IT was longer even than the Senora had thought it would be, before
Father Salvierderra arrived. The old man had grown feeble during the
year that she had not seen him, and it was a very short day's journey
that he could make now without too great fatigue. It was not only his
body that had failed. He had lost heart; and the miles which would have
been nothing to him, had he walked in the companionship of hopeful and
happy thoughts, stretched out wearily as he brooded over sad memories
and still sadder anticipations,--the downfall of the Missions, the loss
of their vast estates, and the growing power of the ungodly in the land.
The final decision of the United States Government in regard to the
Mission-lands had been a terrible blow to him. He had devoutly believed
that ultimate restoration of these great estates to the Church was
inevitable. In the long vigils which he always kept when at home at the
Franciscan Monastery in Santa Barbara, kneeling on the stone pavement
in the church, and praying ceaselessly from midnight till dawn, he had
often had visions vouchsafed him of a new dispensation, in which the
Mission establishments should be reinstated in all their old splendor
and prosperity, and their Indian converts again numbered by tens of
thousands.
Long after every one knew that this was impossible, he would narrate
these visions with the faith of an old Bible seer, and declare that they
must come true, and that it was a sin to despond. But as year after year
he journeyed up and down the country, seeing, at Mission after Mission,
the buildings crumbling into ruin, the lands all taken, sold, resold,
and settled by greedy speculators; the Indian converts disappearing,
driven back to their original wildernesses, the last traces of the noble
work of his order being rapidly swept away, his courage faltered, his
faith died out. Changes in the manners and customs of his order itself,
also, were giving him deep pain. He was a Franciscan of the same type as
Francis of Assisi. To wear a shoe in place of a sandal, to take money in
a purse for a journey, above all to lay aside the gray gown and cowl for
any sort of secular garment, seemed to him wicked. To own comfortable
clothes while there were others suffering for want of them--and
there were always such--seemed to him a sin for which one might not
undeservedly be smitten with sudden and terrible punishment. In vain the
Brothers again and again supplied him with a warm cloak; he gave it away
to the first beggar he met: and as for food, the refectory would have
been left bare, and the whole brotherhood starving, if the supplies had
not been carefully hidden and locked, so that Father Salvierderra could
not give them all away. He was fast becoming that most tragic yet often
sublime sight, a man who has survived, not only his own time, but
the ideas and ideals of it. Earth holds no sharper loneliness: the
bitterness of exile, the anguish of friendlessness at their utmost,
are in it; and yet it is so much greater than they, that even they seem
small part of it.
It was with thoughts such as these that Father Salvierderra drew near
the home of the Senora Moreno late in the afternoon of one of those
midsummer days of which Southern California has so many in spring. The
almonds had bloomed and the blossoms fallen; the apricots also, and the
peaches and pears; on all the orchards of these fruits had come a filmy
tint of green, so light it was hardly more than a shadow on the gray.
The willows were vivid light green, and the orange groves dark and
glossy like laurel. The billowy hills on either side the valley were
covered with verdure and bloom,--myriads of low blossoming plants, so
close to the earth that their tints lapped and overlapped on each other,
and on the green of the grass, as feathers in fine plumage overlap each
other and blend into a changeful color.
The countless curves, hollows, and crests of the coast-hills in Southern
California heighten these chameleon effects of the spring verdure; they
are like nothing in nature except the glitter of a brilliant lizard in
the sun or the iridescent sheen of a peacock's neck.
Father Salvierderra paused many times to gaze at the beautiful picture.
Flowers were always dear to the Franciscans. Saint Francis himself
permitted all decorations which could be made of flowers. He classed
them with his brothers and sisters, the sun, moon, and stars,--all
members of the sacred choir praising God.
It was melancholy to see how, after each one of these pauses, each fresh
drinking in of the beauty of the landscape and the balmy air, the old
man resumed his slow pace, with a long sigh and his eyes cast down.
The fairer this beautiful land, the sadder to know it lost to the
Church,--alien hands reaping its fulness, establishing new customs,
new laws. All the way down the coast from Santa Barbara he had seen,
at every stopping-place, new tokens of the settling up of the
country,--farms opening, towns growing; the Americans pouring in, at
all points, to reap the advantages of their new possessions. It was
this which had made his journey heavy-hearted, and made him feel, in
approaching the Senora Moreno's, as if he were coming to one of the last
sure strongholds of the Catholic faith left in the country.
When he was within two miles of the house, he struck off from the
highway into a narrow path that he recollected led by a short-cut
through the hills, and saved nearly a third of the distance. It was
more than a year since he had trod this path, and as he found it growing
fainter and fainter, and more and more overgrown with the wild mustard,
he said to himself, “I think no one can have passed through here this
year.”
As he proceeded he found the mustard thicker and thicker. The wild
mustard in Southern California is like that spoken of in the New
Testament, in the branches of which the birds of the air may rest.
Coming up out of the earth, so slender a stem that dozens can find
starting-point in an inch, it darts up, a slender straight shoot, five,
ten, twenty feet, with hundreds of fine feathery branches locking
and interlocking with all the other hundreds around it, till it is an
inextricable network like lace. Then it bursts into yellow bloom still
finer, more feathery and lacelike. The stems are so infinitesimally
small, and of so dark a green, that at a short distance they do not
show, and the cloud of blossom seems floating in the air; at times it
looks like golden dust. With a clear blue sky behind it, as it is often
seen, it looks like a golden snow-storm. The plant is a tyrant and a
nuisance,--the terror of the farmer; it takes riotous possession of a
whole field in a season; once in, never out; for one plant this year, a
million the next; but it is impossible to wish that the land were freed
from it. Its gold is as distinct a value to the eye as the nugget gold
is in the pocket.
Father Salvierderra soon found himself in a veritable thicket of these
delicate branches, high above his head, and so interlaced that he could
make headway only by slowly and patiently disentangling them, as one
would disentangle a skein of silk. It was a fantastic sort of dilemma,
and not unpleasing. Except that the Father was in haste to reach his
journey's end, he would have enjoyed threading his way through
the golden meshes. Suddenly he heard faint notes of singing. He
paused,--listened. It was the voice of a woman. It was slowly drawing
nearer, apparently from the direction in which he was going. At
intervals it ceased abruptly, then began again; as if by a sudden but
brief interruption, like that made by question and answer. Then, peering
ahead through the mustard blossoms, he saw them waving and bending, and
heard sounds as if they were being broken. Evidently some one entering
on the path from the opposite end had been caught in the fragrant
thicket as he was. The notes grew clearer, though still low and sweet
as the twilight notes of the thrush; the mustard branches waved more and
more violently; light steps were now to be heard. Father Salvierderra
stood still as one in a dream, his eyes straining forward into the
golden mist of blossoms. In a moment more came, distinct and clear to
his ear, the beautiful words of the second stanza of Saint Francis's
inimitable lyric, “The Canticle of the Sun:”
“Praise be to thee, O Lord, for all thy creatures, and especially for
our brother the Sun,--who illuminates the day, and by his beauty and
splendor shadows forth unto us thine.”
“Ramona!” exclaimed the Father, his thin cheeks flushing with pleasure.
“The blessed child!” And as he spoke, her face came into sight, set in
a swaying frame of the blossoms, as she parted them lightly to right and
left with her hands, and half crept, half danced through the loop-hole
openings thus made. Father Salvierderra was past eighty, but his blood
was not too old to move quicker at the sight of this picture. A man must
be dead not to thrill at it. Ramona's beauty was of the sort to be best
enhanced by the waving gold which now framed her face. She had just
enough of olive tint in her complexion to underlie and enrich her skin
without making it swarthy. Her hair was like her Indian mother's, heavy
and black, but her eyes were like her father's, steel-blue. Only those
who came very near to Ramona knew, however, that her eyes were blue, for
the heavy black eyebrows and long black lashes so shaded and shadowed
them that they looked black as night. At the same instant that Father
Salvierderra first caught sight of her face, Ramona also saw him, and
crying out joyfully, “Ah, Father, I knew you would come by this path,
and something told me you were near!” she sprang forward, and sank on
her knees before him, bowing her head for his blessing. In silence he
laid his hands on her brow. It would not have been easy for him to speak
to her at that first moment. She had looked to the devout old monk, as
she sprang through the cloud of golden flowers, the sun falling on
her bared head, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining, more like an
apparition of an angel or saint, than like the flesh-and-blood maiden
whom he had carried in his arms when she was a babe.
“We have been waiting, waiting, oh, so long for you, Father!” she said,
rising. “We began to fear that you might be ill. The shearers have been
sent for, and will be here tonight, and that was the reason I felt so
sure you would come. I knew the Virgin would bring you in time for mass
in the chapel on the first morning.”
The monk smiled half sadly. “Would there were more with such faith as
yours, daughter,” he said. “Are all well on the place?”
“Yes, Father, all well,” she answered. “Felipe has been ill with a
fever; but he is out now, these ten days, and fretting for--for your
coming.”
Ramona had like to have said the literal truth,--“fretting for the
sheep-shearing,” but recollected herself in time.
“And the Senora?” said the Father.
“She is well,” answered Ramona, gently, but with a slight change of
tone,--so slight as to be almost imperceptible; but an acute observer
would have always detected it in the girl's tone whenever she spoke of
the Senora Moreno. “And you,--are you well yourself, Father?” she asked
affectionately, noting with her quick, loving eye how feebly the old
man walked, and that he carried what she had never before seen in his
hand,--a stout staff to steady his steps. “You must be very tired with
the long journey on foot.”
“Ay, Ramona, I am tired,” he replied. “Old age is conquering me. It will
not be many times more that I shall see this place.”
“Oh, do not say that, Father,” cried Ramona; “you can ride, when it
tires you too much to walk. The Senora said, only the other day, that
she wished you would let her give you a horse; that it was not right for
you to take these long journeys on foot. You know we have hundreds of
horses. It is nothing, one horse,” she added, seeing the Father slowly
shake his head.
“No;” he said, “it is not that. I could not refuse anything at the hands
of the Senora. But it was the rule of our order to go on foot. We
must deny the flesh. Look at our beloved master in this land, Father
Junipero, when he was past eighty, walking from San Diego to Monterey,
and all the while a running ulcer in one of his legs, for which most men
would have taken to a bed, to be healed. It is a sinful fashion that
is coming in, for monks to take their ease doing God's work. I can no
longer walk swiftly, but I must walk all the more diligently.”
While they were talking, they had been slowly moving forward, Ramona
slightly in advance, gracefully bending the mustard branches, and
holding them down till the Father had followed in her steps. As they
came out from the thicket, she exclaimed, laughing, “There is Felipe, in
the willows. I told him I was coming to meet you, and he laughed at me.
Now he will see I was right.”
Astonished enough, Felipe, hearing voices, looked up, and saw Ramona and
the Father approaching. Throwing down the knife with which he had been
cutting the willows, he hastened to meet them, and dropped on his knees,
as Ramona had done, for the monk's blessing. As he knelt there, the wind
blowing his hair loosely off his brow, his large brown eyes lifted in
gentle reverence to the Father's face, and his face full of affectionate
welcome, Ramona thought to herself, as she had thought hundreds of times
since she became a woman, “How beautiful Felipe is! No wonder the Senora
loves him so much! If I had been beautiful like that she would have
liked me better.” Never was a little child more unconscious of her own
beauty than Ramona still was. All the admiration which was expressed
to her in word and look she took for simple kindness and good-will.
Her face, as she herself saw it in her glass, did not please her. She
compared her straight, massive black eyebrows with Felipe's, arched and
delicately pencilled, and found her own ugly. The expression of gentle
repose which her countenance wore, seemed to her an expression of
stupidity. “Felipe looks so bright!” she thought, as she noted his
mobile changing face, never for two successive seconds the same. “There
is nobody like Felipe.” And when his brown eyes were fixed on her, as
they so often were, in a long lingering gaze, she looked steadily back
into their velvet depths with an abstracted sort of intensity which
profoundly puzzled Felipe. It was this look, more than any other one
thing, which had for two years held Felipe's tongue in leash, as it
were, and made it impossible for him to say to Ramona any of the loving
things of which his heart had been full ever since he could remember.
The boy had spoken them unhesitatingly, unconsciously; but the man found
himself suddenly afraid. “What is it she thinks when she looks into my
eyes so?” he wondered. If he had known that the thing she was usually
thinking was simply, “How much handsomer brown eyes are than blue!
I wish my eyes were the color of Felipe's!” he would have perceived,
perhaps, what would have saved him sorrow, if he had known it, that a
girl who looked at a man thus, would be hard to win to look at him as a
lover. But being a lover, he could not see this. He saw only enough to
perplex and deter him.
As they drew near the house, Ramona saw Margarita standing at the gate
of the garden. She was holding something white in her hands, looking
down at it, and crying piteously. As she perceived Ramona, she made an
eager leap forward, and then shrank back again, making dumb signals
of distress to her. Her whole attitude was one of misery and entreaty.
Margarita was, of all the maids, most beloved by Ramona. Though they
were nearly of the same age, it had been Margarita who first had charge
of Ramona; the nurse and her charge had played together, grown up
together, become women together, and were now, although Margarita never
presumed on the relation, or forgot to address Ramona as Senorita, more
like friends than like mistress and maid.
“Pardon me, Father,” said Ramona. “I see that Margarita there is in
trouble. I will leave Felipe to go with you to the house. I will be with
you again in a few moments.” And kissing his hand, she flew rather than
ran across the field to the foot of the garden.
Before she reached the spot, Margarita had dropped on the ground and
buried her face in her hands. A mass of crumpled and stained linen lay
at her feet.
“What is it? What has happened, Margarita mia?” cried Ramona, in the
affectionate Spanish phrase. For answer, Margarita removed one wet hand
from her eyes, and pointed with a gesture of despair to the crumpled
linen. Sobs choked her voice, and she buried her face again in her
hands.
Ramona stooped, and lifted one corner of the linen. An involuntary cry
of dismay broke from her, at which Margarita's sobs redoubled, and
she gasped out, “Yes, Senorita, it is totally ruined! It can never be
mended, and it will be needed for the mass to-morrow morning. When I saw
the Father coming by your side, I prayed to the Virgin to let me die.
The Senora will never forgive me.”
It was indeed a sorry sight. The white linen altar-cloth, the cloth
which the Senora Moreno had with her own hands made into one solid front
of beautiful lace of the Mexican fashion, by drawing out part of the
threads and sewing the remainder into intricate patterns, the
cloth which had always been on the altar, when mass was said, since
Margarita's and Ramona's earliest recollections,--there it lay, torn,
stained, as if it had been dragged through muddy brambles. In silence,
aghast, Ramona opened it out and held it up. “How did it happen,
Margarita?” she whispered, glancing in terror up towards the house.
“Oh, that is the worst of it, Senorita!” sobbed the girl. “That is the
worst of it! If it were not for that, I would not be so afraid. If it
had happened any other way, the Senora might have forgiven me; but she
never will. I would rather die than tell her;” and she shook from head
to foot.
“Stop crying, Margarita!” said Ramona, firmly, “and tell me all about
it. It isn't so bad as it looks. I think I can mend it.”
“Oh, the saints bless you!” cried Margarita, looking up for the first
time. “Do you really think you can mend it, Senorita? If you will mend
that lace, I'll go on my knees for you all the rest of my life!”
Ramona laughed in spite of herself. “You'll serve me better by keeping
on your feet,” she said merrily; at which Margarita laughed too, through
her tears. They were both young.
“Oh, but Senorita,” Margarita began again in a tone of anguish, her
tears flowing afresh, “there is not time! It must be washed and ironed
to-night, for the mass to-morrow morning, and I have to help at the
supper. Anita and Rosa are both ill in bed, you know, and Maria has gone
away for a week. The Senora said if the Father came to-night I must help
mother, and must wait on table. It cannot be done. I was just going
to iron it now, and I found it--so--It was in the artichoke-patch, and
Capitan, the beast, had been tossing it among the sharp pricks of the
old last year's seeds.”
“In the artichoke-patch!” ejaculated Ramona. “How under heavens did it
get there?”
“Oh, that was what I meant, Senorita, when I said she never would
forgive me. She has forbidden me many times to hang anything to dry on
the fence there; and if I had only washed it when she first told me, two
days ago, all would have been well. But I forgot it till this afternoon,
and there was no sun in the court to dry it, and you know how the sun
lies on the artichoke-patch, and I put a strong cloth over the fence,
so that the wood should not pierce the lace, and I did not leave it more
than half an hour, just while I said a few words to Luigo, and there
was no wind; and I believe the saints must have fetched it down to the
ground to punish me for my disobedience.”
Ramona had been all this time carefully smoothing out the torn places,
“It is not so bad as it looks,” she said; “if it were not for the hurry,
there would be no trouble in mending it. But I will do it the best I
can, so that it will not show, for to-morrow, and then, after the Father
is gone, I can repair it at leisure, and make it just as good as new.
I think I can mend it and wash it before dark,” and she glanced at the
sun. “Oh, yes, there are good three hours of daylight yet. I can do it.
You put the irons on the fire, to have them hot, to iron it as soon
as it is partly dried. You will see it will not show that anything has
happened to it.”
“Will the Senora know?” asked poor Margarita, calmed and reassured, but
still in mortal terror.
Ramona turned her steady glance full on Margarita's face. “You would not
be any happier if she were deceived, do you think?” she said gravely.
“O Senorita, after it is mended? If it really does not show?” pleaded
the girl.
“I will tell her myself, and not till after it is mended,” said Ramona;
but she did not smile.
“Ah, Senorita,” said Margarita, deprecatingly, “you do not know what it
is to have the Senora displeased with one.”
“Nothing can be so bad as to be displeased with one's self,” retorted
Ramona, as she walked swiftly away to her room with the linen rolled up
under her arm. Luckily for Margarita's cause, she met no one on the way.
The Senora had welcomed Father Salvierderra at the foot of the veranda
steps, and had immediately closeted herself with him. She had much to
say to him,--much about which she wished his help and counsel, and much
which she wished to learn from him as to affairs in the Church and in
the country generally.
Felipe had gone off at once to find Juan Canito, to see if everything
were ready for the sheep-shearing to begin on the next day, if the
shearers arrived in time; and there was very good chance of their coming
in by sundown this day, Felipe thought, for he had privately instructed
his messenger to make all possible haste, and to impress on the Indians
the urgent need of their losing no time on the road.
It had been a great concession on the Senora's part to allow the
messenger to be sent off before she had positive intelligence as to the
Father's movements. But as day after day passed and no news came, even
she perceived that it would not do to put off the sheep-shearing much
longer, or, as Juan Canito said, “forever.” The Father might have fallen
ill; and if that were so, it might very easily be weeks before they
heard of it, so scanty were the means of communication between the
remote places on his route of visitation. The messenger had therefore
been sent to summon the Temecula shearers, and Senora had resigned
herself to the inevitable; piously praying, however, morning and night,
and at odd moments in the day, that the Father might arrive before the
Indians did. When she saw him coming up the garden-walk, leaning on
the arm of her Felipe, on the afternoon of the very day which was the
earliest possible day for the Indians to arrive, it was not strange that
she felt, mingled with the joy of her greeting to her long-loved friend
and confessor, a triumphant exultation that the saints had heard her
prayers.
In the kitchen all was bustle and stir. The coming of any guest into the
house was a signal for unwonted activities there,--even the coming of
Father Salvierderra, who never knew whether the soup had force-meat
balls in it or not, old Marda said; and that was to her the last extreme
of indifference to good things of the flesh. “But if he will not eat,
he can see,” she said; and her pride for herself and for the house was
enlisted in setting forth as goodly an array of viands as her larder
afforded, She grew suddenly fastidious over the size and color of the
cabbages to go into the beef-pot, and threw away one whole saucepan full
of rice, because Margarita had put only one onion in instead of two.
“Have I not told you again and again that for the Father it is always
two onions?” she exclaimed. “It is the dish he most favors of all; and
it is a pity too, old as he is. It makes him no blood. It is good beef
he should take now.”
The dining-room was on the opposite side of the courtyard from the
kitchen, and there was a perpetual procession of small messengers going
back and forth between the rooms. It was the highest ambition of each
child to be allowed to fetch and carry dishes in the preparation of
the meals at all times; but when by so doing they could perchance get a
glimpse through the dining-room door, open on the veranda, of strangers
and guests, their restless rivalry became unmanageable. Poor Margarita,
between her own private anxieties and her multiplied duties of helping
in the kitchen, and setting the table, restraining and overseeing her
army of infant volunteers, was nearly distraught; not so distraught,
however, but that she remembered and found time to seize a lighted
candle in the kitchen, run and set it before the statue of Saint Francis
of Paula in her bedroom, hurriedly whispering a prayer that the lace
might be made whole like new. Several times before the afternoon had
waned she snatched a moment to fling herself down at the statue's feet
and pray her foolish little prayer over again. We think we are quite
sure that it is a foolish little prayer, when people pray to have torn
lace made whole. But it would be hard to show the odds between asking
that, and asking that it may rain, or that the sick may get well. As the
grand old Russian says, what men usually ask for, when they pray to God,
is, that two and two may not make four. All the same he is to be pitied
who prays not. It was only the thought of that candle at Saint Francis's
feet, which enabled Margarita to struggle through this anxious and
unhappy afternoon and evening.
At last supper was ready,--a great dish of spiced beef and cabbage in
the centre of the table; a tureen of thick soup, with force-meat balls
and red peppers in it; two red earthen platters heaped, one with the
boiled rice and onions, the other with the delicious frijoles (beans)
so dear to all Mexican hearts; cut-glass dishes filled with hot stewed
pears, or preserved quinces, or grape jelly; plates of frosted cakes of
various sorts; and a steaming silver teakettle, from which went up an
aroma of tea such as had never been bought or sold in all California,
the Senora's one extravagance and passion.
“Where is Ramona?” asked the Senora, surprised and displeased, as she
entered the dining-room, “Margarita, go tell the Senorita that we are
waiting for her.”
Margarita started tremblingly, with flushed face, towards the door. What
would happen now! “O Saint Francis,” she inwardly prayed, “help us this
once!”
“Stay,” said Felipe. “Do not call Senorita Ramona.” Then, turning to his
mother, “Ramona cannot come. She is not in the house. She has a duty to
perform for to-morrow,” he said; and he looked meaningly at his mother,
adding, “we will not wait for her.”
Much bewildered, the Senora took her seat at the head of the table in a
mechanical way, and began, “But--” Felipe, seeing that questions were to
follow, interrupted her: “I have just spoken with her. It is impossible
for her to come;” and turning to Father Salvierderra, he at once engaged
him in conversation, and left the baffled Senora to bear her unsatisfied
curiosity as best she could.
Margarita looked at Felipe with an expression of profound gratitude,
which he did not observe, and would not in the least have understood;
for Ramona had not confided to him any details of the disaster. Seeing
him under her window, she had called cautiously to him, and said: “Dear
Felipe, do you think you can save me from having to come to supper? A
dreadful accident has happened to the altar-cloth, and I must mend it
and wash it, and there is barely time before dark. Don't let them call
me; I shall be down at the brook, and they will not find me, and your
mother will be displeased.”
This wise precaution of Ramona's was the salvation of everything, so far
as the altar-cloth was concerned. The rents had proved far less serious
than she had feared; the daylight held out till the last of them was
skilfully mended; and just as the red beams of the sinking sun came
streaming through the willow-trees at the foot of the garden, Ramona,
darting down the garden, had reached the brook, and kneeling on the
grass, had dipped the linen into the water.
Her hurried working over the lace, and her anxiety, had made her cheeks
scarlet. As she ran down the garden, her comb had loosened and her hair
fallen to her waist. Stopping only to pick up the comb and thrust it in
her pocket, she had sped on, as it would soon be too dark for her to see
the stains on the linen, and it was going to be no small trouble to get
them out without fraying the lace.
Her hair in disorder, her sleeves pinned loosely on her shoulders, her
whole face aglow with the earnestness of her task, she bent low over
the stones, rinsing the altar-cloth up and down in the water, anxiously
scanning it, then plunging it in again.
The sunset beams played around her hair like a halo; the whole place was
aglow with red light, and her face was kindled into transcendent beauty.
A sound arrested her attention. She looked up. Forms, dusky black
against the fiery western sky, were coming down the valley. It was the
band of Indian shearers. They turned to the left, and went towards the
sheep sheds and booths. But there was one of them that Ramona did not
see. He had been standing for some minutes concealed behind a large
willow-tree a few rods from the place where Ramona was kneeling. It was
Alessandro, son of Pablo Assis, captain of the shearing band. Walking
slowly along in advance of his men, he had felt a light, as from a
mirror held in the sun, smite his eyes. It was the red sunbeam on the
glittering water where Ramona knelt. In the same second he saw Ramona.
He halted, as wild creatures of the forest halt at a sound; gazed;
walked abruptly away from his men, who kept on, not noticing his
disappearance. Cautiously he moved a few steps nearer, into the shelter
of a gnarled old willow, from behind which he could gaze unperceived on
the beautiful vision,--for so it seemed to him.
As he gazed, his senses seemed leaving him, and unconsciously he spoke
aloud; “Christ! What shall I do!”
V
THE room in which Father Salvierderra always slept when at the Senora
Moreno's house was the southeast corner room. It had a window to the
south and one to the east. When the first glow of dawn came in the sky,
this eastern window was lit up as by a fire. The Father was always on
watch for it, having usually been at prayer for hours. As the first ray
reached the window, he would throw the casement wide open, and standing
there with bared head, strike up the melody of the sunrise hymn sung in
all devout Mexican families. It was a beautiful custom, not yet wholly
abandoned. At the first dawn of light, the oldest member of the family
arose, and began singing some hymn familiar to the household. It was the
duty of each person hearing it to immediately rise, or at least sit up
in bed, and join in the singing. In a few moments the whole family would
be singing, and the joyous sounds pouring out from the house like
the music of the birds in the fields at dawn. The hymns were usually
invocations to the Virgin, or to the saint of the day, and the melodies
were sweet and simple.
On this morning there was another watcher for the dawn besides Father
Salvierderra. It was Alessandro, who had been restlessly wandering about
since midnight, and had finally seated himself under the willow-trees by
the brook, at the spot where he had seen Ramona the evening before. He
recollected this custom of the sunrise hymn when he and his band were
at the Senora's the last year, and he had chanced then to learn that the
Father slept in the southeast room. From the spot where he sat, he could
see the south window of this room. He could also see the low eastern
horizon, at which a faint luminous line already showed. The sky was like
amber; a few stars still shone faintly in the zenith. There was not
a sound. It was one of those rare moments in which one can without
difficulty realize the noiseless spinning of the earth through space.
Alessandro knew nothing of this; he could not have been made to believe
that the earth was moving. He thought the sun was coming up apace,
and the earth was standing still,--a belief just as grand, just as
thrilling, so far as all that goes, as the other: men worshipped the sun
long before they found out that it stood still. Not the most reverent
astronomer, with the mathematics of the heavens at his tongue's end,
could have had more delight in the wondrous phenomenon of the dawn, than
did this simple-minded, unlearned man.
His eyes wandered from the horizon line of slowly increasing light, to
the windows of the house, yet dark and still. “Which window is hers?
Will she open it when the song begins?” he thought. “Is it on this side
of the house? Who can she be? She was not here last year. Saw the saints
ever so beautiful a creature!”
At last came the full red ray across the meadow. Alessandro sprang to
his feet. In the next second Father Salvierderra flung up his south
window, and leaning out, his cowl thrown off, his thin gray locks
streaming back, began in a feeble but not unmelodious voice to sing,--
“O beautiful Queen,
Princess of Heaven.”
Before he had finished the second line, a half-dozen voices had joined
in,--the Senora, from her room at the west end of the veranda, beyond
the flowers; Felipe, from the adjoining room; Ramona, from hers, the
next; and Margarita and other of the maids already astir in the wings of
the house. As the volume of melody swelled, the canaries waked, and the
finches and the linnets in the veranda roof. The tiles of this roof were
laid on bundles of tule reeds, in which the linnets delighted to build
their nests. The roof was alive with them,--scores and scores, nay
hundreds, tame as chickens; their tiny shrill twitter was like the
tuning of myriads of violins.
“Singers at dawn
From the heavens above
People all regions;
Gladly we too sing,”
continued the hymn, the birds corroborating the stanza. Then men's
voices joined in,--Juan and Luigo, and a dozen more, walking slowly up
from the sheepfolds. The hymn was a favorite one, known to all.
“Come, O sinners,
Come, and we will sing
Tender hymns
To our refuge,”
was the chorus, repeated after each of the five verses of the hymn.
Alessandro also knew the hymn well. His father, Chief Pablo, had been
the leader of the choir at the San Luis Rey Mission in the last years of
its splendor, and had brought away with him much of the old choir music.
Some of the books had been written by his own hand, on parchment. He not
only sang well, but was a good player on the violin. There was not at
any of the Missions so fine a band of performers on stringed instruments
as at San Luis Rey. Father Peyri was passionately fond of music, and
spared no pains in training all the neophytes under his charge who
showed any special talent in that direction. Chief Pablo, after the
breaking up of the Mission, had settled at Temecula, with a small band
of his Indians, and endeavored, so far as was in his power, to keep
up the old religious services. The music in the little chapel of the
Temecula Indians was a surprise to all who heard it.
Alessandro had inherited his father's love and talent for music, and
knew all the old Mission music by heart. This hymn to the
“Beautiful Queen,
Princess of Heaven,”
was one of his special favorites; and as he heard verse after verse
rising, he could not forbear striking in.
At the first notes of this rich new voice, Ramona's voice ceased in
surprise; and, throwing up her window, she leaned out, eagerly looking
in all directions to see who it could be. Alessandro saw her, and sang
no more.
“What could it have been? Did I dream it?” thought Ramona, drew in her
head, and began to sing again.
With the next stanza of the chorus, the same rich barytone notes. They
seemed to float in under all the rest, and bear them along, as a great
wave bears a boat. Ramona had never heard such a voice. Felipe had
a good tenor, and she liked to sing with him, or to hear him; but
this--this was from another world, this sound. Ramona felt every note of
it penetrating her consciousness with a subtle thrill almost like pain.
When the hymn ended, she listened eagerly, hoping Father Salvierderra
would strike up a second hymn, as he often did; but he did not this
morning; there was too much to be done; everybody was in a hurry to
be at work: windows shut, doors opened; the sounds of voices from all
directions, ordering, questioning, answering, began to be heard. The sun
rose and let a flood of work-a-day light on the whole place.
Margarita ran and unlocked the chapel door, putting up a heartfelt
thanksgiving to Saint Francis and the Senorita, as she saw the snowy
altar-cloth in its place, looking, from that distance at least, as good
as new.
The Indians and the shepherds, and laborers of all sorts, were coming
towards the chapel. The Senora, with her best black silk handkerchief
bound tight around her forehead, the ends hanging down each side of her
face, making her look like an Assyrian priestess, was descending the
veranda steps, Felipe at her side; and Father Salvierderra had already
entered the chapel before Ramona appeared, or Alessandro stirred from
his vantage-post of observation at the willows.
When Ramona came out from the door she bore in her hands a high silver
urn filled with ferns. She had been for many days gathering and hoarding
these. They were hard to find, growing only in one place in a rocky
canon, several miles away.
As she stepped from the veranda to the ground, Alessandro walked slowly
up the garden-walk, facing her. She met his eyes, and, without knowing
why, thought, “That must be the Indian who sang.” As she turned to the
right and entered the chapel, Alessandro followed her hurriedly, and
knelt on the stones close to the chapel door. He would be near when she
came out. As he looked in at the door, he saw her glide up the aisle,
place the ferns on the reading-desk, and then kneel down by Felipe in
front of the altar. Felipe turned towards her, smiling slightly, with a
look as of secret intelligence.
“Ah, Senor Felipe has married. She is his wife,” thought Alessandro, and
a strange pain seized him. He did not analyze it; hardly knew what it
meant. He was only twenty-one. He had not thought much about women. He
was a distant, cold boy, his own people of the Temecula village said.
It had come, they believed, of learning to read, which was always bad.
Chief Pablo had not done his son any good by trying to make him like
white men. If the Fathers could have stayed, and the life at the Mission
have gone on, why, Alessandro could have had work to do for the Fathers,
as his father had before him. Pablo had been Father Peyri's right-hand
man at the Mission; had kept all the accounts about the cattle; paid the
wages; handled thousands of dollars of gold every month. But that was
“in the time of the king;” it was very different now. The Americans
would not let an Indian do anything but plough and sow and herd cattle.
A man need not read and write, to do that.
Even Pablo sometimes doubted whether he had done wisely in teaching
Alessandro all he knew himself. Pablo was, for one of his race, wise and
far-seeing. He perceived the danger threatening his people on all sides.
Father Peyri, before he left the country, had said to him: “Pablo, your
people will be driven like sheep to the slaughter, unless you keep them
together. Knit firm bonds between them; band them into pueblos; make
them work; and above all, keep peace with the whites. It is your only
chance.”
Most strenuously Pablo had striven to obey Father Peyri's directions. He
had set his people the example of constant industry, working steadily in
his fields and caring well for his herds. He had built a chapel in his
little village, and kept up forms of religious service there. Whenever
there were troubles with the whites, or rumors of them, he went from
house to house, urging, persuading, commanding his people to keep the
peace. At one time when there was an insurrection of some of the Indian
tribes farther south, and for a few days it looked as if there would
be a general Indian war, he removed the greater part of his band, men,
women, and children driving their flocks and herds with them, to
Los Angeles, and camped there for several days, that they might be
identified with the whites in case hostilities became serious.
But his labors did not receive the reward that they deserved. With every
day that the intercourse between his people and the whites increased,
he saw the whites gaining, his people surely losing ground, and his
anxieties deepened. The Mexican owner of the Temecula valley, a friend
of Father Peyri's, and a good friend also of Pablo's, had returned
to Mexico in disgust with the state of affairs in California, and was
reported to be lying at the point of death. This man's promise to Pablo,
that he and his people should always live in the valley undisturbed,
was all the title Pablo had to the village lands. In the days when the
promise was given, it was all that was necessary. The lines marking off
the Indians' lands were surveyed, and put on the map of the estate. No
Mexican proprietor ever broke faith with an Indian family or village,
thus placed on his lands.
But Pablo had heard rumors, which greatly disquieted him, that such
pledges and surveyed lines as these were coming to be held as of no
value, not binding on purchasers of grants. He was intelligent enough
to see that if this were so, he and his people were ruined. All these
perplexities and fears he confided to Alessandro; long anxious hours the
father and son spent together, walking back and forth in the village, or
sitting in front of their little adobe house, discussing what could be
done. There was always the same ending to the discussion,--a long sigh,
and, “We must wait, we can do nothing.”
No wonder Alessandro seemed, to the more ignorant and thoughtless young
men and women of his village, a cold and distant lad. He was made old
before his time. He was carrying in his heart burdens of which they
knew nothing. So long as the wheat fields came up well, and there was
no drought, and the horses and sheep had good pasture, in plenty, on the
hills, the Temecula people could be merry, go day by day to their easy
work, play games at sunset, and sleep sound all night. But Alessandro
and his father looked beyond. And this was the one great reason why
Alessandro had not yet thought about women, in way of love; this,
and also the fact that even the little education he had received was
sufficient to raise a slight barrier, of which he was unconsciously
aware, between him and the maidens of the village. If a quick, warm
fancy for any one of them ever stirred in his veins, he found himself
soon, he knew not how, cured of it. For a dance, or a game, or a
friendly chat, for the trips into the mountains after acorns, or to the
marshes for grasses and reeds, he was their good comrade, and they were
his; but never had the desire to take one of them for his wife, entered
into Alessandro's mind. The vista of the future, for him, was filled
full by thoughts which left no room for love's dreaming; one purpose and
one fear filled it,--the purpose to be his father's worthy successor,
for Pablo was old now, and very feeble; the fear, that exile and ruin
were in store for them all.
It was of these things he had been thinking as be walked alone, in
advance of his men, on the previous night, when he first saw Ramona
kneeling at the brook. Between that moment and the present, it seemed
to Alessandro that some strange miracle must have happened to him. The
purposes and the fears had alike gone. A face replaced them; a vague
wonder, pain, joy, he knew not what, filled him so to overflowing that
he was bewildered. If he had been what the world calls a civilized man,
he would have known instantly and would have been capable of weighing,
analyzing, and reflecting on his sensations at leisure. But he was not
a civilized man; he had to bring to bear on his present situation only
simple, primitive, uneducated instincts and impulses. If Ramona had been
a maiden of his own people or race, he would have drawn near to her as
quickly as iron to the magnet. But now, if he had gone so far as to even
think of her in such a way, she would have been, to his view, as far
removed from him as was the morning star beneath whose radiance he had
that morning watched, hoping for sight of her at her window. He did not,
however, go so far as to thus think of her. Even that would have
been impossible. He only knelt on the stones outside the chapel door,
mechanically repeating the prayers with the rest, waiting for her to
reappear. He had no doubt, now, that she was Senor Felipe's wife; all
the same he wished to kneel there till she came out, that he might see
her face again. His vista of purpose, fear, hope, had narrowed now down
to that,--just one more sight of her. Ever so civilized, he could hardly
have worshipped a woman better. The mass seemed to him endlessly long.
Until near the last, he forgot to sing; then, in the closing of the
final hymn, he suddenly remembered, and the clear deep-toned voice
pealed out, as before, like the undertone of a great sea-wave, sweeping
along.
Ramona heard the first note, and felt again the same thrill. She was as
much a musician born as Alessandro himself. As she rose from her knees,
she whispered to Felipe: “Felipe, do find out which one of the Indians
it is has that superb voice. I never heard anything like it.”
“Oh, that is Alessandro,” replied Felipe, “old Pablo's son. He is a
splendid fellow. Don't you recollect his singing two years ago?”
“I was not here,” replied Ramona; “you forget.”
“Ah, yes, so you were away; I had forgotten,” said Felipe. “Well, he
was here. They made him captain of the shearing-band, though he was only
twenty, and he managed the men splendidly. They saved nearly all their
money to carry home, and I never knew them do such a thing before.
Father Salvierderra was here, which might have had something to do with
it; but I think it was quite as much Alessandro. He plays the violin
beautifully. I hope he has brought it along. He plays the old San Luis
Rey music. His father was band-master there.”
Ramona's eyes kindled with pleasure. “Does your mother like it, to have
him play?” she asked.
Felipe nodded. “We'll have him up on the veranda tonight,” he said.
While this whispered colloquy was going on, the chapel had emptied,
the Indians and Mexicans all hurrying out to set about the day's work.
Alessandro lingered at the doorway as long as he dared, till he was
sharply called by Juan Canito, looking back: “What are you gaping at
there, you Alessandro! Hurry, now, and get your men to work. After
waiting till near midsummer for this shearing, we'll make as quick work
of it as we can. Have you got your best shearers here?”
“Ay, that I have,” answered Alessandro; “not a man of them but can shear
his hundred in a day, There is not such a band as ours in all San Diego
County; and we don't turn out the sheep all bleeding, either; you'll see
scarce a scratch on their sides.”
“Humph.” retorted Juan Can. “'Tis a poor shearer, indeed, that draws
blood to speak of. I've sheared many a thousand sheep in my day, and
never a red stain on the shears. But the Mexicans have always been famed
for good shearers.”
Juan's invidious emphasis on the word “Mexicans” did not escape
Alessandro. “And we Indians also,” he answered, good-naturedly,
betraying no annoyance; “but as for these Americans, I saw one at work
the other day, that man Lomax, who settled near Temecula, and upon my
faith, Juan Can, I thought it was a slaughter-pen, and not a shearing.
The poor beasts limped off with the blood running.”
Juan did not see his way clear at the moment to any fitting rejoinder to
this easy assumption, on Alessandro's part, of the equal superiority
of Indians and Mexicans in the sheep-shearing art; so, much vexed, with
another “Humph!” he walked away; walked away so fast, that he lost the
sight of a smile on Alessandro's face, which would have vexed him still
further.
At the sheep-shearing sheds and pens all was stir and bustle. The
shearing shed was a huge caricature of a summerhouse,--a long, narrow
structure, sixty feet long by twenty or thirty wide, all roof and
pillars; no walls; the supports, slender rough posts, as far apart
as was safe, for the upholding of the roof, which was of rough planks
loosely laid from beam to beam. On three sides of this were the
sheep-pens filled with sheep and lambs.
A few rods away stood the booths in which the shearers' food was to be
cooked and the shearers fed. These were mere temporary affairs, roofed
only by willow boughs with the leaves left on. Near these, the Indians
had already arranged their camp; a hut or two of green boughs had
been built, but for the most part they would sleep rolled up in their
blankets, on the ground. There was a brisk wind, and the gay colored
wings of the windmill blew furiously round and round, pumping out into
the tank below a stream of water so swift and strong, that as the men
crowded around, wetting and sharpening their knives, they got well
spattered, and had much merriment, pushing and elbowing each other into
the spray.
A high four-posted frame stood close to the shed; in this, swung from
the four corners, hung one of the great sacking bags in which the
fleeces were to be packed. A big pile of bags lay on the ground at the
foot of the posts. Juan Can eyed them with a chuckle. “We'll fill more
than those before night, Senor Felipe,” he said. He was in his element,
Juan Can, at shearing times. Then came his reward for the somewhat
monotonous and stupid year's work. The world held no better feast for
his eyes than the sight of a long row of big bales of fleece, tied,
stamped with the Moreno brand, ready to be drawn away to the mills.
“Now, there is something substantial,” he thought; “no chance of wool
going amiss in market!”
If a year's crop were good, Juan's happiness was assured for the next
six months. If it proved poor, he turned devout immediately, and
spent the next six months calling on the saints for better luck, and
redoubling his exertions with the sheep.
On one of the posts of the shed short projecting slats were nailed, like
half-rounds of a ladder. Lightly as a rope-walker Felipe ran up these,
to the roof, and took his stand there, ready to take the fleeces and
pack them in the bag as fast as they should be tossed up from below.
Luigo, with a big leathern wallet fastened in front of him, filled with
five-cent pieces, took his stand in the centre of the shed. The thirty
shearers, running into the nearest pen, dragged each his sheep into
the shed, in a twinkling of an eye had the creature between his knees,
helpless, immovable, and the sharp sound of the shears set in. The
sheep-shearing had begun. No rest now. Not a second's silence from the
bleating, baa-ing, opening and shutting, clicking, sharpening of shears,
flying of fleeces through the air to the roof, pressing and stamping
them down in the bales; not a second's intermission, except the hour of
rest at noon, from sunrise till sunset, till the whole eight thousand
of the Senora Moreno's sheep were shorn. It was a dramatic spectacle. As
soon as a sheep was shorn, the shearer ran with the fleece in his
hand to Luigo, threw it down on a table, received his five-cent piece,
dropped it in his pocket, ran to the pen, dragged out another sheep, and
in less than five minutes was back again with a second fleece. The shorn
sheep, released, bounded off into another pen, where, light in the head
no doubt from being three to five pounds lighter on their legs, they
trotted round bewilderedly for a moment, then flung up their heels and
capered for joy.
It was warm work. The dust from the fleeces and the trampling feet
filled the air. As the sun rose higher in the sky the sweat poured off
the men's faces; and Felipe, standing without shelter on the roof, found
out very soon that he had by no means yet got back his full strength
since the fever. Long before noon, except for sheer pride, and for
the recollection of Juan Canito's speech, he would have come down and
yielded his place to the old man. But he was resolved not to give up,
and he worked on, though his face was purple and his head throbbing.
After the bag of fleeces is half full, the packer stands in it, jumping
with his full weight on the wool, as he throws in the fleeces, to
compress them as much as possible. When Felipe began to do this, he
found that he had indeed overrated his strength. As the first cloud of
the sickening dust came up, enveloping his head, choking his breath,
he turned suddenly dizzy, and calling faintly, “Juan, I am ill,” sank
helpless down in the wool. He had fainted. At Juan Canito's scream of
dismay, a great hubbub and outcry arose; all saw instantly what had
happened. Felipe's head was hanging limp over the edge of the bag, Juan
in vain endeavoring to get sufficient foothold by his side to lift him.
One after another the men rushed up the ladder, until they were all
standing, a helpless, excited crowd, on the roof, one proposing one
thing, one another. Only Luigo had had the presence of mind to run to
the house for help. The Senora was away from home. She had gone with
Father Salvierderra to a friend's house, a half-day's journey off.
But Ramona was there. Snatching all she could think of in way of
restoratives, she came flying back with Luigo, followed by every servant
of the establishment, all talking, groaning, gesticulating, suggesting,
wringing their hands,--as disheartening a Babel as ever made bad matters
worse.
Reaching the shed, Ramona looked up to the roof bewildered. “Where is
he?” she cried. The next instant she saw his head, held in Juan Canito's
arms, just above the edge of the wool-bag. She groaned, “Oh, how will he
ever be lifted out!”
“I will lift him, Senora,” cried Alessandro, coming to the front, “I am
very strong. Do not be afraid; I will bring him safe down.” And swinging
himself down the ladder, he ran swiftly to the camp, and returned,
bringing in his hands blankets. Springing quickly to the roof again,
he knotted the blankets firmly together, and tying them at the middle
around his waist, threw the ends to his men, telling them to hold him
firm. He spoke in the Indian tongue as he was hurriedly doing this,
and Ramona did not at first understand his plan. But when she saw
the Indians move a little back from the edge of the roof, holding the
blankets firm grasped, while Alessandro stepped out on one of the narrow
cross-beams from which the bag swung, she saw what he meant to do. She
held her breath. Felipe was a slender man; Alessandro was much heavier,
and many inches taller. Still, could any man carry such a burden safely
on that narrow beam! Ramona looked away, and shut her eyes, through
the silence which followed. It was only a few moments; but it seemed an
eternity before a glad murmur of voices told her that it was done, and
looking up, she saw Felipe lying on the roof, unconscious, his face
white, his eyes shut. At this sight, all the servants broke out afresh,
weeping and wailing, “He is dead! He is dead!”
Ramona stood motionless, her eyes fixed on Felipe's face. She, too,
believed him dead; but her thought was of the Senora.
“He is not dead,” cried Juan Canito, who had thrust his hand under
Felipe's shirt. “He is not dead. It is only a faint.”
At this the first tears rolled down Ramona's face. She looked piteously
at the ladder up and down which she had seen Alessandro run as if it
were an easy indoor staircase. “If I could only get up there!” she said,
looking from one to another. “I think I can;” and she put one foot on
the lower round.
“Holy Virgin!” cried Juan Can, seeing her movement. “Senorita! Senorita!
do not attempt it. It is not too easy for a man. You will break your
neck. He is fast coming to his senses.”
Alessandro caught the words. Spite of all the confusion and terror of
the scene, his heart heard the word, “Senorita.” Ramona was not the
wife of Felipe, or of any man. Yet Alessandro recollected that he had
addressed her as Senora, and she did not seem surprised. Coming to the
front of the group he said, bending forward, “Senorita!” There must
have been something in the tone which made Ramona start. The simple word
could not have done it. “Senorita,” said Alessandro, “it will be nothing
to bring Senor Felipe down the ladder. He is, in my arms, no more
than one of the lambs yonder. I will bring him down as soon as he is
recovered. He is better here till then. He will very soon be himself
again. It was only the heat.” Seeing that the expression of anxious
distress did not grow less on Ramona's face, he continued, in a tone
still more earnest, “Will not the Senorita trust me to bring him safe
down?”
Ramona smiled faintly through her tears. “Yes,” she said, “I will trust
you. You are Alessandro, are you not?”
“Yes, Senorita,” he answered, greatly surprised, “I am Alessandro.”