The Doomswoman: An Historical Romance of Old California

He turned his back upon the Mission and rode toward his home, sixty miles in a howling November wind.  At Bodega Bay he learned that Governor Rotscheff had passed there two days before with a party of guests that he had gone down to Sausalito to meet.  Chonita awaited him in the North.  A softer mood pressed through the somberness of his spirit, and the candle of hope burned again.  Gold must exist elsewhere in California, and he swore anew that it should yield itself to him.  The last miles of his ride lay along the cliffs.  Sometimes the steep hills covered with redwoods rose so abruptly from the trail that the undergrowth brushed him as he passed; on the other side but a few inches stood between himself and death amidst the surf pounding on the rocks a thousand feet below.  The sea-gulls screamed about his head, the sea-lions barked with the hollow note of consumptives on the outlying rocks.  On the horizon was a bank of fog, outlined with the crests and slopes and gulches of the mountain beside him.  It sent an advance wrack scudding gracefully across the ocean to puff among the redwoods, capriciously clinging to some, ignoring others.  Then came the vast white mountain rushing over the roaring ocean, up the cliffs and into the gloomy forests, blotting the lonely horseman from sight.

He arrived at his house—­a big structure of logs—­late in the night.  His servants came out to meet him, and in a moment a fire leaped in the great fireplace in his library.  He lived alone; his parents and brothers were dead, and his sisters married; but the fire made the low long room, covered with bear-skins and lined with books, as cheerful as a bachelor could expect.  He found a note from the Princess Hélène Rotscheff, the famous wife of the governor, asking him to spend the following week at Fort Ross; but he was so tired that even the image of Chonita was dim; the note barely caused a throb of anticipation.  After supper he flung himself on a couch before the fire and slept until morning, then went to bed and slept until afternoon.  By that time he was himself again.  He sent a vaquero ahead with his evening clothes, and an hour or two later started for Fort Ross, spurring his horse with a lighter heart over the cliffs.  His ranchos adjoined the Russian settlement; the journey from his house to the military enclosure was not a long one.  He soon rounded the point of a sloping hill and entered the spreading core formed by the mountains receding in a semicircle above the cliffs, and in whose shelter lay Fort Ross.  The fort was surrounded by a stockade of redwood beams, bastions in the shape of hexagonal towers at diagonal corners.  Cannon, mounted on carriages, were at each of the four entrances, in the middle of the enclosure, and in the bastions.  Sentries paced the ramparts with unremitting vigilance.

Within were the long low buildings occupied by the governor and officers, the barracks, and the Russian church, with its belfry and cupola.  Beyond was the “town,” a collection of huts accommodating about eight hundred Indians and Siberian convicts, the workingmen of the company.  All the buildings were of redwood logs or planed boards, and made a very different picture from the white towns of the South.  The curving mountains were sombrous with redwoods, the ocean growled unceasingly.

Estenega threw his bridle to a soldier and went directly to the house.  A servant met him on the veranda and conducted him to his room; it was late, and every one else was dressing for dinner.  He changed his riding-clothes for the evening dress of modern civilization, and went at once to the drawing-room.  Here all was luxury, nothing to suggest the privations of a new country.  A thick red carpet covered the floor, red arras the walls; the music of Mozart and Beethoven was on the grand piano.  The furniture was rich and comfortable, the large carved table was covered with French novels and European periodicals.

The candles had not been brought in, but logs blazed in the open fireplace.  As Estenega crossed the room, a woman, dressed in black, rose from a deep chair, and he recognized Chonita.  He sprang forward impetuously and held out his arms, but she waved him back.

“No, no,” she said, hurriedly.  “I want to explain why I am here.  I came for two reasons.  First, I could refuse the Princess Hélène no longer; she goes so soon.  And then—­I wanted to see you once more before I leave the world.”

“Before you do what?”

“I am not going into a convent; I cannot leave my father.  I am going to retire to the most secluded of our ranchos, to see no more of the world or its people.  I shall take my father with me.  Reinaldo and Prudencia will remain at Casa Grande.”

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed, impatiently.  “Do you suppose I shall let you do anything of the sort?  How little you know me, my love!  But we will discuss that question later.  We shall be alone only a few moments now.  Tell me of yourself.  How are you?”

“I will tell you that, also, at another time.”

And at the moment a door opened, and the governor and his wife entered and greeted Estenega with cordial hospitality.  The governor was a fine-looking Russian, with a spontaneous warmth of manner; the princess a woman who possessed both elegance and vivacity, both coquetry and dignity; she could sparkle and chill, allure and suppress in the same moment.  Even here, rough and wild as her surroundings were, she gave much thought to her dress; to-night her blonde harmonious loveliness was properly framed in a toilette of mignonette greens, fresh from Paris.  A moment later Reinaldo and Prudencia appeared, the former as splendid a caballero as ever, although wearing the chastened air of matrimony, the latter pre-maternally consequential.  Then came the officers and their wives, all brilliant in evening dress; and a moment later dinner was announced.

Estenega sat at the right of his hostess, and that trained daughter of the salon kept the table in a light ripple of conversation, sparkling herself, without striking terror to the hearts of her guests.  She and Estenega were old friends, and usually indulged in lively sallies, ending some times in a sharp war of words, for she was a very clever woman; but to-night he gave her absent attention:  he watched Chonita furtively, and thought of little else.

Her eyes had darker shadows beneath them than those cast by her lashes; her face was pale and slightly hollowed.  She had suffered, and not for her mother.  “She shall suffer no more,” he thought.

“We hunt bear to-night,” he heard the governor say at length.

“I should like to go,” said Chonita, quickly.  “I should like to go out to-night.”

Immediately there was a chorus from all the Other women, excepting the Princess Hélène and Prudencia; they wanted to go too.  Rotscheff, who would much rather have left them at home, consented with good grace, and Estenega’s spirits rose at once.  He would have a talk with Chonita that night, something he had not dared to hope for, and he suspected that she had promoted the opportunity.

The men remained in the dining-room after the ladies had withdrawn, and Estenega, restored to his normal condition, and in his natural element among these people of the world, expanded into the high spirits and convivial interest in masculine society which made him as popular with men as he was fascinating, through the exercise of more subtle faculties, to women.  Reinaldo watched him with jealous impatience; no one cared to hearken to his eloquence when Estenega talked; and he had come to Fort Ross only to have a conversation with his one-time enemy.  As he listened to Estenega, shorn, for the time-being, of his air of dictator and watchful ambition, a man of the world taking an enthusiastic part in the hilarity of the hour, but never sacrificing his dignity by assuming the rôle of chief entertainer, there grew within him a dull sense of inferiority:  he felt, rather than knew, that neither the city of Mexico nor gratified ambitions would give him that assured ease, that perfection of breeding, that calm sense of power, concealing so gracefully the relentless will and the infinite resource which made this most un-Californian of Californians seem to his Arcadian eyes a being of a higher star.  And hatred blazed forth anew.

As the men rose, finally, to go to the drawing-room, he asked Estenega to remain for a moment.  “Thou wilt keep thy promise soon, no?” he said when they were alone.

“What promise?”

“Thy promise to send me as diputado to the next Mexican Congress.”

Estenega looked at him reflectively.  He had little toleration for the man of inferior brain, and, although he did not underrate his power for mischief, he relied upon his own wit to circumvent him.  He had disposed of this one by warning Santa Ana, and he concluded to be annoyed by him no further.  Besides, as a brother-in-law, he would be insupportable except at the long range of mutual unamiability.

“I made you no promise,” he said, deliberately; “and I shall make you none.  I do not wish you in the city of Mexico.”

Reinaldo’s face grew livid.  “Thou darest to say that to me, and yet would marry my sister?”

“I would, and I shall.”

“And yet thou wouldst not help her brother?”

“Her brother is less to me than any man with whom I have sat to-night.  Build no hopes on that.  You will stay at Santa Barbara and play the grand seigneur, which suits you very well, or become a prisoner in your own house.”  And he left the room.