Part 29 (1/2)

”Alfonso, I have waited long for you,” Christine replied.

”Ah, yes, Christine, but have you been true all these years?”

As Alfonso spoke these words, he sat with Christine's hand in his own, looking inquiringly into her blue eyes for her answer. Her face flushed and she was speechless.

Alfonso, dropping her hand, said in a kindly voice, ”For years I have kept pure and sought to be worthy of you, and fortune has smiled upon me; I could now match gold with gold, but when I demand purity for purity your silence and your blushes condemn you, and I must bid you a final farewell.”

Christine could not answer, and as Alfonso left the house, she fell weeping upon the sofa, where her sister Fredrika found her, long past midnight. The terrible sorrow of that evening remained forever a mystery to Fredrika.

It was 10 o'clock next morning when the marquis called upon Alfonso Harris at the Hotel Holland. He found him busy answering important letters from the coast. The marquis was not long in detecting that Alfonso lacked his usual buoyancy of spirits, and so rightly concluded that the meeting with Christine the night before had resulted unfavorably.

Alfonso explained all that transpired, and the two artists, who had flattered themselves that they knew women well, admitted to each other their keen disappointment in Christine's character. Both lighted cigars, and for a moment or two unconsciously smoked vigorously, as if still in doubt as to their unsatisfactory conclusions.

Soon Alfonso said, ”Leo, how about your own former love, Rosie Ricci? To meet Rosie again was possibly the motive that prompted you to leave your estate in Italy.”

”Yes, Alfonso, I loved Rosie, as I once frankly stated to your sister on the ocean, but in a moment of peevishness she returned the engagement tokens, and the lovers' quarrel resulted in separation. But after the death of Lucille I found the smouldering fires of the old love for Rosie again easily fanned into a flame, so I crossed the sea in search of my dear country-woman.”

”And did you find her!”

”Yes, Alfonso, that is, all that was left of the vivacious, happy songster, as we once knew her. Her new world surroundings proved disastrous.”

”How so?”

”Look, here is a picture in water color, that tells the story.” Saying this the Marquis slowly removed a white paper from a small sketch which he had made the week before. It was a picture in the morgue on the East River, with its half hundred corpses, waiting recognition or burial in the Potter's Field. Upon a cold marble slab lay the body of a young girl, her shapely hands across her breast. Alfonso recognized Rosie's sweet face and golden tresses that artists had raved over.

The marquis in sad tones added a few words of explanation. ”The senator who educated Rosie proved a villain. When she acted as Juliet at the Capitol, fas.h.i.+onable society gave hearty approval of her rare abilities.

Rosie's genius, like a shooting star, flashed across the sky and then shot into oblivion.”

A few days afterwards, Alfonso on the pier with his white handkerchief waved adieu to Leo who had resolved to wed art in sunny Italy. Sad memories decided Alfonso to leave New York at once. For a short time he was inclined to give up a new purpose, and return to his own family at Harrisville, but the law of equity controlled his heart, he journeyed back to the Pacific Coast, and again approached the Yosemite Valley.

Seated again on Inspiration Point, he gazed long and earnestly into the gorge below. He could discern neither smoke nor moving forms. All had changed; not the peaks, or domes, or wonderful waterfalls; all these remained the same. But where were Red Cloud and kind-hearted Mariposa?

Alfonso's own race now occupied the valley for pleasure and for gain.

Mariposa might not be of his own race, but she had a n.o.ble heart.

Education had put her in touch with civilization, and she was as pure as the snow of the Sierras. He wondered if she ever thought of him. He remembered that, when he rode away, her face was turned toward the Bridal Veil Falls. Did she thus intend to say, ”I love you?”

At midnight, as the moon rose above the forest, the tall pines whispered of Mariposa, of wild flowers she was wont to gather, of journeys made to highest peaks, of weeks of watching and waiting, and of the burial of Red Cloud at the foot of an ancient sequoia; then the language of the breezes among the pines became indistinct, and Alfonso, half-asleep, half-awake, saw approaching a white figure. Two dark eyes full of tears, gazed into his face, at first with a startled look, and then with a gleam of joy and trust.

Alfonso exclaimed, ”Mariposa!” He sought to clasp her in his arms, but the graceful figure vanished, and the pines seemed to whisper, ”Alfonso, I go to join the braves in the happy hunting grounds beyond the setting sun. You will wed the fairest of your people. Adieu.”

When Alfonso awoke, the ring of beaten gold was gone, where, he knew not.

The tourist-coach was rumbling down the mountain road, and he joined it.

After an inspection of his mines, he sadly left the Sierras for San Francisco.

The prophetic words of Mariposa, whispered among the pines, proved true.

Alfonso again met Gertrude's best friend, beautiful Mrs. Eastlake, now a young widow, and later he married her, making their home on k.n.o.b Hill, the most fas.h.i.+onable quarter of the city by the Golden Gate.