Essential Novelists - Bret Harte. Bret Harte

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      "No! It is accident—what you call Fate!"

      She walked to the window, and stood for a few moments looking out upon the falling rain. The face that looked out was so old, so haggard, so hard and set in its outlines, that one of the loungers on the side-walk, glancing at the window to catch a glimpse of the pretty French stranger, did not recognise her. Possibly the incident recalled her to herself, for she presently turned with a smile of ineffable sweetness, and returning to the side of Ramirez, said, in the gentlest of voices, "Then you abandon me?"

      Victor did not dare to meet her eyes. He looked straight before him, shrugged his shoulders, and said—"It is Fate!"

      She clasped her thin fingers lightly before her, and, standing in front of her companion, so as to be level with his eyes, said—"You have a good memory, Victor."

      He did not reply.

      "Let me assist it. It is a year ago that I received a letter in Berlin, signed by a Mr. Peter Dumphy, of San Francisco, saying that he was in possession of important papers regarding property of my late husband, Dr. Paul Devarges, and asking me to communicate with him. I did not answer his letter; I came. It is not my way to deliberate or hesitate—perhaps a wise man would. I am only a poor, weak woman, so I came. I know it was all wrong. You sharp, bold, cautious men would have written first. Well, I came!"

      Victor winced slightly, but did not speak.

      "I saw Mr. Dumphy in San Francisco. He showed me some papers that he said he had found in a place of deposit which Dr. Devarges had evidently wished preserved. One was a record of a Spanish grant, others indicated some valuable discoveries. He referred me to the Mission and Presidio of San Ysabel that had sent out the relief party for further information. He was a trader—a mere man of business—it was a question of money with him; he agreed to assist me for a percentage! Is it not so?"

      Victor raised his dark eyes to hers, and nodded.

      "I came to the Mission. I saw you—the Secretary of the former Comandante—the only one left who remembered the expedition, and the custodian of the Presidio records. You showed me the only copy of the report; you, too, would have been cold and business-like, until I told you my story. You seemed interested. You told me about the young girl, this mysterious Grace Conroy, whose name appeared among the dead, who you said you thought was an impostor! Did you not?"

      Victor nodded.

      "You told me of her agony on reading the report! Of her fainting, of the discovery of her condition by the women, of the Comandante's pity, of her mysterious disappearance, of the Comandante's reticence, of your own suspicions of the birth of a child! Did you not, Victor?"

      He endeavoured to take her hand. Without altering her gentle manner, she withdrew her hand quietly, and went on—

      "And then you told me of your finding that paper on the floor where they loosened her dress—the paper you now hold in your hand. You told me of your reasons for concealing and withholding it. And then, Victor, you proposed to me a plan to secure my own again—to personate this girl—to out-imposture this imposture. You did not ask me for a percentage! You did not seek to make money out of my needs; you asked only for my love! Well, well! perhaps I was a fool, a weak woman. It was a tempting bribe; possibly I listened more to the promptings of my heart than my interest. I promised you my hand and my fortune when we succeeded. You come to me now, and ask to be relieved of that obligation. No! no! you have said enough."

      The now frightened man had seized her by the hand, and thrown himself on his knees before her in passionate contrition; but, with a powerful effort, she had wrested herself free.

      "No, no!" she continued, in the same deprecatory voice. "Go to this brother, whom the chief end of your labours seems to have been to discover. Go to him now. Restore to him the paper you hold in your hand. Say that you stole it from his sister, whom you suspected to have been an impostor, and that you knew to be the mother of an illegitimate child! Say that in doing this, you took the last hope from the wronged and cast-off wife who came thousands of miles to claim something from the man who should have supported her. Say this, and that brother, if he is the good and kind man you represent him to be, he will rise up and bless you! You have only to tell him further, that this paper cannot be of any use to him, as this property legally belongs to his sister's child, if living. You have only to hand him the report which declares both of his sisters to be dead, and leaves his own identity in doubt, to show him what a blessing has fallen upon him."

      "Forgive me," gasped Victor, with a painful blending of shame and awesome admiration of the woman before him; "forgive me, Julie! I am a coward! a slave! an ingrate! I will do anything, Julie; anything you say."

      Madame Devarges was too sagacious to press her victory further; perhaps she was too cautious to exasperate the already incautiously demonstrative man before her. She said "Hush," and permitted him at the same time, as if unconsciously, to draw her beside him.

      "Listen, Victor. What have you to fear from this man?" she asked, after a pause. "What would his evidence weigh against me, when he is in unlawful possession of my property, my legally declared properly, if I choose to deny his relationship? Who will identity him as Gabriel Conroy, when his only surviving relative dare not come forward to recognise him; when, if she did, you could swear that she came to you under another name? What would this brother's self-interested evidence amount to opposed to yours, that I was the Grace Conroy who came to the Mission, to the proof of my identity offered by one of the survivors, Peter Dumphy?"

      "Dumphy!" echoed Ramirez, in amazement.

      "Yes, Dumphy!" repeated Madame Devarges. "When he found that, as the divorced wife of Dr. Devarges, I could make no legal claim, and I told him of your plan, he offered himself as witness of my identity. Ah, Victor! I have not been idle while you have found only obstacles."

      "Forgive me!" He caught and kissed her hands passionately. "I fly now. Good-bye."

      "Where are you going?" she asked, rising.

      "To 'One Horse Gulch,'" he answered.

      "No! Sit down. Listen. You must go to San Francisco, and inform Dumphy of your discovery. It will be necessary, perhaps, to have a lawyer; but we must first see how strong we stand. You must find out the whereabouts of this girl Grace, at once. Go to San Francisco, see Dumphy, and return to me here!"

      "But you are alone here, and unprotected. These men!"

      The quick suspicions of a jealous nature flashed in his eyes.

      "Believe me, they are less dangerous to our plans than women! Do you not trust me, Victor?" she said, with a dazzling smile.

      He would have thrown himself at her feet, but she restrained him with an arch look at the wall, and a precautionary uplifted finger.

      "Good; go now. Stay. This Gabriel—is he married?"

      "No."

      "Good-bye."

      The door closed upon his dark, eager face, and he was gone. A moment later there was a sharp ringing of the bell of No. 92, the next room to that occupied by Mme. Devarges.

      The truculent porter knocked at the door, and entered this room respectfully. There was no suspicion attached to the character of its occupant. He was well known as Mr. Jack Hamlin, a gambler.

      "Why the devil did СКАЧАТЬ