"When I saw you were not in the wagon and knew you were walking I slipped out to intercept you, as I had something to tell you before you saw the others. I thought you wouldn"t mind." She stopped, and suddenly hesitated.
What was this new strange shyness that seemed to droop her eyelids, her proud head, and even the slim hand that had been so impulsively and frankly outstretched towards him? And he--Paul--what was he doing?
Where was this pa.s.sionate outburst that had filled his heart for nights and days? Where this eager tumultuous questioning that his feverish lips had rehea.r.s.ed hour by hour? Where this desperate courage that would sweep the whole world away if it stood between them? Where, indeed? He was standing only a few feet from her--cold, silent, and tremulous!
She drew back a step, lifted her head with a quick toss that seemed to condense the moisture in her shining eyes, and sent what might have been a glittering dew-drop flying into the loosed tendrils of her hair.
Calm and erect again, she put her little hand to her jacket pocket.
"I only wanted you to read a letter I got yesterday," she said, taking out an envelope.
The spell was broken. Paul caught eagerly at the hand that held the letter, and would have drawn her to him; but she put him aside gravely but sweetly.
"Read that letter!"
"Tell me of YOURSELF first!" he broke out pa.s.sionately. "Why you fled from me, and why I now find you here, by the merest chance, without a word of summons from yourself, Yerba? Tell me who is with you? Are you free and your own mistress--free to act for yourself and me?
Speak, darling--don"t be cruel! Since that night I have longed for you, sought for you, and suffered for you every day and hour. Tell me if I find you the same Yerba who wrote"--
"Read that letter!"
"I care for none but the one you left me. I have read and reread it, Yerba--carried it always with me. See! I have it here!" He was in the act of withdrawing it from his breast-pocket, when she put up her hand piteously.
"Please, Paul, please--read this letter first!"
There was something in her new supplicating grace, still retaining the faintest suggestion of her old girlish archness, that struck him. He took the letter and opened it. It was from Colonel Pendleton.
Plainly, concisely, and formally, without giving the name of his authority or suggesting his interview with Mrs. Argalls, he had informed Yerba that he had doc.u.mentary testimony that she was the daughter of the late Jose de Arguello, and legally ent.i.tled to bear his name. A copy of the instructions given to his wife, recognizing Yerba Buena, the ward of the San Francisco Trust, as his child and hers, and leaving to the mother the choice of making it known to her and others, was inclosed.
Paul turned an unchanged face upon Yerba, who was watching him eagerly, uneasily, almost breathlessly.
"And you think this concerns ME!" he said bitterly. "You think only of this, when I speak of the precious letter that bade me hope, and brought me to you?"
"Paul," said the girl, with wondering eyes and hesitating lips; "do you mean to say that--that--this is--nothing to you?"
"Yes--but forgive me, darling!" he broke out again, with a sudden vague remorsefulness, as he once more sought her elusive hand. "I am a brute--an egotist! I forgot that it might be something to YOU."
"Paul," continued the girl, her voice quivering with a strange joy, "do you say that you--YOU yourself, care nothing for this?"
"Nothing," he answered, gazing at her transfigured face with admiring wonder.
"And"--more timidly, as a faint aurora kindled in her checks--"that you don"t care--that--that--I am coming to you WITH A NAME, to give you in--exchange?"
He started.
"Yerba, you are not mocking me? You will be my wife?"
She smiled, yet moving softly backwards with the grave stateliness of a vanishing yet beckoning G.o.ddess, until she reached the sumach-bush from which she had emerged. He followed. Another backward step, and it yielded to let her through; but even as it did so she caught him in her arms, and for a single moment it closed upon them both, and hid them in its glory. A still lingering song-bird, possibly convinced that he had mistaken the season, and that spring had really come, flew out with a little cry to carry the message south; but even then Paul and Yerba emerged with such innocent, childlike gravity, and, side by side, walked so composedly towards the house, that he thought better of it.
CHAPTER IX.
It was only the THIRD time they had ever met--did Paul consider that when he thought her cold? Did he know now why she had not understood him at Rosario? Did he understand now how calculating and selfish he had seemed to her that night? Could he look her in the face now--no, he must be quiet--they were so near the house, and everybody could see them!--and say that he had ever believed her capable of making up that story of the Arguellos? Could he not have guessed that she had some memory of that name in her childish recollections, how or where she knew not? Was it strange that a daughter should have an instinct of her father? Was it kind to her to know all this himself and yet reveal nothing? Because her mother and father had quarreled, and her mother had run away with somebody and left her a ward to strangers--was that to be concealed from her, and she left without a name? This, and much more, tenderly reproachful, bewildering and sweetly illogical, yet inexpressibly dear to Paul, as they walked on in the gloaming.
More to the purpose, however, the fact that Briones, as far as she knew, did not know her mother, and never before the night at Strudle Bad had ever spoken of her. Still more to the purpose, that he had disappeared after an interview with the colonel that night, and that she believed always that the colonel had bought him off. It was not with HER money. She had sometimes thought that the colonel and he were in confidence, and that was why she had lately distrusted Pendleton.
But she had refused to take the name of Arguello again after that scene, and had called herself only by the name he had given her--would he forgive her for ever speaking of it as she had?--Yerba Buena. But on shipboard, at Milly"s suggestion, and to keep away from Briones, her name had appeared on the pa.s.senger list as Miss Good, and they had come, not to New York, but Boston.
It was possible that the colonel had extracted the information he sent her FROM Briones. They had parted from Pendleton in London, as he was grumpy and queer, and, as Milly thought, becoming very miserly and avaricious as he grew older, for he was always quarreling over the hotel bills. But he had Mrs. Woods"s New York address at Under Cliff, and, of course, guessed where she was. There was no address on his letter: he had said he would write again.
Thus much until they reached the steps of the veranda, and Milly, flying down, was ostentatiously overwhelmed with the unexpected appearance of Mr. Paul Hathaway and Yerba, whom she had been watching from the window for the last ten minutes. Then the appearance of Mr.
Woods, Californian and reminiscent, and Mrs. Woods, metropolitan, languid, and forgetful, and the sudden and formal retirement of the girls. An arch and indefinable mystery in the air whenever Paul and Yerba appeared together--of which even the servants were discreetly conscious.
At dinner Mr. Woods again became retrospective and Californian, and dwelt upon the changes he had noticed. It appeared the old pioneers had in few cases attained a comfortable fortune for their old age. "I know," he added, "that your friend Colonel Pendleton has dropped a good deal of money over in Europe. Somebody told me that he actually was reduced to take a steerage pa.s.sage home. It looks as if he might gamble--it"s an old Californian complaint." As Paul, who had become suddenly grave again, did not speak, Mrs. Woods reminded them that she had always doubted the colonel"s moral principles. Old as he was, he had never got over that freedom of life and social opinion which he had imbibed in early days. For her part, she was very glad he had not returned from Europe with the girls, though, of course, the presence of Don Caesar and his sister during their European sojourn was a corrective. As Paul"s face grew darker during this languid criticism, Yerba, who had been watching it with a new and absorbing sympathy, seized the first moment when they left the table to interrogate him with heartbreaking eyes.
"You don"t think, Paul, that the colonel is really poor?"
"G.o.d only knows," said Paul. "I tremble to think how that scoundrel may have bled him."
"And all for me! Paul, dear, you know you were saying in the woods that you would never, never touch my money. What"--exultingly--"if we gave it to him?"
What answer Paul made did not transpire, for it seemed to have been indicated by an interval of profound silence.
But the next morning, as he and Mr. Woods were closeted in the library, Yerba broke in upon them with a pathetic face and a telegram in her hand. "Oh, Paul--Mr. Hathaway--IT"S TRUE!"
Paul seized the telegram quickly: it had no signature, only the line: "Colonel Pendleton is dangerously ill at St. John"s Hospital."
"I must go at once," said Paul, rising.
"Oh, Paul"--imploringly---"let me go with you! I should never forgive myself if--AND IT"S ADDRESSED TO ME, and what would he think if I didn"t come?"
Paul hesitated. "Mrs. Woods will let Milly go with us and she can stay at the hotel. Say yes," she continued, seeking his eyes eagerly.
He consented, and in half an hour they were in the train for New York.
Leaving Milly at the hotel, ostensibly in deference to the Woods"s prejudices, but really to save the presence of a third party at this meeting, Paul drove with Yerba rapidly to the hospital. They were admitted to an anteroom. The house surgeon received them respectfully, but doubtingly. The patient was a little better this morning, but very weak. There was a lady now with him--a member of a religious and charitable guild, who had taken the greatest interest in him--indeed, she had wished to take him to her own home--but he had declined at first, and now he was too weak to be removed.
"But I received this telegram: it must have been sent at his request,"
protested Yerba.
The house surgeon looked at the beautiful face. He was mortal. He would see if the patient was able to stand another interview; possibly the regular visitor might withdraw.
When he had gone, an attendant volunteered the information that the old gentleman was perhaps a little excited at times. He was a wonderful man; he had seen a great deal; he talked much of California and the early days; he was very interesting. Ah, it would be all right now if the doctor found him well enough, for the lady was already going--that was she, coming through the hall.
She came slowly towards them--erect, gray, grim--a still handsome apparition. Paul started. To his horror, Yerba ran impulsively forward, and said eagerly: "Is he better? Can he see us now?"
The woman halted an instant, seemed to gather the prayer-book and reticule she was carrying closer to her breast, but was otherwise unchanged. Replying to Paul rather than the young girl, she said rigidly: "The patient is able to see Mr. Hathaway and Miss Yerba Buena," and pa.s.sed slowly on. But as she reached the door she unloosed her black mourning veil from her bonnet, and seemed to drop it across her face with the gesture that Paul remembered she had used twelve years ago.
"She frightens me!" said Yerba, turning a suddenly startled face on Paul. "Oh, Paul, I hope it isn"t an omen, but she looked like some one from the grave!"
"Hush!" said Paul, turning away a face that was whiter than her own.
"They are coming now."