; the smoke of burning woods on the eastern hillsides rose silentlyand steadily; the great wheat fields of the intermediate valleys clothedthemselves humbly in dust and ashes. A column of red dust accompaniedthe Wingdam and One Horse Gulch stage-coach, a pillar of fire by day aswell as by night, and made the fainting passengers look longingly towardthe snow-patched Sierras beyond. It was hot in California; few had everseen the like, and those who had were looked upon as enemies of theirrace. A rashly scientific man of Murphy's Camp who had a theory of hisown, and upon that had prophesied a continuance of the probablerecurrence of the earthquake shock, concluded he had better leave thesettlement until the principles of meteorology were better recognisedand established.

  It was hot in One Horse Gulch--in the oven-like Gulch, on the burningsands and scorching bars of the river. It was hot even on Conroy's Hill,among the calm shadows of the dark-green pines--on the deep verandahs ofthe Conroy _cottage orn['e]_. Perhaps this was the reason why Mrs. GabrielConroy, early that morning after the departure of her husband for themill, had evaded the varnished and white-leaded heats of her own houseand sought the more fragrant odours of the sedate pines beyond thehilltop. I fear, however, that something was due to a mysterious notewhich had reached her clandestinely the evening before, and which,seated on the trunk of a prostrate pine, she was now reperusing.

  I should like to sketch her as she sat there. A broad-brimmed straw hatcovered her head, that although squared a little too much at the templesfor shapeliness, was still made comely by the good taste withwhich--aided by a crimping-iron--she had treated her fine-spunelectrical blonde hair. The heat had brought out a delicate dewy colourin her usually pale face, and had heightened the intense nervousbrightness of her vivid grey eyes. From the same cause, probably, herlips were slightly parted, so that the rigidity that usuallycharacterised their finely chiselled outlines was lost. She lookedhealthier; the long flowing skirts which she affected, after the fashionof most _petite_ women, were gathered at a waist scarcely as sylph-likeand unsubstantial as that which Gabriel first clasped after the accidentin the fateful ca[~n]on. She seemed a trifle more languid--more careful ofher personal comfort, and spent some time in adjusting herself to theinequalities of her uncouth seat with a certain pouting peevishness ofmanner that was quite as new to her character as it was certainlyfeminine and charming. She held the open note in her thin, narrow,white-tipped fingers, and glanced over it again with a slight smile. Itread as follows:--

  "At ten o'clock I shall wait for you at the hill near the Big Pine! You shall give me an interview if you know yourself well. I say beware! I am strong, for I am injured!--VICTOR."

  Mrs. Conroy folded the note again, still smiling, and placed itcarefully in her pocket. Then she sat patient, her hands clasped lightlybetween her knees, the parasol open at her feet--the very picture of afond, confiding tryst. Then she suddenly drew her feet under her,sideways, with a quick, nervous motion, and examined the groundcarefully with sincere distrust of all artful lurking vermin who lie inwait for helpless womanhood. Then she looked at her watch.

  It was five minutes past the hour. There was no sound in the dim,slumbrous wood, but the far-off sleepy caw of a rook. A squirrel ranimpulsively halfway down the bark of the nearest pine, and catchingsight of her tilted parasol, suddenly flattened himself against thebark, with outstretched limbs, a picture of abject terror. A boundinghare came upon it suddenly and had a palpitation of the heart that hethought he really never should get over. And then there was a slowcrackling in the underbrush as of a masculine tread, and Mrs. Conroy,picking up her terrible parasol, shaded the cold fires of her grey eyeswith it and sat calm and expectant.

  A figure came slowly and listlessly up the hill. When within a dozenyards of her, she saw it was _not_ Victor. But when it approached nearershe suddenly started to her feet with pallid cheeks and an exclamationupon her lips. It was the Spanish translator of Pacific Street. Shewould have flown, but on the instant he turned and recognised her with acry, a start, and a passion equal to her own. For a moment they stoodglaring at each other breathless but silent!

  "Devarges!" said Mrs. Conroy, in a voice that was scarcely audible."Good God!"

  The stranger uttered a bitter laugh. "Yes! Devarges!--the man who ranaway with you--Devarges the traitor! Devarges the betrayer of yourhusband. Look at me! You know me--Henry Devarges! Your husband'sbrother!--your old accomplice--your lover--your dupe!"

  "Hush," she said, imploringly glancing around through the dim woods,"for God's sake, hush!"

  "And who are you," he went on, without heeding her, "which of theMesdames Devarges is it now? Or have you taken the name of the youngsprig of an officer for whom you deserted me and maybe in turn married?Or did he refuse you even that excuse for your perfidy? Or is it thewife and accomplice of this feeble-minded Conroy? What name shall I callyou? Tell me quick! Oh, I have much to say, but I wish to be polite,madame; tell me to whom I am to speak!"

  Despite the evident reality of his passion and fury there was somethingso unreal and grotesque in his appearance--in his antique foppery, inhis dyed hair, in his false teeth, in his padded coat, in his thinstrapped legs, that this relentless woman cowered before him in veryshame, not of her crime but of her accomplice! "Hush," she said, "callme your friend; I am always your friend, Henry. Call me anything, butlet me go from here. For God's sake, do you hear? Not so loud! Anothertime and another place I will listen," and she drew slowly back, until,scarce knowing what he did, she had led him away from the place ofrendezvous toward the ruined cabin. Here she felt that she was at leastsafe from the interruption of Victor. "How came you here? How did youfind out what had become of me? Where have you been these long years?"she asked hastily.

  Within the last few moments she had regained partially the strange powerthat she had always exerted over all men except Gabriel Conroy. Thestranger hesitated, and then answered in a voice that had more ofhopelessness than bitterness in its quality--

  "I came here six years ago, a broken, ruined, and disgraced man. I hadno ambition but to hide myself from all who had known me, from thatbrother whose wife I had stolen, and whose home I had broken up--fromyou--you, Julie! you and your last lover--from the recollection of yourdouble treachery!" He had raised his voice here, but was checked by theunflinching eye and cautionary gesture of the woman before him. "Whenyou abandoned me in St. Louis, I had no choice but death or a secondexile. I could not return to Switzerland, I could not live in thesickening shadow of my crime and its bitter punishment. I came here. Myeducation, my knowledge of the language stood me in good stead. I mighthave been a rich man, I might have been an influential one, but I onlyused my opportunities for the bare necessaries of life and the means toforget my trouble in dissipation. I became a drudge by day, a gambler bynight. I was always a gentleman. Men thought me crazy, an enthusiast,but they learned to respect me. Traitor as I was in a larger trust, noone doubted my honour or dared to question my integrity. But bah! whatis this to you? You!"

  He would have turned from her again in very bitterness, but in the acthe caught her eye, and saw in it if not sympathy, at least a certaincritical admiration, that again brought him to her feet. For despicableas this woman was, she was pleased at this pride in the man she hadbetrayed, was gratified at the sentiment that lifted him above his dyedhair and his pitiable foppery, and felt a certain honourablesatisfaction in the fact that, even after the lapse of years, he hadproved true to her own intuitions of him.

  "I had been growing out of my despair, Julie," he went on, sadly; "Iwas, or believed I was, forgetting my fault, forgetting even _you_, whenthere came to me the news of my brother's death--by starvation. Listento
me, Julie. One day there came to me for translation a document,revealing the dreadful death of him--your husband, my brother--do youhear?--by starvation! Driven from his home by shame, he had desperatelysought to hide himself as I had--accepted the hardship ofemigration--he, a gentleman and a man of letters--with the boors andrabble of the plains, had shared their low trials and their vulgarpains, and died among them, unknown and unrecorded."

  "He died as he had lived," said Mrs. Conroy, passionately, "a traitorand a hypocrite; he died following the fortunes of his paramour, anuneducated, vulgar rustic, to whom, dying, he willed a fortune--thisgirl--Grace Conroy. Thank God, I have the record! Hush! what's that?"

  Whatever it was--a falling bough or the passing of some small animal inthe underbrush--it was past now. A dead silence enwrapped the twosolitary actors; they might have been the first man and the first woman,so encompassed were they by Nature and solitude.

  "No," she went on, hurriedly, in a lower tone, "it was the same oldstory--the story of that girl at Basle--the story of deceit andtreachery which brought us first together, which made you, Henry, myfriend, which turned our sympathies into a more dangerous passion. Youhave suffered. Ah, well, so have I. We are equal now."

  Henry Devarges looked speechlessly upon his companion. Her voicetrembled, there were tears in her eyes, that had replaced the burninglight of womanly indignation. He had come there knowing her to havebeen doubly treacherous to her husband and himself. She had not deniedit. He had come there to tax her with an infamous imposture, but hadfound himself within the last minute glowing with sympatheticcondemnation of his own brother, and ready to accept the yet unofferedand perfectly explicable theory of that imposture. More than that, hebegan to feel that his own wrongs were slight in comparison with theinjuries received by this superior woman. The woman who endeavours tojustify herself to her jealous lover, always has a powerful ally in hisown self-love, and Devarges was quite willing to believe that even if hehad lost her love, he had never at least been deceived. And the answerto the morality of this imposture was before him. Here was she marriedto the surviving brother of the girl she had personated. Had he--had Dr.Devarges ever exhibited as noble trust, as perfect appreciation of hernature and sufferings? Had they not thrown away the priceless pearl ofthis woman's love through ignorance and selfishness? You and I, my dearsir, who are not in love with this most reprehensible creature, will bequick to see the imperfect logic of Henry Devarges, but when a manconstitutes himself accuser, judge, and jury of the woman he loves, heis very apt to believe he is giving a verdict when he is only entering a_nolle prosequi_. It is probably that Mrs. Conroy had noticed thisweakness in her companion, even with her preoccupied fears of theinopportune appearance of Victor, whom she felt she could have accountedfor much better in his absence. Victor was an impulsive person, andthere are times when this quality, generally adored by a self-restrainedsex, is apt to be confounding.

  "Why did you come here to see me?" asked Mrs. Conroy, with a dangeroussmile. "Only to abuse me?"

  "There is another grant in existence for the same land that you claimas Grace Conroy or Mrs. Conroy," returned Devarges, with masculinebluntness, "a grant given prior to that made to my brother Paul. Asuspicion that some imposture has been practised is entertained by theparty holding the grant, and I have been requested to get at the facts."

  Mrs. Conroy's grey eyes lightened. "And how were these suspicionsaroused?"

  "By an anonymous letter."

  "And you have seen it?"

  "Yes; both it and the handwriting in portions of the grant areidentical."

  "And you know the hand?"

  "I do; it is that of a man now here, an old Californian--VictorRamirez!"

  He fixed his eyes upon her; unabashed she turned her own clear glance onhis, and asked, with a dazzling smile--

  "But does not your client know that, whether this grant is a forgery ornot, my husband's title is good?"

  "Yes; but the sympathies of my client, as you call _her_, are interestedin the orphan girl Grace."

  "Ah!" said Mrs. Conroy, with the faintest possible sigh, "your client,for whom you have travelled--how many miles?--is a woman."

  Half-pleased, but half-embarrassed, Devarges said "Yes."

  "I understand," said Mrs. Conroy slowly. "A young woman, perhaps a good,a _pretty_ one! And you have said, 'I will prove this Mrs. Conroy animpostor,' and you are here. Well, I do not blame you. You are a man. Itis well perhaps it is so."

  "But, Julie, hear me!" interrupted the alarmed Devarges.

  "No more!" said Mrs. Conroy, rising, and waving her thin white hand, "Ido not blame you. I could expect--I deserve--no more! Go back to yourclient, sir, tell her that you have seen Julie Devarges, the impostor.Tell her to go and press her claim, and that you will assist her. Finishthe work that the anonymous letter-writer has begun, and earn yourabsolution for your crime and my folly. Get your reward--you deserveit--but tell her to thank God for having raised up to her better friendsthan Julie Devarges ever possessed in the heyday of her beauty. Go!Farewell! No; let me go, Henry Devarges, I am going to my husband. He atleast has known how to forgive and protect a friendless and erringwoman."

  Before the astonished man could recover his senses, elusive as a sunbeamshe had slipped through his fingers and was gone. For a moment only hefollowed the flash of her white skirt through the dark aisles of theforest, and then the pillared trees, crowding in upon each other, hidher from view.

  Perhaps it was well, for a moment later Victor Ramirez, flushed,wild-eyed, dishevelled, and panting, stumbled blindly upon the trail,and blundered into Devarges' presence. The two men eyed each other insilence.

  "A hot day for a walk!" said Devarges, with an ill-concealed sneer.

  "Vengeance of God! you are right, it is," returned Victor. "And you?"

  "Oh, I have been fighting flies. Good-day!"