Breakfast, usually a movable feast at La Mision Perdida, had been
prolonged until past midday; the last of the dance guests had flown,
and the home party--with the exception of Captain Carroll, who had
returned to duty at his distant post--were dispersing; some as riding
cavalcades to neighboring points of interest; some to visit certain
notable mansions which the wealth of a rapid civilization had erected
in that fertile valley. One of these in particular, the work of a
breathless millionaire, was famous for the spontaneity of its growth
and the reckless extravagance of its appointments.
"If you go to Aladdin's Palace," said Maruja, from the top step of the
south porch, to a wagonette of guests, "after you've seen the stables
with mahogany fittings for one hundred horses, ask Aladdin to show you
the enchanted chamber, inlaid with California woods and paved with gold
quartz."
"We would have a better chance if the Princess of China would only go
with us," pleaded Garnier, gallantly.
"The Princess will stay at home with her mother, like a good girl,"
returned Maruja, demurely.
"A bad shot of Garnier's this time," whispered Raymond to Buchanan, as
the vehicle rolled away with them. "The Princess is not likely to
visit Aladdin again."
"Why?"
"The last time she was there, Aladdin was a little too Persian in his
extravagance: offered her his house, stables, and himself."
"Not a bad catch--why, he's worth two millions, I hear."
"Yes; but his wife is as extravagant as himself."
"His WIFE, eh? Ah, are you serious; or must you say something
derogatory of the lassie's admirers too?" said Buchanan, playfully
threatening him with his cane. "Another word, and I'll throw you from
the wagon."
After their departure, the outer shell of the great house fell into a
profound silence, so hollow and deserted that one might have thought
the curse of Koorotora had already descended upon it. Dead leaves of
roses and fallen blossoms from the long line of vine-wreathed columns
lay thick on the empty stretch of brown veranda, or rustled and crept
against the sides of the house, where the regular breath of the
afternoon "trades" began to arise. A few cardinal flowers fell like
drops of blood before the open windows of the vacant ball-room, in
which the step of a solitary servant echoed faintly. It was Maruja's
maid, bringing a note to her young mistress, who, in a flounced morning
dress, leaned against the window. Maruja took it, glanced at it
quietly, folded it in a long fold, and put it openly in her belt.
Captain Carroll, from whom it came, might have carried one of his
despatches as methodically. The waiting-woman noticed the act, and was
moved to suggest some more exciting confidences.
"The Dona Maruja has, without doubt, noticed the bouquet on her
dressing-room table from the Senor Garnier?"
The Dona Maruja had. The Dona Maruja had also learned with pain that,
bribed by Judas-like coin, Faquita had betrayed the secrets of her
wardrobe to the extent of furnishing a ribbon from a certain yellow
dress to the Senor Buchanan to match with a Chinese fan. This was
intolerable!
Faquita writhed in remorse, and averred that through this solitary act
she had dishonored her family.
The Dona Maruja, however, since it was so, felt that the only thing
left to do was to give her the polluted dress, and trust that the Devil
might not fly away with her.
Leaving the perfectly consoled Faquita, Maruja crossed the large hall,
and, opening a small door, entered a dark passage through the thick
adobe wall of the old casa, and apparently left the present century
behind her. A peaceful atmosphere of the past surrounded her not only
in the low vaulted halls terminating in grilles or barred windows; not
only in the square chambers whose dark rich but scanty furniture was
only a foil to the central elegance of the lace-bordered bed and
pillows; but in a certain mysterious odor of dried and desiccated
religious respectability that penetrated everywhere, and made the
grateful twilight redolent of the generations of forgotten Guitierrez
who had quietly exhaled in the old house. A mist as of incense and
flowers that had lost their first bloom veiled the vista of the long
corridor, and made the staring blue sky, seen through narrow windows
and loopholes, glitter like mirrors let into the walls. The chamber
assigned to the young ladies seemed half oratory and half
sleeping-room, with a strange mingling of the convent in the bare white
walls, hung only with crucifixes and religious emblems, and of the
seraglio in the glimpses of lazy figures, reclining in the deshabille
of short silken saya, low camisa, and dropping slippers. In a broad
angle of the corridor giving upon the patio, its balustrade hung with
brightly colored serapes and shawls, surrounded by voluble domestics
and relations, the mistress of the casa half reclined in a hammock and
gave her noonday audience.
Maruja pushed her way through the clustered stools and cushions to her
mother's side, kissed her on the forehead, and then lightly perched
herself like a white dove on the railing. Mrs. Saltonstall, a dark,
corpulent woman, redeemed only from coarseness by a certain softness of
expression and refinement of gesture, raised her heavy brown eyes to
her daughter's face.
"You have not been to bed, Mara?"
"No, dear. Do I look it?"
"You must lie down presently. They tell me that Captain Carroll
returned suddenly this morning."
"Do you care?"
"Who knows? Amita does not seem to fancy Jose, Esteban, Jorge, or any
of her cousins. She won't look at Juan Estudillo. The Captain is not
bad. He is of the government. He is--"
"Not more than ten leagues from here," said Maruja, playing with the
Captain's note in her belt. "You can send for him, dear little mother.
He will be glad."
"You will ever talk lightly--like your father! She was not then
grieved--our Amita--eh?"
"She and Dorotea and the two Wilsons went off with Raymond and your
Scotch friend in the wagonette. She did not cry--to Raymond."
"Good," said Mrs. Saltonstall, leaning back in her hammock. "Raymond is
an old friend. You had better take your siesta now, child, to be
bright for dinner. I expect a visitor this afternoon--Dr. West."
"Again! What will Pereo say, little mother?"
"Pereo," said the widow, sitting up again in her hammock, with
impatience, "Pereo is becoming intolerable. The man is as mad as Don
Quixote; it is impossible to conceal his eccentric impertinence and
interference from strangers, who can not understand his confidential
position in our house or his long service. There are no more
mayordomos, child. The Vallejos, the Briones, the Castros, do without
them now. Dr. West says, wisely, they are ridiculous survivals of the
patriarchal system."
"And can be replaced by intelligent strangers," interrupted Maruja,
demurely.
"The more easily if the patriarchal system has not been able to
preserve the respect due from children to parents. No, Maruja! No; I
am offended. Do not touch me! And your hair is coming down, and your
eyes have rings like owls. You uphold this fanatical Pereo because he
leaves YOU alone and stalks your poor sisters and their escorts like
the Indian, whose blood is in his veins. The saints only can tell if
he did not disgust this Captain Carroll into flight. He believes
himself the sole custodian of the honor of our family--that he has a
sacred mission from this Don Fulano of Koorotora to avert its fate.
Without doubt he keeps up his delusions with aguardiente, and passes
for a prophet among the silly peons and servants. He frightens the
children with his ridiculous stories, and teaches them to decorate that
heathen mound as if it were a shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows. He was
almost rude to Dr. West yesterday."
"But you have encouraged him in his confidential position here," said
Maruja. "You forget, my mother, how you got him to 'duena' Euriqueta
with the Colonel Brown; how you let him frighten the young Englishman
who was too attentive to Dorotea; how you set him even upon poor
Raymond, and failed so dismally that I had to take him myself in hand."
"But if I choose to charge him with explanations that I can not make
myself without derogating from the time-honored hospitality of the
casa, that is another thing. It is not," said Dona Maria, with a
certain massive dignity, that, inconsistent as it was with the weakness
of her argument, was not without impressiveness, "it is not yet,
Blessed Santa Maria, that we are obliged to take notice ourself of the
pretensions of every guest beneath our roof like the match-making,
daughter-selling English and Americans. And THEN Pereo had tact and
discrimination. Now he is mad! There are strangers and strangers.
The whole valley is full of them--one can discriminate, since the old
families year by year are growing less."
"Surely not," said Maruja, innocently. "There is the excellent
Ramierrez, who has lately almost taken him a wife from the singing-hall
in San Francisco; he may yet be snatched from the fire. There is the
youthful Jose Castro, the sole padrono of our national bull-fight at
Soquel, the famous horse-breaker, and the winner of I know not how many
races. And have we not Vincente Peralta, who will run, it is said, for
the American Congress. He can read and write--truly I have a letter
from him here." She turned back the folded slip of Captain Carroll's
note and discovered another below.
Mrs. Saltonstall tapped her daughter's hand with her fan. "You jest at
them, yet you uphold Pereo! Go, now, and sleep yourself into a better
frame of mind. Stop! I hear the Doctor's horse. Run and see that
Pereo receives him properly."
Maruja had barely entered the dark corridor when she came upon the
visitor,--a gray, hard-featured man of sixty,--who had evidently
entered without ceremony. "I see you did not wait to be announced,"
she said, sweetly. "My mother will be flattered by your impatience.
You will find her in the patio."
"Pereo did not announce me, as he was probably still under the effect
of the aguardiente he swallowed yesterday," said the Doctor, dryly. "I
met him outside the tienda on the highway the other night, talking to a
pair of cut-throats that I would shoot on sight."
"The mayordomo has many purchases to make, and must meet a great many
people," said Maruju. "What would you? We can not select HIS
acquaintances; we can hardly choose our own," she added, sweetly.
The Doctor hesitated, as if to reply, and then, with a grim
"Good-morning," passed on towards the patio. Maruja did not follow
him. Her attention was suddenly absorbed by a hitherto unnoticed
motionless figure, that seemed to be hiding in the shadow of an angle
of the passage, as if waiting for her to pass. The keen eyes of the
daughter of Joseph Saltonstall were not deceived. She walked directly
towards the figure, and said, sharply, "Pereo!"
The figure came hesitatingly forward into the light of the grated
window. It was that of an old man, still tall and erect, though the
hair had disappeared from his temples, and hung in two or three
straight, long dark elf-locks on his neck. His face, over which one of
the bars threw a sinister shadow, was the yellow of a dried
tobacco-leaf, and veined as strongly. His garb was a strange mingling
of the vaquero and the ecclesiastic--velvet trousers, open from the
knee down, and fringed with bullion buttons; a broad red sash around
his waist, partly hidden by a long, straight chaqueta; with a circular
sacerdotal cape of black broadcloth slipped over his head through a
slit-like opening braided with gold. His restless yellow eyes fell
before the young girl's; and the stiff, varnished, hard-brimmed
sombrero he held in his wrinkled hands trembled.
"You are spying again, Pereo," said Maruja, in another dialect than the
one she had used to her mother. "It is unworthy of my father's trusted
servant."
"It is that man--that coyote, Dona Maruja, that is unworthy of your
father, of your mother, of YOU!" he gesticulated, in a fierce whisper.
"I, Pereo, do not spy. I follow, follow the track of the prowling,
stealing brute until I run him down. Yes, it was I, Pereo, who warned
your father he would not be content with the half of the land he stole!
It was I, Pereo, who warned your mother that each time he trod the soil
of La Mision Perdida he measured the land he could take away!" He
stopped pantingly, with the insane abstraction of a fixed idea
glittering in his eyes.
"And it was YOU, Pereo," she said, caressingly, laying her soft hand on
his heaving breast, "YOU who carried me in your arms when I was a
child. It was you, Pereo, who took me before you on your pinto horse
to the rodeo, when no one knew it but ourselves, my Pereo, was it not?"
He nodded his head violently. "It was you who showed me the gallant
caballeros, the Pachecos, the Castros, the Alvarados, the Estudillos,
the Peraltas, the Vallejos." His head kept time with each name as the
fire dimmed in his wet eyes. "You made me promise I would not forget
them for the Americanos who were here. Good! That was years ago! I
am older now. I have seen many Americans. Well, I am still free!"
He caught her hand, and raised it to his lips with a gesture almost
devotional. His eyes softened; as the exaltation of passion passed,
his voice dropped into the querulousness of privileged age. "Ah,
yes!--you, the first-born, the heiress--of a verity, yes! You were
ever a Guitierrez. But the others? Eh, where are they now? And it was
always: 'Eh, Pereo, what shall we do to-day? Pereo, good Pereo, we are
asked to ride here and there; we are expected to visit the new people
in the valley--what say you, Pereo? Who shall we dine to-day?' Or:
'Enquire me of this or that strange caballero--and if we may speak.'
Ah, it is but yesterday that Amita would say: 'Lend me thine own horse,
Pereo, that I may outstrip this swaggering Americano that clings ever
to my side,' ha! ha! Or the grave Dorotea would whisper: 'Convey to
this Senor Presumptuous Pomposo that the daughters of Guitierrez do not
ride alone with strangers!' Or even the little Liseta would say, he!
he! 'Why does the stranger press my foot in his great hand when he
helps me into the saddle? Tell him that is not the way, Pereo.' Ha!
ha!" He laughed childishly, and stopped. "And why does Senorita Amita
now--look--complain that Pereo, old Pereo, comes between her and this
Senor Raymond---this maquinista? Eh, and why does SHE, the lady
mother, the Castellana, shut Pereo from her councils?" he went on, with
rising excitement. "What are these secret meetings, eh?--what these
appointments, alone with this Judas--without the family--without ME!"
"Hearken, Pereo," said the young girl, again laying her hand on the old
man's shoulder; "you have spoken truly--but you forget--the years pass.
These are no longer strangers; old friends have gone--these have taken
their place. My father forgave the Doctor--why can not you? For the
rest, believe in me--me--Maruja"--she dramatically touched her heart
over the international complications of the letters of Captain Carroll
and Peralta. "I will see that the family honor does not suffer. And
now, good Pereo, calm thyself. Not with aguardiente, but with a bottle
of old wine from the Mision refectory that I will send to thee. It was
given to me by thy friend, Padre Miguel, and is from the old vines that
were here. Courage, Pereo! And thou sayest that Amita complains that
thou comest between her and Raymond. So! What matter? Let it cheer
thy heart to know that I have summoned the Peraltas, the Pachecos, the
Estudillos, all thy old friends, to dine here to-day. Thou wilt hear
the old names, even if the faces are young to thee. Courage! Do thy
duty, old friend; let them see that the hospitality of La Mision
Perdida does not grow old, if its mayordomo does. Faquita will bring
thee the wine. No; not that way; thou needest not pass the patio, nor
meet that man again. Here, give me thy hand. I will lead thee. It
trembles, Pereo! These are not the sinews that only two years ago
pulled down the bull at Soquel with thy single lasso! Why, look! I
can drag thee; see!" and with a light laugh and a boyish gesture, she
half pulled, half dragged him along, until their voices were lost in
the dark corridor.
Maruja kept her word. When the sun began to cast long shadows along
the veranda, not only the outer shell of La Mision Perdida, but the
dark inner heart of the old casa, stirred with awakened life. Single
horsemen and carriages began to arrive; and, mingled with the modern
turnouts of the home party and the neighboring Americans, were a few of
the cumbrous vehicles and chariots of fifty years ago, drawn by gayly
trapped mules with bizarre postilions, and occasionally an outrider.
Dark faces looked from the balcony of the patio, a light cloud of
cigarette-smoke made the dark corridors the more obscure, and mingled
with the forgotten incense. Bare-headed pretty women, with roses
starring their dark hair, wandered with childish curiosity along the
broad veranda and in and out of the French windows that opened upon the
grand saloon. Scrupulously shaved men with olive complexion, stout men
with accurately curving whiskers meeting at their dimpled chins,
lounged about with a certain unconscious dignity that made them
contentedly indifferent to any novelty of their surroundings. For a
while the two races kept mechanically apart; but, through the tactful
gallantry of Garnier, the cynical familiarity of Raymond, and the
impulsive recklessness of Aladdin, who had forsaken his enchanted
Palace on the slightest of invitations, and returned with the party in
the hope of again seeing the Princess of China, an interchange of
civilities, of gallantries, and even of confidences, at last took
place. Jovita Castro had heard (who had not?) of the wonders of
Aladdin's Palace, and was it of actual truth that the ladies had a
bouquet and a fan to match their dress presented to them every morning,
and that the gentlemen had a champagne cocktail sent to their rooms
before breakfast? "Just you come, Miss, and bring your father and your
brothers, and stay a week and you'll see," responded Aladdin,
gallantly. "Hold on! What's your father's first name? I'll send a
team over there for you to-morrow." "And is it true that you
frightened the handsome Captain Carroll away from Amita?" said Dolores
Briones, over the edge of her fan to Raymond. "Perfectly," said
Raymond, with ingenuous frankness. "I made it a matter of life or
death. He was a soldier, and naturally preferred the former as giving
him a better chance for promotion." "Ah! we thought it was Maruja you
liked best." "That was two years ago," said Raymond, gravely. "And
you Americanos can change in that time?" "I have just experienced that
it can be done in less," he responded, over the fan, with bewildering
significance. Nor were these confidences confined to only one
nationality. "I always thought you Spanish gentlemen were very dark,
and wore long mustaches and a cloak," said pretty little Miss Walker,
gazing frankly into the smooth round face of the eldest Pacheco--"why,
you are as fair as I am," "Eaf I tink that, I am for ever mizzarable,"
he replied, with grave melancholy. In the dead silence that followed
he was enabled to make his decorous point. "Because I shall not ezcape
ze fate of Narcissus." Mr. Buchanan, with the unrestrained and
irresponsible enjoyment of a traveler, entered fully into the spirit of
the scene. He even found words of praise for Aladdin, whose
extravagance had at first seemed to him almost impious. "Eh, but I'm
not prepared to say he is a fool, either," he remarked to his friend
the San Francisco banker. "Those who try to pick him up for one,"
returned the banker, "will find themselves mistaken. His is the
prodigality that loosens others' purse-strings besides his own,
Everybody contents himself with criticising his way of spending money,
but is ready to follow his way of making it."
The dinner was more formal, and when the mistress of the house, massive
in black silk, velvet and gold embroidery, moved like a pageant to the
head of her table, where she remained like a sacerdotal effigy, not
even the presence of the practical Scotchman at her side could remove
the prevailing sense of restraint. For a while the conversation of the
relatives might have been brought with them in their antique vehicles
of fifty years ago, so faded, so worn, and so springless it was.
General Pico related the festivities at Monterey, on the occasion of
the visit of Sir George Simpson early in the present century, of which
he was an eyewitness, with great precision of detail. Don Juan
Estudillo was comparatively frivolous, with anecdotes of Louis
Philippe, whom he had seen in Paris. Far-seeing Pedro Guitierrez was
gloomily impressed with a Mongolian invasion of California by the
Chinese, in which the prevailing religion would be supplanted by
heathen temples, and polygamy engrafted on the Constitution. Everybody
agreed however, that the vital question of the hour was the settlement
of land titles--Americans who claimed under preemption and the native
holders of Spanish grants were equally of the opinion.
In the midst of this the musical voice of Maruja was heard saying,
"What is a tramp?"
Raymond, on her right, was ready but not conclusive.
A tramp, if he could sing, would be a troubadour; if he could pray,
would be a pilgrim friar--in either case a natural object of womanly
solicitude. But as he could do neither, he was simply a curse.
"And you think that is not an object of womanly solicitude? But that
does not tell me WHAT he is."
A dozen gentlemen, swept in the radius of those softly-inquiring eyes,
here started to explain. From them it appeared that there was no such
thing in California as a tramp, and there were also a dozen varieties
of tramp in California.
"But is he always very uncivil?" asked Maruja.
Again there were conflicting opinions. You might have to shoot him on
sight, and you might have him invariably run from you. When the
question was finally settled, Maruja was found to have become absorbed
in conversation with some one else.
Amita, a taller copy of Maruja, and more regularly beautiful, had built
up a little pile of bread crumbs between herself and Raymond, and was
listening to him with a certain shy, girlish interest that was as
inconsistent with the serene regularity of her face as Maruja's
self-possessed, subtle intelligence was incongruous to her youthful
figure. Raymond's voice, when he addressed Amita, was low and earnest;
not from any significance of matter, but from its frank confidential
quality.
"They are discussing the new railroad project, and your relations are
all opposed to it; to-morrow they will each apply privately to Aladdin
for the privilege of subscribing."
"I have never seen a railroad," said Amita, slightly coloring; "but you
are an engineer, and I know they must be some thing very clever."
Notwithstanding the coolness of the night, a full moon drew the guests
to the veranda, where coffee was served, and where, mysteriously
muffled in cloaks and shawls, the party took upon itself the appearance
of groups of dominoed masqueraders, scattered along the veranda and on
the broad steps of the porch in gypsy-like encampments, from whose
cloaked shadow the moonlight occasionally glittered upon a varnished
boot or peeping satin slipper. Two or three of these groups had
resolved themselves into detached couples, who wandered down the acacia
walk to the sound of a harp in the grand saloon or the occasional
uplifting of a thin Spanish tenor. Two of these couples were Maruja
and Garnier, followed by Amita and Raymond.
"You are restless to-night, Maruja," said Amita, shyly endeavoring to
make a show of keeping up with her sister's boyish stride, in spite of
Raymond's reluctance. "You are paying for your wakefulness to-day."
The same idea passed through the minds of both men. She was missing
the excitement of Captain Carroll's presence.
"The air is so refreshing away from the house," responded Maruja, with
a bright energy that belied any suggestion of fatigue or moral
disquietude. "I'm tired of running against those turtle-doves in the
walks and bushes. Let us keep on to the lane. If you are tired, Mr.
Raymond will give you his arm."
They kept on, led by the indomitable little figure, who, for once, did
not seem to linger over the attentions, both piquant and tender, with
which Garnier improved his opportunity. Given a shadowy lane, a
lovers' moon, a pair of bright and not unkindly eyes, a charming and
not distant figure--what more could he want? Yet he wished she hadn't
walked so fast. One might be vivacious, audacious, brilliant, at an
Indian trot; but impassioned--never! The pace increased; they were
actually hurrying. More than that, Maruja had struck into a little
trot; her lithe body swaying from side to side, her little feet
straight as an arrow before her; accompanying herself with a quaint
musical chant, which she obligingly explained had been taught her as a
child by Pereo. They stopped only at the hedge, where she had that
morning encountered the tramp.
There is little doubt that the rest of the party was disconcerted:
Amita, whose figure was not adapted to this Camilla-like exercise;
Raymond, who was annoyed at the poor girl's discomfiture; and Garnier,
who had lost a golden opportunity, with the faint suspicion of having
looked ridiculous. Only Maruja's eyes, or rather the eyes of her
lamented father, seemed to enjoy it.
"You are too effeminate," she said, leaning against the fence, and
shading her eyes with her fan, as she glanced around in the staring
moonlight. "Civilization has taken away your legs. A man ought to be
able to trust to his feet all day, and to nothing else."
"In fact--a tramp," suggested Raymond.
"Possibly. I think I should like to have been a gypsy, and to have
wandered about, finding a new home every night."
"And a change of linen on the early morning hedges," said Raymond. "But
do you think seriously that you and your sister are suitably clad to
commence to-night. It is bitterly cold," he added, turning up his
collar. "Could you begin by showing a pal the nearest haystack or
hen-roost?"
"Sybarite!" She cast a long look over the fields and down the lane.
Suddenly she started. "What is that?"
She pointed to a tall erect figure slowly disappearing on the other
side of the hedge.
"It's Pereo, only Pereo. I knew him by his long serape," said Garnier,
who was nearest the hedge, complacently. "But what is surprising, he
was not there when we came, nor did he come out of that open field. He
must have been walking behind us on the other side of the hedge."
The eyes of the two girls sought each other simultaneously, but not
without Raymond's observant glance. Amita's brow darkened as she moved
to her sister's side, and took her arm with a confidential pressure
that was returned. The two men, with a vague consciousness of some
contretemps, dropped a pace behind, and began to talk to each other,
leaving the sisters to exchange a few words in a low tone as they
slowly returned to the house.
Meanwhile, Pereo's tall figure had disappeared in the shrubbery, to
emerge again in the open area by the summer-house and the old
pear-tree. The red sparks of two or three cigarettes in the shadow of
the summer-house, and the crouching forms of two shawled women came
forward to greet him.
"And what hast thou heard, Pereo?" said one of the women.
"Nothing," said Pereo, impatiently. "I told thee I would answer for
this little primogenita with my life. She is but leading this
Frenchman a dance, as she has led the others, and the Dona Amita and
her Raymond are but wax in her hands. Besides, I have spoken with the
little 'Ruja to-day, and spoke my mind, Pepita, and she says there is
nothing."
"And whilst thou wert speaking to her, my poor Pereo, the devil of an
American Doctor was speaking to her mother, thy mistress--our mistress,
Pereo! Wouldst thou know what he said? Oh, it was nothing."
"Now, the curse of Koorotora on thee, Pepita!" said Pereo, excitedly.
"Speak, fool, if thou knowest anything!"
"Of a verity, no. Let Faquita, then, speak: she heard it." She
reached out her hand, and dragged Maruja's maid, not unwilling, before
the old man.
"Good! 'Tis Faquita, daughter of Gomez, and a child of the land.
Speak, little one. What said this coyote to the mother of thy
mistress?"
"Truly, good Pereo, it was but accident that befriended me."
"Truly, for thy mistress's sake, I hoped it had been more. But let
that go. Come, what said he, child?"
"I was hanging up a robe behind the curtain in the oratory when Pepita
ushered in the Americano. I had no time to fly."
"Why shouldst thou fly from a dog like this?" said one of the
cigarette-smokers who had drawn near.
"Peace!" said the old man.
"When the Dona Maria joined him they spoke of affairs. Yes, Pereo,
she, thy mistress, spoke of affairs to this man--ay, as she might have
talked to THEE. And, could he advise this? and could he counsel that?
and should the cattle be taken from the lower lands, and the fields
turned to grain? and had he a purchaser for Los Osos?"
"Los Osos! It is the boundary land--the frontier--the line of the
arroyo--older than the Mision," muttered Pereo.
"Ay, and he talked of the--the--I know not what it is!--the
r-r-rail-r-road."
"The railroad," gasped the old man. "I will tell thee what it is! It
is the cut of a burning knife through La Mision Perdida--as long as
eternity, as dividing as death. On either side of that gash life is
blasted; wherever that cruel steel is laid the track of it is livid and
barren; it cuts down all barriers; leaps all boundaries, be they canada
or canyon; it is a torrent in the plain, a tornado in the forest; its
very pathway is destruction to whoso crosses it--man or beast; it is
the heathenish God of the Americanos; they build temples for it, and
flock there and worship it whenever it stops, breathing fire and flame
like a very Moloch."
"Eh! St. Anthony preserve us!" said Faquita, shuddering; "and yet they
spoke of it as 'shares' and 'stocks,' and said it would double the
price of corn."
"Now, Judas pursue thee and thy railroad, Pereo," said Pepita,
impatiently. "It is not such bagatela that Faquita is here to relate.
Go on, child, and tell all that happened."
"And then," continued Faquita, with a slight affectation of maiden
bashfulness, in the closer-drawing circle of cigarettes, "and then they
talked of other things and of themselves; and, of a verity, this
gray-bearded Doctor will play the goat and utter gallant speeches, and
speak of a lifelong devotion and of the time he should have a right to
protect--"
"The right, girl! Didst thou say the right? No, thou didst mistake.
It was not THAT he meant?"
"Thy life to a quarter peso that the little Faquita does not mistake,"
said the evident satirist of the household. "Trust to Gomez' muchacha
to understand a proposal."
When the laugh was over, and the sparks of the cigarette, cleverly
whipped out of the speaker's lips by Faquita's fan, had disappeared in
the darkness, she resumed, pettishly, "I know not what you call it when
he kissed her hand and held it to his heart."
"Judas!" gasped Pereo. "But," he added, feverishly, "she, the Dona
Maria, thy mistress, SHE summoned thee at once to call me to cast out
this dust into the open air; thou didst fly to her assistance? What!
thou sawest this, and did nothing--eh?" He stopped, and tried to peer
into the girl's face. "No! Ah, I see; I am an old fool. Yes; it was
Maruja's own mother that stood there. He! he! he!" he laughed
piteously; "and she smiled and smiled and broke the coward's heart, as
Maruja might. And when he was gone, she bade thee bring her water to
wash the filthy Judas stain from her hand."
"Santa Ana!" said Faquita, shrugging her shoulders. "She did what the
veriest muchacha would have done. When he had gone, she sat down and
cried."
The old man drew back a step, and steadied himself by the table. Then,
with a certain tremulous audacity, he began: "So! that is all you have
to tell--nothing! Bah! A lazy slut sleeps at her duty, and dreams
behind a curtain! Yes, dreams!--you understand--dreams! And for this
she leaves her occupations, and comes to gossip here! Come," he
continued, steadily working himself into a passion, "come, enough of
this! Get you gone!--you, and Pepita, and Andreas, and Victor--all of
you--back to your duty. Away! Am I not master here? Off! I say!"
There was no mistaking the rising anger of his voice. The cowed group
rose in a frightened way and disappeared one by one silently through
the labyrinth. Pereo waited until the last had vanished, and then,
cramming his stiff sombrero over his eyes with an ejaculation, brushed
his way through the shrubbery in the direction of the stables.
Later, when the full glory of the midnight moon had put out every
straggling light in the great house; when the long veranda slept in
massive bars of shadow, and even the tradewinds were hushed to repose,
Pereo silently issued from the stable-yard in vaquero's dress, mounted
and caparisoned. Picking his way cautiously along the turf-bordered
edge of the gravel path, he noiselessly reached a gate that led to the
lane. Walking his spirited mustang with difficulty until the house had
at last disappeared in the intervening foliage, he turned with an easy
canter into a border bridle-path that seemed to lead to the canada. In
a quarter of an hour he had reached a low amphitheatre of meadows, shut
in a half circle of grassy treeless hills.
Here, putting spurs to his horse, he entered upon a singular exercise.
Twice he made a circuit of the meadow at a wild gallop, with flying
serape and loosened rein, and twice returned. The third time his speed
increased; the ground seemed to stream from under him; in the distance
the limbs of his steed became invisible in their furious action, and,
lying low forward on his mustang's neck, man and horse passed like an
arrowy bolt around the circle. Then something like a light ring of
smoke up-curved from the saddle before him, and, slowly uncoiling
itself in mid air, dropped gently to the ground as he passed. Again,
and once again, the shadowy coil sped upward and onward, slowly
detaching its snaky rings with a weird deliberation that was in strange
contrast to the impetuous onset of the rider, and yet seemed a part of
his fury. And then turning, Pereo trotted gently to the centre of the
circle.
Here he divested himself of his serape, and, securing it in a
cylindrical roll, placed it upright on the ground and once more sped
away on his furious circuit. But this time he wheeled suddenly before
it was half completed and bore down directly upon the unconscious
object. Within a hundred feet he swerved slightly; the long detaching
rings again writhed in mid air and softly descended as he thundered
past. But when he had reached the line of circuit again, he turned and
made directly for the road he had entered. Fifty feet behind his
horse's heels, at the end of a shadowy cord, the luckless serape was
dragging and bounding after him!
"The old man is quiet enough this morning," said Andreas, as he groomed
the sweat-dried skin of the mustang the next day. "It is easy to see,
friend Pinto, that he has worked off his madness on thee."