Who Would Have Thought It?. María Ruiz de Burton
"Finish her education! A Catholic Catechism!" faintly echoed Mrs. Norval, letting her cap-strings go, and sinking into her arm-chair.
The doctor, in his shirt-sleeves, crossed his arms over his breast, and, standing before his wife, also repeated,
"Finish her education, Mrs. Norval; yes, and a Catholic Catechism. I said those words, Mrs. Norval; and I mean them, too, madam."
A contemptuous smile played around the pale lips of the agitated Mrs. Norval, as she said,
"And pray who is to teach her that abominable idolatry here? and who is to pay for her magnificent education? for I suppose she must have several masters to teach her foreign languages, and music, and painting."
The doctor nodded his head in the affirmative, entirely disregarding his wife's sarcasm, and, taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, said,
"If you will follow me, madam, I'll show you with what Lola's education is to be paid." And the doctor, taking a candle, led the way to Julian's room. Mrs. Norval followed her husband, not knowing but that he had gone crazy and meant to set the house on fire with the lighted candle he carried.
The doctor set the candle on the bureau, and Mrs. · Norval seated herself on a chair, silently waiting to see what he would do next.
The doctor selected a key from the bunch he held in his hand, and opened a trunk, from which he took a screw-driver. Then he went to one of the heavy boxes, brought with so much labor, and began to unscrew from the lid several large screws, saying,—
"Arthur Sinclair is to blame for these boxes taking this trip up to New England. I told him distinctly that I wished them to be left at his brother's in New York; and he must, of course, go to work and ship them by express all the way here. When I went to William Sinclair's office to see if the boxes were there, he told me they had been shipped that morning. I went to the depot to stop their coming up; but only two boxes had not been put into the baggage-car, and those I sent back to Sinclair's. The other four came up; and now I shall have to take them back."
"So you were bringing six boxes full of rocks?" "But only to New York."
Now the doctor took out the last screw, opened the box with the key, and began by taking out some articles of clothing. Mrs. Norval smiled. Then he came to some specimens of ores, very rough-looking stones. He lifted a piece of canvas, on which these rough stones were laid, and said to his wife,
"This is what will pay for Lola's education."
Mrs. Norval stood up, uttering a cry of delighted surprise; then, clasping her hands, remained silent, with open mouth and staring eyes, transfixed by her amazement and joy.
"But is it real gold?" she whispered, hoarsely, after some moments of bewildered silence.
"All is not gold that glitters," the doctor replied, smiling; "but this is."
"And whose is it? Ours? Yours? Whose?"
"Don't you guess? If I say it will pay for Lolita's education, it is because it belongs to her."
What?" ejaculated Mrs. Norval, falling back in her chair. "You are jesting; you can't mean that. No, no! I can't believe that this horrible little negro girl
"Once for all, let me tell you that the blood of that child is as good as, or better than, yours or mine; that she is neither an Indian nor a negro child, and that, unless you wish to doubt my word, my veracity, you will not permit yourself or anybody else to think her such."
Mrs. Norval was incapable of controversy now; her soul was floating over those yellow, shining lumps of cold, unfeeling metal. She made no reply to her husband; but, as if obeying a natural impulse, she knelt by the chest, and, with childlike simplicity, began to take pieces of gold and examine them attentively and toss them up playfully; then she took a handful, then two handfuls, trying to see how many pieces she could lift up. The sedate, severe, sober, serious lady of forty was a playful, laughing child again.
The doctor watched her and smiled, but his smile was sad. He had not seen that expression on her face since they were gathering apples and he asked her to marry him, twenty-one years ago!
"I think that Lola, instead of being a burden to us, will be a great acquisition. Don't you think so?" said the doctor, after his wife had toyed with the gold for some time.
"How much is it?" asked Mrs. Norval, in a scarcely audible voice, tremulous with emotion,
"I really can't tell how much is in this one box, but, according to our calculation in San Francisco, there must be about a million dollars in the six boxes."
"A million!" screamed Mrs. Norval.
"Hush, wife! If you indulge in such loud exclamations, some one will hear you; and I don't want it to be known that there is so much gold in my house. I shall certainly send it back to New York as soon as possible."
"But what will you do with so much gold? Won't they steal it from you?"
"I'll look out for that. William Sinclair is an honest man, and he will take charge of it. I arranged all that with him. He is to have the gold coined immediately, and will take it for three years at six per cent. interest, giving me good securities on real estate."
"But the child doesn't want sixty thousand dollars a year," said Mrs. Norval, deprecatingly, as if speaking to the gold, and in a timid, plaintive voice,-she was so subdued, so humbled, before the yellow god!
CHAPTER V.
THE ROUGH PEBBLES.
"No, Lola doesn't want sixty thousand dollars a year, nor the fifth of that," said the doctor; "but what we don't spend on her we will invest in real estate, or stocks, or anything else that Sinclair thinks advisable, so that by the time the little girl is twenty, she will be very rich, and people wouldn't call her Indian or nigger even if she were, which she is not."
"I am glad she is not, because-because—if she be of decent people, then-why-then, of course, a decent man would marry her."
"Just so; and she will be beautiful, as that black skin will certainly wear off," said the doctor, busily putting back in the box the things he had got out of it, and beginning to screw the lid down as it was before.
"Have you thought that Julian or brother Isaac might take a fancy to Lola? and"
"No. I am the last man to plot matrimony; and, take my advice, you let it alone too. No good comes of that kind of managing."
You have not told me how you came across this child and her gold," said Mrs. Norval, as they walked back to their bedroom again.
"Her mother deposited both under my care, as the poor lady died on the banks of the Gila River."
"But what was such a rich woman doing there? Why did she leave her child and gold with you? Had she no husband or relations? How came she to die in that wild country among savages?"
"Well, the poor lady's story is a long one, and unless you let me smoke my pipe while telling it to you, we'll have to put it off until to-morrow; and now let us go to sleep."
Mrs. Norval allowed the pipe; though very obnoxious, it was better than to go to bed and not be able to sleep thinking about the probable history of such a rich woman.
Whilst filling his pipe, the doctor prefaced his recital by saying,–
"I am very sorry I could not bring with me the narrative in writing in the very words of Lolita's mother herself, as Lebrun wrote it in short-hand. The poor lady knew well that she would soon die, and begged that I should make a memorandum of what she was going to tell me, so that I could let her husband know it if I ever found him. I called Lebrun to the bedside of the poor lady; and, as Lebrun is a stenographer, he took in short-hand all she said, and will soon send me the manuscript, when he puts it all in plain English. So, about the previous