"The depth of your ignorance, Miss Francisca!" exclaimed the Professor.
"You see, Mildred, Nature runs a Flower Mission on such a large
scale that she deprives us of that—as well as many other legitimate
philanthropies."
"Ah!" said Francisca, "now I do know what a Flower Mission is. It must
be very helpful. And we do so little good with all these—only to dress
the church."
"And welcome strangers," suggested Miss Dysart.
"My sister is always giving flowers away, and fruit," declared
Francisco. "The Señor and the Padre know if that is true."
"But only for pleasure, thou foolish one," said Francisca, smiling at
him.
Francisco did not smile back. He remained grave, and bowed their guest
farewell, with his _caballero_ air, without a word.
"What a beautiful, solemn boy!" exclaimed Miss Dysart as she walked down
the street.
"Francisco? Oh, he can be merry enough; you must allow for the effect
of a visitor from Boston."
"Pray let poor Boston alone! What an absolute partisan you have become!"
"Have I? Perhaps it is only my mean effort to hide our consciousness of
inferiority. We have no Missions here—except Franciscan ones."
"We! our!" repeated Miss Dysart, emphatically. "Have you ceased to be
a New Englander already? Is this the effect of this remarkable climate?"
"I am afraid—it is," replied the Professor, meekly.
And as he walked home that eastern breeze blew more keenly still. As one
turns to the sun, he turned to the house hopefully. Only Francisco was
still sitting on the top step gazing gloomily into space. The Professor
laid an affectionate hand on the boy's shoulder.
"What is the matter, Francisco? Are you not well?"
"There is nothing, Señor," was the melancholy reply.
The Professor fidgetted restlessly about the veranda and lawn, feeling
as if the whole place had been subtly changed. There was no Spanish that
afternoon, either; Francisca was apparently too busy, for she did not
come out at all.
In the evening, however, she was idle enough. Francisco and she sat on
the steps and watched the moonlight make patterns on the walk below.
The Professor had gone to call on Miss Dysart, inwardly reviling the
social necessity which demanded starched linen and a black coat on
such a night. It was still early when Francisca with some light word
of excuse, and the little caress to her brother nothing could have made
her forget, rose and went in.
It was not even late when the Professor with eager feet came up
the path, all inlaid with the ferny tracery of shadows from the
pepper-boughs. The veranda, apparently deserted, greeted him silently,
and he stood a moment battling with an immense disappointment. It seemed
to him that he had lost forever an evening out of his life.
Slowly he mounted the steps, and on the threshold he paused again. A
long tendril of the Banksia swayed in the half-shadow, and surely his
ears caught a suppressed sobbing breath. He made one step toward it.
"Francisca!"
"It is I, Señor," replied the melancholy voice of Francisco; and the
boy came forward into the moonlight. "Did you wish anything, Señor?"
"Nothing," replied the Professor, mendaciously, his cheeks warm in the
darkness.
"Good-night, Francisco!"
[Illustration: Francisca "kept the house."—Page 277.]
"Good-night, Señor!" returned the boy in the same melancholy tone.
Long after the Professor's light was extinguished, the lad lay watching
the night away in the hammock.
The stamp of that vigil was on his face the next morning when he asked
the Professor to advise him as to some orange-trees at the farther end
of the ranch. The Professor, who had also passed a white night, gave a
haggard consent. Francisca alone appeared fresh and smiling. The best
artists do not adorn the stage.
There seemed nothing particular the matter with the grove, when they
had reached it.
"Which are the trees in question?" asked the Professor, who at that
moment wished all oranges in a climate much too tropical for them.
"Señor," replied Francisco, facing him—and it struck the Professor the
boy had grown tall overnight—"do you love my sister?"
"Francisco!" exclaimed the Professor, violently, and the blood began to
pound in his ears.
"I must know, Señor. When you spoke of an old friend, we thought,
Francisca and I, of an old woman—and now here has come this young lady
from your home, one of your people—and she calls you by your name, and
you call her by hers. She has come because she cares for you, and you
spend your time with her, and yet, Señor, you gave her back her rose
and kept my sister's!"
There was a guilty movement of the Professor's hand toward his
breast-pocket, instantly checked.
"When you came home last night you called my sister by name. Señor,
this cannot be! I am not jealous; you have a right to love this other,
but I must know. I do not say for a moment," he added, proudly, "that
Francisca has thought of you, but she is very young. She might come to
care, and—I will not have it so!"
"Francisco!" exclaimed the Professor again.
"We are poor now," said Francisco, lifting his head, "but my people were
great people when yours, Señor—the Americans—were nobody!"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed the Professor, sharply, catching at a tangible
point of remonstrance with relief. "My people were never 'nobody'—they
were New Englanders."
Francisco bowed.
"Francisco," said the Professor, in a different tone, "I thought you
loved me—I thought you trusted me."
"What has that to do with it, Señor?" inquired Francisco, sternly. "It
is of my sister I think. If you do not love her you must go away at
once."
"I will be answerable to your sister only," began the Professor.
"Pardon me, Señor, you will be answerable to _me_. I am the head of the
family. Francisca is only a child," said this other child.
The Professor was silent. When he spoke, at last, he was answering
himself rather than Francisco.
"I will go!"
Francisco winced, but did not flinch.
He made a gesture for the Professor to lead the way back, which the
Professor did like a blind man. He could not have told whether his
bitterness was toward the boy or himself. Half way he stopped.
"What am I to tell her?"
"You can have business—and she will understand."
The Professor ground his teeth, and going to his room, began grimly
flinging things into his trunk. He was furious with Francisco, with
himself, with the climate which could lead a man to this.
He ate his lunch in silence. So did Francisco. Men have these refuges.
Francisca the woman, with a thread of speech, kept that silence from
bursting. After lunch the Professor finished packing, wrote a brief note
declining the Chair, and went down to buy his ticket. All the way down
the landscape cried out to him.
As he left the station with his ticket in his hand he encountered Miss
Dysart on the threshold with her purse in hers.
"What is the matter?" she exclaimed, after one glance. "Where are you
going?"
"Home," answered the Professor. "I was coming to tell you."
Miss Dysart opened her lips, then closed them again, and turning without
a word they walked on until the bend of the road threw them from the
town into the country lane. There she stopped.
"_Why_ are you going? You must have reasons."
"I have reasons—" He stopped, smitten with the conscious absurdity that
she who was his principal reason had scarcely crossed his mind all day.
"Business—it—it is impossible for me to stay," he wound up, lamely.
"_Why_ is it impossible?"
The Professor looked at her and anathematised the climate again.
"I—really cannot explain, Mildred," he said. "But there are reasons
why—I feel obliged to go."
[Illustration: Francisco and Francisca listened silently.—Page 280.
Drawn by Walter Appleton Clark.]
Miss Dysart's cheeks flushed, and she looked a moment at the wide valley
before them.
"I feel that you are making the mistake of your life," she said, in a
low voice.
[Illustration: He could not have told whether his bitterness was
toward the boy or himself.—Page 284.]
The Professor made a vague gesture.
"But you will not go," she said, quietly. "You will think better of it.
You will not do yourself so much wrong."
"I shall go. I have bought my ticket."
"I will buy it of you. I was on the way to buy one myself."
"You were—!" He looked at her in his turn. "We shall travel together,
then."
"We shall do nothing of the kind. What is the use? If you go back you
will simply break down again. You have your work here. You love this
country."
The Professor's eyes swept mutely over the valley and hills, and the
girl watched him jealously.
"You love it more than New England," she said, with a touch of
bitterness.
"Differently!" exclaimed the poor Professor; "differently!"
"You love it _more_," persisted the New England girl.
The Professor drew a long breath. "Can I help it? One is
affection—fondness; the other—" He stopped abruptly.
Her lips were closed tightly.
"Oh, you will suffer intolerable homesickness—you are homesick _now_.
And then it is _all_ of no use—Everard, you must stay; you must think
better of it. Stay and take that Chair! There cannot be any business so
pressing. It will be no use—not the slightest use for you to go."
In her earnestness she put her hand on his, but instantly withdrew it.
Her troubled eyes looked straight into his, and the Professor's looked
straightly back. But he shook his head, and suddenly she looked away.
"And you?"
"Oh, I," she answered, lightly; "I am a thorough-going dyed-in-the-wool
New-Englander. I was brought up to go to church on Sunday and clean
house twice a year, and have a proper respect for calling cards. I shall
go on and join aunty at Santa Barbara, and get home in time for all my
clubs and classes. Besides, I have been meaning to tell you, I am going
to take a year in the College Settlement."
"A year in the College Settlement!" echoed the Professor, vaguely.
"Yes; that will suit me better than—this. Don't forget to send Francisco
with the ticket! Good-by!"
She gave him her hand frankly, and once more their eyes encountered.
"If I had had a French grandmother, you see—it might have been different
with me," she said with a touch of mirthfulness. "And _that_ at least
is true," she concluded to herself, looking so straight ahead that she
walked a space beyond the hotel without seeing.
The Professor, going in the opposite direction, went like a man under
sentence.
That "intolerable homesickness" was already upon him; but he was
determined to go. He, too, was a New Englander. It is a great thing to
have inherited principles.
He was determined to go—all the way up under the hanging peppers—all
the way beside the scented limes; nor did his determination falter as
he turned into the accustomed path under the oranges, and the sight and
perfume of a thousand roses stormed him all at once.
There in the wonted place Francisca sat, steadily drawing the threads
with unsteady fingers. Her lips might be a little pale, but they smiled.
Even the rose was not missing from her hair.
Francisco, perfectly miserable and perfectly proud, rose mutely from
the steps to salute the Señor.
The Señor with two gentle hands lifted the boy from his path, and made
two steps to the chair—one touch drew the lace from the brave fingers.
"Francisca," said the Professor. "Francisca—Francisca!"
This was the only explanation he ever made, but in fact it was a perfect
statement of the case.
If it needed any elaboration it might be held to receive it when
Francisca, stooping—long afterward—to recover the abused lace, picked
up with it something else.
"What is this?" she said, a little puzzled.
"Oh, that," said the Professor, "that is Miss Dysart's ticket! She is
going away to-morrow."
"Ah!" said Francisca only.
"Francisco is to take it to her, and by the way, where is the dear lad?"
He made a movement to rise, but Francisca stopped him, raising his hand
in hers.
Out on the twilight air already heavy with sweet odors, came floating
the sound of a guitar, low, but inexpressibly joyous and tender.
Francisca's eyes filled with tears, but "_Caro_ Francisco!" she only
said.
[Illustration: "Where the musk-rat swims, and the cat-tails sway."
—Page 289.
Drawn by Henry Hutt.]