The Splendid Idle Forties Part 40

"My children," he said solemnly, "my heart is wrung for you. You have broken the laws of G.o.d and of the Holy Catholic Church, and the punishments thereof are awful. Can I do anything for you, excepting to pray? You shall have my prayers, my children. But that is not enough; I cannot--ay! I cannot endure the thought that you shall be d.a.m.ned.

Perhaps"--again he stared meditatively at the stones, then, after an impressive silence, raised his eyes. "Heaven vouchsafes me an idea, my children. I will make your punishment here so bitter that Almighty G.o.d in His mercy will give you but a few years of purgatory after death.

Come with me."

He turned and led the way slowly to the rear of the mission buildings.

Andreo shuddered for the first time, and tightened his arm about Pilar's shaking body. He knew that they were to be locked in the dungeons.

Pilar, almost fainting, shrank back as they reached the narrow spiral stair which led downward to the cells. "Ay! I shall die, my Andreo!" she cried. "Ay! my father, have mercy!"

"I cannot, my children," said the padre, sadly. "It is for the salvation of your souls."

"Mother of G.o.d! When shall I see thee again, my Pilar?" whispered Andreo. "But, ay! the memory of that week on the mountain will keep us both alive."

Padre Arroyo descended the stair and awaited them at its foot.

Separating them, and taking each by the hand, he pushed Andreo ahead and dragged Pilar down the narrow pa.s.sage. At its end he took a great bunch of keys from his pocket, and raising both hands commanded them to kneel.

He said a long prayer in a loud monotonous voice which echoed and reechoed down the dark hall and made Pilar shriek with terror. Then he fairly hurled the marriage ceremony at them, and made the couple repeat after him the responses. When it was over, "Arise," he said.

The poor things stumbled to their feet, and Andreo caught Pilar in a last embrace.

"Now bear your incarceration with fort.i.tude, my children; and if you do not beat the air with your groans, I will let you out in a week. Do not hate your old father, for love alone makes him severe, but pray, pray, pray."

And then he locked them both in the same cell.

THE BELLS OF SAN GABRIEL

I

The Senor Capitan Don Luis de la Torre walked impatiently up and down before the grist-mill wherein were quartered the soldiers sent by Mexico to protect the building of the Mission of San Gabriel. The Indian workmen were slugs; California, a vast region inhabited only by savages and a few priests, offered slender attractions to a young officer craving the gay pleasures of his capital and the presence of the woman he was to marry. For months he had watched the mission church mount slowly from foundation to towers, then spread into pillared corridors and rooms for the clergy. He could have mapped in his mind every acre of the wide beautiful valley girt by mountains snowed on their crest. He had thought it all very lovely at first: the yellow atmosphere, the soft abiding warmth, the blue reflecting lake; but the green on mountain and flat had waxed to gold, then waned to tan and brown, and he was tired.

Not even a hostile Indian had come to be killed.

He was very good-looking, this tall young Spaniard, with his impatient eyes and haughty intelligent face, and it is possible that the lady in Mexico had added to his burden by doleful prayers to return. He took a letter from his pocket, read it half through, then walked rapidly over to the mission, seeking interest in the work of the Indians. Under the keen merciless supervision of the padres,--the cleverest body of men who ever set foot in America,--they were mixing and laying the adobes, making nails and tiles, hewing aqueducts, fashioning great stone fonts and fountains. De la Torre speculated, after his habit, upon the future of a country so beautiful and so fertile, which a dozen priests had made their own. Would these Indians, the poorest apologies for human beings he had ever seen, the laziest and the dirtiest, be Christianized and terrified into worthy citizens of this fair land? Could the clear white flame that burned in the brains of the padres strike fire in their neophytes' narrow skulls, create a soul in those grovelling bodies? He dismissed the question.

Would men of race, tempted by the loveliness of this great gold-haired houri sleeping on the Pacific, come from old and new Spain and dream away a life of pleasure? What grapes would grow out of this rich soil to be crushed by Indian slaves into red wine! And did gold vein those velvet hills? How all fruits, all grains, would thrive! what superb beasts would fatten on the thick spring gra.s.s! Ay! it was a magnificent discovery for the Church, and great would be the power that could wrest it from her.

There was a new people, somewhere north of Mexico, in the United States of America. Would they ever covet and strive to rob? The worse for them if they molested the fire-blooded Spaniard. How he should like to fight them!

That night the sentinel gave a sudden piercing shout of warning, then dropped dead with a poisoned arrow in his brain. Another moment, and the soldiers had leaped from their swinging beds of hide, and headed by their captain had reached the church they were there to defend. Through plaza and corridors sped and shrieked the savage tribe, whose invasion had been made with the swiftness and cunning of their race. The doors had not been hung in the church, and the naked figures ran in upon the heels of the soldiers, waving torches and yelling like the soulless fiends they were. The few neophytes who retained spirit enough to fight after the bleaching process that had chilled their native fire and produced a result which was neither man nor beast, but a sort of barnyard fowl, hopped about under the weight of their blankets and were promptly despatched.

The brunt of the battle fell upon the small detachment of troops, and at the outset they were overwhelmed by numbers, dazzled by the glare of torches that waved and leaped in the cavern-like darkness of the church.

But they fought like Spaniards, hacking blindly with their swords, cleaving dusky skulls with furious maledictions, using their fists, their feet, their teeth--wrenching torches from malignant hands and hurling them upon distorted faces. Curses and wild yells intermingled.

De la Torre fought at the head of his men until men and savages, dead and living, were an indivisible ma.s.s, then thrust back and front, himself unhurt. The only silent clear-brained man among them, he could reason as he a.s.saulted and defended, and he knew that the Spaniards had little chance of victory--and he less of looking again upon the treasures of Mexico. The Indians swarmed like ants over the great nave and transept. Those who were not fighting smashed the altar and slashed the walls. The callous stars looked through the apertures left for windows, and shed a pallid light upon the writhing ma.s.s. The padres had defended their altar, behind the chancel rail; they lay trampled, with arrows vibrating in their hard old muscles.

De la Torre forced his way to the door and stood for a moment, solitary, against the pale light of the open, then turned his face swiftly to the night air as he fell over the threshold of the mission he had so gallantly defended.

II

Delfina de Capalleja, after months of deferred hope, stood with the crowd at the dock, awaiting the return of the troop which had gone to defend the Mission of San Gabriel in its building. There was no flutter of colour beneath her white skin, and the heavy lids almost concealed the impatient depths of her eyes; the proud repose of her head indicated a profound reserve and self-control. Over her white gown and black dense hair she wore a black lace mantilla, fastened below the throat with a large yellow rose.

The ship swung to anchor and answered the salute from the fort. Boats were lowered, but neither officers nor soldiers descended. The murmur of disappointment on sh.o.r.e rose to a shout of execration. Then, as the ship's captain and pa.s.sengers landed, a whisper ran through the crowd, a wail, and wild sobbing. They flung themselves to the earth, beating their heads and b.r.e.a.s.t.s,--all but Delfina de Capalleja, who drew her mantilla about her face and walked away.

The authorities of the city of Mexico yielded to public clamour and determined to cast a silver bell in honour of the slaughtered captain and his men. The casting was to take place in the great plaza before the cathedral, that all might attend: it was long since any episode of war had caused such excitement and sorrow. The wild character and remoteness of the scene of the tragedy, the meagreness of detail which stung every imagination into action, the brilliancy and popularity of De la Torre, above all, the pa.s.sionate sympathy felt for Delfina de Capalleja, served to shake society from peak to base, and no event had ever been antic.i.p.ated with more enthusiasm than the casting of that silver bell.

No one had seen Delfina since the arrival of the news had broken so many hearts, and great was the curiosity regarding her possible presence at the ceremony. Universal belief was against her ever again appearing in public; some said that she was dead, others that she had gone into a convent, but a few maintained that she would be high priestess at the making of the bell which was to be the symbol and monument of her lover's gallantry and death.

The hot sun beat upon the white adobe houses of the stately city. At the upper end of the plaza, bending and swaying, coquetting and languishing, were women clad in rich and vivid satins, their graceful heads and shoulders draped with the black or white mantilla; caballeros, gay in velvet trousers laced with gold, and serape embroidered with silver.

Eyes green and black and blue sparkled above the edge of large black fans; fiery eyes responded from beneath silver-laden sombreros. The populace, in gala attire, crowded the rest of the plaza and adjacent streets, chattering and gesticulating. But all looked in vain for Delfina de Capalleja.

Much ceremony attended the melting of the bell. Priests in white robes stiff with gold chanted prayers above the silver bubbling in the caldron. A full-robed choir sang the Te Deum; the regiment to which De la Torre had belonged fired salutes at intervals; the crowd sobbed and shouted.

Thunder of cannon, pa.s.sionate swell of voices: the molten silver was about to be poured into the mould. The crowd hushed and parted. Down the way made for her came Delfina de Capalleja. Her black hair hung over her long white gown. Her body bent under the weight of jewels--the jewels of generations and the jewels of troth. Her arms hung at her sides. In her eyes was the peace of the dead.

She walked to the caldron, and taking a heavy gold chain from her neck flung it into the silver. It swirled like a snake, then disappeared. One by one, amidst quivering silence, the magnificent jewels followed the chain. Then, as she took the last bracelet from her arm, madness possessed the breathless crowd. The indifferent self-conscious men, the lanquid coquetting women, the fat drowsy old dowagers, all rushed, scrambling and screaming, to the caldron, tore from their heads and bodies the superb jewels and ropes of gold with which they were bedecked, and flung them into the molten ma.s.s, which rose like a tide.

The electric current sprang to the people; their baubles sped like hail through the air. So great was the excitement that a sudden convulsing of the earth was unfelt. When not a jewel was left to sacrifice, the caldron held enough element for five bells--the five sweet-voiced bells which rang in the Mission of San Gabriel for more than a century.

Exhausted with shouting, the mult.i.tude was silent. Delfina de Capalleja, who had stood with panting chest and dilating nostrils, turned from the sacrificial caldron, the crowd parting for her again, the Laudate Dominum swelling. As she reached the cathedral, a man who loved her, noting a change in her face, sprang to her side. She raised her bewildered eyes to his and thrust out her hands blankly, then fell dead across the threshold.

WHEN THE DEVIL WAS WELL

The Devil locked the copper gates of h.e.l.l one night, and sauntered down a s.p.a.cian pathway. The later arrivals from the planet Earth had been of a distressingly commonplace character to his Majesty--a gentleman of originality and attainments, whatever his disagreements with the conventions. He was become seriously disturbed about the moral condition of the sensational little twinkler.

"What are my own about?" he thought, as he drifted past planets which yielded up their tributes with monotonous regularity. "What a squeezed old orange would Earth become did I forsake it! I must not neglect it so long again; my debt of grat.i.tude is too great. Let me see. Where shall I begin? It is some years since I have visited America in person, and unquestionably she has most need of my attention; Europe is in magnificent running order. This is a section of her, if my geography does not fail me; but what? I do not recall it."

He poised above a country that looked as if it still hung upon the edge of chaos: wild, fertile, ma.s.sive, barren, luxuriant, crouching on the ragged line of the Pacific. From his point of vantage he saw long ranges of stupendous mountains, some but ma.s.ses of scowling crags, some green with forests of mammoth trees projecting their gaunt rigid arms above a carpet of violets; indolent valleys and swirling rivers; snow on the black peaks of the North; the riotous colour of eternal summer in the South. Suddenly he uttered a sharp exclamation and swept downward, halting but a mile above the ground. He frowned heavily, then smiled--a long, placid, sardonic smile. There appeared to be but few inhabitants in this country, and those few seemed to live either in great white irregular buildings, surmounted by crosses, in little brown huts near by, in the caves, or in hollowed trees on the mountains. The large buildings were situated about sixty miles apart, in chosen valleys; they were imposing and rambling, built about a plaza. They boasted pillared corridors and bright red tiles on their roofs. Within the belfries were ma.s.sive silver bells, and the crosses could be seen to the furthermost end of the valley and from the tops of the loftiest mountain.

"California!" exclaimed the Devil. "I know of her. Her scant history is outlined in the Scarlet Book. I remember the points: Climate, the finest, theoretically, in the world; satanically, simply magnificent.

I have waited impatiently for the stream of humanity to deflect thitherward, but priests will answer my present purpose exactly--unless they are all too tough. To continue, gold under that gra.s.s in chunks--aha! I shall have to throw out an extra wing in h.e.l.l! Parched deserts where men will die cursing; fruitful valleys, more gratifying to my genius; about as much of one as of the other, but the latter will get all the advertising, and the former be carefully kept out of sight.

Everything in the way of animal life, from grizzly bears to fleas. A very remarkable State! Well, I will begin on the priests."

He shot downward, and alighted in a valley whose proportions pleased his eye. Its shape was oval; the bare hills enclosing it were as yellow and as bright as hammered gold; the gra.s.s was bronze-coloured, baking in the intense heat; but the placid cows and shining horses nibbled it with the contentment of those that know not of better things. A river, almost concealed by bending willows and slender erect cottonwoods, wound capriciously across the valley. The mission, simpler than some of the others, was as neatly kept as the farm of older civilizations. Peace, order, reigned everywhere; all things drowsed under the relentless outpouring of the midsummer sun.

"It is well I do not mind the heat," thought his Majesty; "but I am sensible of this. I will go within."

He drew a boot on his cloven foot, thus rendering himself invisible, and entered a room of the long wing that opened upon the corridor. Here the temperature was almost wintry, so thick were the adobe walls.

Two priests sat before a table, one reading aloud from a bulky ma.n.u.script, the other staring absently out of the window. The reader was an old man; his face was pale and spiritual; no fires burned in his sunken eyes; his mouth was stern with the lines of self-repression. The Devil lost all interest in him at once, and turned to the younger man.

His face was pale also, but his pallor was that of fasting and the hair shirt; the mouth expressed the determination of the spirit to conquer the restless longing of the eyes; his nostrils were spirited; his figure was lean and nervous; he moved his feet occasionally, and clutched at the brown Franciscan habit.

"Paulo," said the older priest, reprovingly, as he lifted his eyes and noted the unbowed head, "thou art not listening to the holy counsel of our glorious Master, our saint who has so lately ascended into heaven."

"I know Junipero Serra by heart," said Paulo, a little pettishly. "I wish it were not too hot to go out; I should like to take a walk.

Surely, San Miguel is the hottest spot on earth. The very fleas are gasping between the bricks."