Chapter 4

He had known, of course, of the law that forbade the Spanish colonies to trade with foreign ships, but he had relied partly upon the use he could make of the orders given by the Spanish King at the request of the Tsar regarding the expedition under Krusenstern, partly upon his own wit and address. But although the royal order had insured him immediate hospitality and saved him many wearisome formalities, he had already discovered that the Spanish on the far rim of their empire had lost nothing of their connate suspicion. Rather, their isolation made them the more wary. Although they little appreciated the richness and variousness of California's soil, and not at all this wonderful bay that would accommodate the combined navies of the world, pocketing several, the pious zeal of the clergy in behalf of the Indians, and the general policy of Spain to hold all of the western hemisphere that disintegrating forces would permit, made her as tenacious of this vast territory she had so sparsely populated as had she been aware that its foundations were of gold, conceived that its climate and soil were a more enduring source of wealth than ever she would command again. If Rezanov was not gifted with the prospector's sense for ores--although he had taken note of Arguello's casual reference to a vein of silver and lead in the Monterey hills--no man ever more thoroughly appreciated the visible resources of California than he. Baranhov, chief-manager of the Company, had talked with American and British skippers for twenty years, and every item he had accumulated Rezanov had extracted. To-day he had drawn further information from Concha and her brothers; and their artless descriptions as well as this incomparable bay had filled him with enthusiasm. What a gift to Russia! What an achievement to his immortal credit! The fog rolled in from the Pacific in great white waves and stealthily enfolded him, obliterated the sea and the land. But he did not see it. Apprehension left him. Once more he fell to dreaming. In the course of a few years the Company would attract a large population to the mouth of the Columbia River, be strong enough to make use of any favorable turn in European politics and sweep down upon California. The geographical position of Mexico, the arid and desolate, herbless and waterless wastes intervening, would prohibit her sending any considerable assistance overland; and, all powerful at court by that time, he would take care that the Russian navy inspired Spain with a distaste for remote Pacific waters. He had long since recovered from the disappointment induced by the orders compelling him to remain in the colonies. The great Company he had heretofore regarded merely as a source of income and a means of advancing his ambitions, he now loved as his child. Even during the marches over frozen swamps and mountains, during the terrible winter in Sitka when he had become familiar with illness and even with hunger, his ardor had grown, as well as his determination to force Russia into the front rank of Commercial Europe. The United States he barely considered. He respected the new country for the independent spirit and military genius that had routed so powerful a nation as Great Britain, but he thought of her only as a new and tentative civilization on the far shores of the Atlantic. After some experience of travel in Siberia, and knowing the immensity and primeval conditions of north-western America, he did not think it probable that the little cluster of states, barely able to walk alone, would indulge in dreams of expansion for many years to come. He had heard of the projected expedition of Lewis and Clarke to the mouth of the Columbia, but--perhaps he was too Russian--he did not take any adventure seriously that had not a mighty nation at its back. And as it was almost the half of a century from that night before the American flag flew over the Custom House of Monterey, there is reason to believe that Russian aggression under the leadership of so energetic and resourceful a spirit as Nicolai Petrovich de Rezanov was in a fair way to make history first in the New Albion of Drake and the California of the incompetent Spaniard.

V

The Russians were to call at the house of the Commandante on their way to the Mission, and Concha herself made the chocolate with which they were to be detained for another hour. It was another sparkling morning, one of the few that came between winter and summer, summer and winter, and made even this bleak peninsula a land of enchantment before the cold winds took the sand hills up by their foundations and drove them down to Yerba Buena, submerging the battery and every green thing by the way; or the great fogs rolled down from the tule lands of the north and in from the sea, making the shivering San Franciscan forget that not ten miles away the sun was as prodigal as youth. For a few weeks San Francisco had her springtime, when the days were warm and the air of a wonderful lightness and brightness, the atmosphere so clear that the flowers might be seen on the islands, when man walked with wings on his feet and a song in his heart; when the past was done with, the future mattered not, the present with its ever changing hues on bay and hill, its cool electrical breezes stirring imagination and pulse, was all in all.

And it was in San Francisco's springtime that Concha Arguello made chocolate for the Russian to whom she was to give a niche in the history of her land; and sang at her task. She whirled the molinillo in each cup as it was filled, whipping the fragrant liquid to froth; pausing only to scold when her servant stained one of the dainty saucers or cups. Poor Rosa did not sing, although the spring attuned her broken spirit to a gentler melancholy than when the winds howled and the fog was cold in her marrow. She had been sentenced by the last Governor, the wise Borica, to eight years of domestic servitude in the house of Don Jose Arguello for abetting her lover in the murder of his wife. Concha, thoughtless in many things, did what she could to exorcise the terror and despair that stared from the eyes of the Indian and puzzled her deeply. Rosa adored her young mistress and exulted even when Concha's voice rose in wrath; for was not she noticed by the loveliest senorita in all the Californias, while others, envious and spiteful to a poor girl no worse than themselves, were ignored?

Concha's cheeks were as pink as the Castilian roses that grew even before the kitchen door and were quivering at the moment under the impassioned carolling of a choir of larks. Her black eyes were full of dancing lights, like the imprisoned sun-flecks under the rose bush, and never had indolent Spanish hands moved so quickly.

"Mira! Mira!" she cried to the luckless Rosa. "That is the third time thou hast spilt the chocolate. Thy hands are of wood when they should be of air. A soft bit of linen to clean them, not that coarse rag. Dios de mi alma! I shall send for Malia."

"For the love of Mary, senorita, have pity!" wailed Rosa. "There--see--thanks to the Virgin I have poured three cups without spilling a drop. And this rag is of soft linen. Look, Dona Concha, is it not true?"

"Bueno; take care thou leavest not one drop on a saucer and I will forgive thee--do not kiss my hand now, foolish one! How can I whirl the molinillo? Be always good and I will burn a candle for thee every time I go to the Mission. The Russians go to the Mission this morning. Hast thou seen the Russians, Rosa?"

"I have seen them, senorita. Did I not serve at table yesterday?"

"True; I had forgotten. What didst thou think of them?"

"What matters it to such great folk what a poor Indian girl thinks of them? They are very fair, which may be the fashion in their country; but I am not accustomed to it; and I like not beards."

"His excellency wore no beard--he who sat on my mother's right and opposite to me."

"He is very grand, senorita; more grand than the Governor, who after all has red hair and is old. He is even grander than Don Jose, whom may the saints preserve; or than the padres at the mission. Perhaps he is a king, like our King and natural lord in spain. (El rey nuestro y senor natural.) Is he a king, senorita?"

"No, but he should be. Rosa, thou mayest have my red cloak that came from Mexico--last year. I have a new one and that is too small. I had intended to give it to Ana Paula, but thou art a good girl and should have a gay mantle for Sunday, like the other girls. I have also a red ribbon for thy hair--"

Rosa spilt half the contents of the chocolate pot on the floor and Concha gave her a sound box on the ear. However, she did not dismiss her, a sentence for which the trembling girl prepared herself.

"Make more--quickly!" cried the lady of caprice. "They come. I hear them. But this is enough for the first. Make the rest and beat with the molinillo as I have done, and Malia will bring all to the corridor."

She ran to her room and her mirror. Both were small, the room little more luxurious than the cell of a nun. But the roses hung over the window, the birds had built in the eaves, and over the wall the sun shone in. In one corner was an altar and a crucifix. If the walls were rough and white, they were spotless as the hands that shook out and then twisted high the fine dusky masses of hair. When a fold had been drawn over either ear, in the modest fashion of the California maid and wife, and the tall shell comb had fastened the rest, Concha instead of finishing the headdress with her long Spanish pins, divested the stems of two half-blown roses of their thorns and thrust them obliquely through the knot. Her dress was of simple white linen made with a very full skirt and little round jacket, but embroidered by her own deft fingers with the color she loved best. She patted her frock, rolled down her sleeves, and went out to the "corridor" to stand demurely behind her mother as the Russians, escorted by Father Ramon Abella, rode into the square.

Rezanov had intended merely to pay a call of ceremony upon the hospitable Arguellos, but after he had dismounted and kissed the hands of the smiling senora and her beautiful daughter he was nothing loath to linger over a cup of chocolate.

It was served out there in the shade of the vines. Rezanov and Concha sat on the railing, and the man stared over his cup at the girl with the roses touching her cheeks and ruffling her hair.

"Do you like chocolate, senor?" asked Concha, who was not in the intellectual mood of yesterday. "I made it myself--I and my poor Rosa."

"It is the most delectable foam I have ever tasted. I am interested to know that it has the solid foundation of a name. What is the matter with your Rosa?"

"She is an unfortunate. Her lover killed his wife, and it is said that she is not innocent herself. The lover serves in chains for eight years, and she is with us that we may make her repent and keep her from further sin. She is unhappy and will marry the man when his punishment is over. I am very sorry for her."

"Fancy you living close to a woman like that! I find it detestable."

"Why?--if I can do her good--and make her happy, sometimes?"

"Does she ever talk about her life--before she came here?"

"Oh, no; she is far too sad. Once only, when I told her I would pray for her in the Mission Church, she asked me to burn a candle that her lover might serve his sentence more quickly and come out and marry her. Will you light one for her to-day, senor?"

"With the greatest pleasure; if you really want your maid to marry a man who no doubt will murder her for the sake of some other woman."

"Oh, surely not! He loves her. I know that many men love more than once, but when they are punished like that, they must remember."

"Is it true that you are only sixteen? Is that an impertinent question? I cannot help it. Those years are so few, and so much wisdom has gone into that little head."

"Sixteen is quite old." Concha drew herself up with an air of offended dignity. "Elena Castro, who lives on the other side, is but eighteen and she has three little ones. The Virgin brought them in the night and left them in the big rosebush you see before the door--one at a time, of course. Only the old nurse knew; the Virgin whispered it while she was saying a prayer for Elena; and early in the morning she came and found the dear little baby and put it in Elena's arms. I am the godmother of the first--Conchitita. In Santa Barbara, where we lived for some years, Anita Amanda Carillo, the friend of Ana Paula, is married, although she is but twelve and sits on the floor all day and plays with her dolls. She prays every night to the Virgin to bring her a real baby, but she is not old enough to take care of it and must wait. Twelve is too young to marry." Concha shook her head. Her eyes were wise, and Rezanov noted anew that her mouth alone was as young as her years. "My father would not permit such a thing. I am glad he is not anxious we should marry soon. I should love to have the babies, though; they are so sweet to play with and make little dresses for. But my mother says the Virgin does not bring the little ones to good girls--poor Rosa had one but it died--until their parents find them a husband first. I have never wanted a husband--" Concha darted a swift glance over her shoulder, but Santiago was in the clutches of the learned doctor and wishing that he knew no Latin; "so I go every day and play with Elena's babies, which is well enough."

Rezanov listened to this innocent revelation with the utmost gravity, but for the first time in many years he was conscious of a novel fascination in a sex to which he had paid no niggard's tribute. In his world the married woman reigned; it was doubtful if he had ever had ten minutes' conversation with a young girl before, never with one whose face and form were as arresting as her crystal purity. He was fascinated, but more than ever on his guard. As he rode over the sand hills to the Mission she clung fast to his thoughts and he speculated upon the woman hidden away in the depths of that lovely shell like the deep color within the tight Castilian buds that opened so slowly. He recalled the personalities of the young officers that surrounded her. They were charming fellows, gay, kindly, honest; but he felt sure that not one of them was fit to hold the cup of life to the exquisite young lips of Concha Arguello. The very thought disposed him to twist their necks.

VI

The Mission San Francisco de Assisi stood at the head of a great valley about a league from the Presidio and facing the eastern hills. Behind it, yet not too close, for the priests were ever on their guard against Indians more lustful of loot than salvation, was a long irregular chain of hills, breaking into twin peaks on its highest ridge, with a lone mountain outstanding. It was an imposing but forbidding mass, as steep and bare as the walls of a fortress; but in the distance, north and south, as the range curved in a tapering arc that gave the valley the appearance of a colossal stadium, the outlines were soft in a haze of pale color. The sheltered valley between the western heights and the sand hills far down the bay where it turned to the south, was green with wheat fields, and a small herd of cattle grazed on the lower slopes. The beauty of this superbly proportioned valley was further enhanced by groves of oaks and bay trees, and by a lagoon, communicating with an arm of the bay, which the priests had named for their Lady of Sorrows--Nuestra Senora de los Dolores. The little sheet of water was almost round, very green and set in a thicket of willows that were green, too, in the springtime, and golden in summer. Near its banks, or closer to the protecting Mission--on whose land grant they were built--were the comfortable adobe homes of the few Spanish pioneers that preferred the bracing north to the monotonous warmth of the south. Some of these houses were long and rambling, others built about a court; all were surrounded by a high wall, enclosing a garden where the Castilian roses grew even more luxuriantly than at the Presidio. The walls, like the houses, were white, and on those of Don Juan Moraga, a cousin of Dona Ignacia Arguello, the roses had been trained to form a border along the top in a fashion that reminded Rezanov of the pink edged walls of Fiesole.

The white red-tiled church and the long line of rooms adjoining were built of adobe with no effort at grandeur, but with a certain noble simplicity of outline that harmonized not only with the lofty reserve of the hills but with the innocent hope of creating a soul in the lowest of human bipeds. The Indians of San Francisco were as immedicable as they were hideous; but the fathers belabored them with sticks and heaven with prayer, and had so far succeeded that if as yet they had sown piety no higher than the knees, they had trained some twelve hundred pairs of hands to useful service.

On the right was a graveyard, with little in it as yet but rose trees; behind the church and the many spacious rooms built for the consolation of virtue in the wilderness was a large building surrounding a court. Girls and young widows occupied the cells on the north side, and the work rooms on the east, while the youths, under the sharp eye of a lay brother, were opposite. All lived a life of unwilling industry: cleaning and combing wool, spinning, weaving, manufacturing chocolate, grinding corn between stones, making shoes, fashioning the simple garments worn by priest and Indian. Between the main group of buildings and the natural rampart of the "San Bruno Mountains" was the Rancheria, where the Indian families lived in eight long rows of isolated huts.

In spite of vigilance an Indian escaped now and again to the mountains, where he could lie naked in the sun and curse the fetich of civilization. As the Russians approached, a friar, with deer-skin armor over his cassock, was tugging at a recalcitrant mule, while a body-guard of four Indians stood ready to attend him down the coast in search of an enviable brother. The mule, as if in sympathy with the fugitive, had planted his four feet in the earth and lifted his voice in derision, while the young friar, a recruit at the Mission, and far from enamored of his task, strained at the rope, and an Indian pelted the hindquarters with stones. Suddenly, the mule flung out his heels, the enemy in the rear sprawled, the rope flew loose, the beast with a loud bray fled toward the willows of Dolores. But the young priest was both agile and angry. With a flying leap he reached the heaving back. The mule acknowledged himself conquered. The body-guard trotted on their own feet, and the party disappeared round a bend of the hills.

Rezanov laughed heartily and even the glum visage of Father Abella relaxed.

"It is a common sight, Excellency," he said. "We are thankful to have a younger friar for such fatiguing work. Many a time have I belabored stubborn mules and bestrode bucking mustangs while searching for one of these ungrateful but no doubt chosen creatures. It is the will of God, and we make no complaint; but we are very willing, Father Landaeta and I, that youth should cool its ardor in so certain a fashion while we attend to the more reasonable duties at home."

They were dismounted at the door of the church. The horses were led off by waiting Indians. The soldiers on guard saluted and stepped aside, and the party entered. Two priests in handsome vestments stood before the altar, but the long dim nave was empty. The Russians had been told that a mass would be said in their honor, and they marched down the church and bent their knees with as much ceremony as had they been of the faith of their hosts. When the short mass was over, Rezanov bethought himself of Concha's request, and whispering its purport to Father Abella was led to a double iron hoop stuck with tallow dips in various stages of petition. Rezanov lit a candle and fastened it in an empty socket. Then with a whimsical twist of his mouth he lit and adjusted another.

"No doubt she has some fervent wish, like all children," he thought apologetically. "And whether this will help her to realize it or not, at least it will be interesting to watch her eyes--and mouth--when I tell her. Will she melt, or flash, or receive my offering at her shrine as a matter of course? I'll surprise her to-night in the middle of a dance."

He deposited a gold piece among the candles on the table and followed Father Abella through a side door. A corridor ran behind the long line of rooms designed not only for priests but for travellers always sure of a welcome at these hospitable Missions. Father Abella shuffled ahead, halted on the threshold of a large room, and ceremoniously invited his guests to enter. Two other priests stood before a table set with wine and delicate confections, their hands concealed in their wide brown sleeves, but their unmatched physiognomies--the one lean and jovial, the other plump and resigned--alight with the same smile of welcome. Father Abella mentioned them as his coadjutor Father Martin Landaeta, and their guest Father Jose Uria of San Jose; and then the three, with the scant rites of genuine hospitality, applied themselves to the tickling of palates long unused to ambrosial living. Responding ingenuously to the glow of their home-made wines, they begged Rezanov to accept the Mission, burn it, plunder it, above all, to plan his own day.

"I hope that I am to see every detail of your great work," replied the diplomatic guest of honor. "But at your own leisure. Meanwhile, I beg that you will order one of your Indians to bring in the little presents I venture to offer as a token of my respect. You may have heard that the presents of his Imperial Majesty were refused by the Mikado of Japan. I reserved many of them for possible use in our own possessions, particularly a piece of cloth of gold. This I had intended for our church at New Archangel, but finding the priests there more in need of punishment than reward, I concluded to bring it here and offer it as a manifest of my admiration for what the great Franciscan Order of the Most Holy Church of Rome has accomplished in the Californias. Have I been too presumptuous?"

The priests all wore the eager expressions of children.

"Could we not see them first?" asked Father Landaeta of his superior; and Father Abella sent a servant with an order to unload the horse and bring in the presents.