The Crusade of the Excelsior

by Bret Harte

  CHAPTER IV.

  A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE.

  While these various passions had been kindled by her compatriots inthe peaceful ashes of Todos Santos, Eleanor Keene had moved among themindifferently and, at times, unconsciously. The stranding of her younglife on that unknown shore had not drawn her towards her fellow-exiles,and the circumstances which afterwards separated her from daily contactwith them completed the social estrangement. She found herself more insympathy with the natives, to whom she had shown no familiarity,than with her own people, who had mixed with them more or lesscontemptuously. She found the naivete of Dona Isabel more amusing thanthe doubtful simplicity of that married ingenue Mrs. Brimmer, althoughshe still met the young girl's advances with a certain reserve. Shefound herself often pained by the practical brusqueness with which Mrs.Markham put aside the Comandante's delicate attentions, and she wasmoved with a strange pity for his childlike trustfulness, which she knewwas hopeless. As the months passed, on the few occasions that she stillmet the Excelsior's passengers she was surprised to find how theyhad faded from her memory, and to discover in them the existence ofqualities that made her wonder how she could have ever been familiarwith them. She reproached herself with this fickleness; she wonderedif she would have felt thus if they had completed their voyage to SanFrancisco together; and she recalled, with a sad smile, the enthusiasticplans they had formed during the passage to perpetuate their fellowshipby anniversaries and festivals. But she, at last, succumbed, and finallyaccepted their open alienation as preferable to the growing awkwardnessof their chance encounters.

  For a few weeks following the flight of Captain Bunker and heracceptance of the hospitality and protection of the Council, she becamedespondent. The courage that had sustained her, and the energy she hadshown in the first days of their abandonment, suddenly gave way, for noapparent reason. She bitterly regretted the brother whom she scarcelyremembered; she imagined his suspense and anguish on her account, andsuffered for both; she felt the dumb pain of homesickness for a homeshe had never known. Her loneliness became intolerable. Her conditionat last affected Mrs. Markham, whose own idleness had been beguiled bywriting to her husband an exhaustive account of her captivity, which hadfinally swelled to a volume on Todos Santos, its resources, inhabitants,and customs. "Good heavens!" she said, "you must do something, child,to occupy your mind--if it is only a flirtation with that conceitedSecretary." But this terrible alternative was happily not required. TheComandante had still retained as part of the old patriarchal governmentof the Mission the Presidio school, for the primary instruction ofthe children of the soldiers,--dependants of the garrison. Miss Keene,fascinated by several little pairs of beady black eyes that had lookedup trustingly to hers from the playground on the glacis, offered toteach English to the Comandante's flock. The offer was submitted tothe spiritual head of Todos Santos, and full permission given by PadreEsteban to the fair heretic. Singing was added to the Instruction, andin a few months the fame of the gracious Dona Leonor's pupils stirred toemulation even the boy choristers of the Mission.

  Her relations with James Hurlstone during this interval were at firstmarked by a strange and unreasoning reserve. Whether she resentedthe singular coalition forced upon them by the Council and felt theawkwardness of their unintentional imposture when they met, she did notknow, but she generally avoided his society. This was not difficult, ashe himself had shown no desire to intrude his confidences upon her; andeven in her shyness she could not help thinking that if he had treatedthe situation lightly or humorously--as she felt sure Mr. Brace or Mr.Crosby would have done--it would have been less awkward and unpleasant.But his gloomy reserve seemed to the high-spirited girl to color theirinnocent partnership with the darkness of conspiracy.

  "If your conscience troubles you, Mr. Hurlstone, in regard to thewretched infatuation of those people," she had once said, "undeceivethem, if you can, and I will assist you. And don't let that affairof Captain Bunker worry you either. I have already confessed to theComandante that he escaped through my carelessness."

  "You could not have done otherwise without sacrificing the poorSecretary, who must have helped you," Hurlstone returned quietly.

  Miss Keene bit her lip and dropped the subject. At their next meetingHurlstone himself resumed it.

  "I hope you don't allow that absurd decree of the Council to disturbyou; I imagine they're quite convinced of their folly. I know thatthe Padre is; and I know that he thinks you've earned a right to thegratitude of the Council in your gracious task at the Presidio schoolthat is far beyond any fancied political service."

  "I really haven't thought about it at all," said Miss Keene coolly. "Ithought it was YOU who were annoyed."

  "I? not at all," returned Hurlstone quickly. "I have been able to assistthe Padre in arranging the ecclesiastical archives of the church, andin suggesting some improvement in codifying the ordinances of the lastforty years. No; I believe I'm earning my living here, and I fancy theythink so."

  "Then it isn't THAT that troubles you?" said Miss Keene carelessly, butglancing at him under the shade of her lashes.

  "No," he said coldly, turning away.

  Yet unsatisfactory as these brief interviews were, they revived in MissKeene the sympathizing curiosity and interest she had always felt forthis singular man, and which had been only held in abeyance at thebeginning of their exile; in fact, she found herself thinking of himmore during the interval when they seldom saw each other, and apparentlyhad few interests in common, than when they were together on theExcelsior. Gradually she slipped into three successive phases of feelingtowards him, each of them marked with an equal degree of peril to herpeace of mind. She began with a profound interest in the mystery ofhis secluded habits, his strange abstraction, and a recognition ofthe evident superiority of a nature capable of such deepfeeling--uninfluenced by those baser distractions which occupied Brace,Crosby, and Winslow. This phase passed into a settled conviction thatsome woman was at the root of his trouble, and responsible for it. Withan instinctive distrust of her own sex, she was satisfied that it mustbe either a misplaced or unworthy attachment, and that the unknown womanwas to blame. This second phase--which hovered between compassion andresentment--suddenly changed to the latter--the third phase of herfeelings. Miss Keene became convinced that Mr. Hurlstone had a settledaversion to HERSELF. Why and wherefore, she did not attempt to reason,yet she was satisfied that from the first he disliked her. His studiousreserve on the Excelsior, compared with the attentions of the others,ought then to have convinced her of the fact; and there was no doubtnow that his present discontent could be traced to the unfortunatecircumstances that brought them together. Having given herself up tothat idea, she vacillated between a strong impulse to inform him thatshe knew his real feelings and an equally strong instinct to avoid himhereafter entirely. The result was a feeble compromise. On the groundthat Mr. Hurlstone could "scarcely be expected to admire her inferiorperformances," she declined to invite him with Father Esteban to listento her pupils. Father Esteban took a huge pinch of snuff, examinedMiss Keene attentively, and smiled a sad smile. The next day hebegged Hurlstone to take a volume of old music to Miss Keene with hiscompliments. Hurlstone did so, and for some reason exerted himself to beagreeable. As he made no allusion to her rudeness, she presumed he didnot know of it, and speedily forgot it herself. When he suggested areturn visit to the boy choir, with whom he occasionally practiced, sheblushed and feared she had scarcely the time. But she came with Mrs.Markham, some consciousness, and a visible color!

  And then, almost without her knowing how or why, and entirely unexpectedand unheralded, came a day so strangely and unconsciously happy, soinnocently sweet and joyous, that it seemed as if all the other daysof her exile had only gone before to create it, and as if it--and italone--were a sufficient reason for her being there. A day full ofgentle intimations, laughing suggestions, childlike surprises andawakenings; a day delicious for the very incompleteness of its vaguehappiness. And this remarkable day was simply marked
in Mrs. Markham'sdiary as follows:--"Went with E. to Indian village; met Padre and J. H.J. H. actually left shell and crawled on beach with E. E. chatty."

  The day itself had been singularly quiet and gracious, even for thatrare climate of balmy days and recuperating nights. At times the slightbreath of the sea which usually stirred the morning air of Todos Santoswas suspended, and a hush of expectation seemed to arrest land andwater. When Miss Keene and Mrs. Markham left the Presidio, the tide waslow, and their way lay along the beach past the Mission walls. A walkof two or three miles brought them to the Indian village--properly asuburban quarter of Todos Santos--a collection of adobe huts and rudelycultivated fields. Padre Esteban and Mr. Hurlstone were awaiting them inthe palm-thatched veranda of a more pretentious cabin, that served as aschool-room. "This is Don Diego's design," said the Padre, beaming witha certain paternal pride on Hurlstone, "built by himself and helped bythe heathen; but look you: my gentleman is not satisfied with it, andwishes now to bring his flock to the Mission school, and have themmingle with the pure-blooded races on an equality. That is therevolutionary idea of this sans culotte reformer," continued the goodFather, shaking his yellow finger with gentle archness at the young man."Ah, we shall yet have a revolution in Todos Santos unless you ladiestake him in hand. He has already brought the half-breeds over to hisside, and those heathens follow him like dumb cattle anywhere. There,take him away and scold him, Dona Leonor, while I speak to the SenoraMarkham of the work that her good heart and skillful fingers may do formy poor muchachos."

  Eleanor Keene lifted her beautiful eyes to Hurlstone with an artlesstribute in their depths that brought the blood faintly into his cheek.She was not thinking of the priest's admonishing words; she was thinkingof the quiet, unselfish work that this gloomy misanthrope had beendoing while his companions had been engaged in lower aims and listlesspleasures, and while she herself had been aimlessly fretting anddiverting herself. What were her few hours of applauded instruction withthe pretty Murillo-like children of the Fort compared to his silent andunrecognized labor! Yet even at this moment an uneasy doubt crossed hermind.

  "I suppose Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb interest themselves greatly inyour--in the Padre's charities?"

  The first playful smile she had seen on Hurlstone's face lightened inhis eyes and lips, and was becoming.

  "I am afraid my barbarians are too low and too near home for Mrs.Brimmer's missionary zeal. She and Miss Chubb patronize the Mexicanschool with cast-off dresses, old bonnets retrimmed, flannel petticoats,some old novels and books of poetry--of which the Padre makes anauto-da-fe--and their own patronizing presence on fete days. Providencehas given them the vague impression that leprosy and contagiousskin-disease are a peculiarity of the southern aborigine, and they haveleft me severely alone."

  "I wish you would prevail upon the Padre to let ME help you," said MissKeene, looking down.

  "But you already have the Commander's chickens--which you are bringingup as swans, by the way," said Hurlstone mischievously. "You wouldn'tsurely abandon the nest again?"

  "You are laughing at me," said Miss Keene, putting on a slight pout tohide the vague pleasure that Hurlstone's gayer manner was givingher. "But, really, I've been thinking that the Presidio children arealtogether too pretty and picturesque for me, and that I enjoy them toomuch to do them any good. It's like playing with them, you know!"

  Hurlstone laughed, but suddenly looking down upon her face he was struckwith its youthfulness. She had always impressed him before--through herreserve and independence--as older, and more matured in character. Hedid not know how lately she was finding her lost youth as he asked her,quite abruptly, if she ever had any little brothers and sisters.

  The answer to this question involved the simple story of Miss Keene'slife, which she gave with naive detail. She told him of her earlychildhood, and the brother who was only an indistinct memory; of herschool days, and her friendships up to the moment of her first step intothe great world that was so strangely arrested at Todos Santos. Hewas touched with the almost pathetic blankness of this virgin page.Encouraged by his attention, and perhaps feeling a sympathy she hadlately been longing for, she confessed to him the thousand little thingswhich she had reserved from even Mrs. Markham during her first apatheticweeks at Todos Santos.

  "I'm sure I should have been much happier if I had had any one totalk to," she added, looking up into his face with a naivete of faintreproach; "it's very different for men, you know. They can alwaysdistract themselves with something. Although," she continuedhesitatingly, "I've sometimes thought YOU would have been happier if youhad had somebody to tell your troubles to--I don't mean the Padre;for, good as he is, he is a foreigner, you know, and wouldn't look uponthings as WE do--but some one in sympathy with you."

  She stopped, alarmed at the change of expression in his face. A quickflush had crossed his cheek; for an instant he had looked suspiciouslyinto her questioning eyes. But the next moment the idea of his quietlyselecting this simple, unsophisticated girl as the confidant of hismiserable marriage, and the desperation that had brought him there,struck him as being irresistibly ludicrous and he smiled. It was thefirst time that the habitual morbid intensity of his thoughts on thatone subject had ever been disturbed by reaction; it was the firsttime that a clear ray of reason had pierced the gloom in which he hadenwrapped it. Seeing him smile, the young girl smiled too. Then theysmiled together vaguely and sympathetically, as over some unspokenconfidence. But, unknown and unsuspected by himself, that smile hadcompleted his emancipation and triumph. The next moment, when he soughtwith a conscientious sigh to reenter his old mood, he was half shockedto find it gone. Whatever gradual influence--the outcome of these fewmonths of rest and repose--may have already been at work to dissipatehis clouded fancy, he was only vaguely conscious that the laughingbreath of the young girl had blown it away forever.

  The perilous point passed, unconsciously to both of them, they fell intofreer conversation, tacitly avoiding the subject of Mr. Hurlstone's pastreserve only as being less interesting. Hurlstone did not return MissKeene's confidences--not because he wished to deceive her, but that hepreferred to entertain her; while she did not care to know his secretnow that it no longer affected their sympathy in other things. It was apleasant, innocent selfishness, that, however, led them along, step bystep, to more uncertain and difficult ground.

  In their idle, happy walk they had strayed towards the beach, and hadcome upon a large stone cross with its base half hidden in sand, andcovered with small tenacious, sweet-scented creepers, bearing a palelilac blossom that exhaled a mingled odor of sea and shore. Hurlstonepointed out the cross as one of the earliest outposts of the Church onthe edge of the unclaimed heathen wilderness. It was hung with stringsof gaudy shells and feathers, which Hurlstone explained were votiveofferings in which their pagan superstitions still mingled with theirnew faith.

  "I don't like to worry that good old Padre," he continued, with a lightsmile, "but I'm afraid that they prefer this cross to the chapel forcertain heathenish reasons of their own. I am quite sure that they stillhold some obscure rites here under the good Father's very nose, andthat, in the guise of this emblem of our universal faith, they worshipsome deity we have no knowledge of."

  "It's a shame," said Miss Keene quickly.

  To her surprise, Hurlstone did not appear so shocked as she, in herbelief of his religious sympathy with the Padre, had imagined.

  "They're a harmless race," he said carelessly. "The place is muchfrequented by the children--especially the young girls; a good many ofthese offerings came from them."

  The better to examine these quaint tributes, Miss Keene had thrownherself, with an impulsive, girlish abandonment, on the mound by thecross, and Hurlstone sat down beside her. Their eyes met in an innocentpleasure of each other's company. She thought him very handsome in thedark, half official Mexican dress that necessity alone had obliged himto assume, and much more distinguished-looking than his companionsin their extravagant foppery; he thought her b
eauty more youthful andartless than he had imagined it to be, and with his older and graverexperiences felt a certain protecting superiority that was pleasant andreassuring.

  Nevertheless, seated so near each other, they were very quiet. Hurlstonecould not tell whether it was the sea or the flowers, but the dress ofthe young girl seemed to exhale some subtle perfume of her own freshnessthat half took away his breath. She had scraped up a handful of sand,and was allowing it to escape through her slim fingers in a slender rainon the ground. He was watching the operation with what he began to fearwas fatuous imbecility.

  "Miss Keene?--I beg your pardon"--

  "Mr. Hurlstone?--Excuse me, you were saying"--

  They had both spoken at the same moment, and smiled forgivingly ateach other. Hurlstone gallantly insisted upon the precedence of herthought--the scamp had doubted the coherency of his own.

  "I used to think," she began--"you won't be angry, will you?"

  "Decidedly not."

  "I used to think you had an idea of becoming a priest."

  "Why?"

  "Because--you are sure you won't be angry--because I thought you hatedwomen!"

  "Father Esteban is a priest," said Hurlstone, with a faint smile, "andyou know he thinks kindly of your sex."

  "Yes; but perhaps HIS life was never spoiled by some wicked womanlike--like yours."

  For an instant he gazed intently into her eyes.

  "Who told you that?"

  "No one."

  She was evidently speaking the absolute truth. There was no deceit orsuppression in her clear gaze; if anything, only the faintest look ofwonder at his astonishment. And he--this jealously guarded secret, thecurse of his whole wretched life, had been guessed by this simple girl,without comment, without reserve, without horror! And there had been noscene, no convulsion of Nature, no tragedy; he had not thrown himselfinto yonder sea; she had not fled from him shrinking, but was sittingthere opposite to him in gentle smiling expectation, the golden lightof Todos Santos around them, a bit of bright ribbon shining in her darkhair, and he, miserable, outcast, and recluse, had not even changed hisposition, but was looking up without tremulousness or excitement, andsmiling, too.

  He raised himself suddenly on his knee.

  "And what if it were all true?" he demanded.

  "I should be very sorry for you, and glad it were all over now," shesaid softly.

  A faint pink flush covered her cheek the next moment, as if she hadsuddenly become aware of another meaning in her speech, and she turnedher head hastily towards the village. To her relief she discerned that anumber of Indian children had approached them from behind and had halteda few paces from the cross. Their hands were full of flowers and shellsas they stood hesitatingly watching the couple.

  "They are some of the school-children," said Hurlstone, in answer to herinquiring look; "but I can't understand why they come here so openly."

  "Oh, don't scold them!" said Eleanor, forgetting her previous orthodoxprotest; "let us go away, and pretend we don't notice them."

  But as she was about to rise to her feet the hesitation of the littlecreatures ended in a sudden advance of the whole body, and before shecomprehended what they were doing they had pressed the whole of theirfloral tributes in her lap. The color rose again quickly to her laughingface as she looked at Hurlstone.

  "Do you usually get up this pretty surprise for visitors?" she saidhesitatingly.

  "I assure you I have nothing to do with it," he answered, with frankamazement; "it's quite spontaneous. And look--they are even decoratingME."

  It was true; they had thrown a half dozen strings of shells onHurlstone's unresisting shoulders, and, unheeding the few words helaughingly addressed them in their own dialect, they ran off a fewpaces, and remained standing, as if gravely contemplating their work.Suddenly, with a little outcry of terror, they turned, fled wildly pastthem, and disappeared in the bushes.

  Miss Keene and Hurlstone rose at the same moment, but the young girl,taking a step forward, suddenly staggered, and was obliged to clasp oneof the arms of the cross to keep herself from falling. Hurlstone sprangto her side.

  "Are you ill?" he asked hurriedly. "You are quite white. What is thematter?"

  A smile crossed her colorless face.

  "I am certainly very giddy; everything seems to tremble."

  "Perhaps it is the flowers," he said anxiously. "Their heavy perfume inthis close air affects you. Throw them away, for Heaven's sake!"

  But she clutched them tighter to her heart as she leaned for a moment,pale yet smiling, against the cross.

  "No, no!" she said earnestly; "it was not that. But the children werefrightened, and their alarm terrified me. There, it is over now."

  She let him help her to her seat again as he glanced hurriedly aroundhim. It must have been sympathy with her, for he was conscious of aslight vertigo himself. The air was very close and still. Even thepleasant murmur of the waves had ceased.

  "How very low the tide is!" said Eleanor Keene, resting her elbow onher knees and her round chin upon her hand. "I wonder if that could havefrightened those dear little midgets?" The tide, in fact, had left theshore quite bare and muddy for nearly a quarter of a mile to seaward.

  Hurlstone arose, with grave eyes, but a voice that was unchanged.

  "Suppose we inquire? Lean on my arm, and we'll go up the hill towardsthe Mission garden. Bring your flowers with you."

  The color had quite returned to her cheek as she leant on his profferedarm. Yet perhaps she was really weaker than she knew, for he felt thesoft pressure of her hand and the gentle abandonment of her figureagainst his own as they moved on. But for some preoccupying thought,he might have yielded more completely to the pleasure of that innocentcontact and have drawn her closer towards him; yet they moved steadilyon, he contenting himself from time to time with a hurried glance atthe downcast fringes of the eyes beside him. Presently he stopped,his attention disturbed by what appeared to be the fluttering of ablack-winged, red-crested bird, in the bushes before him. The nextmoment he discovered it to be the rose-covered head of Dona Isabel, whowas running towards them. Eleanor withdrew her arm from Hurlstone's.

  "Ah, imbecile!" said Dona Isabel, pouncing upon Eleanor Keene like anaffectionate panther. "They have said you were on the seashore, and Ifly for you as a bird. Tell to me quick," she whispered, hastily puttingher own little brown ear against Miss Keene's mouth, "immediatamente,are you much happy?"

  "Where is Mr. Brace?" said Miss Keene, trying to effect a diversion, asshe laughed and struggled to get free from her tormentor.

  "He, the idiot boy! Naturally, when he is for use, he comes not. Butas a maniac--ever! I would that I have him no more. You will to mepresently give your--brother! I have since to-day a presentimiento thathim I shall love! Ah!"

  She pressed her little brown fist, still tightly clutching her fan,against her low bodice, as if already transfixed with a secret andabsorbing passion.

  "Well, you shall have Dick then," said Miss Keene, laughing; "but was itfor THAT you were seeking me?"

  "Mother of God! you know not then what has happened? You are a blind--adeaf--to but one thing all the time? Ah!" she said quickly, unfoldingher fan and modestly diving her little head behind it, "I have ashamedfor you, Miss Keene."

  "But WHAT has happened?" said Hurlstone, interposing to relieve hiscompanion. "We fancied something"--

  "Something! he says something!--ah, that something was a temblor! Anearthquake! The earth has shaken himself. Look!"

  She pointed with her fan to the shore, where the sea had suddenlyreturned in a turbulence of foam and billows that was breaking over thebase of the cross they had just quitted.

  Miss Keene drew a quick sigh. Dona Isabel had ducked again modestlybehind her fan, but this time dragging with her other arm Miss Keene'shead down to share its discreet shadow as she whispered,--

  "And--infatuated one!--you two never noticed it!"