The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California

Two weeks later they were again gathered about the tubs.

For a time after arrival they forgot La Tulita—­now the absorbing topic of Monterey—­in a new sensation.  Mariquita had appeared with a basket of unmistakable American underwear.

“What!” cried Faquita, shrilly.  “Thou wilt defile these tubs with the linen of bandoleros?  Hast thou had thy silly head turned with a kiss?  Not one shirt shall go in this water.”

Mariquita tossed her head defiantly.  “Captain Brotherton say the Indian women break his clothes in pieces.  They know not how to wash anything but dish-rags.  And does he not go to marry our Doña Eustaquia?”

“The Captain is not so bad,” admitted Faquita.  The indignation of the others also visibly diminished:  the Captain had been very kind the year before when gloom lay heavy on the town.  “But,” continued the autocrat, with an ominous pressing of her lips, “sure he must change three times a day.  Is all that Captain Brotherton’s?”

“He wear many shirts,” began Mariquita, when Faquita pounced upon the basket and shook its contents to the grass.

“Aha!  It seems that the Captain has sometimes the short legs and sometimes the long.  Sometimes he put the tucks in his arms, I suppose.  What meaning has this?  Thou monster of hypocrisy!”

The old women scowled and snorted.  The girls looked sympathetic:  more than one midshipman had found favour in the lower quarter.

“Well,” said Mariquita, sullenly, “if thou must know, it is the linen of the Lieutenant of La Tulita.  Ana ask me to wash it, and I say I will.”

At this announcement Faquita squared her elbows and looked at Mariquita with snapping eyes.

“Oho, señorita, I suppose thou wilt say next that thou knowest what means this flirtation!  Has La Tulita lost her heart, perhaps?  And Don Ramon—­dost thou know why he leaves Monterey one hour after he comes?” Her tone was sarcastic, but in it was a note of apprehension.

Mariquita tossed her head, and all pressed close about the rivals.

“What dost thou know, this time?” inquired the girl, provokingly.  “Hast thou any letter to read today?  Thou dost forget, old Faquita, that Ana is my friend—­”

“Throw the clothes in the tubs,” cried Faquita, furiously.  “Do we come here to idle and gossip?  Mariquita, thou hussy, go over to that tub by thyself and wash the impertinent American rags.  Quick.  No more talk.  The sun goes high.”

No one dared to disobey the queen of the tubs, and in a moment the women were kneeling in irregular rows, tumbling their linen into the water, the brown faces and bright attire making a picture in the colorous landscape which some native artist would have done well to preserve.  For a time no sound was heard but the distant roar of the surf, the sighing of the wind through the pines on the hill, the less romantic grunts of the women and the swish of the linen in the water.  Suddenly Mariquita, the proscribed, exclaimed from her segregated tub:—­

“Look!  Look!”

Heads flew up or twisted on their necks.  A party of young people, attended by a dueña, was crossing the meadow to the road.  At the head of the procession were a girl and a man, to whom every gaze which should have been intent upon washing-tubs alone was directed.  The girl wore a pink gown and a reboso.  Her extraordinary grace made her look taller than she was; the slender figure swayed with every step.  Her pink lips were parted, her blue starlike eyes looked upward into the keen cold eyes of a young man wearing the uniform of a lieutenant of the United States army.

The dominant characteristics of the young man’s face, even then, were ambition and determination, and perhaps the remarkable future was foreshadowed in the restless scheming mind.  But to-day his deep-set eyes were glowing with a light more peculiar to youth, and whenever bulging stones afforded excuse he grasped the girl’s hand and held it as long as he dared.  The procession wound past the tubs and crossing the road climbed up the hill to the little wooded cemetery of the early fathers, the cemetery where so many of those bright heads were to lie forgotten beneath the wild oats and thistles.

“They go to the grave of Benicia Ortega and her little one,” said Francesca.  “Holy Mary!  La Tulita never look in a man’s eyes like that before.”

“But she have in his,” said Mariquita, wisely.

“No more talk!” cried Faquita, and once more silence came to her own.  But fate was stronger than Faquita.  An hour later a little girl came running down, calling to the old woman that her grandchild, the consolation of her age, had been taken ill.  After she had hurried away the women fairly leaped over one another in their efforts to reach Mariquita’s tub.

“Tell us, tell us, chiquita,” they cried, fearful lest Faquita’s snubbing should have turned her sulky, “what dost thou know?”

But Mariquita, who had been biting her lips to keep back her story, opened them and spoke fluently.

“Ay, my friends!  Doña Eustaquia and Benicia Ortega are not the only ones to wed Americans.  Listen!  La Tulita is mad for this man, who is no more handsome than the palm of my hand when it has all day been in the water.  Yesterday morning came Don Ramon.  I am in the back garden of the Casa Rivera with Ana, and La Tulita is in the front garden sitting under the wall.  I can look through the doors of the sala and see and hear all.  Such a handsome caballero, my friends!  The gold six inches deep on the serape.  Silver eagles on the sombrero.  And the botas!  Stamp with birds and leaves, ay, yi!  He fling open the gates so bold, and when he see La Tulita he look like the sun is behind his face. (Such curls, my friends, tied with a blue ribbon!) But listen!

“‘Mi querida!’ he cry, ‘mi alma!’ (Ay, my heart jump in my throat like he speak to me.) Then he fall on one knee and try to kiss her hand.  But she throw herself back like she hate him.  Her eyes are like the bay in winter.  And then she laugh.  When she do that, he stand up and say with the voice that shake:—­

“‘What is the matter, Herminia?  Do you not love me any longer?’

“‘I never love you,’ she say.  ’They give me no peace until I say I marry you, and as I love no one else—­I do not care much.  But now that you have insult me, I have the best excuse to break the engagement, and I do it.’

“‘I insult you?’ He hardly can speak, my friends, he is so surprised and unhappy.

“‘Yes; did you not forget the smocks?’

“‘The—­smocks!’ he stammer, like that.  ‘The smocks?’

“‘No one can be blame but you,’ she say.  ’And you know that no bride forgive that.  You know all that it means.’

“‘Herminia!’ he say.  ’Surely you will not put me; away for a little thing like that!’

“‘I have no more to say,’ she reply, and then she get up and go in the house and shut the door so I cannot see how he feel, but I am very sorry for him if he did forget the smocks.  Well!  That evening I help Ana water the flowers in the front garden, and every once in the while we look through the windows at La Tulita and the Lieutenant.  They talk, talk, talk.  He look so earnest and she—­she look so beautiful.  Not like a devil, as when she talk to Don Ramon in the morning, but like an angel.  Sure, a woman can be both!  It depends upon the man.  By and by Ana go away, but I stay there, for I like look at them.  After a while they get up and come out.  It is dark in the garden, the walls so high, and the trees throw the shadows, so they cannot see me.  They walk up and down, and by and by the Lieutenant take out his knife and cut a shoot from the rose-bush that climb up the house.

“‘These Castilian roses,’ he say, very soft, but in very bad Spanish, ’they are very beautiful and a part of Monterey—­a part of you.  Look, I am going to plant this here, and long before it grow to be a big bush I come back and you will wear its buds in your hair when we are married in that lovely old church.  Now help me,’ and then they kneel down and he stick it in the ground, and all their fingers push the earth around it.  Then she give a little sob and say, ‘You must go?’

“He lift her up and put his arms around her tight.  ‘I must go,’ he say.  ’I am not my own master, you know, and the orders have come.  But my heart is here, in this old garden, and I come back for it.’  And then she put her arms around him and he kiss her, and she love him so I forget to be sorry for Don Ramon.  After all, it is the woman who should be happy.  He hold her a long time, so long I am afraid Doña Carmen come out to look for her.  I lift up on my knees (I am sit down before) and look in the window and I see she is asleep, and I am glad.  Well!  After a while they walk up and down again, and he tell her all about his home far away, and about some money he go to get when the law get ready, and how he cannot marry on his pay.  Then he say how he go to be a great general some day and how she will be the more beautiful woman in—­how you call it?—­Washington, I think.  And she cry and say she does not care, she only want him.  And he tell her water the rose-bush every day and think of him, and he will come back before it is large, and every time a bud come out she can know he is thinking of her very hard.”

“Ay, pobrecita!” said Francesca, “I wonder will he come back.  These men!”

“Surely.  Are not all men mad for La Tulita?”

“Yes—­yes, but he go far away.  To America!  Dios de mi alma!  And men, they forget.”  Francesca heaved a deep sigh.  Her youth was far behind her, but she remembered many things.

“He return,” said Mariquita, the young and romantic.

“When does he go?”

Mariquita pointed to the bay.  A schooner rode at anchor.  “He go to Yerba Buena on that to-morrow morning.  From there to the land of the American.  Ay, yi!  Poor La Tulita!  But his linen is dry.  I must take it to iron for I have it promised for six in the morning.”  And she hastily gathered the articles from the low bushes and hurried away.

That evening as the women returned to town, talking gayly, despite the great baskets on their heads, they passed the hut of Faquita and paused at the window to inquire for the child.  The little one lay gasping on the bed.  Faquita sat beside her with bowed head.  An aged crone brewed herbs over a stove.  The dingy little house faced the hills and was dimly lighted by the fading rays of the sun struggling through the dark pine woods.

“Holy Mary, Faquita!” said Francesca, in a loud whisper.  “Does Liseta die?”

Faquita sprang to her feet.  Her cross old face was drawn with misery.  “Go, go!” she said, waving her arms, “I want none of you.”

The next evening she sat in the same position, her eyes fixed upon the shrinking features of the child.  The crone had gone.  She heard the door open, and turned with a scowl.  But it was La Tulita that entered and came rapidly to the head of the bed.  The girl’s eyes were swollen, her dress and hair disordered.

“I have come to you because you are in trouble,” she said.  “I, too, am in trouble.  Ay, my Faquita!”

The old woman put up her arms and drew the girl down to her lap.  She had never touched her idol before, but sorrow levels even social barriers.

“Pobrecita!” she said, and the girl cried softly on her shoulder.

“Will he come back, Faquita?”

“Surely, niñita.  No man could forget you.”

“But it is so far.”

“Think of what Don Vicente do for Doña Ysabel, mijita.”

“But he is an American.  Oh, no, it is not that I doubt him.  He loves me!  It is so far, like another world.  And the ocean is so big and cruel.”

“We ask the priest to say a mass.”

“Ah, my Faquita!  I will go to the church to-morrow morning.  How glad I am that I came to thee.”  She kissed the old woman warmly, and for the moment Faquita forgot her trouble.

But the child threw out its arms and moaned.  La Tulita pushed the hair out of her eyes and brought the medicine from the stove, where it simmered unsavourily.  The child swallowed it painfully, and Faquita shook her head in despair.  At the dawn it died.  As La Tulita laid her white fingers on the gaping eyelids, Faquita rose to her feet.  Her ugly old face was transfigured.  Even the grief had gone out of it.  For a moment she was no longer a woman, but one of the most subtle creations of the Catholic religion conjoined with racial superstitions.

“As the moon dieth and cometh to life again,” she repeated with a sort of chanting cadence, “so man, though he die, will live again.  Is it not better that she will wander forever through forests where crystal streams roll over golden sands, than grow into wickedness, and go out into the dark unrepenting, perhaps, to be bitten by serpents and scorched by lightning and plunged down cataracts?” She turned to La Tulita.  “Will you stay here, señorita, while I go to bid them make merry?”

The girl nodded, and the woman went out.  La Tulita watched the proud head and erect carriage for a moment, then bound up the fallen jaw of the little corpse, crossed its hands and placed weights on the eyelids.  She pushed the few pieces of furniture against the wall, striving to forget the one trouble that had come into her triumphant young life.  But there was little to do, and after a time she knelt by the window and looked up at the dark forest upon which long shafts of light were striking, routing the fog that crouched in the hollows.  The town was as quiet as a necropolis.  The white houses, under the black shadows of the hills, lay like tombs.  Suddenly the roar of the surf came to her ears, and she threw out her arms with a cry, dropping her head upon them and sobbing convulsively.  She heard the ponderous waves of the Pacific lashing the keel of a ship.

She was aroused by shouting and sounds of merriment.  She raised her head dully, but remembered in a moment what Faquita had left her to await.  The dawn lay rosily on the town.  The shimmering light in the pine woods was crossed and recrossed by the glare of rockets.  Down the street came the sound of singing voices, the words of the song heralding the flight of a child-spirit to a better world.  La Tulita slipped out of the back door and went to her home without meeting the procession.  But before she shut herself in her room she awakened Ana, and giving her a purse of gold, bade her buy a little coffin draped with white and garlanded with white flowers.