Gabriel Conroy Part 18

"Ef that school-ma'am comes up here, do you jest make up to her!"

"Olly!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the alarmed Gabriel.

"You jest go for her! You jest do for her what you did for that Susan Markle. And jest you do it, if you can, Gabe--when Mrs. Markle's around--or afore little Manty--she'll go and tell her mother--she tells her everything. I've heerd, Gabe, that some o' them school-ma'ams is nice."

In his desire to please Olly, Gabriel would have imparted to her the story of his adventure in the canon, but a vague fear that Olly might demand from him an instant offer of his hand and heart to the woman he had saved, checked the disclosure. And the next moment there was a rap at the door of the cabin.

"I forgot to say, Gabe, that Lawyer Maxwell was here to-day to see ye,"

said Olly, "and I bet you thet's him. If he wants you to nuss anybody, Gabe, don't ye do it! You got enough to do to look arter me!"

Gabriel rose with a perplexed face and opened the door. A tall dark man, with a beard heavily streaked with grey, entered. There was something in his manner and dress, although both conformed to local prejudices and customs, that denoted a type of man a little above the average social condition of One Horse Gulch. Unlike Gabriel's previous evening visitor, he did not glance around him, but fixed a pair of keen, half-humorous, half-interrogating grey eyes upon his host's face, and kept them there. The habitual expression of his features was serious, except for a certain half-nervous twitching at the left corner of his mouth, which continued usually, until he stopped and pa.s.sed his hand softly across it. The impression always left on the spectator was, that he had wiped away a smile, as some people do a tear.

"I don't think I ever before met you, Gabriel," he said, advancing and offering his hand. "My name is Maxwell. I think you've heard of me. I have come for a little talk on a matter of business."

The blank dismay of Gabriel's face did not escape him, nor the gesture with which he motioned to Olly to retire.

"It's quite evident," he said to himself, "that the child knows nothing of this, or is unprepared. I have taken him by surprise."

"If I mistake not, Gabriel," said Maxwell aloud, "your little--er--girl--is as much concerned in this matter as yourself. Why not let her remain?"

"No, no;" said Gabriel, now feeling perfectly convinced in the depths of his conscience-stricken soul that Maxwell was here as the legal adviser of the indignant Mrs. Markle. "No! Olly, run out and get some chips in the wood-house agin to-morrow morning's fire. Run!"

Olly ran. Maxwell cast a look after the child, wiped his mouth, and leaning his elbow on the table, fixed his eyes on Gabriel. "I have called to-night, Gabriel, to see if we can arrange a certain matter without trouble, and even--as I am employed against you--with as little talk as possible. To be frank, I am entrusted with the papers in a legal proceeding against you. Now, see here! is it necessary for me to say what these proceedings are? Is it even necessary for me to give the name of my client?"

Gabriel dropped his eyes, but even then the frank honesty of his nature spoke for him. He raised his head and said simply--"No!"

Lawyer Maxwell was for a moment staggered, but only for a moment.

"Good," he said thoughtfully; "you are frank. Let me ask you now if, to avoid legal proceedings, publicity, and scandal--and allow me to add, the almost absolute certainty of losing in any suit that might be brought against you--would you be willing to abandon this house and claim at once, allowing it to go for damages in the past? If you would, I think I could accept it for such. I think I could promise that even this question of a closer relations.h.i.+p would not come up. Briefly, _she_ might keep her name, and _you_ might keep yours, and you would remain to each other as strangers. What do you say?"

Gabriel rose quickly and took the lawyer's hands with a tremulous grasp.

"You're a kind man, Mr. Maxwell," he said, shaking the lawyer's hand vigorously; "a good man. It's a bad business, and you've made the best of it. Ef you'd been my own lawyer instead o' hers, you couldn't hev treated me better. I'll leave here at once. I've been thinking o' doing it ever since this yer thing troubled me; but I'll go to-morrow. Ye can hev the house, and all it contains. If I had anything else in a way of a fee to offer ye, I'd do it. She kin hev the house and all that they is of it. And then nothing will be said?"

"Not a word," said Maxwell, examining Gabriel curiously.

"No talk--nothin' in the newspapers?" continued Gabriel.

"Your conduct toward her and your att.i.tude in this whole affair will be kept a profound secret, unless you happen to betray it yourself and that is my one reason for advising you to leave here."

"I'll do it--to-morrow," said Gabriel, rubbing his hands. "Wouldn't you like to have me sign some bit o' paper?"

"No, no," said the lawyer, wiping his mouth with his hand, and looking at Gabriel as if he belonged to some entirely new species. "Let me advise you, as a friend, to sign no paper that might be brought against you hereafter. Your simple abandonment of the claim and house is sufficient for our purposes. I will make out no papers in the case until Thursday; by that time I expect to find no one to serve them on. You understand?"

Gabriel nodded, and wrung the lawyer's hand warmly.

Maxwell walked toward the door, still keeping his glance fixed on Gabriel's clear, honest eyes. On the threshold he paused, and leaning against it, wiped his mouth with a slow gesture, and said--"From all I can hear, Gabriel, you are a simple, honest fellow, and I frankly confess to you, but for the admission you have made to me, I would have thought you incapable of attempting to wrong a woman. I should have supposed it some mistake. I am not a judge of the motives of men; I am too old a lawyer, and too familiar with things of this kind to be surprised at men's motives, or even to judge their rights or wrongs by my own. But now that we understand each other, would you mind telling me what was your motive for this peculiar and monstrous form of deception?

Understand me; it will not alter my opinion of you, which is, that you are not a bad man. But I am curious to know how you could deliberately set about to wrong this woman; what was the motive?"

Gabriel's face flushed deeply. Then he lifted his eyes and pointed to the screen. The lawyer followed the direction of his finger, and saw Olly standing in the doorway.

Lawyer Maxwell smiled. "It is the s.e.x, anyway," he said to himself; "perhaps a little younger than I supposed; of course, his own child." He nodded again, smiled at Olly, and with the consciousness of a professional triumph, blent with a certain moral satisfaction that did not always necessarily accompany his professional success, he pa.s.sed out into the night.

Gabriel avoided conversation with Olly until late in the evening. When she had taken her accustomed seat at his feet before the fire, she came directly to the point. "What did he want, Gabe?"

"Nothing partickler," said Gabriel, with an affectation of supreme indifference. "I was thinking, Olly, that I'd tell you a story. It's a long time since I told one." It had been Gabriel's habit to improve these precious moments by relating the news of the camp, or the current topics of the day, artfully imparted as pure fiction; but since his pre-occupation with Mrs. Markle, he had lately omitted it.

Olly nodded her head, and Gabriel went on--

"Once upon a time they lived a man ez hed lived and would live--for thet was wot was so sing'ler about him--all alone, 'cept for a little sister ez this man hed, wot he loved very dearly. They was no one ez this man would ever let ring in, so to speak, between him and this little sister, and the heaps o' private confidence, and the private talks about this and thet, thet this yer man hed with this little sister, was wonderful to behold."

"Was it a real man--a pure man?" queried Olly.

"The man was a real man, but the little sister, I oughter say, was a kind o' fairy, you know, Olly, ez hed a heap o' power to do good to this yer man, unbeknownst to him and afore his face. They lived in a sorter paliss in the woods, this yer man and his sister. And one day this yer man hed a heap o' troubil come upon him that was sich ez would make him leave this beautiful paliss, and he didn't know how to let on to his little sister about it; and so he up, and he sez to her, sez he, 'Gloriana'--thet was her name--'Gloriana,' sez he, 'we must quit this beautiful paliss and wander into furrin parts, and the reason why is a secret ez I can't tell ye.' And this yer little sister jest ups and sez, 'Wot's agreeable to you, brother, is agreeable to me, for we is everything to each other the wide world over, and variety is the spice o' life, and I'll pack my traps to-morrow.' And she did. For why, Olly?

Why, don't ye see, this yer little sister was a fairy, and knowed it all without bein' told. And they went away to furrin parts and strange places, war they built a more beautiful paliss than the other was, and they lived thar peaceful like and happy all the days o' their life."

"And thar wasn't any old witch of a Mrs. Markle to bother them. When are ye goin', Gabe?" asked the practical Olly.

"I thought to-morrow," said Gabriel, helplessly abandoning all allegory, and looking at his sister in respectful awe, "thet ez, I reckoned, Olly, to get to Casey's in time to take the arternoon stage up to Marysville."

"Well," said Olly, "then I'm goin' to bed now."

"Olly," said Gabriel reproachfully, as he watched the little figure disappear behind the canvas, "ye didn't kiss me fur good-night."

Olly came back. "You ole Gabe--you!" she said patronisingly, as she ran her fingers through his tangled curls, and stooped to bestow a kiss on his forehead from an apparently immeasurable moral and intellectual height--"You old big Gabe, what would you do without me, I'd like to know?"

The next morning Gabriel was somewhat surprised at observing Olly, immediately after the morning meal, proceed gravely to array herself in the few more respectable garments that belonged to her wardrobe. Over a white muslin frock, yellow and scant with age, she had tied a scarf of glaring cheap pink ribbon, and over this again she had secured, by the aid of an enormous tortoisesh.e.l.l brooch, a large black and white check shawl of her mother's, that even repeated folding could not reduce in size. She then tied over her yellow curls a large straw hat trimmed with white and yellow daisies and pale-green ribbon, and completed her toilet by unfurling over her shoulder a small yellow parasol. Gabriel, who had been watching these preparations in great concern, at last ventured to address the _bizarre_ but pretty little figure before him.

"War you goin', Olly?"

"Down the gulch to say good-bye to the Reed gals. 'Taint the square thing to vamose the ranch without lettin' on to folks."

"Ye ain't goin' near Mrs. Markle's, are ye?" queried Gabriel, in deprecatory alarm.

Olly turned a scornful flash of her clear blue eye upon her brother, and said curtly, "Ketch me!"

There was something so appalling in her quickness, such a sudden revelation of quaint determination in the lines of her mouth and eyebrows, that Gabriel could say no more. Without a word he watched the yellow sunshade and flapping straw hat with its streaming ribbons slowly disappear down the winding descent of the hill. And then a sudden and grotesque sense of dependence upon the child--an appreciation of some reserved quality in her nature hitherto unsuspected by him--something that separated them now, and in the years to come would slowly widen the rift between them--came upon him with such a desolating sense of loneliness that it seemed unendurable. He did not dare to re-enter or look back upon the cabin, but pushed on vaguely toward his claim on the hillside. On his way thither he had to pa.s.s a solitary red-wood tree that he had often noticed, whose enormous bulk belittled the rest of the forest; yet, also, by reason of its very isolation had acquired a certain lonely pathos that was far beyond the suggestion of its heroic size. It seemed so imbecile, so gratuitously large, so unproductive of the good that might be expected of its bulk, so unlike the smart spruces and pert young firs and larches that stood beside it, that Gabriel instantly accepted it as a symbol of himself, and could not help wondering if there were not some other locality where everything else might be on its own plane of existence. "If I war to go thar," said Gabriel to himself, "I wonder if I might not suit better than I do yer, and be of some sarvice to thet child." He pushed his way through the underbrush, and stood upon the ledge that he had first claimed on his arrival at One Horse Gulch. It was dreary--it was unpromising--a vast stony field high up in air, covered with scattered boulders of dark iron-grey rock. Gabriel smiled bitterly. "Any other man but me couldn't hev bin sich a fool as to preempt sich a claim fur gold. P'r'aps it's all for the best that I'm short of it now," said Gabriel, as he turned away, and descended the hill to his later claim in the gulch, which yielded him that pittance known in the mining dialect as "grub."

It was nearly three o'clock before he returned to the cabin with the few tools that he had gathered. When he did so, he found Olly awaiting him, with a slight flush of excitement on her cheek, but no visible evidences of any late employment to be seen in the cabin.

"Ye don't seem to have been doin' much packin', Olly," said Gabriel--"tho' thar ain't, so to speak, much to pack up."

"Thar ain't no use in packin', Gabe," replied Olly, looking directly into the giant's bashful eyes.

"No use?" echoed Gabriel.

"No sort o' use," said Olly decidedly. "We ain't goin', Gabe, and that's the end on't. I've been over to see Lawyer Maxwell, and I've made it all right!"

Gabriel dropped speechless into a chair, and gazed, open-mouthed, at his sister. "I've made it all right, Gabe," continued Olly coolly, "you'll see. I jest went over thar this morning, and hed a little talk with the lawyer, and giv him a piece o' my mind about Mrs. Markle--and jest settled the whole thing."