General Trednoke’s house was built by Spanish missionaries in the
sixteenth century; and in its main features it was little altered in
three hundred years. In a climate where there is no frost, walls of
adobe last as long as granite. The house consisted, practically, of but
one story; for although there were rooms under the roof, they were used
only for storage; no one slept in them. The plan of the building was
not unlike that of a train of railway-cars,--or, it might be more
appropriate to say, of emigrant-wagons. There was a series of rooms,
ranged in a line, access to them being had from a narrow corridor,
which opened on the rear veranda. Several of the rooms also communicated
directly with each other, and, through low windows, gave on the veranda
in front; for the house was merely a comparatively narrow array of
apartments between two broad verandas, where most of the living,
including much of the sleeping, was done.
Logically, there can be nothing uglier than a Spanish-American dwelling
of this type. But, as a matter of fact, they appear seductively
beautiful. The thick white walls acquire a certain softness of tone; the
surface scales off here and there, and cracks and crevices appear. In
a damp country, like England, they would soon become covered with moss;
but moss is not to be had in this region, though one were to offer for
it the price of the silk velvet, triple ply, which so much resembles
it. Nevertheless, there are compensations. The soil is inexhaustibly
fertile, and its fertility expresses itself in the most inveterate
beauty. Such colors and varieties of flowers exist nowhere else, and
they continue all the year round. Climbing vines storm the walls, and
toss their green ladders all over it, for beauty to walk up and down.
Huge jars, standing on the verandas, emit volcanoes of lovely blossoms;
and vases swung from the roof drip and overflow with others, as if water
had turned to flowers. In the garden, which extends over several acres
at the front of the house, and, as it were, makes it an island in
a gorgeous sea of petals, there are roses, almonds, oranges, vines,
pomegranates, and a hundred rivals whose names are unknown to the
present historian, marching joyfully and triumphantly through the
seasons, as the symphony moves through changes along its central theme.
Everything that is not an animal or a mineral seems to be a flower.
There are too many flowers,--or, rather, there is not enough of anything
else. The faculty of appreciation wearies, and at last ceases to
take note. It is like conversing with a person whose every word is
an epigram. The senses have their limitations, and imagination and
expectation are half of beauty and delight, and the better half;
otherwise we should have no souls. A single violet, discovered by chance
in the by-ways of an April forest in New England, gives a pleasure
as poignant as, and more spiritual than, the miles upon miles of
Californian splendors.
Monotony is the ruling characteristic,--monotony of beauty, monotony
of desolation, monotony even of variety. The glorious blue overhead
is monotonous: as for the thermometer, it paces up and down within the
narrowest limits, like a prisoner in his cell, or a meadow-lark hopping
to and fro in a seven-inch cage. The plan and aspect of the buildings
are monotonous, and so is the way of life of those who inhabit them.
Fortunately, the sun does rise and set in Southern California: otherwise
life there would be at an absolute stand-still, with no past and no
future. But, as it is, one can look forward to morning, and remember the
evening.
Then, there are the not infrequent but seldom very destructive
earthquakes; the occasional cloud-bursts and tornadoes, sudden and
violent as a gunpowder-explosion; and, finally, the astounding contrast
between the fertile regions and the desert. There are places where you
can stand with one foot planted in everlasting sterility and the other
in immortal verdure. In the midst of an arid and hopeless waste, you
come suddenly upon the brink of a narrow ravine, sharply defined as
if cut out with an axe, and packed to the brim with enchanting and
voluptuous fertility. Or you will come upon mountains which sweep upward
out of burning death into sumptuous life. When the monotony of life
meets the monotony of death, Southern California becomes a land of
contrasts; and the contrasts themselves become monotonous.
General Trednoke’s ranch was very near the borders of these two mighty
forces. An hour’s easy ride would carry him to a region as barren
and apparently as irreclaimable as that through which Childe Roland
journeyed in quest of the Dark Tower; lying, too, in a temperature so
fiery that it coagulated the blood in the veins, and stopped the beating
of the heart. Underfoot were fine dust, and whitened bones; the air
was prismatic and magical, ever conjuring up phantom pictures, whose
characteristic was that they were at the farthest remove from any
possible reality. The azure sky descended and became a lake; the
pulsations of the atmosphere translated themselves into the rhythmic
lapse of waves; spikes of sage-brush and blades of cactus became sylvan
glades, and hamlets cheerful with inhabitants. Only, all was silent; and
as you drew near, the scene trembled, altered, and was gone!
Hideous black lizards and horned toads crawl and hop amid this
desolation; and the deadly little sidewinder rattlesnake lies basking in
the blaze of sunshine, which it distils into venom. Sometimes the level
plain is broken up into savage ridges and awful canons, along whose arid
bottoms no water streams. As you stagger through their chaotic bottoms,
you see vast boulders poised overhead, tottering to a fall; a shiver
of earthquake, a breath of hurricane, and they come crashing and
splintering in destruction down. Along the sides of these acclivities
extend long, level lines and furrows, marks of where the ocean flowed
ages ago. But sometimes the hills are but accumulations of desert dust,
which shift slowly from place to place under the action of the wind,
melting away here to be re-erected yonder; mounding themselves, perhaps,
above a living and struggling human being, to move forward, anon,
leaving where he was a little heap of withered bones. A fearful place is
this broad abyss, where once murmured the waters of a prehistoric sea.
Let us return to the cool and fragrant security of the general’s ranch.
At right angles to the main body of the house extend two wings,
thus forming three sides of a square, the interior of which is the
court-yard. Here the business of the establishment is conducted. It is
the liveliest spot on the premises; though it is liveliness of a very
indolent sort. The veranda built around these sides is twenty feet
in breadth, paved with tiles that have been worn into hollows by
innumerable lazy footsteps, mostly shoeless, for this side of the house
is frequented chiefly by the servants of the place, who are Mexican
Indians. Ancient wooden settles are bolted to the walls; from hooks hang
Indian baskets of bright colors; in one corner are stretched raw hides,
which serve as beds. Small brown children, half naked, trot, clamber,
and crawl about. Black-haired, swarthy women squat on the tiled floor,
pursuing their vocations, or, often, doing nothing at all beyond
continuing a placid organic existence. Boys and men saunter in and out
of the court-yard, chatting or calling in their musical patois; once
in a while there is a thud and clatter of hoofs, a rider arriving or
departing. It is an entertaining scene, charming in its monotony of
small changes and evolutions; you can sit watching it in a half-doze for
twenty years at a stretch, and it may seem only as many minutes, or vice
versa.
Most of the rooms in the wings are used for the kitchens and other
servants’ quarters; but one large chamber is devoted to a special
purpose of the general’s own: it is a museum; the Curiosity-Room, he
calls it. It is lighted by two windows opening on opposite sides, one
on the court-yard, the other on an orange grove at the south end of the
house. Besides being, in itself, a cool and pleasant spot, it is full
of interest to any one who cares about the relics and antiquities of an
ancient and vanishing race, concerning whom little is or ever will be
known. There are two students in it at this moment; though whether they
are studying antiquities is another matter. Let us give ear to their
discourse and be instructed.
“But this was made for you to wear, Miss Trednoke. Try it. It fits you
perfectly, you see. There can be no doubt about your being a princess,
now!”
“I sometimes feel it,--here!” she said, putting her hand on her bosom.
She was looking at him as she said it, but her eyes, instead of any
longer meeting his, seemed to turn their regard inward, and to traverse
strange regions, not of this world. “I see some one who is myself,
though I can never have been she: she is surrounded with brightness, and
people not like ours; she thinks of things that I have never known. It
is the memory of a dream, I suppose,” she added, in another tone.
“Heredity is a queer thing. You may be Aztecan over again, in mind and
temperament; and every one knows how impressions are transmitted.
If features and traits of character, why not particular thoughts and
feelings?”
“I think it is better not to try to explain these things,” said she,
with the unconscious haughtiness which maidens acquire who have not seen
the world and are adored by their family. “They are great mysteries,--or
else nothing.” She now removed from her head the curious cap or helmet,
ornamented with gold and with the green feathers of the humming-bird,
which her companion had crowned her with, and hung it on its nail in the
cabinet. “Perhaps the thoughts came with the cap,” she remarked, smiling
slightly. “I don’t feel that way any more. I ought not to have spoken of
it.”
“I hope the time will come when you will feel that you may trust me.”
“You seem easy to know, Mr. Freeman,” she replied, looking at him
contemplatively as she spoke, “and yet you are not. There is one of you
that thinks, and another that speaks. And you are not the same to my
father, or to Professor Meschines, that you are to me.”
“What is the use of human beings except to take one out of one’s self?”
“But it is not your real self that comes out,” said Miriam, after a
little pause. She never spoke hurriedly, or until after the coming
speech had passed into her face.
Freeman laughed. “Well,” he said, “if I’m a hypocrite, I’m one of those
who are made and not born. As a boy, I was frank enough. But a good
part of my life has been spent with people who couldn’t be trusted; and
perhaps the habit of protecting myself against them has grown upon me.
If I could only live here for a while it would be different.--Here’s an
odd-looking thing. What do you call that?”
“We call it the Golden Fleece.”
“The Golden Fleece! I can imagine a Medea; but where is the Dragon?”
“If Jason came, the Dragon might appear.”
“I remember reading somewhere that the Dragon was less to be feared than
Medea’s eyes. But this fleece seems to have lost most of its gold. There
is only a little gold embroidery.”
“It shows where the gold is hidden.”
“It’s you that are concealing something now, Miss Trednoke. How can a
woollen garment be a talisman?”
“The secret might be woven into it, perhaps,” replied Miriam, passing
her fingers caressingly over the soft tunic. “Then, when the right
person puts it on, it would----But you don’t believe in these things.”
“I don’t know: you don’t give me a chance. But who is the right person?
The thing seems rather small. I’m sure I couldn’t get it on.”
“It can fit only the one it was made for,” said Miriam, gravely. “And
if you wanted to find the gold, you would trust to your science, rather
than to this.”
“Well, gold-hunting is not in my line, at present. Every nugget has been
paid for more than once, before it is found. Besides, there is something
better than gold in Southern California,--something worth any labor to
get.”
“What is it?” asked Miriam, turning her tranquil regard upon him.
Harvey Freeman had never been deficient in audacity. But, standing in
the dark radiance of this maiden’s eyes, his self-assurance dwindled,
and he could not bring himself to say to her what he would have said to
any other pretty woman he had ever met. For he felt that great pride and
passion were concealed beneath that tranquil surface: it was a nature
that might give everything to love, and would never pardon any frivolous
parody thereof. Freeman had been acquainted with Miriam scarcely two
days, but he had already begun to perceive the main indications of a
character which a lifetime might not be long enough wholly to explore.
Marriage had never been among the enterprises he had, in the course of
his career, proposed to himself: he did not propose it now: yet he dared
not risk the utterance of a word that would lead Miriam to look at him
with an offended or contemptuous glance. It was not that she was, from
the merely physical point of view, transcendently beautiful. His first
impression of her, indeed, had been that she was merely an unusually
good example of a type by no means rare in that region. But ere long
he became sensible of a spiritual quality in her which lifted her to a
level far above that which can be attained by mere harmony of features
and proportions. Beneath the outward aspect lay a profound depth of
being, glimpses of which were occasionally discernible through her eyes,
in the tones of her voice, in her smile, in unconscious movements of
her hands and limbs. Demonstrative she could never be; but she could,
at will, feel with tropical intensity, and act with the swiftness and
energy of a fanatic.
In Miriam’s company, Freeman forgot every one save her,--even
himself,--though she certainly made no effort to attract him or (beyond
the commonplaces of courtesy) to interest him. Consequently he had
become entirely oblivious of the existence of such a person as Grace
Parsloe, when, much to his irritation, he heard the voice of that young
lady, mingled with others, approaching along the veranda. At the same
moment he experienced acute regret at the whim of fortune which had made
himself and that sprightly young lady fellow-passengers from Panama, and
at the idle impulse which had prompted him to flirt with her.
But the past was beyond remedy: it was his concern to deal with the
present. In a few seconds, Grace entered the curiosity-room, followed by
Professor Meschines, and by a dashing young Mexican senor, whom Freeman
had met the previous evening, and who was called Don Miguel de Mendoza.
The senor, to judge from his manner, had already fallen violently in
love with Grace, and was almost dislocating his organs of speech in the
effort to pay her romantic compliments in English. Freeman observed this
with unalloyed satisfaction. But the look which Grace bent upon him and
Miriam, on entering, and the ominous change which passed over her mobile
countenance, went far to counteract this agreeable impression.
One story is good until another is told. Freeman had really thought
Grace a fascinating girl, until he saw Miriam. There was no harm in
that: the trouble was, he had allowed Grace to perceive his admiration.
He had already remarked that she was a creature of violent extremes,
tempered, but not improved, by a thin polish of subtlety. She was now
about to give an illustration of the passion of jealousy. But it was not
her jealousy that Freeman minded: it was the prospect of Miriam’s scorn
when she should surmise that he had given Grace cause to be jealous.
Miriam was not the sort of character to enter into a competition with
any other woman about a lover. He would lose her before he had a chance
to try to win her.
But fortune proved rather more favorable than Freeman expected, or,
perhaps, than he deserved. Grace’s attack was too impetuous. She stopped
just inside the threshold, and said, in an imperious tone, “Come here,
Mr. Freeman: I wish to speak to you.”
“Thank you,” he replied, resolving at once to widen the breach to the
utmost extent possible, “I am otherwise engaged.”
“Upon my word,” observed the professor, with a chuckle, “you’re
no diplomatist, Harvey! What are you two about here? Investigating
antiquities?”
“The remains of ancient Mexico are more interesting than some of her
recent products,” returned Freeman, who wished to quarrel with somebody,
and had promptly decided that Senor Don Miguel de Mendoza was the most
available person. He bowed to the latter as he spoke.
“You--a--spoken to me?” said the senor, stepping forward with a polite
grimace. “I no to quite comprehend----”
“Pray don’t exert yourself to converse with me out of your own language,
senor,” interrupted Freeman, in Spanish. “I was just remarking that the
Spaniards seem to have degenerated greatly since they colonized Mexico.”
“Senor!” exclaimed Don Miguel, stiffening and staring.
“Of course,” added Freeman, smiling benevolently upon him, “I judge only
from such specimens of the modern Mexican as I happen to meet with.”
Don Miguel’s sallow countenance turned greenish white. But, before he
could make a reply, Meschines, who scented mischief in the air, and
divined that the gentler sex must somehow be at the bottom of it, struck
in.
“You may consider yourself lucky, Harvey, in making the acquaintance of
a gentleman like Senor de Mendoza, who exemplifies the undimmed virtues
of Cortez and Torquemada. For my part, I brought him here in the
hope that he might be able to throw some light on the mystery of this
embroidered garment, which I see you’ve been examining. What do you say,
Don Miguel? Have these designs any significance beyond mere ornament?
Anything in the nature of hieroglyphics?”
The senor was obliged to examine, and to enter into a discussion,
though, of course, his ignorance of the subject in dispute was as the
depths of that abyss which has no bottom. Miriam, who was not fond of
Don Miguel, but who felt constrained to exceptional courtesy in view
of Freeman’s unwarrantable attack upon him, stood beside him and the
Professor; and Freeman and Grace were thus left to fight it out with
each other.
But Grace had drawn her own conclusions from what had passed. Freeman
had insulted Don Miguel. Wherefore? Obviously, it could only be because
he thought that she was flirting with him. In other words, Freeman was
jealous; and to be jealous is to love. Now, Grace was so constituted
that, though she did not like to play second fiddle herself, yet she
had no objection to monopolizing all the members of the male species who
might happen, at a given moment, to be in sight.
She had, consequently, already forgiven Freeman for his apparent
unfaithfulness to her, by reason of his manifest jealousy of Don Miguel.
As a matter of fact, he was not jealous, and he was unfaithful; but
fate had decreed that there should be, for the moment, a game of
cross-purposes; and the decrees of fate are incorrigible.
“I had no idea you were so savage,” she said, softly.
“I’m not savage,” replied Freeman. “I am bored.”
“Well, I don’t know as I can blame you,” said Grace, still more softly:
she fancied he was referring to Miriam. “I don’t much like Spanish
mixtures myself.”
“One has to take what one can get,” said Freeman, referring to Don
Miguel.
“But it’s all right now,” rejoined she, meaning that Freeman and herself
were reconciled after their quarrel.
“If you are satisfied, I am,” observed Freeman, too indifferent to care
what she meant.
“Only, you mustn’t take that poor young man too seriously,” she went
on: “these Mexicans are absurdly demonstrative, but they don’t mean
anything.”
“He won’t, if he values his skin,” said Freeman, meaning that if Don
Miguel attempted to interfere between himself and Miriam he would wring
his neck.
“He won’t, I promise you,” said Grace, sparkling with pleasure.
“I don’t quite see how you can help it,” returned Freeman.
“I should hope I could manage a creature like that!” murmured she,
smiling.
“Well,” said Freeman, after a pause,--for Grace’s seeming change of
attitude puzzled him a little,--“I’m glad you look at it that way. I
don’t wish to be meddled with; that’s all.”
“You shan’t be,” she whispered; and then, just when they were
approaching the point where their eyes might have been opened, in came
General Trednoke. The group round the Golden Fleece broke up.
The general wore his riding-dress, and his bearing was animated, though
he was covered with dust.
“I was wondering what had become of you all,” he said, as the others
gathered about him. “I have been taking a canter to the eastward.
Kamaiakan said this morning that one of the boys had brought news of a
cloud-burst in that direction. I rode far enough to ascertain that there
has really been something of the kind, and I think it has affected the
arroyo on the farther side of the little sierra. Now, I don’t know how
you gentlemen feel, but it occurred to me that it might be interesting
to make up a little party of exploration to-morrow. Would you like to
try it, Meschines?”
“To be sure I should!” the professor replied. “I imagine I can stand as
much of the desert as you can! And I want to catch a sidewinder.”
“Good! And you, Mr. Freeman?”
“It would suit me exactly,” said the latter. “In fact, I had been
intending to gratify my curiosity by making some such expedition on my
own account.”
“Ah!” said the general, eying him with some intentness. “Well, we may be
able to show you something more curious than you anticipate.--And now,
Senor de Mendoza, there is only you left. May we count on your company
into the desert?”
But the Mexican, with a bow and a grimace, excused himself. Scientific
curiosity was an unknown emotion to him; but he foresaw an opportunity
to have Grace all to himself, and he meant to improve it. He also wished
leisure to think over some plan for getting rid of Senor Freeman, in
whom he scented a rival, and who, whether a rival or not, had behaved to
him with a lack of consideration in the presence of ladies.