The Doomswoman: An Historical Romance of Old California

Delfina, the first child of Alvarado, born in the purple at the governor’s mansion in Monterey, was about to be baptized with all the pomp and ceremony of the Church and time.  Doña Martina, the wife of a year, was unable to go to the church, but lay beneath her lace and satin coverlet, her heavy black hair half covering the other side of the bed.  Beside her stood the nurse, a fat, brown, high-beaked old crone, holding a mass of grunting lace.  I stood at the foot of the bed, admiring the picture.

“Be careful for the sun, Tomasa,” said the mother.  “Her eyes must be strong, like the Alvarados’,—­black and keen and strong.”

“Sure, señora.”

“And let her not smother, nor yet take cold.  She must grow tall and strong,—­like the Alvarados.”

“Sure, señora.”

“Where is his Excellency?”

“I am here.”  And Alvarado entered the room.  He looked amused, and probably had overheard the conversation.  He justified, however, the admiration of his young wife.  His tall military figure had the perfect poise and suggestion of power natural to a man whose genius had been recognized by the Mexican government before he had entered his twenties.  The clean-cut face, with its calm profile and fiery eyes, was not that of the Washington of his emulation, and I never understood why he chose so tame a model.  Perhaps because of the meagerness of that early proscribed literature; or did the title “Father of his Country” appeal irresistibly to that lofty and doomed ambition?

He passed his hand over his wife’s long white fingers, but did not offer her any other caress in my presence.

“How dost thou feel?”

“Well; but I shall be lonely.  Do not stay long at the church, no?  How glad I am that Chonita came in time for the christening!  What a beautiful comadre she will be!  I have just seen her.  Ay, poor Diego! he will fall in love with her; and what then?”

“It would have been better had she come too late, I think.  To avoid asking Diego to stand for my first child was impossible, for he is the man of men to me.  To avoid asking Doña Chonita was equally impossible, I suppose, and it will be painful for both.  He serenaded her last night, not knowing who she was, but having seen her at her grating; he only returned yesterday.  I hope she plants no thorns in his heart.”

“Perhaps they will marry and bind the wounds,” suggested the woman.

“An Estenega and an Iturbi y Moncada will not marry.  He might forget, for he is passionate and of a nature to break down barriers when a wish is dear; but she has all the wrongs of all the Iturbi y Moncadas on her white shoulders, and all their pride in the carriage of her head; to say nothing of that brother whom she adores.  She learned this morning that it was Diego’s determined opposition that kept Reinaldo out of the Departmental Junta, and meets him in no tender frame of mind——­”

Doña Martina raised her hand.  Chonita stood in the door-way.  She was quite beautiful enough to plant thorns where she listed.  Her tall supple figure was clothed in white, and over her gold hair—­lurid and brilliant, but without a tinge of red—­she wore a white lace mantilla.  Her straight narrow brows and heavy lashes were black; but her skin was more purely white than her gown.  Her nose was finely cut, the arch almost indiscernible, and she had the most sculptured mouth I have ever seen.  Her long eyes were green, dark, and luminous.  Sometimes they had the look of a child, sometimes she allowed them to flash with the fire of an animated spirit.  But the expression she chose to cultivate was that associated with crowned head and sceptered hand; and sure no queen had ever looked so calm, so inexorable, so haughty, so terribly clear of vision.  She never posed—­for any one, at least, but herself.  For some reason—­a youthful reason probably—­the iron in her nature was most admired by her.  Wherefore,—­also, as she had the power, as twin, to heal and curse,—­I had named her the Doomswoman, and by this name she was known far and wide.  By the lower class of Santa Barbara she was called The Golden Señorita, on account of her hair and of her father’s vast wealth.

“Come,” she said, “every one is waiting.  Do not you hear the voices?”

The windows were closed, but through them came a murmur like that of a pine forest.

The governor motioned to the nurse to follow Chonita and myself, and she trotted after us, her ugly face beaming with pride of position.  Was not in her arms the oldest-born of a new generation of Alvarados? the daughter of the governor of The Californias?  Her smock, embroidered with silk, was new, and looked whiter than fog against her bare brown arms and face.  Her short red satin skirt, a gift of her happy lady’s, was the finest ever worn by exultant nurse.  About her stringy old throat was a gold chain, bright red roses were woven in her black reboso.  I saw her admire Chonita’s stately figure with scornful reserve of the colorless gown.

We were followed in a moment by the governor, adjusting his collar and smoothing his hair.  As he reached the door-way at the front of the house he was greeted with a shout from assembled Monterey.  The plaza was gay with beaming faces and bright attire.  The men, women, and children of the people were on foot, a mass of color on the opposite side of the plaza:  the women in gaudy cotton frocks girt with silken sashes, tawdry jewels, and spotless camisas, the coquettish reboso draping with equal grace faces old and brown, faces round and olive; the men in glazed sombreros, short calico jackets and trousers; Indians wound up in gala blankets.  In the foreground, on prancing silver-trapped horses, were caballeros and doñas, laughing and coquetting, looking down in triumph upon the dueñas and parents who rode older and milder mustangs and shook brown knotted fingers at heedless youth.  The young men had ribbons twisted in their long black hair, and silver eagles on their soft gray sombreros.  Their velvet serapes were embroidered with gold; the velvet knee-breeches were laced with gold or silver cord over fine white linen; long deer-skin botas were gartered with vivid ribbon; flaunting sashes bound their slender waists, knotted over the hip.  The girls and young married women wore black or white mantillas, the silken lace of Spain, regardless of the sun which might darken their Castilian fairness.  Their gowns were of flowered silk or red or yellow satin, the waist long and pointed, the skirt full; jeweled buckles of tiny slippers flashed beneath the hem.  The old people were in rich dress of sober color.  A few Americans were there in the ugly garb of their country, a blot on the picture.

At the door, just in front of the cavalcade, stood General Vallejo’s carriage, the only one in California, sent from Sonoma for the occasion.  Beside it were three superbly-trapped horses.

The governor placed the swelling nurse in the carriage, then glanced about him.  “Where is Estenega?—­and the Castros?” he asked.

“There are Don José and Doña Modeste Castro,” said Chonita.

The crowd had parted suddenly, and two men and a woman rode toward the governor.  One of the men was tall and dark, and his somber military attire became the stern sadness of his face.  Castro was not Comandante-general of the army at that time, but his bearing was as imperious in that year of 1840 as when six years later the American Occupation closed forever the career of a man made in derision for greatness.  At his right rode his wife, one of the most queenly beauties of her time, small as she was in stature.  Every woman’s eye turned to her at once; she was our leader of fashion, and we all copied the gowns that came to her from the city of Mexico.

But Chonita gave no heed to the Castros.  She fixed her cold direct regard on the man who rode with them, and whom, she knew, must be Diego Estenega, for he was their guest.  She was curious to see this enemy of her house, the political rival of her brother, the owner of the voice which had given her the first thrill of her life.  He was dressed as plainly as Castro, and had none of the rich southern beauty of the caballeros.  His hair was cut short like Alvarado’s, and his face was thin and almost sallow.  But the life that was in that face! the passion, the intelligence, the kindness, the humor, the grim determination!  And what splendid vitality was in his tall thin figure, and nervous activity under the repose of his carriage!  I remember I used to think in those days that Diego Estenega could conquer the world if he wished, although I suspected that he lacked one quality of the great rulers of men,—­inexorable cruelty.

From the moment his horse carried him into the plaza he did not remove his eyes from Chonita’s face.  She lowered hers angrily after a moment.  As he reached the house he sprang to the ground, and Alvarado presented the sponsors.  He lifted his cap and bowed, but not as low as the caballeros who were wont to prostrate themselves before her.  They murmured the usual form of salutation: 

“At your feet, señorita.”

“I appreciate the honor of your acquaintance.”

“It is my duty and pleasure to lift you to your horse.”  And, still holding his cap in his hand, he led her to one of the three horses which stood beside the carriage; with little assistance she sprang to its back, and he mounted the one reserved for him.

The cavalcade started.  First the carriage, then Alvarado and myself, followed by the sponsors, the Castros, the members of the Departmental Junta and their wives, then the caballeros and the doñas, the old people and the Americans; the populace trudging gayly in the rear, keeping good pace with the riders, who were held in check by a fragment of pulp too young to be jolted.

“You never have been in Monterey before, señorita, I understand,” said Estenega to Chonita.  No situation could embarrass him.

“No; once they thought to send me to the convent here,—­to Doña Concepcion Arguéllo,—­but it was so far, and my mother does not like to travel.  So Doña Concepcion came to us for a year, and, after, I studied with an instructor who came from Mexico to educate my brother and me.”  She had no intention of being communicative with Diego Estenega, but his keen reflective gaze confused her, and she took refuge in words.

“Doña Eustaquia tells me that, unlike most of our women, you have read many books.  Few Californian women care for anything but to look beautiful and to marry,—­not, however, being unique in that respect.  Would you not rather live in our capital?  You are so far away down there, and there are but few of the gente de razon, no?”

“We are well satisfied, señor, and we are gay when we wish.  There are ten families in the town, and many rancheros within a hundred leagues.  They think nothing of coming to our balls.  And we have grand religious processions, and bull-fights, and races.  We have beautiful cañons for meriendas; and I could dance every night if I wished.  We are few, but we are quite as gay and quite as happy as you in your capital.”  The pride of the Iturbi y Moncadas and of the Barbariña flashed in her eyes, then made way for anger under the amused glance of Estenega.

“Oh, of course,” he said, teasingly.  “You are to Monterey what Monterey is to the city of Mexico.  But, pardon me, señorita; I would not anger you for all the gold which is said to lie like rocks under our Californias,—­if it be true that certain padres hold that mighty secret. (God! how I should like to get one by the throat and throttle it out of him!) Pardon me again, señorita; I was going to say that you may be pleased to know that there is little magnificence where my ranchos are,—­high on the coast, among the redwoods.  I live in a house made of big ugly logs, unpainted.  There are no cavalcades in the cold depths of those redwood forests, and the ocean beats against ragged cliffs.  Only at Fort Ross, in her log palace, does the beautiful Russian, Princess Hélène Rotscheff, strive occasionally to make herself and others forget that the forest is not the Bois of her beloved Paris, that in it the grizzly and the panther hunger for her, and that an Indian Prince, mad with love for the only fair-haired woman he has ever seen, is determined to carry her off——­”

“Tell me! tell me!” cried Chonita, eagerly, forgetting her rôle and her enemy.  “What is that?  I do not know the princess, although she has sent me word many times to visit her—­Did an Indian try to carry her off?”

“It happened only the other day.  Prince Solano, perhaps you have heard, is chief of all the tribes of Sonoma, Valley of the Moon.  He is a handsome animal, with a strong will and remarkable organizing abilities.  One day I was entertaining the Rotscheffs at dinner when Solano suddenly flung the door open and strode into the room:  we are old friends, and my servants do not stand on ceremony with him.  As he caught sight of the princess he halted abruptly, stared at her for a moment, much as the first man may have stared at the first woman, then turned and left the house, sprang on his mustang and galloped away.  The princess, you must know, is as blonde as only a Russian can be, and an extremely pretty woman, small and dainty.  No wonder the mighty prince of darkness took fire.  She was much amused.  So was Rotscheff, and he joked her the rest of the evening.  Before he left, however, I had a word with him alone, and warned him not to let the princess stray beyond the walls of the fortress.  That same night I sent a courier to General Vallejo—­who, fortunately, was at Sonoma—­bidding him watch Solano.  And, sure enough—­the day I left for Monterey the Princess Hélène was in hysterics, Rotscheff was swearing like a madman, and a soldier was at every carronade:  word had just come from General Vallejo that he had that morning intercepted Solano in his triumphant march, at the head of six tribes, upon Fort Ross, and sent him flying back to his mountain-top in disorder and bitterness of spirit.”

“That is very interesting!” cried Chonita.  “I like that.  What an experience those Russians have had!  That terrible tragedy!—­Ah, I remember, it was you who were to have aided Natalie Ivanhoff in her escape—­”

“Hush!” said Estenega.  “Do not speak of that.  Here we are.  At your service, señorita.”  He sprang to the whaleboned pavement in front of the little church facing the blue bay and surrounded by the gray ruins of the old Presidio, and lifted her down.

Chonita recalled, and angry with herself for having been beguiled by her enemy, took the infant from the nurse’s arms and carried it fearfully up the aisle.  Estenega, walking beside her, regarded her meditatively.

“What is she?” he thought, “this Californian woman with her hair of gold and her unmistakable intellect, her marble face crossed now and again by the animation of the clever American woman?  What an anomaly to find on the shores of the Pacific!  All I had heard of The Doomswoman, The Golden Señorita, gave me no idea of this.  What a pity that our houses are at war!  She is not maternal, at all events; I never saw a baby held so awkwardly.  What a poise of head!  She looks better fitted for tragedy than for this little comedy of life in the Californias.  A sovereignty would suit her,—­were it not for her eyes.  They are not quite so calm and just and inexorable as the rest of her face.  She would not even make a good household tyrant, like Doña Jacoba Duncan.  Unquestionably she is religious, and swaddled in all the traditions of her race; but her eyes,—­they are at odds with all the rest of her.  They are not lovely eyes; they lack softness and languor and tractability; their expression changes too often, and they mirror too much intelligence for loveliness, but they never will be old eyes, and they never will cease to look.  And they are the eyes best worth looking into that I have ever seen.  No, a sovereignty would not suit her at all; a salon might.  But, like a few of us, she is some years ahead of her sphere.  Glory be to the Californias—­of the future, when we are dirt, and our children have found the gold!”

The baby was nearly baptized by the time he had finished his soliloquy.  She had kicked alarmingly when the salt was laid on her tongue, and squalled under the deluge of water which gave her her name and also wet Chonita’s sleeve.  The godmother longed for the ceremony to be over; but it was more protracted than usual, owing to the importance of the restless object on the pillow in her weary arms.  When the last word was said, she handed pillow and baby to the nurse with a fervent sigh of relief which made her appear girlish and natural.

After Estenega had lifted her to her horse he dried her sleeve with his handkerchief.  He lingered over the task; the cavalcade and populace went on without them, and when they started they were in the rearward of the blithesome crowd.

“Do you know what I thought as I stood by you in the church?” he asked.

“No,” she said, indifferently.  “I hope you prayed for the fortune of the little one.”

“I did not; nor did you.  You were too afraid you would drop it.  I was thinking how unmotherly, I had almost said unwomanly, you looked.  You were made for the great world,—­the restless world, where people fly faster from monotony than from a tidal wave.”

She looked at him with cold dignity, but flushed a little.  “I am not unwomanly, señor, although I confess I do not understand babies and do detest to sew.  But if I ever marry I shall be a good wife and mother.  No Spanish woman was ever otherwise, for every Spanish woman has had a good mother for example.”

“You have said exactly what you should have said, voicing the inborn principles and sentiments of the Spanish woman.  I should be interested to know what your individual sentiments are.  But you misunderstand me.  I said that you were too good for the average lot of woman.  You are a woman, not a doll; an intelligence, not a bundle of shallow emotions and transient desires.  You should have a larger destiny.”

She gave him a swift sidelong flash from eyes that suddenly looked childish and eager.

“It is true,” she said, frankly, “I have no desire to marry and have many children.  My father has never said to me, ‘Thou must marry;’ and I have sometimes thought I would say ‘No’ when that time came.  For the present I am contented with my books and to ride about the country on a wild horse; but perhaps—­I do not know—­I may not always be contented with that.  Sometimes when reading Shakespeare I have imagined myself each of those women in turn.  But generally, of course, I have thought little of being any one but myself.  What else could I be here?”

“Nothing; excepting a Joan of Arc when the Americans sweep down upon us.  But that would be only for a day; we should be such easy prey.  If I could put you to sleep and awaken you fifty years hence, when California was a modern civilization!  God speed the Americans:  Therein lies our only chance.”

“What!” she cried.  “You—­you would have the Americans?  You—­a Californian!  But you are an Estenega; that explains everything.”

“I am a Californian,” he said, ignoring the scorn of the last words, “but I hope I have acquired some common-sense in roving about the world.  The women of California are admirable in every way,—­chaste, strong of character, industrious, devoted wives and mothers, born with sufficient capacity for small pleasures.  But what are our men?  Idle, thriftless, unambitious, too lazy to walk across the street, but with a horse for every step, sleeping all day in a hammock, gambling and drinking all night.  They are the natural followers of a race of men who came here to force fortune out of an unbroken country with little to help them but brains and will.  The great effort produced great results; therefore there is nothing for their sons to do, and they luxuriously do nothing.  What will the next generation be?  Our women will marry Americans,—­respect for men who are men will overcome prejudice,—­the crossed blood will fight for a generation or two, then a race will be born worthy of California.  Why are our few great men so very great to us?  What have men of exceptional talent to fight down in the Californias except the barriers to its development?  In England or the United States they still would be great men,—­Alvarado and Castro, at least,—­but they would have to work harder.”

Chonita, in spite of her disapproval and her blood, looked at him with interest.  His ideas and language were strikingly unlike the sentimental rhetoric of the caballeros.

“It is as you say,” she admitted; “but the Californian’s highest duty is loyalty to his country.  Ours is a double duty, isolated as we are on this far strip of land, away from all other civilization.  We should be more contemptible than Indians if we were not true to our flag.”

“No wonder that you and that famous patriot of ours, Doña Eustaquia Ortega, are bonded friends.  I doubt if you could hate as well as she.  You have no such violence in your nature; you could neither love nor hate very hard.  You would love (if you loved at all) with majesty and serenity, and hate with chili severity.”  While he spoke he watched her intently.

She met his gaze unflinchingly.  “True, señor; I am no ’bundle of shallow emotions,’ nor have I a lion in me, like Eustaquia.  I am a creature of deliberation, not of impulse:  I love and hate as duty dictates.”

“You are by nature the most impulsive woman I ever saw,” he said, much amused, “and Eustaquia’s lion is a kitten to the one that sleeps in you.  You have cold deliberation enough, but it is manufactured, and the result of pretty hard work at that.  Like all edifices reared without a foundation, it will fall with a crash some day, and the fragments will be of very little use to you.”  And there the conversation ended:  they had reached the plaza, and a babel of voices surrounded them.  Governor Alvarado stood on the upper corridor of his house, throwing handfuls of small gold coins among the people, who were shrieking with delight.  The girl guests mingled with them, seeing that no palm went home empty.  Beside the governor sat Doña Martina, radiant with pride, and behind her stood the nurse, holding the infant on its pillow.

“We had better go to the house as soon as possible,” said Estenega.  “It is nearly time for the bull-bear fight, and we must have good seats.”

They forced their way through the crowd, dismounted at the door, and went up to the corridor.  The Castros and I were already there, with a number of other invited guests.  The women sat in chairs, close to the corridor railing; several rows of men stood behind them.

The plaza was a jagged circle surrounded by dwelling-houses, some one story in height, others with overhanging balconies; from it radiated five streets.  All corridors were crowded with the elegantly-dressed men and women of the aristocracy; large black fans were waving; every eye was flashing expectantly; the people stood on platforms which had been erected in four of the streets.

Amidst the shouts of the spectators, two vaqueros, dressed in black velvet short-clothes, dazzling linen, and stiff black sombreros, tinkling bells attached to their trappings, jingling spurs on their heels, galloped into the plaza, driving a large aggressive bull.  They chased him about in a circle, swinging their reatas, dodging his onslaughts, then rode out, and four others entered, dragging an unwilling bear by a reata tied to each of its legs.  By means of a long chain and much dexterity they fastened the two beasts together, freed the legs of the bear, then retired to the entrance to await events.  But the bull and the bear would not fight.  The latter arose on his haunches and regarded his enemy warily; the bull appeared to disdain the bear as too small game; he but lowered his horns and pawed the ground.  The spectators grew impatient.  The brave caballeros and dainty doñas wanted blood.  They tapped their feet and murmured ominously.  As for the populace, it howled for slaughter.  Governor Alvarado made a sign to one of the vaqueros; the man rushed abruptly upon the bull and hit him a sharp blow across the nose with the cruel quirto.  The bull’s dignity vanished.  With the quadrupedian capacity for measuring distance, he inferred that the blow had been inflicted by the bear, who sat some twenty feet away, mildly licking his paws.  He made a savage onset.  The bear, with the dexterity of a vaquero, leaped aside and sprang upon the assailant’s neck, his teeth meeting argumentatively in the rope-like tendons.  The bull roared with pain and rage and attempted to shake him off, but he hung on; both lost their footing and rolled over and over amidst clouds of dust, a mighty noise, and enough blood to satisfy the early thirst of the beholders.  Then the bull wrenched himself free; before the mountain visitor could scramble to his feet, he fixed him with his horns and tossed him on high.  As the bear came down on his back with a thud and a snap which would have satisfied a bull less anxious to show what a bull could do, the victor rushed upon the corpse, kicked and stamped and bit until the blood spouted into his eyes, and pulp and dust were indistinguishable.  Then how the delighted spectators clapped their hands and cried “Brava!” to the bull, who pranced about the plaza, dragging the carcass of the bear after him, his head high, his big eyes red and rolling!  The women tore off their rebosos and waved them like banners, smashed their fans, and stamped their little feet; the men whirled their sombreros with supple wrists.  But the bull was not satisfied; he pawed the ground with demanding hoofs; and the vaqueros galloped into the ring with another bear.  Nor had they time to detach their reatas before the bull was upon the second antagonist; and they were obliged to retire in haste.

Estenega, who stood between Chonita and myself, watched The Doomswoman attentively.  Her lips were compressed fiercely:  for a moment they bore a strange resemblance to his own as I had seen them at times.  Her nostrils were expanded, her lids half covered her eyes.  “She has cruelty in her,” he murmured to me as the first battle finished; “and it was her imperious wish that the bull should win, because he is the more lordly animal.  She has no sympathy for the poor bundle of hair and quivering flesh that bounded on the mountain yesterday.  Has she brutality in her?—­just enough—­”

“Brava!  Brava!” The women were on their feet; even Chonita for the moment forgot herself, and beat the railing with her small fist.  Another bear had been impaled and tossed and trampled.  The bull, panting from his exertions, dashed about the plaza, still dragging his first victim after him.  Suddenly he stopped; the blood gushed from his nostrils; he shivered like a skeleton hanging in the wind, then fell in an ignominious heap—­dead.

“A warning, Diego,” I said, rising and shaking my fan at him.  “Be not too ambitious, else wilt thou die of thy victories.  And do not love the polar star,” I murmured in his ear, “lest thou set fire to it and fall to ashes thyself.”