When the night was old, and others slept, Raquel Arteaga crept in
silence to the bedside of the old Indian woman of the hill tribe who had
been her nurse, who was still her maid, and who was the one link she
kept near her of the old life.
"Tia Polonia, awake!" she said, briefly; and as the woman did so,
frightened and full of questions, her mistress held up her hand and
rested herself on the side of the pallet, regarding the dark old face
with doubt.
"Thy husband, beloved,--he has--"
"It is not my husband this time, Polonia. He is quite safe at the
gaming-table, and will come in at sunrise with empty pockets. It is not
my husband. It is--" She paused a long time, scrutinizing every feature
of the old woman, who grew gray of visage under those smouldering eyes,
and her hands shook.
"Darling, little one, thou art so like thy mother; more than ever when
angry, and it is night; and I--Holy God! It is like a ghost comes to my
bed to--to--ah, Dona Espiritu--mia!--what is the anger in thine eyes?"
"Can a dead woman be angry?" demanded her mistress drearily, the
beautiful curved mouth quivering for an instant. "And it is a dead woman
they have made of me--all of you! You lied to me, Polonia, when you
brought word to me he had died there in Mexico!"
The old woman covered her face with her hands, and sank back whimpering
on the pallet.
"I trusted you, and you lied to me, all of you!" the girl repeated in a
hopeless tone of finality. "All these months he has been alive, and I
have not known. You liars--liars--liars accursed!"
The old woman uttered a smothered shriek, and buried her face in the
blankets.
"Not the curse, beloved, not the curse!" she begged, tremulously, "the
curse of your people. It means--it means--Ai! not the curse, little one!
Thou hast only meant to frighten me to tell you how it was, and I
will--I will! Only, child of the spirits, Dona Espiritu, bring not the
curse!"
[Illustration: "YOU LIED TO ME--ALL OF YOU!"]
She cowered and mumbled in a sort of palsied fear, but the girl sat
there untouched by her misery, looking at her drearily. Perhaps she had
some slight hope of denial, but Polonia's gray face put that out of her
reach.
"Sit up," she commanded, and the old woman hastily scrambled into a
sitting posture, but with her hands over her eyes, her body still
rocking with fear. "Why did you do it?"
Never before had Tia Polonia heard those hard cold tones from her
"querida"--her little one--her nursling of other days. This girl sitting
there erect in the glimmering light of the candle was really Dona
Espiritu of the tribe of the kings.
"Excellencia," she muttered, "it is true; I did sin. But the padre gave
me the word. He said your soul was lost; that the man had bewitched you
as--as your little mother had been bewitched when she--when she left
religion for your father, and in the end they both died--and so
soon!--and--and I wanted you to live, Excellencia! and I wanted your
soul to live; and--so it was I took the word of the padre to you, and
told you he was dead--and wished that he was dead--but it was all no use
at all! On his hand when the fever burned was your ring--it kept him
alive and he could not die, and all day and all night he said, 'Dona
Espiritu! Dona Espiritu!' The padre heard, and I heard. The American
brother, he heard too, and asked the Indios who was Dona Espiritu, and
where did she live, that he might send for her. But it was no use. The
padre made them all afraid for your soul, so that I told you the lie.
Now it is all said, and my life is going out of my body at the curse of
your anger."
In fact, the fear in the old creature had worked on her own nerves, so
that her final words were very faint. She spoke as one half swooning,
and put out her hand in pitiful plea for help.
"Ah--the good padre," said the girl, bitterly. "Well, you see how it has
all ended. The padre died, and has gone to God to answer for the lie;
and the man he wished dead is alive--alive--alive, and oh--Mother of
God! is happy with--with--"
Her cold self-control melted in a flood of tears, and she flung herself
face down on the pallet beside the frightened Indian woman, her form
shaken with shuddering sobs of absolute despair.
The dawn was near. All the night she had walked in her room alone,
stunned and wordless over this thing she could not fight, or reason, or
pray away; and now, having heard it all,--even of his calls for her when
unconscious,--she had let fall for the first time the cold mask she had
worn since the death of Dona Luisa, and since the significance of her
vow had been revealed to her by the days and nights of Rafael's life.
She wept in a wild abandonment of grief at the hopeless vista of years
reaching on to the edge of the world where death is. It had all been
dreary enough before; but now--
When the birds began their welcome of the day she was still lying prone,
but silent. The tempest of feeling had passed, and her Indian woman
stroked her hair softly, and waited, and did not speak. At last she
rose, and looked out on the yellowing light touching the purple of the
mountains.
"This is only a dream of the night, Polonia," she said, with a great
sigh; "sleep again, and forget it all."
But the old woman clung with trembling hands to the folds of the girl's
gown, and rested her cheek on the silken slippers.
"And the curse, darling? what of the curse of the lie?"
"Curses come home to the people who utter them," said the girl,
drearily. "On my head they all lie--the curse by which I was made blind
for a little, little while of life, and which now allows me to see when
it is too late. The curse of God has followed our people; no blessing of
the Church can wipe it out."
"But I--I--beloved?"
"The sin that is for love is not so black a sin, and it was your love
the padre trusted to--your fear that I was bewitched and lost. But it is
all over; we are in a new land, and this is a new life."
"And--he is happy--without thee?"
"I have seen his wife; people call her beautiful. I saw him almost
touching her, yet I did not scream."
"Mother of God! his wife!"
"I heard her name,--it was enough. His I did not need to ask; I
remembered."
"But--dear one--it is better that he is married. Pardon, beloved--I am
at thy feet, and I feel thy heartache. But, after all, is it not to
thank the saints that he is married?"
"Perhaps. Otherwise, he might say to me some day, 'Come!' And the
witchcraft of the ring might hold, and--"
"Holy Mother! and then--"
"And I--God knows what I might do, Polonia."
And then the old Indian woman was left alone, mumbling prayers and
crossing herself.
Later she got up and went to the priest of Our Lady of the Angels and
brought a bottle of holy water to sprinkle on the threshold of the
street door, and all sides of Dona Raquel's room, that no curse of
witchcraft or bad dream of the night might have power over the days.
It was broad daylight when Rafael came home whistling gayly a dance of
melody. He had been gifted with unusual good luck, and his pockets were
full of gold pieces. He threw a buckskin sack of coin on his wife's bed
before he noticed that she was not lying there.
"Hola! Raquelita mia! There is plenty to pay for masses; your priests
always want money for that sort of thing. Since you look after my soul,
I pay for the prayers when I have good luck."
Raquel arose from where she knelt at the little altar in the corner.
"Oh, is that where you are? What need to pay the priests when you do
enough praying for an army?"
She smiled absently, but did not speak. He stood watching her as she
brushed her mass of dark, slightly waving hair.
"Let your woman do that," he said at last, with perfunctory solicitude.
"It tires your arm, and I don't want you tired to-day. There is a
picnic, and we should go."
"Which of our friends make it?"
"It is Dona Maria Downing, who, as our one neighbor down the country,
wants to add to the entertainment Los Angeles gives you. It is to make
peace with the bishop, I think; at least, so it looks. He is invited.
You can help them to be friends. Is that not the duty of us both as good
Catholics?"
She halted in her task and looked at him quietly. He was plainly set on
being very agreeable, for some reason; too seldom had he mentioned their
faith but to scoff at the rigid rules of his mother and his wife.
"You want it very much," she said; "but why? You do not care at all for
Dona Maria's personal peace with the bishop. That can be arranged
without a picnic to the hills. It only needs that they give back, of
their own free will, that which belongs to the Church, and make a
confession that it was wrongly held."
"If you would only talk to her of this graciously, instead of demanding
it," persisted Rafael, gently, "much could be effected. Dona Angela
thinks for certain--"
"Dona Angela?"
"Oh, I mean her--the relative who is with her now--the Mrs. Bryton who
drove with her yesterday. The bishop asked who she was--you remember?"
"I remember," she said, quietly, though a little shudder touched her.
"But I am tired of this town, Rafael. I meant to tell you so this
morning. I want to ride home to-day. Dona Maria's merry-makings do not
attract me. Our business here is over; let us go."
"Holy God! but you are a wife for a man!" he cried in sudden fury. "I
weigh you down with jewels and silks and laces, and you would bury them
all with yourself in that old rat-hole of a Mission. I wish to God the
padre and Dona Maria had blown down every brick of it before you saw the
accursed place!"
"Accursed? The Church of God? Rafael!"
"Ay, accursed, since you will know!" he repeated. "Every old Indian of
San Juan can tell you that."
"Some Indian, perhaps, who has had to be whipped by the padres," she
remarked, with quiet scorn.
"You don't believe me?" he cried. "Well, you shall! Sit down--sit down
and listen for once, and you will be glad to keep out of the
curse-haunted place."
She regarded him with a little tolerant smile, and drew a serape of blue
around her, and curled herself on the foot of the bed and waited.
"It is early for stories," she observed; "but since it is your
pleasure--"
"Not any pleasure has any of it been to me from first to last," he
retorted, "nor any pleasure will it be to whoever holds it! You think
you are strong, your saints will help you! But no saint ever put on an
altar--not even that of the Virgin herself--can take off the curse from
San Juan till the altar is bathed in human blood, as the tiles of the
floor have been bathed--that is the curse of Sahirit."
She stared at him with wide eyes and blanching face.
"Until the altar is bathed in human blood, as the tiles of the floor
have been," she whispered. "Rafael! That--that is of a religion older
than the life of Christianity in Mexico. God of Gods! Does it follow me
here?"
"Follow _you_!" and he laughed contemptuously; "it is a story older than
our grandfathers. Only the old Indians whisper it now each time ill luck
comes to any of us--and I've had enough! When they picked up Miguel
tramped into the earth by the cattle, only the white men would help--no
Indian; they knew it was the curse coming true."
"Tell me," she said, briefly. Her lips were white, and she shuddered
with cold, and drew the serape close.
"You'd rather hear some old Indian tell it," he answered; "they make
one chill when they count on their fingers and toes the things the curse
has brought. We had a curse of our own in the Arteaga family: my mother
was always in prayer because of that; she never knew that Miguel had
bought an interest in another."
"Go on--tell me! How comes the rule of the Aztec altar to this Christian
temple?"
"Aztec? I did not say Aztec. I know nothing of their mummeries. But it
can't be that--there have been no Aztecs since the time of Cortez and
the priests."
"I--I have heard there is one hill tribe still refusing the saints, and
giving the sun worship," she said, slowly. "But go on; tell me!"
"Sun-worship! yes, that's the thing!" he cried. "A man, who was a
heretic of Mexico and a great builder of stone, killed a priest and a
woman down there. Some say the woman was his wife. He was to have his
head cut off for it, but word went down from here that such a man was
needed by the priests of San Juan; they wished to build a stone church
instead of adobe brick, as all the others were, if only a master mason
could be sent to them. They had soldiers to guard him, even if the man
chanced to be a convict, as many of the guards had been, and they got
the viceroy to help; and in the end the heretic who had killed a priest
was sent to San Juan. The old Indios say he looked as big as two men,
and he worked as he pleased. When the padres interfered he sat down and
looked at the piles of stone and did nothing, and nothing could move
him. They could have shot and buried him, but that would not build their
church, which was to be the finest in the Californias. So they had to
let him alone, and he built it as pleased himself. Their ground plan
only he accepted. It was like a cross, as you see it now, but on no
other part of the church was any symbol of Christianity--only stars and
other things which some say are flowers and some say are suns and moons,
and on the corner-stone and key-stone of the high altar is carved a
thing no Christian can read, not even the padres--and somewhere in those
symbols is held the curse."
[Illustration: "R[~U]ELAS ME FECIT. ME LLAMA SAN JUAN. 1796."]
"Who says? Did he?"
"He? No; he died laughing, and refused the blessing of the priest. One
thing only he said when he read the words on the oldest bell, as he
built a place in the tower for it. The name of the maker is on the bell;
you can see it yet; it is Ruelas. 'So Ruelas made you--iron-tongue,' a
soldier heard him say, 'and your name is San Juan. Well, Senor
Ruelas, you only have your name in this work. The good padres will see
that my name is forgotten, but instead of a name, I will leave myself,
and so long as stone stands on stone I will call louder and farther than
your iron tongue when rung your loudest! When the storms of centuries
shall beat out every star and moon and sun in the stone of the temple,
the man from Culiacan will be remembered here in Sahirit.'"
"Sahirit?"
"The Indian name for the valley was 'Quanis Savit Sahirit'; you can see
it on the church records."
"And it means?"
"No one knows, and no one cares; it may mean another curse, for all I
know. The Indios either do not know or will not tell."
"But--" and she drew in a long breath of relief--"what the man from
Culiacan said to the bell--the thing the soldier heard--was not a curse;
it was only that the beautiful work should be remembered."
"Oh, yes, that! But there was a prophecy years before, when the
corner-stone was set in its place and blessed by the padres, and the
Indios were all there on their knees saying a rosary, and the viceroy
and all the dignitaries. An Indian hunter was also there from the south,
and he was a stranger. He looked at the thing carved on the
corner-stone, and he looked at the builder, who leaned against the wall
and laughed when the holy water touched it; and the stranger crossed
himself, for his mother was a convert; but to the captain of the guard
he said the thing I told you, and the captain of the guard was of my
father's family. So it was repeated down to our time."
"But the words--he said what of a prophecy?"
"He said human blood, and not holy water, must baptize the stones and
the altar of a temple with those signs. He was afraid the padre would
put malediction on him if he told him that the blessing of a Christian
saint was not so strong as the gods of the Indians, but he would not
stand or kneel beside the lines where the church was to be, and he would
not tell why he was afraid. He said he did not know what would happen
there: it might be a tidal wave from the sea in sight, or it might be a
pestilence, for the people were very wicked and very dirty, but it was
marked with a sign for evil, and it would be well if the walls never
went higher."
"Well?"
"They tried to get him to tell the padre, so that the builder might be
whipped, but the stranger Indian was afraid. He said he wanted to live
to see his children again, and they lived south in the hill country;
and he ran away when they tried to keep him, but he had warned some old
Indios, and when the first earthquake cracked the walls, they all
remembered."
"And--?"
"The mason laughed, but mended the cracked walls and went on at work,
always singing, always working, even before sunrise. The old Indios who
helped said it was at sunrise hour only that he worked on the keystones
with the suns and star things, but they maybe lied. And after the
dedication of the church he died as he lived, laughing and a heretic;
and when the earthquake came and the tower of the bells fell, and the
tiles of the floor were wet with the blood of the thirty-nine lives
crushed out there, then the old Indios whispered and remembered many
things; for the prophecy of the strange learned Indian of the south had
come true."
"And--the altar? Did--some one--"
Her lips were stiff as with cold, and she could scarcely articulate.
"Holy God! how white you are, Raquel!" he exclaimed. "I thought you were
not a coward like the other women. Take this wine--take it! Por Dios,
but you gave me a fright!"
She swallowed the wine, and smiled absently at his excitement, and drew
the serape closer. She did not speak again for a long time, just sat
staring out toward the blue of the hills.
"Are you in a trance?" he demanded. "Santa Maria, but you are a wife to
come home to! If I interest you at all, I have to talk to you of things
bad enough to scare the devil. Now you see why Dona Maria blows down the
walls--they were accursed from the beginning. She thinks maybe she is
doing a pious thing, who knows?"
"Selling to others the stone that is accursed?"
"Oh, that is a side issue. But I think truly, Raquelita, she is afraid
of the bishop now, since you have come. I even think she wants to be
friends; Dona Angela told me. She has promised that she will build a
chapel there of adobe, if the bishop will give his benediction. Much of
bad luck is coming to them, and she is growing afraid."
"Yes; she has no sense of justice in her; she has only fear," returned
Raquel. "Let her build chapels if she likes, but the blessing of God was
put on those stone walls, as well as the curse of a heretic, and what
she has done is sacrilege. I will do nothing to countenance it, or allow
it to continue."
"But, at least, you will do one thing," he said, emphatically. "You have
heard enough of the curse to show you why it is no place for human
beings to live. Only half the curse is carried out. The tiles have been
baptized by human blood--but not the altar. You will stay here with live
people, and let the old ruin wait alone for the curse to be lifted."
"I will go back," she said, with sudden decision, dropping the serape
from around her shoulders and beginning to braid her hair. "No, you need
not swear like that, Rafael; God would shut His ears if He heard you.
You have told me a fine story of fear, and some of it may be true, but
our duty lies there. We may lift the curse; we can go back and try."
Her husband sprang to his feet and flung his chair crashing into the low
window opening on a veranda. The shattered glass fell in a glittering
heap, but the noise of it did not drown his oaths.
"It is no use at all to break the windows of our friends, Rafael,"
observed his wife; "and neither the saints nor Our Lady the Virgin will
allow such curses as yours to be heard. There are dangers here for--for
both of us, perhaps,--dangers more to be afraid of than the walls of the
good padres. I ride back to-day."
"You think of it as all past, that curse?" he demanded, threateningly.
"Well, you think so! Priests have gone mad there, though the Church
keeps it quiet. Since the year Don Eduardo and Dona Maria bought it,
what has happened? All their land is slipping away. To-day she is
building an adobe on the old Mission ranch, to hold one hundred and
sixty acres in case they lose all the rest of their thirty miles of
ranches. Two of her sons have been killed in the streets--one by a
woman. All that remains is slipping slowly through their fingers. It is
like a handful of wheat: the closer they try to hold it, the less they
have in their hands. All they try is of no use. When they first bought
those old walls of the Mission at Pico's auction, they were masters of
the land, but what of that?"
"If it is a curse, they earned it by tearing down the temple consecrated
to God, that is all!"
"All? Miguel, my brother, blew down no walls; he did no harm to anything
at all. He only bought an interest in the Mission lands, and claimed
some living-rooms as his share, and he is struck like the others by the
curse, and does not die in his bed either, but is trampled into the
earth until no one can see him!"
"But that may be the other curse working--the curse on the Arteagas. You
people seem to have earned a great many! Is it not time some of the
family should try to live for blessings?"
He did not answer, only stared at her with angry eyes and lips twitching
in wrath he could not express. She looked at him an instant, and
stretched out her arms wearily. All the glorious world of love about
them, yet never aught of harmony in their two lives linked together. She
had never seen the life domestic of young people. She did not know what
it might mean to other women, but there were days when she grew sick
with the dread of future years, the endless prison of her vow, the--
Suddenly she turned to him with a little gesture of appeal, almost
tremulous. It was such weary work to battle constantly; and his mother--
"Rafael," she said, gently, "the blessings are in the world
somewhere--shall not we try to find them? The old lives of the
maledictions are gone. Ours is the new life, and we have done no wrong
to expiate. And it may be, if we live as--as your mother would have
wanted us to live, that the saints--"
"To the bottom of the sea with your saints!" he broke in, angrily. "Por
Dios! you are always dragging the dead out of their graves to make the
days like a funeral. I prefer most the picnic in the hills, and I go
to-day."
"So do I," she answered; "but it will be to the hills of the south by
the sea. To-night the moon shines, and the ride will be better than a
picnic of your political friends."
"By--"
"It is no sort of use for you to make empty oaths, Rafael. I leave this
town to-day; with you if you are wise, without you if you are not. But I
myself--I go!"
He went out and slammed the door, and directly she heard him tell Juan
Castillas that he had married one of the wooden saints of the Mission
come to life.
"I am glad it is not one with the broken glass eyes and the missing
fingers," laughed Juan. "Dona Raquel is the most beautiful woman in the
Californias to-day."
She turned from the window and looked at herself in the mirror. The most
beautiful woman in the Californias! Was that so? Could it be? Yet what
was beauty, after all, if--
Between herself and the glass another face seemed to arise,--the
blue-eyed childish face for which she had been forgotten.
"Holy Mother!" she moaned, and covered her own with her hands. "Of what
use is beauty to a woman who is not beloved?"
[Music: _El Tormento de Amor._]
Tormento de amor,
passion que devora,
Tu marchi taste
la fuente de mi vida.