For the Soul of Rafael Part 35

"She is the widow of his half-brother; that is all."

"All? Then how--why should Teresa say this thing? Yesterday I heard her say that Dona Angela made a flirtation with Rafael only to make Senor Bryton jealous. I heard it, though she did not know. Why should that be, if it is only his brother's wife?"

"Oh, G.o.d alone knows the heart of a woman, Raquel! It may be all a lie.

Our people do not understand the gringo women. They look love to so many men, and mean it, perhaps, for none. But it was thought, yes, plainly said, when she first came to Los Angeles, that Keith Bryton was the one man she wanted to marry. But that is all over now; no one thinks--"

"Teresa thinks."

"Teresa had better be at her prayers! I could tell you something strange of Keith Bryton,--only you are not interested in gringos,--something of a love of his, and I feel sure it is never the pretty Dona Angela."

"Tell me," said Raquel, coldly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN INNER COURT.]

"A man--a priest--learned it from him some way. I thought the Americanos had no saints; but something like a love for a saint keeps Keith Bryton from caring much for any one else. It is as if a woman, instead of a wooden saint, should be in one of the niches of the old altar-place, and he said prayers there. Whoever she is, she seems to be very far above him--like the star he cannot reach."

"The men who cannot reach the stars content themselves with picking flowers, do they not?"

"Oh, G.o.d alone knows how they content themselves! I only tell you this thing to show you that Senor Bryton has not anywhere in the land a woman to go to him if he were dying alone in the hills; his saint would not step down from the niche of the altar-place."

"Anita mia, you forget," she said, in a strange, mocking tone. "If Keith Bryton is a friend of yours, you should wish him better fortune than to kneel at a place like our old altar. Do you forget that of the eleven niches still left in the old ruin, only one holds a saint,--a saint where no one openly kneels,--that of the Maria Madalena?"

"Raquel, what things you do fancy! Now that you know whom you may have to meet, will you ride with me, or back to the road?"

"Back to the plaza?" asked Dona Raquel. "Anita mia, all this has come to me in the inner court of the aliso portal: it does not belong to the outer world; neither do we, I think, to-night. Whatever the shadows of the canon cover for us, I think, we must ride upward to meet them. Your friend's saint, the Madalena of the niche, will watch over us. When we go back she shall have candles and roses--red ones, Anita!"

Ana was voluble in her delight, and rode up the valley with a great load lifted from her heart.

But the witching spell of the aliso portal had lost its gay charm for Raquel, or else it had sent her another more potent, for she rode in silence under the stars, without gladness, yet so steadily, so recklessly, that Ana more than once had to complain that only a deer or a coyote could keep ahead of her.

[Music: _Ella No Me Ama._]

Ella vierte la copa de amargura Gota, gota en mi pobre corozon.

CHAPTER XVII

That same evening a gay party from the south rode along the sea to San Juan Capistrano. Dona Maria and Don Eduardo rode in a carriage, but the Dona Angela had received riding lessons from Rafael, and disdained now the lounging ease of the cushioned seats. She and Rafael galloped far ahead at times, and then loitered idly among the odorous gra.s.ses and chaparral, and watched the waves roll in, and said the gay, foolish things that sometimes mean only courtesy, and sometimes mean the ripples of thought fringing pools of unsounded depths. There was little doubt of the quality of Rafael's thought. Whatever it had been in the commencement, there was little now within his power to accomplish which he would not have done at the bidding of her smiling childish lips.

"If we had a boat out there where the whitecaps are, we could go even faster than the horses," she was saying. "I always wanted a boat; I always wanted to live near the ocean, if only the right people could be with me."

"You shall have a boat, any day you want it," he said, eagerly. "They make them at San Pedro; that is not far to send. A boat, and a house by the sea! Why not wish for a more difficult thing? Would you like that bluff above the river's mouth? Or Dana's Point, beyond there? You could watch the whales spouting from the quay, and all the sea and valley could be yours at a glance, and--"

"And a fine view, also, of your monastery walls, far, far away, Don Rafael."

"I should never be far away, only as far as you bid me go."

"Ah! that sounds very submissive," she replied; "but you are not really so, not really. I--I want to say to you that my cousin's wife reproves me for your--your--"

Her hesitation was very pretty. It delighted the man, who caught her hand and kissed it.

"My--my--you can find no word, madama, for my madness; is that it?" he asked, softly. "You are right; there are no words ever coined to cover it. I make myself a carpet for your feet, mi corazon!"

"I don't want a carpet for my feet,--at least I think I do not," she said, doubtfully, "not in the face of all the frowns of California; and we perhaps go to-day where we see many frowns from my cousin. She says she may not visit your wife. Why?"

"Perhaps she does not like a home where there are endless prayers," he said, briefly; "but, such as it is, it is for you, madama. You would light up even the shadows there. As for the Dona Maria, she is--ah, well, she is old, and forgets many things. She has had her own romances, and they should teach her charity! The plans she makes in San Diego and on the road are all right for those places, but when we reach San Juan you all go to my home. I sent word ahead."

"Your wife expects us to-night?"

"She does not know what night, or what day, but she will expect you."

"She does not care at all for people, does she?" and Angela's eyes were turned from him to the sea. "All this wonderful princ.i.p.ality of a place, and a home like a ruined castle, and the boxes of jewels they say she never looks at! She must be a marvellous woman,--the Dona Raquel Arteaga. I shall feel a little afraid, I think, of the magnificence she disdains."

"A finer castle will go up on those bluffs when you say the word, madama mia; and the jewels--one can always find more pearls in the sea!"

"How often shall I have to tell you that you must not make those foolish promises to me? You, a married man!"

"Just so often as you make me forget the marriage--and that--"

"Adam!" she laughed. "Of course it is to be the woman's fault,--'She tempted me!'"

She sprang to her feet and ran to her horse as the carriage came in sight over the mesa. He was by her side in an instant.

"And that, madama, is every time I hear your voice, or look in your eyes, or feel the touch of your hand! Ah, beloved!"

"If you kiss me, Don Rafael, remember I cannot go to the house of your wife!"

He released her with a groan, and stared at her as she leaned panting against her horse.

"You put a man in purgatory, madama," he said, between shut teeth. "But it must end--only Christ knows how! It must end one of these days."

He lifted her to the saddle and kept his arms about her, looking up into her face.

"Was that about the boat all a jest? Once before you spoke of a boat--and us two. Perhaps it was only your woman's way to torture a man by helping him to think of that sort of heaven! But, after all, what is all this life here to you? You care nothing for the people; you will go away somewhere, some day, and no one will ever hear of you again. What better way, after all, than the boat? It leaves no tracks; there would be all the world before us."

"Hush!" she said, with a little smile. "Who is now the tempter? You are quite mad, Don Rafael."

"G.o.d!" he muttered. "If I could only have the happiness of knowing it _was_ a temptation to you!"

She smiled again, and touched her horse with the quirt; and though he caught his horse and mounted quickly, she was a considerable distance ahead of him, and perversely insisted on keeping a wide s.p.a.ce between them, or else lagging beside the carriage for conversation with Dona Maria, whom Rafael knew she loved little.

For the rest of the ride there was no chance of a word alone with her.

Only as they turned from the beach to the river valley she checked her horse for an instant, and with a little flash of a glance toward him, she flung a kiss from the tips of her fingers to the bluffs above San Juan River.

"Adios, O castle of the air in which Love might have lived! Adios, O boat of beautiful dreams, for which there is no harbor! Don Rafael, you sing so well--could you not put the castle and the boat in a Spanish song! It would sound pretty in a love-song, and it is much too romantic for every-day life; for, after all, there is no harbor here."