Chapter 5

"Never have they been so beautiful, Eustaquia! Is it not so, my Prudencia?" she cried to the girl, who was curled on one corner of the table, gloating over the treasures she knew her uncle's generosity would make her own. "Look, how these little diamonds flash! And the embroidery on this crêpe!--a dozen eyes went out ay! yi! This satin is like a tile! These fans were made in Spain! This is as big as a windmill. God of my soul!"--she threw a handful of yellow sewing-silk upon a piece of white satin; "Ana shall embroider this gown,--the golden poppies of California on a bank of mountain snow." She suddenly seized a case of topaz and a piece of scarlet silk and ran over to me: I being a Montereña, etiquette forbade me to purchase in Santa Barbara. "Thou must have these, my Eustaquia. They will become thee well. And wouldst thou like any of my white things? Mary! but I am selfish. Take what thou wilt, my friend."

To refuse would be to spoil her pleasure and insult her hospitality: so I accepted the topaz--of which I had six sets already--and the silk,--whose color prevailed in my wardrobe,--and told her that I detested white, which did not suit my weather-dark skin, and she was as blind and as pleased as a child.

"But come, come," she cried. "My father is not so generous when he has to wait too long."

She gathered the mass of stuff in her arms and staggered up the companion-way. I followed, leaving Prudencia raking the trove her short arms would not hold.

"Ay, my Chonita!" she wailed, "I cannot carry that big piece of pink satin and that vase. And I have only two pairs of slippers and one fan. Ay, Cho-n-i-i-ta, look at those shawls! Mother of God, suppose Valencia Menendez comes--"

"Do not weep on the silk and spoil what thou hast," called down Chonita from the top step. "Thou shalt have all thou canst wear for a year."

She reached the deck and stood panting and imperious before her father. "All! All! I must have all!" she cried. "Never have they been so fine, so rich."

"Holy Mary!" shrieked Don Guillermo. "Dost thou think I am made of doubloons, that thou wouldst buy a whole ship's cargo? Thou shalt have a quarter; no more,--not a yard!"

"I will have all!" And the stately daughter of the Iturbi y Moncadas stamped her little foot upon the deck.

"A third,--not a yard more. And diamonds! Holy Heaven! There is not gold enough in the Californias to feed the extravagance of the Señorita Doña Chonita Iturbi y Moncada."

She managed to bend her body in spite of her burden, her eyes flashing saucily above the mass of tulle which covered the rest of her face.

"And not fine raiment enough in the world to accord with the state of the only daughter of the Señor Don Guillermo Iturbi y Moncada, the delight and the pride of his old age. Wilt thou send these things to the North, to be worn by an Estenega? Thy Chonita will cry her eyes so red that she will be known as the ugly witch of Santa Barbara, and Casa Grande will be like a tomb."

"Oh, thou spoilt baby! Thou wilt have thy way--" At this moment Prudencia appeared. Nothing whatever could be seen of her small person but her feet; she looked like an exploded bale of goods. "What! what!" gasped Don Guillermo. "Thou little rat! Thou wouldst make a Christmas doll of thyself with satin that is too heavy for thy grandmother, and eke out thy dumpy inches with a train? Oh, Mother of God!" He turned to the captain, who was smoking complacently, assured of the issue. "I will let them carry these things home; but to-morrow one-half, at least, comes back." And he stamped wrathfully down the deck.

"Send the rest," said Chonita to the captain, "and thou shalt have a bag of gold to-night."

[Footnote A: In writing of Casa Grande and its inmates, no reference to the distinguished De la Guerra family of Santa Barbara is intended, beyond the description of their house and state and of the general characteristics of the founder of the family fortunes in California.]

XI.

The next morning Chonita, clad in a long gown of white wool, a silver cross at her throat, her hair arranged like a coronet, sat in a large chair in the dispensary. Her father stood beside a table, parcelling drugs. The sick-poor of Santa Barbara passed them in a long line.

The Doomswoman exercised her power to heal, the birthright of the twin.

"I wonder if I can," she said to me, laying her white fingers on a knotted arm, "or if it is my father's medicines. I have no right to question this beautiful faith of my country, but I really don't see how I do it. Still, I suppose it is like many things in our religion, not for mere human beings to understand. This pleases my vanity, at least. I wonder if I shall have cause to exercise my other endowment."

"To curse?"

"Yes: I think I might do that with something more of sincerity."

The men, women, and children, native Californians and Indians, scrubbed for the occasion, filed slowly past her, and she touched all kindly and bade them be well. They regarded her with adoring eyes and bent almost to the ground.

"Perhaps they will help me out of purgatory," she said; "and it is something to be on a pedestal; I should not like to come down. It is a cheap victory, but so are most of the victories that the world knows of."

When she had touched nearly a hundred, they gathered about her, and she spoke a few words to them.

"My friends, go, and say, 'I shall be well.' Does not the Bible say that faith shall make ye whole? Cling to your faith! Believe! Believe! Else will you feel as if the world crumbled beneath your feet! And there is nothing, nothing to take its place. What folly, what presumption, to suggest that anything can--a mortal passion--" She stopped suddenly, and continued coldly, "Go, my friends; words do not come easily to me to-day. Go, and God grant that you may be well and happy."

XII.

We sat in the sala the next evening, awaiting the return of the prodigal and his deliverer. The night was cool, and the doors were closed; coals burned in a roof-tile. The room, unlike most Californian salas, boasted a carpet, and the furniture was covered with green rep, instead of the usual black horse-hair.

Don Guillermo patted the table gently with his open palm, accompanying the tinkle of Prudencia's guitar and her light monotonous voice. She sat on the edge of a chair, her solemn eyes fixed on a painting of Reinaldo which hung on the wall. Doña Trinidad was sewing as usual, and dressed as simply as if she looked to her daughter to maintain the state of the Iturbi y Moncadas. Above a black silk skirt she wore a black shawl, one end thrown over her shoulder. About her head was a close black silk turban, concealing, with the exception of two soft gray locks on either side of her face, what little hair she may still have possessed. Her white face was delicately cut: the lines of time indicated spiritual sweetness rather than strength.

Chonita roved between the sala and an adjoining room where four Indian girls embroidered the yellow poppies on the white satin. I was reading one of her books,--the "Vicar of Wakefield."

"Wilt thou be glad to see Reinaldo, my Prudencia?" asked Don Guillermo, as the song finished.

"Ay!" and the girl blushed.

"Thou wouldst make a good wife for Reinaldo, and it is well that he marry. It is true that he has a gay spirit and loves company, but you shall live here in this house, and if he is not a devoted husband he shall have no money to spend. It is time he became a married man and learned that life was not made for dancing and flirting; then, too, would his restless spirit get him into fewer broils. I have heard him speak twice of no other woman, excepting Valencia Menendez, and I would not have her for a daughter; and I think he loves thee."

"Sure!" said Doña Trinidad.

"That is love, I suppose," said Chonita, leaning back in her chair and forgetting the poppies. "With her a placid contented hope, with him a calm preference for a malleable woman. If he left her for another she would cry for a week, then serenely marry whom my father bade her, and forget Reinaldo in the _donas_ of the bridegroom. The birds do almost as well."

Don Guillermo smiled indulgently. Prudencia did not know whether to cry or not. Doña Trinidad, who never thought of replying to her daughter, said,--

"Chonita mia, Liseta and Tomaso wish to marry, and thy father will give them the little house by the creek."

"Yes, mamacita?" said Chonita, absently: she felt no interest in the loves of the Indians.

"We have a new Father in the Mission," continued her mother, remembering that she had not acquainted her daughter with all the important events of her absence. "And Don Rafael Guzman's son was drafted. That was a judgment for not marrying when his father bade him. For that I shall be glad to have Reinaldo marry. I would not have him go to the war to be killed."

"No," said Don Guillermo. "He must be a diputado to Mexico. I would not lose my only son in battle. I am ambitious for him; and so art thou, Chonita, for thy brother? Is it not so?"

"Yes. I have it in me to stab the heart of any man who rolls a stone in his way."

"My daughter," said Don Guillermo, with the accent of duty rather than of reproof, "thou must love without vengeance. Sustain thy brother, but harm not his enemy. I would not have thee hate even an Estenega, although I cannot love them myself. But we will not talk of the Estenegas. Dost thou realize that our Reinaldo will be with us this night? We must all go to confession to-morrow,--thy mother and myself, Eustaquia, Reinaldo, Prudencia, and thyself."

Chonita's face became rigid. "I cannot go to confession," she said. "It may be months before I can: perhaps never."

"What?"

"Can one go to confession with a hating and an unforgiving heart? Ay! that I never had gone to Monterey! At least I had the consolation of my religion before. Now I fight the darkness by myself. Do not ask me questions, for I shall not answer them. But taunt me no more with confession."

Even Don Guillermo was dumb. In all the twenty-four years of her life she never had betrayed violence of spirit before: even her hatred of the Estenegas had been a religion rather than a personal feeling. It was the first glimpse of her soul that she had accorded them, and they were aghast. What--what had happened to this proud, reserved, careless daughter of the Iturbi y Moncadas?

Doña Trinidad drew down her mouth. Prudencia began to cry. Then, for the moment, Chonita was forgotten. Two horses galloped into the court-yard.

"Reinaldo!"

The door had but an inside knob: Don Guillermo threw it open as a young man sprang up the three steps of the corridor, followed by a little man who carefully picked his way.

"Yes, I am here, my father, my mother, my sister, my Prudencia! Ay, Eustaquia, thou too." And the pride of the house kissed each in turn, his dark eyes wandering absently about the room. He was a dashing caballero, and as handsome as any ever born in the Californias. The dust of travel had been removed--at a saloon--from his blue velvet gold-embroidered serape, which he immediately flung on the floor. His short jacket and trousers were also of dark-blue velvet, the former decorated with buttons of silver filigree, the latter laced with silver cord over spotless linen. The front of his shirt was covered with costly lace. His long botas were of soft yellow leather stamped with designs in silver and gartered with blue ribbon. The clanking spurs were of silver inlaid with gold. The sash, knotted gracefully over his hip, was of white silk. His curled black hair was tied with a blue ribbon, and clung, clustering and damp, about a low brow. He bore a strange resemblance to Chonita, in spite of the difference of color, but his eyes were merely large and brilliant: they had no stars in their shallows. His mouth was covered by a heavy silken mustache, and his profile was bold. At first glance he impressed one as a perfect type of manly strength, aggressively decided of character. It was only when he cast aside the wide sombrero--which, when worn a little back, most becomingly framed his face--that one saw the narrow, insignificant head.

For a time there was no conversation, only a series of exclamations. Chonita alone was calm, smiling a loving welcome. In the excitement of the first moments little notice was taken of the devoted bailer, who ardently regarded Chonita.

Don Juan de la Borrasca was flouting his sixties, fighting for his youth as a parent fights for its young. His withered little face wore the complacent smile of vanity; his arched brows furnished him with a supercilious expression which atoned for his lack of inches,--he was barely five feet two. His large curved nose was also a compensating gift from the godmother of dignity, and he carried himself so erectly that he looked like a toy general. His small black eyes were bright as glass beads, and his hair was ribboned as bravely as Reinaldo's. He was clad in silk attire,--red silk embroidered with butterflies. His little hands were laden with rings; carbuncles glowed in the lace of his shirt. He was moderately wealthy, but a stanch retainer of the house of Iturbi y Moncada, the devoted slave of Chonita.

She was the first to remember him, and held out her hand for him to kiss. "Thou hast the gratitude of my heart, dear friend," she said, as the little dandy curved over it. "I thank thee a thousand times for bringing my brother back to me."

"Ay, Doña Chonita, thanks be to God and Mary that I was enabled so to do. Had my mission proved unsuccessful I should have committed a crime and gone to prison with him. Never would I have returned here. Dueño adorado, ever at thy feet."

Chonita smiled kindly, but she was listening to her brother, who was now expatiating upon his wrongs to a sympathetic audience.

"Holy heaven!" he exclaimed, striding up and down the room, "that an Iturbi y Moncada, the descendant of twenty generations, should be put to shame, to disgrace and humiliation, by being cast into a common prison! That an ardent patriot, a loyal subject of Mexico, should be accused of conspiring against the judgment of an Alvarado! Carillo was my friend, and had his cause been a just one I had gone with him to the gates of death or the chair of state. But could I, _I_, conspire against a wise and great man like Juan Bautista Alvarado? No! not even if Carillo had asked me so to do. But, by the stars of heaven, he did not. I had been but the guest of his bounty for a month; and the suspicious rascals who spied upon us, the poor brains who compose the Departmental Junta, took it for granted that an Iturbi y Moncada could not be blind to Carillo's plots and plans and intrigues, that, having been the intimate of his house and table, I must perforce aid and abet whatever schemes engrossed him. Ay, more often than frequently did a dark surmise cross my mind, but I brushed it aside as one does the prompting of evil desires. I would not believe that a Carillo would plot, conspire, and rise again, after the terrible lesson he had received in 1838. Alvarado holds California to his heart; Castro, the Mars of the nineteenth century, hovers menacingly on the horizon. Who, who, in sober reason, would defy that brace of frowning gods?"

His eloquence was cut short by respiratory interference, but he continued to stride from one end of the room to the other, his face flushed with excitement. Prudencia's large eyes followed him, admiration paralyzing her tongue. Doña Trinidad smiled upward with the self-approval of the modest barn-yard lady who has raised a magnificent bantam. Don Guillermo applauded loudly. Only Chonita turned away, the truth smiting her for the first time.

"Words! words!" she thought, bitterly. "_He_ would have said all that in two sentences. Is it true--_ay, triste de mi!_--what he said of my brother? I hate him, yet his brain has cut mine and wedged there. My head bows to him, even while all the Iturbi y Moncada in me arises to curse him. But my brother! my brother! he is so much younger. And if he had had the same advantages--those years in Mexico and America and Europe--would he not know as much as Diego Estenega? Oh, sure! sure!"

"My son," Don Guillermo was saying, "God be thanked that thou didst not merit thy imprisonment. I should have beaten thee with my cane and locked thee in thy room for a month hadst thou disgraced my name. But, as it happily is, thou must have compensation for unjust treatment.--Prudencia, give me thy hand."

The girl rose, trembling and blushing, but crossed the room with stately step and stood beside her uncle. Don Guillermo took her hand and placed it in Reinaldo's. "Thou shalt have her, my son," he said. "I have divined thy wishes."

Reinaldo kissed the small fingers fluttering in his, making a great flourish. He was quite ready to marry, and his pliant little cousin suited him better than any one he knew. "Day-star of my eyes!" he exclaimed, "consolation of my soul! Memories of injustice, discomfort, and sadness fall into the waters of oblivion rolling at thy feet. I see neither past nor future. The rose-hued curtain of youth and hope falls behind and before us."

"Yes, yes," assented Prudencia, delightedly. "My Reinaldo! my Reinaldo!"

We congratulated them severally and collectively, and, when the ceremony was over, Reinaldo cried, with even more enthusiasm than he had yet shown, "My mother, for the love of Mary give me something to eat,--tamales, salad, chicken, dulces. Don Juan and I are as empty as hides."

Doña Trinidad smiled with the pride of the Californian housewife. "It is ready, my son. Come to the dining-room, no?"

She led the way, followed by the family, Reinaldo and Prudencia lingering. As the others crossed the threshold he drew her back.

"A lump of tallow, dost thou hear, my Prudencia?" he whispered, hurriedly. "Put it under the green bench. I must have it to-night."

"Ay! Reinaldo--"

"Do not refuse, my Prudencia, if thou lovest me. Wilt thou do it?"

"Sure, my Reinaldo."

XIII.

The family retired early in its brief seasons of reclusion, and at ten o'clock Casa Grande was dark and quiet. Reinaldo opened his door and listened cautiously, then stepped softly to the green bench and felt beneath for the lump of tallow. It was there. He returned to his room and swung himself from his window into the yard, about which were irregularly disposed the manufactories of the Indians, a high wall protecting the small town. All was quiet here, and had been for hours. He stole to the wooden tower and mounted a ladder, lifting it from story to story until he reached the attic under the pointed roof. Then he lit a candle, and, removing a board from the floor, peered down into the room whose door was always so securely locked. The stars shone through the uncurtained windows and were no yellower than the gold coins heaped on the large table and overflowing the baskets. Reinaldo took a long pole from a corner and applied to one end a piece of the soft tallow. He lowered the pole and pressed it firmly into the pile of gold on the table. The pole was withdrawn, and this ingenious fisherman removed a large gold fish from the bait. He fished patiently for an hour, then filled a bag he had brought for the purpose, and returned as he had come. Not to his bed, however. Once more he opened his door and stole forth, this time to the town, to hold high revel around the gaming-table, where he was welcomed hilariously by his boon companions.

A wild fandango in a neighboring booth provided relaxation for the gamblers. In an hour or two Reinaldo found his way to this well-known haven. Black-eyed dancing-girls in short skirts of tawdry satin trimmed with cotton lace, mock jewels on their bare necks and in their coarse black hair, flew about the room and screamed with delight as Reinaldo flung gold pieces among them. The excitement continued in all its variations until morning. Men bet and lost all the gold they had brought with them, then sold horse, serape, and sombrero to the men who neither drank nor gambled, but came prepared for close and profitable bargains. Reinaldo lost his purloins, won them again, stood upon the table and spoke with torrential eloquence of his wrongs and virtues, kissed all the girls, and when by easy and rapid stages he had succeeded in converting himself into a tank of aguardiente, he was carried home and put to bed by such of his companions as were sober enough to make no noise.

XIV.

Chonita, clad in a black gown, walked slowly up and down the corridor of Casa Grande. The rain should have dripped from the eaves, beaten with heavy monotony upon the hard clay of the court-yard, to accompany her mood, but it did not. The sky was blue without fleck of cloud, the sun like the open mouth of a furnace of boiling gold, the air as warm and sweet and drowsy as if it never had come in shock with human care. Prudencia sat on the green bench, drawing threads in a fine linen smock, her small face rosy with contentment.

"Why dost thou wear that black gown this beautiful morning?" she demanded, suddenly. "And why dost thou walk when thou canst sit down?"

"I had a dream last night. Dost thou believe in dreams?" She had as much regard for her cousin's opinion as for the twittering of a bird, but she felt the necessity of speech at times, and at least this child never remembered what she said.

"Sure, my Chonita. Did not I dream that the good captain would bring pink silk stockings? and are they not my own this minute?" And she thrust a diminutive foot from beneath the hem of her gown, regarding it with admiration. "And did not I dream that Tomaso and Liseta would marry? What was thy dream, my Chonita?"

"I do not know what the first part was; something very sad. All I remember is the roar of the ocean and another roar like the wind through high trees. Then a moment that shook and frightened me, but sweeter than anything I know of, so I cannot define it. Then a swift awful tragedy--I cannot recall the details of that, either. The whole dream was like a black mass of clouds, cut now and again by a scythe of lightning. But then, like a vision within a dream, I seemed to stand there and see myself, clad in a black gown, walking up and down this corridor, or one like it, up and down, up and down, never resting, never daring to rest, lest I hear the ceaseless clatter of a lonely fugitive's horse. When I awoke I was as cold as if I had received the first shock of the surf. I cannot say why I put on this black gown to-day. I make no haste to feel as I did when I wore it in that dream,--the desolation,--the endlessness; but I did."

"That was a strange dream, my Chonita," said Prudencia, threading her needle. "Thou must have eaten too many dulces for supper: didst thou?"

"No," said Chonita, shortly, "I did not."

She continued her aimless walk, wondering at her depression of spirits. All her life she had felt a certain mental loneliness, but a healthy body rarely harbors an invalid soul, and she had only to spring on a horse and gallop over the hills to feel as happy as a young animal. Moreover, the world--all the world she knew--was at her feet; nor had she ever known the novelty of an ungratified wish. Once in a while her father arose in an obdurate mood, but she had only to coax, or threaten tears,--never had she been seen to shed one,--or stamp her foot, to bring that doting parent to terms. It is true that she had had her morbid moments, an abrupt impatient desire for something that was not all light and pleasure and gold and adulation; but, being a girl of will and sense, she had turned resolutely from the troublous demands of her deeper soul, regarding them as coals fallen from a mind that burned too hotly at times.