Book: A Ward of the Golden Gate

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"Pardon me. We will leave this room TOGETHER in an hour for the
station. We will board the night express that will take us in
three hours beyond the frontier, where we can each find a friend."

"But my affairs here--my sister--I must see her."

"You shall write a note to her at that table, saying that important
business--a dispatch--has called you away, and we will leave it
with the porter to be delivered IN THE MORNING. Or--I do not
restrict you--you can say what you like, provided she don't get it
until we have left."

"And you make of me a prisoner, sir?"

"No; a visitor, Don Caesar--a visitor whose conversation is so
interesting that I am forced to detain him to hear more. You can
pass the time pleasantly by finishing the story I was obliged to
interrupt a moment ago. Do you know this mother of Miss Yerba, of
whom you spoke?"

"That's m--my affair."

"That means you don't know her. If you did, you'd have had her
within call. And, as she is the only person who is able to say
that Miss Yerba is NOT an Arguello, you have been very remiss."

"Ah, bah! I am not one of your--a--lawyers."

"No; or you would know that, with no better evidence than you have,
you might be sued for slander."

"Ah! Why does not Miss Yerba sue, then?"

"Because she probably expects that somebody will shoot you."

"As YOU for instance?"

"Perhaps."

"And if you do NOT--eh?--you have not stop my mouth, but your own.
And if you DO, you help her to marry the Baron, your rival. You
are not wise, friend Hathaway."

"May I remind you that you have not yet written to your sister, and
you may prefer to do it carefully and deliberately?"

Don Caesar arose with a vindictive glance at Paul, and pulled a
chair before the table, as the latter placed pen, ink, and paper
before him. "Take your time," he added, folding his arms and
walking towards the window. "Say what you like, and don't let my
presence restrain you."

The Mexican began to write furiously, then spasmodically, then
slowly and reluctantly. "I war-r-n you, I shall expose all," he
said suddenly.

"As you please."

"And shall say that if I disappear, you are my murderer--you
understand--my MURDERER!"

"Don't consult me on a question of epithets, but go on."

Don Caesar recommenced his writing with a malign smile. There was
a sudden sharp rap at the door.

Don Caesar leaped to his feet, grasped his papers, and rushed to
the door; but Paul was before him. "Who is there?" he demanded.

"Pendleton."

At the sound of the colonel's voice Don Caesar fell back. Paul
opened the door, admitted the tall figure of the colonel, and was
about to turn the key again. But Pendleton lifted his hand in grim
deprecation.

"That will do, Mr. Hathaway. I know all. But I wish to speak with
Briones elsewhere, alone."

"Excuse me, Colonel Pendleton," said Paul firmly, "but I have the
prior claim. Words have passed between this gentleman and myself
which we are now on our way to the station and the frontier to
settle. If you are willing to accompany us, I shall give you every
opportunity to converse with him alone, and arrange whatever
business you may have with him, provided it does not interfere with
mine."

"My business," said Pendleton, "is of a personal nature, that will
not interfere with any claim of yours that Mr. Briones may choose
to admit, but is of a private quality that must be transacted
between us now." His face was pale, and his voice, although steady
and self-controlled, had that same strange suggestion of sudden age
in it which Paul had before noticed. Whether Don Caesar detected
it, or whether he had some other instinctive appreciation of
greater security, Paul could not tell. He seemed to recover his
swagger again, as he said,--

"I shall hear what Colonel Pendleton has to say first. But I shall
hold myself in readiness to meet you afterwards--you shall not
fear, sir!"

Paul remained looking from the one to the other without speaking.
It was Don Caesar who returned his glance boldly and defiantly,
Colonel Pendleton who, with thin white fingers pulling his
moustache, evaded it. Then Paul unlocked the door, and said
slowly, "In five minutes I leave this house for the station. I
shall wait there until the train arrives. If this gentleman does
not join me, I shall be better able to understand all this and take
measures accordingly."

"And I tell to you, Meester Hathaway, sir," said Don Caesar,
striking an attitude in the doorway, "you shall do as I please--
Caramba!--and shall beg"--

"Hold your tongue, sir--or, by the Eternal!"--burst out Pendleton
suddenly, bringing down his thin hand on the Mexican's shoulder.
He stopped as suddenly. "Gentlemen, this is childish. Go, sir!"
to Don Caesar, pointing with a gaunt white finger into the darkened
hall. "I will follow you. Mr. Hathaway, as an older man, and one
who has seen a good deal of foolish altercation, I regret, sir,
deeply regret, to be a witness to this belligerent quality in a
law-maker and a public man; and I must deprecate, sir--deprecate,
your demand on that gentleman for what, in the folly of youth, you
are pleased to call personal satisfaction."

As he moved with dignity out of the room, Paul remained blankly
staring after him. Was it all a dream?--or was this Colonel
Pendleton the duelist? Had the old man gone crazy, or was he
merely acting to veil some wild purpose? His sudden arrival showed
that Yerba must have sent for him and told him of Don Caesar's
threats; would he be wild enough to attempt to strangle the man in
some remote room or in the darkness of the passage? He stepped
softly into the hall: he could still hear the double tread of the
two men: they had reached the staircase--they were DESCENDING! He
heard the drowsy accents of the night porter and the swinging of
the door--they were in the street!

Wherever they were going, or for what purpose, HE must be at the
station, as he had warned them he would be. He hastily threw a few
things into his valise, and prepared to follow them. When he went
downstairs he informed the porter that owing to an urgent call of
business he should try to catch the through express at three
o'clock, but they must retain his room and luggage until they heard
from him. He remembered Don Caesar's letter. Had either of the
gentlemen, his friends who had just gone out, left a letter or
message? No, Excellency; the gentlemen were talking earnestly--he
believed, in the South American language--and had not spoken to
him.

Perhaps it was this that reminded Paul, as he crossed the square
again, that he had made no preparation for any possible fatal issue
to himself in this adventure. SHE would know it, however, and why
he had undertaken it. He tried to think that perhaps some interest
in himself had prompted her to send the colonel to him. Yet,
mingled with this was an odd sense of a certain ridiculousness in
his position: there was the absurdity of his prospective antagonist
being even now in confidential consultation with his own friend and
ally, whose functions he had usurped, and in whose interests he was
about to risk his life. And as he walked away through the silent
streets, the conviction more than once was forced upon him that he
was going to an appointment that would not be kept.

He reached the station some ten minutes before the train was due.
Two or three half-drowsy, wrapped-up passengers were already on the
platform; but neither Don Caesar nor Colonel Pendleton was among
them. He explored the waiting-rooms and even the half-lit buffet,
but with no better success. Telling the Bahnhof Inspector that his
passage was only contingent upon the arrival of one or two
companions, and describing them minutely to prevent mistakes, he
began gloomily to pace before the ticket-office. Five minutes
passed--the number of passengers did not increase; ten minutes; a
distant shriek--the hoarse inquiry of the inspector--had the Herr's
companions yet gekommt? the sudden glare of a Cyclopean eye in the
darkness, the ongliding of the long-jointed and gleaming spotted
serpent, the train--a hurried glance around the platform, one or
two guttural orders, the slamming of doors, the remounting of black
uniformed figures like caryatides along the marchepieds, a puff of
vapor, and the train had come and gone without them.

Yet he would give his adversary fifteen minutes more to allow for
accident or delay, or the possible arrival of the colonel with an
explanation, and recommenced his gloomy pacing, as the Bahnhof sank
back into half-lit repose. At the end of five minutes there was
another shriek. Paul turned quickly to the inspector. Ah, then,
there was another train? No; it was only the up express for Basle,
going the other way and stopping at the Nord Station, half a mile
away. It would not stop here, but the Herr would see it pass in a
few moments at full speed.

It came presently, with a prolonged despairing shriek, out of the
darkness; a flash, a rush and roar at his side, a plunge into the
darkness again with the same despairing cry; a flutter of something
white from one of the windows, like a loosened curtain, that at
last seemed to detach itself, and, after a wild attempt to follow,
suddenly soared aloft, whirled over and over, dropped, and drifted
slowly, slantwise, to the ground.

The inspector had seen it, ran down the line, and picked it up.
Then he returned with it to Paul with a look of sympathizing
concern. It was a lady's handkerchief, evidently some signal waved
to the well-born Herr, who was the only passenger on the platform.
So, possibly, it might be from his friends, who by some stupid
mischance had gone to the wrong station, and--Gott im Himmel!--it
was hideously stupid, yet possible, got on the wrong train!

The Herr, a little pale, but composed, thought it WAS possible.
No; he would not telegraph to the next station--not yet--he would
inquire.

He walked quickly away, reaching the hotel breathlessly, yet in a
space that seemed all too brief for his disconnected thought.
There were signs of animation in the hall, and an empty carriage
was just reentering the courtyard. The hall-porter met him with
demonstrative concern and apology. Ah! if he had only understood
his Excellency better, he could have saved him all this trouble.
Evidently his Excellency was going with the Arguello party, who had
ordered a carriage, doubtless, for the same important journey, an
hour before, yet had left only a few moments after his Excellency,
and his Excellency, it would appear, had gone to the wrong station.

Paul pushed hurriedly past the man and ascended to his room. Both
windows were open, and in the faint moonlight he could see that
something white was pinned to his pillow. With nervous fingers he
relit his candles, and found it was a note in Yerba's handwriting.
As he opened it, a tiny spray of the vine that had grown on the
crumbling wall fell at his feet. He picked it up, pressed it to
his lips, and read, with dim eyes, as follows:--


"You know now why I spoke to you as I did to-day, and why the other
half of this precious spray is the only memory I care to carry with
me out of this crumbling ruin of all my hopes. You were right,
Paul: my taking you there WAS AN OMEN--not to you, who can never be
anything but proud, beloved, and true--but to ME of all the shame
and misery. Thank you for all you have done--for all you would do,
my friend, and don't think me ungrateful, only because I am
unworthy of it. Try to forgive me, but don't forget me, even if
you must hate me. Perhaps, if you knew all--you might still love a
little the poor girl to whom you have already given the only name
she can ever take from you--YERBA BUENA!



CHAPTER VII.


It was already autumn, and in the city of New York an early Sunday
morning breeze was sweeping up the leaves that had fallen from the
regularly planted ailantus trees before the brown-stone frontage of
a row of monotonously alike five-storied houses on one of the
principal avenues. The Pastor of the Third Presbyterian Church,
that uplifted its double towers on the corner, stopped before one
of these dwellings, ran up the dozen broad steps, and rang the
bell. He was presently admittted to the sombre richness of a hall
and drawing-room with high-backed furniture of dark carved woods,
like cathedral stalls, and, hat in hand, somewhat impatiently
awaited the arrival of his hostess and parishioner. The door
opened to a tall, white-haired woman in lustreless black silk. She
was regular and resolute in features, of fine but unbending
presence, and, though somewhat past middle age, showed no signs of
either the weakness or mellowness of years.

"I am sorry to disturb your Sabbath morning meditations, Sister
Argalls, nor would I if it were not in the line of Christian duty;
but Sister Robbins is unable today to make her usual Sabbath
hospital visit, and I thought if you were excused from the Foreign
Missionary class and Bible instruction at three you might undertake
her functions. I know, my dear old friend," he continued, with
bland deprecation of her hard-set eyes, "how distasteful this
promiscuous mingling with the rough and ungodly has always been to
you, and how reluctant you are to be placed in the position of
being liable to hear coarse, vulgar, or irreverent speech. I
think, too, in our long and pleasant pastoral relations, you have
always found me mindful of it. I admit I have sometimes regretted
that your late husband had not more generally familiarized you with
the ways of the world. But so it is--we all have our weaknesses.
If not one thing, another. And as Envy and Uncharitableness
sometimes find their way in even Christian hearts, I should like
you to undertake this office for the sake of example. There are
some, dear Sister Argalls, who think that the rich widow who is
most liberal in the endowment of the goods that Providence has
intrusted to her hands claims therefore to be exempt from labor in
the Christian vineyard. Let us teach them how unjust they are."

"I am willing," said the lady, with a dry, determined air. "I
suppose these patients are not professedly bad characters?"

"By no means. A few, perhaps; but the majority are unfortunates--
dependent either upon public charity or some small provision made
by their friends."

"Very well."

"And you understand that though they have the privilege of
rejecting your Christian ministrations, dear Sister Argalls, you
are free to judge when you may be patient or importunate with
them?"

"I understand."

The Pastor was not an unkindly man, and, as he glanced at the
uncompromising look in Mrs. Argalls's eyes, felt for a moment some
inconsistency between his humane instincts and his Christian duty.
"Some of them may require, and be benefited by, a stern monitress,
and Sister Robbins, I fear, was weak," he said consolingly to
himself, as he descended the steps again.

At three o'clock Mrs. Argalls, with a reticule and a few tracts,
was at the door of St. John's Hospital. As she displayed her
testimonials and announced that she had taken Mrs. Robbins's place,
the officials received her respectfully, and gave some instructions
to the attendants, which, however, did not stop some individual
comments.

"I say, Jim, it doesn't seem the square thing to let that grim old
girl loose among them poor convalescents."

"Well, I don't know: they say she's rich and gives a lot o' money
away, but if she tackles that swearing old Kentuckian in No. 3,
she'll have her hands full."

However, the criticism was scarcely fair, for Mrs. Argalls,
although moving rigidly along from bed to bed of the ward, equipped
with a certain formula of phrases, nevertheless dropped from time
to time some practical common-sense questions that showed an almost
masculine intuition of the patients' needs and requirements. Nor
did she betray any of that over-sensitive shrinking from coarseness
which the good Pastor had feared, albeit she was quick to correct
its exhibition. The languid men listened to her with half-
aggressive, half-amused interest, and some of the satisfaction of
taking a bitter but wholesome tonic. It was not until she reached
the bed at the farther end of the ward that she seemed to meet with
any check.

It was occupied by a haggard man, with a long white moustache and
features that seemed wasted by inward struggle and fever. At the
first sound of her voice he turned quickly towards her, lifted
himself on his elbow, and gazed fixedly in her face.

"Kate Howard--by the Eternal!" he said, in a low voice.

Despite her rigid self-possession the woman started, glanced
hurriedly around, and drew nearer to him.

"Pendleton!" she said, in an equally suppressed voice, "What, in
God's name, are you doing here?"

"Dying, I reckon--sooner or later," he said grimly, "that's what
they do here."

"But--what," she went on hurriedly, still glancing over her
shoulder as if she suspected some trick--"what has brought you to
this?"

"YOU!" said the colonel, dropping back exhaustedly on his pillow.
"You and your daughter."

"I don't understand you," she said quickly, yet regarding him with
stern rigidity. "You know perfectly well I have NO daughter. You
know perfectly well that I've kept the word I gave you ten years
ago, and that I have been dead to her as she has been to me."

"I know," said the colonel, "that within the last three months I
have paid away my last cent to keep the mouth of an infernal
scoundrel shut who KNOWS that you are her mother, and threatens to
expose her to her friends. I know that I'm dying here of an old
wound that I got when I shut the mouth of another hound who was
ready to bark at her two years after you disappeared. I know that
between you and her I've let my old nigger die of a broken heart,
because I couldn't keep him to suffer with me, and I know that I'm
here a pauper on the State. I know that, Kate, and when I say it I
don't regret it. I've kept my word to YOU, and, by the Eternal,
your daughter's worth it! For if there ever was a fair and
peerless creature--it's your child!"

"And she--a rich woman--unless she squandered the fortune I gave
her--lets you lie here!" said the woman grimly.

"She don't know it."

"She SHOULD know it! Have you quarreled?" She was looking at him
keenly.

"She distrusts me, because she half suspects the secret, and I
hadn't the heart to tell her all."

"All? What does she know? What does this man know? What has been
told her?" she said rapidly.

"She only knows that the name she has taken she has no right to."

"Right to? Why, it was written on the Trust--Yerba Buena."

"No, not that. She thought it was a mistake. She took the name of
Arguello."

"What?" said Mrs. Argalls, suddenly grasping the invalid's wrist
with both hands. "What name?" her eyes were startled from their
rigid coldness, her lips were colorless.

"Arguello! It was some foolish schoolgirl fancy which that hound
helped to foster in her. Why--what's the matter, Kate?"

The woman dropped the helpless man's wrist, then, with an effort,
recovered herself sufficiently to rise, and, with an air of
increased decorum, as if the spiritual character of their interview
excluded worldly intrusion, adjusted the screen around his bed, so
as partly to hide her own face and Pendleton's. Then, dropping
into the chair beside him, she said, in her old voice, from which
the burden of ten long years seemed to have been lifted,--

"Harry, what's that you're playing on me?"

"I don't understand you," said Pendleton amazedly.

"Do you mean to say you don't know it, and didn't tell her
yourself?" she said curtly.

"What? Tell her what?" he repeated impatiently.

"That Arguello WAS her father!"

"Her father?" He tried to struggle to his elbow again, but she
laid her hand masterfully upon his shoulder and forced him back.
"Her father!" he repeated hurriedly. "Jose Arguello! Great God!--
are you sure?"

Quietly and yet mechanically gathering the scattered tracts from
the coverlet, and putting them back, one by one in her reticule,
she closed it and her lips with a snap as she uttered--"Yes."

Pendleton remained staring at her silently, "Yes," he muttered, "it
may have been some instinct of the child's, or some diabolical
fancy of Briones'. But," he said bitterly, "true or not, she has
no right to his name."

"And I say she HAS."

She had risen to her feet, with her arms folded across her breast,
in an attitude of such Puritan composure that the distant
spectators might have thought she was delivering an exordium to the
prostrate man.

"I met Jose Arguello, for the second time, in New Orleans," she
said slowly, "eight years ago. He was still rich, but ruined in
health by dissipation. I was tired of my way of life. He proposed
that I should marry him to take care of him and legitimatize our
child. I was forced to tell him what I had done with her, and that
the Trust could not be disturbed until she was of age and her own
mistress. He assented. We married, but he died within a year. He
died, leaving with me his acknowledgment of her as his child, and
the right to claim her if I chose."

"And?"--interrupted the colonel with sparkling eyes.

"I DON'T CHOOSE.

"Hear me!" she continued firmly. "With his name and my own
mistress, and the girl, as I believed, properly provided for and
ignorant of my existence, I saw no necessity for reopening the
past. I resolved to lead a new life as his widow. I came north.
In the little New England town where I first stopped, the country
people contracted my name to Mrs. Argalls. I let it stand so. I
came to New York and entered the service of the Lord and the bonds
of the Church, Henry Pendleton, as Mrs. Argalls, and have remained
so ever since."

"But you would not object to Yerba knowing that you lived, and
rightly bore her father's name?" said Pendleton eagerly.

The woman looked at him with compressed lips. "I should. I have
buried all my past, and all its consequences. Let me not seek to
reopen it or recall them."

"But if you knew that she was as proud as yourself, and that this
very uncertainty as to her name and parentage, although she has
never known the whole truth, kept her from taking the name and
becoming the wife of a man whom she loves?"

"Whom she loves!"

"Yes; one of her guardians---Hathaway--to whom you intrusted her
when she was a child."

"Paul Hathaway--but HE knew it."

"Yes. But SHE does not know he does. He has kept the secret
faithfully, even when she refused him."

She was silent for a moment, and then said,--

"So be it. I consent."

"And you'll write to her?" said the colonel eagerly.

"No. But YOU may, and if you want them I will furnish you with
such proofs as you may require."

"Thank you." He held out his hand with such a happy yet childish
gratitude upon his worn face that her own trembled slightly as she
took it. "Good-by!"

"I shall see you soon," she said.

"I shall be here," he said grimly.

"I think not," she returned, with the first relaxation of her
smileless face, and moved away.

As she passed out she asked to see the house surgeon. How soon did
he think the patient she had been conversing with could be removed
from the hospital with safety? Did Mrs. Argalls mean "far?" Mrs.
Argalls meant as far as THAT--tendering her card and eminently
respectable address. Ah!--perhaps in a week. Not before? Perhaps
before, unless complications ensued; the patient had been much run
down physically, though, as Mrs. Argalls had probably noticed, he
was singularly strong in nervous will force. Mrs. Argalls HAD
noticed it, and considered it an extraordinary case of conviction--
worthy of the closest watching and care. When he was able to be
moved she would send her own carriage and her own physician to
superintend his transfer. In the mean time he was to want for
nothing. Certainly, he had given very little trouble, and, in
fact, wanted very little. Just now he had only asked for paper,
pens, and ink.


CHAPTER VIII.


As Mrs. Argalls's carriage rolled into Fifth Avenue, it for a
moment narrowly grazed another carriage, loaded with luggage,
driving up to a hotel. The abstracted traveler within it was Paul
Hathaway, who had returned from Europe that morning.

Paul entered the hotel, and, going to the register mechanically,
turned its leaves for the previous arrivals, with the same hopeless
patience that had for the last six weeks accompanied this habitual
preliminary performance on his arrival at the principal European
hotels. For he had lost all trace of Yerba, Pendleton, Milly, and
the Briones from the day of their departure. The entire party
seemed to have separated at Basle, and, in that eight-hours' start
they had of him, to have disappeared to the four cardinal points.
He had lingered a few days in London to transact some business; he
would linger a few days longer in New York before returning to San
Francisco.

The daily papers already contained his name in the list of the
steamer passengers who arrived that morning. It might meet HER
eye, although he had been haunted during the voyage by a terrible
fancy that she was still in Europe, and had either hidden herself
in some obscure provincial town with the half-crazy Pendleton, or
had entered a convent, or even, in reckless despair, had accepted
the name and title of some penniless nobleman. It was this
miserable doubt that had made his homeward journey at times seem
like a cruel desertion of her, while at other moments the
conviction that Milly's Californian relatives might give him some
clew to her whereabouts made him feverishly fearful of delaying an
hour on his way to San Francisco. He did not believe that she had
tolerated the company of Briones a single moment after the scene at
the Bad Hof, and yet he had no confidence in the colonel's attitude
towards the Mexican. Hopeless of the future as her letter seemed,
still its naive and tacit confession of her feelings at the moment
was all that sustained him.

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