Book: A Ward of the Golden Gate

B >> Bret Harte >> A Ward of the Golden Gate




"I think, too," continued Mrs. Woods, "she has worried foolishly
about this ridiculous mystery of her parentage--as if it could make
the slightest difference to a girl with a quarter of a million, or
as if that didn't show quite conclusively that she WAS somebody!"

"Certainly," said Paul, quickly, with a relief that he nevertheless
felt was ridiculous.

"And, of course, I dare say it will all come out when she is of
age. I suppose you know if any of the family are still living?"

"I really do not."

"I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Woods, with a smile. "I forgot it's
a profound secret until then. But here we are at the house; I see
the girls have walked over to our neighbors'. Perhaps you would
like to have a few moments to yourself before you dress for dinner,
and your portmanteau, which has been sent for, comes from your
hotel. You must be tired of seeing so many people."

Paul was glad to accept any excuse for being alone, and, thanking
his hostess, followed a servant to his room--a low-ceilinged but
luxuriously furnished apartment on the first floor. Here he threw
himself on a cushioned lounge that filled the angle of the deep
embrasure--the thickness of the old adobe walls--that formed a part
of the wooden-latticed window. A Cape jessamine climbing beside it
filled the room with its subtle, intoxicating perfume. It was so
strong, and he felt himself so irresistibly overpowered and
impelled towards a merely idle reverie, that, in order to think
more clearly and shut out some strange and unreasoning enthrallment
of his senses, he rose and sharply closed the window. Then he sat
down and reflected.

What was he doing here? and what was the meaning of all this? He
had come simply to fulfill a duty to his past, and please a
helpless and misunderstood old acquaintance. He had performed that
duty. But he had incidentally learned a certain fact that might be
important to this friend, and clearly his duty was simply to go
back and report it. He would gain nothing more in the way of
corroboration of it by staying now, if further corroboration were
required. Colonel Pendleton had already been uselessly and
absurdly perplexed about the possible discovery of the girl's
parentage, and its effect upon her fortunes and herself. She had
just settled that of her own accord, and, without committing
herself or others, had suggested a really sensible plan by which
all trouble would be avoided in future. That was the common-sense
way of looking at it. He would lay the plan before the colonel,
have him judge of its expediency and its ethics--and even the
question whether she already knew the real truth, or was self-
deceived. That done, he would return to his own affairs in
Sacramento. There was nothing difficult in this, or that need
worry him, only he could have done it just as well an hour ago.

He opened the window again. The scent of the jessamine came in as
before, but mingled with the cooler breath of the roses. There was
nothing intoxicating or unreal in it now; rather it seemed a gentle
aromatic stimulant--of thought. Long shadows of unseen poplars
beyond barred the garden lanes and alleys with bands of black and
yellow. A slanting pencil of sunshine through the trees was for a
moment focussed on a bed of waxen callas before a hedge of
ceanothus, and struck into dazzling relief the cold white chalices
of the flowers and the vivid shining green of their background.
Presently it slid beyond to a tiny fountain, before invisible, and
wrought a blinding miracle out of its flashing and leaping spray.
Yet even as he gazed the fountain seemed to vanish slowly, the
sunbeam slipped on, and beyond it moved the shimmer of white and
yellow dresses. It was Yerba and Milly returning to the house.
Well, he would not interrupt his reflections by idly watching them;
he would, probably, see a great deal of Yerba that evening, and by
that time he would have come to some conclusion in regard to her.

But he had not taken into consideration her voice, which, always
musical in its Southern intonation and quite audible in the quiet
garden, struck him now as being full of joyous sweetness. Well,
she was certainly very happy--or very thoughtless. She was
actually romping with Milly, and was now evidently being chased
down the rose-alley by that volatile young woman. Then these swift
Camillas apparently neared the house, there was the rapid rustle of
skirts, the skurrying of little feet on the veranda, a stumble, a
mouse-like shriek from Milly, and HER voice, exhausted, dying,
happy, broken with half-hushed laughter, rose to him on the breath
of the jessamine and rose.

Surely she WAS a child, and, if a child, how he had misjudged her!
What if all that he had believed was mature deliberation was only
the innocent imaginings of a romantic girl, all that he had taken
seriously only a school-girl's foolish dream! Instead of combating
it, instead of reasoning with her, instead of trying to interest
her in other things, he had even helped on her illusions. He had
treated her as if the taint of her mother's worldliness and
knowledge of evil was in her pure young flesh. He had recognized
her as the daughter of an adventuress, and not as his ward,
appealing to his chivalry through her very ignorance--it might be
her very childish vanity. He had brought to a question of tender
and pathetic interest only his selfish opinion of the world and the
weaknesses of mankind. The blood came to his cheeks--with all his
experienced self-control, he had not lost the youthful trick of
blushing--and he turned away from the window as if it had breathed
a reproach.

But ought he have even contented himself with destroying her
illusions--ought he not have gone farther and told her the whole
truth? Ought he not first have won her confidence--he remembered
bitterly, now, how she had intimated that she had no one to confide
in--and, after revealing her mother's history, have still pledged
himself to keep the secret from all others, and assisted her in her
plan? It would not have altered the state of affairs, except so
far as she was concerned; they could have combined together; his
ready wit would have helped him; and his sympathy would have
sustained her; but--

How and in what way could he have told her? Leaving out the
delicate and difficult periphrase by which her mother's shame would
have to be explained to an innocent school-girl--what right could
he have assumed to tell it? As the guardian who had never
counseled or protected her? As an acquaintance of hardly an hour
ago? Who would have such a right? A lover--on whose lips it would
only seem a tacit appeal to her gratitude or her fears, and whom no
sensitive girl could accept thereafter? No. A husband? Yes! He
remembered, with a sudden start, what Pendleton had said to him.
Good Heavens! Had Pendleton that idea in his mind? And yet--it
seemed the only solution.

A knock at his door was followed by the appearance of Mr. Woods.
Mr. Hathaway's portmanteau had come, and Mrs. Woods had sent a
message, saying that in view of the limited time that Mr. Hathaway
would have with his ward, Mrs. Woods would forego her right to keep
him at her side at dinner, and yield her place to Yerba. Paul
thanked him with a grave inward smile. What if he made his
dramatic disclosure to her confidentially over the soup and fish?
Yet, in his constantly recurring conviction of the girl's
independence, he made no doubt she would have met his brutality
with unflinching pride and self-possession. He began to dress
slowly, at times almost forgetting himself in a new kind of
pleasant apathy, which he attributed to the odor of the flowers,
and the softer hush of twilight that had come on with the dying
away of the trade winds, and the restful spice of the bay-trees
near his window. He presently found himself not so much thinking
of Yerba as of SEEING her. A picture of her in the summer-house
caressing her cheek with the roses seemed to stand out from the
shadows of the blank wall opposite him. When he passed into the
dressing-room beyond, it was not his own face he saw in the glass,
but hers. It was with a start, as if he had heard HER voice, that
he found upon his dressing-table a small vase containing a flower
for his coat, with the penciled words on a card in a school-girl's
hand, "From Yerba, with thanks for staying." It must have been
placed there by a servant while he was musing at the window.

Half a dozen people were already in the drawing-room when Paul
descended. It appeared that Mr. Woods had invited certain of his
neighbors--among them a Judge Baker and his wife, and Don Caesar
Briones, of the adjacent Rancho of Los Pajaros, and his sister, the
Dona Anna. Milly and Yerba had not yet appeared. Don Caesar, a
young man of a toreador build, roundly bland in face and murky in
eye, seemed to notice their absence, and kept his glances towards
the door, while Paul engaged in conversation with Dona Anna--if
that word could convey an impression of a conventionality which
that good-humored young lady converted into an animated flirtation
at the second sentence with a single glance and two shakes of her
fan. And then Milly fluttered in--a vision of school-girl
freshness and white tulle, and a moment later--with a pause of
expectation--a tall, graceful figure, that at first Paul scarcely
recognized.

It is a popular conceit of our sex that we are superior to any
effect of feminine adornment, and that a pretty girl is equally
pretty in the simplest frock. Yet there was not a man in the room
who did not believe that Yerba in her present attire was not only
far prettier than before, but that she indicated a new and more
delicate form of beauty. It was not the mere revelation of contour
and color of an ordinary decollete dress, it was a perfect
presentment of pure symmetry and carriage. In this black grenadine
dress, trimmed with jet, not only was the delicate satin sheen of
her skin made clearer by contrast, but she looked every inch her
full height, with an ideal exaltation of breeding and culture. She
wore no jewelry except a small necklace of pearls--so small it
might have been a child's--that fitted her slender throat so
tightly that it could scarcely be told from the flesh that it
clasped. Paul did not know that it was the gift of the mother to
the child that she had forsworn only a few weeks before she parted
from her forever; but he had a vague feeling that, in that sable
dress that seemed like mourning, she walked at the funeral of her
mother's past. A few white flowers in her corsage, the companions
of the solitary one in his button-hole, were the only relief.

Their eyes met for a single moment, the look of admiration in
Paul's being answered by the naive consciousness in Yerba's of a
woman looking her best; but the next moment she appeared
preoccupied with the others, and the eager advances of Don Caesar.

"Your brother seems to admire Miss Yerba," said Paul.

"Ah, ye--es," returned Dona Anna. "And you?"

"Oh!" said Paul, gayly, "I? I am her guardian--with me it is
simple egotism, you know."

"Ah!" returned the arch Dona Anna, "you are then already SO certain
of her? Good! I shall warn him."

A precaution that did seem necessary; as later, when Paul, at a
signal from his hostess, offered his arm to Yerba, the young
Spaniard regarded him with a look of startled curiosity.

"I thank you for selecting me to wear your colors," said Paul with
a glance at the flowers in her corsage, as they sat at table, "and
I think I deserve them, since, but for you, I should have been on
my way to San Francisco at this moment. Shall I have an
opportunity of talking to you a few minutes later in the evening?"
he added, in a lower tone.

"Why not now?" returned Yerba, mischievously. "We are set here
expressly for that purpose."

"Surely not to talk of our own business--I should say, of our
FAMILY affairs," said Paul, looking at her with equal playfulness;
"though I believe your friend Don Caesar, opposite, would be more
pleased if he were sure that was all we did."

"And you think his sister would share in that pleasure?" retorted
Yerba. "I warn you, Mr. Hathaway, that you have been quite
justifying the Reverend Mother's doubts about your venerable
pretensions. Everybody is staring at you now."

Paul looked up mechanically. It was true. Whether from some
occult sympathy, from a human tendency to admire obvious fitness
and symmetry, or the innocent love with which the world regards
innocent lovers, they were all observing Yerba and himself with
undisguised attention. A good talker, he quickly led the
conversation to other topics. It was then that he discovered that
Yerba was not only accomplished, but that this convent-bred girl
had acquired a singular breadth of knowledge apart from the
ordinary routine of the school curriculum. She spoke and thought
with independent perceptions and clearness, yet without the
tactlessness and masculine abruptness that is apt to detract from
feminine originality of reflection. By some tacit understanding
that had the charm of mutual confidence, they both exerted
themselves to please the company rather than each other, and Paul,
in the interchange of sallies with Dona Anna, had a certain
pleasure in hearing Yerba converse in Spanish with Don Caesar. But
in a few moments he observed, with some uneasiness, that they were
talking of the old Spanish occupation, and presently of the old
Spanish families. Would she prematurely expose an ignorance that
might be hereafter remembered against her, or invite some dreadful
genealogical reminiscence that would destroy her hopes and raze her
Spanish castles? Or was she simply collecting information? He
admired the dexterity with which, without committing herself, she
made Don Caesar openly and even confidentially communicative. And
yet he was on thorns; at times it seemed as if he himself were
playing a part in this imposture of Yerba's. He was aware that his
wandering attention was noticed by the quick-witted Dona Anna, when
he regained his self-possession by what appeared to be a happy
diversion. It was the voice of Mrs. Judge Baker calling across the
table to Yerba. By one of the peculiar accidents of general
conversation, it was the one apparently trivial remark that in a
pause challenged the ears of all.

"We were admiring your necklace, Miss Yerba."

Every eye was turned upon the slender throat of the handsome girl.
The excuse was so natural.

Yerba put her hand to her neck with a smile. "You are joking, Mrs.
Baker. I know it is ridiculously small, but it is a child's
necklace, and I wear it because it was a gift from my mother."

Paul's heart sank again with consternation. It was the first time
he had heard the girl distinctly connect herself with her actual
mother, and for an instant he felt as startled as if the forgotten
Outcast herself had returned and taken a seat at the board.

"I told you it couldn't be so?" remarked Mrs. Baker, to her
husband.

Everybody naturally looked inquiringly upon the couple, and Mrs.
Baker explained with a smile: "Bob thinks he's seen it before; men
are so obstinate."

"Pardon me, Miss Yerba," said the Judge, blandly, "would you mind
showing it to me, if it is not too much trouble?"

"Not at all," said Yerba, smiling, and detaching the circlet from
her neck. "I'm afraid you'll find it rather old-fashioned."

"That's just what I hope to find it," said Judge Baker, with a
triumphant glance at his wife. "It was eight years ago when I saw
it in Tucker's jewelry shop. I wanted to buy it for my little
Minnie, but as the price was steep I hesitated, and when I did make
up my mind he had disposed of it to another customer. Yes," he
added, examining the necklace which Yerba had handed to him. "I am
certain it is the same: it was unique, like this. Odd, isn't it?"

Everybody said it WAS odd, and looked upon the occurrence with that
unreasoning satisfaction with which average humanity receives the
most trivial and unmeaning coincidences. It was left to Don Caesar
to give it a gallant application.

"I have not-a the pleasure of knowing-a the Miss Minnie, but the
jewelry, when she arrives, to the throat-a of Miss Yerba, she has
not lost the value--the beauty--the charm."

"No," said Woods, cheerily. "The fact is, Baker, you were too
slow. Miss Yerba's folks gobbled up the necklace while you were
thinking. You were a new-comer. Old 'forty-niners' did not
hesitate over a thing they wanted."

"You never knew who was your successful rival, eh?" said Dona Anna,
turning to Judge Baker with a curious glance at Paul's pale face in
passing.

"No," said Baker, "but"--he stopped with a hesitating laugh and
some little confusion. "No, I've mixed it up with something else.
It's so long ago. I never knew, or if I did I've forgotten. But
the necklace I remember." He handed it back to Yerba with a bow,
and the incident ended.

Paul had not looked at Yerba during this conversation, an
unreasoning instinct that he might confuse her, an equally
unreasoning dread that he might see her confused by others,
possessing him. And when he did glance at her calm, untroubled
face, that seemed only a little surprised at his own singular
coldness, he was by no means relieved. He was only convinced of
one thing. In the last five minutes he had settled upon the
irrevocable determination that his present relations with the girl
could exist no longer. He must either tell her everything, or see
her no more. There was no middle course. She was on the brink of
an exposure at any moment, either through her ignorance or her
unhappy pretension. In his intolerable position, he was equally
unable to contemplate her peril, accept her defense, or himself
defend her.

As if, with some feminine instinct, she had attributed his silence
to some jealousy of Don Caesar's attentions, she more than once
turned from the Spaniard to Paul with an assuring smile. In his
anxiety, he half accepted the rather humiliating suggestion, and
managed to say to her, in a lower tone:--

"On this last visit of your American guardian, one would think, you
need not already anticipate your Spanish relations."

He was thrilled with the mischievous yet faintly tender pleasure
that sparkled in her eyes as she said,--

"You forget it is my American guardian's FIRST visit, as well as
his last."

"And as your guardian," he went on, with half-veiled seriousness,
"I protest against your allowing your treasures, the property of
the Trust," he gazed directly into her beautiful eyes, "being
handled and commented upon by everybody."

When the ladies had left the table, he was, for a moment, relieved.
But only for a moment. Judge Baker drew his chair beside Paul's,
and, taking his cigar from his lips, said, with a perfunctory
laugh:--

"I say, Hathaway, I pulled up just in time to save myself from
making an awful speech, just now, to your ward."

Paul looked at him with cold curiosity.

"Yes. Gad! Do you know WHO was my rival in that necklace
transaction?"

"No," said Paul, with frigid carelessness.

"Why, Kate Howard! Fact, sir. She bought it right under my nose--
and overbid me, too."

Paul did not lose his self-possession. Thanks to the fact that
Yerba was not present, and that Don Caesar, who had overheard the
speech, moved forward with a suggestive and unpleasant smile, his
agitation congealed into a coldly placid fury.

"And I suppose," he returned, with perfect calmness, "that, after
the usual habit of this class of women, the necklace very soon
found its way back, through the pawnbroker, to the jeweler again.
It's a common fate."

"Yes, of course," said Judge Baker, cheerfully. "You're quite
right. That's undoubtedly the solution of it. But," with a laugh,
"I had a narrow escape from saying something--eh?"

"A very narrow escape from an apparently gratuitous insult," said
Paul, gravely, but fixing his eyes, now more luminous than ever
with anger, not on the speakers but on the face of Don Caesar, who
was standing at his side. "you were about to say,"--

"Eh--oh--ah! this Kate Howard? So! I have heard of her--yees!
And Miss Yerba--ah--she is of my country--I think. Yes--we shall
claim her--of a truth--yes."

"Your countrymen, I believe, are in the habit of making claims that
are more often founded on profit than verity," said Paul, with
smileless and insulting deliberation. He knew perfectly what he
was saying, and the result he expected. Only twenty-four hours
before he had smiled at Pendleton's idea of averting scandal and
discovery by fighting, yet he was endeavoring to pick a quarrel
with a man, merely on suspicion, for the same purpose, and he saw
nothing strange in it. A vague idea, too, that this would
irrevocably confirm him in opposition to Yerba's illusions probably
determined him.

But Don Caesar, albeit smiling lividly, did not seem inclined to
pick up the gauntlet, and Woods interfered hastily. "Don Caesar
means that your ward has some idea herself that she is of Spanish
origin--at least, Milly says so. But of course, as one of the
oldest trustees, YOU know the facts."

In another moment Paul would have committed himself. "I think
we'll leave Miss Yerba out of the question," he said, coldly. "My
remark was a general one, although, of course, I am responsible for
any personal application of it."

"Spoken like a politician, Hathaway," said Judge Baker, with an
effusive enthusiasm, which he hoped would atone for the alarming
results of his infelicitous speech. "That's right, gentlemen! You
can't get the facts from him before he is ready to give them. Keep
your secret, Mr. Hathaway, the court is with you."

Nevertheless, as they passed out of the room to join the ladies,
the Mayor lingered a little behind with Woods. "It's easy to see
the influence of that Pendleton on our young friend," he said,
significantly. "Somebody ought to tell him that it's played out
down here--as Pendleton is. It's quite enough to ruin his career."

Paul was too observant not to notice this, but it brought him no
sense of remorse; and his youthful belief in himself and his power
kept him from concern. He felt as if he had done something, if
only to show Don Caesar that the girl's weakness or ignorance could
not be traded upon with impunity. But he was still undecided as to
the course he should pursue. But he should determine that to-
night. At present there seemed no chance of talking to her alone--
she was unconcernedly conversing with Milly and Mrs. Woods, and
already the visitors who had been invited to this hurried levee in
his honor were arriving. In view of his late indiscretion, he
nervously exerted his fullest powers, and in a very few minutes was
surrounded by a breathless and admiring group of worshipers. A
ludicrous resemblance to the scene in the Golden Gate Hotel passed
through his mind; he involuntarily turned his eyes to seek Yerba in
the half-fear, half-expectation of meeting her mischievous smile.
Their glances met; to his surprise hers was smileless, and
instantly withdrawn, but not until he had been thrilled by an
unconscious prepossession in its luminous depths that he scarcely
dared to dwell upon. What mattered now this passage with Don
Caesar or the plaudits of his friends? SHE was proud of him!

Yet, after that glance, she was shy, preoccupying herself with
Milly, or even listening sweetly to Judge Baker's somewhat
practical and unromantic reminiscences of the deprivations and the
hardships of California early days, as if to condone his past
infelicity. She was pleasantly unaffected with Don Caesar,
although she managed to draw Dona Anna into the conversation; she
was unconventional, Paul fancied, to all but himself. Once or
twice, when he had artfully drawn her towards the open French
window that led to the moonlit garden and shadowed veranda, she had
managed to link Milly's arm in her own, and he was confident that a
suggestion to stroll with him in the open air would be followed by
her invitation to Milly to accompany them. Disappointed and
mortified as he was, he found some solace in her manner, which he
still believed suggested the hope that she might be made accessible
to his persuasions. Persuasions to what? He did not know.

The last guest had departed; he lingered on the veranda with a
cigar, begging his host and hostess not to trouble themselves to
keep him company. Milly and Yerba had retired to the former's
boudoir, but, as they had not yet formally bade him good night,
there was a chance of their returning. He still stayed on in this
hope for half an hour, and then, accepting Yerba's continued
absence as a tacit refusal of his request, he turned abruptly away.
But as he glanced around the garden before reentering the house, he
was struck by a singular circumstance--a white patch, like a
forgotten shawl, which he had observed on the distant ceanothus
hedge, and which had at first thrilled him with expectation, had
certainly CHANGED ITS POSITION. Before, it seemed to be near the
summer-house; now it was, undoubtedly, farther away. Could they,
or SHE alone, have slipped from the house and be awaiting him
there? With a muttered exclamation at his stupidity he stepped
hastily from the veranda and walked towards it. But he had
scarcely proceeded a dozen yards before it disappeared. He reached
the summer-house--it was empty; he followed the line of hedge--no
one was there. It could not have been her, or she would have
waited, unless he were the victim of a practical joke. He turned
impatiently back to the house, reentered the drawing-room by the
French window, and was crossing the half-lit apartment, when he
heard a slight rustle in the shadow of the window. He looked
around quickly, and saw that it was Yerba, in a white, loose gown,
for which she had already exchanged her black evening dress,
leaning back composedly on the sofa, her hands clasped behind her
shapely head.

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