Chapter 10

"The Russian bear is no longer a figure of speech," he said. "Forgive me. I forgot that you are as tender as you are strong."

Her hands were tightly clasped against her breast and the breath was short in her throat, but she made no protest. Her eyes were radiant, her mouth was the only color in that gray dawn. In a moment she too laughed.

"Dios de mi alma! What will they say? A heretic! If Tamalpais fell into the sea it would not make so great a sensation in this California of ours where civilized man exists but to drive heathen souls into the one true church."

"Will it matter to you? Are you strong enough? It will be only a question of time to win them over, if you are."

She nodded emphatically. "I was born with strength. Now--Dios!--now I can be stronger than the King of Spain himself, than the Governor, my parents and all the priests-- You would not become a Catholic?" she asked abruptly.

He shook his head, although he still smiled at her. "Not even for you."

"No," she said thoughtfully. "I will confess--what matters it?--I often dreamed that this would come just because I believed it would not. But why should one control the imagination when it alone can give us happiness for a little while? I gave it rein, for I thought that one-half of my life was to be passed in that unreal but by no means niggardly world. And I thought of everything. To change your religion would mean the ruin of your career; moreover, it is not a possibility of your character. Were it I think I should not love you so much. Nor could I bear to think of any change in you. Only it will be harder--longer." Then she stretched out her hand, and closed and opened it slowly. The most obtuse could not have failed to read the old simile of the steel in the velvet. "I shall win because it is my nature--and my power--to hold what I grasp."

"But if they persistently refuse--"

"Dios!" she interrupted him. "Do you think that your love is greater than mine? I was born with a thousand years of love in me and had you not come I should have gone alone with my dreams to the grave. I am all women in one, not merely Concha Arguello, a girl of sixteen." She clasped her hands high above her head, lifting her eyes to the ashen vault so soon to yield to the gay brush of dawn.

"Before all that great mystery," she said solemnly, "I give myself to you forever, how much or how little that may mean here on earth. Forever."

XVI

The Commandante of the San Francisco Company sat opposite Rezanov with his mouth open, the lines of his strong face elongated and relaxed. It was the hour of siesta, and they were alone in the sala.

"Mother of God!" he exclaimed. "Mother of God! Are you mad, Excellency?"

"No man was ever saner," said Rezanov cheerfully. "What better proof would you have than this final testimony to Dona Concha's perfections?"

"But it cannot be! Surely, Excellency, you realize that? The priests! Ay yi! Ay yi!"

"I think I understand the priests. Persuade the Governor to buy my cargo and they will look upon me as an amicus humani generis to whom common rules do not apply. And I have won their sincere friendship."

"You have won mine, senor. But, though I say it, there is no more devout Catholic in the Californias than Jose Arguello. Do you know what they call me? El santo. God knows I am not, but it is not for want of the wish. Did I give my daughter to a heretic, not only should I become an outcast, a pariah, but I should imperil my everlasting soul and that of my best beloved child. It is impossible, Excellency--unless, indeed, you embrace our faith."

"That is so impossible that the subject is not worth the waste of a moment. But surely, Commandante, in your excitement at this perfectly natural issue you are misrepresenting yourself. I do not believe, devout Catholic as you are, that your soul is steeped in fanaticism. You are known far and wide as the first and most intelligent of His Catholic Majesty's subjects in New Spain. When you have my word of honor that your daughter's faith shall never be disturbed, it is impossible you should believe that marriage with me would ruin her chances of happiness in the next world. But I doubt if your soul and conscience will have the peace you desire if you ruin her happiness in this. What pleasure do you find in the thought of an old age companioned by a heart-broken daughter?"

Don Jose turned pale and hitched his chair. "Other maids have been balked when young, and have forgotten. Concha is but sixteen--"

"She is also unique. She will marry me or no one. Of that I am as certain as that she is the woman of women for me."

"How can you be so certain?" asked the Commandante sharply. "Surely you have had little talk alone with her?"

"The heart has a language of its own. Recall your own youth, senor."

"It is true," said Don Jose, with a heavy sigh, as he had a fleeting vision of Dona Ignacia, slim and lovely, at the grating, with a rose in her hair. "But this tremendous passion of the heart--it passes, senor, it passes. We love the good wife, but we sometimes realize that we could have loved another good wife as well."

"That is a bit of philosophy I should have uttered myself, Commandante--yesterday. But there are women and women, and your daughter is one of the chosen few who take from the years what the years take from others. I am not rushing into matrimony for the sake of a pair of black eyes and a fine figure. I have outlived the possibility of making a fool of myself if I would. Before I realized how deeply I loved your daughter I had deliberately chosen her out of all the women I have known, as my friend and companion for the various and difficult ways of life which I shall be called upon to follow. Your daughter will have a high place at the Russian Court, and she will occupy it as naturally as if I had found her in Madrid and you in the great position to which your attainments and services entitle you."

Don Jose, despite his consternation, titillated agreeably. He privately thought no one in New Spain good enough for his daughter, and his weather-beaten self was not yet insensible to the rare visitation of winged darts tipped with honey. But the situation was one of the most embarrassing he had ever been called upon to face, and perhaps for the first time in his direct and honest life his resolution was shaken in a crisis.

"Believe me, your excellency, I appreciate the honor you have done my house, and I will add with all my heart that never have I liked a man more. But--Mother of God! Mother of God!"

Rezanov took out his cigarette case, a superb bit of Russian enamel, graven with the Imperial arms, and a parting gift from his Tsar. He passed it to his host, who had developed a preference for Russian cigarettes.

"There are other things to consider besides the happiness of your daughter and myself," he remarked. "This alliance would mean the consolidation of Spanish and Russian interests on the Pacific coast. It would mean the protection of California in the almost certain event of 'American' aggression. And I hear that a courier brought word again yesterday that the Russian and the Spanish fleets had sailed for these waters. I do not believe a word of it; but should it be true, I would remind you of two things: that I have the powers of the Tsar himself in this part of the world, and that the Russian fleet is likely to arrive first."

Again the Commandante moved uneasily. The news from Mexico had kept himself and the Governor awake the better part of the night. He fully appreciated the importance of this powerful Russian's friendship. Nothing would bind and commit him like taking a Californian to wife. If only he had fallen in love with Carolina Xime'no or Delfina Rivera! Don Jose had an uneasy suspicion that his scruples as a Catholic might have gone down before his sense of duty to this poor California. But a heretic in his own family! He was justly renowned for his piety. Aside from the wrath of the church, the mere thought of one of his offspring in matrimonial community beyond its pale made him sick with repugnance. And yet--California! And he would have selected Rezanov for his daughter out of all men had he been of their faith. And he was deeply conscious of the honor that had descended, however unfruitfully, upon his house. Madre de Dios! How would it end? Suddenly he felt himself inspired. In blissful ignorance of her subtle feminine rule, he reminded himself that Concha's mind was the child of his own. When she saw his embarrassment, filial duty and woman's wit would extricate them both with grace and avert the enmity of the Russian even though the latter's more personal interest in California must die in his disappointment. He would make her feel the weight of the stern paternal hand, and then indicate the part she had to play.

He rang a bell and directed the servant to summon his daughter, drew himself up to his full height, and set his rugged face in hard lines. As Concha entered he looked the Commandante, the stern disciplinarian, every inch of him.

There was no trace of the siesta in Concha's cheeks. They were very white, but her eyes were steady and her mouth indomitable as she walked down the sala and took the chair Rezanov placed for her. Except for her Castilian fairness, she looked very like the martinet sitting on the other side of the table. The Commandante regarded her silently with brows drawn together. Dimly, he felt apprehension, wondered, in a flash of insight, if girls held fast to the parental recipe, or recombined with tongue in cheek. The bare possibility of resistance almost threw him into panic, but he controlled his features until the effort injected his eyes and drew in his nostrils. Concha regarded him calmly, although her heart beat unevenly, for she dreaded the long strain she foresaw.

"My daughter," said Don Jose finally, his tones harsh with repressed misgiving, "do you suspect why I have sent for you?"

"I think that his excellency wishes to marry me," replied Concha; and the Commandante was so staggered by the calm assurance of her tone and manner that his pent-up emotion exploded.

"Dios!" he roared. "What right have you to know when a man wishes to marry you? What manner of Spanish girl is this? Truly has his excellency said that you are not as other women. The place for you is your room, with bread and water for a week. Sixteen!"

"Ignacio was born when my mother was sixteen," said Concha coolly.

"What of that? She married whom and when she was told to marry."

"I have heard that you serenaded nightly beneath her grating--"

"So did others."

"I have heard that when of all her suitors her father chose one more highly born, a gentleman of the Viceroy's court, she pined until they gave their consent to her marriage with you, lest she die."

"But I was a Catholic! The prejudice against my birth was an unworthy one. I had distinguished myself. And she had the support of the priests."

"It is my misfortune that M. de Rezanov is not a Catholic, but it will make no difference. I shall not fall ill, for I am like you, not like my dear mother--and the education you have given me is very different from hers. But I shall marry his excellency or no one, and whether I marry him or live alone with the thought of him until the end of my mortal days, I do not believe that my soul will be imperilled in the least."

"You do not!" shouted the irate Spaniard. "How dare you presume to decide such a question for yourself? What does a woman know of love until she marries? It is nothing but a sickening imagination before; and if the man goes, the doctor soon comes."

"You may not have intended--but you have taught me to think for myself. And I have seen others besides M. de Rezanov--the flower of California and more than one fine gentleman from Mexico. I will have none of them. I will marry the man of my choice or no one. It may be that I know naught of love. If you wish, you may think that my choice of a husband is determined by ambition, that I am dazzled with the thought of court life in St. Petersburg, of being the consort of a great and wealthy noble. It matters not. Love or ambition, I shall marry this Russian or I shall never marry at all."

"Mother of God! Mother of God!" Don Jose's face was purple. The veins swelled in his neck. He was the more wroth because he recognized his own daughter and his own handiwork, because he saw that he confronted a Toledo blade, not a woman's brittle will. Concha regarded him calmly.

"If you refuse your consent you will lose me in another way. I may not be able to marry as I wish, but I will have no worldly alternative. I shall join the Third Order of the Franciscans, and enter a convent as soon as one is built in California. To that you cannot withhold your consent, or they no longer would call you El santo."

Don Jose leaped from his chair. "Go to your room!" he thundered. "And do not dare to leave it without my permission--"

But Concha sprang forward and flung herself upon his neck. She rubbed her warm elastic cheek against his own in the manner he loved, and softened her voice. "Papacito mio, papacito mio," she pleaded. "Thou wilt not refuse thy Concha the only thing she has ever begged of thee. And I beg! I beg! Papa mio! I love him! I love him!" And she broke into wild weeping and kissed him frantically, while Rezanov who had followed her plan of attack and resistance in silent admiration, did not know whether he should himself be moved to tears or further admire.

Don Jose pushed her from him with a heavy sob and hastily left the room, oblivious in the confusion of his faculties of the boon he conferred on the lovers. Concha dried her eyes, but her face was deathly pale. It had not been all acting, by any means, and she was beginning to feel the tyranny of sleepless nights; and the joy and wonder of the morning had left her with but a remnant of endurance for the domestic battleground.

"Go," she whispered, as he took her in his arms. "Return for the dance to-night as if nothing had happened-- I forgot, there is to be a bull-bear fight in the square. So much the better, for it is in your honor, and you could not well remain away. There is much trouble to come, but in the end we shall win."

XVII

The muscles in Dona Ignacia's cheeks fell an inch as she listened, dumbfounded, to the tale her husband poured out. To her simple aristocratic soul Rezanov had loomed too great a personage to dream of mating with a Californian; and as her sharp maternal instinct had recognized his personal probity, even his gallantries had seemed to her no more consequent than the more catholic trifling of his officers.

"Holy Mary!" she whimpered, when her voice came back. "Holy Mary! A heretic! And he would take our Concha from us! And she would go! To St. Petersburg! Ten thousand miles! To the priests with her--now--this very day!"

Concha had thrown herself on her bed in belated hope of siesta, when Malia (Rosa had been sent to the house of Don Mario Sal in the valley) entered with the message that she was to accompany her parents to the Mission at once. She rose sullenly, but in the manifold essentials of a girl's life she had always yielded the implicit obedience exacted by the Californian parent. In a few moments she was riding out of the Presidio beside her father. Dona Ignacia jolted behind in her carreta, a low and clumsy vehicle, on solid wheels and springless, drawn by oxen, and driven by a stable-boy on a mustang. The journey was made in complete silence save for the maledictions addressed to the oxen by the boy, and an occasional "Ay yi!" "Madre de Dios!" "Sainted Mary, but the sun bores a hole in the head," from Dona Ignacia, whose increasing discomfort banished wrath and apprehension for the hour.

Don Jose did not even look at his daughter, but his face was ten years older than in the morning. He had begun dimly to appreciate that she was suffering, and in a manner vastly different from the passionate resentment he had seen her display when the contents of a box from Mexico disappointed her, or she was denied a visit to Monterey. That his best-loved child should suffer tore his own heart, but he merely cursed Rezanov and resolved to do his best to persuade the Governor to yield to his other demands, that California might be rid of him the sooner.

Father Abella was walking down the long outer corridor of the Mission reading his breviary, and praying he might not be diverted from righteousness by the comforting touch of his new habit, when he looked up and saw the party from the presidio floundering over the last of the sand hills. He shuffled off to order refreshments, and returned in time to disburden the carreta of Dona Ignacia--no mean feat--volubly delighted in the visit and the gossip it portended. But as he offered his arm to lead her into the sala, she pushed him aside and pointed to Concha, who had sprung to the ground unassisted.

"She has come to confess, padre!" she exclaimed, her mind, under the deep tiled roof of the corridor, readjusting itself to tragedy. "I beg that you will take her at once. Padre Landaeta can give us chocolate and we will tell our terrible news to him and receive advice and consolation."

Father Abella, not without a glimmering of the truth, for better than any one he understood the girl he had confessed many times, besides himself having succumbed to the Russian, led the way to the confessional in some perturbation of spirit. He walked slowly, hoping that the long, cool church, its narrow high windows admitting so scant a meed of sunlight that no one of its worshippers had ever read the legends on the walls, and even the stations were but deeper bits of shade, would attune her mind to holy things, and throw a mantle of unreality over those of the world.

He covered his face with his hand as she told her story. This she did in a few words, disjointed, for she was both tired and seething. For a few moments afterward there was a silence; the good priest was increasingly disturbed and by no means certain of his course. He was astonished to feel a tug at his sleeve. Before he could reprove this impenitent child for audacity she had raised herself that she might approach her lips more closely to his ear.

"Mi padre!" she whispered hoarsely, "you will take my part! You will not condemn me to a life of misery! I am too proud to speak openly to others--but I love this man more than my soul--more than my immortal soul. Do you hear? I am in danger of mortal sin. Perhaps I am already in that state. You cannot save me if he goes. I will not pray. I will not come to the church. I will be an outcast. If I marry him, I will be a good Catholic to the end of my days. If I marry him I can think of other things besides--of my church, my father, my mother, my sisters, brothers. If he goes, I shall pass my life thinking of nothing but him, and if it be true that heretics are doomed to hell, then I will live so that I may go to hell with him."

In spite of his horror the priest was thrilled by the intense passion in the voice so close to his ear. Moreover, he knew women well, this good padre, for even in California they differed little from those that played ball with the world. So he dismissed the horror and spoke soothingly.

"What you have said would be mortal sin, my daughter, were it not that you are laboring under strong and natural excitement; and I shall absolve you freely when you have done the penance I must impose. You have always been such a good child that I am able to forgive you even in this terrible moment. But, my daughter, surely you know that this marriage can never take place--"

"It shall! It shall!"

"Control yourself, my daughter. You cannot bring this man into the true church. His character is long since formed and cast--it is iron. Even love will not melt it. Were he younger--"

"I should hate him. All young men are insufferable to me--always have been. I have found my mate, and have him I will if I have to hide in the hold of his ship. Ah, padre mio, I know not what I say. But you will help me. Only you can. My father thinks you as wise as a saint. And there are other things--my head turns round--I can hardly think--but you dare not lose the friendship of this Russian. And my marriage to him would be as much for the good of the Missions as for California herself. Champion our course, point out that not only would it be a great match for me, but that many ends would be lost by ruining my life. The Governor will find himself in a position to grant your prayers for the cargo, particularly if you first persuaded my father--so long they have been friends, the Governor could not resist if he joined our forces. What is one girl that she should be held of greater account than the welfare of this country to which you are devoting your life? The happier are your converts, the more kindly will they take to Christianity--which they do not love as yet!--the more faithful and contented will they be, in the prospect of the luxuries and the toys and the trinkets of the Russian north. What is one girl against the friendship of Russia for Spain? Who am I that I should weigh a peseta in the scale?"

"You are Concha Arguello, the flower of all the maidens in California, and the daughter of the best of our men," replied Father Abella musingly. "And until to-day there has been no Catholic more devout--"

"It lies with you, mi padre, whether I continue to be the best of Catholics or become the most abandoned of heretics. You know me better than anyone. You know that I will not weaken and bend and submit, like a thousand other women. I could be bad--bad--bad--and I will be! Do you hear?" And she shook his arm violently, while her hoarse voice filled the church.

"My child! My child! I have always believed that you had it in you to become a saint. Yes, yes, I feel the strength and maturity of your nature, I know the lengths to which it might lead another; but you could not be bad, Conchita. I have known many women. In you alone have I perceived the capacity for spiritual exaltation. You are the stuff of which saints and martyrs are made. The violent will, the transcendent passions--they have existed in the greatest of our saints, and been conquered."

"I will not conquer. I-- Oh, padre--for the love of heaven--"

He left the box hastily and lifted her where she had fallen and carried her into the room adjoining the church. He laid her on the floor, and ran for Dona Ignacia, who, refreshed with wine and chocolate, came swiftly. But when Concha, under practical administrations and maternal endearments, finally opened her eyes, she pushed her mother coldly aside, rose and steadied herself against the wall for a moment, then returned to the church, closing the door behind her.

When a woman has borne thirteen children in the lost corners of the world, with scarce a thought in thirty years for aught else save the husband and his comforts, it is not to be expected that her wits should be rapiers or her vocabulary distinguished. But Dona Ignacia's unresting heart had an intelligence of its own, and no inner convulsion could alter the superb dignity of mien which Nature had granted her. As she rose and confronted Father Abella he moved forward with the instinct to kiss her hand, as he had seen Rezanov do.