he said, and the cook had burnt her hand, and the other maids were lazy.
He brought wood and laid a fire.
After some time, Doña Isabella entered, dressed in heavy mourning, her
face very white against the black, and her eyes red. The curls about her
neck and ears were pale, too--quite ashen.
After Father Vaillant had greeted her and spoken consoling words, the
young lawyer began once more gently to explain to her the difficulties
that confronted them, and what they must do to defeat the action of the
Olivares family. She sat submissively, touching her eyes and nose with
her little lace handkerchief, and clearly not even trying to understand
a word of what he said to her.
Father Joseph soon lost patience and himself approached the widow. "You
understand, my child," he began briskly, "that your husband's brothers
are determined to disregard his wishes, to defraud you and your
daughter, and, eventually, the Church. This is no time for childish
vanity. To prevent this outrage to your husband's memory, you must
satisfy the court that you are old enough to be the mother of
Mademoiselle Inez. You must resolutely declare your true age;
fifty-three, is it not?"
Doña Isabella became pallid with fright. She shrank into one end of the
deep sofa, but her blue eyes focused and gathered light, as she became
intensely, rigidly animated in her corner,--her back against the wall,
as it were.
"Fifty-three!" she cried in a voice of horrified amazement. "Why, I
never heard of anything so outrageous! I was forty-two my last birthday.
It was in December, the fourth of December. If Antonio were here, he
would tell you! And he wouldn't let you scold me and talk about business
to me, either, Father Joseph. He never let anybody talk about business
to me!" She hid her face in her little handkerchief and began to cry.
Father Latour checked his impetuous Vicar, and sat down on the sofa
beside Madame Olivares, feeling very sorry for her and speaking very
gently. "Forty-two to your friends, dear Madame Olivares, and to the
world. In heart and face you are younger than that. But to the Law and
the Church there must be a literal reckoning. A formal statement in
court will not make you any older to your friends; it will not add one
line to your face. A woman, you know, is as old as she looks."
"That's very sweet of you to say, Bishop Latour," the lady quavered,
looking up at him with tearbright eyes. "But I never could hold up my
head again. Let the Olivares have that old money. I don't want it."
Father Vaillant sprang up and glared down at her as if he could put
common sense into her drooping head by the mere intensity of his gaze.
"Four hundred thousand pesos, Señora Isabella!" he cried. "Ease and
comfort for you and your daughter all the rest of your lives. Would you
make your daughter a beggar? The Olivares will take everything."
"I can't help it about Inez," she pleaded. "Inez means to go into the
convent anyway. And I don't care about the money. _Ah, mon père, je
voudrais mieux être jeune et mendiante, que n'être que vieille et
riche, certes, oui_!"
Father Joseph caught her icy cold hand. "And have you a right to defraud
the Church of what is left to it in your trust? Have you thought of the
consequences to yourself of such a betrayal?"
Father Latour glanced sternly at his Vicar. "_Assez_," he said quietly.
He took the little hand Father Joseph had released and bent over it,
kissing it respectfully. "We must not press this any further. We must
leave this to Madame Olivares and her own conscience. I believe, my
daughter, you will come to realize that this sacrifice of your vanity
would be for your soul's peace. Looking merely at the temporal aspect of
the case, you would find poverty hard to bear. You would have to live
upon the Olivares's charity, would you not? I do not wish to see this
come about. I have a selfish interest; I wish you to be always your
charming self and to make a little _poésie_ in life for us here. We
have not much of that."
Madame Olivares stopped crying. She raised her head and sat drying her
eyes. Suddenly she took hold of one of the buttons on the Bishop's
cassock and began twisting it with nervous fingers.
"Father," she said timidly, "what is the youngest I could possibly be,
to be Inez's mother?"
The Bishop could not pronounce the verdict; he hesitated, flushed, then
passed it on to O'Reilly with an open gesture of his fine white hand.
"Fifty-two, Señora Olivares," said the young man respectfully. "If I
can get you to admit that, and stick to it, I feel sure we will win our
case."
"Very well, Mr. O'Reilly." She bowed her head. As her visitors rose, she
sat looking down at the dust-covered rugs. "Before everybody!" she
murmured, as if to herself.
When they were tramping home, Father Joseph said that as for him, he
would rather combat the superstitions of a whole Indian pueblo than the
vanity of one white woman.
"And I would rather do almost anything than go through such a scene
again," said the Bishop with a frown. "I don't think I ever assisted at
anything so cruel."
Boyd O'Reilly defeated the Olivares brothers and won his case. The
Bishop would not go to the court hearing, but Father Vaillant was there,
standing in the malodorous crowd (there were no chairs in the court
room), and his knees shook under him when the young lawyer, with the
fierceness born of fright, poked his finger at his client and said:
"Señora Olivares, you are fifty-two years of age, are you not?"
Madame Olivares was swathed in mourning, her face a streak of shadowed
white between folds of black veil.
"Yes, sir." The crape barely let it through.
The night after the verdict was pronounced, Manuel Chavez, with several
of Antonio's old friends, called upon the widow to congratulate her.
Word of their intention had gone about the town and put others in the
mood to call at a house that had been closed to visitors for so long. A
considerable company gathered there that evening, including some of the
military people, and several hereditary enemies of the Olivares
brothers.
The cook, stimulated by the sight of the long sala full of people once
more, hastily improvised a supper. Pablo put on a white shirt and a
velvet jacket, and began to carry up from the cellar his late master's
best whisky and sherry, and quarts of champagne. (The Mexicans are very
fond of sparkling wines. Only a few years before this, an American
trader who had got into serious political trouble with the Mexican
military authorities in Santa Fé, regained their confidence and
friendship by presenting them with a large wagon shipment of
champagne--three thousand, three hundred and ninety-two bottles,
indeed!)
This hospitable mood came upon the house suddenly, nothing had been
prepared beforehand. The wineglasses were full of dust, but Pablo wiped
them out with the shirt he had just taken off, and without instructions
from anyone he began gliding about with a tray full of glasses, which he
afterward refilled many times, taking his station at the sideboard.
Even Doña Isabella drank a little champagne; when she had sipped one
glass with the young Georgia captain, she could not refuse to take
another with their nearest neighbour, Ferdinand Sanchez, always a true
friend to her husband. Everyone was gay, the servants and the guests,
everything sparkled like a garden after a shower.
Father Latour and Father Vaillant, having heard nothing of this
spontaneous gathering of friends, set off at eight o'clock to make a
call upon the brave widow. When they entered the courtyard, they were
astonished to hear music within, and to see light streaming from the
long row of windows behind the _portale_. Without stopping to knock,
they opened the door into the _sala_. Many candles were burning. Señors
were standing about in long frock-coats buttoned over full figures.
O'Reilly and a group of officers from the Fort surrounded the sideboard,
where Pablo, with a white napkin wrapped showily about his wrist, was
pouring champagne. From the other end of the room sounded the high
tinkle of the harp, and Doña Isabella's voice:
"_Listen to the mocking-bird_,
_Listen to the mocking-bird!_"
The priests waited in the doorway until the song was finished, then went
forward to pay their respects to the hostess. She was wearing the
unrelieved white that grief permitted, and the yellow curls were bobbing
as of old--three behind her right ear, one over either temple, and a
little row across the back of her neck. As she saw the two black figures
approaching, she dropped her arms from the harp, took her satin toe from
the pedal, and rose, holding out a hand to each. Her eyes were bright,
and her face beamed with affection for her spiritual fathers. But her
greeting was a playful reproach, uttered loud enough to be heard above
the murmur of conversing groups:
"I never shall forgive you, Father Joseph, nor you either, Bishop
Latour, for that awful lie you made me tell in court about my age!"
The two churchmen bowed amid laughter and applause.
BOOK SEVEN
_THE GREAT DIOCESE_
1
THE MONTH OF MARY
THE Bishop's work was sometimes assisted, often impeded, by external
events.
By the Gadsden Purchase, executed three years after Father Latour came
to Santa Fé, the United States took over from Mexico a great territory
which now forms southern New Mexico and Arizona. The authorities at Rome
notified Father Latour that this new territory was to be annexed to his
diocese, but that as the national boundary lines often cut parishes in
two, the boundaries of Church jurisdiction must be settled by conference
with the Mexican Bishops of Chihuahua and Sonora. Such conferences would
necessitate a journey of nearly four thousand miles. As Father Vaillant
remarked, at Rome they did not seem to realize that it was no easy
matter for two missionaries on horseback to keep up with the march of
history.
The question hung fire for some years, the subject of voluminous
correspondence. At last, in 1858, Father Vaillant was sent to arrange
the debated boundaries with the Mexican Bishops. He started in the
autumn and spent the whole winter on the road, going from El Paso del
Norte west to Tucson, on to Santa Magdalena and Guaymas, a seaport town
on the Gulf of California, and did some seafaring on the Pacific before
he turned homeward.
On his return trip he was stricken with malarial fever, resulting from
exposure and bad water, and lay seriously ill in a cactus desert in
Arizona. Word of his illness came to Santa Fé by an Indian runner, and
Father Latour and Jacinto rode across New Mexico and half of Arizona,
found Father Vaillant, and brought him back by easy stages.
He was ill in the Bishop's house for two months. This was the first
spring that he and Father Latour had both been there at the same time,
to enjoy the garden they had laid out soon after they first came to
Santa Fé.
It was the month of Mary and the month of May. Father Vaillant was lying
on an army cot, covered with blankets, under the grape arbour in the
garden, watching the Bishop and his gardener at work in the vegetable
plots. The apple trees were in blossom, the cherry blooms had gone by.
The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts of spring; the
soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full of red dust. The air
one breathed was saturated with earthy smells, and the grass under foot
had a reflection of blue sky in it.
This garden had been laid out six years ago, when the Bishop brought his
fruit trees (then dry switches) up from St. Louis in wagons, along with
the blessed Sisters of Loretto, who came to found the Academy of Our
Lady of Light. The school was now well established, reckoned a benefit
to the community by Protestants as well as Catholics, and the trees were
bearing. Cuttings from them were already yielding fruit in many Mexican
gardens. While the Bishop was away on that first trip to Baltimore,
Father Joseph had, in addition to his many official duties, found time
to instruct their Mexican housekeeper, Fructosa, in cookery. Later
Bishop Latour took in hand Fructosa's husband, Tranquilino, and trained
him as a gardener. They had boldly planned for the future; the ground
behind the church, between the Bishop's house and the Academy, they laid
out as a spacious orchard and kitchen-garden. Ever since then the Bishop
had worked on it, planting and pruning. It was his only recreation.
A line of young poplars linked the Episcopal courtyard with the school.
On the south, against the earth wall, was the one row of trees they had
found growing there when they first came,--old, old tamarisks, with
twisted trunks. They had been so neglected, left to fight for life in
such hard, sun-baked, burro-trodden ground, that their trunks had the
hardness of cypress. They looked, indeed, like very old posts, well
seasoned and polished by time, miraculously endowed with the power to
burst into delicate foliage and flowers, to cover themselves with long
brooms of lavender-pink blossom.
Father Joseph had come to love the tamarisk above all trees. It had been
the companion of his wanderings. All along his way through the deserts
of New Mexico and Arizona, wherever he had come upon a Mexican
homestead, out of the sun-baked earth, against the sun-baked adobe
walls, the tamarisk waved its feathery plumes of bluish green. The
family burro was tied to its trunk, the chickens scratched under it, the
dogs slept in its shade, the washing was hung on its branches. Father
Latour had often remarked that this tree seemed especially designed in
shape and colour for the adobe village. The sprays of bloom which adorn
it are merely another shade of the red earth walls, and its fibrous
trunk is full of gold and lavender tints. Father Joseph respected the
Bishop's eye for such things, but himself he loved it merely because it
was the tree of the people, and was like one of the family in every
Mexican household.
This was a very happy season for Father Vaillant. For years he had not
been able properly to observe this month which in his boyhood he had
selected to be the holy month of the year for him, dedicated to the
contemplation of his Gracious Patroness. In his former missionary life,
on the Great Lakes, he used always to go into retreat at this season.
But here there was no time for such things. Last year, in May, he had
been on his way to the Hopi Indians, riding thirty miles a day;
marrying, baptizing, confessing as he went, making camp in the
sand-hills at night. His devotions had been constantly interrupted by
practical considerations.
But this year, because of his illness, the month of Mary he had been
able to give to Mary; to Her he had consecrated his waking hours. At
night he sank to sleep with the sense of Her protection. In the morning
when he awoke, before he had opened his eyes, he was conscious of a
special sweetness in the air,--Mary, and the month of May. _Alma Mater
redemptoris_! Once more he had been able to worship with the ardour of a
young religious, for whom religion is pure personal devotion, unalloyed
by expediency and the benumbing cares of a missionary's work. Once again
this had been his month; his Patroness had given it to him, the season
that had always meant so much in his religious life.
He smiled to remember a time long ago, when he was a young curate in
Cendre, in the Puy-de-Dôm; how he had planned a season of special
devotion to the Blessed Virgin for May, and how the old priest to whom
he was assistant had blasted his hopes by cold disapproval. The old man
had come through the Terror, had been trained in the austerity of those
days of the persecution of the clergy, and he was not untouched by
Jansenism. Young Father Joseph bore his rebuke with meekness, and went
sadly to his own chamber. There he took his rosary and spent the entire
day in prayer. "_Not according to my desires, but if it is for thy
glory, grant me this boon, O Mary, my hope_." In the evening of that
same day the old pastor sent for him, and unsolicited granted him the
request he had so sternly denied in the morning. How joyfully Father
Joseph had written all this to his sister Philomène, then a pupil with
the nuns of the Visitation in their native Riom, begging her to make him
a quantity of artificial flowers for his May altar. How richly she had
responded!--and she rejoiced no less than he that his May devotions were
so largely attended, especially by the young people of the parish, in
whom a notable increase of piety was manifest. Father Vaillant's had
been a close-knit family--losing their mother while they were yet
children had brought the brothers and sisters the closer together--and
with this sister, Philomène, he had shared all his hopes and desires
and his deepest religious life.
Ever since then, all the most important events in his own history had
occurred in the blessed month when this sinful and sullied world puts on
white as if to commemorate the Annunciation, and becomes, for a little,
lovely enough to be in truth the Bride of Christ. It was in May that he
had been given grace to perform the hardest act of his life; to leave
his country, to part from his dear sister and his father (under what sad
circumstances!), and to start for the New World to take up a
missionary's labours. That parting was not a parting, but an escape--a
running away, a betrayal of family trust for the sake of a higher trust.
He could smile at it now, but at the time it had been terrible enough.
The Bishop, thinning carrots yonder, would remember. It was because of
what Father Latour had been to him in that hour, indeed, that Father
Joseph was here in a garden in Santa Fé. He would never have left his
dear Sandusky when the newly appointed Bishop asked him to share his
hardships, had he not said to himself: "Ah, now it is he who is torn by
perplexity! I will be to him now what he was to me that day when we
stood by the road-side, waiting for the _diligence_ to Paris, and my
purpose broke, and he saved me."
That time came back upon Father Vaillant now so keenly that he wiped a
little moisture from his eyes,--(he was quickly moved, after the way of
sick people) and he cleared his glasses and called:
"Father Latour, it is time for you to rest your back. You have been
stooping over a great while."
The Bishop came and sat down in a wheelbarrow that stood at the edge of
the arbour.
"I have been thinking that I shall no longer pray for your speedy
recovery, Joseph. The only way I can keep my Vicar within call is to
have him sick."
Father Joseph smiled.
"You are not in Santa Fé a great deal yourself, my Bishop."
"Well, I shall be here this summer, and I hope to keep you with me. This
year I want you to see my lotus flowers. Tranquilino will let the water
into my lake this afternoon." The lake was a little pond in the middle
of the garden, into which Tranquilino, clever with water, like all
Mexicans, had piped a stream from the Santa Fé creek flowing near at
hand. "Last summer, while you were away," the Bishop continued, "we had
more than a hundred lotus blossoms floating on that little lake. And all
from five bulbs that I put into my valise in Rome."
"When do they blossom?"
"They begin in June, but they are at their best in July."
"Then you must hurry them up a little. For with my Bishop's permission,
I shall be gone in July."
"So soon? And why?"
Father Vaillant moved uneasily under his blankets. "To hunt for lost
Catholics, Jean! Utterly lost Catholics, down in your new territory,
towards Tucson. There are hundreds of poor families down there who have
never seen a priest. I want to go from house to house this time, to
every little settlement. They are full of devotion and faith, and it has
nothing to feed upon but the most mistaken superstitions. They remember
their prayers all wrong. They cannot read, and since there is no one to
instruct them, how can they get right? They are like seeds, full of
germination but with no moisture. A mere contact is enough to make them
a living part of the Church. The more I work with the Mexicans, the more
I believe it was people like them our Saviour bore in mind when He said,
_Unless ye become as little children_. He was thinking of people who are
not clever in the things of this world, whose minds are not upon gain
and worldly advancement. These poor Christians are not thrifty like our
country people at home; they have no veneration for property, no sense
of material values. I stop a few hours in a village, I administer the
sacraments and hear confessions, I leave in every house some little
token, a rosary or a religious picture, and I go away feeling that I
have conferred immeasurable happiness, and have released faithful souls
that were shut away from God by neglect.
"Down near Tucson a Pima Indian convert once asked me to go off into the
desert with him, as he had something to show me. He took me into a place
so wild that a man less accustomed to these things might have mistrusted
and feared for his life. We descended into a terrifying canyon of black
rock, and there in the depths of a cave, he showed me a golden chalice,
vestments and cruets, all the paraphernalia for celebrating Mass. His
ancestors had hidden these sacred objects there when the mission was
sacked by Apaches, he did not know how many generations ago. The secret
had been handed down in his family, and I was the first priest who had
ever come to restore to God his own. To me, that is the situation in a
parable. The Faith, in that wild frontier, is like a buried treasure;
they guard it, but they do not know how to use it to their soul's
salvation. A word, a prayer, a service, is all that is needed to set
free those souls in bondage. I confess I am covetous of that mission. I
desire to be the man who restores these lost children to God. It will be
the greatest happiness of my life."
The Bishop did not reply at once to this appeal. At last he said
gravely, "You must realize that I have need of you here, Father Joseph.
My duties are too many for one man."
"But you do not need me so much as they do!" Father Joseph threw off his
coverings and sat up in his cassock, putting his feet to the ground.
"Any one of our good French priests from Montferrand can serve you here.
It is work that can be done by intelligence. But down there it is work
for the heart, for a particular sympathy, and none of our new priests
understand those poor natures as I do. I have almost become a Mexican! I
have learned to like _chili colorado_ and mutton fat. Their foolish ways
no longer offend me, their very faults are dear to me. I am _their
man_!"
"Ah, no doubt, no doubt! But I must insist upon your lying down for the
present."
Father Vaillant, flushed and excited, dropped back upon his pillows, and
the Bishop took a short turn through the garden,--to the row of tamarisk
trees and back. He walked slowly, with even, unhesitating pace, with
that slender, unrigid erectness, and the fine carriage of head, which
always made him seem master of the situation. No one would have guessed
that a sharp struggle was going on within him. Father Joseph's
impassioned request had spoiled a cherished plan, and brought Father
Latour a bitter personal disappointment. There was but one thing to
do,--and before he reached the tamarisks he had done it. He broke off a
spray of the dry lilac-coloured flowers to punctuate and seal, as it
were, his renunciation. He returned with the same easy, deliberate
tread, and stood smiling beside the army cot.
"Your feeling must be your guide in this matter, Joseph. I shall put no
obstacles in your way. A certain care for your health I must insist
upon, but when you are quite well, you must follow the duty that calls
loudest."
They were both silent for a few moments. Father Joseph closed his eyes
against the sunlight, and Father Latour stood lost in thought, drawing
the plume of tamarisk blossom absently through his delicate, rather
nervous fingers. His hands had a curious authority, but not the calmness
so often seen in the hands of priests; they seemed always to be
investigating and making firm decisions.