Conroy had none of the nervous apprehension of her sex in regard to probable ghosts or burglars—she had too much of a man's practical pre-occupation for that, yet she listened curiously. It came again. There was no mistaking it now. It was the tread of the man with whom her thoughts had been busy—her husband.
What was he doing here? In the few months of their married life he had never been home before at this hour. The lumber-room contained among other things the disjecta membra of his old mining life and experience. He may have wanted something. There was an old bag which she remembered he said contained some of his mother's dresses. Yet it was so odd that he should go there now. Any other time but this. A terrible superstitious dread—a dread that any other time she would have laughed to scorn, began to creep over her. Hark! he was moving. She stopped breathing.
The tread recommenced. It passed into the upper hall and came slowly down the stairs, each step recording itself in her heartbeats. It reached the lower hall and seemed to hesitate; then it came slowly along toward her door, and again hesitated. Another moment of suspense and she felt she would have screamed. And then the door slowly opened and Gabriel stood before her.
In one swift, intuitive, hopeless look she read her fate. He knew all! And yet his eyes, except that they bore less of the usual perplexity and embarrassment with which they had habitually met hers, though grave and sad, had neither indignation nor anger. He had changed his clothes to a rough miner's blouse and trowsers, and carried in one hand a miner's pack, and in the other a pick and a shovel. He laid them down slowly and deliberately, and seeing her eyes fixed upon them with a nervous intensity, began apologetically:
"They contain, ma'am, on'y a blanket and a few duds ez I allus used to carry with me. I'll open it ef you say so. But you know me, ma'am, well enough to allow that I'd take nothin' outer this yer house ez I didn't bring inter it."
"You are going away?" she said, in a voice that was not audible to herself, but seemed to echo vaguely in her mental consciousness.
"I be. Ef ye don't know why, ma'am, I 'reckon ez you'll hear it from the same vyce ez I did. It's on'y the squar thing to say afore I go, ez it ain't my fault nor hiz'n. I was on the hill this mornin' in the old cabin."
It seemed as if he had told her this before, so old and self-evident the fact appeared.
"I was sayin' I woz on the hill, when I heerd vyces, and lookin' out I seed you with a stranger. From what ye know o' me and my ways, ma'am, it ain't like me to listen to thet wot ain't allowed for me to hear. And ye might have stood thar ontel now ef I hedn't seed a chap dodgin' round behind the trees spyin' and list'nin'. When I seed that man I knowed him to be a pore Mexican, whose legs I'd tended yer in the Gulch mor'n a year ago. I went up to him, and when he seed me he'd hev run. But I laid my hand onto him—and—he stayed!"
There was something so unconsciously large and fine in the slight gesture of this giant's hand as he emphasized his speech, that even through her swiftly rising pride Mrs. Conroy was awed and thrilled by it. But the next moment she found herself saying—whether aloud or not she could not tell—"If he had loved me he would have killed him then and there."
"Wot thet man sed to me—bein' flustered and savage like, along o' bein' choked hard to keep him from singin' out and breakin' in upon you and thet entire stranger—ain't fur me to say. Knowin' him longer than I do, I reckon you suspect 'bout wot it was. That it ez the truth I read it in your face now, ma'am, ez I reckon I might hev read it off and on in many ways and vari's styles sens we've been yer together, on'y I was thet weak and ondecided yer."
He pointed to his forehead here, and then with his broad palm appeared to wipe away the trouble and perplexity that had overshadowed it. He then drew a paper from his breast.
"I've drawed up a little paper yer ez I'll hand over to Lawyer Maxwell makin' over back agin all ez I once hed o' you and all ez I ever expect to hev. For I don't agree with thet Mexican thet wot was gin to Grace belongs to me. I allow ez she kin settle thet herself, ef she ever comes, and ef I know thet chile, ma'am, she ain't goin' tech it with a two-foot pole. We've allus bin simple folks, ma'am, though it ain't the squar' thing to take me for a sample, and oneddicated and common, but thar ain't a Conroy thet lived ez was ever pinted for money or ez ever took more outer the company's wages than his grub and his clothes."
Vol. XII.—3.
