BY WILLA CATHER
DEATH COMES
FOR THE
ARCHBISHOP
"_Auspice Maria!_"
Father Vaillant's signet-ring
NEW YORK
ALFRED A KNOPF--MCMXXVII
COPYRIGHT 1926, 1927, BY WILLA CATHER
_The Works of_
WILLA CATHER
ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE
O PIONEERS!
THE SONG OF THE LARK
MY ANTONIA
ONE OF OURS
A LOST LADY
THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE
MY MORTAL ENEMY
YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA
CONTENTS
Prologue. At Rome
1. The Vicar Apostolic
2. Missionary Journeys
3. The Mass at Ácoma
4. Snake Root
5. Padre Martinez
6. Doña Isabella
7. The Great Diocese
8. Gold under Pike's Peak
9. Death Comes for the Archbishop
DEATH COMES FOR THE
ARCHBISHOP
_PROLOGUE_
AT ROME
ONE summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary
Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in
the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome. The villa was famous for the fine
view from its terrace. The hidden garden in which the four men sat at
table lay some twenty feet below the south end of this terrace, and was
a mere shelf of rock, overhanging a steep declivity planted with
vineyards. A flight of stone steps connected it with the promenade
above. The table stood in a sanded square, among potted orange and
oleander trees, shaded by spreading ilex oaks that grew out of the rocks
overhead. Beyond the balustrade was the drop into the air, and far below
the landscape stretched soft and undulating; there was nothing to arrest
the eye until it reached Rome itself.
It was early when the Spanish Cardinal and his guests sat down to
dinner. The sun was still good for an hour of supreme splendour, and
across the shining folds of country the low profile of the city barely
fretted the sky-line--indistinct except for the dome of St. Peter's,
bluish grey like the flattened top of a great balloon, just a flash of
copper light on its soft metallic surface. The Cardinal had an eccentric
preference for beginning his dinner at this time in the late afternoon,
when the vehemence of the sun suggested motion. The light was full of
action and had a peculiar quality of climax--of splendid finish. It was
both intense and soft, with a ruddiness as of much-multiplied
candlelight, an aura of red in its flames. It bored into the ilex trees,
illuminating their mahogany trunks and blurring their dark foliage; it
warmed the bright green of the orange trees and the rose of the oleander
blooms to gold; sent congested spiral patterns quivering over the damask
and plate and crystal. The churchmen kept their rectangular clerical
caps on their heads to protect them from the sun. The three Cardinals
wore black cassocks with crimson pipings and crimson buttons, the Bishop
a long black coat over his violet vest.
They were talking business; had met, indeed, to discuss an anticipated
appeal from the Provincial Council at Baltimore for the founding of an
Apostolic Vicarate in New Mexico--a part of North America recently
annexed to the United States. This new territory was vague to all of
them, even to the missionary Bishop. The Italian and French Cardinals
spoke of it as _Le Mexique_, and the Spanish host referred to it as "New
Spain." Their interest in the projected Vicarate was tepid, and had to
be continually revived by the missionary, Father Ferrand; Irish by
birth, French by ancestry--a man of wide wanderings and notable
achievement in the New World, an Odysseus of the Church. The language
spoken was French--the time had already gone by when Cardinals could
conveniently discuss contemporary matters in Latin.
The French and Italian Cardinals were men in vigorous middle life--the
Norman full-belted and ruddy, the Venetian spare and sallow and
hook-nosed. Their host, Garcia Maria de Allande, was still a young man.
He was dark in colouring, but the long Spanish face, that looked out
from so many canvases in his ancestral portrait gallery, was in the
young Cardinal much modified through his English mother. With his
_caffè oscuro_ eyes, he had a fresh, pleasant English mouth, and an
open manner.
During the latter years of the reign of Gregory XVI, de Allande had been
the most influential man at the Vatican; but since the death of Gregory,
two years ago, he had retired to his country estate. He believed the
reforms of the new Pontiff impractical and dangerous, and had withdrawn
from politics, confining his activities to work for the Society for the
Propagation of the Faith--that organization which had been so fostered
by Gregory. In his leisure the Cardinal played tennis. As a boy, in
England, he had been passionately fond of this sport. Lawn tennis had
not yet come into fashion; it was a formidable game of indoor tennis the
Cardinal played. Amateurs of that violent sport came from Spain and
France to try their skill against him.
The missionary, Bishop Ferrand, looked much older than any of them, old
and rough--except for his clear, intensely blue eyes. His diocese lay
within the icy arms of the Great Lakes, and on his long, lonely
horseback rides among his missions the sharp winds had bitten him well.
The missionary was here for a purpose, and he pressed his point. He ate
more rapidly than the others and had plenty of time to plead his
cause,--finished each course with such dispatch that the Frenchman
remarked he would have been an ideal dinner companion for Napoleon.
The Bishop laughed and threw out his brown hands in apology. "Likely
enough I have forgot my manners. I am preoccupied. Here you can scarcely
understand what it means that the United States has annexed that
enormous territory which was the cradle of the Faith in the New World.
The Vicarate of New Mexico will be in a few years raised to an Episcopal
See, with jurisdiction over a country larger than Central and Western
Europe, barring Russia. The Bishop of that See will direct the beginning
of momentous things."
"Beginnings," murmured the Venetian, "there have been so many. But
nothing ever comes from over there but trouble and appeals for money."
The missionary turned to him patiently. "Your Eminence, I beg you to
follow me. This country was evangelized in fifteen hundred, by the
Franciscan Fathers. It has been allowed to drift for nearly three
hundred years and is not yet dead. It still pitifully calls itself a
Catholic country, and tries to keep the forms of religion without
instruction. The old mission churches are in ruins. The few priests are
without guidance or discipline. They are lax in religious observance,
and some of them live in open concubinage. If this Augean stable is not
cleansed, now that the territory has been taken over by a progressive
government, it will prejudice the interests of the Church in the whole
of North America."
"But these missions are still under the jurisdiction of Mexico, are they
not?" inquired the Frenchman.
"In the See of the Bishop of Durango?" added Maria de Allande.
The missionary sighed. "Your Eminence, the Bishop of Durango is an old
man; and from his seat to Santa Fé is a distance of fifteen hundred
English miles. There are no wagon roads, no canals, no navigable rivers.
Trade is carried on by means of pack-mules, over treacherous trails. The
desert down there has a peculiar horror; I do not mean thirst, nor
Indian massacres, which are frequent. The very floor of the world is
cracked open into countless canyons and arroyos, fissures in the earth
which are sometimes ten feet deep, sometimes a thousand. Up and down
these stony chasms the traveller and his mules clamber as best they can.
It is impossible to go far in any direction without crossing them. If
the Bishop of Durango should summon a disobedient priest by letter, who
shall bring the Padre to him? Who can prove that he ever received the
summons? The post is carried by hunters, fur trappers, gold seekers,
whoever happens to be moving on the trails."
The Norman Cardinal emptied his glass and wiped his lips.
"And the inhabitants, Father Ferrand? If these are the travellers, who
stays at home?"
"Some thirty Indian nations, Monsignor, each with its own customs and
language, many of them fiercely hostile to each other. And the Mexicans,
a naturally devout people. Untaught and unshepherded, they cling to the
faith of their fathers."
"I have a letter from the Bishop of Durango, recommending his Vicar for
this new post," remarked Maria de Allande.
"Your Eminence, it would be a great misfortune if a native priest were
appointed; they have never done well in that field. Besides, this Vicar
is old. The new Vicar must be a young man, of strong constitution, full
of zeal, and above all, intelligent. He will have to deal with savagery
and ignorance, with dissolute priests and political intrigue. He must be
a man to whom order is necessary--as dear as life."
The Spaniard's coffee-coloured eyes showed a glint of yellow as he
glanced sidewise at his guest. "I suspect, from your exordium, that you
have a candidate--and that he is a French priest, perhaps?"
"You guess rightly, Monsignor. I am glad to see that we have the same
opinion of French missionaries."
"Yes," said the Cardinal lightly, "they are the best missionaries. Our
Spanish fathers made good martyrs, but the French Jesuits accomplish
more. They are the great organizers."
"Better than the Germans?" asked the Venetian, who had Austrian
sympathies.
"Oh, the Germans classify, but the French arrange! The French
missionaries have a sense of proportion and rational adjustment. They
are always trying to discover the logical relation of things. It is a
passion with them." Here the host turned to the old Bishop again. "But
your Grace, why do you neglect this Burgundy? I had this wine brought up
from my cellar especially to warm away the chill of your twenty Canadian
winters. Surely, you do not gather vintages like, this on the shores of
the Great Lake Huron?"
The missionary smiled as he took up his untouched glass. "It is superb,
your Eminence, but I fear I have lost my palate for vintages. Out there,
a little whisky, or Hudson Bay Company rum, does better for us. I must
confess I enjoyed the champagne in Paris. We had been forty days at sea,
and I am a poor sailor."
"Then we must have some for you." He made a sign to his major-domo. "You
like it very cold? And your new Vicar Apostolic, what will he drink in
the country of bison and _serpents à sonnettes_? And what will he eat?"
"He will eat dried buffalo meat and frijoles with chili, and he will be
glad to drink water when he can get it. He will have no easy life, your
Eminence. That country will drink up his youth and strength as it does
the rain. He will be called upon for every sacrifice, quite possibly for
martyrdom. Only last year the Indian pueblo of San Fernandez de Taos
murdered and scalped the American Governor and some dozen other whites.
The reason they did not scalp their Padre, was that their Padre was one
of the leaders of the rebellion and himself planned the massacre. That
is how things stand in New Mexico!"
"Where is your candidate at present, Father?"
"He is a parish priest, on the shores of Lake Ontario, in my diocese. I
have watched his work for nine years. He is but thirty-five now. He came
to us directly from the Seminary."
"And his name is?"
"Jean Marie Latour."
Maria de Allande, leaning back in his chair, put the tips of his long
fingers together and regarded them thoughtfully.
"Of course, Father Ferrand, the Propaganda will almost certainly appoint
to this Vicarate the man whom the Council at Baltimore recommends."
"Ah yes, your Eminence; but a word from you to the Provincial Council,
an inquiry, a suggestion----"
"Would have some weight, I admit," replied the Cardinal smiling. "And
this Latour is intelligent, you say? What a fate you are drawing upon
him! But I suppose it is no worse than a life among the Hurons. My
knowledge of your country is chiefly drawn from the romances of Fenimore
Cooper, which I read in English with great pleasure. But has your priest
a versatile intelligence? Any intelligence in matters of art, for
example?"
"And what need would he have for that, Monsignor? Besides, he is from
Auvergne."
The three Cardinals broke into laughter and refilled their glasses. They
were all becoming restive under the monotonous persistence of the
missionary.
"Listen," said the host, "and I will relate a little story, while the
Bishop does me the compliment to drink my champagne. I have a reason for
asking this question which you have answered so finally. In my family
house in Valencia I have a number of pictures by the great Spanish
painters, collected chiefly by my great-grandfather, who was a man of
perception in these things and, for his time, rich. His collection of El
Greco is, I believe, quite the best in Spain. When my progenitor was an
old man, along came one of these missionary priests from New Spain,
begging. All missionaries from the Americas were inveterate beggars,
then as now, Bishop Ferrand. This Franciscan had considerable success,
with his tales of pious Indian converts and struggling missions. He came
to visit at my great-grandfather's house and conducted devotions in the
absence of the Chaplain. He wheedled a good sum of money out of the old
man, as well as vestments and linen and chalices--he would take
anything--and he implored my grandfather to give him a painting from his
great collection, for the ornamentation of his mission church among the
Indians. My grandfather told him to choose from the gallery, believing
the priest would covet most what he himself could best afford to spare.
But not at all; the hairy Franciscan pounced upon one of the best in the
collection; a young St. Francis in meditation, by El Greco, and the
model for the saint was one of the very handsome Dukes of Albuquerque.
My grandfather protested; tried to persuade the fellow that some picture
of the Crucifixion, or a martyrdom, would appeal more strongly to his
redskins. What would a St. Francis, of almost feminine beauty, mean to
the scalp-takers?
"All in vain. The missionary turned upon his host with a reply which has
become a saying in our family: 'You refuse me this picture because it is
a good picture. _It is too good for God, but it is not too good for
you_.'
"He carried off the painting. In my grandfather's manuscript catalogue,
under the number and title of the St. Francis, is written: _Given to
Fray Teodocio, for the glory of God, to enrich his mission church at
Pueblo de Cia, among the savages of New Spain_.
"It is because of this lost treasure, Father Ferrand, that I happen to
have had some personal correspondence with the Bishop of Durango. I once
wrote the facts to him fully. He replied to me that the mission at Cia
was long ago destroyed and its furnishings scattered. Of course the
painting may have been ruined in a pillage or massacre. On the other
hand, it may still be hidden away in some crumbling sacristy or smoky
wigwam. If your French priest had a discerning eye, now, and were sent
to this Vicarate, he might keep my El Greco in mind."
The Bishop shook his head. "No, I can't promise you--I do not know. I
have noticed that he is a man of severe and refined tastes, but he is
very reserved. Down there the Indians do not dwell in wigwams, your
Eminence," he added gently.
"No matter, Father. I see your redskins through Fenimore Cooper, and I
like them so. Now let us go to the terrace for our coffee and watch the
evening come on."
The Cardinal led his guests up the narrow stairway. The long gravelled
terrace and its balustrade were blue as a lake in the dusky air. Both
sun and shadows were gone. The folds of russet country were now violet.
Waves of rose and gold throbbed up the sky from behind the dome of the
Basilica.
As the churchmen walked up and down the promenade, watching the stars
come out, their talk touched upon many matters, but they avoided
politics, as men are apt to do in dangerous times. Not a word was spoken
of the Lombard war, in which the Pope's position was so anomalous. They
talked instead of a new opera by young Verdi, which was being sung in
Venice; of the case of a Spanish dancing-girl who had lately become a
religious and was said to be working miracles in Andalusia. In this
conversation the missionary took no part, nor could he even follow it
with much interest. He asked himself whether he had been on the frontier
so long that he had quite lost his taste for the talk of clever men. But
before they separated for the night Maria de Allande spoke a word in his
ear, in English.
"You are distrait, Father Ferrand. Are you wishing to unmake your new
Bishop already? It is too late. Jean Marie Latour--am I right?"
BOOK ONE
_THE VICAR APOSTOLIC_
1
THE CRUCIFORM TREE
ONE afternoon in the autumn of 1851 a solitary horseman, followed by a
pack-mule, was pushing through an arid stretch of country somewhere in
central New Mexico. He had lost his way, and was trying to get back to
the trail, with only his compass and his sense of direction for guides.
The difficulty was that the country in which he found himself was so
featureless--or rather, that it was crowded with features, all exactly
alike. As far as he could see, on every side, the landscape was heaped
up into monotonous red sand-hills, not much larger than haycocks, and
very much the shape of haycocks. One could not have believed that in the
number of square miles a man is able to sweep with the eye there could
be so many uniform red hills. He had been riding among them since early
morning, and the look of the country had no more changed than if he had
stood still. He must have travelled through thirty miles of these
conical red hills, winding his way in the narrow cracks between them,
and he had begun to think that he would never see anything else. They
were so exactly like one another that he seemed to be wandering in some
geometrical nightmare; flattened cones, they were, more the shape of
Mexican ovens than haycocks--yes, exactly the shape of Mexican ovens,
red as brick-dust, and naked of vegetation except for small juniper
trees. And the junipers, too, were the shape of Mexican ovens. Every
conical hill was spotted with smaller cones of juniper, a uniform
yellowish green, as the hills were a uniform red. The hills thrust out
of the ground so thickly that they seemed to be pushing each other,
elbowing each other aside, tipping each other over.
The blunted pyramid, repeated so many hundred times upon his retina and
crowding down upon him in the heat, had confused the traveller, who was
sensitive to the shape of things.
"_Mais, c'est fantastique_!" he muttered, closing his eyes to rest them
from the intrusive omnipresence of the triangle.
When he opened his eyes again, his glance immediately fell upon one
juniper which differed in shape from the others. It was not a
thick-growing cone, but a naked, twisted trunk, perhaps ten feet high,
and at the top it parted into two lateral, flat-lying branches, with a
little crest of green in the centre, just above the cleavage. Living
vegetation could not present more faithfully the form of the Cross.
The traveller dismounted, drew from his pocket a much worn book, and
baring his head, knelt at the foot of the cruciform tree.
Under his buckskin riding-coat he wore a black vest and the cravat and
collar of a churchman. A young priest, at his devotions; and a priest in
a thousand, one knew at a glance. His bowed head was not that of an
ordinary man,--it was built for the seat of a fine intelligence. His
brow was open, generous, reflective, his features handsome and somewhat
severe. There was a singular elegance about the hands below the fringed
cuffs of the buckskin jacket. Everything showed him to be a man of
gentle birth--brave, sensitive, courteous. His manners, even when he was
alone in the desert, were distinguished. He had a kind of courtesy
toward himself, toward his beasts, toward the juniper tree before which
he knelt, and the God whom he was addressing.
His devotions lasted perhaps half an hour, and when he rose he looked
refreshed. He began talking to his mare in halting Spanish, asking
whether she agreed with him that it would be better to push on, weary as
she was, in hope of finding the trail. He had no water left in his
canteen, and the horses had had none since yesterday morning. They had
made a dry camp in these hills last night. The animals were almost at
the end of their endurance, but they would not recuperate until they got
water, and it seemed best to spend their last strength in searching for
it.
On a long caravan trip across Texas this man had had some experience of
thirst, as the party with which he travelled was several times put on a
meagre water ration for days together. But he had not suffered then as
he did now. Since morning he had had a feeling of illness; the taste of
fever in his mouth, and alarming seizures of vertigo. As these conical
hills pressed closer and closer upon him, he began to wonder whether his
long wayfaring from the mountains of Auvergne were possibly to end here.
He reminded himself of that cry, wrung from his Saviour on the Cross,
"_J'ai soif_!" Of all our Lord's physical sufferings, only one, "I
thirst," rose to His lips. Empowered by long training, the young priest
blotted himself out of his own consciousness and meditated upon the
anguish of his Lord. The Passion of Jesus became for him the only
reality; the need of his own body was but a part of that conception.
His mare stumbled, breaking his mood of contemplation. He was sorrier
for his beasts than for himself. He, supposed to be the intelligence of
the party, had got the poor animals into this interminable desert of
ovens. He was afraid he had been absent-minded, had been pondering his
problem instead of heeding the way. His problem was how to recover a
Bishopric. He was a Vicar Apostolic, lacking a Vicarate. He was thrust
out; his flock would have none of him.
The traveller was Jean Marie Latour, consecrated Vicar Apostolic of New
Mexico and Bishop of Agathonica _in partibus_ at Cincinnati a year
ago--and ever since then he had been trying to reach his Vicarate. No
one in Cincinnati could tell him how to get to New Mexico--no one had
ever been there. Since young Father Latour's arrival in America, a
railroad had been built through from New York to Cincinnati; but there
it ended. New Mexico lay in the middle of a dark continent. The Ohio
merchants knew of two routes only. One was the Santa Fé trail from St.
Louis, but at that time it was very dangerous because of Comanche Indian
raids. His friends advised Father Latour to go down the river to New
Orleans, thence by boat to Galveston, across Texas to San Antonio, and
to wind up into New Mexico along the Rio Grande valley. This he had
done, but with what misadventures!
His steamer was wrecked and sunk in the Galveston harbour, and he had
lost all his worldly possessions except his books, which he saved at the
risk of his life. He crossed Texas with a traders' caravan, and
approaching San Antonio he was hurt in jumping from an overturning
wagon, and had to lie for three months in the crowded house of a poor
Irish family, waiting for his injured leg to get strong.
It was nearly a year after he had embarked upon the Mississippi that the
young Bishop, at about the sunset hour of a summer afternoon, at last
beheld the old settlement toward which he had been journeying so long:
The wagon train had been going all day through a greasewood plain, when
late in the afternoon the teamsters began shouting that over yonder was
the Villa. Across the level, Father Latour could distinguish low brown
shapes, like earthworks, lying at the base of wrinkled green mountains
with bare tops,--wave-like mountains, resembling billows beaten up from
a flat sea by a heavy gale; and their green was of two colors--aspen and
evergreen, not intermingled but lying in solid areas of light and dark.
As the wagons went forward and the sun sank lower, a sweep of red
carnelian-coloured hills lying at the foot of the mountains came into
view; they curved like two arms about a depression in the plain; and in
that depression, was Santa Fé, at last! A thin, wavering adobe town ...
a green plaza ... at one end a church with two earthen towers that rose
high above the flatness. The long main street began at the church, the
town seemed to flow from it like a stream from a spring. The church
towers, and all the low adobe houses, were rose colour in that light,--a
little darker in tone than the amphitheatre of red hills behind; and
periodically the plumes of poplars flashed like gracious accent
marks,--inclining and recovering themselves in the wind.
The young Bishop was not alone in the exaltation of that hour; beside
him rode Father Joseph Vaillant, his boyhood friend, who had made this
long pilgrimage with him and shared his dangers. The two rode into Santa
Fé together, claiming it for the glory of God.
How, then, had Father Latour come to be here in the sand-hills, many
miles from his seat, unattended, far out of his way and with no
knowledge of how to get back to it?
On his arrival at Santa Fé, this was what had happened: The Mexican
priests there had refused to recognize his authority. They disclaimed
any knowledge of a Vicarate Apostolic, or a Bishop of Agathonica. They
said they were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Durango, and had
received no instructions to the contrary. If Father Latour was to be
their Bishop, where were his credentials? A parchment and letters, he
knew, had been sent to the Bishop of Durango, but these had evidently
got no farther. There was no postal service in this part of the world;
the quickest and surest way to communicate with the Bishop of Durango
was to go to him. So, having travelled for nearly a year to reach Santa
Fé, Father Latour left it after a few weeks, and set off alone on
horseback to ride down into Old Mexico and back, a journey of full
three thousand miles.
He had been warned that there were many trails leading off the Rio
Grande road, and that a stranger might easily mistake his way. For the
first few days he had been cautious and watchful. Then he must have
grown careless and turned into some purely local trail. When he realized
that he was astray, his canteen was already empty and his horses seemed
too exhausted to retrace their steps. He had persevered in this sandy
track, which grew ever fainter, reasoning that it must lead somewhere.
All at once Father Latour thought he felt a change in the body of his
mare. She lifted her head for the first time in a long while, and seemed
to redistribute her weight upon her legs. The pack-mule behaved in a
similar manner, and both quickened their pace. Was it possible they
scented water?
Nearly an hour went by, and then, winding between two hills that were
like all the hundreds they had passed, the two beasts whinnied
simultaneously. Below them, in the midst of that wavy ocean of sand, was
a green thread of verdure and a running stream. This ribbon in the
desert seemed no wider than a man could throw a stone,--and it was
greener than anything Latour had ever seen, even in his own greenest
corner of the Old World. But for the quivering of the hide on his mare's
neck and shoulders, he might have thought this a vision, a delusion of
thirst.
Running water, clover fields, cottonwoods, acacias, little adobe houses
with brilliant gardens, a boy-driving a flock of white goats toward the
stream,--that was what the young Bishop saw.
A few moments later, when he was struggling with his horses, trying to
keep them from overdrinking, a young girl with a black shawl over her
head came running toward him. He thought he had never seen a kindlier
face. Her greeting was that of a Christian.
"_Ave Maria Purissima, Señor_. Whence do you come?"
"Blessed child," he replied in Spanish, "I am a priest who has lost his
way. I am famished for water."
"A priest?" she cried, "that is not possible! Yet I look at you, and it
is true. Such a thing has never happened to us before; it must be in
answer to my father's prayers. Run, Pedro, and tell father and
Salvatore."
2
HIDDEN WATER
AN hour later, as darkness came over the sand-hills, the young Bishop
was seated at supper in the motherhouse of this Mexican
settlement--which, he learned, was appropriately called _Agua Secreta_,
Hidden Water. At the table with him were his host, an old man called
Benito, the oldest son, and two grandsons. The old man was a widower,
and his daughter, Josepha, the girl who had run to meet the Bishop at
the stream, was his housekeeper. Their supper was a pot of frijoles
cooked with meat, bread and goat's milk, fresh cheese and ripe apples.
From the moment he entered this room with its thick whitewashed adobe
walls, Father Latour had felt a kind of peace about it. In its bareness
and simplicity there was something comely, as there was about the
serious girl who had placed their food before them and who now stood in
the shadows against the wall, her eager eyes fixed upon his face. He
found himself very much at home with the four dark-headed men who sat
beside him in the candlelight. Their manners were gentle, their voices
low and agreeable. When he said grace before meat, the men had knelt on
the floor beside the table. The grandfather declared that the Blessed
Virgin must have led the Bishop from his path and brought him here to
baptize the children and to sanctify the marriages. Their settlement was
little known, he said. They had no papers for their land and were afraid
the Americans might take it away from them. There was no one in their
settlement who could read or write. Salvatore, his oldest son, had gone
all the way to Albuquerque to find a wife, and had married there. But
the priest had charged him twenty pesos, and that was half of all he had
saved to buy furniture and glass windows for his house. His brothers and
cousins, discouraged by his experience, had taken wives without the
marriage sacrament.
In answer to the Bishop's questions, they told him the simple story of
their lives. They had here all they needed to make them happy. They spun
and wove from the fleece of their flocks, raised their own corn and
wheat and tobacco, dried their plums and apricots for winter. Once a
year the boys took the grain up to Albuquerque to have it ground, and
bought such luxuries as sugar and coffee. They had bees, and when sugar
was high they sweetened with honey. Benito did not know in what year his
grandfather had settled here, coming from Chihuahua with all his goods
in ox-carts. "But it was soon after the time when the French killed
their king. My grandfather had heard talk of that before he left home,
and used to tell us boys about it when he was an old man."
"Perhaps you have guessed that I am a Frenchman," said Father Latour.
No, they had not, but they felt sure he was not an American. José, the
elder grandson, had been watching the visitor uncertainly. He was a
handsome boy, with a triangle of black hair hanging over his rather
sullen eyes. He now spoke for the first time.
"They say at Albuquerque that now we are all Americans, but that is not
true, Padre. I will never be an American. They are infidels."
"Not all, my son. I have lived among Americans in the north for ten
years, and I found many devout Catholics."
The young man shook his head. "They destroyed our churches when they
were fighting us, and stabled their horses in them. And now they will
take our religion away from us. We want our own ways and our own
religion."
Father Latour began to tell them about his friendly relations with
Protestants in Ohio, but they had not room in their minds for two ideas;
there was one Church, and the rest of the world was infidel. One thing
they could understand; that he had here in his saddle-bags his
vestments, the altar stone, and all the equipment for celebrating the
Mass; and that to-morrow morning, after Mass, he would hear confessions,
baptize, and sanctify marriages.
After supper Father Latour took up a candle and began to examine the
holy images on the shelf over the fire-place. The wooden figures of the
saints, found in even the poorest Mexican houses, always interested him.
He had never yet seen two alike. These over Benito's fire-place had come
in the oxcarts from Chihuahua nearly sixty years ago. They had been
carved by some devout soul, and brightly painted, though the colours had
softened with time, and they were dressed in cloth, like dolls. They
were much more to his taste than the factory-made plaster images in his
mission churches in Ohio--more like the homely stone carvings on the
front of old parish churches in Auvergne. The wooden Virgin was a
sorrowing mother indeed,--long and stiff and severe, very long from the
neck to the waist, even longer from waist to feet, like some of the
rigid mosaics of the Eastern Church. She was dressed in black, with a
white apron, and a black reboso over her head, like a Mexican woman of
the poor. At her right was St. Joseph, and at her left a fierce little
equestrian figure, a saint wearing the costume of a Mexican _ranchero_,
velvet trousers richly embroidered and wide at the ankle, velvet jacket
and silk shirt, and a high-crowned, broad-brimmed Mexican sombrero. He
was attached to his fat horse by a wooden pivot driven through the
saddle.
The younger grandson saw the priest's interest in this figure. "That,"
he said, "is my name saint, Santiago."
"Oh, yes; Santiago. He was a missionary, like me. In our country we call
him St. Jacques, and he carries a staff and a wallet--but here he would
need a horse, surely."
The boy looked at him in surprise. "But he is the saint of horses. Isn't
he that in your country?"
The Bishop shook his head. "No. I know nothing about that. How is he the
saint of horses?"
"He blesses the mares and makes them fruitful. Even the Indians believe
that. They know that if they neglect to pray to Santiago for a few
years, the foals do not come right."
A little later, after his devotions, the young Bishop lay down in
Benito's deep feather-bed, thinking how different was this night from
his anticipation of it. He had expected to make a dry camp in the
wilderness, and to sleep under a juniper tree, like the Prophet,
tormented by thirst. But here he lay in comfort and safety, with love
for his fellow creatures flowing like peace about his heart. If Father
Vaillant were here, he would say, "A miracle"; that the Holy Mother, to
whom he had addressed himself before the cruciform tree, had led him
hither. And it was a miracle, Father Latour knew that. But his dear
Joseph must always have the miracle very direct and spectacular, not
with Nature, but against it. He would almost be able to tell the colour
of the mantle Our Lady wore when She took the mare by the bridle back
yonder among the junipers and led her out of the pathless sand-hills, as
the angel led the ass on the Flight into Egypt.
* * *
In the late afternoon of the following day the Bishop was walking alone
along the banks of the life-giving stream, reviewing in his mind the
events of the morning. Benito and his daughter had made an altar before
the sorrowful wooden Virgin, and placed upon it candles and flowers.
Every soul in the village, except Salvatore's sick wife, had come to the
Mass. He had performed marriages and baptisms and heard confessions and
confirmed until noon. Then came the christening feast. José had killed
a kid the night before, and immediately after her confirmation Josepha
slipped away to help her sisters-in-law roast it. When Father Latour
asked her to give him his portion without chili, the girl inquired
whether it was more pious to eat it like that. He hastened to explain
that Frenchmen, as a rule, do not like high seasoning, lest she should
hereafter deprive herself of her favourite condiment.
After the feast the sleepy children were taken home, the men gathered in
the plaza to smoke under the great cottonwood trees. The Bishop, feeling
a need of solitude, had gone forth to walk, firmly refusing an escort.
On his way he passed the earthen thrashing-floor, where these people
beat out their grain and winnowed it in the wind, like the Children of
Israel. He heard a frantic bleating behind him, and was overtaken by
Pedro with the great flock of goats, indignant at their day's
confinement, and wild to be in the fringe of pasture along the hills.
They leaped the stream like arrows speeding from the bow, and regarded
the Bishop as they passed him with their mocking, humanly intelligent
smile. The young bucks were light and elegant in figure, with their
pointed chins and polished tilted horns. There was great variety in
their faces, but in nearly all something supercilious and sardonic. The
angoras had long silky hair of a dazzling whiteness. As they leaped
through the sunlight they brought to mind the chapter in the Apocalypse,
about the whiteness of them that were washed in the blood of the Lamb.
The young Bishop smiled at his mixed theology. But though the goat had
always been the symbol of pagan lewdness, he told himself that their
fleece had warmed many a good Christian, and their rich milk nourished
sickly children.
About a mile above the village he came upon the water-head, a spring
overhung by the sharp-leafed variety of cottonwood called water willow.
All about it crowded the oven-shaped hills,--nothing to hint of water
until it rose miraculously out of the parched and thirsty sea of sand.
Some subterranean stream found an outlet here, was released from
darkness. The result was grass and trees and flowers and human life;
household order and hearths from which the smoke of burning piñon logs
rose like incense to Heaven.
The Bishop sat a long time by the spring, while the declining sun poured
its beautifying light over those low, rose-tinted houses and bright
gardens. The old grandfather had shown him arrow-heads and corroded
medals, and a sword hilt, evidently Spanish, that he had found in the
earth near the water-head. This spot had been a refuge for humanity long
before these Mexicans had come upon it. It was older than history, like
those well-heads in his own country where the Roman settlers had set up
the image of a river goddess, and later the Christian priests had
planted a cross. This settlement was his Bishopric in miniature;
hundreds of square miles of thirsty desert, then a spring, a village,
old men trying to remember their catechism to teach their grandchildren.
The Faith planted by the Spanish friars and watered with their blood was
not dead; it awaited only the toil of the husbandman. He was not
troubled about the revolt in Santa Fé, or the powerful old native
priest who led it--Father Martinez, of Taos, who had ridden over from
his parish expressly to receive the new Vicar and to drive him away. He
was rather terrifying, that old priest, with his big head, violent
Spanish face, and shoulders like a buffalo; but the day of his tyranny
was almost over.
3
THE BISHOP _CHEZ LUI_
IT was the late afternoon of Christmas Day, and the Bishop sat at his
desk writing letters. Since his return to Santa Fé his official
correspondence had been heavy; but the closely-written sheets over which
he bent with a thoughtful smile were not to go to Monsignori, or to
Archbishops, or to the heads of religious houses,--but to France, to
Auvergne, to his own little town; to a certain grey, winding street,
paved with cobbles and shaded by tall chestnuts on which, even to-day,
some few brown leaves would be clinging, or dropping one by one, to be
caught in the cold green ivy on the walls.
The Bishop had returned from his long horseback trip into Mexico only
nine days ago. At Durango the old Mexican prelate there had, after some
delay, delivered to him the documents that defined his Vicarate, and
Father Latour rode back the fifteen hundred miles to Santa Fé through
the sunny days of early winter. On his arrival he found amity instead of
enmity awaiting him. Father Vaillant had already endeared himself to the
people. The Mexican priest who was in charge of the pro-cathedral had
gracefully retired--gone to visit his family in Old Mexico, and carried
his effects along with him. Father Vaillant had taken possession of the
priest's house, and with the help of carpenters and the Mexican women of
the parish had put it in order. The Yankee traders and the military
Commandant at Fort Marcy had sent generous contributions of bedding and
blankets and odd pieces of furniture.
The Episcopal residence was an old adobe house, much out of repair, but
with possibilities of comfort. Father Latour had chosen for his study a
room at one end of the wing. There he sat, as this afternoon of
Christmas Day faded into evening. It was a long room of an agreeable
shape. The thick clay walls had been finished on the inside by the deft
palms of Indian women, and had that irregular and intimate quality of
things made entirely by the human hand. There was a reassuring solidity
and depth about those walls, rounded at door-sills and window-sills,
rounded in wide wings about the corner fire-place. The interior had been
newly whitewashed in the Bishop's absence, and the flicker of the fire
threw a rosy glow over the wavy surfaces, never quite evenly flat, never
a dead white, for the ruddy colour of the clay underneath gave a warm
tone to the lime wash. The ceiling was made of heavy cedar beams,
overlaid by aspen saplings, all of one size, lying close together like
the ribs in corduroy and clad in their ruddy inner skins. The earth
floor was covered with thick Indian blankets; two blankets, very old,
and beautiful in design and colour, were hung on the walls like
tapestries.
On either side of the fire-place plastered recesses were let into the
wall. In one, narrow and arched, stood the Bishop's crucifix. The other
was square, with a carved wooden door, like a grill, and within it lay a
few rare and beautiful books. The rest of the Bishop's library was on
open shelves at one end of the room.
The furniture of the house Father Vaillant had bought from the departed
Mexican priest. It was heavy and somewhat clumsy, but not unsightly. All
the wood used in making tables and bedsteads was hewn from tree boles
with the ax or hatchet. Even the thick planks on which the Bishop's
theological books rested were ax-dressed. There was not at that time a
turning-lathe or a saw-mill in all northern New Mexico. The native
carpenters whittled out chair rungs and table legs, and fitted them
together with wooden pins instead of iron nails. Wooden chests were used
in place of dressers with drawers, and sometimes these were beautifully
carved, or covered with decorated leather. The desk at which the Bishop
sat writing was an importation, a walnut "secretary" of American make
(sent down by one of the officers of the Fort at Father Vaillant's
suggestion). His silver candlesticks he had brought from France long
ago. They were given to him by a beloved aunt when he was ordained.
The young Bishop's pen flew over the paper, leaving a trail of fine,
finished French script behind, in violet ink.
"My new study, dear brother, as I write, is full of the delicious
fragrance of the piñon logs burning in my fire-place. (We use this kind
of cedar-wood altogether for fuel, and it is highly aromatic, yet
delicate. At our meanest tasks we have a perpetual odour of incense
about us.) I wish that you, and my dear sister, could look in upon this
scene of comfort and peace. We missionaries wear a frock-coat and
wide-brimmed hat all day, you know, and look like American traders. What
a pleasure to come home at night and put on my old cassock! I feel more
like a priest then--for so much of the day I must be a 'business
man'!--and, for some reason, more like a Frenchman. All day I am an
American in speech and thought--yes, in heart, too. The kindness of the
American traders, and especially of the military officers at the Fort,
commands more than a superficial loyalty. I mean to help the officers at
their task here. I can assist them more than they realize. The Church
can do more than the Fort to make these poor Mexicans 'good Americans.'
And it is for the people's good; there is no other way in which they can
better their condition.
"But this is not the day to write you of my duties or my purposes.
To-night we are exiles, happy ones, thinking of home. Father Joseph has
sent away our Mexican woman,--he will make a good cook of her in time,
but to-night he is preparing our Christmas dinner himself. I had thought
he would be worn out to-day, for he has been conducting a Novena of High
Masses, as is the custom here before Christmas. After the Novena, and
the midnight Mass last night, I supposed he would be willing to rest
to-day; but not a bit of it. You know his motto, 'Rest in action.' I
brought him a bottle of olive-oil on my horse all the way from Durango
(I say 'olive-oil,' because here 'oil' means something to grease the
wheels of wagons!), and he is making some sort of cooked salad. We have
no green vegetables here in winter, and no one seems ever to have heard
of that blessed plant, the lettuce. Joseph finds it hard to do without
salad-oil, he always had it in Ohio, though it was a great extravagance.
He has been in the kitchen all afternoon. There is only an open
fire-place for cooking, and an earthen roasting-oven out in the
courtyard. But he has never failed me in anything yet; and I think I can
promise you that to-night two Frenchmen will sit down to a good dinner
and drink your health."
The Bishop laid down his pen and lit his two candles with a splinter
from the fire, then stood dusting his fingers by the deep-set window,
looking out at the pale blue darkening sky. The evening-star hung above
the amber afterglow, so soft, so brilliant that she seemed to bathe in
her own silver light. _Ave Maris Stella_, the song which one of his
friends at the Seminary used to intone so beautifully; humming it softly
he returned to his desk and was just dipping his pen in the ink when the
door opened, and a voice said,
"_Monseigneur est servi! Alors, Jean, veux-tu apporter les bougies._"
The Bishop carried the candles into the dining-room, where the table was
laid and Father Vaillant was changing his cook's apron for his cassock.
Crimson from standing over an open fire, his rugged face was even
homelier than usual--though one of the first things a stranger decided
upon meeting Father Joseph was that the Lord had made few uglier men. He
was short, skinny, bow-legged from a life on horseback, and his
countenance had little to recommend it but kindliness and vivacity. He
looked old, though he was then about forty. His skin was hardened and
seamed by exposure to weather in a bitter climate, his neck scrawny and
wrinkled like an old man's. A bold, blunt-tipped nose, positive chin, a
very large mouth,--the lips thick and succulent but never loose, never
relaxed, always stiffened by effort or working with excitement. His
hair, sunburned to the shade of dry hay, had originally been
tow-coloured; "_Blanchet_" ("Whitey") he was always called at the
Seminary. Even his eyes were near-sighted, and of such a pale, watery
blue as to be unimpressive. There was certainly nothing in his outer
case to suggest the fierceness and fortitude and fire of the man, and
yet even the thick-blooded Mexican half-breeds knew his quality at once.
If the Bishop returned to find Santa Fé friendly to him, it was because
everybody believed in Father Vaillant--homely, real, persistent, with
the driving power of a dozen men in his poorly built body.
On coming into the dining-room, Bishop Latour placed his candlesticks
over the fire-place, since there were already six upon the table,
illuminating the brown soup-pot. After they had stood for a moment in
prayer, Father Joseph lifted the cover and ladled the soup into the
plates, a dark onion soup with croutons. The Bishop tasted it critically
and smiled at his companion. After the spoon had travelled to his lips a
few times, he put it down and leaning back in his chair remarked,
"Think of it, _Blanchet_; in all this vast country between the
Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, there is probably not another human
being who could make a soup like this."
"Not unless he is a Frenchman," said Father Joseph. He had tucked a
napkin over the front of his cassock and was losing no time in
reflection.
"I am not deprecating your individual talent, Joseph," the Bishop
continued, "but, when one thinks of it, a soup like this is not the work
of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There
are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup."