The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California

“Doña Concepción had the greatest romance of us all; so she should not chide too bitterly.”

“But she has such a sense of her duty!  Such a sense of her duty!  Ay, Dios de mi alma!  Shall we ever grow like that?”

“If we have a Russian lover who is killed in the far North, and we have a convent built for us, and teach troublesome girls.  Surely, if one goes through fire, one can become anything—­”

“Ay, yi!  Look!  Look!”

Six dark heads were set in a row along the edge of a secluded corner of the high adobe wall surrounding the Convent of Monterey.  They looked for all the world like a row of charming gargoyles—­every mouth was open—­although there was no blankness in those active mischief-hunting eyes.  Their bodies, propped on boxes, were concealed by the wall from the passer-by, and from the sharp eyes of dueñas by a group of trees just behind them.  Their section of the wall faced the Presidio, which in the early days of the eighteenth century had not lost an adobe, and was full of active life.  At one end was the house of the Governor of all the Californias, at another the church, which is all that stands to-day.  Under other walls of the square were barracks, quarters for officers and their families, store-rooms for ammunition and general supplies in case of a raid by hostile tribes (when all the town must be accommodated within the security of those four great walls), and a large hall in which many a ball was given.  The aristocratic pioneers of California loved play as well as work.  Beyond were great green plains alive with cattle, and above all curved the hills dark with pines.  Three soldiers had left the Presidio and were sauntering toward the convent.

“It is Enrico Ortega!” whispered Eustaquia Carillo, excitedly.

“And Ramon de Castro!” scarcely breathed Elena Estudillo.

“And José Yorba!”

“Not Pepe Gomez?  Ay, yi!”

“Nor Manuel Ameste!”

The only girl who did not speak stood at the end of the row.  Her eyes were fixed on the church, whose windows were dazzling with the reflected sunlight of the late afternoon.

The officers, who apparently had been absorbed in conversation and their fragrant cigaritos, suddenly looked up and saw the row of handsome and mischievous faces.  They ran forward, and dashed their sombreros into the dust before the wall.

“At your feet, señoritas!  At your feet!” they cried.

“Have they any?” whispered one.  “How unreal they look!  How symbolical!”

“The rose in your hair, Señorita Eustaquia, for the love of Heaven!” cried Ortega, in a loud whisper.

She detached the rose, touched it with her lips, and cast it to the officer.  He almost swallowed it in the ardour of his caresses.

None of the girls spoke.  That would have seemed to them the height of impropriety.  But Elena extended her arm over the wall so that her little hand hung just above young Castro’s head.  He leaped three times in the air, and finally succeeded in brushing his mustache against those coveted finger-tips:  rewarded with an approving but tantalizing laugh.  Meanwhile, José Yorba had torn a silver eagle from his sombrero, and flung it to Lola de Castro, who caught and thrust it in her hair.

“Ay, Dios!  Dios! that the cruel wall divides us,” cried Yorba.

“We will mount each upon the other’s shoulder—­”

“We will make a ladder from the limbs of the pines on the mountain—­”

“Señoritas!”

The six heads dropped from the wall like so many Humpty-Dumpties.  As they flashed about the officers caught a glimpse of horror in twelve expanded eyes.  A tall woman, serenely beautiful, clad in a long gray gown fastened at her throat with a cross, stood just within the trees.  The six culprits thought of the tragic romance which had given them the honour of being educated by Concepción de Arguello, and hoped for some small measure of mercy.  The girl who had looked over the heads of the officers, letting her gaze rest on the holy walls of the church, alone looked coldly unconcerned, and encountered steadily the sombre eyes of the convent’s mistress.

“Was thy lover in the road below, Pilar?” asked Doña Concepción, with what meaning five of the girls could not divine.  For Pilar, the prettiest and most studious girl in the convent, cared for no man.

Pilar’s bosom rose once, but she made no reply.

“Come,” said Doña Concepción, and the six followed meekly in her wake.  She led them to her private sala, a bare cold room, even in summer.  It was uncarpeted; a few religious prints were on the whitewashed walls; there were eight chairs, and a table covered with books and papers.  The six shivered.  To be invited to this room meant the greatest of honours or a lecture precursory to the severest punishment in the system of the convent.  Doña Concepción seated herself in a large chair, but her guests were not invited to relieve their weakened knees.

“Did you speak—­any of you?” she asked in a moment.

Five heads shook emphatically.

“But?”

Eustaquia, Elena, and Lola drew a long breath, then confessed their misdoings glibly enough.

“And the others?”

“They had no chance,” said Eustaquia, with some sarcasm.

“Thou wouldst have found a chance,” replied the Lady Superior, coldly.  “Thou art the first in all naughtiness, and thy path in life will be stormy if thou dost not curb thy love of adventure and insubordination.”

She covered her face with her hand and regarded the floor for some moments in silence.  It was the first performance of the kind that had come to her knowledge, and she was at a loss what to do.  Finally she said severely:  “Go each to your bed and remain there on bread and water for twenty-four hours.  Your punishment shall be known at the Presidio.  And if it ever happens again, I shall send you home in disgrace.  Now go.”

The luckless six slunk out of the room.  Only Pilar stole a hasty glance at the Lady Superior.  Doña Concepción half rose from her chair, and opened her lips as if to speak again; then sank back with a heavy sigh.

The girls were serenaded that night; but the second song broke abruptly, and a heavy gate clanged just afterward.  Concepción de Arguëllo was still young, but suffering had matured her character, and she knew how to deal sternly with those who infringed her few but inflexible rules.  It was by no means the first serenade she had interrupted, for she educated the flower of California, and it was no simple matter to prevent communication between the girls in her charge and the ardent caballeros.  She herself had been serenaded more than once since the sudden death of her Russian lover; for she who had been the belle of California for three years before the coming of Rezánof was not lightly relinquished by the impassioned men of her own race; but both at Casa Grande, in Santa Barbara, where she found seclusion until her convent was built, and after her immolation in Monterey, she turned so cold an ear to all men’s ardours that she soon came to be regarded as a part of four gray walls.  How long it took her to find actual serenity none but herself and the dead priests know, but the old women who are dying off to-day remember her as consistently placid as she was firm.  She was deeply troubled by the escapade of the little wretches on the wall, although she had dealt with it summarily and feared no further outbreak of the sort.  But she was haunted by a suspicion that there was more behind, and to come.  Pilar de la Torre and Eustaquia Carillo were the two most notable girls in the convent, for they easily took precedence of their more indolent mates and were constantly racing for honours.  There the resemblance ended.  Eustaquia, with her small brilliant eyes, irregular features, and brilliant colour, was handsome rather than beautiful, but full of fire, fascination, and spirit.  Half the Presidio was in love with her, and that she was a shameless coquette she would have been the last to deny.  Pilar was beautiful, and although the close long lashes of her eyes hid dreams, rather than fire, and her profile and poise of head expressed all the pride of the purest aristocracy California has had, nothing could divert attention from the beauty of her contours of cheek and figure, and of her rich soft colouring.  The officers in church stood up to look at her; and at the balls and meriendas she attended in vacations the homage she received stifled and annoyed her.  She was as cold and unresponsive as Concepción de Arguello.  People shrugged their shoulders and said it was as well.  Her mother, Doña Brígida de la Torre of the great Rancho Diablo, twenty miles from Monterey, was the sternest old lady in California.  It was whispered that she had literally ruled her husband with a greenhide reata, and certain it was that two years after the birth of Pilar (the thirteenth, and only living child) he had taken a trip to Mexico and never returned.  It was known that he had sent his wife a deed of the rancho; and that was the last she ever heard of him.  Her daughter, according to her imperious decree, was to marry Ygnacio Piña, the heir of the neighbouring rancho.  Doña Brígida anticipated no resistance, not only because her will had never been crossed, but because Pilar was the most docile of daughters.  Pilar was Doña Concepción’s favourite pupil, and when at home spent her time reading, embroidering, or riding about the rancho, closely attended.  She rarely talked, even to her mother.  She paid not the slightest attention to Ygnacio’s serenades, and greeted him with scant courtesy when he dashed up to the ranch-house in all the bravery of silk and fine lawn, silver and lace.  But he knew the value of Doña Brígida as an ally, and was content to amuse himself elsewhere.

The girls passed their twenty-four hours of repressed energy as patiently as necessity compelled.  Pilar, alone, lay impassive in her bed, rarely opening her eyes.  The others groaned and sighed and rolled and bounced about; but they dared not speak, for stern Sister Augusta was in close attendance.  When the last lagging minute had gone and they were bidden to rise, they sprang from the beds, flung on their clothes, and ran noisily down the long corridors to the refectory.  Doña Concepción stood at the door and greeted them with a forgiving smile.  Pilar followed some moments later.  There was something more than coldness in her eyes as she bent her head to the Lady Superior, who drew a quick breath.

“She feels that she has been humiliated, and she will not forgive,” thought Doña Concepción.  “Ay de mi!  And she may need my advice and protection.  I should have known better than to have treated her like the rest.”

After supper the girls went at once to the great sala of the convent, and sat in silence, with bent heads and folded hands and every appearance of prayerful revery.

It was Saturday evening, and the good priest of the Presidio church would come to confess them, that they might commune on the early morrow.  They heard the loud bell of the convent gate, then the opening and shutting of several doors; and many a glance flashed up to the ceiling as the brain behind scurried the sins of the week together.  It had been arranged that the six leading misdemeanants were to go first and receive much sound advice, before the old priest had begun to feel the fatigue of the confessional.  The door opened, and Doña Concepción stood on the threshold.  Her face was whiter than usual, and her manner almost ruffled.

“It is Padre Domínguez,” she said.  “Padre Estudillo is ill.  If—–­if—­any of you are tired, or do not wish to confess to the strange priest, you may go to bed.”

Not a girl moved.  Padre Domínguez was twenty-five and as handsome as the marble head of the young Augustus which stood on a shelf in the Governor’s sala.  During the year of his work in Monterey more than one of the older girls had met and talked with him; for he went into society, as became a priest, and holidays were not unfrequent.  But, although he talked agreeably, it was a matter for comment that he loved books and illuminated manuscripts more than the world, and that he was as ambitious as his superior abilities justified.

“Very well,” said Doña Concepción, impatiently.  “Eustaquia, go in.”

Eustaquia made short work of her confession.  She was followed by Elena, Lola, Mariana, and Amanda.  When the last appeared for a moment at the door, then courtesied a good night and vanished, Doña Concepción did not call the expected name, and several of the girls glanced up in surprise.  Pilar raised her eyes at last and looked steadily at the Lady Superior.  The blood rose slowly up the nun’s white face, but she said carelessly:—­

“Thou art tired, mijita, no?  Wilt thou not go to bed?”

“Not without making my confession, if you will permit me.”

“Very well; go.”

Pilar left the room and closed the door behind her.  Alone in the hall, she shook suddenly and twisted her hands together.  But, although she could not conquer her agitation, she opened the door of the chapel resolutely and entered.  The little arched whitewashed room was almost dark.  A few candles burned on the altar, shadowing the gorgeous images of Virgin and saints.  Pilar walked slowly down the narrow body of the chapel until she stood behind a priest who knelt beside a table with his back to the door.  He wore the brown robes of the Franciscan, but his lean finely proportioned figure manifested itself through the shapeless garment.  He looked less like a priest than a masquerading athlete.  His face was hidden in his hands.

Pilar did not kneel.  She stood immovable and silent, and in a moment it was evident that she had made her presence felt.  The priest stirred uneasily.  “Kneel, my daughter,” he said.  But he did not look up.  Pilar caught his hands in hers and forced them down upon the table.  The priest, throwing back his head in surprise, met the flaming glance of eyes that dreamed no longer.  He sprang to his feet, snatching back his hands.  “Doña Pilar!” he exclaimed.

“I choose to make my confession standing,” she said.  “I love you!”

The priest stared at her in consternation.

“You knew it—­unless you never think at all.  You are the only man I have ever thought it worth while to talk to.  You have seen how I have treated others with contempt, and that I have been happy with you—­and we have had more than one long talk together.  You, too, have been happy—­”

“I am a priest!”

“You are a Man and I am a Woman.”

“What is it you would have me do?”

“Fling off that hideous garment which becomes you not at all, and fly with me to my father in the City of Mexico.  I hear from him constantly, and he is wealthy and will protect us.  The barque, Joven Guipuzcoanoa, leaves Monterey within a week after the convent closes for vacation.”

The priest raised his clasped hands to heaven.  “She is mad!  She is mad!” he said.  Then he turned on her fiercely.  “Go!  Go!” he cried.  “I hate you!”

“Ay, you love me! you love me!”

The priest slowly set his face.  There was no gleam of expression to indicate whether the words that issued through his lips came from his soul or from that section of his brain instinct with self-protection.  He spoke slowly:—­

“I am a priest, and a priest I shall die.  What is more, I shall denounce you to Doña Concepción, the clergy, and—­to your mother.  The words that have just violated this chapel were not said under the seal of the confessional, and I shall deal with them as I have said.  You shall be punished, that no other man’s soul may be imperilled.”

Pilar threw out her hands wildly.  It was her turn to stare; and her eyes were full of horror and disgust.

“What?” she cried.  “You are a coward?  A traitor?  You not only dare not acknowledge that you love me, but you would betray me—­and to my mother?  Ah, Madre de Dios!”

“I do not love you.  How dare you use such a word to me,—­to me, an anointed priest!  I shall denounce—­and to-night.”

“And I loved you!”

He shrank a little under the furious contempt of her eyes.  Her whole body quivered with passion.  Then, suddenly, she sprang forward and struck him so violent a blow on his cheek that he reeled and clutched the table.  But his foot slipped, and he went down with the table on top of him.  She laughed into his red unmasked face.  “You look what you are down there,” she said,—­“less than a man, and only fit to be a priest.  I hate you!  Do your worst.”

She rushed out of the chapel and across the hall, flinging open the door of the sala.  As she stood there with blazing eyes and cheeks, shaking from head to foot, the girls gave little cries of amazement, and Doña Concepción, shaking, came forward hastily; but she reached the door too late.

“Go to the priest,” cried Pilar.  “You will find him on his back squirming under a table, with the mark of my hand on his cheek.  He has a tale to tell you.”  And she flung off the hand of the nun and ran through the halls, striking herself against the walls.

Doña Concepción did not leave her sala that night.  The indignant young aspirant for honours in Mexico had vowed that he would tell Doña Brígida and the clergy before dawn, and all her arguments had entered smarting ears.  She had finally ordered him to leave the convent and never darken its doors again.  “And the self-righteous shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” she had exclaimed in conclusion.  “Who are you that you should judge and punish this helpless girl and ruin a brilliant future?  And why?  Because she was so inexperienced in men as to trust you.”

“She has committed a deadly sin, and shall suffer,” cried the young man, violently.  It was evident that his outraged virtue as well as his face was in flames.  “Women were born to be good and meek and virtuous, to teach and to rear children.  Such creatures as Pilar de la Torre should be kept under lock and key until they are old and hideous.”

“And men were made strong, that they might protect women.  But I have said enough.  Go.”

Pilar appeared at the refectory table in the morning, but she exchanged a glance with no one, and ate little.  She looked haggard, and it was plain that she had not slept; but her manner was as composed as ever.  When Doña Concepción sent for her to come to the little sala, she went at once.

“Sit down, my child,” said the nun.  “I said all I could to dissuade him, but he would not listen.  I will protect thee if I can.  Thou hast made a terrible mistake; but it is too late for reproaches.  We must think of the future.”

“I have no desire to escape the consequences.  I staked all and lost.  And nothing can affect me now.  He has proved a dog, a cur, a coward, a brute.  I can suffer no more than when I made that discovery; and if my mother chooses to kill me, I shall make no resistance.”

“Thou art young and clever and will forget him.  He is not worth remembering.  He shall not go unpunished.  I shall use my influence to have him sent to the poorest hamlet in California.  He is worthy to do only the meanest work of the Church, and my influence with the clergy is stronger than his.  But thou?  I shall receive your mother when she comes, and beg her to leave you with me during the vacation.  Then, later, when her wrath is appeased, I will suggest that she send you to live for two years with your relatives at Santa Barbara.”

Pilar lifted her shoulders and stared out of the window.  Suddenly she gave a start and trembled.  The bell of the gate was pealing vociferously.  Doña Concepción sprang to her feet.

“Stay here,” she said; “I will receive her in the grand sala.”

But her interview with Doña Brígida lasted two minutes.

“Give her to me!” cried the terrible old woman, her furious tones ringing through the convent.  “Give her to me!  I came not here to talk with nuns.  Stand aside!”

Doña Concepción was forced to lead her to the little sala.  She strode into the room, big and brown and bony, looking like an avenging Amazon, this mother of thirteen children.  Her small eyes were blazing, and the thick wrinkles about them quivered.  Her lips twitched, her cheeks burned with a dull dark red.  In one hand she carried a greenhide reata.  With the other she caught her daughter’s long unbound hair, twisted it about her arm like a rope, then brought the reata down on the unprotected shoulders with all her great strength Doña Concepción fled from the room.  Pilar made no sound.  She had expected this, and had vowed that it should not unseal her lips.  The beating stopped abruptly.  Doña Brígida, still with the rope of hair about her arm, pushed Pilar through the door, out of the convent and its gates, then straight down the hill.  For the first time the girl faltered.

“Not to the Presidio!” she gasped.

Her mother struck her shoulder with a fist as hard as iron, and Pilar stumbled on.  She knew that if she refused to walk, her mother would carry her.  They entered the Presidio.  Pilar, raising her eyes for one brief terrible moment, saw that Tomaso, her mother’s head vaquero, stood in the middle of the square holding two horses, and that every man, woman, and child of the Presidio was outside the buildings.  The Commandante and the Alcalde were with the Governor and his staff, and Padre Estudillo.  They had the air of being present at an important ceremony.

Amidst a silence so profound that Pilar heard the mingled music of the pines on the hills above the Presidio and of the distant ocean, Doña Brígida marched her to the very middle of the square, then by a dexterous turn of her wrist forced her to her knees.  With both hands she shook her daughter’s splendid silken hair from the tight rope into which she had coiled it, then stepped back for a moment that all might appreciate the penalty a woman must pay who disgraced her sex.  The breeze from the hills lifted the hair of Pilar, and it floated and wreathed upward for a moment—­a warm dusky cloud.

Suddenly the intense silence was broken by a loud universal hiss.  Pilar, thinking that it was part of her punishment, cowered lower, then, obeying some impulse, looked up, and saw the back of the young priest.  He was running.  As her dull gaze was about to fall again, it encountered for a moment the indignant blue eyes of a red-haired, hard-featured, but distinguished-looking young man, clad in sober gray.  She knew him to be the American, Malcolm Sturges, the guest of the Governor.  But her mind rapidly shed all impressions but the wretched horror of her own plight.  In another moment she felt the shears at her neck, and knew that her disgrace was passing into the annals of Monterey, and that half her beauty was falling from her.  Then she found herself seated on the horse in front of her mother, who encircled her waist with an arm that pressed her vitals like iron.  After that there was an interval of unconsciousness.

When she awoke, her first impulse was to raise her head from her mother’s bony shoulder, where it bumped uncomfortably.  Her listless brain slowly appreciated the fact that she was not on her way to the Rancho Diablo.  The mustang was slowly ascending a steep mountain trail.  But her head ached, and she dropped her face into her hands.  What mattered where she was going?  She was shorn, and disgraced, and disillusioned, and unspeakably weary of body and soul.

They travelled through dense forests of redwoods and pine, only the soft footfalls of the unshod mustang or the sudden cry of the wild-cat breaking the primeval silence.  It was night when Doña Brígida abruptly dismounted, dragging Pilar with her.  They were halfway up a rocky height, surrounded by towering peaks black with rigid trees.  Just in front of them was an opening in the ascending wall.  Beside it, with his hand on a huge stone, stood the vaquero.  Pilar knew that she had nothing to hope from him:  her mother had beaten him into submission long since.  Doña Brígida, without a word, drove Pilar into the cave, and she and the vaquero, exerting their great strength to the full, pushed the stone into the entrance.  There was a narrow rift at the top.  The cave was as black as a starless midnight.

Then Doña Brígida spoke for the first time:—­

“Once a week I shall come with food and drink.  There thou wilt stay until thy teeth fall, the skin bags from thy bones, and thou art so hideous that all men will run from thee.  Then thou canst come forth and go and live on the charity of the father to whom thou wouldst have taken a polluted priest.”

Pilar heard the retreating footfalls of the mustangs.  She was too stunned to think, to realize the horrible fate that had befallen her.  She crouched down against the wall of the cave nearest the light, her ear alert for the growl of a panther or the whir of a rattler’s tail.