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CHAPTER XVIII

Everyone on the range, from its owner down to old Jack, considered that Gore made much more way after his trip to Denver. Mariquita, it was decided, had, as it were, awakened to him. It was believed that she and he saw more of each other, and that she liked his company.

Sarella thought things were going so well that they had much better be left to themselves, and this view she strongly impressed upon Don Joaquin. He had gradually come to hold a higher opinion of her sense; at first he had been attracted entirely by her beauty. Her aunt had not been remarkable for intelligence, and he had not thought the niece could be expected to be wiser than her departed elder.

Sarella, on the other hand, did not think her admirer quite so sensible as he really was. That he was shrewd and successful in business, she knew, but was the less impressed that his methods had been slow and unhurried. To her eastern ideas there was nothing imposing (though extremely comfortable) in a moderate wealth accumulated by thirty years of patient work and stingy expenditure. But she was sure he did not in the least understand his own daughter, in whom she (who did not understand her any better than she would have understood Dante's Divina Commedia) saw nothing at all difficult to understand. The truth was that Don Joaquin had never understood any woman; without imagination, he could understand no sex but his own – and his experience of women was of the narrowest. Nevertheless, he was nearer to a sort of rough, nebulous perception of his daughter than was Sarella herself.

His saying that Mariquita would not "consider" Gore's good looks, a remark that Sarella thought merely ridiculous, was an illustration of this. In his explicit mind, in his conscious attitude towards Mariquita, he assumed that it was her business and duty to respect him. He was her parent, so placed by God, and he had a great and sincere reverence for such Divine appointments as placed himself in a condition of superiority. (Insubordination or insolence in the cowboys would have gravely and honestly scandalized him). All the same, in an inner mind that he never consulted, and whose instruction he was far from seeking, he knew that his daughter was a higher creature than himself; all he knew that he knew was that a young girl was necessarily more innocent and pure than an elderly man could be (he himself was no profligate); that in fact all women were more religious than men, and that it behooved them to be so; nature made it easier for them.

He had after deliberate consideration decided that it would be convenient and suitable that his daughter should marry Gore; the young man, he was sure, wished it, and, while the circumstances in which she was placed held little promise of a wide choice of husbands for her, he would, in Don Joaquin's opinion, make a quite suitable husband. To do him justice, he would never have manoeuvred to bring Gore into a marriage with Mariquita, had he appeared indifferent to the girl, or had he seemed in any way unfit.

But, though Don Joaquin had reached the point of intending the marriage, he saw no occasion for much love-making, and none for Mariquita's falling in love with the young man's handsome face and fine figure. Her business was to learn that her father approved the young man as a suitor, and to recognize that that approval stamped him as suitable. That Mariquita would not suddenly learn this lesson, Sarella had partly convinced him; but he did not think there would now be any suddenness in the matter. He would have spoken with authoritative plainness to her now, without further delay; but there was a difficulty – Gore had not spoken to him.

Don Joaquin thought it was about time he did so.

"You think," he remarked when they were alone together over the fire, "that you shall buy Blaine's?"

Now Gore would certainly not buy a range so near Don Joaquin's if he should fail to secure a mistress for it in Don Joaquin's daughter. And he was by no means inclined to take success with her for granted. He was beginning to hope that there was a chance of success – that was all.

"It is worth the money," he answered; "and I have the money. But I have not absolutely decided to settle down to this way of life at all."

"I thought you had."

"Well, no. It must depend on what does not depend upon myself."

Don Joaquin found this enigmatical, which Gore might or might not have intended that he should. Though wholly uncertain how Mariquita might regard him when she came to understand that he wished for more than friendship, he was by this time quite aware that her father approved; and he was particularly anxious that she should not be "bothered."

Don Joaquin diplomatically hinted that Blaine might close with some other offer.

"There is no other offer. He told me so quite straightforwardly. I have the refusal. If he does get another offer, and I have not decided, he is of course quite free to accept it. He does not want to hurry me; I expect he knows that if I did buy, he would get a better price from me than from anyone else."

Gore might very reasonably be tired after his immensely long ride, and when he went off to bed Don Joaquin could not feel aggrieved. But he was hardly pleased by the idea that the young man intended to manage his own affairs without discussion of them, and to keep his own counsel.

CHAPTER XIX

"Just you leave well alone," said Sarella, a little more didactically than Don Joaquin cared for. "Things are going as well as can be expected" (and here she laughed a little); "they're moving now."

Don Joaquin urged his opinion that Mariquita ought to be enlightened as to his approval of her suitor.

Sarella answered, with plain impatience, "If you tell her she has a suitor she won't have one. Don't you pry her eyes open with your thumb; let them open of themselves."

Don Joaquin only half understood this rhetoric, and he seldom liked what he could not understand.

He adopted a slightly primitive measure in reprisal —

"It isn't," he remarked pregnantly, "as if the young man were not a Catholic – I would not allow her to marry him if he were not."

"No?"

And it was quite clear to Don Joaquin that he had killed two birds with one stone; he saw that Sarella was both interested and impressed.

"Catholics should marry Catholics," he declared with decision.

"You didn't think so always," Sarella observed, smiling.

"If I forgot it, I suffered for it," her elderly admirer retorted.

Sarella was puzzled. She naturally had not the remotest suspicion that he had felt his wife's early death as a reprisal on the part of Heaven. She knew little of her aunt, and less of that aunt's married life. Had there been quarrels about religion?

"Well, I daresay you may be right," she said gravely. "Two religions in one house may lead to awkwardness."

"Yes. That is so," he agreed, with a completeness of conviction that considerably enlightened her.

"And after all," she went on, smiling with great sweetness, "they're only two branches of the same religion."

This was her way of hinting that the little bird he had married would have been wise to hop from her own religious twig to his.

This suggestion, however, Don Joaquin utterly repudiated.

"The same religion!" he said, with an energy that almost made Sarella jump. "The Catholic Church and heresy all one religion! Black and white the same color!"

Sarella was now convinced that he and his wife had fought on the subject. On such matters she was quite resolved there should be no fighting in her case; concerning expenditure it might be necessary to fight. But Sarella was an easy person who had no love for needless warfare, and she made up her mind at once.

"I understand, now you put it that way," she said amiably, "you're right again. Both can't be right, and the husband is the head of the wife."

Don Joaquin accepted this theory whole-heartedly, and nodded approvingly.

"How," he said, "can a Protestant mother bring up her Catholic son?"

Sarella laughed inwardly. So he had quite arranged the sex of his future family.

"But," she said with a remarkably swift riposte, "if Catholics should not marry Protestants, they have no business to make love to them. Have they?"

Her Catholic admirer looked a little silly, and she swore to herself that he was blushing.

"Because," she continued, entirely without blushing, "a Catholic gentleman made love to me once – "

"Perhaps," suggested Don Joaquin, recovering himself "he hoped you would become a Catholic, if you accepted him."

"I daresay," Sarella agreed very cheerfully.

"But you evidently did not accept him."

"As to that," she explained frankly, "he did not go quite so far as asking me to marry him."

"He drew back!"

"Not exactly. He was interrupted."

"But didn't he resume the subject?"

Sarella laughed.

"I'd rather not answer that question," she answered; "you're asking quite a few questions, aren't you?"

"I want to ask another. Did you like that Catholic gentleman well enough to share all he had, his religion, his name, and his home?"

Don Joaquin was not laughing, on the contrary, he was eagerly serious, and Sarella laughed no more.

"He never did ask me to share them," she replied with a self-possession that her elderly lover admired greatly.

"But he does. He is asking you. Sarella, will you share my religion, and my name, my home, and all that I have?"

Even now she was amused inwardly, not all caused by love. She noted, and was entertained by noting, how he put first among things she was to share, his religion – because he was not so sure of her willingness to share that as of her readiness to share his name and his goods, and meant to be sure, as she now quite understood. It did not make her respect him less. She had the sense to know that he would not make a worse husband for caring enough for his religion to make a condition of it, and she was grateful for the form in which he put the condition. He spared her the brutality of, "I will marry you if you will turn Catholic to marry me, but I won't if you refuse to do that."

She smiled again, but not lightly. "I think," she said, "you will need some one when Mariquita goes away to a home of her own. And I think I could make you comfortable and happy. I will try, anyway. And it would never make you happy and comfortable if we were of different religions. If my husband's is good enough for him, it must be good enough for me."

Poor Sarella! She was quite homeless, and quite penniless. She had not come here with any idea of finding a husband in this elderly Spaniard, but she could think of him as a husband, with no repugnance and with some satisfaction. He was respectable and trustworthy; she believed him to be as fond of her as it was in his nature to be fond of anybody. He had prudence and good sense. And his admiration pleased her; her own sense told her that she would get in marrying him as much as she could expect.

"Shall you tell Mariquita, or shall I?" she inquired before they parted.

"I will tell her. I am her father," he replied.

"Then, do not say anything about her moving off to a home of her own – "

"Why not?" he asked with some obstinacy. For in truth he had thought the opportunity would be a good one for "breaking ground."

"Because she will think we want to get rid of her; or she will think I do. Tell her, instead, that I will do my best to make her happy and comfortable. If I were you, I should tell her you count on our marriage making it pleasanter for her here."

CHAPTER XX

When her father informed her of his intended marriage, Mariquita was much more taken aback than he had foreseen. He had supposed she must have observed more or less what was coming.

"Marry Sarella, father!" she exclaimed, too thoroughly astonished to weigh her words, "but you are her uncle!"

Don Joaquin, who was pale enough ordinarily, reddened angrily.

"I am no relation whatever to her," he protested fiercely. "How dare you accuse your father of wishing to marry his own niece? How dare you insult Sarella by supposing she would marry her uncle?"

It was terrible to Mariquita to see her father so furious. He had never been soft or tender to her, but he had hardly ever shown any anger towards her, and now he looked at her as if he disliked her.

It did astonish her that Sarella should be willing to marry her uncle. Sarella had indeed, as Don Joaquin had not, thought of the difficulty; but she saw that there appeared to be none to him; no doubt, he knew what was the marriage-law among Catholics, and perhaps that was why he was so insistent as to her being one.

"I know," Mariquita said gently, "that there is no blood relationship between her and you. She is my first cousin, but she is only your niece by marriage. I do not even know what the Church lays down."

Her father was still angry with her, but he was startled as well. He did not know any better than herself what the Church laid down. He did know that between him and Sarella there was no real relationship – in the law of nature there was nothing to bar their marriage, and he had acted in perfect good faith. But he did not intend to break the Church's law again.

"If you are ignorant of the Church's law," he said severely, "you should not talk as if you knew it."

She knew she had not so talked, but she made no attempt to excuse herself.

"It is," she said quietly, "quite easy to find out. The priest at Maxwell would tell you immediately."

She saw that her father, though still frowning heavily, was not entirely disregardful of her suggestion.

"Father," she went on in a low gentle tone, "I beg your pardon if, being altogether surprised, I spoke suddenly, and seemed disrespectful."

"You were very disrespectful," he said, with stiff resentment.

Mariquita's large grave eyes were full of tears, but he did not notice them, and would have been unmoved if he had seen them. It was difficult for her to keep them from overflowing, and more difficult to go on with what she wished to say.

"You know," she said, "that there are things which the Church does not allow except upon conditions, but does allow on conditions – "

"What things?"

"For instance, marriage with a person who is not a Catholic – "

Don Joaquin received a sudden illumination. Yes! With a dispensation that would have been dutiful which he had done undutifully without one.

"You think a dispensation can be obtained in – in this case."

"Father," she answered almost in a whisper, "I am quite ignorant about it."

He had severely reprimanded her for speaking, being ignorant. Now he wanted encouragement and ordered her to speak.

"But say what you think," he said dictatorially.

"As there is no real relationship," she answered, courageously enough after her former snubbing, "if such a marriage is forbidden" (he scowled blackly, but she went on), "it cannot be so by the law of God, but by the law of the Church. She cannot give anyone permission to disregard God's law, but she can, I suppose, make exception to her own law. That is what we call a dispensation. God does not forbid the use of meat on certain days, but she does. If God forbade it she could never give leave for it; but she often gives leave – not only to a certain person, but to a whole diocese, or a whole country even, for temporary reasons – what we call a dispensation."

Don Joaquin had listened carefully. He was much more ignorant of ecclesiastical matters than his daughter. He had never occupied himself with considering the reasons behind ecclesiastical regulations, and much that he heard now came like entirely new knowledge. But he was Spaniard enough to understand logic very readily, and he did understand Mariquita.

"So," he queried eagerly, "you think that even if such a marriage is against regulation" (he would not say "forbidden"), "there might be a dispensation?"

"I do not see why there should not."

"Of course, there is no reason," he said loftily, adding with ungracious ingratitude, "and it was extremely out of place for you to look shocked when I told you of my purpose."

Mariquita accepted this further reproof meekly. Don Joaquin was only asserting his dignity, that had lain a little in abeyance while he was listening to her explanations.

"I shall have to be away all to-morrow," he said, "on business. I do not wish you to say anything to Sarella till I give you permission."

"Of course not."

Don Joaquin was not addicted to telling fibs – except business ones; in selling a horse he regarded them as merely the floral ornaments of a bargain, which would have an almost indecent nakedness without them. But on this occasion he stooped to a moderate prevarication.

"Sarella," he confidentially informed that lady, "I shall be up before sunrise and away the whole of to-morrow. Sometime the day after I shall have a good chance of telling Mariquita. Don't you hint anything to her meanwhile."

"Not I," Sarella promised.

("A hitch somewhere," she thought, feeling pretty sure that he had spoken to Mariquita already.)

When Don Joaquin, after his return from Maxwell, spoke to Mariquita again, he once more condescended to some half-truthfulness – necessary, as he considered, to that great principle of diplomacy – the balance of power. A full and plain explanation of the exact position would, he thought, unduly exalt his daughter's wisdom and foresight at the expense of his own.

"The priest," he informed her, "will, of course, be very pleased to marry Sarella and myself when we are ready. That will not be until she has been instructed and baptized. It will not be for a month or two."

Mariquita offered her respectful congratulations both on Sarella's willingness to become a Catholic, and on the marriage itself. She was little given to asking questions, and was quite aware that her father had no wish to answer any in the present instance.

Neither did he tell Sarella that a dispensation would be necessary; still less, that the priest believed the dispensation would have to be sought, through the Bishop, of course, from the Papal Delegate, and professed himself even uncertain whether the Papal Delegate himself might not refer to Rome before granting it, though he (the priest) thought it more probable that His Excellency would grant the dispensation without such reference.

Don Joaquin merely gave Sarella to understand that their marriage would follow her reception into the Church, and that the necessary instruction previous to that reception would take some time.

CHAPTER XXI

As the marriage could not take place without delay, Don Joaquin did not wish it to be unreservedly announced; the general inhabitants of the range might guess what they chose, but they were not at present to be informed.

"Mariquita may tell Gore," he explained to Sarella, "that is a family matter."

"And I am sure she will not tell him unless you order her to," said Sarella; "she does not think of him in that light."

"What light?" demanded Don Joaquin irritably.

"As one of the family," Sarella replied, without any irritation at all. Her placidity of temper was likely to be one of her most convenient endowments.

"I shall give her to understand," said Don Joaquin, "that there is no restriction on her informing Mr. Gore."

Sarella shrugged her pretty shoulders and made no comment.

Mariquita took her father's intimation as an order and obeyed, though surprised that he should not, if he desired Mr. Gore to know of his approaching marriage, tell him himself. Possibly, she thought, her father was a little shy about such a subject.

Mr. Gore received her announcement quite coolly, without any manifestation of surprise. It had not, as Don Joaquin had hoped it might, the least effect of hurrying his own steps.

"Am I," he inquired, "supposed to show that I have been told?"

"Oh, I think so."

So that night when they were alone, after the others had gone to their rooms, Gore congratulated his host.

"Thank you! You see," said Don Joaquin, assuming a tone of pathos that sat most queerly on him, "as time goes on, I should be very lonely."

He shook his head sadly, and Gore endeavored to look duly sympathetic.

"Sarella," the older man proceeded, "could not stop here – if she were not my wife – after Mariquita had left us."

Gore, who perfectly understood Mariquita's father and his diplomacy, would not indulge him by asking if his daughter were, then, likely to leave him.

So Don Joaquin sighed and had to go on.

"Yes! It would be very lonely for me, dependent as I am for society on Mariquita."

Here Gore, with some inward amusement, could not refrain from accusing his possible father-in-law of some hypocrisy; for he was sure the elderly gentleman would miss his daughter as little as any father could miss his child.

"Certainly," he said aloud, "it is hard to think how the range would get on without her."

No doubt, her absence would be hard to fill in the matter of usefulness, and Gore was inclined to doubt whether Sarella would even wish to fill it. He was pretty sure that that young woman would refuse to work as her cousin had worked.

"It must get on without her," Don Joaquin agreed, not without doubt, "when her time comes for moving to a home of her own."

Still Gore refused to "rise."

"We must be prepared for that," Mariquita's father went on, refilling his pipe. "She is grown up. It is natural she should be thinking of her own future – "

Gore suddenly felt angry with him, instead of being merely amused. To him it appeared a profanation of the very idea of Mariquita, to speak of her as indulging in surmises and calculations concerning her own matrimonial chances.

"It would not," he said, "be unnatural – but I am sure her mind is given to no such thoughts."

Don Joaquin slightly elevated his eyebrows.

"I do not know," he said coldly, "how you can answer for what her mind is given to. I, at any rate, must have such thoughts on her account. I am not English. English parents may, perhaps, leave all such things to chance. We, of my people, are not so. To us it seems the most important of his duties for a father to trust to no chances, but arrange and provide for his daughter's settlement in life."

Here the old fellow paused, and having shot his bolt, pretended it had been a mere parenthesis in answer to an implied criticism.

"But," he continued, "I have wandered from what I was really explaining. I was telling that soon I should, in the natural course of things, be left here alone, as regards home companionship, unless I myself tried to find a mate, so I tried and I have succeeded."

Here he bowed with great majesty and some complacence, as if he might have added, "Though you, in your raw youthfulness and conceit, may have thought me too old a suitor to win a lovely bride."

Gore responded by the heartiest felicitations. "Sir," he added after a brief pause, "since it seems to me that you wish it, I will explain my own position. I can well afford to marry. And I would wish very much to marry. But there is only one lady whom I have ever met, whom I have now, or ever, felt that I would greatly desire to win for my wife."

So far Don Joaquin had listened with an absolutely expressionless countenance of polite attention, though he had never been more interested.

"The lady," Gore continued, "is your daughter."

(Here that lady's father relaxed the aloofness of his manner, and permitted himself a look of benign, though not eager, approval.)

"It may be," the young man went on, "that you have perceived my wishes…"

(Don Joaquin would express neither negation nor assent.)

"Anyway, you know them now. But your daughter does not know them. To thrust the knowledge of them prematurely upon her would, I am sure, make the chance of her responding to them very much less hopeful. Therefore I have been slow and cautious in endeavoring to gain even a special footing of friendship with her; I have, lately, gained a little. I cannot flatter myself that it is more than a little; between us there is on her side only the mere dawn of friendship. That being so, I should have been unwilling to speak to yourself – lest it should seem like assuming that she had any sort of interest in me beyond what I have explained. I speak now because you clearly expect that I should. Well, I have spoken. But I am so greatly in eager earnest about this that I ask you plainly to allow me to endeavor to proceed with what, I think, you almost resent as a timidity of caution. It is my only chance."

Don Joaquin did not see that at all. If he were to inform Mariquita that Mr. Gore wished to become her husband and he, her father, wished her to become Mr. Gore's wife, he could not bring himself to picture such disobedience as any refusal on her part would amount to.

"Our way," he said, "is more direct than your fanciful English way; it regards not a young girl's fanciful delays, and timid uncertainty, but her solid welfare, and therefore her solid happiness. In reality it gets over her maiden modesty in the best way – by wise authority. She does not have to tell herself baldly, 'I have become in love with this young man,' but 'My parents have found this young man worthy to undertake the charge of my life and my happiness, and I submit to their experience and wisdom.' Then duty will teach her love; a safer teacher than fancy."

"I hope, sir," said Gore, "that you do not yourself propose that method."

"And if I did?"

"I would, though more earnestly desirous to win your daughter than I am desirous of anything in this life, tell you that I refuse to win her in that way. It never would win her."

"'Win her'! She is all duty – "

"Excuse me! No duty would command her to become my wife if she could only do so with repugnance. If you told her it was her duty I should tell her it was no such thing."

Don Joaquin was amazed at such crass stupidity. He flung his open hands upwards with angry protest. He was even suspicious. Did the young man really want to marry his daughter? It was much more evident that he was in earnest now, than it had been to Don Joaquin that he was in earnest before.

The elderly half-breed had not the least idea of blaming his own crude diplomacy; on the contrary, he had been pluming himself on its success. For some time he had desired to obtain from Gore a definite expression of his wish to marry Mariquita, and he had obtained it. That it had been speedily followed by this further pronouncement, incomprehensible to the girl's father, was not his fault, but was due entirely to the Englishman's peculiarities, peculiarities that to Don Joaquin seemed perverse and almost suspicious.

"If you were a Spaniard," he said stiffly, "you would be grateful to me for being willing to influence my daughter in your favor."

Gore knew that he must be disturbed, as it was his rule to speak of himself not as a Spaniard, but as an American.

"I am grateful to you, sir, for being willing to let me hope to win your daughter for my wife – most grateful."

"You do not appear grateful to me for my willingness to simplify matters."

"They cannot be simplified – nor hurried. If your daughter can be brought to think favorably of me as one who earnestly desires to have the great, great honor and privilege of being the guardian of her life and its happiness, it must be gradually and by very gentle approaches. I hope that she already likes me, but I am sure she does not yet love me."

"Before she has been asked to be your wife! Love you! Certainly not. She will love her husband, for that will be her duty."

Gore did not feel at all like laughing; his future father-in-law's peculiarities seemed as perverse to him as his own did to Don Joaquin. He dreaded their operation; it seemed only too possible that Don Joaquin would be led to interference by them, and such interference he feared extremely; nor could he endure the idea of Mariquita's being dragooned by her father.

"If," he declared stoutly, "you thrust prematurely upon your daughter the idea of me as her husband, you will make her detest the thought of me, and I never shall be her husband."

Don Joaquin was offended.

"I am not used to do anything prematurely," he said grimly. "And it may be that I understand my daughter, who is of my own race, better than you who are not of her race."

"It may be. But I am not certain that it is so. Sir, since you have twice alluded to that question of race, you must not be surprised or displeased if I remind you that she is as much of my race as of your own. Half Spanish she is, but half of English blood."

Don Joaquin was displeased, but all the same, he did feel that there might be something in Gore's argument. He had always thought of Mariquita as Spanish like himself; but he had never been unconscious that she was unlike himself – it might possibly be by reason of her half-English descent.

"The lady," Gore went on, "whom you yourself are marrying, would perhaps understand me better than you appear to do."

This reference to Sarella did not greatly conciliate her betrothed. He did not wish her to be occupied in understanding any young man. All the same, he was slightly flattered at Gore's having, apparently, a confidence in her judgment. Moreover, he knew that it was so late that this discussion could not be protracted much longer, and he was not willing to say anything like an admission that he had receded (which he had not) from his own opinion.

"Her judgment," he said, "is good. And she has a maternal interest in Mariquita. I will tell her what you have said."

Gore went to bed smiling to himself at the idea of Sarella's maternal interest. She did not strike him as a motherly young lady.