Overland Tales Part 16

"'Drei Lilien, drei Lilien-- Die pflanzt mir auf mein Grab.'"

"There"--she turned to Clara--"that's music for you."

Right here, let me confide to the reader Christine's great failing--the weak point in this strong nature. She had a queer habit of keeping up a sort of running comment on any conversation that took place in her presence--any occurrence that came under her observation; comment in the shape of bits of poetry or song, that she sang softly to herself. But she _could_ not sing--and that was the great failing. Think of a music-teacher who could not, if life depended on it, sing a dozen notes in the same key, but would drop lower and lower, "till her voice fell clear into the cellar"--according to the girl's own statement.

Mr. Muldweber seemed loath to part with his prospective tenants, but was a.s.sured that the close of the week would find them at Lone Linden. When they reached the depot, the train that was to take Mrs. Wardor and Clara back to the city was ready, and Christine had only just time to apostrophize Clara's eyes--

"Lebt wohl ihr Augen, ihr schonen blauen,"

before it started.

On reaching home, Miss Barbara met them at the threshold, with flaming cheeks and sparkling eyes. "Such a romp as I have had with s...o...b..ll,"

she explained; and the Indian girl laughed like an imp of the devil.

Mrs. Wardor chided the young lady for romping, but Clara drew back from the girl with an uncomfortable feeling. Clara's cheeks boasted but a delicate pink tinge at best, and to-night, in the glare of the gas, after the day's fatigue, she looked almost haggard beside the robust, health-glowing girl.

"How old are you, Lady Clare?" she asked in the course of the evening.

"Twenty-two. Why?"

"Oh, nothing; only when I get to be as old as you are I shall wear black constantly, just as you do, particularly if I have lost all my color, too."

"A wise resolution. I never had your color, though. Neither my face nor my hair was ever red--nor my mother's, before me. Perhaps she did not stand over the hot fire as much as your mother did."

"Yes--I know they say mother 'lived out' as cook when she first came to California; but then--_she_ didn't have to marry to get a home."

It was all out now; though the girl sent the shaft almost at random, it had struck the sore spot. Clara had married for a home. Her mother had expended her meagre fortune on Clara's education, never doubting that the girl's loveliness would attract a goodly number of suitors, from whom the most suitable, that is, the wealthiest, could be chosen.

Whether Clara was less worldly or more romantic--at any rate she lost her heart to a young man in society, who was considered an ornament of that society--though it would have puzzled a common mortal to discover why. His upper lip boasted a full, silken moustache, and he could turn over the music sheets, standing beside the young lady performing on the piano, with unequalled grace; he sang a languid tenor, and could fasten his eyes on a lady with a melting, melancholy look, as if sighing in his heart, "could I but die for thee."

It was what he spoke out aloud to Clara, when, after months of intimate acquaintance, he understood that Clara's mother wanted to see her daughter "settled." But he didn't die; he only bewailed his fate, his inability to make her his cherished wife, and lay all the treasures of the Golden State at her feet. To quote Christine's hard, unsympathetic opinion, he was "a graceless monkey, a fortune hunter, without ambition enough to try for a living for himself, let alone for the woman he professed to adore." Amid tears and protestations of breaking hearts and darkened lives they parted: Clara to give her hand, at her mother's entreaties, to a man of great wealth and corresponding age and respectability--her lover to continue his search for a wife who could boast of money besides beauty and amiability.

Miss Barbara's heart was good in the main, and she would not have hurt Clara as she did had she not been wild with an excitement for which there seemed no cause. She was heedless, to be sure; and her temper--well, she had red hair.

Only three days later, early in the morning, we see them all at the depot, and comfortably seated in the cars--Mrs. Wardor, Clara, Barbara, and Daisy--with Kickup aboard the train, but in a different car--Kickup being only an Indian pony, and the s.h.a.ggiest kind of one at that. Miss Barbara and "her maid," as she grandly styled the moon-faced Indian sometimes, sat behind Mrs. Wardor and Clara--Clara and Barbara each sitting nearest the window. Clara in deepest black, with the delicate flush on her face, looked, the most interesting of young widows, and whenever she raised her dove-like eyes, was sure to encounter the gaze of the many who stood outside. Just as the sharp click of the starting-bell rang through the cars, Clara, looking up, caught sight of a figure that caused her heart to beat full and fast. Yet her face grew pale as she noted the form of which the words "an elegantly attired gentleman" would, perhaps, give the best idea.

He leaned against one of the wooden pillars supporting the depot roof, with a dejected, melancholy air. Almost involuntarily Clara leaned forward, but sank back the next moment, her face ablaze, her lips trembling. The impish laugh of the Indian girl that had struck her so unpleasantly on the night of her return from San Jose, again fell on her ear, and Miss Barbara's irrepressible "te-he" mingled with it. Had she then betrayed her heart's secret to these two foolish, giggling things?

Her cheeks burned with mortification, but in her heart there was a strange gleam of happiness. He knew, then, that she was free; he had heard of her leaving the city, and chose this delicate way of intimating to her that.--Ah! well; she was still in deepest mourning, and must not think--anything--for a while yet, at least.

Mrs. Wardor, her mind filled with doubts and misgivings as to whether she had brought just the things she wanted for the summer in San Jose, had noticed nothing of the little episode, but catching sight of Clara's face as they left the cars, she exclaimed, with genuine gladness in her tone, "Why, Clara, I know this summer in the country will do you good; your eyes are bright with antic.i.p.ation!"

Christine met them at the depot, and as the carriage rolled smoothly toward their new home, she told them of what other arrangements she had made with old Mr. Muldweber. He owned a horse of venerable age, which could be driven by the most timid lady, and the old gentleman was willing that they should use the horse, but, as of the garden, so he wanted to take care of the animal, too. This was cheerfully agreed to, and when she went on to say that she had hired a phaeton--really quite a stylish affair--Miss Barbara almost smothered her with kisses, which would not have happened, by the by, if there had been any place for Christine to hide in.

At the gate stood Mr. Muldweber. "What a funny old man," laughed Miss Barbara. "A patriarch," said Clara; but Christine declared, with more than her usual energy, that no one should say anything disrespectful of or to Mr. Muldweber in her presence.

With chivalrous bearing he welcomed Mrs. Wardor to her new home, and his address, delivered with true German earnestness, would have checked Miss Barbara's mirth, even without Christine's warning; and Christine herself could only repeat, as she kissed Clara's fair head, "Der Herr segne Deinen Einzug."

Then she led her up-stairs, where she had two rooms, opening into each other, fitted up for Clara and herself, with windows reaching to the floor leading to the balcony. The other window in Christine's room looked toward the Coyote Hills, the corresponding window in Clara's room disclosing a view of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

"Now tell me what you have on your mind, little one," she said, drawing Clara down by the window, and looking off toward the cool, deep shadows of the redwoods on the mountain, she listened to blus.h.i.+ng Clara's recital of the morning's occurrence, while she hummed softly (ending full three notes lower than she had commenced):

"I have gazed into the darkness-- Seeking in the busy crowd For a form once--"

"Perhaps I have done him wrong after all," she interrupted herself; and aloud she said, cheerfully: "The name of this place will be changed before we leave it, I know. But down there is Mr. Muldweber; I mean to ask him about Lone Linden, and his singular fancy for that tree." She knew Clara would be happier left alone to dream over the vision of the morning, and her heart really went out in sympathy to this lonely old man, who had such a longing, hungry look in his eyes as he stood with his arm thrown around the lone linden, his other hand shading his eyes while he peered down the road toward the town.

"No one hastens home at twilight, Waiting for my hand to wave."

Christine's dreary singing would hardly have enlivened Mr. Muldweber's spirits if he had heard it; but it ceased ere she came close up to him.

With his usual gallantry the old man spread his handkerchief on the gra.s.s covering the broken mound for Christine to rest on, and before darkness had spread over the plain and crept up to the mountain-tops, she knew more of the old man's history--which was the history of the linden tree--than she had ever expected to learn. He had learned to love the girl during the few days that the fitting-up of the house had thrown them together; and he could speak his mother tongue to her--he never would have said so much in English.

When he had left the mining-school at Freiberg in the Fatherland to come to the great America, he had brought with him from the old _Edelhof_, where he was born and raised, a handful of seed from the linden trees that formed his favorite avenue. He meant to build up just such a place in America, and he carried the linden seed with him through the United States and then into Mexico, where his knowledge of scientific mining was of more use at that time. Into Mexico he carried his bride, a young German girl, whose parents had died on their way out from the Fatherland, and who died herself of _Heimweh_, in the strange, wild land to which her husband brought her. But she left him a son, to whom he gave a new mother, a dark-eyed senorita from Durango. Then he drifted on toward California, before it was California to us, and settled finally in the Pueblo of San Jose, near the mission of Santa Clara, after it had ceased to be a mission. Here he built the old _adobe_--a house quite pretentious for those times, and he threw up the mound, smooth and round, and discernible at some distance, and planted the linden seed he had so carefully h.o.a.rded. But he did not sow the seed broadcast; it was a tree for every member of the family--no more. As the senorita from Durango had presented him with quite a little herd of Muldwebers, however, he had begun to entertain hopes of growing something of a forest in the valley, when the dark eyes of the senorita were closed one dread night, and never opened again to the light of this world.

The wealth she had brought him had weighed but little in her husband's estimation; he had learned to admire her goodness of heart and n.o.bility of character. It was a heavy blow; but, strange to say, his heart almost turned from her children at that time and clung again to the child of his first love, the German girl who had died of being homesick. He grew intolerant of Spanish, would not even speak English, but shut himself up with his oldest son to teach him the language he had neglected for so long. Then died the two sons of his Spanish wife, and, though he mourned their loss, he drew still closer to his first-born.

But he had conceived the singular fancy that the spirit of his dead could not rest while their trees lived; and he cut them down, one by one, with his own trembling hands, and, weeping, made a fire of their straight trunks and graceful branches, and buried the ashes deep in the earth. It was about this time that his German friends, of whom there were now quite a number in San Jose, began to whisper among themselves that Mr. Muldweber was getting very queer--eccentric, in fact--if not worse than eccentric. His son, among the first pupils of Santa Clara College, was brought home, and pursued his studies as mining engineer under the guidance of his father, whose intellect and mental equilibrium seemed perfectly restored, if they had ever been wavering.

Then death ruthlessly deprived him of the last remaining child of the Spanish woman--a daughter with eyes as dark as her mother's, and cherry lips and dimpled cheeks; and he turned from his first-born and only child now, shunning and avoiding him, as he had neglected all his other children at one time. The boy, or rather young man--for he had pa.s.sed the age of twenty-one--bore his father's whim like the sensible fellow he was, understanding well the grief, perhaps self-reproach, that was preying on his parent's heart; and they lived on, apart, though under the same roof. When he could no longer bear his father's coldness, amounting almost to aversion, he left home, hoping that absence would work a change. No letter was ever returned for the kindly-meant missives sent by him, and when the thought of his father's growing age and loneliness overcame his pride, and he returned, he found the homestead let to strangers, and his father established in his little hut, more unreasonable than ever.

He tried by kindness to conquer the old man's injustice; but one day he spoke such hard, cruel words to his son, that pride and manhood rebelled against the indignity, and he left the old homestead forever, he said, vowing to live, under a strange name, "where his father should never hear of him again, living or dead."

A s.h.i.+ver ran through the old man's frame; the day had gone to rest, and the wind blew coldly through the branches of the lone tree above them; but he would not listen to the girl's suggestion, of coming into the house with her.

"No!" he said, "I must speak of the wrong I did to the boy right here, under his tree; he is not dead, I know--the spirit of his mother comes here sometimes and tells me so. She had such blue eyes--like her that is with you; but her heart was not strong like yours, either. You see," he continued, "I was crazy then with grief and loneliness, and self-reproaches, and I said to him, when he spoke kindly and cheerfully, that he was the 'laughing heir,' waiting only for me to follow his brothers, in order to lay claim to the riches that I hoped would be a curse to him. Ah! I see his white face before me every night, and hear his last words ringing through my head: 'So shall they be a curse to me if ever thou seest me again. Leave thy wealth to strangers, old man, thou hast no longer a son.'"

He had arisen and stood erect, unconsciously giving a dramatic representation. The hand he extended had grown firm, but his face gleamed white and ghastly, through the falling gloom. Then the hand sank powerless as he complained, "And he will keep his word--though he was so good--my Rudolph."

He looked up in sudden astonishment; Christine had laid her hand on his shoulder and gazed eagerly into his face. "Rudolph," she repeated, and her hands wrung wildly a moment, dropped by her side in a kind of quiet despair. But the old man hardly noticed her. He stood on the mound again, his form bent forward, as if to catch the first glimpse of any who might be coming up the road, and he shook his head slowly as he muttered to himself, "Er kommt nicht, er kommt noch immer nicht."

Christine held out her hand to him. "Come, let me lead you," she said; but the old man did not understand all the words meant.

Late at night, sitting by the open window, from where she could see his domicile, she caught herself humming,

"'T is said that absence conquers love, But, oh! believe it not."

And she stopped. She _was_ thinking of Rudolph. Yes, but she had fancied at first that she was "singing out of his father's heart," not her own.

Poor Rudolph! Now she knew what had exiled him from his father's home, and she, alas! had driven him from the new home he had meant to build for himself. And she had thought herself right. A bankrupt suicide's daughter, how could she, a German, with all the deep religious prejudices of that people burnt into her soul, dream of becoming anything more than a friend to the man she honored above all others?

People said she had led him on, had jilted him, and he had left the country. Could she recall him? And how? Yet she could not leave this lonely old man to die, as he was surely dying, of the remorse in his heart and the bitter regrets for his injustice to his son.

No one, coming upon the family at the Lone Linden the very day after their advent to the place, would have suspected them of being strangers there. It was home to them at once. The garden, with its "two ornamental palms," as Christine called them, its wealth of flowers and sparkling fountain, lay all day in the laughing suns.h.i.+ne, and the beams that crept in through the bay-window of the sitting-room played hide-and-seek amid the ivy trailing its glossy leaves across the opposite wall. It was here that Christine's piano stood, and as Miss Barbara always sought the more gayly-furnished parlor as soon as her music-lesson was ended, so Clara learned to despise that apartment, and spend much of her time in this room.

Toward sunset, when shadows grew heavier, and the evening breeze shook the foliage, the broken mound with its single tree had always a dreary look about it, and even Clara was moved into saying, "If Mr. Muldweber should die, I would not dare come to this tree in the evening sun--it would be haunted, I know. I should see the old gentleman or his wraith standing there with his arm around the tree, and his other hand shading his eye. How lonely he looks; is he waiting for any one, I wonder?"