Overland: A Novel

by John William De Forest

"Certainly," replied Coronado. He did so, and returned with the news that Garcia had sailed to San Diego, having been summoned back to Santa Fé by the state of his affairs. That day and the night following he slept fourteen hours, making up the arrears of rest which he had lost in watching his uncle. Henceforward he was easier; he had a pretty clear field before him; there was no one present to poison Clara; no one but himself to court her. And the courtship went forward with a better prospect of success than is quite agreeable to contemplate.

Coronado and Clara were Adam and Eve; they were the only man and woman in this paradise. People thus situated are claimed by a being whom most call a goddess, and some a demon. She is protean; she is at once an invariable formula and an individual caprice; she is a law governing the universal multitude, and a passion swaying the unit. She seems to be under an impression that, where a couple are left alone together, they are the last relics of the human race, and that if they do not marry the type will perish. Indifferent to all considerations but one, she pushes them toward each other.

There is comparative safety from her in a crowd. Bachelors and maidens who mingle by hundreds may remain bachelors and maidens. But pair them off in lonely places and see if the result is not amazingly hymeneal. A fellow who has run the gauntlet of seven years of parties in New York will marry the first agreeable girl whom he meets in Alaska. There is such a thing as leaving the haunts of men and repairing to waste places to find a husband. We are told that English girls have reduced this to a system, and that fair archers who have failed at Brighton go out to hunt successfully in India.

Well, Coronado had the favoring chances of solitude, propinquity, and daily opportunity. Seldom away from Clara for a day together, he was in condition to take advantage of any of those moods which lay woman open to courtship, such as gratitude for attentions, a disgust with loneliness, a desire for something to love. It was a great thing for him that there was work about the hacienda which no woman could easily do; that there were men servants to govern, horses to be herded, valued, and sold, and lands to be cultivated. All these male mysteries were soon handed over to Coronado, subject to the advice of Aunt Maria and the final judgment of Clara. The result was that he and she got into a way of frequently discussing many things which threatened to habituate her to the idea of being at one with him through life.

Have you ever watched two specks floating in a vessel of water? For a long time they approach each other so slowly that the movement is imperceptible but at last they are within range of each other's magnetism; there is a start, a swift rush, and they are together. Thus it was that Clara was gently, very gently, and unconsciously to herself, approaching Coronado. A mote on the wave of life, she was subject to attraction, as all of us motes are, and this man was the only tractor at hand. Aunt Maria did not count, for woman cannot absorb woman. As to Thurstane, he not only was not there, but he was not anywhere, as she at last believed.

Not a word from him or about him, except one letter from the Adjutant-General, which somehow evaded Coronado's brazier, gave her a moment of choking hope and fear, opened its white, official lips, acknowledged her "communication," and stopped there. The unseen tragedies in which souls suffer are numberless. Here was one. The girl had written with tears and heart-beats, and then with tears and heart-beats had waited. At last came the words, "I have the honor to acknowledge, etc., very respectfully, etc." It was one of the business-like facts of life unknowingly trampling upon a bleeding sentiment.

Imagine Clara's agitations during this long suspense; her plans and hopes and despairs would furnish matter for a library. There was not a day, if indeed there was an hour, during which her mind was not the theatre of a dozen dramas whereof Thurstane was the hero, either triumphant or perishing. They were horribly fragmentary; they broke off and pieced on to each other like nightmares; one moment he was rescued, and the next tomahawked. And this last fancy, despite all her struggles to hope, was for the most part victorious. Meantime Coronado, guessing her sufferings, and suffering horribly himself with jealousy, talked much and sympathetically to her of Thurstane. So much did this man bear, and with such outward sweetness did he bear it, that one half longs to consider him a martyr and saint. Pity that his goodness should not bear dissection; that it should have no more life in it than a stuffed mannikin; that it should be just fit to scare crows with.

But hypocrite as Coronado was, he was clever enough to win every day more of Clara's confidence; and perhaps she might have walked into this whited sepulchre in due time had it not been for an accident. Cantering into San Francisco to hold a consultation with her lawyer, she was saluted in the street by a United States officer, also on horseback. She instinctively drew rein, her pulse throbbing at sight of the uniform, and wild hopes beating at her heart.

"Miss Van Diemen, I believe," said the officer, a dark, stout, bold-looking trooper. "I am glad to see that you reached here in safety. You have forgotten me. I am Major Robinson."

"I remember," said Clara, who had not recollected him at first because she was looking solely for Thurstane. "You passed us in the desert."