Music: El Corazon.Yo te he de amar,te he de amarhasta muerte,Y si pudiera—Yo te a maria despues.CHAPTER VII
Music: El Corazon.Yo te he de amar,te he de amarhasta muerte,Y si pudiera—Yo te a maria despues.
Yo te he de amar,te he de amarhasta muerte,Y si pudiera—Yo te a maria despues.
Yo te he de amar,te he de amarhasta muerte,Y si pudiera—Yo te a maria despues.
M
He had crossed the ranges twice and returned, but the City of the Angels had lost its old witchery.
The rose-tinted dawns, and the amethystine dusks were beautiful as ever, but to banish the memories he had once dreamed over there, he galloped alone to the harbor called "The Hell of California," and lay all one day on the beach, and stared moodily at the waves whipping the yellow sands of San Pedro.
To the south there, far beyond the prosaic stretch of grazing-lands bordered by the sea, beyond all the tame levels where the water was green or yellow in the shallows, beyond all the jutting points, veiled in the miles of mists, he could follow in his mind eachcurve, until the one valley of beauty would gleam like a green jewel seen from the cliffs of San Juan.
And at the foot of those cliffs there were no flat stretches of color such as make weary the eye; the water there held all the shimmering, bewitching, iridescence of a peacock's feathers,—the gold and purple, the greens and the blues ever changing,—the strange touch of pink making it all glorious in certain glints of the sunlight; and at the edge of it all, the fringe of foam—a string of pearls shattered on the brown cliffs or sandy beach, and gathered up to be dashed again and again and again—the endless garniture of old Ocean's robe.
Never on any other shore had mere waves, running to the sand, the same witchery. Alvara had said that all men came back some day to San Juan. What witchery was it by which its mesa and its valley and its wonderful shore were forever set apart from other shores of California? Some mystery of life brooded there from sea to mountain, suggesting so much which was left for poor humanity to solve; it was only a whispered suggestion, dim and delightful, as the music of the waves heard from the Mission plaza, or as dreamy as the high film of fog, drifting high up and tempering the sun's rays until they fell softly as a benediction on the valley between blue sea and blue summit.
Never on Any Other Shore“Never on Any Other Shore”
“Never on Any Other Shore”
His own life stretched before him like the brown levels and yellow flatness of San Pedro; and there to the south, miles across the ranges, was the heart of the dreamland he must not enter: another man had that claim under fence. He gave voice to some self-condemnation of a sort reserved for men who golocoover a woman who forgets, and after hours of brooding there alone by the shore, arrived at only one decision—the California of the south ranges was no longer his own. All the width of it was now narrowed to one little valley, where the poppies flamed over forgotten graves and adobe walls, and the doves circled above a ruined chancel.
He rode into town, where some kind friends mentioned that Don Rafael Arteaga and his bride were beingfêtedby the leading Spanish families of Los Angeles, and he was invited to a dinner in their honor a week hence.
"I go to Mexico—I start to-day," he answered, briefly. Ten minutes before, he had not thought of it.
"To Mexico? You cover ground fast these days, Don Keith. On the new road of iron they mean to make, you could not go so much faster than on the horses you ride; you have the good American luck in the pick of them."
"Yes, the good American luck!" said Keith Bryton,with a touch of bitterness. "May your saints send you a better!"
A man who stood near, and who much desired the invitation Bryton had refused, shrugged his shoulders as the Americano mounted his horse and rode away.
"What better luck could a man have, than a chance to meet Doña Raquel Estevan de Arteaga?" he queried of any who might care to answer. "The bishop himself shows her honor, and they say she is working for the Church against Downing, the Englishman, who holds the Mission lands under Pico's sale. Sixteen years has the Church fought for those lands in the courts; if she gets them back, she deserves the pope's blessing. And the fool boy of an Americano rides south when he could meet her—perhaps touch her hand!"
But the fool Americano rode south and kept on riding south for many dusty days. He crossed a corner of the Yaqui country, and then across the ranges to the old mine, called the Mine of the Temple—the one of which he had told Don Juan Alvara—was it so few weeks ago? It might have been years instead of weeks, by his own feeling and attitude of mind. He was riding back a different man. He evaded the few Mexicans as he neared the mine; no turn of the trail was lonely for him. Memorykept pace, and the murmur of one girl's voice spoke through the rustling leaves of the mountains.
A travelling priest, jubilant at the idea of comradeship, hailed him in one of the mountain passes, and found him but a sorry companion.
"This is a country," said the padre, "where the sight of a white face is most welcome. Six months since I was sent to this parish, and few of them have I seen. Now, I ride out of my way just to talk with an American who works a mine up here. Your brother, is it? Well, he has a good name with the brown folks. A lot of pagans they are! It is not a priest they need here; it is a missionary the bishop should send to teach them their religion anew. If ever they had any, it has been lost."
But it was evidently the opinion of the padre that they had never really secured any to lose. He discoursed at some length on the failure of the Church to impress upon them the advantage of marriage. Few were the wedding fees to be obtained from the Mexicans, while the heathen Indians had some form of their own, arranged by the head of their clan, and it was a disgrace to a land held under cross and crown for two centuries—an endless shame!
Keith assented, without heeding the list of Indian iniquities. He was rather glad, after all, that Teddyhad a civilized neighbor, willing to be companionable. Teddy liked people too well to exile himself from them but for the one thing—to go back north, able to cover one white throat with pearls, or two white hands with diamonds.
His greeting of his half-brother was a bit shy, though wholly glad, and the padre served to bridge over the first few awkward moments. Both men recognized the fact of a change in each since the Los Angeles days. Teddy thought it due only to his clandestine marriage, and Keith felt guilty as he realized how little, how very little, Teddy's marriage meant to him now. While the padre was getting acquainted with the Mexican, the two brothers walked apart, and talked of the chances of the mine's success, and the failure of the backers to see the necessity of using money more freely on the enterprise.
"It's there, you know," insisted Teddy; "all this district is flooded with stories of the ore taken out of it in the first days of the Spaniards; then the Indians descended upon them, and there was a slaughter, and no Spaniard dared venture into these hills for a century."
"Yes. We put in a good many fruitless days trailing those old legends," assented Keith, "but only the Indian superstition tends to show that thisis the real mine of that history. The rich one may not have been on this side of the mountain, since you have not yet struck the lode."
"Don't let's talk about it, if you feel that way," suggested Teddy, "I hear plenty of that from the others; and you didn't really come all the way down here to talk mines. Say, old chap, you acted like a prince over the—well, the wedding. I felt pretty nearly three inches higher when I got your letter. I—I know I acted like a kid, but Angela wanted it arranged so; and—as she about filled the whole horizon—"
"Cut out the explanation, Teddy. A man is never sure of himself until the right woman crosses his trail—or the wrong one. God knows I'm not fit for alcalde in the case. At least, you married your wife."
Teddy stared at him an instant, and then shouted with laughter.
"Married my wife? Well, rather! How else could she be my wife?"
Keith avoided the frank boyish blue eyes of Teddy, and turned away, seating himself on a great bowlder and staring across the little semicircle of the cañon basin, to where gnarled century-old trees reached grotesque arms above some old stone ruins and fragments of marble. Teddy looked at him an instant, and then whistled softly.
"If it were any other man than you, Keith, I'd think—but it's too ridiculous!"
"Say it," suggested Keith.
"Well, I'd say the wrong woman had crossedyourtrail."
"Not the wrong one."
"Good Lord! you don't mean that by any chance it is at last the right one?"
"At last—the right woman."
"And you sit there looking as solemn over it as a wooden Mexican god! Wake up, old fellow, and tell about her."
"There is nothing to tell. She is the right woman, and I shall never see her again."
"Keith!"
"And I've come back here to tell myself so," continued Keith, doggedly; "to say it over and over, and beat it into my brain, if I have any left. The desert didn't help me—I thought this might."
"This?"
"These hills, and—speaking of it."
His brother said nothing, only looked at him in wonder, as he rose with hands thrust in pockets and walked the length of the little terrace formed by the refuse of the mine. The two brothers had changed places. It was now Keith, the cool, theindifferent, who had crossed some line of emotional experience where speech was a relief—Keith, of all men! Teddy wondered who the woman could be; she would be worth seeing.
"So you see, Ted," observed the other, with a forced laugh, "you need not explain things to me. When the woman comes, none of us cares much what the other fellow thinks."
"If she is the right woman, I'm mighty sorry, old man, that it's going to be as you say—that you are not going to see her again."
"Don't waste good sorrow! I'm the only fool in the case—she doesn't care."
"That's not so easy to believe," declared Teddy, loyally. "You probably only asked her once, and then hit the trail before she could change her mind."
"Ask her. When people care, words are not so necessary."
"Perhaps not, but girls do expect words; though the right girl—"
"She doesn't know that she was the right girl; I may not have made it clear. I was a fool who dreamed dreams and believed them true. Talking about it doesn't help. I thought it might; that's all."
He continued to walk the terrace, as though with a certain impatience at having let go of himself. Teddyregarded him for a few moments of awkward silence. Keith had never been demonstrative, and this sudden confidence caught Teddy unprepared. He felt ill at ease, realizing that it was no light sentiment, causing him to let go of himself and speak.
"I reckon this particular mountain must be bewitched," he said at last. "The only other time you talked of a girl—any special girl—was after we were led across yon range by that girl of the convent. Even then you talked of her only when the knock on your head sent you luny. What was the name they called her? Spirit—Doña Spirit—Doña Espiritu! That is it! I really thought for a few days of your ravings that we were going to have a nun in the family; and now it's a new girl!"
Keith regarded him for a moment, then in silence took out tobacco and made a cigarette. Of what use were words?
"I always wondered who that girl was and what became of her," continued Teddy. "The old padre was as dumb as an oyster on the subject. Did you learn more than her name?"
"Not much," said Keith, briefly.
"I always meant to. Funny how those crack-brained Indians let up on the attack that night, when she slipped that ring on your finger and held up yourhand for them to see. It was the last thing I noted before I keeled over. Those Indians have not forgotten that. They knew when I came back here, and they seemed to watch either the mine or me,—I don't know which it is. Once they asked an old Mexican for you; he speaks their lingo. They described you as 'the man of the ring.'"
"That's queer."
"Did the girl tell you what the ring meant?"
"Meant?" repeated Keith, questioningly.
"Yes. To the tribe, it means more than a mere ring. The old Mexican gathered that much. It had something the significance of a sceptre, and was worn only by one of the rulers in the old days. When that girl put it on your finger, the tribe thought it meant that she had picked you out for marriage. She didn't tell you?"
"No, she didn't tell me."
"Well, it's all that saved our lives that night. You know the old padre is dead. It was he did the sleight-of-hand work in getting the girl out of sight before you got on your feet again. With some threat of eternal flames, he shut the lips of every Mexican I tried to bribe to find her."
Keith took the cigarette from his lips, and looked at him without speaking. Teddy smiled and nodded.
"Yes, I looked for her without your knowing it. You came nearer going 'over the range' in that fever than you ever realized. The English doctor down there asked me who the devil 'Espiritu' was, and said that she could probably do more to lower your temperature than his drugs. I tried to locate her, as soon as I could hobble on a crutch, but it was no use. The padre said she had taken the black veil: that shut us out."
"Yes, of course," assented Keith, absently.
"You never mentioned her name after you got on your feet, so I figured that it did not really mean anything. Girls never did mean much to you, individually, Keith,—until now."
"Until now."
"And now it's no use, since you can't see her again."
Keith puffed away in thoughtful silence before he spoke.
"Perhaps not. Yet—quien sabe? A sentiment may be like a sunrise, lifting clouds for you and making you see things—things within yourself you never suspected were there. Our trail in these hills followed the light of the morning star once, and we got out of the wilderness to safety: that star has meant something to me ever since. I can't possess it,but the meaning of it is mine. I can't give myself to the right woman,"—and he held out his hand and looked at it,—"but no conventions of the world, no man-made walls can prevent the thought of me from going to her—the thought which, after all, is the real me. When that is so, who can say that even an unknown love has not its own uses? It may prove the illumination of a whole lifetime."
Teddy, with wonder in his eyes, laid his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Old man, that kind of feeling is beyond me. I want my girl with me, and I want her mighty bad. I've lived beside you all my life, and never dreamed it was in you to care like that for any woman. It only shows how little we know, after all."
"Yes; how little, after all, until the right woman crosses the trail."
"The chances are that we can never talk of it again. I know youthatmuch! I told you this old hill of the temple was uncanny—bewitched,—and it is. You never would have mentioned this to me in civilized places."
"Perhaps not," agreed Keith. "And you're right—I could never speak of it again."
They never did. That night they talked only of Teddy's enterprise, and covered much paper with many figures, and made fine plans for the future.
The next day it was that Keith, hunting in the hills, heard an unusual blast from the mine, felt the ground tremble from the shock, and turning back on the trail, met a Mexican with a bleeding hand and a cut face, who urged him to hasten. It was the word of the padre!
He reached Teddy's side only in time to accept "Angela—poor little Angela—" as a life-long legacy. There had been an explosion. Graves were made for the young engineer and three of his Mexican miners on the side of the mountain. When it was all over, Keith Bryton climbed to the heights above, where the broken walls of stone showed white and gray among forest growth on the temple terrace. Below, and beyond the ranges, lay the world. In his isolation of grief, he felt as alone as the solitary mountain rising from the plain below, through which a river ran. Far down the river, miles away, gleamed a cross on the chapel of a convent. It was the old Mexican pueblo of which he had told Alvara. He remembered saying to the old man that he would never come back; yet here he was. How useless to say what one will or will not do in this world! One must make allowance for the moves fate insists upon in the game of life.
Back of him, on a slight elevation, stood somebroken columns, and half an arch yet showed where an entrance had been, and under a dwarfed and twisted oak half covered with tropical vines a bench of marble gleamed. Two birds fluttered to the ground near him and turned inquisitive eyes on the intruder. He watched them carelessly, until one of them perched on a fallen block of stone ornamented with the sculptured sun of the Aztecs. It brought back like a flash that other day when he went from the presence of death to a ruined altar-place, where the Aztec sun and the cactus commemorated some unknown Mexican sculptor who cut the symbol of the faith of his people into the walls of a Christian church.
He closed his eyes, and the vision of that other day was only intensified. The wind in the oaks back of him sounded like the surf on San Juan's beach; and through it the slow, fateful words of a girl kneeling in her wedding-veil echoed in his ears as it had done a thousand times:
"So long—as—we—both—shall live!"
There were no weeping girls here, and no bells to toll out the death message; but otherwise the atmosphere of the place, and the illusion, were perfect. How—how had he chanced to enter into this half-pagan atmosphere of death? Unconsciously,automatically, he turned and re-turned on his finger the onyx ring at which Angela had laughed.
He was still seated there when the miners who had filled the graves came up the path, and with them the priest from the plains below. The Mexicans halted outside the broken walls. Only one Indian, who had followed at a distance, crossed the line of entrance, and stood apart, watching and listening in a furtive way—watching the American especially.
"Many times I have heard of this place," said the priest, "but never before have I been so far into the mountain. There are strange old traditions of it in the accounts some of the early padres left. Their king or chief became Christian and gave his sons to the Church, but the main body of the people kept to many of their pagan rites. And this was their temple. The men ask me if you continue with the mining, señor."
He noticed they all listened for the answer, and looked relieved when he said, "No."
"They are all very glad, señor. They ask me to tell you they have no ill will, but they say not any of their men will go into the mine of the temple."
"Some superstition?"
"It seems so. They say one man always dies when outsiders meddle with the mountain, but neverbefore have three men died at once. They ask you to let the company know that none of them will come back."
"Very good," and Bryton arose and picked up the sombrero he had dropped beside him. "I will tell them to bring foreigners if they mean to keep on; but I doubt it. The cave-in down there means a fortune to dig out. I don't think they have the capital."
He was turning away, when he noticed the Indian.
"Is he a workman?"
The others exchanged glances, and then one of them stepped forward.
"No, señor. He is one of the mountain people. No one knows where they live. I know a little of their talk. He says for us all to go away, or worse things will always happen. He—he wants to speak to you."
"Well?"
The man hesitated, and then said a few words, and the Indian replied in a strange jargon with peculiar aspirated syllables.
"He says," continued the interpreter, hesitatingly, "to ask if she is to come back."
"She?"
Bryton's face flushed, as the priest looked at him curiously.
"You have known those people before?"
"I—my brother and I were lost once in the forest here. We—well, we were made to feel we had trespassed; but some one—a sort of missionary among them—made them lead us to the plain. It would have been better if my brother had never come back."
"And—?"
The priest noticed Bryton's hesitation; so did the Indian, for he walked direct to him, and pointed to the ring he wore, and looked from the ring to Bryton's face.
"Tell him," said the American, "that she is a man's wife, and lives in a lovely land."
"You see her—some day?" asked the Indian.
"No—not ever again—perhaps."
The Indian bent his head, and with a slight gesture as of farewell, turned and walked swiftly away from them, around the bend of the mountain.
"Your words have an unusual interest," said the priest, as they walked down toward the plain. "They suggest that the missionary might be the one they spoke of here as the Indian nun."
"This lady was not Indian," said Keith, decidedly. "Her skin was whiter than either yours or mine. The Indians called her Doña Espiritu! It was the only name they knew her by."
"It was the same, and her father's name was Estevan," said the priest, quietly.
"Yes, I know now. His name was Estevan, but—"
"And he was the man who died the awful death up there." And he pointed back to the temple.
"No!" Bryton stopped on the path and faced the priest, thus halting the entire procession at a point where a yawning gulf of a cañon reached to unseen depths below.
"For the love of Christ—señor!" screamed the priest, while the Mexicans in the rear clung to their burros and swore.
"The man who was killed left no child," persisted Bryton. "I heard the story."
"A daughter was born six months after his death—after the wife had taken the black veil of eternal renunciation of the world," declared the priest, solemnly. "Now, señor, for the love of God, will you let us find safer footing?"
"Oh, yes. Pardon me!" and Bryton continued thoughtfully along the trail to the plain below. When they reached a broader road where it was possible to ride abreast, he asked one more question.
"Father, does she know?"
"Not unless some in the world have told her.Here, the old priest, her uncle, had power enough over the wild tribe to make them promise they would not tell her until she had lived twenty years. He died ten years ago, but they kept faith. There are some people in the world who had to know,—the lawyers and judges who settled the estate,—for Estevan was a man of wealth. He carried wounds here from the war for California. The child thought he died from the effects of those. Out in the world where she has gone, that wild barbaric outbreak of her mother's people will never be known; and of the few who have learned it who would tell her?"
"True, father: who would?"
Music: La Passion Funesta.CHAPTER VIII
Music: La Passion Funesta.
H
He did not go north for a month. His letter to Angela contained a check, which she at once invested in very becoming mourning, for which she of course had to journey to Los Angeles.
With her went Don Eduardo Downing and his wife, Doña Maria, who, with Rafael, had unpleasant business to transact with the bishop, and were irritable in consequence. Bryton called upon them at the home of the ex-Governor of California. After Angela's first emotional outburst at the details of Teddy's death and burial,—and regret that a Protestant clergyman was not to be had,—she managed to come back to subjects nearer home, and retail a few of the changes since the death of Doña Luisa.
There had not been time for many. Yet—well—there had been the marriage, of course; and therelations who thought it so fine a thing that Rafael married an heiress and a saint were not so sure now. The tone of Angela and her slight shrug of contempt showed that she shared their doubts.
Raquel Estevan de Arteaga was in the city. She had ridden the sixty miles on horseback, and all the old Spanish families were entertaining her in a style magnificent as their means would allow; but all who cared to have her must invite no heretic Americans, and it was understood to be a promise to Doña Luisa. She did not wish to meet the English-speaking people; not one had yet crossed her threshold; even Don Eduardo, sharing some business interests with her husband, was not welcomed, because he held fields of the old Mission, for which the Church was fighting in the courts of law.
The bishop himself had set the pace for courtesy toward Raquel. He had called on her personally, had a long private interview (Angela's opinion of clerical private interviews with young wives was expressed by another shrug), and he made a point of calling on several families where she visited.
Doña Maria was of course justly offended. Her estates had been greater than those of the Arteagas, and her family name was older in the land than Estevan, which after all was only Spanish for Stevens.On this subject it was easy to see Angela agreed perfectly with the wife of her cousin. Each had built her own plan for certain social supremacies in the little kingdom of San Juan, but neither had reckoned with the fact that the girl from a convent in Mexico would assume a rule there such as no one else had ever dared attempt, and emphasize it by barring out heretics, even when married into Catholic families.
What Rafael thought of it no one yet knew. He hated the old Mission, above all places. The only time it was worth while was when the dances were held in the old dining-room; and when his mother died he thought of course no woman would ever wish to live there. A town residence was assured, and thus closer connection with the new, progressive people. But the bride of a day had decided differently: when a home befitting their station was built for her in San Juan, she would move to it; until then the Mission rooms would serve, and they must arrange it with the bishop.
To tell her that the bishop no longer had jurisdiction over the property was of no use whatever. She had listened quietly to the legal details of the auction sale, when it had all been bought by Eduardo Downing and Miguel Arteaga.
"That is right, to buy it when the place was sold for debt; any son of the Church should do that," she conceded; "but to hold it,—to treat it as a quarry from which to mine bricks and blocks of stone,—may the saints intercede for your brother in his grave, who did such wickedness! If your mother had known that a son of hers was fighting in the courts of law against the Church, it would have killed her the day the word reached her. If you people value money more than the blessing of God, I will give you money for it—to you and your English partner; but not another blast of powder must shatter the place of the altar."
It was in vain they told her Doña Maria had a pious plan to blow down the stonework—the most magnificent monument of such Indian labor ever erected in that part of Mexico which is now United States,—and to build on its site an adobe chapel of her own design. Raquel Estevan de Arteaga listened quietly to all the plans, but shook her head.
"It is sacrilege; it shall not be," she repeated. "Since gold is the god of the English people, we will give them gold."
"But you forget, beloved," put in Rafael. "Doña Maria is Catholic—is Spanish—is—"
"Rafael," said his bride, quietly, "will you listen a little? Then it will be no need to speak of thosethings again—we will both understand. The padre comes a stranger to San Juan as I do, but he comes from a strange land, and cares not anything for these different races. But I have all the names of those people from your mother, that I know whom to avoid in this life—and in the next."
"My mother was one of the old Spanish people; they were slow. Times change."
"Yes, times did change when men like Alvarado were pushed aside and a quadroon ruled the politics and the Mission property. Thus California paved the way for American rule. In politics and business men must meet unpleasant people often, but it is not ever necessary for the ladies of any family to do so; and, Rafael, here before your padre, two things I must say. The heretics I have promised never to meet except as God sends them in our path. As for the Spanish ladies you mention, if you do not know that there is not a woman of noble Spanish blood in the length of this valley, then you shut your eyes very tight when you might see. The daughters of Don Juan Alvara have one Spanish strain in them; the others are mixed people of Mexican, Indian, and negro, and few of them care to remember their grandmothers. When you bring into my house Spanish ladies of good breeding, I shall be gladto make them welcome, but I do not care for the substitutes. The Indios by the river are of more interest, for they need to be taught."
This conversation had been repeated by Padre Andros to Doña Maria over a game ofmalillaand a glass of the new American drink called whiskey,—a gift from the army officers, and enjoyed very much by the ladies of San Juan; it suggested a drink made of chilis, because of the appetizing burn it gave the throat.
Padre Andros was frightened when he saw the effect of his recital. Doña Maria was not so stout as most of the women of the mixed races; but as he saw the dark color mount luridly to her face, and her eyes look almost bloodshot with sudden fury, he set down the glass of whiskey to cross himself, and dropped an ace in his perturbation.
"For the love of God! señora," he exclaimed; and then it was Angela entered the room and found her cousin's wife ill with a fury she durst express only in prayers and maledictions against this girl brought to San Juan by Doña Luisa to ruin them all!
Only fragments of the cause of her fury reached Angela, despite all her sudden sympathetic interest in the wife of her cousin, to whom she had heretofore been rather indifferent. But she pieced the fragmentstogether, and as she told them to Bryton he could, with his own knowledge of the early racial mixtures in the land, get a very fair idea of the situation. The girl from Mexico had dared open the closet of a forgotten skeleton.
"Of course she rules Rafael just now, to a certain extent," conceded Angela, carelessly. "He sees the Church and half the town at her feet here; she is a novelty, and he sees everyone turn to look at her. But at San Juan she will find no one at her feet, and her churchmen will be far enough away. The padre there detests her; she stopped him from selling bricks from the cloister pillars."
"The padre and Doña Maria should make a strong team," observed Bryton. "The woman need be strong to win against them—is she?"
"How do I know? I've never spoken to her. She has nasty eyes. That's all I can remember of her."
"Nasty?"
"Oh, it is the expression. I saw them once, and she made me nervous. Perhaps it was because she divined that I was one of the 'accursed heretics.' I understand that is the way the lower order speak of Protestants!"
"But she cannot be quite of the lower order, can she? Her father was of the best Spanish andAmerican blood ever joined on this coast, far above the Arteagas."
"Oh! So you also look up pedigrees here; I wonder why."
"It is a country where you hear of them without question," he returned, indifferently. "The people are always sparring among themselves and referring to their ancestors—if they dare. Doña Luisa was a pure-blood Spanish woman, but the Arteagas had a bad Indian and Mexican streak. She saw it develop in her own children, and it gave her a bad fright. She counted on this marriage bringing the last of them back to the old conservative manner of life."
"Ah!" She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously; "but you forget that Raquel, the present Señora Arteaga, has also a Mexican streak."
"No, I don't forget; but there are high class and low of every race. Noble Indians and high-class Mexicans have gone into history. The American makes a great mistake when he judges the high classes by the masses. In this land one has to dig out the facts of each individual line, if he wants to know the truth of a pedigree. But the lady from Mexico seems to have drawn her distinctions very closely, and realizing her own superiority, she dares dictate."
"Even to her—husband?" There was just the slightest possible hesitation at the title.
"Why not, if she is the superior?"
"But—oh, can't you see how all these marriages are a barter-and-sale family affair,—money that is married, instead of people? If she was in love with him as a—a real woman would be, she never would know she was superior, never! Not that I believe she is," she added with a shrug; "to me she looks as wooden as the saints on her own altar."
He arose and walked to the window, staring out over the heads of the people.
"She may not be wooden to those she cares for," he said at last.
"Perhaps not; but I'm certain of one thing: if she ever cared for any one, it is not the man she married. If she cared, she would forget that rigid fanatic sense of duty sometimes."
"I came to talk of your affairs," he said, abruptly. "Teddy left some mining shares; they may pan out later on. I have talked with a lawyer about them; this is his address," and he handed her a slip of paper. "Whatever funds are procurable he will turn over to you quarterly. Is there anything else I can do for you at present?"
"Yes," she returned; "you might be a bit humanand sympathetic. You seem to forget," and her red lip quivered in self-pity, "how utterly alone I am among these Mexicans, and all their women jealous as fiends."
He regarded her with a long, steady stare, and then smiled as he rose.
"I don't blame them," he observed, quietly. "You have given more attention to several of their men than you ever gave to poor Ted. Where's your baby?"
"Heavens! Do you suppose I could drag her on this trip, and a Mexican or Indian nurse?" she demanded, impatiently. "That's so like a man! They think a woman with a child should be merely a domestic animal, like those dunces of Spanish women. I feel as if I were in jail, hedged around with all their conventions. I don't dare walk on the street alone, or with a man; I don't dare ride in a carriage with a man, and it's no pleasure to go with those empty-headed women. Doña Maria is as bad as the rest since I'm in mourning; it is a sort of prison, forbidding the wearer a free breath!"
"Take it off," he suggested, so quietly that he quite deceived her, and she uttered a little cry of shocked appeal.
"Keith! And poor Teddy—"
"Angela!" and his hand fell heavy on her shoulder, "listen to me just once. When Ted was alive I could bear to hear you mention his name, but now that he is dead I—can't. He belongs to me now, and I forbid it."
"Keith!" She gasped again, but this time in sheer fright. "And the money—the shares you—"
He laughed mirthlessly, and took his hand from her shoulder. His moment of feeling gave place to amused appreciation of the real woman poor Ted had never known.
"Who says women are inconsistent?" he queried. "You are a living illustration of the contrary. I have never seen you vary a hair's-breadth from my first instinctive feeling concerning you, you pretty baby kitten! You needn't look so frightened; you will get whatever money is in reach. Now, don't go to whimpering! Get on your bonnet, if Doña Maria may think it allowable for me to take you both for a carriage drive. I promised Ted to do things for you, and I must make a beginning."
"Is that the only reason?" she began, with righteous indignation.
"That is the only reason, my lady," he returned. "Are you coming?"
A little later they were rolling along Spring Street,past the plaza, and many heads turned to look at the golden-haired girlish little figure in mourning, drooping beside Doña Maria, whose rigid, unsmiling, dark features were the best possible foil. Keith Bryton, sitting opposite, noticed the admiration she aroused. The caballeros who had swept sombreros to the ground at the passage of the carriage in which Raquel and the bishop were riding did so as a matter of reverence to a devotee; but the rule of the woman whom Keith had called a baby kitten would always be one of childish appeal, personal to a degree.
Looking at her cynically, he tried to fancy her twenty years ahead,—the mother of a grown daughter,—but failed. The daughter would have to be guardian; the mother would always need one. She was watching him furtively to see the effect this open admiration might have upon him. He was the one man of them all who had ever dared treat her so carelessly. His attitude had piqued her to the point where she had a brief tigerish desire to rend his heart—his affections—if he had any! And Teddy was the weapon.
Of course she had regretted it all—there were other men with so much more money. Still, as it had turned out, it was not so bad. She was installed as a member of his family, and that wasbetter than to depend entirely on the cousinship to the Mexican Doña Maria. She was really a little afraid of the swarthy black-browed women of the country. To be sure, they sat around in fat content, with their bits of embroidery or drawn work, and seemed to see nothing else; but she had seen Doña Maria whip an Indian servant with her own hands one day, and the blind rage in the dark face had ever after made Angela a trifle more respectful. It was not nice to be entirely at the mercy of ignorant power. Don Eduardo was always ready with gold pieces for a pretty woman, but even the distant cousinhood might not be all the protection required for a lady of Angela's beauty, if any animosity should ever take root in Doña Maria's mind.
So it was all well as things stood. Keith Bryton would, she knew, keep to both letter and spirit of any promise he had made poor Teddy, and she felt sure the fond boy had exacted much of the brother who he thought could accomplish all things.
Thus she decided, as she watched and weighed his apparent amused indifference to the admiration she excited. Fair women were at a premium in the City of the Angels. He had just arrived from the dusky tribes of Mexico; before that he had ranged the desert land; but she realized with resentment that nobeauty of hers would ever make an oasis for him. The men who did admire her he regarded as fools.
He saw her glance from him, and she set her white teeth together with a little click of absolute frustration. She had accepted his ungracious invitation in order to show him the admiration her mere appearance on the drive would excite, and it all weighed not an iota. Would he ever really care for any one? Had he ever cared?
Then he moved his hand, and the sun gleamed on the ring he wore, the Mexican onyx with the Aztec eagle. It recalled the adventure over which she had laughed at the Mission. She had never believed Teddy when he declared that Keith's attraction for that queer Mexican nun was a serious fact. Teddy knew so little, so very little, of the real feelings of either men or women. He had gone to his death buoyed for any sort of adventure by the absolute conviction that his wife adored him. Poor Teddy! Never would any woman be able to fool Keith Bryton like that,—not even the woman he would care for, if she ever did appear.
While she thought so, and watched him, his face grew suddenly rigid and colorless. The carriage of the bishop came down the street, the palomentos with their golden coats and silver manes and tails shininglike satin in the sunlight. Rafael sat with his back to the horses, looking very much bored indeed, but beside the bishop sat the woman who had faced her on the hill of San Juan, and who had held her horse in the middle of the road.
She was prepared for the sudden light of appreciation in Rafael's beautiful eyes, as he lifted his hat and let his glance linger and meet hers for one swift instant of comprehension, but she was not prepared for the sudden leaning forward of his dark-browed bride, and the quick look with which she took in the two women in the carriage, and then the colorless face of their escort.
He looked at her levelly as he lifted his hat in acknowledgment of her husband's salutation. If his glance held ever so slight a suggestion of warning, it was unheeded by her. Her dark eyes glowed, her red lips parted and lost their color as she rested one slender jewelled hand on the carriage frame, and stared at him with incredulous eyes; one could see that she did not even breathe as the carriages whirled past each other; at least Angela noted it.
By turning her head she saw Rafael put out his hand suddenly to his wife, who had sunk back on the cushions beside the bishop. His manner suggested that he thought her ill. Keith could see the samewithout turning his head. But even after he observed the lace-draped shoulders straighten themselves, and the head held again proudly erect under the mantilla, he continued to gaze after them, unconscious that the blue eyes opposite him were alive with curiosity.
"One would think you were a long-lost brother, from the way that woman stared," she remarked. "One would think she would show more restraint when riding in state beside the bishop, and with her husband opposite."
Keith recovered himself and turned his attention to her.
"Was that Rafael Arteaga's wife?" he asked, carelessly. "I supposed it was, but have not had the honor of being presented."
"Well, they told me she would not notice heretics, but one heretic was the only person she noticed in this carriage. How she looked at you! I told you she had nasty staring eyes, like augers boring through one. Did you see, Doña Maria? Did you not fear she would disgrace us all by leaping into the carriage?"
Doña Maria's black, bead-like eyes were regarding the young man curiously.
"It may be a custom of Mexico for ladies to show attention to strange men in that way," she observed, guardedly. "It may be so. I had never heard of it.The new lady of the Mission is teaching San Juan many new things, but I do not think she will teach it that sort of manners. They do not compare well with the American ladies' manners—no?"
"I fancy it was only as your escort she was gracious enough to turn and look at me; she might have fancied I was known to her. She looks very young."
"You would forget she was young if you heard her talk to the padre," returned Doña Maria, significantly. "It was enough to bring a malediction on all our heads to listen to it!"
"The bishop has forgiven her; at least it looks so."
"Oh, she is clever! He thinks she is a saint, this bishop. But the padre knows!"
She did not add, "and I know," but her thin cold lips with their satisfied smile suggested as much, and Bryton, observing it, felt anew that the girl from Mexico had a strong team to fight in Doña Maria and the padre.