Overland: A Novel

by John William De Forest

"Yes, yes, yes," laughed and chattered Clara. "Great Scott and great Thurstane! All yours. Three hundred thousand. Half a million. A million. I don't know how much. All I know is that it is all yours. Oh, my darling! oh, my darling! How I have fooled you! Are you angry with me? Say, are you angry? What will you do to me?"

We must excuse Thurstane for finding no other chastisement than to squeeze her in his arms and choke her with kisses. Next he held her from him, set her down upon a sofa, fell back a pace and stared at her much as if she were a totally new discovery, something in the way of an arrival from the moon. He was in a state of profound amazement at the dexterity with which she had taken his destiny out of his own hands into hers, without his knowledge. He had not supposed that she was a tenth part so clever. For the first time he perceived that she was his match, if indeed she were not the superior nature; and it is a remarkable fact, though not a dark one if one looks well into it, that he respected her the more for being too much for him.

"It beats Hannibal," he said at last. "Who would have expected such generalship in you? I am as much astonished as if you had turned into a knight in armor. Well, how much it has saved me! I should have hesitated and been miserable; and I should have married you all the same; and then been ashamed of marrying money, and had it rankle in me for years. And now—oh, you wise little thing!—all I can say is, I worship you."

"Yes, darling," replied Clara, walking gravely up to him, putting her hands on his shoulders, and looking him thoughtfully in the eyes. "It was the wisest thing I ever did. Don't be afraid of me. I never shall be so clever again. I never shall be so tempted to be clever."

We must pass over a few months. Thurstane soon found that he had the Muñoz estate in his hands, and that, for the while at least, it demanded all his time and industry. Moreover, there being no war and no chance of martial distinction, it seemed absurd to let himself be ordered about from one hot and cramped station to another, when he had money enough to build a palace, and a wife who could make it a paradise. Finally, he had a taste for the natural sciences, and his observations in the Great Cañon and among the other marvels of the desert had quickened this inclination to a passion, so that he craved leisure for the study of geology, mineralogy, and chemistry. He resigned his commission, established himself in San Francisco, bought all the scientific books he could hear of, made expeditions to the California mountains, collected garrets full of specimens, and was as happy as a physicist always is.

Perhaps his happiness was just a little increased when Mrs. Stanley announced her intention of returning to New York. The lady had been amiable on the whole, as she meant always to be; but she could not help daily taking up her parable concerning the tyranny and stupidity of man and the superior virtue of woman; and sometimes she felt it her duty to put it to Thurstane that he owed everything to his wife; all of which was more or less wearing, even to her niece. At the same time she was such a disinterested, well-intentioned creature that it was impossible not to grant her a certain amount of admiration. For instance, when Clara proposed to make her comfortable for life by settling upon her fifty thousand dollars, she replied peremptorily that it was far too much for an old woman who had decided to turn her back on the frivolities of society, and she could with difficulty be brought to accept twenty thousand.

Furthermore, she was capable, that is, in certain favored moments, of confessing error. "My dear," she said to Clara, some weeks after the marriage, "I have made one great mistake since I came to these countries. I believed that Mr. Coronado was the right man and Mr. Thurstane the wrong one. Oh, that smooth-tongued, shiny-eyed, meeching, bowing, complimenting hypocrite! I see at last what a villain he was. I see it," she emphasized, as if nobody else had discovered it. "To think that a person who was so right on the main question [female suffrage] could be so wrong on everything else! The contradiction adds to his guilt. Well, I have had my lesson. Every one must make her mistake. I shall never be so humbugged again."

Some little time after Thurstane had received the acceptance of his resignation and established himself in his handsome city house, Aunt Maria observed abruptly, "My dears, I must go back."

"Go back where? To the desert and turn hermit?" asked Clara, who was accustomed to joke her relative about "spheres and missions."

"To New York," replied Mrs. Stanley. "I can accomplish nothing here. This miserable Legislature will take no notice of my petitions for female suffrage."