For the Soul of Rafael Part 21

"Well?"

"They tried to get him to tell the padre, so that the builder might be whipped, but the stranger Indian was afraid. He said he wanted to live to see his children again, and they lived south in the hill country; and he ran away when they tried to keep him, but he had warned some old Indios, and when the first earthquake cracked the walls, they all remembered."

"And--?"

"The mason laughed, but mended the cracked walls and went on at work, always singing, always working, even before sunrise. The old Indios who helped said it was at sunrise hour only that he worked on the keystones with the suns and star things, but they maybe lied. And after the dedication of the church he died as he lived, laughing and a heretic; and when the earthquake came and the tower of the bells fell, and the tiles of the floor were wet with the blood of the thirty-nine lives crushed out there, then the old Indios whispered and remembered many things; for the prophecy of the strange learned Indian of the south had come true."

"And--the altar? Did--some one--"

Her lips were stiff as with cold, and she could scarcely articulate.

"Holy G.o.d! how white you are, Raquel!" he exclaimed. "I thought you were not a coward like the other women. Take this wine--take it! Por Dios, but you gave me a fright!"

She swallowed the wine, and smiled absently at his excitement, and drew the serape closer. She did not speak again for a long time, just sat staring out toward the blue of the hills.

"Are you in a trance?" he demanded. "Santa Maria, but you are a wife to come home to! If I interest you at all, I have to talk to you of things bad enough to scare the devil. Now you see why Dona Maria blows down the walls--they were accursed from the beginning. She thinks maybe she is doing a pious thing, who knows?"

"Selling to others the stone that is accursed?"

"Oh, that is a side issue. But I think truly, Raquelita, she is afraid of the bishop now, since you have come. I even think she wants to be friends; Dona Angela told me. She has promised that she will build a chapel there of adobe, if the bishop will give his benediction. Much of bad luck is coming to them, and she is growing afraid."

"Yes; she has no sense of justice in her; she has only fear," returned Raquel. "Let her build chapels if she likes, but the blessing of G.o.d was put on those stone walls, as well as the curse of a heretic, and what she has done is sacrilege. I will do nothing to countenance it, or allow it to continue."

"But, at least, you will do one thing," he said, emphatically. "You have heard enough of the curse to show you why it is no place for human beings to live. Only half the curse is carried out. The tiles have been baptized by human blood--but not the altar. You will stay here with live people, and let the old ruin wait alone for the curse to be lifted."

"I will go back," she said, with sudden decision, dropping the serape from around her shoulders and beginning to braid her hair. "No, you need not swear like that, Rafael; G.o.d would shut His ears if He heard you.

You have told me a fine story of fear, and some of it may be true, but our duty lies there. We may lift the curse; we can go back and try."

Her husband sprang to his feet and flung his chair crashing into the low window opening on a veranda. The shattered gla.s.s fell in a glittering heap, but the noise of it did not drown his oaths.

"It is no use at all to break the windows of our friends, Rafael,"

observed his wife; "and neither the saints nor Our Lady the Virgin will allow such curses as yours to be heard. There are dangers here for--for both of us, perhaps,--dangers more to be afraid of than the walls of the good padres. I ride back to-day."

"You think of it as all past, that curse?" he demanded, threateningly.

"Well, you think so! Priests have gone mad there, though the Church keeps it quiet. Since the year Don Eduardo and Dona Maria bought it, what has happened? All their land is slipping away. To-day she is building an adobe on the old Mission ranch, to hold one hundred and sixty acres in case they lose all the rest of their thirty miles of ranches. Two of her sons have been killed in the streets--one by a woman. All that remains is slipping slowly through their fingers. It is like a handful of wheat: the closer they try to hold it, the less they have in their hands. All they try is of no use. When they first bought those old walls of the Mission at Pico's auction, they were masters of the land, but what of that?"

"If it is a curse, they earned it by tearing down the temple consecrated to G.o.d, that is all!"

"All? Miguel, my brother, blew down no walls; he did no harm to anything at all. He only bought an interest in the Mission lands, and claimed some living-rooms as his share, and he is struck like the others by the curse, and does not die in his bed either, but is trampled into the earth until no one can see him!"

"But that may be the other curse working--the curse on the Arteagas. You people seem to have earned a great many! Is it not time some of the family should try to live for blessings?"

He did not answer, only stared at her with angry eyes and lips twitching in wrath he could not express. She looked at him an instant, and stretched out her arms wearily. All the glorious world of love about them, yet never aught of harmony in their two lives linked together. She had never seen the life domestic of young people. She did not know what it might mean to other women, but there were days when she grew sick with the dread of future years, the endless prison of her vow, the--

Suddenly she turned to him with a little gesture of appeal, almost tremulous. It was such weary work to battle constantly; and his mother--

"Rafael," she said, gently, "the blessings are in the world somewhere--shall not we try to find them? The old lives of the maledictions are gone. Ours is the new life, and we have done no wrong to expiate. And it may be, if we live as--as your mother would have wanted us to live, that the saints--"

"To the bottom of the sea with your saints!" he broke in, angrily. "Por Dios! you are always dragging the dead out of their graves to make the days like a funeral. I prefer most the picnic in the hills, and I go to-day."

"So do I," she answered; "but it will be to the hills of the south by the sea. To-night the moon shines, and the ride will be better than a picnic of your political friends."

"By--"

"It is no sort of use for you to make empty oaths, Rafael. I leave this town to-day; with you if you are wise, without you if you are not. But I myself--I go!"

He went out and slammed the door, and directly she heard him tell Juan Castillas that he had married one of the wooden saints of the Mission come to life.

"I am glad it is not one with the broken gla.s.s eyes and the missing fingers," laughed Juan. "Dona Raquel is the most beautiful woman in the Californias to-day."

She turned from the window and looked at herself in the mirror. The most beautiful woman in the Californias! Was that so? Could it be? Yet what was beauty, after all, if--

Between herself and the gla.s.s another face seemed to arise,--the blue-eyed childish face for which she had been forgotten.

"Holy Mother!" she moaned, and covered her own with her hands. "Of what use is beauty to a woman who is not beloved?"

[Music: _El Tormento de Amor._]

Tormento de amor, pa.s.sion que devora, Tu marchi taste la fuente de mi vida.

CHAPTER X

"I wasted the holy water on the doorway of the sala and the bedroom,"

grumbled old Polonia, ensconced among the serapes on the carreta; "I should have kept it for the road to the sea. She rides away from him alone; but it is a witchcraft, all the same."

Secretly the old woman gave sympathy to the handsome Rafael, who loved women of gaiety and fine clothes. The town was a very good place to stay, and the band played, and there was a good circus; and to choose instead a nasty old Mission where a cross priest scolded, and smoked, and drank himself stupid each dinner-time! What kind of a girl would go back there?

Still, the old Indian knew that she was not of wood, like the statues in the old church, let the husband think as he might! Last night had proven she could be her mother's own child in a storm of pa.s.sion. It was perhaps for the best that she did not love her husband so madly; for if he should ever prove untrue,--and men of course were so--what might not happen?

She thought of the witchcraft of the mother, and crossed herself.

The moon, the beautiful moon of the month of Mary! shone round and silvered in the blue above the mountains, as the blaze of the sun sank into the western sea. South lay the ranch of San Joaquin, and Raquel, for all her thirty-mile ride, was sorry. She would have no excuse to ride past; it was the one slight of the country to pa.s.s the house of an acquaintance, and this family was one deserving of honor. The soft dusk of warm lands had stretched over the level. The sweet clover along the road had a deeper note of perfume, and the patches of mustard bloom added its own spicy fragrance. Gladly she would have ridden on alone in the perfect night, but it would not do. She cared little for the herd of people, but she always tried to keep in mind what the Dona Luisa would have done in the little duties toward the opinion of the valley, and she had no idea of making a scandal, or of appearing to ride in secret from the town where her husband was still detained.

So, when the dogs barked, she galloped forward to the ranch-house, and was met with excited welcome from the mistress and her two vivacious daughters and their cousin Ana Mendez. All the news of the town they asked for. They had heard wonderful things of the courtesy shown her by the new bishop, who was not given to showing much p.r.o.nounced attention to even the devout of the faith. They had rejoiced each day to hear of the honors showered on her by the families of the city. It was as if a queen had arrived in their valley--and to leave it all and ride alone in the night!

Ana cut their queries short and bade them see to old Polonia, that she might be fed and rested well, and the driver also, and then carried her guest to her own room, where she put her hands on Raquel's shoulders and looked into her eyes, and then without a word led her to the shrine in the corner, where they both knelt.

When the prayer was over and she had seen her guest supplied with bread, and red wine, and olives, and sliced beef, she regarded her sadly a moment, noting that only the wine was swallowed, and that the girl looked pale in the candle-light.

"Poor little dear," she said, softly, and patted her shoulder and spoke with the tenderness of intimacy. "I think now thou wert only a child that morning in the wedding-veil, when she gave thee that vow and died.

Thou hast such strength in looks, my Raquelita, no one remembers how young in life thou art. But I see now how it is. Rafael is the son of my mother's cousin, and I know that blood! You but give the word, and my uncle shall ride to Los Angeles in the morning and say what is right to be said to Rafael. We know those boys--Miguel too," and she crossed herself. "My uncle always look himself to the door-key when that Miguel Arteaga come with a serenade. Oh, we know those boys in this valley better than their mother, who thought to guard Rafael from the heretics.

Holy Mary! No heretic in the land lived worse than the life on Miguel Arteaga's ranches!"

"That does not make any difference at all," said the girl, wearily. "I took the vow, '_So long as we both shall live_.' That seems a long time, my dear Ana, but I must have not one other thought in this life."