"Of course I shall be gentle," he said, taking her hand cordially. As he held it he could feel the hard places on the palm which much household toil, never neglected, though never mentioned, had made there.
"But when you see her, when you hear her talk, it may not be so easy," responded Mrs. Thorne, looking at him with an expression in her eyes which struck him as containing at the same time both entreaty and defiance.
"It will always be easy, I think, for me to be gentle with Garda," responded Winthrop; and his own tone was gentle enough as he said it.
Tears rose in Mrs. Thorne's eyes; but she repressed them, they did not fall. "I depend greatly upon you," she said, with more directness than she had yet used. She drew her hand from his, took up his hat, which was lying on a chair near her, and gave it to him; she seemed to wish him to go, to say no more.
He obeyed her wish, he left the house and went to the rose garden. Here, after looking about for a moment, he saw Garda.
CHAPTER XI
She was under the great rose-tree. Dressed in an old white gown of a thick cotton material, she was sitting on the ground, with her crossed arms resting on the bench, and her head laid on her arms; her straw hat was off, the rose-tree shading her from the afternoon sun. Carlos Mateo, mounting guard near, eyed Winthrop sharply as he approached. But though Garda of course heard his steps, she did not move; he came up and stood beside her, still she did not raise her head. He could see her face in profile, as it lay on her arm; it was pale, the long lashes were wet with tears.
"Garda," he said.
"Yes, I know who it is," she answered without looking up; – "it is Mr. Winthrop. Mamma has asked you to come and talk to me, I suppose; but it is of no use." And he could see the tears drop down again, one by one.
"I should be glad to come on my own account, without being asked, if I could be of any use to you, Garda."
"You cannot," she murmured, hopelessly.
His speech had sounded in his own ears far too formal and cold for this grieving child – for the girl looked not more than fourteen as she sat there with her bowed head on her arms. He resisted, however, the impulse to treat her as though she had been indeed a child, to stoop down and try to comfort her.
"I am very sorry to find you so unhappy," he went on, still feeling that his words were too perfunctory.
"I don't believe it; I wish I did," answered Garda, who was never perfunctory, but always natural. "If I did, perhaps I could talk to you about it, and then it wouldn't be quite so hard."
"Talk to me whether you believe it or not," suggested Winthrop.
"I cannot; you never liked him."
A frown showed itself on Winthrop's face; but Garda could not see it, and he took good care that his voice should not betray irritation as he answered: "But as I like you, won't that do as well? You ought to feel safe enough with me to say anything."
"Oh, why won't you be good to me?" said the girl, in a weeping tone, abandoning the argument. "I shall die if everybody is so cruel when I am suffering so."
"I am not cruel," said Winthrop. He had seated himself on the bench near her, he put out his hand and laid it for a moment on her bright brown hair.
The touch seemed very grateful to Garda; instantly she moved towards him, put her arms on his knee, and laid her head down again, in much the same attitude she often assumed when with Margaret Harold, save that she did not look up; her eyes remained downcast, the lashes heavy with tears. "I cannot bear it – he has gone away," she said, letting her sorrow come forth. "I liked him so much – so much better than I liked any one else. And now he has gone, and I am left! And there was no preparation – it was so sudden! Only yesterday we had that beautiful walk on Patricio beach (don't you remember? – I called to you as we passed), and he said nothing about going. I can never tell you how long and dreadful the time has been since I got his note this morning."
"Don't try," said Winthrop. "Think of other things. Some of us are left, make the best of us; we are all very fond of you, Garda." He felt a great wrath against Lucian Spenser; but he could not show any indication of it lest he should lose the confidence she was reposing in him, the confidence which made her come and lay her crossed arms on his knee and tell him all her grief. This confidence had other restrictive aspects, it showed that she regarded him as a species (somewhat younger, perhaps) of Mr. Moore or Dr. Kirby; Winthrop was acutely conscious that he could not play that part in the least; it certainly behooved him, therefore, to do the best he could with his own.
"Yes, you are all kind, I know," Garda had answered. "But Lucian was different, Lucian amused me so."
"Amused? Was that it?" said Winthrop, surprised by the word she had chosen.
"Of course," answered Garda, in the same dejected tone. "Is there anything better than to be amused? I am sure I don't know anything. I was so dull here, and he made everything delightful; but now – " Her tears rose again as the contrast came over her.
"Perhaps, now that you have called our attention to it, the rest of us might contrive to be more amusing," said Winthrop, with a tinge of sarcasm in his tone.
But Garda did not notice the sarcasm. "No," she answered, seriously, "you could not. You might try; but no, you could not," she repeated, with conviction. "For it wasn't anything he did, it was Lucian himself. Besides, I liked so much to look at him – he was so beautiful. Don't you remember the dimple that came when he threw back his head and laughed?" She moved a little so that she could rest her chin on her clasped hands, and look up into Winthrop's face; her eyes met his dreamily; she saw him, but she was thinking of Spenser.
"Torres has a dimple too," answered Winthrop, rather desperately. For between the beauty of the girl herself, made more appealing as it was now by her sorrow, her confiding trust that he was prepared to play on demand the part of grandfather or uncle – between this and her extraordinary, frank dwelling upon the attractive points of Lucian Spenser, together with the wrath he felt against that accomplished young engineer – he was not, perhaps, so fully in possession of his accustomed calmness as usual. But she was a child, of course; he always came back to that; she was nothing but a child.
It was true that poor Torres had a dimple, as Winthrop had said. It was in his lean dark cheek, and everybody was astonished to see it there; once there, everybody wondered where it found space to play. It did not find it in depth, and had to spread itself laterally; it was a very thin dimple on a bone.
But Garda paid no attention to this attempt at a diversion. "Did you ever see such eyes as Lucian's, such a deep, deep blue?" she demanded of Winthrop's gray ones.
"Very blue," he answered. He was succeeding in keeping all expression out of his face (if there had been any, it would not have been of the pleasantest). He felt, however, that his tone was dry.
But acquiescence was enough for Garda, she did not notice his tone; she continued the expression of her recollections. "When the light shone across his hair – don't you remember the color? It was like real gold. He looked then like – like a sun-god," she concluded, bringing out the word with ardor.
"What do you know of sun-gods?" said Winthrop, endeavoring to bear himself agreeably in these intimate confidences. "How many of the warm-complexioned gentlemen have you known?"
"I mean the Kirbys' picture," answered Garda, with much definiteness, rejecting sun-gods in general as a topic, as she had the dimple of poor Torres; "you must remember the one I mean."
Winthrop did remember; it was a copy of the Phœbus Apollo of Guido's "Aurora" at Rome.
"Oh," continued Garda, without waiting for reply, "what a comfort it is to talk to you! Mamma has been so strange, she has looked at me as though I were saying something very wrong. I have only told her how much I admired him – just as I have been telling you; is that wrong?"
"Not the least in the world," answered Winthrop, who had at last decided upon the course he should pursue. "But it won't last long, you know, it's only a fancy; you have seen so few people, shut up in this one little place. When you have been about more, your taste will change."
Garda did not pay much heed to these generalities arrayed before her, nor did he expect that she would. But this was the tone he intended to take; later she would recall it. All she said now was, "Oh, please stay ever so long, all the evening; I cannot let you go, now that you are so good to me." And taking his hand with a caressing little motion, she laid her soft cheek against it.
"Suppose we walk a while," suggested Winthrop, rising. He said to himself that perhaps he should feel less like a grandfather if he were on his feet; perhaps, too, she would treat him less like one.
Garda obeyed him directly. She was as docile as possible. When they were a dozen yards off, Carlos Mateo began to follow them slowly, taking very high steps with his thin legs, and pausing carefully before each one, with his upheld claw in the air, as if considering the exact point in the sand where he should place it next. They went to the live-oak avenue. "How long do you think it will hurt me so, hurt me as it does now – his going away?" the girl asked, sadly.
"Not long," replied Winthrop, in a matter-of-course tone. "It's always so when we are parted from our friends; perhaps you have never been parted from a friend before?"
"That is true, I have not," she answered, a little consoled. "But no," she went on, in a changed voice, "it's not like that, it's not like other friends; I cared so much for him! You might all go away, every one of you, and I shouldn't care as I do now." And with all her figure drooping, as though it had been struck by a blighting wind, she put her hand over her eyes again.
"Take my arm," said Winthrop; "we will go down to the landing, where you can rest on the bench; you are tired out, poor child."
Again she obeyed him without opposition, and they walked on; but her breath came in long sobs, and she kept her little hand over her eyes, trusting to his arm to guide her. He felt that it was better that she should talk of Spenser than sob in that way, and, bracing himself with patience, he began.
"How was it that he entertained you so? what did he do?" he asked. There was no indefiniteness about that "he;" there was only one "he" for Garda.
She took the bait immediately. "Oh, I don't know. He always made me laugh." Then her face brightened as recollection woke. "He was always saying things that I had never thought of – not like the things that other people say," she went on; "and he said them, too, in a way that always pleased me so much. Generally he surprised me, and I like to be surprised."
"Yes, I see; it was the novelty."
"No," answered Garda, with a reasonable air, "it couldn't have been the novelty alone, because, don't you see, there were you. You were novel – nothing could have been more so; and yet you never began to give me any such amusement as Lucian did."
Evert Winthrop remarked to himself that a girl had to be very pretty, very pretty indeed, before a man could enjoy such comparisons as these from her lips. But Garda Thorne's beauty was enchanting, sometimes he had thought it irresistibly so; to be wandering with this exquisite young creature on his arm, in this soft air, on this far southern shore – yes – one could put up with a good deal for that.
They reached the landing; she seated herself on the bench that stood at the bank's edge, under the last oak, and folded her hands passively. A little dilapidated platform of logs, covered with planks, ran out a few yards into the water; the old boat of the Thornes lay moored at its end. Winthrop took a seat on the bench also. "Tell me, Garda," he said, "have you ever thought of going north?"
"I have thought of it to-day. But there's no use, we cannot go."
"Don't you remember that you wanted to see snow, and the great winter storms?"
"Did I?" said Garda, vaguely. "I should like to go to Washington," she added, with more animation. "But what is the use of talking about it? We cannot go." And she relapsed again. "We cannot ever go anywhere, unless we should be able to sell the place, and we shall never be able to sell it, because nobody wants it; nobody could want it."
"It's a pleasant old place," remarked Winthrop.
A sudden light came into Garda's eyes. "Mr. Winthrop," she said, eagerly, "I had forgotten your odd tastes; perhaps you really do like East Angels? I remember I thought so once, or rather mamma did; mamma thought you might buy it. I told her I did not want you to feel that it was urged upon you; but everything is different to me now, and I wish you would buy it. I suppose that you are so rich that it wouldn't matter to you, and it would make us so happy."
"Us?"
"Oh yes, to sell it has long been mamma's hope. I won't say her only one, because mamma has so many hopes; but this has been the principal one, the one upon which everything else hung. So few people come to Gracias – people of our position, I mean (for of course we wouldn't sell it to any one else) – that it has seemed impossible; there have been only you and Lucian, and Lucian, you know, has no money at all. But you have a great deal, they all say, and I almost think you really do like the place, you look about you so when you come."
"I like it greatly; better than any other place I have seen here."
"He likes it greatly; better than any other place he has seen here," repeated Garda, in a delighted tone. She rose and began to walk up and down the low bank, clapping her hands softly, and smiling to herself. Then, laughing, she came back to him, her pretty teeth shining beneath her parted lips. "You are the kindest man in the whole world," she announced, standing before him. Winthrop laughed also to see how suddenly happy and light-hearted she had become. "Let us go and tell mamma," continued Garda. "Poor mamma – I haven't been nice to her. But now I will be; I shall tell her that you will buy the place, there's nothing nicer than that. Then we can go to Washington."
"It will take some time, you know," Winthrop suggested.
Her face fell. "Much?" she asked.
"I hardly know; probably a good deal could be done in the course of the summer. There may be difficulty about getting a clear title; complications about taxes, tax claims, or the old Spanish grants." He thought it was as well she should comprehend, in the beginning, that there would be no going to Washington, for the present at least.
"But in our case there can be no complications, we are the old Spaniards ourselves," said Garda, confidently.
He was silent.
"It would be very hard to have to wait long," she went on, dejected by his manner.
"Yes. But it's something to have it sold, isn't it?"
"Of course it is, it's everything," she responded, taking heart again. "And even if it is long, I am young, I can wait; Lucian is young too; and – I don't think he will forget me, do you?"
"I want to advise one thing – that you should not talk so constantly about Spenser," suggested Winthrop.
"Not talk about him? It's all I care for." She drew her arm from his, and moved away. Stopping at a little distance, she gazed back at him with a frown.
"I know it is," answered Winthrop, admiring the beauty of her face in anger. "My suggestion is that you talk about him only to me."
"Then I shall have to see you very often," she answered, breaking into smiles, and coming to take his arm again of her own accord. They went back through the avenue towards the house.
They found Mrs. Thorne in the drawing-room. She appeared to have dressed herself afresh from head to foot, her little black gown was exquisitely neat, her hair under her widow's cap was very smooth; she had a volume of Emerson in her hand. She looked guardedly at Winthrop and her daughter as they came into the room; her face was steady and composed, she was ready for anything.
Garda kissed her, and sat down on the edge of her chair, with one arm round her small waist, giving her a little hug to emphasize her words.
"Oh, mamma, think of it! Mr. Winthrop wants to buy the place."
Mrs. Thorne turned her eyes towards Winthrop. They still had a guarded expression, her face remained carefully grave.
"I have long admired the place, Mrs. Thorne," he began, in answer to her glance. "I have thought for some time that if you should ever feel willing to sell it – "
"Willing? Delighted!" interpolated Garda.
" – I should be very glad to become the purchaser," he concluded; while Garda laughed from pure gladness at hearing the statement repeated in clear, business-like phrase.
Mrs. Thorne gave her little cough, and sat looking at the floor. "It would be a great sacrifice," she answered at last. "There would be so many old associations broken, so many precious traditions given up – "
"Traditions?" repeated Garda, in her sweet, astonished voice. "But, mamma, we cannot live forever upon traditions."
"We have done so, or nearly so, for some time, and not without happiness, I think," replied Mrs. Thorne, with dignity. "Take one thing alone, Edgarda, one thing that we should have to relinquish – the family burying-ground; it has been maintained here unbroken for over two hundred years."
"Mamma, Mr. Winthrop would leave us that."
"Even if he should, there's not room for a house there that I am aware of," replied Mrs. Thorne, funereally.
Winthrop with difficulty refrained from a laugh. But he did refrain. He saw that the relief of having her daughter returned to her, freed from the incomprehensible grief that had swept over her so strangely, this, combined with the suddenly expanding prospect of a fulfilment of her long-cherished dream of selling the place, had so filled her constantly anxious mind with busy plans, pressing upon each other's heels, that beyond them she had only room for a general feeling that she must not appear too eager, that she must, as a Thorne, say something that should seem like an objection – though in reality it would not be one.
But if Winthrop refrained from a laugh, Garda did not. "Oh, mamma, how funny you are to-day!" she said, embracing her again with a merry peal.
"I am not aware that I am funny," replied Mrs. Thorne, with solemnity.
"Why, yes, you are, mamma. Do we want to live in the burying-ground?" said Garda, with another peal.
But Mrs. Thorne preserved her composed air. It almost seemed as if that indeed might be her wish.
Winthrop took leave soon afterwards, in spite of Garda's entreaty that he should stay longer. He had administered a good deal of comfort, it may have been, too, that he had come to the end of his capacity to hear more, that day at least, about Lucian Spenser. He had reached the bottom of the old stairway, and gone some distance down the stone-flagged corridor towards the door, when he heard Garda's voice again:
"Mr. Winthrop?" He looked up. She had come half-way down the stairs, and was standing with one hand on the carved balustrade, her white figure outlined against the high dark panelling of the other side. "I shall never be able to keep silence as you wish, unless I see you very soon again," she said.
He smiled, without making answer in words, for Raquel had now appeared, coming from her own domain to open the lower door. Raquel always paid this attention, though no one asked her to do it. Mrs. Thorne, indeed, disapproving of it and her, never rang to let her know that her guests were departing. This made no difference to Raquel, or rather it gave her the greater insistence; when guests were in the house she now made a point of giving up all work while they remained, in order to be in readiness for this parting ceremonial. Raquel had a high regard for ceremonials; she had been brought up by the Old Madam.
Winthrop carried out his project. Asking the good offices of Dr. Kirby as appraiser, he took the first steps towards the purchase of East Angels. It soon became apparent that the steps would be many. The Dueros having been, as Garda had said, "the old Spaniards" themselves, there was no trouble in this case about the Spanish grants; theirs was a bona fide one. But there were other intricacies, and in studying them Winthrop learned the history of the place almost back to the landing of Ponce de Leon. The lands had been granted in the beginning by the crown of Spain (of course over the heads of the unimportant natives) to Admiral Juan de Duero in 1585. They had been regranted (over the heads of the Dueros), seventy years later, by the crown of England, to an English nobleman, who, without taking possession, had sold his grant, and comfortably enjoyed the profits; the buyer meanwhile had crossed the ocean only to lose his life by shipwreck off the low Florida coast, and his descendants had, it appeared, sent an intermittent cry across from England that they should assuredly come over, and take possession. They never did, however; and the Dueros of course considered their claim as merely so much unimportant insanity. Later, at the beginning of the British occupation in 1763, the Dueros themselves had transferred part of their domain to other owners. Then, upon the return of the Spaniards, twenty years afterwards, they had calmly taken possession of the property again, without going through the form of asking permission, the new owners meanwhile having gone north, to cast their fortunes with the raw young republic called the United States; the descendants of these new owners had also at intervals sent up a cry, which echoed through the title rather more clearly than the earlier one from England. The place had been three times pillaged by buccaneers, who at one period were fond of picnic-parties on Florida shores; it had been through several attacks by Indians, in one of which the stone sugar-mill had been destroyed. Since the long warm peninsula had come into the possession of the United States these same lands had suffered several partitions (on paper) from forced sales (also on paper), owing to unpaid taxes, the confusion having been much increased by the late war. Tax claims in large numbers lifted their heads, like a crop of quick-growing malodorous weeds, at the first intimation that a bona fide purchaser had appeared, a man from the North who had the eccentricity of wishing, in the first place, for such a worn-out piece of property as East Angels, and, in the second, for a clear title to it; this last seemed an eccentricity indeed, when the Dueros themselves had lived there so long without one. Evert Winthrop persevered; he persevered with patience, for he was amused by the local history his researches unearthed. Dr. Kirby persevered also, but he persevered with impatience; he was especially incensed against the attorney who represented a portion of the later tax titles. This attorney, a new-comer in Gracias, was a tall, narrow-chested young man from Maine, who had hoped to obtain health and a modest livelihood in the little southern town; it was plain that he would obtain neither, if long opposed to Reginald Kirby.
"Sir," said the Doctor, who had been especially exasperated by a tax title which stood in the name of a certain Increase Kittredge, described as a resident, "there is collusion in this evidently. There is no such person in Gracias-á-Dios, and I venture to say there is no such person in the State; it is some northern freebooter who is acting through you. Kittredge," he repeated, putting on his spectacles to read the name again. "And Increase!" he added, throwing back his head and looking about the room, as if calling the very furniture to witness. "No southerner, high or low, sir, had ever such a name as that since the universe was created; it's Yankee, Yankee to the core, as – if you will kindly allow me to mention it – is your own also."
The youthful attorney, whose name was Jeremiah Boise, sat looking at his pen-holder with a discouraged air; he was very young, and he admired the Doctor profoundly, which made it worse.
"And I am surprised," continued the Doctor, changing his tone to one of simple gravity, "that you should be willing to lend yourself to these plots and jobs" (the Doctor brought out these two words with rich round utterance), "which must, of course, act more or less upon the nerves, you who are so far from robust, who have so evidently a tendency" – here the Doctor paused, surveying Jeremiah from head to foot – "a tendency to weakness of the breathing powers."
The poor young man, who knew that he had, looked so pallid, nevertheless, under this professional statement of his case that the kind-hearted Doctor instantly repented. He put out his hand, "There, there," he said; "don't look so disheartened. Come to my office and let me see you, I venture to say I can set you up in no time – in no time at all. I presume you haven't the least idea how to take care of yourself, it's extraordinary how people go about the world one mass of imprudence. Have the kindness to stand up for a moment. Now draw a long breath. Hum – hum – I thought so; no absolute harm done as yet." And the Doctor tapped and listened, and tapped and listened again, with as much interest as though the suspected chest had belonged to a southern Kirby instead of to a Jeremiah from Maine. "That will do; thank you. You must come and see me this very afternoon; come about five. I shall give you some rules to follow. One of the first will be that you live more generously, enjoy yourself more (you northerners don't seem to know how). Never fear, man; we'll build you up in a few months so that you won't know yourself!" And cordially shaking his hand, the Doctor took leave – only to come back and remark, standing upon the threshold, with a full return of his majestic manner, "But I should advise you, sir – I should most seriously advise you to relinquish all connection with the scandalous claims masquerading under that fraudulent name – that name of Increase Kittredge!"
He departed, and returned again briskly, to say in his pleasantest voice: "Oh, by-the-way, I'm going to send you some sound wine – port; I have a little left. Be good enough to take it according to the directions." And this time he was really gone.
In the mean while all Gracias congratulated Mrs. Thorne. That lady bore herself with much propriety under the altered aspect of her affairs. There were advantages in it, she said with a sigh, which of course she appreciated; still, it was impossible for her to think without sadness of "the severing of old associations" which such a change must bring about. Gracias agreed with her there – the severing would be difficult; old associations, indeed, had always been Gracias's strong point. Still, a good deal of breakage could be borne – it was, indeed, a duty to bear it – when such an equivalent was to be rendered ("equivalent" was the term they had decided upon). The equivalent – that is, the sum which Winthrop was to pay for the plantation – was not large. But to Gracias in its reduced state it seemed an ample fortune; Gracias wondered what Mrs. Thorne would do with it. That lady kept her own counsel; but in private she covered sheets of paper with her small careful figures, and pondered over them.
To Garda the hoped-for sum represented but one word – Washington! Winthrop had again dwelt upon the advice that she should not speak that word too audibly. "So long as I can whisper it to you, I can be dumb to the others," she answered, laughing.
But it did not seem to him that she whispered.
The conditions of their friendship at present were remarkable. Garda was restless unless she could see him every day; if he came on horseback, she had espied him from afar, and was at the edge of the barren to meet him; if he sailed down the lagoon in the Emperadora, she had recognized the sail, and was in waiting on the landing. Once there, she wished to have him all to herself, she grudged every moment he spent with her mother. This did not prevent him from spending a good many with the little mistress of East Angels, who now received him with a subdued resignation which was his delight. This was the man who was about to dispossess them of their home, the home of her daughter's forefathers; he meant no harm, he wished for the place, sad misfortune compelled them to part with it; but naturally, naturally, they could not quite welcome him with undiluted feelings; naturally their feelings were, must be, charged with – retrospect. All this, especially the retrospect, was so reluctantly yet perfectly expressed in her voice and manner that Winthrop was never tired of admiring it, and her; she was practising the tone she intended to take about him; he could not deny that it was a very perfect little minor note. Garda's feelings, however, did not seem to be diluted with anything; she received him with unmixed joy. As soon as she could get him to herself she carried him off to the live-oak avenue, whose high arches and still gray shade had now become her favorite resort; here she strolled up and down with him and talked of Lucian, being contented with his mere presence as reply. Often Carlos Mateo stalked up and down behind them; for he lived in the live-oak avenue now, Garda declared that he danced by himself there on moonlight nights. Sometimes Adolfo Torres performed similar sentinel duty. For Garda had become almost tender in her manner to the young Cuban since her own interest in Lucian had developed itself. "He feels as I do," she said to Winthrop, with conviction.
"Never mind his feeling. What is yours for him?" suggested Winthrop, who was perhaps rather tired of the sentinels, bird and man.
"Pity," answered Garda, promptly. "A nice, kind pity."
"He must be a poor stick to keep coming here for that."
"Oh, he doesn't think it's pity, he would never comprehend that, though you should tell him a dozen times. He's satisfied; Adolfo is always satisfied, I think."