"Santiago!" whispered Concha. "Do not go down to the ship. Take me
for a walk. I have much to say."
Santiago, who had not been asked to form one of the escort upon the
return of the Russians to the Juno for the night, felt injured and
sulky and deigned no reply.
"If you do not, I'll not braid your hair to-morrow," said his sister,
giving his arm a little shake; and he succumbed. The luxuriant tresses
of the male Arguellos were combed and braided and tied with a ribbon
every morning by the women of the family, and Concha's fingers were the
gentlest and deftest. And Concha and Santiago were more intimate than
even the rest of that united family. They had studied and read
together, were equally dissatisfied with their narrow existence,
ambitious for a wider experience. Santiago consoled himself with cards
and training roosters for battle, and otherwise as a man may. He was
but fifteen, this haughty, severe-looking young hidalgo, but while in
some respects many years older than his sister, in others he was
younger, for he possessed none of her illuminating instinct.
She led him through a postern gate, round the first of the dunes, and
they were alone in a waste of sand. She demanded abruptly:
"What do you think of our illustrious visitor?"
"I like him. He would wring your neck if you got in his way, but has a
kind heart for those that call him master. I like that sort of a man.
I wish he would take me away with him."
"He shall--one of these days. Santiago mio, let me whisper--" She
pulled his ear down to her lips. "He will marry me. I feel it. I
know it. He has talked to me the whole day. He has told me grave
secrets. Not even to you would I reveal them. So many have loved
me--why should not he? I shall live in St. Petersburg, and see all
Europe!--thousands of people--Dios mio! Dios mio!"
"Indeed!" Santiago, still unamiable, responded to this confidence with
a sneer. "You aspire very high for a little girl of the wilderness,
without fortune, and only half a coat-of-arms, so to speak. Do you
know that this Rezanov--Dr. Langsdorff has told us all about him--is a
great noble, one of the ten barons of Russia, and a Chamberlain in
accordance with a decree of Peter the Great that court titles should be
bestowed as a reward for distinguished services alone? He got a
fortune in his youth by marriage with a daughter of Shelikov--that
Siberian who founded the Russian colonies in America. The wife died
almost immediately, but the Baron's influence remained with
Shelikov--for his influence at court was even greater--and after the
older man's death, with his mother-in-law, who is uncommonly clever.
Shelikov's schemes were but little sketches beside Rezanov's, who from
merely a courtier and a gay blood about town developed into a great man
of business, with an ambition to correspond. It was he who got the
Imperial ukase that gave the Russian-American Company its power to
squeeze all the other fur hunters and traders out of the northeast, and
made Rezanov and everybody belonging to it so rich your head would swim
if I told you the number of doubloons they spend in a year. Nobody has
ever been so clever at managing those old beasts of autocrats as he.
They think him merely the accomplished courtier, a brilliant
dilettante, a condescending patron of art and letters, a devotee of
pleasure, and all the time he is pulling their befuddled old brains
about to suit himself. The Tsar Paul was a lunatic and they murdered
him, but meanwhile he signed the ukase. The Tsar Alexander, who is not
so bad nor so silly as the others, thinks there is no man so clever as
Rezanov, who addresses him personally when sending home his reports.
Do you know what all that means? Your plenipotentiary is not only a
Chamberlain at court, a Privy Councillor, and the Tsar himself on this
side of the world, but when his inspections and reforms are concluded,
and he is one of the wealthiest men in Russia, he will return to St.
Petersburg and become so high and mighty that a princess would snap at
him. And you aspire! I never heard such nonsense."
"His excellency told me much of this," replied Concha imperturbably.
"And I am sure that he cares nothing for princesses and will marry whom
he most admires. He would not say, but I know he cared nothing for
that poor little wife, dead so long ago. It was a mariage de
convenance, such as all the great world is accustomed to. He will love
me more than all the fine ladies he has ever seen. I feel it. I know
it! And I am quite happy."
"Do you love him?" asked Santiago, looking curiously at his sister's
flushed and glowing face. It seemed to him that she had never looked so
young. "Many have loved you. I had begun to think you had no heart
for men, no wish for anything but admiration. And now you give your
heart in a day to this Russian--who must be nearly forty--unasked."
"I have not thought of my heart at all. But I could love him, of
course. He is so handsome, so kind, so grand, so gay! But love is for
men and wives--has not my mother said so? Now I think only of St.
Petersburg! of Paris! of London! of the beautiful gowns and jewels I
shall wear at court--a red velvet train as long as a queen's, and all
embroidered with gold, a white veil spangled with gold, a head-dress a
foot high studded with jewels, ropes of diamonds and pearls--I made him
tell me how the great ladies dressed. Ah! there is the pleasure of
being a girl--to think and dream of all those beautiful things, not of
when the wife must live always for the husband and children. That
comes soon enough. And why should I not have all!--there is so little
in life for the girl. It seems to me now that I have had nothing.
When he asks me to marry him he will tell me of the fine things I shall
have and the great sights I shall witness--the ceremonies at court, the
winter streets--with snow--snow, Santiago!--where the great nobles
drive four horses through the drifts like little hills, and are wrapped
in furs like bears! The grand military parades--how I shall laugh when
I think of our poor little Presidios with their dozen officers
strutting about--" She stopped abruptly and bursting wildly into tears
flung herself into her brother's arms. "But I never could leave you!
And my father! my mother! all! all! Ay, Dios de mi alma! what an
ingrate I am! I should die of homesickness! My Santiago! My
Santiago!"
Santiago patted her philosophically. "You are not going to-morrow," he
reminded her. "Don't cross your bridges until you come to them. That
is a good proverb for maids and men. You might take us all with you,
or spend every third year or so in California. No doubt you would need
the rest. And meanwhile remember that the high and mighty Chamberlain
has not yet asked for the honor of an alliance with the house of
Arguello, and that your brother will match his best fighting cock
against your new white lace mantilla from Mexico, that he is not
meditating any project so detrimental to his fortunes. Console
yourself with the reflection that if he were, our father and the
priests, and the Governor himself, would die of apoplexy. He is a
heretic--a member of the Greek Church! Hast thou lost thy reason,
Conchita? Dry your eyes and come home to sleep, and let us hear no
more of marriage with a man who is not only a barbarian of the north
and a heretic, but so proud he does not think a Californian good enough
to wash his decks."