XIX.
The next morning we started at an early hour for the Rancho de lasRocas, three leagues from Santa Barbara. The populace remained in thebooth, but we were joined by all our friends of the town, and oncemore were a large party. We were bound for a merienda and a carnesada,where bullocks would be roasted whole on spits over a bed of coals ina deep excavation. It took a Californian only a few hours to sleepoff fatigue, and we were as fresh and gay as if we had gone to bed ateight the night before.
Valencia managed to ride beside Estenega, and I wondered if shewould win him. Woman's persistence, allied to man's vanity, so oftenaccomplishes the result intended by the woman. It seemed to me thesimplest climax for the unfolding drama, although I should have beensorry for Diego.
It was Reinaldo's turn to look black, but he devoted himselfostentatiously to Prudencia, who beamed like a child with a stick ofcandy. Chonita rode between Don Juan de la Borrasca and Adan. Her facewas calm, but it occurred to me that she was growing careless of hersovereignty, for her manner was abstracted and indifferent; she seemedto have discarded those little coquetries which had sat so gracefullyupon her. Still, as long as she concealed the light of her mind undera bushel, her beauty and Lorleian fascination would draw men to herfeet and keep them there. Every man but Estenega and Alvarado wasas gay of color as the wild flowers had been, and the girls, as theycantered, looked like full-blown roses. Chonita wore a dark-blue gownand reboso of thin silk, which became her fairness marvelously well.
"Dona Chonita, light of my eyes," said Don Juan, "thou art not wont tobe so quiet when I am by thee."
"Thou usually hast enough to say for two."
"Ay, thou canst appreciate the art of speech. Hast thou ever known anyone who could converse with lighter ease than I and thy brother?"
"I never have heard any one use more words."
"Ay! they roll from my tongue--and from Reinaldo's--like wheelsdownhill."
She turned to Adan: "They will be happy, you think,--Reinaldo andPrudencia?"
"Ay!"
"What a beautiful wedding, no?"
"Ay!"
"Life is always the same with thee, I suppose,--smoking, riding,swinging in the hammock?"
"Ay!"
"Thou wouldst not exchange thy life for another? Thou dost not wish totravel?"
"No,--sure."
She wheeled suddenly and galloped over to her father and Alvarado, hercaballeros staring helplessly after her.
When we arrived at the rancho the bullocks were already swingingin the pits, the smell of roast meat was in the air. We dismounted,throwing our bridles to the vaqueros in waiting; and while Indianservants spread the table, the girls joined hands and danced about thepit, throwing flowers upon the bullocks, singing and laughing. Themen watched them, or amused themselves in various ways,--some withcockfights and impromptu races; others began at once to gamble on alarge flat stone; a group stood about a greased pole and jeered at tworival vaqueros endeavoring to mount it for the sake of the gold pieceon the top. One buried a rooster in the ground, leaving its headalone exposed; others, mounting their horses, dashed by at full speed,snatching at the head as they passed. Reinaldo distinguished himselfby twisting it off with facile wrist while urging his horse to theswiftness of the east wind.
"I am going to dare more than Californian has ever dared before," saidEstenega to me, as we gathered at length about the table-cloth. "I amgoing to get Dona Chonita off by herself in that little canon and havea talk with her. Now, do you stand guard."
"I shall not!" I exclaimed. "It is understood that when Dona Trinidadstays at home Chonita is in my charge. I will not permit such athing."
"Thou wilt, my Eustaquia. Dona Chonita is no pudding-brained girl. Sheneeds no duena."
"I know that; but it is not that I am thinking of. Suppose some onesees you; thou knowest the inflexibility of our conventions."
"You forget that we are _comadre_ and _compadre_. Our privilegesare many." He abruptly dismissed the intimate "thou," with his usualAmerican perversity.
"True; I had forgotten. But whither is all this tending, Diego? Sheneither will nor can marry you."
"She both can and will. Will you help me, or not? Because if not Ishall proceed without you. Only you can make it easier."
I always gave way to him; everybody did.
He was as good as his word. How he managed, Chonita never knew, butnot a half-hour after dinner she found herself alone in the canon withhim, seated among the huge stones cataclysms had hurled there.
"Why have you brought me here?" she asked.
"To talk with you."
"But this would be severely censured."
"Do you care?"
"No."
She looked at him with a curious feeling she had had before; therewas something inside of his head that she wanted to get at,--somethingthat baffled and teased and allured her. She wanted to understand him,and she was oppressed by the weight of her ignorance; she had no keyto unlock a man like that. With one of her swift impulses she told himof what she was thinking.
He smiled, his eyes lighting. "I am more than willing you shouldknow all that you would be curious about," he said. "Ask me a hundredquestions; I will answer them."
She meditated a moment. She never had taken sufficient interest in aman before to desire to fathom him, and the arts of the Californianbelle were not those of the tactfully and impartially interested womanof to-day. She did not know how to begin.
"What have you read?" she asked, at length.
He gave her some account of his library,--a large one,--and mentionedmany books of many nations, of which she had never heard.
"You have read all those books?"
"There are many long winter nights and days in the redwood forests ofthe northern coast."
"That does not tell me much,--what you have read. I feel that it isbut one of the many items which went to the making up of you. You havetraveled everywhere, no? Was it like living over again the books oftravel?"
"Not in the least. Each man travels for himself."
"Madame de Stael said that traveling was sad. Is it so?"
"To the lover of history it is like food without salt: imagination haspainted an historical city with the panorama of a great time; it hasbeen to us a stage for great events. We find it a stage with familiarparaphernalia, and actors as commonplace as ourselves."
"It is more satisfactory to stay at home and read about it?"
"Infinitely, though less expanding."
"Then is anything worth while except reading?
"Several things; the pursuit of glory, for one thing, and the activeoccupied life necessary for its achievement."
She leaned forward a little; she felt that she had stumbled nearer tohim. "Are you ambitious?" she asked.
"For what it compels life to yield; abstractly, not. Ambition is thelooting of hell in chase of biting flames swirling above a desert ofashes. As for posthumous fame, it must be about as satisfactory as adraught of ice-water poured down the throat of a man who has died onSahara. And yet, even if in the end it all means nothing, if 'fromhour to hour we ripe and ripe and then from hour to hour we rotand rot,' still for a quarter-century or so the nettle of ambitionflagellating our brain may serve to make life less uninteresting andmore satisfactory. The abstraction and absorption of the fight, thestinging fear of rivals, the murmur of acknowledgment, the shout ofcompelled applause,--they fill the blanks."
"Tell me," she said, imperiously, "what do you want?"
"Shall I tell you? I never have spoken of it to a living soul butAlvarado. Shall I tell it to a woman,--and an Iturbi y Moncada? Couldthe folly of man further go?"
"If I am a woman I am an Iturbi y Moncada, and if I am an Iturbi yMoncada I have the honor of its generations in my veins."
"Very good. I believe you would not betray me, even in the interest ofyour house. Would you?"
"No."
"And I love to talk to you, to tell you what I would tell no other.Listen, then. An envoy g
oes to Mexico next week with letters fromAlvarado, desiring that I be the next governor of the Californias, andcontaining the assurance that the Departmental Junta will endorseme. I shall follow next month to see Santa Ana personally; I know himwell, and he was a friend of my father's. I wish to be invested withpeculiar powers; that is to say, I wish California to be practicallyoverlooked while I am governor and I wish it understood that I shallbe governor as long as I please. Alvarado will hold no office underthe Americans, and is as ready to retire now as a few years later. Ofcourse my predilection for the Americans must be carefully concealedboth from the Mexican government and the mass of the people here:Santa Ana and Alvarado know what is bound to come; the Mexicans,generally, retain enough interest in the Californias to wish to keepthem. I shall be the last governor of the Department, and I shallemploy that period to amalgamate the native population so closely thatthey will make a strong contingent in the new order of things andbe completely under my domination. I shall establish a college withAmerican professors, so that our youth will be taught to think, and tothink in English. Alvarado has done something for education, but notenough; he has not enforced it, and the methods are very primitive.I intend to be virtually dictator. With as little delay as possibleI shall establish a newspaper,--a powerful weapon in the hands of aruler, as well as a factor of development. Then I shall organize asuperior court for the punishment of capital crimes. Not that I do notrecognize the right of a man to kill if his reasons satisfy himself,but there can be no subservience to authority in a country wheremurder is practically licensed. American immigration will be more thanencouraged, and it shall be distinctly understood by the Americansthat I encourage it. Everything, of course, will be done to promotegood-will between the Californians and the new-comers. Then, when theUnited States make up their mind to take possession of us, I shallwaste no blood, but hand over a country worthy of capture. In themeantime it will have been carefully drilled into the Californian mindthat American occupation will be for their ultimate good, and that Ishall go to Washington to protect their interests. There will then beno foolish insurrections. Do you care to hear more?"
Her face was flushed, her chest was rising rapidly.
"I hardly know what to think,--how I feel. You interest me so much asyou talk that I wish you to succeed: I picture your success. And yetit maddens me to hear you talk of the Americans in that way,--alsoto know that your house will be greater than ours,--that we will beforgotten. But--yes, tell me all. What will you do then?"
"I shall have California, in the first place, scratched for the goldthat I believe lies somewhere within her. When that great resource_is_ located and developed I shall publish in every American newspaperthe extraordinary agricultural advantages of the country. In a word,my object is to make California a great State and its name synonymouswith my own. As I told you before, for fame as fame I care nothing;I do not care if I am forgotten on my death-bed; but with my bloodbiting my veins I must have action while living. Shall I say thatI have a worthier motive in wishing to aid in the development ofcivilization? But why worthier? Merely a higher form of selfishness.The best and the worst of motives are prompted by the same instinct."
"I would advise you," she said, slowly, "never to marry. Your wifewould be very unhappy."
"But no one has greater scorn than you for the man who spends his lifewith his lips at the chalice of the poppy."
"True, I had forgotten them." She rose abruptly. "Let us go back," shesaid. "It is better not to stay too long."
As they walked down the canon she looked at him furtively. The men ofher race were almost all tall and finely-proportioned, but they didnot suggest strength as this man did. And his face,--it was sogrimly determined at times that she shrank from it, then drewnear, fascinated. It had no beauty at all--according to Californianstandards; she could not know that it represented all that intellect,refinement and civilization, generally, would do for the humanrace for a century to come,--but it had a subtle power, an absoluteaudacity, an almost contemptuous fearlessness in its bold, fineoutline, a dominating intelligence in the keen deeply-set eyes, anda hint of weakness, where and what she could not determine, thatmystified and magnetized her.
"I know you a little better," she said, "just a little,--enough tomake my curiosity ache and jump. At the same time, I know now what Idid not before,--that I might climb and mine and study and watch, andyou would always be beyond me. There is something subtle and evasiveabout you--something I seem to be close to always, yet never can seeor grasp."
"It is merely the barrier of sex. A man can know a woman fairly well,because her life, consequently the interests which mould her mind andconceive her thoughts, are more or less simple. A man's life is socomplex, his nature so inevitably the sum and work of it of it liesso far outside of woman's sphere, his mind spiked with a thousandmagnets, each pointing to a different possibility,--that she wouldneed divine wisdom to comprehend him in his entirety, even if he madeher a diagram of every cell in his brain,--which he never would, outof consideration for both her and his own vanity. But within certainrestrictions there can be a magnificent sense of comradeship."
"But a woman, I think, would never be happy with that something inthe man always beyond her grasp,--that something which she could benothing to. She would be more jealous of that independence of her inman than of another woman."
"That was pure insight," he said. "You could not know that."
"No," she said, "I had not thought of it before."
I had made a martyr of myself on a three-cornered stone at theentrance of the canon, waiting to duena them out. "Never will I dothis again!" I exclaimed, with that virtue born of discomfort, as theycame in sight.
"My dearest Eustaquia," said Diego, kissing my hand gallantly, "thouhast given me pleasure so often, most charming and clever of women,thou hast but added one new art to thy overflowing store."
We mounted almost immediately upon returning, and I was alone withChonita for a moment. "Do you realize that you are playing with fire?"I said, warningly. "Estenega is a dangerous man; the most successfulman with women I have ever known."
"I do not deny his power," she said. "But I am safe, for the manyreasons thou knowest of. And, being safe, why should I deny myself thepleasure of talking to him? I shall never meet his like again. Let melive for a little while."
"Ay, but do not live too hard! It hurts down into the core andmarrow."
The Doomswoman: An Historical Romance of Old California Page 19
