What Padre Libertad saw or heard he did not particularize. But when
Keith Bryton, the day of the Spanish dance, had arisen and dressed, and
talked a little with all those known to him in the Mission, except the
mistress of it, the bearded priest closed the door on them all, and came
and sat beside him.
"To-morrow, my friend, we go," he said.
"Can I--will she speak to me--once?"
"What is there to say to a woman like that? God! To think that such a
one should be Rafael Arteaga's wife!"
"No," agreed the other; "there is nothing to be said. Only I would like
to see her face once, even though she should not know it. Could that
be?"
"It is not wise; it sends you away with more of a heartache; but there
is one place she goes each evening as the stars come out. There is one
saint left in one niche of the old ruin. Since she rode with us from
the hills, flowers are always there, and she goes from her own chapel
there--to pray, perhaps. She has not said so, but--"
"I can see her there. Will you--will you try to manage that no one else
comes? Oh, it will be brief enough, even if we speak. But the statue in
the niche--I can't remember."
"It is in the shadow. The draperies of red are very faded, and so is the
gilt of the embroideries now. Once it was very gorgeous, and it is
called Maria Madalena."
Keith turned on the speaker with flaming eyes.
"She kneels there to pray--_she_? What mad fanaticism is that? Good God,
man! _she_ is the soul of innocence!"
"What she knows of her own heart, she knows, my friend. This is not the
thing to tell a man who is to her what you are; but there is--there may
be some day, a thing that will leave her free; and if it come--"
Keith had covered his face with his hands. The weakness of the illness
was still on him; he durst not leave his eyes unguarded. But after a
little he looked up.
"You know something more?" he said.
"I know there is another woman who has Rafael tied hand and foot; I know
she will take him away; the only thing I do not know is how long it will
last. The bishop himself would help such a separation."
"God himself could not," said Keith, "unless he kill Rafael Arteaga.
When I heard what he said of her outside the window, I was tempted to
kill him with my own hand. Nothing else would free her; I heard the oath
she took!"
"To send to eternity the soul she is vowed to guard would not free her
from the idea. If he should die suddenly, unshriven, it is a lost soul,
just the same."
"It is the maddest fanaticism to bind a child like that to such a hell;
and she accepts it, as--as her people in the past accepted the order for
sacrifices."
"What do you know of her people?"
"What do you?"
The two men looked into each other's eyes for a moment, and then Padre
Libertad spoke:
"I saw her mother years ago in Mexico. I was only a boy, and I adored
Estevan. I carried letters for their love-making. That helps me to
understand their daughter. It is true; it is in the blood, and you must
go, my friend, before worse happens. And if ever she should be free--"
Keith put out his hand.
"Don't tempt me with a hope like that! I want to be sane when I do see
her!"
* * * * *
He saw Dona Angela first, a delightful vision of brocades and white
mantilla. She had dressed early, that she might help to receive the
guests.
She flinched a little under his keen glance as his eyes wandered from
the pearl-trimmed bodice to the fair face.
"Oh, of course it is not mourning," she exclaimed, "if that is what you
are thinking of! But at least I wear no color, and it is only for one
night. I have not the least intention of dancing. The whole affair is
only to show off the old costumes."
"You succeed very well," he remarked. "Let Dolly come around to see me
when she has had supper. I leave early in the morning, and can't see her
then to say good-bye."
"So soon--going?" She tried to keep the delight from her tone of
surprise. He was the most unmanageable man she had ever known. His
indifference had attracted her, even infatuated her, a year ago, but
there were days since when she thought she hated him. "Yes, I will send
Dolly. She loves you dearly, more even than she did poor Ted."
"We will not discuss my brother," he said, coldly. "But that will not
prevent me caring for the child as he would have done."
"Irrespective of her mother?" she asked, halting in the door and looking
over her shoulder at him.
"Certainly."
"Or--or of anything I might offend you in?"
"Nothing you choose to do will affect my promise to my brother," he
said, impatient at her persistence.
"I may remind you of that some day," she said, gathering up her
brocades. "If you do go, I hope that ghoul of a man, your padre, goes
too. His silence makes him more like a spook than a man. The people have
a holy horror of his piety."
After she had disappeared, Padre Libertad entered from an inner room and
smiled grimly at Bryton.
"You are the sort of lover to be unhappy," he observed. "You can't
console yourself with the other women. Half the men in the valley are
mad over that woman, who would coquette with you if you did not turn ice
when she comes near."
Keith stared out of the window toward the hills of the sea, tinged with
the warm rose of the sunset. And the man in a priest's robe tried to
laugh, and ended with a sigh.
"I admire your strength, though I doubt if I could emulate it," he
confessed. "One pretty woman in sight is worth a dozen goddesses over
the hill."
"Talk sense if you can!"
"I can. I shall leave to-night instead of to-morrow. I find I can go to
Mexico, or South America if I choose, without touching land. I shall be
running away with the property of a relative, and you might not care to
mix up with it."
"An hour ago you had no such plan."
"An hour ago I had not confessed Victorio Lopez! I know an old record of
his, and he thinks it is witchcraft. There is a lot of coin going
along,--a matter of several rawhide sacks of it,--but it will be donated
by a man who can afford gifts. Let me have your address two months
ahead, and I can tell you how it all turns out."
"You should be glad to get away alive, without weighting yourself with
coin. There is a woman here who would care if things went entirely
wrong."
"Ana? It is for her I take the chance. I know a corner down the coast
where fifty thousand will last forever. She is free, and she is of
California--no snow of the hills in her blood! She will come to me after
the chase is over."
"She knows?"
"Not yet. Women's fears upset things sometimes. If I do not tell her,
it will be better. I need only tell that I am going; she is waiting
eagerly for that."
"And Victorio Lopez?"
"He is paralyzed by the fear that I may give some old proofs of things
to the alcalde. Oh, Victorio is all right. He knows two Indian sailors
who will say nothing. They need to get away, and want a chance. We will
bind and gag the others and put them ashore. It is all settled. The
saints be thanked that I know boats and the coast!"
Bryton scarcely knew whether to think the plan a wild fancy or an actual
fact. The whole scheme of life those days was so filled with the strange
and tragic, that all the echoes of laughter and the tinkle of guitars in
the corridors could not even temper it.
At sunset Rafael Arteaga rode a dripping horse into the plaza, and
shouted cordial responses to the chorus of greetings awaiting him. All
the day he had been in the saddle. "On business," was the only
explanation to Don Eduardo and Dona Maria. To his wife he had offered
none, nor spoken since the scene in the chapel. But he was in high good
spirits, gay and eager.
He came direct to Bryton's room with a fine air of delight that he was
on his feet again. Even to Padre Libertad, whom he had so fervently
cursed the day before, he was at last gracious. When told by Ana that
the padre was on his journey south either at once or early in the
morning, he gave her some gold pieces to bestow upon him for his church
or his order: priests always had all sorts of ways to use money. Padre
Libertad accepted the alms gratefully, and exchanged for them a
blessing.
The sun was gone, and men, and women too, were riding in from outlying
ranches. The Indians and Mexicans were trooping to the plaza to watch
the gay caballeros and dark-eyed ladies in the dresses of their
grandparents. Raquel Arteaga, dressed in simple black, with white
undersleeves and white chemisette of silk, stood in the corridor for a
while and greeted her earlier guests, while her husband dressed. All the
people were on the west side of the plaza, where the dancing was to be.
Bryton could see her there surrounded by the gay people, almost nunlike
with the strings of black pearls around her throat as sole ornament, and
in the braids of her hair the white stars of the odorous jasmine, thrust
there by Ana, to break the severity of her garb. Her eyes burned like
purple stars, and the pink color crept, in spite of herself, to her
cheeks, and stayed there. Somewhere, she knew, one man was watching her,
and each moment the terror grew that some of their many friends would
bring him to her and make it impossible for him to refuse to come.
Several times she caught the eyes of Ana regarding her curiously. It was
the first time she had ever seen Raquel surrounded by men and bandying
compliments, and looking, for all her nunlike white and black, like a
royal creature at a puppet show. And Ana had a sort of triumph in noting
that the eyes of Dona Angela also wandered to her hostess in a sort of
petulant amaze at the supremacy of her, when she chose to unbend and
radiate graciousness in that manner. For Raquel jested and laughed at
the pretty phrases of caballeros murmured in her ear. She refused a
brooch of emerald for the Virgin in the chapel, in exchange for the
jasmine in her hair. She promised two men to say a rosary for their
aching hearts, and she allowed the older men to kiss her hands. One
looking at her said:
"You are Mexico come to life to-night, senora. Always I have thought it.
But to-night I see it with my own eyes. Mexico has always that glory of
the opal fires at the heart."
Angela Bryton saw and heard, and her own childish appeal appeared all at
once cheap and of tinsel. The pearls and brocades of the woman she hated
seemed to scorch her flesh, and she felt the truth of the petulant words
she had said to Rafael: that the pearls had been tossed to her with the
indifference of a queen. The owner of the casket could afford to stand
serene and gemless, with only the jasmine flower in her hair, and yet
dominate.
A cold rage filled her as she realized what Raquel could mean to men if
she cared. It would be as it was when they met first on the hill, always
she would hold the middle of the road, if she was aroused to care. Up to
that moment there had been a wild fancy of perhaps sailing away alone
with the hastily gathered coin, and of stopping at no port for Rafael.
She was half afraid of him and after all what could he do if she did
elude him like that? But the sight of Raquel and her little court of
admirers changed all that. The proud eyes should know all the
humiliation one woman could cause another--all!
She looked for Rafael; at once she would tell him,--now, while the glory
of the Mexican opal eclipsed the woman of the royal pearls! She was
blind with anger to every other thing. But he had not yet appeared. He
was dressing, and a gentleman came to claim her for a dance. The guitars
were already sending harmonies through the open doors, and the people
were gathering thick along the western corridors. The rest of the plaza
and the inner court were deserted. Not even a pair of lovers strayed
from the crowd as yet. Later, when the moon came up, they would gather
courage, but the shadows of the corridors seemed eerie retreats at
night to any but souls oblivious to the world.
It was not night yet. The first star glimmered in the western sky, and
to the east a soft radiance over San Juan Mountain marked the path where
the moon would come. In the warm dusk the woman with the opal fires of
Mexico in her heart slipped away from the gay groups and through the
stillness of the padres' garden, under the sculptured face and serpent,
and then to the place of the altar, where the shadows were always
softest. She came swiftly, silently; she had an odd feeling of being
followed by his thoughts. The altar was the one place of refuge
surely--the altar!
But it was not. He stood there leaning against the pillar. She carried a
tiny candle and a rosary. He watched her light other candles in the
niche, thus outlining the carved saint with the long hair over her
shoulders, and the draperies of crimson. Flowers were there, blood-red
roses, and he saw it all in the soft glimmer of the candles; then, as
she was about to kneel before them, he strode forward and caught her
arm.
The golden rosary fell on the tiled floor between them, and she placed
her other hand over his, in mute appeal.
"You shall not kneel at that altar," he commanded, his voice scarcely
raised above a whisper; "that much of you belongs to me. I will not go
away from you with that memory of you in my mind; I will not!"
She was trembling, and dared not lift her eyes.
"You should not have touched me," she said, brokenly. "All those hours
on the hill I did not touch you even once. Must the two of us be weaker
than one?"
"Weak? Oh yes, I am weak to-night, or I should not be here--the weakness
of a sick man who cannot help himself. It is the last time, Espiritu
mia, so long as we live--so long as we live!"
She slipped the Aztec ring from her finger and gave it to him.
"I thought perhaps it was the ring that gave you power over my
thoughts," she said, simply; "but it was not. Your heart beats here in
my breast, and will till I die, or till you do. Take it back, keep it.
After all, it was not the ring!"
Her voice was so low, so even, that he, hearing his own heart-beats at
the mere sight of her, felt the sudden resentment of a sick man at what
appeared to be her cold control of herself.
"Is it so easy for you, then?" he asked. "Like slipping a ring from your
finger or a bracelet from your wrist, and putting it aside to wear no
more? Oh, God! If but for one minute you could know aught but the sweet
cool love of the girl, or the nun, or the devotee!"
She caught her breath in a little shudder at the heart-call in his
words, then put out her hand and looked at him as he had never seen her
look.
"Don't touch me," she said, her tones tense with a final decision. "You
think that I do not know--that I do not understand; yet you see me kneel
_there_!" and she flung one eloquent hand to the Madalena of the roses.
"It is the thought--the thought! That we live on different sides of the
world will not change the fact that you live in me, and I in you. And it
will be always--always! I do not understand? Yet I have locked my door
at night and flung the key through the bars of the window, that I could
not follow my heart and go to you wherever you were! I do not
understand? Yet there have been days when I feared to mount my horse to
ride alone, for fear the wild wish for you would grow stronger than I
could bear, and I should ride to you, to you only, and--oh, Mother of
God!--ask you to keep me there!"
Her voice broke in shuddering sobs, and she covered her face with her
hands, sinking on her knees before the Madalena of the altar, the last
crowned saint left in the ruin. Her one hand was still extended to ward
him off, but he caught it, held it, and drew her to him.
"You are mine by all that!" he muttered, scarce knowing what he said.
"Do you think I shall leave you here after knowing the truth? Espiritu!
The Indians named you rightly. Spirit of mine, there are no bonds of
earth strong enough to keep me from you now. Come! Our world is
together; the nights of the evil dreams have been lived through.
Somewhere we shall find the sunshine."
The hand clasping hers she caught to her lips, but when he would have
clasped her, she broke from him with a low moan of protest.
"I tell you this that you go away knowing that the real life of me is
with you always," she said, and stood leaning against the altar of the
saint. "Go now, and go quickly; for I tell you truly, if the day ever
come again when I find myself like to follow you, I will come where I am
now, and this will end it all."
From the bodice of her gown she drew the little dagger she had taken
from the jewel-casket the day before.
"My life is not my own to live in my own way; it is bound by an oath to
the dead, and there is no release, none--none! Go now. You know my
heart and the madness of it. Forget me if you can,--but oh, beloved, not
too quickly!"
[Illustration: "ONE WORDLESS MINUTE."]
He caught her to him and held her there. The world reeled about them for
one wordless minute, and then he released her and walked out across
where the tower of the temple had once been, and he knew he was leaving
her forever. A horse was waiting. He had said he could ride best in the
moonlight, and a little later the hoof-beats sounded through the
strumming guitars, and she knew it was over! It was her sacrifice for
the oath to the dead, and she sank prostrate in the shadow of the altar.
The tiny candles glimmered and went out, yet still she lay there. The
moon in its soft yellow light flooded the open space without, but did
not touch her. She had found the rosary and clasped it, her lips against
the cold pearl figure of the sculptured Christ.
And then two persons came toward her through the arch of the old
sacristy, one in the velvet and gold lace of a Spanish grandee, and the
other a shimmer of brocade and pearl-gemmed lilies.
"No, I will not go without it," the woman's voice was saying,
petulantly, "not though a dozen boats waited! Yes, I can slip away after
the dance. Have a horse ready. Dolly will be sleeping; she is the
greatest risk. But we can be out of sight of land long before the dawn
breaks."
The man murmured some plea in her ear, and she turned away, shrugging
her shoulders.
"The jewels first!" she said, with pretty decision. "The coin is a
matter of course; we shall need that to live on. But the jewels--why
not? Half of them belonged to your own family, and for the rest--well,
you leave her enough to give the Church; that is all she lives for.
Bring me the jewels at once: when I see them in my own hand, I am ready
to promise everything."
"You are not afraid to wait here?"
"Yes, a little," she acknowledged. "It's a horrid, creepy place, but
it's the one corner where no one else will come. I will wait for them
here."
The woman prostrate before the Madalena arose to her feet and stood
motionless in the shadow. Her hands were crossed unconsciously on her
heart to quiet its beating. Her own sacrifice, then, was to go for
nothing; the vow she had sworn to live for was to count for naught
because of one little white vampire of a creature whose god was gold and
jewels!
The crossed hands held the rosary and the dagger.
"They are here," said Rafael, returning after a few minutes, "all but
the few the girls wear to-night. There! They are at last in your own
hands, and now--"
She slipped her white arm about his throat and kissed him on the mouth.
"And you will live in my way--not hers?" she said, with clinging
sweetness. "You are not to be even Catholic with me? You have promised!"
"Thou art my only god, O little white one!" he said, and pressed her to
his breast. "All the world can go to hell, so I have you! My soul I give
into these little hands; my heart is under these little feet, which I
kiss thus; and thus, and thus! Though Christ himself stood in the way, I
would have you for myself!"
She laughed softly in her triumph.
"We shall be missed," she said at last. "Go that way to the plaza, and I
will go by the old garden. These I will wrap up and carry in my own
hands. Go,--oh, there will be other nights for kisses,--go now,
quickly!"
She pushed him from her, and he obeyed, walking across the tiled floor
in the moonlight, and out into the plaza, as Bryton had walked so short
a time before. The woman with the casket stood an instant looking after
him, and then raised the lid and lifted a handful of the gems, holding
them up that the soft light of the moon might add to the glow of rubies
and the white fire of diamonds.
"All these, and his very soul besides!" she murmured, holding a necklace
aloft to the moon's rays,--"his soul besides!"
And then a low strangled cry escaped her as the woman of the rosary and
dagger came silently to her from the shadows and halted a moment beside
her.
* * * * *
A little later the Padre Libertad was stopped in the corridor by Raquel.
He had been watching the dancers, and was about to start south. Like
Bryton, he meant to ride at night, instead of in the hot sun.
"Wait," she said, imperatively; "the chapel is open; I would confess
before you go."
"But to-morrow--your own padre--"
"To-night," she said; "and I want no other padre."
"If you have remembered a sin--" he began, hesitatingly; but she
interrupted.
"I think it is neither sin nor remorse," she said, quietly; "but it is
you that must listen to me."
He closed the door behind them. Old Polonia crouched unnoticed beside
it, and in perhaps ten minutes he came out again, and started to walk
the road to the sea. Rafael saw him, and laughed at the queer
crack-brained padre who preferred walking to riding a good horse.
Others laughed also, and the dance went on, until the partners of Dona
Angela grew impatient, and a gay party with guitars started to encircle
the plaza for her, singing love-songs of appeal as they went.
[Illustration: "THINGS KNOWN AND NEVER TOLD."]
The white gleam of the brocaded gown caught the eyes of the singers, and
then a great cry went up in the night, and the music of the dance
ceased, and the people crowded about the dead woman on the altar steps,
and the old Indios crossed themselves, and said in their own tongue:
"It has come, after all,--the sacrifice of blood on the altar of the
temple,--the thing our fathers told us has come to pass."
The strings of pearls and other jewels were scattered on the
diamond-shaped tiles of the floor, and many were red with blood.
"Some one has tried to steal the jewels while we all danced there,"
suggested one of the guests, "and she has died defending them. Rafael,
she has given her life to save the jewels of your wife!"
"Yes," Rafael said, at last, and stared at the speaker in a dazed way;
"my wife. I--I will go to my wife."
He strode through the crowd toward the living-rooms, and flung wide the
door of her chamber. She was on her knees where Padre Libertad had left
her.
"Raquel!"
His voice sounded hollow and strange in his own ears. A strange buzzing
in his head blurred speech and thought, and when she arose and faced him
with clear eyes and quiet face, he leaned against the chair and looked
at her strangely--helplessly.
"She is dead," he said, thickly; "Angela Bryton is found dead--and your
jewels--"
"Wait," she said, "and I will go with you."
And turning, she lifted the lid from the perfumed box of candles.
"She did not believe in these," she said, quietly, "but we will light
them for her, just the same. None of us knew whom they would burn for;
perhaps she knows now, Rafael."
He made no answer, but moved like a man stunned mentally. Out beside her
he walked to the altar-place, and the people made way for them.
It was the hour of dawn when a fisherman rode from the beach to tell how
he had found two sailors beaten and bound at the landing-place. They had
a story of a sailing-vessel and sacks of coin, and a bearded man who
looked like El Capitan; but it must have been his ghost, for it was
thought Capitan was dead, as well as Juan Flores. At any rate, the
vessel was gone, and the sailors were left tied on the shore. They were
afraid to face Rafael Arteaga, because of the coin he had trusted them
with, and the good boat, gone now straight out of sight--the saints and
the devil only knew where!
But they needed not to fear Rafael. The coin, for which he had exchanged
all the cattle and horses possible to sell in two days' time, was a
forgotten thing to him, or uncared for. He sat apart and silent, as
though paralyzed by a great fear, and he ever followed Raquel Arteaga
with his eyes, and said nothing.
The people wondered much that the robbers who would kill a woman and
steal a boat had not stopped also to gather up the scattered jewels
strewn about her. But they had not. Not even a diamond was missing. They
were gathered from the tiles, and the blood was washed from them, and
the casket was taken to Raquel by Ana, who was almost as silent as
Rafael. On that subject, never in their lives would they gain courage to
speak. Raquel took the casket, and looked at the gems, but did not touch
them.
"And for such trifles she lost her life, perhaps her soul--who knows?"
she said, in the same colorless quiet way, and handed the casket to her
husband. "Rafael, have these put away for her child, when she becomes a
woman. They were paid for by the mother!"
From that night Rafael Arteaga was a changed man. Some said he had gone
mad at the death of the woman there; others said that it was not the
death of the woman, but the curse of the Arteagas had fallen upon him.
No one ever heard him laugh or sing again; and when his wife brought
pretty Marta's little boy from the willows, and had him educated to
inherit after his father, the father accepted him almost without notice.
Keith Bryton never came back. Letters concerning the child of Dona
Angela were exchanged with Don Eduardo, who remained her guardian, and
after that there were long years of silence. Only one man, far down the
coast of South America, guessed what Raquel Arteaga lived through. Even
to Ana, who had left her own land to join him, there were some things
known to him of the old Mission days, and never told.
[Music: _Al Fin_]