Chapter 2

"Concha's father, Don José Dario Argüello, was Commandante of the Presidio of San Francisco then; and there was nothing else to call San Francisco but the Mission. Down at Yerba Buena, where the Americans flaunt themselves, there was but a Battery that could not give even a dance. But we had dances at the Presidio; day and night the guitar tinkled and the fiddles scraped; for what did we know of care, or old age, or convents or death? I was many years younger than Rafaella and did not go to the grand balls, but to the little dances, yes, many and many. When the Russians came--it was in 1806--I saw them every day, and one night danced with Rezánov himself. He was so gay--ay de mi! I remember he swung me quite off my feet and made as if he would throw me in the air. I was angry that he should treat me like a baby, and then he begged me so humbly to forgive him, although his eyes laughed, that of course I did. He had come down from Sitka to try and arrange for a treaty with the Spanish government that the poor men in the employ of the Russian-American Company might have breadstuffs to eat and not die of scurvy, nor toil through the long winter with no flesh on their bones. He brought a cargo with him to exchange for our corn and flour meanwhile. We had never seen any one so handsome and so grand and he turned all our heads, but he had a hard time with the Governor and Don José--there are no such Californians now or the Americans would never have got us--and it took all his diplomacy and all the help Concha and the priests could give him before he got his way, for there was a law against trading with foreigners. It was only when he and Concha became engaged that Governor Arillaga gave in--how I pick up vulgar expressions from these American pupils, I who should reform them! And did I not stand Ellen O'Reilley in the corner yesterday for calling San Francisco 'Frisco'?--_San Francisco de Assisi!_ But all the saints have fled from California.

"Where was I? Forgive an old woman's rambling, but I have not told stories since Rafaella's children grew up, and that was many years ago. What do I talk here? You know. And I that used to love to talk. Ay yi! But no one can say that I am not a good nun. Bishop Alemany has said it and no one knows better than he, the holy man. But for him I might be sitting all day on a corridor in the south sunning myself like an old crocodile, for we had no convent till he came eight years ago; and perhaps but for Concha, whom I always imitated, I might have a dozen brats of my own, for I was pretty and had my wooers and might have been persuaded. And God knows, since I must have the care of children, I prefer they should be mothered by some one else for then I have always the hope to be rid of them the sooner. Well, well! I am not a saint yet, and when I go to heaven I suppose Concha will still shake her finger at me with a smile. Not that she was ever self-righteous, our Concha. Not a bit of it. Only after that long and terrible waiting she just naturally became a saint. Some are made that way and some are not. That is all.

"Did I tell you about the two young lieutenants that came with Baron Rezánov? Davidov and Khostov their names were. Well, well, I shall tell all tonight. I was but fourteen, but what will you? Was I not, then, Spanish? It was Davidov. He always left the older people to romp with the children, although I think there was a flame in his heart for Concha. Perhaps had I been older--who knows? Do not look at my whiskers! That was forty-two years ago. Well, I dreamed of the fair kind young Russian for many a night after he left, and when my time came to marry I would look at none of the caballeros, but nursed Rafaella's babies and thought my thoughts. And then--in 1815 I think it was--the good--and ugly--Dr. Langsdorff sent Luis a copy of his book--he had been surgeon to his excellency--and alas! it told of the terrible end of both those gay kind young men. They were always too fond of brandy; we knew that, but we never--well, hear me! One night not so many years after they sailed away from California, they met Dr. Langsdorff and another friend of their American days, Captain D'Wolf, by appointment in St. Petersburg for a grand reunion. They were all so happy! Perhaps it was that made them too much 'celebrate,' as the Americans say in their dialect. Well, alas! they celebrated until four in the morning, and then my two dear young Russians--for I loved Khostov as a sister, so devoted he was to my friend--well, they started--on foot--for home, and that was on the other side of the Neva. They had almost crossed the bridge when they suddenly took it into their heads that they wanted to see their friends again, and started back. Alas, in the middle of the bridge was a section that opened to permit the passage of boats with tall masts. The night was dark and stormy. The bridge was open. They did not see it. The river was roaring and racing like a flood. A sailor saw them fall, and then strike back for the coming boat. Then he saw them no more. That was the last of my poor friends.

"And we had all been so gay, so gay! For how could we know? All the Russians said that never had they seen a people so light-hearted and frolicking as the Californians, so hospitable, so like one great family. And we were, we were. But you know of that time. Was not your mother Conchitita Castro, if she did marry an American and has not taught you ten words of Spanish? It is of Concha you would hear, and I ramble. Well, who knows? perhaps I hesitate. Rezánov was of the Greek Church. No priest in California would have married them even had Don José--_el santo_ we called him--given his consent. It was for that reason Rezánov went to obtain a dispensation from His Holiness and a license from the King of Spain. Concha knew that he could not return for two years or nearly that, nor even send her a letter; for why should ships come down from Sitka until the treaty was signed? Only Rezánov could get what he wanted, law or no law. And then too our Governor had forbidden the British and Bostonians--so we called the Americans in those days--to enter our ports. This Concha knew, and when one knows one can think in storeys, as it were, and put the last at the top. It is not so bad as the hope that makes the heart thump every morning and the eyes turn into fountains at night. Dios! To think that I should ever have shed a tear over a man. Chinchosas, all of them. However--I think Concha, who was never quite as others, knew deep down in her heart that he would not come back, that it was all too good to be true. Never was a man seen as handsome as that one, and so clever--a touch of the devil in his cleverness, but that may have been because he was a Russian. I know not. And to be a great lady in St. Petersburg, and later--who can tell?--vice-Tsarina of all this part of the world! No, it could not be. It was a fairy tale. I only wonder that the bare possibility came into the life of any woman,--and that a maiden of New Spain, in an unknown corner, that might as well have been on Venus or Mars.

"But Concha had character. She was not one to go into a decline--although I am woman enough to know that her pillow was wet many nights; and besides she lost the freshness of her beauty. She was often as gay as ever, but she cared less and less for the dance, and found more to do at home. Don José was made Commandante of the Santa Barbara Company that same year, and it was well for her to be in a place where there were no memories of Rezánov. But late in the following year as the time approached for his return, or news of him, she could not contain her impatience. We all saw it--I was visiting the Pachecos in the Presidio of Santa Barbara. She grew so thin. Her eyes were never still. We knew. And then!--how many times she climbed to the fortress--it was on that high bluff beside the channel--and stared out to sea--when 1808 and the Spring had come--for hours together: Rezánov was to return by way of Mexico. Then, when I went back to San Francisco soon after, she went with me, and again she would watch the sea from the summit of Lone Mountain, as we call it now. In spite of her reason she hoped, I suppose; for that is the way of women. Or perhaps she only longed for the word from Sitka that would tell her the worst and have done with it. Who knows? She never said, and we dared not speak of it. She was always very sweet, our Concha, but there never was a time when you could take a liberty with her.

"No ship came, but something else did--an earthquake! Ay yi, what an earthquake that was! Not a _temblor_ but a _terremoto_. The whole Presidio came down. I do not know now how we saved all the babies, but we always flew to the open with a baby under each arm the moment an earthquake began, and in the first seconds even this was not so bad. The wall about the Presidio was fourteen feet high and seven feet thick and there were solid trunks of trees crossed inside the adobe. It looked like a heap of dirt, nothing more. Luis was riding up from the Battery of Yerba Buena and his horse was flung down and he saw the sand-dunes heaving toward him like waves in a storm and shiver like quicksilver. And there was a roar as if the earth had dropped and the sea gone after. Ay California! And to think that when Luis wrote a bitter letter to Governor Arillaga in Monterey, the old Mexican wrote back that he had felt earthquakes himself and sent him a box of dates for consolation! Well--we slept on the ground for two months and cooked out-of-doors, for we would not go even into the Mission--which had not suffered--until the earthquakes were over; and if the worst comes first there are plenty after--and, somehow, harder to bear. Perhaps to Concha that terrible time was a God-send, for she thought no more of Rezánov for a while. If the earthquake does not swallow your body it swallows your little self. You are a flea. Just that and nothing more.

"But after a time all was quiet again; the houses were rebuilt and Concha went back to Santa Barbara. By that time she knew that Rezánov would never come, although it was several years before she had a word. Such stories have been told that she did not know of his death for thirty years! Did not Baránhov, Chief-manager of the Russian-Alaskan Company up there at Sitka, send Koskov--that name was so like!--to Bodega Bay in 1812, and would he fail to send such news with him? Was not Dr. Langsdorff's book published in 1814? Did not Kotzbue, who was on his excellency's staff during the embassy to Japan, come to us in 1816, and did we not talk with him every day for a month? Did not Rezánov's death spoil all Russia's plans in this part of the world--perhaps, who knows? alter the course of her history? It is likely we were long without hearing the talk of the North! Such nonsense! Yes, she knew it soon enough, but as that good Padre Abella once said to us, she had the making of the saint and the martyr in her, and even when she could hope no more she did not die, nor marry some one else, nor wither up and spit at the world. Long before the news came, indeed, she carried out a plan she had conceived, so Padre Abella told us, even while Rezánov was yet here. There were no convents in California in those days--you may know what a stranded handful we were--but she joined the Tertiary or Third Order of Franciscans, and wore always the grey habit, the girdle, and the cross. She went among the Indians christianizing them, remaining a long while at Soledad, a bleak and cheerless place, where she was also a great solace to the wives of the soldiers and settlers, whose children she taught. The Indians called her 'La Beata,' and by that name she was known in all California until she took the veil, and that was more than forty years later. And she was worshipped, no less. So beautiful she was, so humble, so sweet, and at the same time so practical; she had what the Americans call 'hard sense,' and something of Rezánov's own way of managing people. When she made up her mind to bring a sinner or a savage into the Church she did it. You know.

"But do not think she had her way in other things without a struggle. Don José and Doña Ignacia--her mother--permitted her to enter upon the religious life, for they understood; and Luis and Santiago made no protest either, for they understood also and had loved Rezánov. But the rest of her family, the relations, the friends, the young men--the caballeros! They went in a body you might say to Don José and demanded that Concha, the most beautiful and fascinating and clever girl in New Spain, should come back to the world where she belonged,--be given in marriage. But Concha had always ruled Don José, and all the protests went to the winds. And William Sturgis--the young Bostonian who lived with us for so many years? I have not told you of him, and your mother was too young to remember. Well, never mind. He would have taken Concha from California, given her just a little of what she would have had as the wife of Rezánov--not in himself; he was as ugly as my whiskers; but enough of the great world to satisfy many women, and no one could deny that he was good and very clever. But to Concha he was a brother--no more. Perhaps she did not even take the trouble to refuse him. It was a way she had. After a while he went home to Boston and died of the climate. I was very sorry. He was one of us.

"And her intellect? Concha put it to sleep forever. She never read another book of travel, of history, biography, memoirs, essays, poetry--romance she had never read, and although some novels came to California in time she never opened them. It was peace she wanted, not the growing mind and the roving imagination. She brought her conversation down to the level of the humblest, and perhaps--who knows?--her thoughts. At all events, although the time came when she smiled again, and was often gay when we were all together in the family--particularly with the children, who came very fast, of course--well, she was then another Concha, not that brilliant dissatisfied ambitious girl we had all known, who had thought the greatest gentleman from the Viceroy's court not good enough to throw gold at her feet when she danced El Son.

"There were changes in her life. In 1814 Don José was made Gobernador Propietario of Lower California. He took all of his unmarried children with him, and Concha thought it her duty to go. They lived in Loreto until 1821. But Concha never ceased to pray that she might return to California--we never looked upon that withered tongue of Mexico as California; and when Don José died soon after his resignation, and her mother went to live with her married daughters, Concha returned with the greatest happiness she had known, I think, since Rezánov went. Was not California all that was left her?

"She lived in Santa Barbara for many years, in the house of Don José de la Guerra--in that end room of the east wing. She had many relations, it is true, but Concha was always human and liked relations better when she was not surrounded by them. Although she never joined in any of the festivities of that gay time she was often with the Guerra family and seemed happy enough to take up her old position as Beata among the Indians and children, until they built a school for her in Monterey. How we used to wonder if she ever thought of Rezánov any more. From the day the two years were over she never mentioned his name, and everybody respected her reserve, even her parents. And she grew more and more reserved with the years, never speaking of herself at all, except just after her return from Mexico. But somehow we knew. And did not the very life she had chosen express it? Even the Church may not reach the secret places of the soul, and who knows what heaven she may have found in hers? And now? I think purgatory is not for Concha, and he was not bad as men go, and has had time to do his penance. It is true the Church tells us there is no marrying in heaven--but, well, perhaps there is a union for mated spirits of which the Church knows nothing. You saw her expression in her coffin.

"Well! The time arrived when we had a convent. Bishop Alemany came in 1850, and in the first sermon he preached in Santa Barbara--I think it was his first in California--he announced that he wished to found a convent. He was a Dominican, but one order was as another to Concha; she had never been narrow in anything. As soon as the service was over, before he had time to leave the church, she went to him and asked to be the first to join. He was glad enough, for he knew of her and that no one could fill his convent as rapidly as she. Therefore was she the first nun, the first to take holy vows, in our California. For a little, the convent was in the old Hartnell house in Monterey, but Don Manuel Ximéno had built a great hotel while believing, with all the rest, that Monterey would be the capital of the new California as of the old, and he was glad to sell it to the Bishop. We were delighted--of course I followed when Concha told me it was my vocation--that the Americans preferred Yerba Buena.

"Concha took her first vows in April, soon after the Bishop's arrival, choosing the name Sister María, Dominica. On the 13th of April 1852 she took the black veil and perpetual vows. Of course the convent had a school at once. Concha's school had been a convent of a sort and the Bishop merely took it over. All the flower of California have been educated by Concha Argüello, including Chonita Estenega who is so great a lady in Mexico today. Two years later we came here, and here we shall stay, no doubt. I think Concha loved Benicia better than any part of California she had known, for it was still California without too piercing reminders of the past: life at the other Presidios and Missions was but the counterpart of our San Francisco, and here the priests and military had never come. In this beautiful wild spot where the elk and the antelope and the deer run about like rabbits, and you meet a bear if you go too far--Holy Mary!--where she went sometimes in a boat among the tules on the river, and where one may believe the moon lives in a silver lake in the old crater of Monte Diablo--Ay, it was different enough and might bring peace to any heart. What she must have suffered for years in those familiar scenes! But she never told. And now she lies here under her little cross and he in Krasnoiarsk--under a stone shaped like an altar, they say. Well! who knows? That is all. I go in now; my old bones ache with the night damp. But my mind is lighter, although never I shall speak of this again. And do you not think of it any more. Curiosity and the world and such nonsense as love and romance are not for us. Go to bed at once and tie a stocking round your throat that you have not a frog in it tomorrow morning when you sing 'Glory be to God on High.' _Buen Dias!_"

THE FORD OF CRÈVECOEUR

BY

MARY AUSTIN

Reprinted from _Out West_ by permission.

YES. I understand; you are M'siu the Notary, M'siu the Sheriff has told me. You are come to hear how by the help of God I have killed Filon Geraud at the ford of Crèvecoeur. By the help of God, yes. Think you if the devil had a hand in it, he would not have helped Filon? For he was the devil's own, was Filon. He was big, he was beautiful, he had a way--but always there was the devil's mark. I see that the first time ever I knew him at Agua Caliente. The devil sit in Filon's eyes and laugh--laugh--some time he go away like a man at a window, but he come again. M'siu, he _live_ there! And Filon, he know that I see, so he make like he not care; but I think he care a little, else why he make for torment me all the time? Ever since I see him at that shearing at Agua Caliente eight, ten year gone, he not like for let me be. I have been the best shearer in that shed, snip--snip--quick, clean. Ah, it is beautiful! All the sheepmen like for have me shear their sheep. Filon is new man at that shearing, Lebecque is just hire him then; but yes, M'siu, to see him walk about that Agua Caliente you think he own all those sheep, all that range. Ah--he had a way! Pretty soon that day Filon is hearing all sheepmen say that Raoul is the best shearer; then he come lean on the rail by my shed and laugh softly like he talk with himself, and say, "See the little man; see him shear." But me, I can no more. The shears turn in my hand so I make my sheep all bleed same like one butcher. Then I look up and see the devil in Filon Geraud's eye. It is always so after that, all those years until I kill Filon. If I make a little game of poker with other shepherds then he walks along and say:

"Ah, you, Raoul, you is one sharp fellow. I not like for play with you." Then is my play all gone bad.

But if Filon play, then he say, "Come, you little man, and bring me the good luck."

It is so, M'siu! If I go stand by that game, Filon is win, win all the time. That is because of the devil. And if there are women--no, M'siu, there was never _one_ woman. What would a shepherd, whose work is always toward the hills, do with a woman? Is it to plant a vineyard that others may drink wine? Ah, non! But me, at shearings and at Tres Piños where we pay the tax, there I like to talk to pretty girl same as other shepherds, then Filon come make like he one gran' friend. All the time he make say the compliments, he make me one mock. His eyes they laugh always, that make women like to do what he say. But me, I have no chance.

It is so, M'siu, when I go out with my sheep. This is my trail--I go out after the shearing through the Cañada de las Viñas, then across the Little Antelope, while the grass is quick. After that I go up toward the hills of Olancho, where I keep one month; there is much good feed and no man comes. Also then I wait at Tres Piños for the sheriff that I pay the tax. _Sacre_! it is a hard one, that tax! After that I am free of the Sierras, what you call _Nieve_--snowy. Well I know that country. I go about with my sheep and seek my meadows--_mine_, M'siu, that I have climbed the great mountains to spy out among the pines, that I have found by the grace of God, and my own wit: La Crevasse, Moultrie, Bighorn, Angostura. Also, I go by other meadows where other shepherds feed one month with another; but these _these_ are all _mine_. I go about and come again when the feed is grown.

M'siu, it is hard to believe, but it is so--Filon finds my meadows one by one. One year I come by La Crevasse--there is nothing there; I go on to Moultrie--here is the grass eaten to the roots, and the little pines have no tops; at Bighorn is the fresh litter of a flock. I think maybe my sheep go hungry that summer. So I come to Angostura. There is Filon. He laugh. Then it come into my mind that one day I goin' kill that Filon Geraud. By the help of God. Yes. For he is big that Filon, he is strong; and me, M'siu, I am as God made me.

So always, where I go on the range there is Filon; if I think to change my trail, he change also his. If I have good luck, Filon has better. If to him is the misfortune--ah--you shall hear.