Susy, A Story of the Plains

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"Hush! This is wicked! Stop!"

She felt she was now on firm ground, and made the most of it in voice
and manner. She must draw the line somewhere, and she would draw it
between passion and impiety.

"Not until I have told you all, and I MUST before I leave you. I loved
you when I came here,--even when your husband was alive. Don't be angry,
Mrs. Peyton; HE would not, and need not, have been angry; he would have
pitied the foolish boy, who, in the very innocence and ignorance of his
passion, might have revealed it to him as he did to everybody but ONE.
And yet, I sometimes think you might have guessed it, had you thought of
me at all. It must have been on my lips that day I sat with you in the
boudoir. I know that I was filled with it; with it and with you; with
your presence, with your beauty, your grace of heart and mind,--yes,
Mrs. Peyton, even with your own unrequited love for Susy. Only, then, I
knew not what it was."

"But I think I can tell you what it was then, and now," said Mrs.
Peyton, recovering her nervous little laugh, though it died a moment
after on her lips. "I remember it very well. You told me then that
I REMINDED YOU OF YOUR MOTHER. Well, I am not old enough to be your
mother, Mr. Brant, but I am old enough to have been, and might have
been, the mother of your wife. That was what you meant then; that
is what you mean now. I was wrong to accuse you of trying to make me
ridiculous. I ask your pardon. Let us leave it as it was that day in the
boudoir, as it is NOW. Let me still remind you of your mother,--I know
she must have been a good woman to have had so good a son,--and when
you have found some sweet young girl to make you happy, come to me for
a mother's blessing, and we will laugh at the recollection and
misunderstanding of this evening."

Her voice did not, however, exhibit that exquisite maternal tenderness
which the beatific vision ought to have called up, and the persistent
voice of Clarence could not be evaded in the shadow.

"I said you reminded me of my mother," he went on at her side, "because
I knew her and lost her only as a child. She never was anything to me
but a memory, and yet an ideal of all that was sweet and lovable in
woman. Perhaps it was a dream of what she might have been when she was
as young in years as you. If it pleases you still to misunderstand me,
it may please you also to know that there is a reminder of her even
in this. I have no remembrance of a word of affection from her, nor a
caress; I have been as hopeless in my love for her who was my mother, as
of the woman I would make my wife."

"But you have seen no one, you know no one, you are young, you scarcely
know your own self! You will forget this, you will forget ME! And
if--if--I should--listen to you, what would the world say, what would
YOU yourself say a few years hence? Oh, be reasonable. Think of it,--it
would be so wild,--so mad! so--so--utterly ridiculous!"

In proof of its ludicrous quality, two tears escaped her eyes in
the darkness. But Clarence caught the white flash of her withdrawn
handkerchief in the shadow, and captured her returning hand. It was
trembling, but did not struggle, and presently hushed itself to rest in
his.

"I'm not only a fool but a brute," he said in a lower voice. "Forgive
me. I have given you pain,--you, for whom I would have died."

They had both stopped. He was still holding her sleeping hand. His arm
had stolen around the burnous so softly that it followed the curves
of her figure as lightly as a fold of the garment, and was presumably
unfelt. Grief has its privileges, and suffering exonerates a
questionable situation. In another moment her fair head MIGHT have
dropped upon his shoulder. But an approaching voice uprose in the
adjoining broad allee. It might have been the world speaking through the
voice of the lawyer Sanderson.

"Yes, he is a good fellow, and an intelligent fellow, too, but a perfect
child in his experience of mankind."

They both started, but Mrs. Peyton's hand suddenly woke up and grasped
his firmly. Then she said in a higher, but perfectly level tone:--

"Yes, I think with you we had better look at it again in the sunlight
to-morrow. But here come our friends; they have probably been waiting
for us to join them and go in."

* * * * *

The wholesome freshness of early morning was in the room when Clarence
awoke, cleared and strengthened. His resolution had been made. He would
leave the rancho that morning, to enter the world again and seek his
fortune elsewhere. This was only right to HER, whose future it should
never be said he had imperiled by his folly and inexperience; and if, in
a year or two of struggle he could prove his right to address her again,
he would return. He had not spoken to her since they had parted in the
garden, with the grim truths of the lawyer ringing in his ears, but he
had written a few lines of farewell, to be given to her after he
had left. He was calm in his resolution, albeit a little pale and
hollow-eyed for it.

He crept downstairs in the gray twilight of the scarce-awakened house,
and made his way to the stables. Saddling his horse, and mounting,
he paced forth into the crisp morning air. The sun, just risen, was
everywhere bringing out the fresh color of the flower-strewn terraces,
as the last night's shadows, which had hidden them, were slowly beaten
back. He cast a last look at the brown adobe quadrangle of the quiet
house, just touched with the bronzing of the sun, and then turned his
face towards the highway. As he passed the angle of the old garden he
hesitated, but, strong in his resolution, he put the recollection of
last night behind him, and rode by without raising his eyes.

"Clarence!"

It was HER voice. He wheeled his horse. She was standing behind the
grille in the old wall as he had seen her standing on the day he had
ridden to his rendezvous with Susy. A Spanish manta was thrown over her
head and shoulders, as if she had dressed hastily, and had run out to
intercept him while he was still in the stable. Her beautiful face was
pale in its black-hooded recess, and there were faint circles around her
lovely eyes.

"You were going without saying 'goodby'!" she said softly.

She passed her slim white hand between the grating. Clarence leaped to
the ground, caught it, and pressed it to his lips. But he did not let it
go.

"No! no!" she said, struggling to withdraw it. "It is better as it
is--as--as you have decided it to be. Only I could not let you go
thus,--without a word. There now,--go, Clarence, go. Please! Don't you
see I am behind these bars? Think of them as the years that separate
us, my poor, dear, foolish boy. Think of them as standing between us,
growing closer, heavier, and more cruel and hopeless as the years go
on."

Ah, well! they had been good bars a hundred and fifty years ago, when it
was thought as necessary to repress the innocence that was behind them
as the wickedness that was without. They had done duty in the convent
at Santa Inez, and the monastery of Santa Barbara, and had been brought
hither in Governor Micheltorrenas' time to keep the daughters of Robles
from the insidious contact of the outer world, when they took the air
in their cloistered pleasance. Guitars had tinkled against them in vain,
and they had withstood the stress and storm of love tokens. But, like
many other things which have had their day and time, they had retained
their semblance of power, even while rattling loosely in their sockets,
only because no one had ever thought of putting them to the test, and,
in the strong hand of Clarence, assisted, perhaps, by the leaning
figure of Mrs. Peyton, I grieve to say that the whole grille suddenly
collapsed, became a frame of tinkling iron, and then clanked, bar by
bar, into the road. Mrs. Peyton uttered a little cry and drew back, and
Clarence, leaping the ruins, caught her in his arms.

For a moment only, for she quickly withdrew from them, and although
the morning sunlight was quite rosy on her cheeks, she said gravely,
pointing to the dismantled opening:--

"I suppose you MUST stay now, for you never could leave me here alone
and defenseless."

He stayed. And with this fulfillment of his youthful dreams the romance
of his young manhood seemed to be completed, and so closed the second
volume of this trilogy. But what effect that fulfillment of youth
had upon his maturer years, or the fortunes of those who were nearly
concerned in it, may be told in a later and final chronicle.