"Mr. Gore came back with you," he said to Mariquita as she joined him. Gore had gone round to the stables with his horse.
"Yes. As he came back from Maxwell he passed the place where I was sitting, and we came on together—after talking for a time."
Mariquita did not think her father was cross-examining her. Nor was he. He was not given to inquisitiveness, and seldom scrutinized her doings.
"Mr. Gore," she continued, "went to Maxwell for the sake of going to Mass."
"So he is a Catholic!" And Mariquita observed with pleasure that her father spoke in a tone of satisfaction. He had never before appeared to be in the least concerned with the religion of any of the men about the place.
That night, after Sarella and Mariquita had gone to bed, Don Joaquin had another satisfaction. He and Gore were alone, smoking; all the large party ate together, but the cowboys went off to their own quarters after meals. Only Don Joaquin, his daughter, Sarella and Gore slept in the dwelling-house. So high up above sea-level, it was cold enough at night, and the log fire was pleasant.
What gave him satisfaction was that Gore asked him about the price of a range, and whether a suitable one was to be had anywhere near.
"It would not be," Don Joaquin bade him note, "the price of the range only. Without some capital it would be throwing money away to buy one."
"Of course. What would range and stock and all cost?"
"That would depend on the size of the range, and the amount of stock it would bear. And also on whether the range were very far out, like this one. If it were near a town and the railway, it would cost more to buy."
Gore quite understood that, and Don Joaquin spoke of "Blaine's" range. "It lies nearer Maxwell than this. But it is not so large, and Blaine has never made much of it—he had not capital enough to put on it the stock it should have had, and he was never the right man. A townsman in all his bones, and his wife towny too. And their girls worse. Hewantsto clear. He will never do good there."
The two men discussed the matter at some length. It seemed to the elder of them that Gore would seriously entertain the plan, and had the money for the purchase.
"I have thought sometimes," said Joaquin, "of buying Blaine's myself."
"Of course, I would not think of it if you wanted it. I would not even make any inquiry—that would be sending the price up."
"Yes. But, if you decide to go in for it, I shall not mind. I have land enough and stock enough, and work enough. I should have bought it if I had a son growing up."
It was satisfactory to Don Joaquin to find that Gore could buy a large range and afford capital to stock it. If he went on with such a purchase it would prove him "substantial as to conditions." And he was a Catholic, also a good thing.
Only Sarella should be a Catholic also. "So you went down to Maxwell to go to Mass," he said, just as they were putting out their pipes to go to bed. "That was not out of place. Perhaps one Saturday we may go down together."
Gore said, of course, that he would be glad of his company.
"It would not be myself only," Don Joaquin explained; "I should take my daughter and her cousin."
When Gore had an opportunity of telling this to Mariquita she was full of gladness.
"See," she said, "how strong good example is!"
"Is your cousin, then, also a Catholic?" he asked, surprised without knowing why.
"Oh, no! My father regrets it, and would like her to be one. That shows he thinks of religion more than you might have guessed."
Gore thought that it showed something else as well. It did not, however, seem to have occurred to Mariquita that her father wanted to marry her cousin.
Sarella strongly approved the idea of going down, all four of them together, to Maxwell some Saturday.
"Of course," she said, "it would be for two nights, at least. He couldn't expectusto ride back on the Sunday. It will be a treat—we must insist on starting early enough to get down there before the shops shut. I daresay there will be a theatre."
Mariquita, suddenly, after five years, promised the chance of hearing Mass and going to Holy Communion, was not surprised that Sarella should only think of it as an outing; she was not a Catholic. But she thought it as well to give Sarella a hint.
"I expect," she said, "father will be hoping that you would come to Mass with us."
"I? Do you think that? He knows I am not a Catholic—why should he care?"
"Oh, he would care. I am sure of that."
Sarella laughed.
"You sly puss! I believe you want to convert me," she said, shaking her head jocularly at Mariquita.
"Of course I should be glad if you were a Catholic. Any Catholic would."
"I daresayyouwould. But your father never troubles himself about such things—he leaves them to the women. He wouldn't care."
"Yes, he would. You must not judge my father—he thinks without speaking; he is a very silent person."
Sarella laughed again.
"Not so silent as you imagine," she said slyly; "he talks to me, my dear."
"Very likely. I daresay you are easier to talk to than I am. For I too am silent—I have not seen towns and things like you."
"It does make a difference," Sarella admitted complacently. Then, with more covert interest than she showed: "If you really think he would like me to go with you to Mass, I should be glad to please him. After all, one should encourage him in this desire to resume his religious duties. Perhaps he would take us again."
"I am quite sure he would like you to hear Mass with us," Mariquita repeated slowly.
"Then I will do so. You had better tell me about it—one would not like to do the wrong thing."
Perhaps Mariquita told her more about it than Sarella had intended.
"She is tremendously in earnest, anyway," Sarella decided; "she can talk onthateagerly enough. I must say," she thought, good-naturedly, "Iamgladherfather's giving her the chance of doing it. I had no idea she felt about it like that. She is good—to care so much and never say a word of what it is to her not to have it. I never thought there was an ounce of religion about the place. She evidently thinks her father cares, too. I should want some persuading ofthat. But she may be right in saying he expects me to go to his church. She is very positive. And some men are like that—their women must do what they do. They leave church alone for twenty years, but when they begin to go to church their women must go at once. And the Don is masterful enough. Perhaps he thinks it's time he began to remember his soul. If so, he is sure to begin by bothering about other people's souls. She thinks a lot more of him than he thinks of her. In his way, though, he is just as Spanish as she is; I suppose that's why I'm to go to Mass."
Don Joaquin had sounded Mariquita with reference to Sarella's religion. It suited him to sound Sarella in reference to Mariquita—and another person. This he would not have done had he not regarded Sarella as potentially a near relation.
"Mr. Gore talks about interesting things?" he observed tentatively.
"What people call 'interesting things' are sometimes very tedious," she answered smartly, intending to please him.
Hewasa little pleased, but not diverted from his purpose. He never was diverted from his purposes.
"He is a different sort of person from any Mariquita has known," he remarked; "conversation like his must interest her."
"Only, she does not converse with him."
"But she hears."
"Oh! Mariquitahearseverything."
"You don't think she finds him tedious?"
"Oh, no! She does not know anyone is tedious." It by no means struck her father that this was a fault in her.
"It is better to be content with one's company," he said. Then, "He does not findhertedious, I think, though she speaks little."
"Mr. Gore? Anything but!" And Sarella laughed.
Don Joaquin waited for more, and got it.
"Nobody could interest him more," she declared with conviction, shaking her head with pregnant meaning.
"Ah! So I have thought sometimes," Don Joaquin agreed.
"Anyonecould see it. Except Mariquita," she proceeded.
"Mariquita not?"
"Not she! Mariquita's eyes look so high she cannot see you and me, nor Mr. Gore."
After "you and me" Sarella had made an infinitesimal pause, and had darted an instantaneous glance at Don Joaquin. He had scarcely time to catch the glance before it was averted and Sarella added, "or Mr. Gore."
Don Joaquin did not think it objectionable in his daughter "not to see" "you and me"—himself and Sarella—too hastily. But it would ultimately be advisable that she should see what was coming before it actually came. That would save telling. Neither would he have been pleased if she had quickly scented a lover in Mr. Gore; that would have offended her father's sense of dignity. Nor would it have been advisable for her to suspect a lover in Mr. Gore at any time, if Mr. Gore were not intending to be one. Once he was really desirous of being one, and her father approved, she might as well awake to it.
"It is true," he said, "Mariquita has not those ideas."
There was undoubtedly a calm communication in his tone. Sarella could not decide whether it implied censure of "those ideas" elsewhere.
"Not seeing what can be seen," she suggested with some pique, "may deceive others. Thus false hopes are given."
"Mariquita has given no hopes to anyone," her father declared sharply.
"Certainly not. Yet Mr. Gore may think that what is visible must be seen—like his 'interest' in her; and that, since it is seen and not disapproved...."
"Only, as you said, Mariquitadoesn'tsee."
"He may not understand that. He may see nothing objectionable in himself...."
"There is nothing objectionable. The contrary."
And Sarella knew from his tone that Don Joaquin did not disapprove of Mr. Gore as a possible son-in-law.
"How hard it is," she thought, "to get these Spaniards to say anything out. Why can't they say what they mean?"
Sarella was not deficient in a sort of superficial good-nature. It seemed to her that she would have to "help things along." She thought it out of the question for Mariquita to go on indefinitely at the range, doing the work of three women for no reward, and rapidly losing her youth, letting her life be simply wasted. There had never been anyone before Mr. Gore, and never would be anyone else; it would be a providential way out of the present impossible state of things if he and Mariquita should make a match of it. And why shouldn't they? She did not believe that he was actually in love with Mariquita yet; perhaps he never would be till he discovered in her some sort of response. And Mariquita if left to herself was capable of going on for ten years just as she was.
"Mr. Gore," she told Don Joaquin, "is not the sort of man to throw himself at a girl's head if he imagined it would be unpleasant to her."
"Why should he be unpleasant to her?"
"No reason at all. And he isn't unpleasant to her. Only she never thinks of—that sort of thing."
Her father did not want her to "think of that sort of thing"—till called upon. Sarella saw that, and thought him as stupid as his daughter.
His idea of what would be correct was that Gore should "speak to him," that he should (after due examination of his conditions) signify approval, first to Gore himself, and then to Mariquita, whereupon it would be her duty to listen encouragingly to Mr. Gore's proposals. Don Joaquin made Sarella understand that these were his notions.
("How Spanish!" she thought.)
"You'll never get it done that way," she told him shortly. "Mr. Gore will not say a word to you till he thinks Mariquita would not be offended—"
"Why should she be offended!"
"She would be, if Mr. Gore came to you, till she had given him some cause for believing she cared at all for him. He knows that well enough. You may be sure that while she seems unaware of his taking an interest in her, he will never give you the least hint. He doesn'twantto marry her—yet. He won't let himself want it before she givessomesign."
Sarella understood her own meaning quite well, but Don Joaquin did not understand it so clearly.
He took an early opportunity of saying to his daughter:
"I think Mr. Gore a nice man. He is correct. I approve of him. And it is an advantage that he is a Catholic."
To call it "an advantage" seemed to Mariquita a dry way of putting it, but then her fatherwasdry.
"Living in the house," he continued, wishing she would say something, "he must be intimate with us. I find him suitable for that. One would not care for it in every case. Had he turned out a different sort of person, I should not have wished for any friendship between him and yourselves—Sarella and you. It might have been out of place."
"I do not think there would ever be much friendship between Sarella and him," said Mariquita; "she hardly listens when he talks about things—"
"Butyoushould listen. It would be not courteous to make him think you found his conversation tedious."
"Tedious! I listen with interest."
"No doubt. And there is nothing out of place in your showing it. He is no longer a stranger to us."
"He is kind," she said. "He worked hard to help Jack in getting his shed fit for Ginger. It was he who built the partitions. Jack told me. Mr. Gore said nothing about it. Also, he was good to Ben Sturt when he hurt his knee and could not ride; he went and sat with him, chatting, and read funny books to him. He is a very kind person. I am glad you like him—I was not sure."
"I waited. One wishes to know a stranger before liking him, as you call it; what is more important, I approve of him, and find him correct."
Whether this helped much we cannot say. Sarella didn't think so, though Don Joaquin reported it to her with much complacence.
"She must know now," he said, "that Iauthorizehim."
Jack sounded Mr. Gore's praises loudly in Mariquita's ears, and she heard them gladly. She thought well of her fellow-creatures, and it was always pleasant to her to hear them commended.
Jack also bragged a little of his diplomacy, bidding his daughter note how Miss Mariquita had been pleased by his praise of her sweetheart.
"Miss Mariquita has not got even a sweetheart," Ginger declared, "and maybe never will. It isn't the way of her. She was just as proud when you said a good word for Ben Sturt."
"Ben Sturt! What'sheto the young mistress?"
"Just nothing at all—not in that way. Nor yet Mr. Gore isn't. And the more's the pity. But she's good-hearted. She likes to hear good of folk—as much as some likes to hear ill of anybody, no matter who."
Jack was a little discouraged—but not effectually.
Mr. Gore was much too slow, he thought. Why should Miss Mariquita be thinking of him unless he "let on" how much he was thinking of her?
"Did you ever lie under an apple-tree when the blossom was on it?" he asked Gore one day.
"I daresay I have."
"And expected to have your mouth full of apples when there was only blossom on it?"
Jack forced so much meaning into his ugly old face that Gore could discern the allegorical intent. He was very amused.
"There'd never be muchchanceof apples," he said carelessly, "if the tree was shaken till the blossom fell off. The wind spoils more blossom than the frost does."
Jack was not the only one who thought Gore slow in his wooing; the cowboys thought so too, though they did not, like Jack, find any fault with him for his slowness. In general they would have been more critical of rapidity and apparent success. Ben Sturt had learned to like him cordially, and wished him success, but Ben was of opinion that more haste would have been worse speed. He thought that Gore deserved Mariquita if anyone could, but was sure that even Gore would have to wait long and be very patient and careful. To Ben Mariquita seemed almost like one belonging to another world, certainly living on a plane above his comprehension, where ordinary love-making would be, somehow, unfitting and hopeless. It had always met with her father's cool approbation that Mariquita kept herself aloof from the young men about the place. But she was not wanting in interest for them. They were her neighbors, and she, who had so much interest for all her little dumb neighbors of the prairie, had a much higher interest in these bigger, but not much less dumb, neighbors of the homestead. They were more than a mere group to her. Each individual in the group was, she knew, as dear to God as herself, had been created by God for the same purpose as herself, and for the soul of each, Christ upon the Cross had been in as bitter labor as for the soul of any one of the saints. She was the last creature on earth to regard as of mere casual interest to herself those in whom God's interest was so deep, and close, and unfailing.
Perhaps they were rough; it might be that of the great things of which Mariquita herself thought so habitually, they thought little and seldom: but she did not think them bad. She thought more of them than they guessed, and liked them better than they imagined. She would have wished to serve and help them, and was not indolent, but humble concerning herself, and shy. She worked for them, more perhaps than her father thought necessary; in that way she could serve them. But she could not preach to them, nor exhort them. She would have shrunk instinctively, not from the danger of ridicule, but from the danger that the ridicule might fall on religion itself, and not merely on her. She would have dreaded the risk of misrepresenting religion to them, of giving them ideas of God such as would repel them from Him. She knew that speech was not easy to her, eloquent speech was no gift of hers; she did not believe herself to have any readiness of expressing what she felt and knew, and did not credit herself with great knowledge. She did not really put them down as being entirely ignorant of what she did know.
The idea of a woman's preaching would have shocked Mariquita, to her it would have seemed "out of place." She was a humble girl, with a diffidence not universal among those who are themselves trying to serve God, some of whom are apt to be slow at understanding that others may be as near Him as themselves, though behaving differently, and holding a different fashion of speech.
God who had made them must know more about them, she felt, than she could. She did not think she understood them very well, but God had made the men and knew them as well as He knew the women. She was, with all her ignorance and her limited opportunities of observation and understanding, able to see much goodness among these neighbors of hers; He must be able to see much more.
In reality Mariquita did more for them than she had any idea of. They understood that in her was something higher than their understanding; that her goodness was real they did understand. It never shocked them as the "goodness" of some good people would by a first instinct have shocked them, by its uncharity, its self-conscious superiority, its selfishness, its complacence, its eagerness to assume the Divine prerogative of judgment and of punishment. They were, perhaps unconsciously, proud of her, who was so plainly never proud of herself. They knew that she was kind. They had penetration enough to be aware that if she held her own way, in some external aloofness, it was not out of cold indifference, or self-centred pride, not even out of a prudish shrinking from their roughness. They became less rough. Their behavior in her sight and hearing was not without effect upon their behavior in her absence. She taught them a reverence for woman that may only have begun in respect for herself. Almost all of them cared enough for her approval to try and become more capable of deserving it. Some of them, God who taught them knows how, became conscious of her lonely absorption in prayer, and the prairie became less empty to them. Probably none of them remained ignorant that to the girl God was life and breath, happiness and health, master and companion: the explanation of herself and of her beauty. They did not understand it all, but they saw more than they understood.
The loveliness of each flower preached to Mariquita; sometimes she would sit upon the ground, her heart beating, holding in her hand one of those tiny weeds that millions of eyes can overlook without perceiving they are beautiful, insignificant in size, without any blaze of color, and realize its marvel of loveliness with a singular exultation; she would note the exquisite perfection of its minute parts—that each tiny spray was a string of stars, white, or tenderest azure, or mauve, gold-centred, a microscopic installation hidden all its life on the prairie-floor, as if falling from heaven it had grown smaller and smaller as it neared the earth. Her heart beat, I say, as she looked, and the light shining in her happy eyes was exultation at the unimaginable loveliness of God, who had imagined this minutest creature, and thought it worth while to conceive this and every other lovely thing for the house even of His children's exile and probation, their waiting-room on the upward road. So it preached to her the Uncreated Beauty, and the unbeginning, Eternal Love. As unconscious as was the little flower of its fragrance, its loveliness and its message, Mariquita, who could never have preached, was giving her message too.
Her rough neighbors saw her near them and (perhaps without knowing that they knew it) knew that that which made her rare and exquisite was of Divine origin. She never hinted covert exhortation in her talk. If she spoke to any of them they could listen without dread of some shrewdly folded rebuke. Yet they could not get away from the fact that she was herself a perpetual reminder of noble purpose.
What the cowboys had come, with varying degrees of slowness or celerity, to feel by intuitions little instructed by experience or reasoning, Gore had to arrive at by more deliberate study.
He was more civilized and less instinctive. He knew many more people, and had experience, wanting to them, of many women of fine and high character. What made the rarity of Mariquita's instinct did not inform him, and he had to observe and surmise.
He saw no books in the house, and did not perceive how Mariquita could read; she must, in the way of information and knowledge such as most educated girls possess be, as it were, disinherited. Yet he did not feel that she was ignorant. It is more ignorant to have adopted false knowledge than to be uninformed.
Every day added to Gore's sense of the girl's rarity and nobility. He admired her more and more, the reverence of his admiration increasing with its growth. Nor was his appreciation blind, or blinded. He surmised a certain lack in her—the absence of humor, and he was, at any rate, so far correct that Mariquita was without the habit of humor. Long after this time, she was thought by her companions to have a delightful radiant cheerfulness like mirth. But when Gore first knew her, what occasion had she had for indulgence in the habit of humor?
Her father's house was not gay, and he would have thought gaiety in it out of place. Loud laughter might resound in the cowboys' quarters, but Don Joaquin would have much disapproved any curiosity in his daughter as to its cause. He seldom laughed himself and never wished to make anyone else laugh. His Spanish blood and his Indian blood almost equally tended to make him regard laughter and merriment as a slur on dignity.
Some of those who have attempted the elusive feat of analyzing the causes and origin of humor lay down that it lies in a perception of the incongruous, the less fit. I should be sorry to think that a complete account of the matter. No doubt it describes the occasion of much of our laughter, though not, I refuse to believe, of all.
That sense of humor implies little charity, and a good deal of conscious superiority. It makes us laugh at accidents not agreeable to those who suffer them, at uncouthness, ignorances, solecisms, inferiorities, follies, blunders, stupidities, unconsciously displayed weaknesses and faults. It is the sort of humor that sets us laughing at a smartly dressed person fallen into a filthy drain, at a man who does not know how to eat decently, at mispronunciation of names, and misapplication or oblivion of aspirates, at greediness not veiled by politeness, at a man singing who doesn't know how. Now Mariquita had no conceit and was steeped in charity in big and little things. In that sort of humor she would have been lacking, for she would have thought too kindly of its butt to be able to enjoy his misfortune. And, as has been already said, she had no habit of the thing.
Gore, in accusing her of lack of humor, felt that the accusation was a heavy one. It was not quite unjust: we have partly explained Mariquita's deficiency without entirely denying it, or pretending it was an attraction. No doubt, she would have been a greater laugher if she had been more ill-natured, had had wider opportunities of perceiving the absurdity of her contemporaries.
As for those queer and quaint quips of circumstance that make the oddity of daily life for some of us, few of them had enlivened Mariquita. The chief occasion of general gathering was round the table, where hunger and haste were the most obvious characteristics of the meeting. Till Gore came, there had been little conversation. It was not Mariquita's fault that she had been used neither to see or hear much that was entertaining. Perhaps the facility of being amused is an acquired taste; and even so, the faculty of humor is almost of necessity dormant where scarcely anything offers for it to work or feed upon.
The projected visit to Maxwell did not immediately take place. Don Joaquin was seldom hasty in action, having a chronic, habitual esteem for deliberation and deliberateness too.
Sarella would have been impatient had she not been sufficiently unwell to shrink for the moment from the idea of a very long ride. For the mere pleasure of riding she would never have mounted a horse; she would only ride when there was no other means of arriving at some object or place not otherwise attainable.
Gore, however, was again absent on the second Saturday after his first visit to Maxwell. And on this occasion his place was vacant at breakfast. Nor did he return till Monday afternoon.
On that afternoon Mariquita had walked out some distance across the prairie. Not in the direction of the Maxwell trail, but quite in the opposite direction. Her way brought her to what they called Saul Bluff—a very low, broken ridge, sparsely overgrown with small rather shabby trees. It would scarcely have hidden the chimneys of a cottage had there been any cottage on its farther side; but there was none anywhere near it. For many miles there was no building in any direction, except "Don Jo's," as, to its owner's annoyance, his homestead was called.
When Mariquita had reached the top of the bluff she took advantage of the slight elevation on which she stood, to look round upon the great spread of country stretching to the low horizon on every side. It was, like most days here, a day of wind and sun. The air was utterly pure and scentless; the scent was not fir-scent, and the scattered, windy trees gave no smell. She saw a chipmunk and laughed, as the sight of that queer little creature, and its odd mixture of shyness and effrontery always made her laugh.
It was even singularly clear, and the foothills of the Rockies were just visible. The trail, which ran over the bluff a little to her left, was full in sight below her, but so little used as to be slight enough. A mile farther on it crossed the river, and was too faint to be seen beyond. The river was five miles behind her as well as a mile in front, for it made a big loop, north, and then, west-about, southward.
She sat down and for a long time was rapt in her own thoughts, which were not, at first, of any human person. Perhaps she would not herself have said that she was praying. But all prayer does not consist in begging favors even for others. Its essence does not lie in request, but in the lifting of self, heart and mind, to God. The love of a child to its father need not necessarily find its sole exercise and expression in demand. Her thought and love flew up to her Father and rested, immeasurably happy. The real joys of her life were in that presence. The sense of His love, not merely for herself, was the higher bliss it gave her: not merely for herself, I say, for it spread as wide as all humanity, and her own share in it was as little as a star in the milky way, in the whole glory, what it is for all the saints in heaven and on earth, for all sinners, for His great Mother, and, most immeasurable of all, the infinite perfection of His love for Himself, of Father and Son for the Holy Spirit, of Son and Spirit for the Eternal Father, of Spirit and Father for the Son. This stretched far beyond the reach of her vision, but she looked as far as her human sight could reach, as one looks on that much of the mystic ocean that eye can hold. Not separable from this joy in the Divine Love was her joy in the Divine Beauty, of which all created beauty sang, whether it were that of the smallest flower or that of Christ's Mother herself. The wind's clean breath whispered of it; the vast loveliness of the enormous dome above her, and the limitless expanse of not less lovely earth on which that dome rested, witnessed to the Infinite Beauty that had imagined and made them.
But sooner or later Mariquita mustshare, for in that the silent tenderness of her nature showed itself: she could not be content to have her great happiness to herself, to enjoy alone. So, presently, in her prayer she came, as always, to gathering round her all whom she knew and all whom she did not know. As she would have wishedthemto think in their prayer of her, so must she have them also in the Divine Presence with her, lift their names up to God, even their names which, unknown to her, He knew as well as He knew her own.
Her living father and her dead mother, the old school-friends and the nuns, the old priest at Loretto, and a certain crooked old gardener that had been there (crooked in body, in face, and in temper), Sarella, and Mr. Gore, and all the cowboys—all these Mariquita gathered into the loving arms of her memory, and presented them at their Father's feet. Her way in this was her own way, and unlike perhaps that of others. She had no idea of bringing them to God's memory, as if His tenderness needed any reminder from her, for always she heard Him saying: "Can you teach Me pity and love?" She did not think it depended on her that good should come to them from Him. Were she to be lazy or forgetful, He would never let them suffer through her neglect. They were immeasurably more His than they could be hers. But she could not be at His feet and not in her loving mind see them there beside her, and she knew He chose that at His feet she should not forget them. She could not dictate to Him what He was to give them, in what fashion He should bless and help them. He knew exactly. Her surmises must be ignorant.
Therefore Mariquita's prayer was more wordless than common, less phrased; but its intensity was more uncommon. Nor could it be limited to those—a handful out of all His children—whom she knew or had ever known. There were all the rest—everywhere: those who knew how to serve Him, and were doing it, as she had never learned to serve; those who had never heard His name, and those who knew it but shrank from it as that of an angry observer; those most hapless ones who lived by disobeying Him, even by dragging others down into the slough of disobedience; the whole world's sick, body-sick and soul-sick; those who here are mad, and will find reason only in heaven; the whole world's sorrowful ones, the luckless, those gripped in the hard clutch of penury, or the sordid clutch of debt; the blind whose first experience of beauty will be perfect beauty, the foully diseased, the deformed, the deaf and dumb whose first speech will be their joining in the songs of heaven, their first hearing that of the music of heaven ... all these, and many, many others she must bring about her, or her gladness in God's nearness would be selfishness. That nearness! she felt Him much nearer than was her own raiment, nearer than was her own flesh....
It was long after Mariquita had come to her place upon the bluff, that the sound of a horse cantering towards it made her rise and go to the farther westward edge of the bluff to look. The horseman was quite near, below her. It was Gore, and he saw her at the same moment in which she saw him. He lifted his big, wide-brimmed hat from his head and waved it. It would never have even occurred to her to be guilty of the churlishness of turning away to go homeward. Her thoughts, almost the only thing of her own she had ever had, she was always ready to lay aside for courtesy.
He had dismounted, and was leading his horse up the rather steep slope. She stood waiting for him, a light rather than a smile upon her noble face, a light like the glow of a far horizon....
"I thought," she said, when he had come up, "that you had gone to Maxwell."
"No, I went to Denver this time," he told her, "beyond Denver a little. Where do you think I heard Mass yesterday—this morning again, too? for both of us, since you could not come."
"Not at Loretto!"
But she knew it was at Loretto. His smile told her.
"Yes, at Loretto. It was the same to me which place I went to. No, not the same, for I wanted to see the place where you had been a little girl, so that I could come back and bring you word of it."
"Ah, how kind you are!" she said, with a sort of wonder of gratefulness shining on her.
("She is far more beautiful than I ever knew," he thought.)
"Not kind at all," Gore protested. "Just to please myself! There's no great kindness in that except to myself."
"Oh, yes! for you knew how it would please me. It was wonderful that you should be so kind as to think of it."
"It gavemepleasure anyway. To be in the place where you had been so happy—"
"Ah, but I am always happy," she interrupted. "Though indeed I was happy there, and sorrowful to leave it. But I did not leave it quite behind; it came with me."
"I have a great many things to tell you. They remember youmostfaithfully. If my going gavemepleasure, it gave them much more. You cannot think how much they made of me for your sake; I stayed there a long time after Mass yesterday, and they made me go back in the afternoon—I was there all afternoon. And all the time we were talking of you."
"Then I think," Mariquita declared, laughing merrily, "your talk will have been monotonous."
"Oh, not monotonous at all. Are they not dear women? They showed me where you sat in chapel—and the different places where you had sat in classrooms, and in the refectory, when you first came, as a small girl of ten, and as you rose in the school."
"I did not rise very high. I was never one of the clever ones—"
"They kept that to themselves—"
"Oh, yes! They would do that. Nuns are so charitable—they would never say that any of the girls was stupid."
"No, they didn't hint that in the least. Sister Gabriel showed me a drawing of yours."
"What was it?"
"She said it was the Grand Canal at Venice. I have never been there—"
"Nor I. But I remember doing it. The water wouldn't come flat. It looked like a blue road running up-hill. Sister Gabriel was very kind, very kind indeed. She used to have hay-fever."
"So she has now. She listened for more than half-an-hour while I told her about you."
"Mr. Gore, I think you will have been inventing things to tell her," Mariquita protested, laughing again. She kept laughing, for happiness and pleasure.
"Oh, no! On the contrary, I kept forgetting things. Afterwards I remembered some of them, and told her what I had left out. Some I only remembered when it was too late, after I had come away. Sister Marie Madeleine—I hope you remember her too—she asked hundreds of questions about you."
"Oh, yes, of course I remember her. She taught me French. And I was stupid about it...."
"She was very anxious to know if you kept it up. She said you wanted only practice—and vocabulary."
"And idiom, and grammar, and pronunciation," Mariquita insisted, laughing very cheerfully. "Did you tell her there was no one to keep it up with?"
He told her of many others of the nuns—he had evidently taken trouble to bring her word of them all. And he had asked for news of the girls she had known best, and brought her news of them also. Several were married, two had entered Holy Religion.
"Sylvia Markham," he said, "you remember her? She has come back to Loretto to be a nun. She is a novice; she was clothed at Easter. Sister Mary Scholastica she is—the younger children call her Sister Elastic."
"Oh," cried Mariquita, with her happy laugh, "how funny it is—to hear you talking of Sylvia. She was harum-scarum. What a noise she used to make, too! How pretty she was!"
"Sister Elastic is just as pretty. She sent fifty messages to you. But Nellie Hurst—you remember her?"
"Certainly I do. She was champion at baseball. And she acted better than anybody. Oh, and she edited the Magazine, and she kept us all laughing. Shewasfunny! Geraldine Barnes had a quinsy and it nearly choked her, but Nellie Hurst made her laugh so much that it burst, and she was soon well again...."
"Well, and where do you think she is now?"
"Where?" Mariquita asked almost breathlessly.
"In California. At Santa Clara, near San José. She is a Carmelite."
"A Carmelite! And she used to say she would write plays (She did write several that were acted at Loretto) and act them herself—on the stage, I mean."
It took Gore a long time to tell all his budget of news; he had hardly finished before they reached the homestead, towards which the sinking sun had long warned them to be moving. And he had presents for her, a rosary ("brought by Mother General from Rome and blessed by the Pope,") a prayerbook, a lovely Agnus Dei covered with white satin and beautifully embroidered, scapulars, a little bottle of Lourdes water, another of ordinary holy water, and a little hanging stoup to put some of it in, also a statue of Our Lady, and a small framed print of the Holy House of Loretto.
Mariquita had never owned so many things in her life.
"Oh, dear!" she said. "And I had been long thinking that I was quite forgotten there; I am ashamed. And you—how to thank you!"
"But you have been thanking me all the time," he said, "ever since I told you where I had been. Every time you laughed you thanked me."
They met Ben Sturt, who was lounging about by the gate in the homestead fence; he had never seen Mariquita with just that light of happiness upon her.
"Here," he said to Gore, "let me take the horse; I'll see to him."
He knew that Mariquita would not come to the stables, and he wanted Gore to be free to stay with her to the last moment.
As he led the horse away he thought to himself: "It has really begun at last;" and he loyally wished his friend good luck.
Within a yard or two of the door they met Don Joaquin.
"Father," she said at once, "Mr. Gore didn't go to Maxwell this time. He went all the way to Denver—to Loretto. And see what a lot of presents he has brought me from them!"
Gore thought she looked adorable as, like a child unused to gifts, she showed her little treasures to the rather grim old prairie dog.
He looked less grim than usual. It suited him that she should be so pleased.
"Well!" he said, "you're stocked now. Mr. Gore had a long ride to fetch them."
"Oh, yes! Did you ever hear of anybody being so kind?"
Her father noted shrewdly the new expression of grateful pleasure on her face. It seemed to him that Gore was not so incompetent as he had been supposing, to carry on his campaign. Sarella came out and joined them. "What a cunning little pin-cushion!" she exclaimed. "Isn't it just sweet?" The Agnus Dei was almost the only one of Mariquita's new treasures to which she could assign a use.
"Oh, and the necklace! Garnets relieved by those crystal blobs are just the very fashion."
"It is a rosary," Don Joaquin explained in a rather stately tone. It made him uneasy—it must be unlucky—to hear these frivolous eulogies applied to "holy objects" with which personally he had never had the familiarity that diminishes awe.
Mariquita had plenty to do indoors and did not linger. Gore went in also to wash and tidy himself after his immensely long ride.
Sarella, who of course knew long before this where Mariquita had received her education, and had been told whence these pious gifts came, smiled as she turned to Don Joaquin.
"So Gore rode all the way to Denver this time," she remarked.
"It is beyond Denver. Mariquita was pleased to hear news of her old friends."
"Oh, I daresay. Gore is not such a fool as he looks."
"I am not thinking that he looks a fool at all," said Don Joaquin, more stately than ever.
("How Spanish!" thought Sarella, "I suppose they'rebornsolemn.")
"Indeed," she cheerfully agreed, "nor do I. He wouldn't be so handsome if he looked silly. He's all sense. And he knows his road, short cuts and all."
Don Joaquin disliked her mention of Gore's good looks, as she intended. She had no idea of being snubbed by her elderly suitor.
"Mariquita," he laid down, "will think more of his good sense than of his appearance. I have not brought her up to consider a gentleman's looks."
Sarella laughed; she was not an easy person to "down."
"But you didn't bringmeup," she said, "and I can tell you that you might have been as wise as Solomon and it wouldn't have mattered to me if you had been ugly. I'd rather look than listen any day; and I like to have something worth looking at."
Her very pretty eyes were turned full on her mature admirer's face, and he did not dislike their flattery. An elderly man who has been very handsome is not often displeased at being told he is worth looking at still.
"So do I, Sarellita," he responded, telling himself (and her) how much pleasure there was in looking ather.
Stately he could not help being, but his manner had now no stiffness; and in the double diminutive of her name there was almost a tenderness, a nearer approach to tenderness than she could understand. She could understand, however, that he was more lover-like than he had ever been.
A slight flush of satisfaction (that he took for maiden shyness) was on her face, as she looked up under her half-drooped eyelids.
"Perhaps," he said in much lower tones than he usually employed, "perhaps Mr. Gore knows what you call his road better than I. But he does not know better the goal he wants to reach."
("Say!" Sarella asked herself, "what's coming?")
Two of the cowboys were coming—had come in fact. They appeared at that moment round the corner of the house, ready for supper.
"So," one of them said, with rather loud irritation, evidently concluding a story, "my dad married her, and I have a step-ma younger than myself—"
Everyone on the range, from its owner down to old Jack, considered that Gore made much more way after his trip to Denver. Mariquita, it was decided, had, as it were, awakened to him. It was believed that she and he saw more of each other, and that she liked his company.
Sarella thought things were going so well that they had much better be left to themselves, and this view she strongly impressed upon Don Joaquin. He had gradually come to hold a higher opinion of her sense; at first he had been attracted entirely by her beauty. Her aunt had not been remarkable for intelligence, and he had not thought the niece could be expected to be wiser than her departed elder.
Sarella, on the other hand, did not think her admirer quite so sensible as he really was. That he was shrewd and successful in business, she knew, but was the less impressed that his methods had been slow and unhurried. To her eastern ideas there was nothing imposing (though extremely comfortable) in a moderate wealth accumulated by thirty years of patient work and stingy expenditure. But she was sure he did not in the least understand his own daughter, in whom she (who did not understand her any better than she would have understood Dante'sDivina Commedia) saw nothing at all difficult to understand. The truth was that Don Joaquin had never understood any woman; without imagination, he could understand no sex but his own—and his experience of women was of the narrowest. Nevertheless, he was nearer to a sort of rough, nebulous perception of his daughter than was Sarella herself.
His saying that Mariquita would not "consider" Gore's good looks, a remark that Sarella thought merely ridiculous, was an illustration of this. In hisexplicitmind, in his conscious attitude towards Mariquita, he assumed that it washerbusiness and duty to respecthim. He was her parent, so placed by God, and he had a great and sincere reverence for such Divine appointments as placed himself in a condition of superiority. (Insubordination or insolence in the cowboys would have gravely and honestly scandalized him). All the same, in an inner mind that he never consulted, and whose instruction he was far from seeking, he knew that his daughter was a higher creature than himself; all heknewthat he knew was that a young girl was necessarily more innocent and pure than an elderly man could be (he himself was no profligate); that in fact all women were more religious than men, and that it behooved them to be so; nature made it easier for them.
He had after deliberate consideration decided that it would be convenient and suitable that his daughter should marry Gore; the young man, he was sure, wished it, and, while the circumstances in which she was placed held little promise of a wide choice of husbands for her, he would, in Don Joaquin's opinion, make a quite suitable husband. To do him justice, he would never have manoeuvred to bring Gore into a marriage with Mariquita, had he appeared indifferent to the girl, or had he seemed in any way unfit.
But, though Don Joaquin had reached the point of intending the marriage, he saw no occasion for much love-making, and none for Mariquita's falling in love with the young man's handsome face and fine figure. Her business was to learn that her father approved the young man as a suitor, and to recognize that that approval stamped him as suitable. That Mariquita would notsuddenlylearn this lesson, Sarella had partly convinced him; but he did not think there would now be any suddenness in the matter. He would have spoken with authoritative plainness to her now, without further delay; but there was a difficulty—Gore had not spoken to him.
Don Joaquin thought it was about time he did so.
"You think," he remarked when they were alone together over the fire, "that you shall buy Blaine's?"
Now Gore would certainly not buy a range so near Don Joaquin's if he should fail to secure a mistress for it in Don Joaquin's daughter. And he was by no means inclined to take success with her for granted. He was beginning to hope that there was a chance of success—that was all.
"It is worth the money," he answered; "and I have the money. But I have not absolutely decided to settle down to this way of life at all."
"I thought you had."
"Well, no. It must depend on what does not depend upon myself."
Don Joaquin found this enigmatical, which Gore might or might not have intended that he should. Though wholly uncertain how Mariquita might regard him when she came to understand that he wished for more than friendship, he was by this time quite aware that her father approved; and he was particularly anxious that she should not be "bothered."
Don Joaquin diplomatically hinted that Blaine might close with some other offer.
"There is no other offer. He told me so quite straightforwardly. I have the refusal. If he does get another offer, and I have not decided, he is of course quite free to accept it. He does not want to hurry me; I expect he knows that if I did buy, he would get a better price from me than from anyone else."
Gore might very reasonably be tired after his immensely long ride, and when he went off to bed Don Joaquin could not feel aggrieved. But he was hardly pleased by the idea that the young man intended to manage his own affairs without discussion of them, and to keep his own counsel.
"Just you leave well alone," said Sarella, a little more didactically than Don Joaquin cared for. "Things are going as well as can be expected" (and here she laughed a little); "they're moving now."
Don Joaquin urged his opinion that Mariquita ought to be enlightened as to his approval of her suitor.
Sarella answered, with plain impatience, "If you tell her she has a suitor shewon'thave one. Don't you pry her eyes open with your thumb; let them open of themselves."
Don Joaquin only half understood this rhetoric, and he seldom liked what he could not understand.
He adopted a slightly primitive measure in reprisal—
"It isn't," he remarked pregnantly, "as if the young man were not a Catholic—I would not allow her to marry him if he were not."
"No?"
And it was quite clear to Don Joaquin that he had killed two birds with one stone; he saw that Sarella was both interested and impressed.
"Catholics should marry Catholics," he declared with decision.
"You didn't think so always," Sarella observed, smiling.
"If I forgot it, I suffered for it," her elderly admirer retorted.
Sarella was puzzled. She naturally had not the remotest suspicion that he had felt his wife's early death as a reprisal on the part of Heaven. She knew little of her aunt, and less of that aunt's married life. Had there been quarrels about religion?
"Well, I daresay you may be right," she said gravely. "Two religions in one house may lead to awkwardness."
"Yes. That is so," he agreed, with a completeness of conviction that considerably enlightened her.
"And after all," she went on, smiling with great sweetness, "they're only two branches of the same religion."
This was her way of hinting that the little bird he had married would have been wise to hop from her own religious twig to his.
This suggestion, however, Don Joaquin utterly repudiated.
"The same religion!" he said, with an energy that almost made Sarella jump. "The Catholic Church and heresy all one religion! Black and white the same color!"
Sarella was now convinced that he and his wife had fought on the subject. On such matters she was quite resolved there should be no fighting in her case; concerning expenditure it might benecessaryto fight. But Sarella was an easy person who had no love for needless warfare, and she made up her mind at once.
"I understand, now you put it that way," she said amiably, "you're right again. Both can't be right, and the husband is the head of the wife."
Don Joaquin acceptedthistheory whole-heartedly, and nodded approvingly.
"How," he said, "can a Protestant mother bring up her Catholic son?"
Sarella laughed inwardly. So he had quite arranged the sex of his future family.
"But," she said with a remarkably swift riposte, "if Catholics should not marry Protestants, they have no business to make love to them. Have they?"
Her Catholic admirer looked a little silly, and she swore to herself that he was blushing.
"Because," she continued, entirely without blushing, "a Catholic gentleman made love tomeonce—"
"Perhaps," suggested Don Joaquin, recovering himself "he hoped you would become a Catholic, if you accepted him."
"I daresay," Sarella agreed very cheerfully.
"But you evidently did not accept him."
"As to that," she explained frankly, "he did not go quite so far as asking me to marry him."
"He drew back!"
"Not exactly. He was interrupted."
"But didn't he resume the subject?"
Sarella laughed.
"I'd rather not answer that question," she answered; "you're asking quite a few questions, aren't you?"
"I want to ask another. Did you like that Catholic gentleman well enough to share all he had, his religion, his name, and his home?"
Don Joaquin was not laughing, on the contrary, he was eagerly serious, and Sarella laughed no more.
"He never did ask me to share them," she replied with a self-possession that her elderly lover admired greatly.
"But he does. He is asking you. Sarella, will you share my religion, and my name, my home, and all that I have?"
Even now she was amused inwardly, not all caused by love. She noted, and was entertained by noting, how he put first among things she was to share, his religion—because he was not so sure of her willingness to share that as of her readiness to share his name and his goods, and meant to be sure, as she now quite understood. It did not make her respect him less. She had the sense to know that he would not make a worse husband for caring enough for his religion to make a condition of it, and she was grateful for the form in which he put the condition. He spared her the brutality of, "I will marry you if you will turn Catholic to marry me, but I won't if you refuse to do that."
She smiled again, but not lightly. "I think," she said, "you will need some one when Mariquita goes away to a home of her own. And I think I could make you comfortable and happy. I will try, anyway. And it would never make you happy and comfortable if we were of different religions. If my husband's is good enough for him, it must be good enough for me."
Poor Sarella! She was quite homeless, and quite penniless. She had not come here with any idea of finding a husband in this elderly Spaniard, but she could think of him as a husband, with no repugnance and with some satisfaction. He was respectable and trustworthy; she believed him to be as fond of her as it was in his nature to be fond of anybody. He had prudence and good sense. And his admiration pleased her; her own sense told her that she would get in marrying him as much as she could expect.
"Shall you tell Mariquita, or shall I?" she inquired before they parted.
"I will tell her. I am her father," he replied.
"Then, do not say anything about her moving off to a home of her own—"
"Why not?" he asked with some obstinacy. For in truth he had thought the opportunity would be a good one for "breaking ground."
"Because she will think we want to get rid of her; or she will thinkIdo. Tell her, instead, that I will do my best to make her happy and comfortable. If I were you, I should tell her you count on our marriage making it pleasanter for her here."
When her father informed her of his intended marriage, Mariquita was much more taken aback than he had foreseen. He had supposed she must have observed more or less what was coming.
"Marry Sarella, father!" she exclaimed, too thoroughly astonished to weigh her words, "but you are her uncle!"
Don Joaquin, who was pale enough ordinarily, reddened angrily.
"I am no relation whatever to her," he protested fiercely. "How dare you accuse your father of wishing to marry his own niece? How dare you insult Sarella by supposing she would marry her uncle?"
It was terrible to Mariquita to see her father so furious. He had never been soft or tender to her, but he had hardly ever shown any anger towards her, and now he looked at her as if he disliked her.
It did astonish her that Sarella should be willing to marry her uncle. Sarella had indeed, as Don Joaquin had not, thought of the difficulty; but she saw that there appeared to be none to him; no doubt, he knew what was the marriage-law among Catholics, and perhaps that was why he was so insistent as to her being one.
"I know," Mariquita said gently, "that there is no blood relationship between her and you. She is my first cousin, but she is only your niece by marriage. I do not even know what the Church lays down."
Her father was still angry with her, but he was startled as well. He did not know any better than herself what the Church laid down. He did know that between him and Sarella there was no real relationship—in the law of nature there was nothing to bar their marriage, and he had acted in perfect good faith. But he did not intend to break the Church's law again.
"If you are ignorant of the Church's law," he said severely, "you should not talk as if you knew it."
She knew she had not so talked, but she made no attempt to excuse herself.
"It is," she said quietly, "quite easy to find out. The priest at Maxwell would tell you immediately."
She saw that her father, though still frowning heavily, was not entirely disregardful of her suggestion.
"Father," she went on in a low gentle tone, "I beg your pardon if, being altogether surprised, I spoke suddenly, and seemed disrespectful."
"You were very disrespectful," he said, with stiff resentment.
Mariquita's large grave eyes were full of tears, but he did not notice them, and would have been unmoved if he had seen them. It was difficult for her to keep them from overflowing, and more difficult to go on with what she wished to say.
"You know," she said, "that there are things which the Church does not allow except upon conditions, but does allow on conditions—"
"What things?"
"For instance, marriage with a person who is not a Catholic—"
Don Joaquin received a sudden illumination. Yes! With a dispensation that would have been dutiful which he had done undutifully without one.
"You think a dispensation can be obtained in—in this case."
"Father," she answered almost in a whisper, "I am quite ignorant about it."
He had severely reprimanded her for speaking, being ignorant. Now he wanted encouragement and ordered her to speak.
"But say what you think," he said dictatorially.
"As there is no real relationship," she answered, courageously enough after her former snubbing, "if such a marriage is forbidden" (he scowled blackly, but she went on), "it cannot be so by the law of God, but by the law of the Church. She cannot give anyone permission to disregard God's law, but she can, I suppose, make exception to her own law. That is what we call a dispensation. God does not forbid the use of meat on certain days, but she does. If God forbade it she could never give leave for it; but she often gives leave—not only to a certain person, but to a whole diocese, or a whole country even, for temporary reasons—what we call a dispensation."
Don Joaquin had listened carefully. He was much more ignorant of ecclesiastical matters than his daughter. He had never occupied himself with considering the reasons behind ecclesiastical regulations, and much that he heard now came like entirely new knowledge. But he was Spaniard enough to understand logic very readily, and he did understand Mariquita.
"So," he queried eagerly, "you think that even if such a marriage is against regulation" (he would not say "forbidden"), "there might be a dispensation?"
"I do not see why there should not."
"Of course, there is no reason," he said loftily, adding with ungracious ingratitude, "and it was extremely out of place for you to look shocked when I told you of my purpose."
Mariquita accepted this further reproof meekly. Don Joaquin was only asserting his dignity, that had lain a little in abeyance while he was listening to her explanations.
"I shall have to be away all to-morrow," he said, "on business. I do not wish you to say anything to Sarella till I give you permission."
"Of course not."
Don Joaquin was not addicted to telling fibs—except business ones; in selling a horse he regarded them as merely the floral ornaments of a bargain, which would have an almost indecent nakedness without them. But on this occasion he stooped to a moderate prevarication.
"Sarella," he confidentially informed that lady, "I shall be up before sunrise and away the whole of to-morrow. Sometime the day after I shall have a good chance of telling Mariquita. Don't you hint anything to her meanwhile."
"Not I," Sarella promised.
("A hitch somewhere," she thought, feeling pretty sure that he had spoken to Mariquita already.)
When Don Joaquin, after his return from Maxwell, spoke to Mariquita again, he once more condescended to some half-truthfulness—necessary, as he considered, to that great principle of diplomacy—the balance of power. A full and plain explanation of the exact position would, he thought, unduly exalt his daughter's wisdom and foresight at the expense of his own.
"The priest," he informed her, "will,of course, be very pleased to marry Sarella and myself when we are ready. That will not be until she has been instructed and baptized. It will not be for a month or two."
Mariquita offered her respectful congratulations both on Sarella's willingness to become a Catholic, and on the marriage itself. She was little given to asking questions, and was quite aware that her father had no wish to answer any in the present instance.
Neither did he tell Sarella that a dispensation would be necessary; still less, that the priest believed the dispensation would have to be sought, through the Bishop, of course, from the Papal Delegate, and professed himself even uncertain whether the Papal Delegate himself might not refer to Rome before granting it, though he (the priest) thought it more probable that His Excellency would grant the dispensation without such reference.
Don Joaquin merely gave Sarella to understand that their marriage would follow her reception into the Church, and that the necessary instruction previous to that reception would take some time.