Book: A Ward of the Golden Gate

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"I think its purchasing value would include even the gnadige Frau,"
said Paul, who had laughed only to hide the uneasiness that Yerba's
approach to the tabooed subject had revived in him. She shook her
head; then, recovering her tone of gentle banter, said, "There--
I've made a confession. If the colonel talks to you again about my
conquests, you will know that at present my affections are centred
on the Baron's mother. I admit it's a strong point in his--in
ANYBODY'S--favor, who can show an unblemished maternal pedigree.
What a pity it is you are an orphan, like myself, Mr. Hathaway!
For I fancy your mother must have been a very perfect woman. A
great deal of her tact and propriety has descended to you. Only it
would have been nicer if she had given it to you, like pocket
money, as occasion required--which you might have shared with me--
than leaving it to you in one thumping legacy."

It was impossible to tell how far the playfulness of her brown eyes
suggested any ulterior meaning, for as Paul again eagerly drew
towards her, she sent her horse into a rapid canter before him.
When he was at her side again, she said, "There is still the ruin
to see on our way home. It is just off here to the right. But if
you wish to go over it we will have to dismount at the foot of the
slope and walk up. It hasn't any story or legend that I know of; I
looked over the guide-book to cram for it before you came, but
there was nothing. So you can invent what you like."

They dismounted at the beginning of a gentle acclivity, where an
ancient wagon-road, now grass-grown, rose smooth as a glacis.
Tying their horses to two moplike bushes, they climbed the slope
hand in hand like children. There were a few winding broken steps,
part of a fallen archway, a few feet of vaulted corridor, a sudden
breach--the sky beyond--and that was all! Not all; for before
them, overlooked at first, lay a chasm covering half an acre, in
which the whole of the original edifice--tower turrets, walls, and
battlements--had been apparently cast, inextricably mixed and
mingled at different depths and angles, with here and there, like
mushrooms from a dust-heap, a score of trees upspringing.

"This is not Time--but gunpowder," said Paul, leaning over a
parapet of the wall and gazing at the abyss, with a slight grimace.

"It don't look very romantic, certainly," said Yerba. "I only saw
it from the road before. I'm dreadfully sorry," she added, with
mock penitence. "I suppose, however, SOMETHING must have happened
here."

"There may have been nobody in the house at the time," said Paul
gravely. "The family may have been at the baths."

They stood close together, their elbows resting upon the broken
wall, and almost touching. Beyond the abyss and darker forest they
could see the more vivid green and regular lines of the plane-trees
of Strudle Bad, the glitter of a spire, or the flash of a dome.
From the abyss itself arose a cool odor of moist green leaves, the
scent of some unseen blossoms, and around the baking vines on the
hot wall the hum of apparently taskless and disappointed bees.
There was nobody in sight in the forest road, no one working in the
bordering fields, and no suggestion of the present. There might
have been three or four centuries between them and Strudle Bad.

"The legend of this place," said Paul, glancing at the long brown
lashes and oval outline of the cheek so near his own, "is simple,
yet affecting. A cruel, remorseless, but fascinating Hexie was
once loved by a simple shepherd. He had never dared to syllable
his hopeless affection, or claim from her a syllabled--perhaps I
should say a one-syllabled--reply. He had followed her from remote
lands, dumbly worshiping her, building in his foolish brain an air-
castle of happiness, which by reason of her magic power she could
always see plainly in his eyes. And one day, beguiling him in the
depths of the forest, she led him to a fair-seeming castle, and,
bidding him enter its portals, offered to show him a realization of
his dream. But, lo! even as he entered the stately corridor it
seemed to crumble away before him, and disclosed a hideous abyss
beyond, in which the whole of that goodly palace lay in heaped and
tangled ruins--the fitting symbol of his wrecked and shattered
hopes."

She drew back a little way from him, but still holding on to the
top of the broken wall with one slim gauntleted hand, and swung
herself to one side, while she surveyed him with smiling, parted
lips and conscious eyelids. He promptly covered her hand with his
own, but she did not seem to notice it.

"That is not the story," she said, in a faint voice that even her
struggling sauciness could not make steadier. "The true story is
called 'The Legend of the Goose-Girl of Strudle Bad, and the
enterprising Gosling.' There was once a goose-girl of the plain who
tried honestly to drive her geese to market, but one eccentric and
willful gosling-- Mr. Hathaway! Stop--please--I beg you let me
go!"

He had caught her in his arms--the one encircling her waist, the
other hand still grasping hers. She struggled, half laughing;
yielded for a breathless moment as his lips brushed her cheek, and--
threw him off. "There!" she said, "that will do: the story was
not illustrated."

"But, Yerba," he said, with passionate eagerness, "hear me--it is
all God's truth.--I love you!"

She drew back farther, shaking the dust of the wall from the folds
of her habit. Then, with a lower voice and a paler cheek, as if
his lips had sent her blood and utterance back to her heart, she
said, "Come, let us go."

"But not until you've heard me, Yerba."

"Well, then--I believe you--there!" she said, looking at him.

"You believe me?" he repeated eagerly, attempting to take her hand
again.

She drew back still farther. "Yes," she said, "or I shouldn't be
here now. There! that must suffice you. And if you wish me still
to believe you, you will not speak of this again while we are out
together. Come, let us go back to the horses."

He looked at her with all his soul. She was pale, but composed,
and--he could see--determined. He followed her without a word.
She accepted his hand to support her again down the slope without
embarrassment or reminiscent emotion. The whole scene through
which she had just passed might have been buried in the abyss and
ruins behind her. As she placed her foot in his hand to remount,
and for a moment rested her weight on his shoulder, her brown eyes
met his frankly and without a tremor.

Nor was she content with this. As Paul at first rode on silently,
his heart filled with unsatisfied yearning, she rallied him
mischievously. Was it kind in him on this, their first day
together, to sulk in this fashion? Was it a promise for their
future excursions? Did he intend to carry this lugubrious visage
through the Allee and up to the courtyard of the hotel to proclaim
his sentimental condition to the world? At least, she trusted he
would not show it to Milly, who might remember that this was only
the SECOND TIME they had met each other. There was something so
sweetly reasonable in this, and withal not without a certain
hopefulness for the future, to say nothing of the half-mischievous,
half-reproachful smile that accompanied it, that Paul exerted
himself, and eventually recovered his lost gayety. When they at
last drew up in the courtyard, with the flush of youth and exercise
in their faces, Paul felt he was the object of envy to the
loungers, and of fresh gossip to Strudle Bad. It struck him less
pleasantly that two dark faces, which had been previously regarding
him in the gloom of the corridor and vanished as he approached,
reappeared some moments later in Yerba's salon as Don Caesar and
Dona Anna, with a benignly different expression. Dona Anna
especially greeted him with so much of the ostentatious archness of
a confident and forgiving woman to a momentarily recreant lover,
that he felt absurdly embarrassed in Yerba's presence. He was
thinking how he could excuse himself, when he noticed a beautiful
basket of flowers on the table and a tiny note bearing a baron's
crest. Yerba had put it aside with--as it seemed to him at the
moment--an almost too pronounced indifference--and an indifference
that was strongly contrasted to Dona Anna's eagerly expressed
enthusiasm over the offering, and her ultimate supplications to
Paul and her brother to admire its beauties and the wonderful taste
of the donor.

All this seemed so incongruous with Paul's feelings, and above all
with the recollection of his scene with Yerba, that he excused
himself from dining with the party, alleging an engagement with his
old fellow-traveler the German officer, whose acquaintance he had
renewed. Yerba did not press him; he even fancied she looked
relieved. Colonel Pendleton was coming; Paul was not loath, in his
present frame of mind, to dispense with his company. A conviction
that the colonel's counsel was not the best guide for Yerba, and
that in some vague way their interests were antagonistic, had begun
to force itself upon him. He had no intention of being disloyal to
her old guardian, but he felt that Pendleton had not been frank
with him since his return from Rosario. Had he ever been so with
HER? He sometimes doubted his disclaimer.

He was lucky in finding the General disengaged, and together they
dined at a restaurant and spent the evening at the Kursaal. Later,
at the Residenz Club, the General leaned over his beer-glass and
smilingly addressed his companion.

"So I hear you, too, are a conquest of the beautiful South
American."

For an instant Paul, recognizing only Dona Anna under that epithet,
looked puzzled.

"Come, my friend," said the General regarding him with some
amusement, "I am an older man than you, yet I hardly think I could
have ridden out with such a goddess without becoming her slave."

Paul felt his face flush in spite of himself. "Ah! you mean Miss
Arguello," he said hurriedly, his color increasing at his own
mention of that name as if he were imposing it upon his honest
companion. "She is an old acquaintance of mine--from my own State--
California."

"Ah, so," said the General, lifting his eyebrows in profound
apology. "A thousand pardons."

"Surely," said Paul, with a desperate attempt to recover his
equanimity, "YOU ought to know our geography better."

"So, I am wrong. But still the name--Arguello--surely that is not
American? Still, they say she has no accent, and does not look
like a Mexican."

For an instant Paul was superstitiously struck with the fatal
infelicity of Yerba's selection of a foreign name, that now seemed
only to invite that comment and criticism which she should have
avoided. Nor could he explain it at length to the General without
assisting and accenting the deception, which he was always hoping
in some vague way to bring to an end. He was sorry he had
corrected the General; he was furious that he had allowed himself
to be confused.

Happily his companion had misinterpreted his annoyance, and with
impulsive German friendship threw himself into what he believed to
be Paul's feelings. "Donnerwetter! Your beautiful countrywoman is
made the subject of curiosity just because that stupid baron is
persistent in his serious attentions. That is quite enough, my
good friend, to make Klatschen here among those animals who do not
understand the freedom of an American girl, or that an heiress may
have something else to do with her money than to expend it on the
Baron's mortgages. But"--he stopped, and his simple, honest face
assumed an air of profound and sagacious cunning--"I am glad to
talk about it with you, who of course are perfectly familiar with
the affair. I shall now be able to know what to say. My word, my
friend, has some weight here, and I shall use it. And now you
shall tell me WHO is our lovely friend, and WHO were her parents
and her kindred in her own home. Her associates here, you possibly
know, are an impossible colonel and his never-before-approached
valet, with some South American Indian planters, and, I believe, a
pork-butcher's daughter. But of THEM--it makes nothing. Tell me
of HER people."

With his kindly serious face within a few inches of Paul's, and
sympathizing curiosity beaming from his pince-nez, he obliged the
wretched and conscience-stricken Hathaway to respond with a
detailed account of Yerba's parentage as projected by herself and
indorsed by Colonel Pendleton. He dwelt somewhat particularly on
the romantic character of the Trust, hoping to draw the General's
attention away from the question of relationship, but he was
chagrined to find that the honest warrior evidently confounded the
Trust with some eleemosynary institution and sympathetically
glossed it over. "Of course," he said, "the Mexican Minister at
Berlin would know all about the Arguello family: so there would be
no question there."

Paul was not sorry when the time came to take leave of his friend;
but once again in the clear moonlight and fresh, balmy air of the
Allee, he forgot the unpleasantness of the interview. He found
himself thinking only of his ride with Yerba. Well! he had told
her that he loved her. She knew it now, and although she had
forbidden him to speak further, she had not wholly rejected it. It
must be her morbid consciousness of the mystery of her birth that
withheld a return of her affections,--some half-knowledge, perhaps,
that she would not divulge, yet that kept her unduly sensitive of
accepting his love. He was satisfied there was no entanglement;
her heart was virgin. He even dared to hope that she had ALWAYS
cared for him. It was for HIM to remove all obstacles--to prevail
upon her to leave this place and return to America with him as her
husband, the guardian of her good name, and the custodian of her
secret. At times the strains of a dreamy German waltz, played in
the distance, brought back to him the brief moment that his arm had
encircled her waist by the crumbling wall, and his pulses grew
languid, only to leap firmer the next moment with more desperate
resolve. He would win her, come what may! He could never have
been in earnest before: he loathed and hated himself for his
previous passive acquiescence to her fate. He had been a weak tool
of the colonel's from the first: he was even now handicapped by a
preposterous promise he had given him! Yes, she was right to
hesitate--to question his ability to make her happy! He had found
her here, surrounded by stupidity and cupidity--to give it no other
name--so patent that she was the common gossip, and had offered
nothing but a boyish declaration! As he strode into the hotel that
night it was well that he did not meet the unfortunate colonel on
the staircase!

It was very late, although there was still visible a light in
Yerba's salon, shining on her balcony, which extended before and
included his own window. From time to time he could hear the
murmur of voices. It was too late to avail himself of the
invitation to join them, even if his frame of mind had permitted
it. He was too nervous and excited to go to bed, and, without
lighting his candle, he opened the French window that gave upon the
balcony, drew a chair in the recess behind the curtain, and gazed
upon the night. It was very quiet; the moon was high, the square
was sleeping in a trance of checkered shadows, like a gigantic
chessboard, with black foreshortened trees for pawns. The click of
a cavalry sabre, the sound of a footfall on the pavement of the
distant Konigsstrasse, were distinctly audible; a far-off railway
whistle was startling in its abruptness. In the midst of this calm
the opening of the door of the salon, with the sudden uplifting of
voices in the hall, told Paul that Yerba's guests were leaving. He
heard Dona Anna's arch accents--arch even to Colonel Pendleton's
monotonous baritone!--Milly's high, rapid utterances, the suave
falsetto of Don Caesar, and HER voice, he thought a trifle
wearied,--the sound of retiring footsteps, and all was still again.

So still that the rhythmic beat of the distant waltz returned to
him, with a distinctiveness that he could idly follow. He thought
of Rosario and the rose-breath of the open windows with a strange
longing, and remembered the half-stifled sweetness of her happy
voice rising with it from the veranda. Why had he ever let it pass
from him then and waft its fragrance elsewhere? Why-- What was
that?

The slight turning of a latch! The creaking of the French window
of the salon, and somebody had slipped softly half out on the
balcony. His heart stopped beating. From his position in the
recess of his own window, with his back to the partition of the
salon, he could see nothing. Yet he did not dare to move. For
with the quickened senses of a lover he felt the diffused and
perfumed aura of HER presence, of HER garments, of HER flesh, flow
in upon him through the open window, and possess his whole
breathless being! It was SHE! Like him, perhaps, longing to enjoy
the perfect night--like him, perhaps, thinking of--

"So you ar-range to get rid of me--ha! lik thees? To tur-rn me off
from your heels like a dog who have follow you--but without a word--
without a--a--thanks--without a 'ope! Ah!--we have ser-rved you--
me and my sister; we are the or-range dry--now we can go! Like the
old shoe, we are to be flung away! Good! But I am here again--you
see. I shall speak, and you shall hear-r."

Don Caesar's voice--alone with her! Paul gripped his chair and sat
upright.

"Stop! Stay where you are! How dared you return here?" It was
Yerba's voice, on the balcony, low and distinct.

"Shut the window! I shall speak with you what you will not the
world to hear."

"I prefer to keep where I am, since you have crept into this room
like a thief!"

"A thief! Good!" He broke out in Spanish, and, as if no longer
fearful of being overheard, had evidently drawn nearer to the
window. "A thief. Ha! muy bueno--but it is not I, you understand--
I, Caesar Briones, who am the thief! No! It is that swaggering
espadachin--that fanfarron of a Colonel Pendleton--that pattern of
an official, Mr. Hathaway--that most beautiful heiress of the
Californias, Miss ARGUELLO--that are thieves! Yes--of a NAME--Miss
Arguello--of a NAME! The name of Arguello!"

Paul rose to his feet.

"Ah, so! You start--you turn pale--you flash your eyes, senora,
but you think you have deceived me all these years. You think I
did not see your game at Rosario--yes, even when that foolish
Castro muchacha first put that idea in your head. Who furnished
you the facts you wanted? I--Mother of God! SUCH FACTS!--I, who
knew the Arguello pedigree--I, who know it was as impossible for
you to be a daughter of them as--what? let me think--as--as it is
impossible for you to be the wife of that baron whom you would
deceive with the rest! Ah, yes; it was a high flight for you,
Mees--Mees--Dona Fulana--a noble game for you to bring down!"

Why did she not speak? What was she doing? If she had but uttered
a single word of protest, of angry dismissal, Paul would have flown
to her side. It could not be the paralysis of personal fear: the
balcony was wide; she could easily pass to the end; she could even
see his open window.

"Why did I do this? Because I loved you, senora--and you knew it!
Ah! you can turn your face away now; you can pretend to
misunderstand me, as you did a moment ago; you can part from me now
like a mere acquaintance--but it was not always so! No, it was YOU
who brought me here; your eyes that smiled into mine--and drove
home the colonel's request that I and my sister should accompany
you. God! I was weak then! You smile, senora; you think you have
succeeded--you and your pompous colonel and your clever governor!
You think you have compromised me, and perjured ME, because of
this. You are wrong! You think I dare not speak to this puppet of
a baron, and that I have no proofs. You are wrong!"

"And even if you can produce them, what care I?" said Yerba
unexpectedly, yet in a voice so free from excitement and passion
that the weariness which Paul had at first noticed seemed to be the
only dominant tone. "Suppose you prove that I am not an Arguello.
Good! you have yet to show that a connection with any of your race
would be anything but a disgrace."

"Ah! you defy me, little one! Caramba! Listen, then! You do not
know all! When you thought I was only helping you to fabricate
your claim to the Arguellos' name, I was finding out WHO YOU REALLY
WERE! Ah! It was not so difficult as you fondly hope, senora. We
were not all brutes and fools in the early days, though we stood
aside to let your people run their vulgar course. It was your
hired bully--your respected guardian--this dog of an espadachin,
who let out a hint of the secret--with a prick of his blade--and a
scandal. One of my peon women was a servant at the convent when
you were a child, and recognized the woman who put you there and
came to see you as a friend. She overheard the Mother Superior say
it was your mother, and saw a necklace that was left for you to
wear. Ah! you begin to believe! When I had put this and that
together I found that Pepita could not identify you with the child
that she had seen. But you, senora, you YOURSELF supplied the
missing proof! Yes! you supplied it with the NECKLACE that you
wore that evening at Rosario, when you wished to do honor to this
young Hathaway--the guardian who had always thrown you off! Ah!--
you now suspect why, perhaps! It was your mother's necklace that
you wore, and you said so! That night I sent the good Pepita to
identify it; to watch through the window from the garden when you
were wearing it; to make it sure as the Creed. I sent her to your
room late that night when you had changed your dress, that she
might examine it among your jewels. And she did and will swear--
look you!--SWEAR that it is the one given you as a child by the
woman at the convent, who was your mother! And who was that woman--
eh? Who was the mother of the Arguello de la Yerba Buena?--who
this noble ancestress?"

"Excuse me--but perhaps you are not aware that you are raising your
voice in a lady's drawing-room, and that although you are speaking
a language no one here understands, you are disturbing the hotel."

It was Paul, quiet, pale in the moonlight, erect on the balcony
before the window. As Yerba, with a start, retreated quickly into
the room, Don Caesar stepped forward angrily and suspiciously
towards the window. He had his hand reached forward towards the
handle as if to close the swinging sash against the intruder, when
in an instant he was seized by Paul, tightly locked in a desperate
grip, and whirled out on the balcony. Before he could gain breath
to utter a cry, Hathaway had passed his right arm around the
Mexican's throat, effectively stopping his utterance, and, with a
supreme effort of strength, dragged him along the wall, falling
with him into the open window of his own room. As he did so, to
his inexpressible relief he heard the sash closed and the bolt
drawn of the salon window, and regained his feet, collected, quiet,
and triumphant.

"I am sorry," he said, coolly dusting his clothes, "to have been
obliged to change the scene of this discussion so roughly, but you
will observe that you can speak more freely HERE, and that any
altercation WE may have in this room will be less likely to attract
comment."

"Assassin!" said Don Caesar chokingly, as he struggled to his feet.

"Thank you. Relieve your feelings as much as you like here; in
fact, if you would speak a little louder you would oblige me. The
guests are beginning to be awake," continued Paul, with a wicked
smile, indicating the noise of an opening door and footsteps in the
passage, "and are now able to locate without difficulty the scene
of the disturbance."

Briones apparently understood his meaning and the success of his
stratagem. "You think you have saved HER from disgrace," he said,
with a livid smile, in a lower tone and a desperate attempt to
imitate Paul's coolness. "For the present--ah--yees! perhaps in
this hotel and this evening. But you have not stop my mouth for--
a--to-morrow--and the whole world, Mr. Hathaway."

"Well," said Paul, looking at him critically, "I don't know about
that. Of course, there's the equal chance that you may kill me--
but that's a question for to-morrow, too."

The Mexican cast a quick glance at the door and window. Paul, as
if carelessly, changed the key of the former from one pocket to the
other, and stepped before the window.

"So this is a plot to murder me! Have a care! You are not in your
own brigand California!"

"If you think so, alarm the house. They will find us quarreling,
and you will only precipitate matters by receiving the insult that
will make you fight--before them."

"I am r-ready, sir, when and where you will," said Briones, with a
swaggering air but a shifting, furtive eye. "Open--a--the door."

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