Chapter 12

Rezanov glowed to his finger tips. Not even the assurance of his union with the woman of his heart, which after all had met but the skeleton of his desires, gave him the acute satisfaction of this sudden fulfilment of his self-imposed mission. He dropped his own official demeanor and throwing himself across the table gripped the Governor's hand while he poured out his thanks in a voice thick with feeling, his eyes glittering with more than victory. He did not lose sight of his ultimate designs and pledge himself to external friendship, but he unwittingly conveyed the impression that Spain had that day made a friend she ill could afford to lose; and his three visitors rose well pleased with the culmination of the interview.

"You must stay here no longer, Rezanov," said Don Jose, as they were taking leave. "My house is now literally your own. It will be some weeks before the large quantities of corn and flour and other stores you wish can be got together--for we must lay a requisition on the fertile Mission ranchos in the valleys--and you will exchange these narrow quarters for such poor comfort as my house affords--I take no denial. Concha will remain at Juan Moraga's for the present."

XXI

Concha, after her father left her, sat for a long while in an attitude of such complete repose that Sturgis, watching her miserably from the veranda, remembered the consolations of his sketch book; and he was able to counterfeit the graceful, proud figure, under the wall and roses, before she stirred.

Concha had sent her father away deeply puzzled. When, after embracing her with unusual emotion, he had informed her of his consent to her marriage, she had received the news as a matter of course, her hopes and desires having mounted too high to contemplate a fall. Then the Commandante, after dwelling at some length upon his discussions with the Governor and the priests, and admonishing her against conceiving herself too important a factor in what might prove to be an alliance of international moment (she had laughed merrily and called him the most callous of parents and subtlest of diplomats), had announced with some trepidation and his most official manner that the consent of the Pope and the King would be sought by Rezanov in person, involving a delay and separation of not less than two years. But to his surprise she did not fling herself upon his neck with blandishments and tears. She merely became quite still, her light high spirits retreating as a breeze might before one of Nature's sudden and portentous calms. Don Jose, after a fruitless attempt to recapture her interest, mounted his horse and rode away; and Concha sat down on a bench under the wall and thought for an hour without moving a finger.

Her first sensation was one of bitter anger and disappointment with Rezanov. He had, apparently, in the first brief interview with their tribunal, given his consent to this long delay of their nuptials.

Her thoughts since his advent had flown on many journeys and known little rest. She had been rudely awakened and stripped of her girlish illusions in those days and nights of battle between pride and her dazzled womanhood when, in the new humility of love, she believed herself to be but one of a hundred pretty girls in the eyes of this accomplished and fortunate Russian. The interval had been brief, but not long enough for the grandeur in her nature to awaken almost concurrently with her passions, and she had planned a life, in which, guided and uplifted by the star of fidelity, and delivered from the frivolous and commonplace temptations of other women, she should devote herself to the improvement and instruction not only of the Indians but of the youth of her own class. The schools founded by the estimable and enterprising Borica had practically disappeared, and she was by far the best educated woman in California. For such there was a manifest and an inexorable duty. She would live to be old, she supposed, like all the Arguellos and Moragas; but hidden in her unspotted soul would be the flame of eternal youth, fed by an ideal and a memory that would outlive her weary, insignificant body. And in it she would find her courage and her inspiration, as well as an unwasting sympathy for those she taught.

Then had come the sudden and passionate wooing of Rezanov. All other ideals and aspirations had fled. She had alternated between the tragic extremes of bliss and despair. So completely did the ardor of her nature respond to his, so fierce and primitive was the cry of her ego for its mate, that she cared nothing for the distress of her parents nor the fate of California. There is no love complete without this early and absolute selfishness, which is merely the furious determination of the race to accomplish its object before the spirit awakens and the passions cool.

Last night life had seemed serious; she had been girlishly, romantically happy. It is true that her heart had thumped against the wall as he kissed her, and that she had been full of a wild desire to sing, although she could hardly shape and utter the words that danced in her throbbing brain. But she had been conscious through it all of the romantic circumstance, of the lonely beauty of the night, of the delightful wickedness of meeting her lover in the silence and the dark, even with a wall ten feet high between them. For the wall, indeed, she had been confusedly and deliciously grateful.

And this was what a man's love came to: ardors by night and expedience by day! Or was it merely that Rezanov was the man of affairs always, the lover incidentally? But how could a man who had seemed the very epitome of all the lovers of all the world but a few hours before, contemplate, far less permit, a separation of years? Poor Concha groped toward the great unacceptable fact of life the whole, lit by love its chief incident; and had a fleeting vision of the waste lands in the lives of women occupied only with matrimony. But she dropped her lashes upon this unalluring vision, and as she did so, inevitably she began to excuse the man.

None knew better than she every side of the great question that was shaking not only her life but California itself. Appeal from the dictum of state and clergy would be a mere waste of time. The only alternative was flight. That would mean the wreck of Rezanov's avowed purposes in coming to this quarter of New Spain, and perhaps of others she dimly suspected. It would mean the very acme of misery for his Sitkans, and an indefensible blow to the Company. It might even prove the fatal mistake in his career, for which his enemies were ever on the alert. He was not communicative about himself except when he had an object in view, but he had told her something of his life, and his officers and Langsdorff had told more. He was no silly caballero warbling and thrumming at her grating when she longed for sleep, but a man in his forties whose passions were in the leash of a remarkably acute and ambitious brain. She even thrilled with pride in his strength, for she knew how he loved her; and although his part was action, her stimulated instincts taught her that she would rarely be long from his mind. And what was she to seek to roll stumbling blocks into the career of a man like that? In this very garden, for four long days, she had dreamed exalted dreams of the manifold gifts she should develop for his solace at home and his worldly advancement. She had once felt all a girl's impatience when her mother's tears made her father's departure on some distant mission more difficult than need be, and although she knew now that her capacity for tenderness was as great, she resolved to mould herself in a larger shape than that.

But she sighed and drooped a little. The burden of woman's waiting seemed already to have descended upon her. Two years were long--long. There might be other delays. He might fall ill; he had been ill before in that barbarous Russian north. And in all that time it was doubtful if she received a line from him, a hint of his welfare. The Boston and British skippers came no more, and it was certain that no Russian ship would visit California again until the treaty was signed and official news of it had made its slow way to these uttermost shores. She had resented, in her young ambition and indocility, the chance that had stranded her, equipped for civilization, on this rim of the world, but never so much as in that moment, when she sat with arrested breath and realized to the full the primitive conditions of a country thousands of miles from the very outposts of Europe, and with never the sight of a letter that did not come from Spain or one of her colonies.

"Would that we lived a generation later," she thought with a heavy sigh. "Progress is almost automatic, and to a land as fertile and desirable as this the stream must turn in due course. But not in my time. Not in my time."

She rose and leaned her elbows in the embrasure of the grille, where Santiago had restored the bars, and looked out over the fields of grain planted by the padres, the immense sand dunes beyond that shut the lovely bay from sight; the hills embracing the primitive scene in a frowning arc. With all her imagination it was long before she could picture a great city covering that immense and almost deserted space. A pueblo in time, perhaps, for Rezanov had awakened her mind to the importance of the harbor as a port of call. Many more adobe homes where the sand was not hot and shifting, a few ships in the bay when Spain had been compelled to relax her jealous vigilance--or--who knew?--perhaps!--a flourishing colony when the Russian bear had devoured the Spanish lion. She knew something and suspected more of the rottenness and inefficiency of Spain, and, were Russia a nation of Rezanovs, what opposition in California against the tide thundering down from the north? Then, perhaps, the city that had travelled from the brain of the Russian to hers when the fog had rolled over the heights; the towers and palaces and bazaars, the thousand little golden domes with the slender cross atop; the forts on the crags and the villas in the hollows, and on all the island and hills. But when she and her lover were dust. When she and her lover were dust.

But she was too young and too ardent to listen long to the ravens of the spirit. Two years are not eternity, and in happiness the past rolls together like a scroll and is naught. She fell to dreaming. Her lips that had been set with the gravity of stone relaxed in warm curves. The color came back to her cheek, the light to her eyes. She was a girl at her grating with the roses poignant above her, and the world, radiant, alluring, and all for her, swimming in the violet haze beyond.

XXII

Rezanov in those days was literally lord and master at the Presidio. If he did not burn the house of his devoted host he ran it to suit himself. He turned one of its rooms into an office, where he received the envoys from the different Missions and examined the samples of everything submitted to him, trusting little to his commissary. His leisure he employed scouring the country or shooting deer and quail in the company of his younger hosts. The literal mind of Don Jose accepted him as an actual son and embryonic California, and, his conscience at peace, revelled in his society as a sign from propitiated heaven; rejoicing in the virtue of his years. The Governor, testily remarking that as California was so well governed for the present he would retire to Monterey and take a siesta, rode off one morning, but not without an affectionate: "God preserve the life of your excellency many years."

But although Rezanov saw the most sanguine hopes that had brought him to California fulfilled, and although he looked from the mountain ridges of the east over the great low valleys watered by rivers and shaded by oaks, where enough grain could be raised to keep the blood red in a thousand times the colonial population of Russia, although he felt himself in more and more abundant health, more and more in love with life, it is not to be supposed for a moment that he was satisfied. Concha he barely saw. She remained with the Moragas, and although she came occasionally to the afternoon dances at the Presidio, and he had dined once at her cousin's house, where the formal betrothal had taken place and the marriage contract had been signed in the presence of her family and more intimate friends, the priests, his officers, and the Governor, he had not spoken with her for a moment alone. Nor had her eyes met his in a glance of understanding. At the dances she showed him no favor; and as the engagement was to be as secret as might be in that small community, until his return with consent of Pope and King, he was forced to concede that her conduct was irreproachable; but when on the day of the betrothal she was oblivious to his efforts to draw her into the garden, he mounted his horse and rode off in a huff.

The truth was that Concha liked the present arrangement no better than himself, and knowing that her own appeal against the proprieties would result in a deeper seclusion, she determined to goad him into using every resource of address and subtlety to bring about a more human state of affairs. And she accomplished her object. Rezanov, at the end of a week was not only infuriated but alarmed. He knew the imagination of woman, and guessed that Concha, in her brooding solitude, distorted all that was unfortunate in the present and dwelt morbidly on the future. He knew that she must resent his part in the long separation, no doubt his lack of impulsiveness in not proposing elopement. There was a priest in his company who, although he ate below the salt and found his associates among the sailors, could have performed the ceremony of marriage when the Juno, under full sail in the night, was scudding for the Russian north. It is not to be denied that this romantic alternative appealed to Rezanov, and had it not been for the starving wretches so eagerly awaiting his coming he might have been tempted to throw commercial relations to the winds and flee with his bride while San Francisco, secure in the knowledge of the Juno's empty hold, was in its first heavy sleep. It is doubtful if he would have advanced beyond impulse, for Rezanov was not the man to lose sight of a purpose to which he had set the full strength of his talents, and life had tempered his impetuous nature with much philosophy. Moreover, while his conscience might ignore the double dealing necessary to the accomplishment of patriotic or political acts, it revolted at the idea of outwitting, possibly wrecking, his trusting and hospitable host. But the mere fact that his imagination could dwell upon such an issue as reckless flight, inflamed his impatience, and his desire to see Concha daily during these last few weeks of propinquity. Finally, he sought the co-operation of Father Abella--Santiago was in Monterey--and that wise student of maids and men gave him cheer.

On Thursday afternoon there was to take place the long delayed Indian dance and bull-bear fight; not in the Presidio, but at the Mission, the pride of the friars inciting them to succeed where the military authorities had failed. All the little world of San Francisco had been invited, and it would be strange if in the confusion between performance and supper a lover could not find a moment alone with his lady.

The elements were kind to the padres. The afternoon was not too hot, although the sun flooded the plain and there was not a cloud on the dazzling blue of the sky. Never had the Mission and the mansions looked so white, their tiles so red. The trees were blossoming pink and white in the orchards, the lightest breeze rippled the green of the fields; and into this valley came neither the winds nor the fogs of the ocean.

The priests and their guests of honor sat on the long corridor beside the church; the soldiers, sailors, and Indians of Presidio and Mission forming the other three sides of a hollow square. The Indian women were a blaze of color. The ladies on the corridor wore their mantillas, jewels, and the gayest of artificial flowers. There were as many fans as women. Rezanov sat between Father Abella and the Commandante, and not being in the best of tempers had never looked more imposing and remote. Concha, leaning against one of the pillars, stole a glance at him and wondered miserably if this haughty European had really sought her hand, if it were not a girl's foolish dream. But Concha's humble moments at this period of her life were rare, and she drew herself up proudly, the blood of the proudest race in Europe shaking angrily in her veins. A moment later, in response to a power greater than any within herself, she turned again. The attention of the hosts and guests was riveted upon the preliminary antics of the Indian dancers, and Rezanov seized the opportunity to lean forward unobserved and gaze at the girl whom it seemed to him he saw for the first time in the full splendor of her beauty. She wore a large mantilla of white Spanish lace. In the fashion of the day it rose at the back almost from the hem of her gown to descend in a point over the high comb to her eyes. The two points of the width were gathered at her breast, defining the outlines of her superb figure, and fastened with one large Castilian rose surrounded by its mass of tiny sharp buds and dull green leaves. As the familiar scent assailed Rezanov's nostrils they tingled and expanded. His lids were lifted and his eyes glowing as he finally compelled her glance, and her own eyes opened with an eager flash; her lips parted and her shoulders lost their haughty poise. For a moment their gaze lingered in a perfect understanding; his ill-humor vanished, and he leaned back with a complimentary remark as Father Abella directed his attention to the most agile of the Indians.

The swart natives of both sexes with their thick features and long hair were even more hideous than usual in bandeaux of bright feathers, scant garments made from the breasts of water-fowls, rattling strings of shells, and tattooing on arm and leg no longer concealed by the decorous Mission smock. Rezanov had that day sent them presents of glass beads and ribbons, and in these they took such extravagant pride that for some time their dancing was almost automatic.

But soon their blood warmed, and after the first dance, which was merely a series of measured springs on the part of the men and a beating of time by the women, a large straw figure symbolizing an entire hostile tribe was brought in, and about this pranced the men with savage cries and gestures, advancing, attacking, retreating, finally piercing it with their arrows and marching it off with sharp yells of triumph that reverberated among the hills; the women never varying from a loud monotonous chant.

There was a peaceful interlude, during which the men, holding bow and arrow aloft, hopped up and down on one spot, the women hopping beside them and snapping thumb and forefinger on the body, still singing in the same high measured voice. But while they danced a great bonfire was laid and kindled. The gyrations lasted a few minutes longer, then the chief seized a live ember and swallowed it. His example was immediately followed by his tribe, and, whether to relieve discomfort or with energies but quickened, they executed a series of incredible handsprings and acrobatic capers. When they finally whirled away on toes and finger tips, another chief, in the horns and hide of a deer, rushed in, pursued by a party of hunters. For several moments he perfectly simulated a hunted animal lurking and dodging in high grass, behind trees, venturing to the brink of a stream to drink, searching eagerly for his mate; and when he finally escaped it was amidst the most enthusiastic plaudits as yet evoked.

After an hour of this varied performance, the square was enlarged by several mounted vaqueros galloping about with warning cries and much flourishing of lassos. They were the cattle herders of the Mission ranch just over the hills, and were in gala attire of black glazed sombrero with silver cord, white shirt open at the throat, short black velvet trousers laced with silver, red sash and high yellow boots. Four, pistol in hand, stationed themselves in front of the corridor, while the others rode out and in again, dragging a bear and a bull, with hind legs attached by two yards of rope. The captors left the captives in the middle of the square, and without more ado the serious sport of the day began. The bull, with stomach empty and hide inflamed, rushed at the bear, furious from captivity, with such a roar that the Indian women screamed and even the men shuffled their feet uneasily. But neither combatant was interested in aught but the other. The one sought to gore, his enemy to strike or hug. The vaqueros teased them with arrows and cries, the dust flew; for a few moments there was but a heaving, panting, lashing bulk in the middle of the arena, and then the bull, his tongue torn out, rolled on his back, and another was driven in before the victor could wreak his unsated vengeance among the spectators. The bear, dragging the dead bull, rushed at the living, who, unmartial at first, stiffened to the defensive as he saw a bulk of wiry fur set with eyes of fire, almost upon him. He sprang aside, lowered his horn and caught the bear in the chest. But the victor was a compact mass of battle and momentum. His onslaught flung the bear over backward, and quickly disengaging himself he made another leap at his equally agile enemy. This time the battle was longer and more various, for the bull was smaller, more active and dexterous. Twice he almost had the bear on his horns, but was rolled, only saving his neck and back from the fury of the mountain beast by such kicking and leaping that both combatants were indistinguishable from the whirlwind of dust. Out of this they would emerge to stand panting in front of each other with tongues pendant and red eyes rolling. Finally the bear, nearly exhausted, made a sudden charge, the bull leaped aside, backed again with incredible swiftness, caught the bear in the belly, tossed him so high that he met the hard earth with a loud cracking of bone. The vaqueros circled about the maddened bull, set his hide thick with arrows, tripped him with the lasso. A wiry little Mexican in yellow, galloping in on his mustang, administered the coup de grace amidst the wild applause of the spectators, whose shouting and clapping and stamping might have been heard by the envious guard at the Presidio and Yerba Buena.

As the party on the corridor broke, Rezanov found no difficulty in reaching Concha's side, for even Dona Ignacia was chattering wildly with several other good dames who renewed their youth briefly at the bull-fight.

"Did you enjoy that?" he asked curiously.

"I did not look at it. I never do. But I know that you were not affronted. You never took your eyes from those dreadful beasts."

"I am exhilarated to know that you watched me. Yes, at a bull-fight the primitive man in me has its way, although I have the grace to be ashamed of myself afterward. In that I am at least one degree more civilized than your race, which never repents."

The door of one of the smaller rooms stood open, and as they took advantage of this oversight with a singular concert of motive, he clasped both her hands in his. "Are you angry with me?" he asked softly. He dared not close the door, but his back was square against it, and the other guests were moving down to the refectory.

"For liking such horrid sport?"

"We have no time to waste in coquetry."