A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters Part 2

They brought the Christchild to the room where the bodies lay. When the little fellow saw them, he clung to Crescimir and uttering a moaning sound, yet seeming half like a laugh, he hid his eyes and would not look again.

"Are these thy parents little one?" asked Crescimir tenderly; the Christchild shook his head negatively and broke into hysterical sobs.

Though the Christchild had denied that these were the bodies of his parents, both Jovita, her mother and Crescimir felt certain that they were.

Crescimir remained that night at the Tulucay hacienda and early next morning the bodies were taken to the village and given burial in consecrated ground, as the cross which the woman wore and a medal of silver which the man carried showed them to be of the true church.

After the burial Crescimir returned to the rancheria. "I will be thy father now, little Christchild," said he as they stood at the well with Jovita, who had been filling the little olla for her mother's night drink.

The child looked up with a pleased smile and then turning to Jovita, asked with his bright eyes a question which words could not better have expressed.

Jovita replied softly as she looked down at the strange, wistful face, and felt the touch of Crescimir's hand on her own, "And I thy mother."

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IV.

By the beginning of summer Crescimir's place had all been restored and the house rebuilt on the summit of the knoll, far away from any danger of another flood.

It was a pretty cottage now, in the new, American style with a trellis-porch over which pa.s.sion vines spread in the profusion of first growth. The flower garden and the long lines and square beds of the vegetable garden looked fresh and bright down by the arroyo.

The house had been completed by the middle of January and Crescimir by careful and steady work had brought back his fields to their former state. The Christchild still lived with him, always as merry as the day was long. He was, as on the night of his arrival, still dressed in his little, white frock or shirt of strange texture, and he would wear nothing else, not even shoes.

Jovita's mother had, however, once made for him a suit, but when she tried to have him put it on, he objected so strenuously that the project had to be abandoned, for not even Crescimir's will, which usually was all that was needed on such occasions, had not in this case any power at all; so he ran quite wild about the gardens, the same pretty, little elf as ever.

He was extremely fond of the water and paddled in the arroyo all day long, so that even the little frock was for the greater time superfluous, and there was never any difficulty in having it for the old woman who came once a week from the village to do the washing. She often said that when she touched it, it gave her "goose flesh," the "feel" was so queer. She had never seen anything like it in all her long experience in her particular line of business.

Crescimir's visits to Tulucay were frequent now and the little Christchild always went with him, his greatest delight seeming to be to see Crescimir and Jovita together.

The day for the wedding was set to be the day before Christmas, for it seemed well that as that season had first made them known to each other, it should see them made man and wife.

The rainless summer and autumn pa.s.sed and winter came with its green gra.s.s and new flowers.

Never had there been such a prosperous year for the Napa Valley, and the fields were fast blossoming with little white cottages, while golden vineyards were growing higher up the hillsides driving the chaparral back from its old inheritance as the Gringos did the natives. The town had increased to nearly twice its former size, so Crescimir's gardens were much sought, and he no longer was compelled to labour from sunrise till sunset to keep the weeds away, for now he was able to hire the hardest work done and enjoy the fruits of his first years' toil.

The month of December came and the leaves on the poplar trees in the village were turning golden, just lingering long enough to mingle lovingly for a while with the new-born green of winter, and then be hidden by the growth of broad leaved plants as soon as they had fallen brown upon the earth, producing that endless harmony of Californian nature, a life everlasting.

There were a few orange coloured poppies nodding in the mesas but violet star-flowers scattered over the lower meadows were powerful enough, by reason of their numbers, to conquer the colour of the gra.s.s, while the fields near the river were yellow with juicy cowslips.

Now the blue dome of St. Helena was not so often visible, for the clouds hovered about it filled with wealth giving rain.

Ploughing and planting had begun and in some places the grain had already started; blackbirds in hosts were perched on all the fences, watching the sowers and chattering saucily to each other as they snapped their bead-like eyes in antic.i.p.ation of the feast so profusely spreading for them.

Over the low lands where the bay stretched its many arms in and out, offering to the ranchos its a.s.sistance to carry their abundant produce to a market, the marshes were red with short-growing sorrel, and the dark green of the tules along the edges fringed the silver indentations of the water in harmonious contrast.

All this did Jovita and Crescimir see from the veranda of Tulucay as with the Christchild by them they talked of the strange discovery and first sudden birth of their love, of how Jovita had first left the flowers at his door and how he had longed so much to know the one, the only one who had cheered his loneliness, and how he had loved the donor even before he had known that it was she.

Then they would talk of the terrible flood which had brought them together, and how each knew the other's love the moment their eyes had met, and of the mysterious little child who had been the medium of their first lovers' kiss.

They had become quite accustomed to the little elf's strange ways, and he no longer seemed to them to be the half supernatural creature he had at first appeared. Jovita's mother had at last discovered, she was sure, that the mysterious frock was nothing more nor less remarkable than a kind of goat hair woven carefully and fine.

So thus was the little elfin Christchild resolved by the power of familiarity into the orphan of some German emigrants who had lost their lives in the great flood; nevertheless, strangers never pa.s.sed him without giving a second glance and never heard him sing in his sweet, odd tones, without wondering.

Crescimir and Jovita were married at Tulucay on the day before Christmas and walked over the fields to the new house on the knoll by the laurel tree, the Christchild going with them.

He had decorated his head and frock with blossoms of early mariposas (calochortus) in honour of the occasion, and his joy seemed uncontrollable and he skipped over the meadow scarcely seeming to tread upon the ground.

There was a bright fire in the cottage when they reached it; the fire was in an open fireplace similar to that which had been in the old cabin.

As they entered, the Christchild, running up to the hearth, pointed to the chimney piece, and then turning to Crescimir with a look which could not be misunderstood, began in his odd notes to sing.

Crescimir then first noticed that there was no hemlock branch above the hearth, so taking one from the other side of the room where they hung in festoons, he fastened it with a bunch of toyone berries over the chimney piece.

The sun was set and in the crimson glow with which the heavens were painted, just above the low, black hills, shone bright and silvery the Evening Star.

Crescimir, with Jovita leaning on his shoulder, stood at the west window looking out over the misty valley where the real seemed ghostlike in the gray evening haze, and even those things with which they were familiar, seemed in the fading light to take to themselves unknown forms.

"Strange world!" said Jovita, meditatively, "Real and Unreal so often blended that we can never say which is tangible and which is air."

"Look Jovita, look!" and Crescimir seizing her hand pointed out toward the garden.

They stood there gazing from the window, as if spellbound, until the crimson light faded from the sky and the clear star descended below the hills.

A bit of mist or fog, or what you will hovered about the garden and then gradually rising it became dissolved and was gone.

"Gone!" whispered Jovita, as the darkness shut out the valley from view.

"Good little Christchild; but his memory shall ever be with us,"

answered Crescimir, as they sat side by side before the open fireplace.

Everybody wondered where the little Christchild had gone, and search was made, but, of course, unsuccessfully; yet Crescimir and Jovita said nothing.

Thus, in time, people forgot about the tiny elf and now there are few who have even heard of Crescimir's guest.

The pretty cottage may to-day be seen on the knoll near the wonderful, wide-spreading laurel tree and every Christmas Eve upon the chimney piece of its open hearted hearth may be seen a dark, glossy branch of hemlock with a bunch of toyone.

Before the fire sit Crescimir and Jovita singing the little Christmas carrol of the Illyrian children. Sometimes they think that they hear a sweet, soft voice joining in harmony with their own, but yet they are not sure but that it may perhaps be only the music of their own happy hearts, and smiling at Jovita, who holds the little Crescimir in her arms, Crescimir the Illyrian points to the branch above the hearth while the little one opens his eyes in wonderment.

"Was he not, Jovita mia, like the affection which is seen by all the world between lovers before marriage? And then the world wonders where it has gone when the priest has p.r.o.nounced the two as one. But we married lovers will never tell, for we are content to know that our Christchild has sunken deep into our hearts where his song inaudible to others is heard by us forever and ever."

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