It was two days later, before the sun was high, that Raquel Arteaga rode
into the plaza, and, slipping from her horse, walked directly into the
little private chapel and closed the door. From the other wing of the
corridor Dona Maria and Dona Angela saw her, and exchanged startled
glances. Their hostess had arrived, and had not even cast her eyes in
their direction. They were both relieved when Rafael and Senor Downing
emerged from the portal of the patio.
"Ah, she has arrived--my wife," remarked Rafael as he noticed her
saddle-horse nibbling at the geraniums. "I sent an Indian messenger this
morning. He has been quick; and, Santa Maria! so has she. Look at the
horse!"
The animal was dripping, and as an Indian boy removed the saddle the
water ran down his sides and made little pools in the dust.
"That will do him good," said Rafael. "Rub him well, and he will look
like black satin. And the Dona Raquel is--"
"Your wife went to her own chapel; she saw no one," observed Dona Maria.
"I should go in, but if she is at prayers--"
[Illustration: "THEIR HOSTESS HAD ARRIVED"]
If she had been, her prayers were ended, for as they spoke she opened
the door and came out on the corridor. She was more pale than Rafael had
ever seen her, and without greeting to anyone, she spoke.
"Rafael, two men have been hurt in the mountain, a priest and--the
American who was missing from the vigilantes. I think--I understand that
he saved the life of the padre--and both were hurt, and--they are
bringing him here."
"The American? You mean Keith Bryton?"
"Yes, I mean Keith Bryton," she said, steadily. "I rode ahead. Ana is
coming with them; she thinks he is very ill--and the padre also was
hurt--and--"
"Keith!" cried Dona Angela, sharply. "He is hurt--and coming
here--_here_?"
"There was no place else to send them," said Raquel, quietly. "There has
always been room in the Mission for the sick or wounded--and in this
case--"
"That is right," exclaimed Rafael, with nervous approval; "that is all
right. Where should Senor Bryton go but where his friends are? This
is his sister, Senora Bryton. It is well she is here; sick men need
their own women folks about them. Raquelita, thou art white as the
lilies in the garden! Get you some wine while I see to beds for the
sick. It was lucky you and Ana chanced to meet them. When did Tomas
reach you with the letter?"
She did not reply. Dona Maria was also asking questions, and telling her
the Padre Andros had gone again to San Luis Rey for a week, and the
three women entered the dining-room, leaving Rafael's question
unanswered. He supposed that Raquel and Ana had ridden south at his
bidding, and was elated that she had received the Dona Maria and her
guest as she had--without gladness, of course, but without signs of
displeasure. He divined there was a white devil of rage under her calm
exterior, but that made no difference so long as she showed no outward
sign of it. Evidently she had accepted the fact that he meant to be
master; after that, life would be easier in Capistrano. He had always
been a bit resentful of Keith Bryton's attitude toward himself. Never
since that dictatorial letter to San Pedro had he felt easy with him,
and there was no doubt whatever that Bryton had avoided him since his
marriage. But he forgot all that in the satisfaction of the news Raquel
brought.
With Bryton ill in the house, there was every reason why the one woman
of his family should remain under the same roof indefinitely. It would
mean the breaking down of barriers against heretic invaders, and so well
content was Rafael over all this that he meant to nurse Keith Bryton as
the most valuable friend the fates could send him. Elated with this
idea, he called Don Eduardo, and together they rode out to meet them,
and at sight of them wondered that even Raquel's cool exterior had not
been more ruffled at the situation: she had given them no idea of what
to expect.
"Your wife, in the cause of humanity, will allow dying space for a
heretic," observed Don Eduardo, dryly, "but she evidently thinks them
worth little attention. The man looks worse than she led us to think. We
should have brought Indios and a litter to meet them."
Keith Bryton, with his head bound up so as to be almost unrecognizable,
was tied on his horse and supported by the left arm of a bearded priest
who rode on one side; while Dona Ana rode on the other, white-faced and
tremulous, as she recognized the two men approaching.
"For the love of God, be cautious--cautious!" she whispered to the
priest. And the latter drew the hood of his habit lower over his brows,
to shut out the sun.
"Softly, Anita mia! From this moment I am under a vow of silence. This
heretic and I have come out of the shadow of death together, he with a
broken head and I with a broken arm. You can send your friends to see
where three men are still unburied in the Trabuco hills. I ask of the
Mission only time for silent meditation until my preserver, here, is
better--or dead. I leave the words of it to you. From the moment help
comes I have vowed silence. Come, come, Anita, girl. When we have
blinded a woman like Raquel Arteaga for two days and nights, we need
fear no eyes of men."
And it was so. The condition of the two men was warrant of Ana's recital
that three refugees of Flores's bandits had assaulted the priest, with
the idea that he was of the vigilantes. When the Americano, by some
chance, had taken a short cut across the ranges, and, hearing shots, had
gone to the rescue, he found one man with a broken arm keeping his
enemies at a distance with one of their own guns. He had stumbled on
their camp while they slept. For the rest, Ana asked Rafael to send some
one to bury the three bodies. They were too near the trail to be left
like that, and would frighten horses when one rode that way.
Of the padre, who, relieved of his burden, had quietly fallen in the
rear, Dona Ana told that he was a travelling monk from Mexico, who had
been entertained at the San Joaquin ranch, and had assisted the Don
Keith to quell a crazy uprising there. He was under a vow of silence
from the moment God sent help; and--and of course there was room for him
at the Mission, not with the crusty old Padre Andros, but if Rafael and
Raquel would allow him a private corner, undisturbed! He did not appear
to be the sort of man for Padre Andros's game-cocks and monte games.
Rafael, glancing at the sallow, bearded face under the monk's hood,
decided that she was right. The padre looked like a man given to vigils
and fasts, one living the life of renunciation such as one heard of from
the older records of the valley, before the secular priests had been let
loose upon the land to fatten, while the parish drifted from faith.
"Padre Andros has been called to San Luis Rey; it will be a week until
he returns. This man--what is his name? Libertad? That is very Mexican.
Well, the Mission is his; he can pray where he chooses. God send he
prays Don Keith well again. Santa Maria! but he has a fever! Does he
know one?"
Ana shook her head. He certainly did not know her, and he did not know
the padre, and she felt a hesitation in telling him that the only one
whose voice or hand quieted the occasional ravings of the American was
that of his own wife. If she had done so, Rafael would have only thought
it a great joke on Raquel, who avoided heretics. All the hours of the
days and nights in the hills, Raquel Arteaga had moved like a woman in a
dream, walking alone when she was not praying beside Keith Bryton's
couch of pine boughs. While Ana slept the sleep of exhaustion that first
night, the silent priest had gone again and again to see Bryton and hear
if there was aught to do, and each time that girl was crouching there,
white-faced as a spirit in the light of the waning moon, while the man
on the couch moaned "Espiritu! Dona Espiritu mia!"
That was the one moan he had made since the fever had struck him, and
there had been no way of quieting him. But that night, when the moans
grew into cries, the silent priest saw the girl listen until she could
bear it no longer, and then she went closer to him and knelt there, her
hands clasped tightly behind her, and in them the golden beads of a
rosary shone against her black dress.
"I am here, close beside you," she said, lowly, "always beside you in
spirit--always!"
"Espiritu mia!" he muttered, and then with a great sigh of relief sank
into slumber.
The priest watched the girl to see what manner of woman might be this
daughter of a nun, whose father had been the gay, lawless, debonair
Felipe Estevan, of whom wild stories had been told in the old days. When
had he ever resisted a love appealing? The man watching her knew the
girls of Mexican California too well to doubt what the result would be:
the lover first, and the rosary and the prayers afterwards.
But the night waned, and the pale moon, facing the morning star, saw her
still crouching there against the tree trunk. Ana thought she slept, but
her husband's enemy, who had watched her through the night, knew better.
He drew Ana aside, and gave her warning.
"Tell Felipe Estevan's daughter nothing. I am the priest; that is all.
She is not the woman to think this justified," and he touched the monk's
robe. "This night I heard her prayers when she thought no one listened;
and, Anita, girl, forget all crazy things I said about Rafael's wife
helping me to revenge."
"You said nothing about Rafael's wife," and Ana faced him with startled
eyes. "You said--what was it you said? Oh, that Keith Bryton should
help you--Keith Bryton, and his love for a woman who was a saint."
As she spoke, the full meaning of his words burst upon her, and she
uttered a low cry of dismay.
"Barto! Holy God!--_Barto_!" she whispered.
But he caught her wrist, and his voice had a note of command in it.
"Silence! She may hear you. Forget the fool things I said there at the
San Joaquin ranch. I thought I knew something of Keith Bryton, but I was
mistaken. I thought I knew much of woman, but one girl at her prayers
last night changed all that. We will nurse him well again, if your
friends do not murder me, and then I will get him away. Some day when
you and I have left all this behind us, I may tell you what I thought I
knew, but not now."
"But Raquel--"
"Raquel will always be first of all the wife of Rafael Arteaga; after
that she may show kindness to other human things, even the heretics. But
this one heretic we will take the care of off her hands all that we can,
Anita. She is not the girl to drag into a man's schemes of revenge."
"I think she bewitches you each time she comes near you," flashed Ana,
resentfully. "On all other things you talk to me sense, but when it is
Raquel, my one friend, you talk riddles always, and you make me feel as
if I were walking beside her in the dark or blindfold. What is it you
mean? That Bryton thinks of her? How could that be, when they have not
met? She thought until last night that he was married, so little
interest in him has she. How do you get such crazy things in your head?"
"That is true. I find they are crazy things; I confess it to you, and
ask you to give no heed to my mistakes."
"It was a mistake, then, that he cared?" persisted Ana. "You were so
sure--"
"It was another woman," broke in the priest, curtly. "Oh yes, there was
a woman; but I was the fool when I thought I knew who the woman was;
that is all."
"And Raquel is not--"
"Raquel Estevan de Arteaga is a woman men should cross themselves when
they mention," he said, quietly. "She has a strength in her that is of
God or the devil; she brings it from her Indian hills of Mexico, and I
for one will be on the safe side and treat it with respect."
"She has bewitched you, that is all," declared Ana; but the man in the
priest's robe drew her behind a giant aliso tree and kissed her on the
mouth.
"Perhaps so," he agreed; "but, my Anita, it is only enough to make me
pity the man she would bewitch in a different way. God! If he knew that
she cared like that, his life would be a hell."
"Why not a heaven?" asked Ana, turning to the care of the breakfast.
"Raquel spoke beautifully of a love like that last night,--a love in the
inner court of life, in sanctuary, where only one other soul could kneel
beside one; it was a love spiritual only."
"Only!" said the man, glancing toward the girlish figure in the serape
curled against the white bark of the tree. "Only! Anita, girl, let us
get the breakfast and leave love to people who have not a price set
against their heads. As for that love of the inner court of life, the
sanctuary, Raquel still dreams the dreams of a nun. Men and women of
California are of flesh and blood, and they do not love in that way."
[Music: _La Tempestad_.]