In those days, Santa Fé, New Mexico, was an undergrown, decrepit,
out-at-elbows ancient hidalgo of a town, with not a scintillation of
prosperity or grandeur about it, except the name of capital.
It was two hundred and seventy years old; and it had less than five
thousand inhabitants. It was the metropolis of a vast extent of country,
not destitute of natural wealth; and it consisted of a few narrow,
irregular streets, lined by one-story houses built of sun-baked bricks.
Owing to the fine climate, it was difficult to die there; but owing to
many things not fine, it was almost equally difficult to live.
Even the fact that Santa Fé had been for a period under the fostering
wings of the American eagle did not make it grow much. Westward-ho
emigrants halted there to refit and buy cattle and provisions; but always
started resolutely on again, westward-hoing across the continent. Nobody
seemed to want to stay in Santa Fé, except the aforesaid less than five
thousand inhabitants, who were able to endure the place because they had
never seen any other, and who had become a part of its gray, dirty, lazy
lifelessness and despondency.
For a wonder, this old atom of a metropolis had lately had an increase of
population, which was nearly as great a wonder as Sarah having a son when
she was "well stricken in years." A couple of new-comers--not a man nor
woman less than a couple--now stood on the flat roof of one of the largest
of the sun-baked brick houses. By great good luck, moreover, these two
were, I humbly trust, worthy of attention. The one was interesting because
she was the handsomest girl in Santa Fé, and would have been considered a
handsome girl anywhere; the other was interesting because she was a
remarkable woman, and even, as Mr. Jefferson Brick might have phrased it,
"one of the most remarkable women in our country, sir." At least so she
judged, and judged it too with very considerable confidence, being one of
those persons who say, "If I know myself, and I think I do."
The beauty was of a mixed type. She combined the blonde and the brunette
fashions of loveliness. You might guess at the first glance that she had
in her the blood of both the Teutonic and the Latin races. While her skin
was clear and rosy, and her curling hair was of a light and bright
chestnut, her long, shadowy eyelashes were almost black, and her eyes were
of a deep hazel, nearly allied to blackness. Her form had the height of
the usual American girl, and the round plumpness of the usual Spanish
girl. Even in her bearing and expression you could discover more or less
of this union of different races. There was shyness and frankness; there
was mistrust and confidence; there was sentimentality and gayety. In
short, Clara Muñoz Garcia Van Diemen was a handsome and interesting young
lady.
Now for the remarkable woman. Sturdy and prominent old character,
obviously. Forty-seven years old, or thereabouts; lots of curling
iron-gray hair twisted about her round forehead; a few wrinkles, and not
all of the newest. Round face, round and earnest eyes, short,
self-confident nose, chin sticking out in search of its own way, mouth
trembling with unuttered ideas. Good figure--what Lord Dundreary would
call "dem robust," but not so sumptuous as to be merely ornamental;
tolerably convenient figure to get about in. Walks up and down,
man-fashion, with her hands behind her back--also man-fashion. Such is
Mrs. Maria Stanley, the sister of Clara Van Diemen's father, and best
known to Clara as Aunt Maria.
"And so this is Santa Fé?" said Aunt Maria, rolling her spectacles over
the little wilted city. "Founded in 1581; two hundred and seventy years
old. Well, if this is all that man can do in that time, he had better
leave colonization to woman."
Clara smiled with an innocent air of half wonder and half amusement, such
as you may see on the face of a child when it is shown some new and rather
awe-striking marvel of the universe, whether a jack-in-a-box or a comet.
She had only known Aunt Maria for the last four years, and she had not yet
got used to her rough-and-ready mannish ways, nor learned to see any sense
in her philosophizings. Looking upon her as a comical character, and
supposing that she talked mainly for the fun of the thing, she was
disposed to laugh at her doings and sayings, though mostly meant in solemn
earnest.
"But about your affairs, my child," continued Aunt Maria, suddenly
gripping a fresh subject after her quick and startling fashion. "I don't
understand them. How is it possible? Here is a great fortune gone; gone in
a moment; gone incomprehensibly. What does it mean? Some rascality here.
Some man at the bottom of this."
"I presume my relative, Garcia, must be right," commenced Clara.
"No, he isn't," interrupted Aunt Maria. "He is wrong. Of course he's
wrong. I never knew a man yet but what he was wrong."
"You make me laugh in spite of my troubles," said Clara, laughing,
however, only through her eyes, which had great faculties for sparkling
out meanings. "But see here," she added, turning grave again, and putting
up her hand to ask attention. "Mr. Garcia tells a straight story, and
gives reasons enough. There was the war," and here she began to count on
her fingers, "That destroyed a great deal. I know when my father could
scarcely send on money to pay my bills in New York. And then there was the
signature for Señor Pedraez. And then there were the Apaches who burnt the
hacienda and drove off the cattle. And then he--"
Her voice faltered and she stopped; she could not say, "He died."
"My poor, dear child!" sighed Aunt Maria, walking up to the girl and
caressing her with a tenderness which was all womanly.
"That seems enough," continued Clara, when she could speak again. "I
suppose that what Garcia and the lawyers tell us is true. I suppose I am
not worth a thousand dollars."
"Will a thousand dollars support you here?"
"I don't know. I don't think it will."
"Then if I can't set this thing straight, if I can't make somebody
disgorge your property, I must take you back with me."
"Oh! if you would!" implored Clara, all the tender helplessness of Spanish
girlhood appealing from her eyes.
"Of course I will," said Aunt Maria, with a benevolent energy which was
almost terrific.
"I would try to do something. I don't know. Couldn't I teach Spanish?"
"You _shan't_" decided Aunt Maria. "Yes, you _shall_. You shall be
professor of foreign languages in a Female College which I mean to have
founded."
Clara stared with astonishment, and then burst into a hearty fit of
laughter, the two finishing the drying of her tears. She was so far from
wishing to be a strong-minded person of either gender, that she did not
comprehend that her aunt could wish it for her, or could herself seriously
claim to be one. The talk about a professorship was in her estimation the
wayward, humorous whim of an eccentric who was fond of solemn joking. Mrs.
Stanley, meanwhile, could not see why her utterance should not be taken in
earnest, and opened her eyes at Clara's merriment.
We must say a word or two concerning the past of this young lady.
Twenty-five years previous a New Yorker named Augustus Van Diemen, the
brother of that Maria Jane Van Diemen now known to the world as Mrs.
Stanley, had migrated to California, set up in the hide business, and
married by stealth the daughter of a wealthy Mexican named Pedro Muñoz.
Muñoz got into a Spanish Catholic rage at having a Yankee Protestant
son-in-law, disowned and formally disinherited his child, and worried her
husband into quitting the country. Van Diemen returned to the United
States, but his wife soon became homesick for her native land, and, like a
good husband as he was, he went once more to Mexico. This time he settled
in Santa Fé, where he accumulated a handsome fortune, lived in the best
house in the city, and owned haciendas.
Clara's mother dying when the girl was fourteen years old, Van Diemen felt
free to give her, his only child, an American education, and sent her to
New York, where she went through four years of schooling. During this
period came the war between the United States and Mexico. Foreign
residents were ill-treated; Van Diemen was sometimes a prisoner, sometimes
a fugitive; in one way or another his fortune went to pieces. Four months
previous to the opening of this story he died in a state little better
than insolvency. Clara, returning to Santa Fé under the care of her
energetic and affectionate relative, found that the deluge of debt would
cover town house and haciendas, leaving her barely a thousand dollars. She
was handsome and accomplished, but she was an orphan and poor. The main
chance with her seemed to lie in the likelihood that she would find a
mother (or a father) in Aunt Maria.
Yes, there was another sustaining possibility, and of a more poetic
nature. There was a young American officer named Thurstane, a second
lieutenant acting as quartermaster of the department, who had met her
heretofore in New York, who had seemed delighted to welcome her to Santa
Fé, and who now called on her nearly every day. Might it not be that
Lieutenant Thurstane would want to make her Mrs. Thurstane, and would have
power granted him to induce her to consent to the arrangement? Clara was
sufficiently a woman, and sufficiently a Spanish woman especially, to
believe in marriage. She did not mean particularly to be Mrs. Thurstane,
but she did mean generally to be Mrs. Somebody. And why not Thurstane?
Well, that was for him to decide, at least to a considerable extent. In
the mean time she did not love him; she only disliked the thought of
leaving him.
While these two women had been talking and thinking, a lazy Indian servant
had been lounging up the stairway. Arrived on the roof, he advanced to La
Señorita Clara, and handed her a letter. The girl opened it, glanced
through it with a flushing face, and cried out delightedly, "It is from my
grandfather. How wonderful! O holy Maria, thanks! His heart has been
softened. He invites me to come and live with him in San Francisco. _O
Madre de Dios!_"
Although Clara spoke English perfectly, and although she was in faith
quite as much of a Protestant as a Catholic, yet in her moments of strong
excitement she sometimes fell back into the language and ideas of her
childhood.
"Child, what are you jabbering about?" asked Aunt Maria.
"There it is. See! Pedro Muñoz! It is his own signature. I have seen
letters of his. Pedro Muñoz! Read it. Oh! you don't read Spanish."
Then she translated the letter aloud. Aunt Maria listened with a firm and
almost stern aspect, like one who sees some justice done, but not enough.
"He doesn't beg your pardon," she said at the close of the reading.
Clara, supposing that she was expected to laugh, and not seeing the point
of the joke, stared in amazement.
"But probably he is in a meeker mood now," continued Aunt Maria. "By this
time it is to be hoped that he sees his past conduct in a proper light.
The letter was written three months ago."
"Three months ago," repeated Clara. "Yes, it has taken all that time to
come. How long will it take me to go there? How shall I go?"
"We will see," said Aunt Maria, with the air of one who holds the fates in
her hand, and doesn't mean to open it till she gets ready. She was by no
means satisfied as yet that this grandfather Muñoz was a proper person to
be intrusted with the destinies of a young lady. In refusing to let his
daughter select her own husband, he had shown a very squinting and
incomplete perception of the rights of woman.
"Old reprobate!" thought Aunt Maria. "Probably he has got gouty with his
vices, and wants to be nursed. I fancy I see him getting Clara without
going on his sore marrow-bones and begging pardon of gods and women."
"Of course I must go," continued Clara, unsuspicious of her aunt's
reflections. "At all events he will support me. Besides, he is now the
head of my family."
"Head of the family!" frowned Aunt Maria. "Because he is a man? So much
the more reason for his being the tail of it. My dear, you are your own
head."
"Ah--well. What is the use of all _that_?" asked Clara, smiling away those
views. "I have no money, and he has."
"Well, we will see," persisted Aunt Maria. "I just told you so. We will
see."
The two women had scarcely left the roof of the house and got themselves
down to the large, breezy, sparsely furnished parlor, ere the lazy,
dawdling Indian servant announced Lieutenant Thurstane.
Lieutenant Ralph Thurstane was a tall, full-chested, finely-limbed
gladiator of perhaps four and twenty. Broad forehead; nose straight and
high enough; lower part of the face oval; on the whole a good physiognomy.
Cheek bones rather strongly marked; a hint of Scandinavian ancestry
supported by his name. Thurstane is evidently Thor's stone or altar;
forefathers priests of the god of thunder. His complexion was so reddened
and darkened by sunburn that his untanned forehead looked unnaturally
white and delicate. His yellow, one might almost call it golden hair, was
wavy enough to be handsome. Eyes quite remarkable; blue, but of a very
dark blue, like the coloring which is sometimes given to steel; so dark
indeed that one's first impression was that they were black. Their natural
expression seemed to be gentle, pathetic, and almost imploring; but
authority, responsibility, hardship, and danger had given them an ability
to be stern. In his whole face, young as he was, there was already the
look of the veteran, that calm reminiscence of trials endured, that
preparedness for trials to come. In fine, taking figure, physiognomy, and
demeanor together, he was attractive.
He saluted the ladies as if they were his superior officers. It was a
kindly address, but ceremonious; it was almost humble, and yet it was
self-respectful.
"I have some great news," he presently said, in the full masculine tone of
one who has done much drilling. "That is, it is great to me. I change
station."
"How is that?" asked Clara eagerly. She was not troubled at the thought of
losing a beau; we must not be so hard upon her as to make that
supposition; but here was a trustworthy friend going away just when she
wanted counsel and perhaps aid.
"I have been promoted first lieutenant of Company I, Fifth Regiment, and I
must join my company."
"Promoted! I am glad," said Clara.
"You ought to be pleased," put in Aunt Maria, staring at the grave face of
the young man with no approving expression. "I thought men were always
pleased with such things."
"So I am," returned Thurstane. "Of course I am pleased with the step. But
I must leave Santa Fé. And I have found Santa Fé very pleasant."
There was so much meaning obvious in these last words that Clara's face
colored like a sunset.
"I thought soldiers never indulged in such feelings," continued the
unmollified Aunt Maria.
"Soldiers are but men," observed Thurstane, flushing through his sunburn.
"And men are weak creatures."
Thurstane grew still redder. This old lady (old in his young eyes) was
always at him about his manship, as if it were a crime and disgrace. He
wanted to give her one, but out of respect for Clara he did not, and
merely moved uneasily in his seat, as men are apt to do when they are set
down hard.
"How soon must you go? Where?" demanded Clara.
"As soon as I can close my accounts here and turn over my stores to my
successor. Company I is at Fort Yuma on the Colorado. It is the first post
in California."
"California!" And Clara could not help brightening up in cheeks and eyes
with fine tints and flashes. "Why, I am going to California."
"We will see," said Aunt Maria, still holding the fates in her fist.
Then came the story of Grandfather Muñoz's letter, with a hint or two
concerning the decay of the Van Diemen fortune, for Clara was not worldly
wise enough to hide her poverty.
Thurstane's face turned as red with pleasure as if it had been dipped in
the sun. If this young lady was going to California, he might perhaps be
her knight-errant across the desert, guard her from privations and
hardships, and crown himself with her smiles. If she was poor, he
might--well, he would not speculate upon that; it was too dizzying.
We must say a word as to his history in order to show why he was so shy
and sensitive. He had been through West Point, confined himself while
there closely to his studies, gone very soon into active service, and so
seen little society. The discipline of the Academy and three years in the
regular army had ground into him the soldier's respect for superiors. He
revered his field officers; he received a communication from the War
Department as a sort of superhuman revelation; he would have blown himself
sky-high at the command of General Scott. This habit of subordination,
coupled with a natural fund of reverence, led him to feel that many
persons were better than himself, and to be humble in their presence. All
women were his superior officers, and the highest in rank was Clara Van
Diemen.
Well, hurrah! he was to march under her to California! and the thought
made him half wild. He would protect her; he would kill all the Indians in
the desert for her sake; he would feed her on his own blood, if necessary.
As he considered these proper and feasible projects, the audacious thought
which he had just tried to expel from his mind forced its way back into
it. If the Van Diemen estate were insolvent, if this semi-divine Clara
were as poor as himself, there was a call on him to double his devotion to
her, and there was a hope that his worship might some day be rewarded.
How he would slave and serve for her; how he would earn promotion for her
sake; how he would fight her battle in life! But would she let him do it?
Ah, it seemed too much to hope. Poor though she was, she was still a
heaven or so above him; she was so beautiful and had so many perfections!
Oh, the purity, the self-abnegation, the humility of love! It makes a man
scarcely lower than the angels, and quite superior to not a few reverenced
saints.