Ramona

by Helen Hunt Jackson

  II

  THE Senora Moreno's house was one of the best specimens to be foundin California of the representative house of the half barbaric, halfelegant, wholly generous and free-handed life led there by Mexican menand women of degree in the early part of this century, under the rule ofthe Spanish and Mexican viceroys, when the laws of the Indies were stillthe law of the land, and its old name, "New Spain," was an ever-presentlink and stimulus to the warmest memories and deepest patriotisms of itspeople.

  It was a picturesque life, with more of sentiment and gayety in it, morealso that was truly dramatic, more romance, than will ever be seenagain on those sunny shores. The aroma of it all lingers there still;industries and inventions have not yet slain it; it will last out itscentury,--in fact, it can never be quite lost, so long as there is leftstanding one such house as the Senora Moreno's.

  When the house was built, General Moreno owned all the land within aradius of forty miles,--forty miles westward, down the valley to thesea; forty miles eastward, into the San Fernando Mountains; and goodforty miles more or less along the coast. The boundaries were not verystrictly defined; there was no occasion, in those happy days, to reckonland by inches. It might be asked, perhaps, just how General Morenoowned all this land, and the question might not be easy to answer. Itwas not and could not be answered to the satisfaction of the UnitedStates Land Commission, which, after the surrender of California,undertook to sift and adjust Mexican land titles; and that was theway it had come about that the Senora Moreno now called herself a poorwoman. Tract after tract, her lands had been taken away from her; itlooked for a time as if nothing would be left. Every one of the claimsbased on deeds of gift from Governor Pio Fico, her husband's mostintimate friend, was disallowed. They all went by the board in onebatch, and took away from the Senora in a day the greater part ofher best pasture-lands. They were lands which had belonged to theBonaventura Mission, and lay along the coast at the mouth of the valleydown which the little stream which ran past her house went to the sea;and it had been a great pride and delight to the Senora, when she wasyoung, to ride that forty miles by her husband's side, all the way ontheir own lands, straight from their house to their own strip of shore.No wonder she believed the Americans thieves, and spoke of them alwaysas hounds. The people of the United States have never in the leastrealized that the taking possession of California was not only aconquering of Mexico, but a conquering of California as well; that thereal bitterness of the surrender was not so much to the empire whichgave up the country, as to the country itself which was given up.Provinces passed back and forth in that way, helpless in the hands ofgreat powers, have all the ignominy and humiliation of defeat, with noneof the dignities or compensations of the transaction.

  Mexico saved much by her treaty, spite of having to acknowledge herselfbeaten; but California lost all. Words cannot tell the sting of sucha transfer. It is a marvel that a Mexican remained in the country;probably none did, except those who were absolutely forced to it.

  Luckily for the Senora Moreno, her title to the lands midway in thevalley was better than to those lying to the east and the west, whichhad once belonged to the missions of San Fernando and Bonaventura;and after all the claims, counter-claims, petitions, appeals, andadjudications were ended, she still was left in undisputed possession ofwhat would have been thought by any new-comer into the country to be ahandsome estate, but which seemed to the despoiled and indignant Senoraa pitiful fragment of one. Moreover, she declared that she should neverfeel secure of a foot of even this. Any day, she said, the United StatesGovernment might send out a new Land Commission to examine the decreesof the first, and revoke such as they saw fit. Once a thief, always athief. Nobody need feel himself safe under American rule. There wasno knowing what might happen any day; and year by year the lines ofsadness, resentment, anxiety, and antagonism deepened on the Senora'sfast aging face.

  It gave her unspeakable satisfaction, when the Commissioners, laying outa road down the valley, ran it at the back of her house instead ofpast the front. "It is well," she said. "Let their travel be where itbelongs, behind our kitchens; and no one have sight of the front doorsof our houses, except friends who have come to visit us." Her enjoymentof this never flagged. Whenever she saw, passing the place, wagonsor carriages belonging to the hated Americans, it gave her a distinctthrill of pleasure to think that the house turned its back on them. Shewould like always to be able to do the same herself; but whatever she,by policy or in business, might be forced to do, the old house, at anyrate, would always keep the attitude of contempt,--its face turned away.

  One other pleasure she provided herself with, soon after this road wasopened,--a pleasure in which religious devotion and race antagonism wereso closely blended that it would have puzzled the subtlest of priests todecide whether her act were a sin or a virtue. She caused to be setup, upon every one of the soft rounded hills which made the beautifulrolling sides of that part of the valley, a large wooden cross; not ahill in sight of her house left without the sacred emblem of her faith."That the heretics may know, when they go by, that they are on theestate of a good Catholic," she said, "and that the faithful may bereminded to pray. There have been miracles of conversion wrought on themost hardened by a sudden sight of the Blessed Cross."

  There they stood, summer and winter, rain and shine, the silent, solemn,outstretched arms, and became landmarks to many a guideless travellerwho had been told that his way would be by the first turn to the leftor the right, after passing the last one of the Senora Moreno's crosses,which he couldn't miss seeing. And who shall say that it did notoften happen that the crosses bore a sudden message to some idleheart journeying by, and thus justified the pious half of the Senora'simpulse? Certain it is, that many a good Catholic halted and crossedhimself when he first beheld them, in the lonely places, standing out insudden relief against the blue sky; and if he said a swift short prayerat the sight, was he not so much the better?

  The house, was of adobe, low, with a wide veranda on the three sides ofthe inner court, and a still broader one across the entire front, whichlooked to the south. These verandas, especially those on the innercourt, were supplementary rooms to the house. The greater part of thefamily life went on in them. Nobody stayed inside the walls, except whenit was necessary. All the kitchen work, except the actual cooking, wasdone here, in front of the kitchen doors and windows. Babies slept,were washed, sat in the dirt, and played, on the veranda. The women saidtheir prayers, took their naps, and wove their lace there. Old Juanitashelled her beans there, and threw the pods down on the tile floor,till towards night they were sometimes piled up high around her, likecorn-husks at a husking. The herdsmen and shepherds smoked there,lounged there, trained their dogs there; there the young made love, andthe old dozed; the benches, which ran the entire length of the walls,were worn into hollows, and shone like satin; the tiled floors also werebroken and sunk in places, making little wells, which filled up in timesof hard rains, and were then an invaluable addition to the children'sresources for amusement, and also to the comfort of the dogs, cats, andfowls, who picked about among them, taking sips from each.

  The arched veranda along the front was a delightsome place. It musthave been eighty feet long, at least, for the doors of five large roomsopened on it. The two westernmost rooms had been added on, and made foursteps higher than the others; which gave to that end of the veranda thelook of a balcony, or loggia. Here the Senora kept her flowers; greatred water-jars, hand-made by the Indians of San Luis Obispo Mission,stood in close rows against the walls, and in them were always growingfine geraniums, carnations, and yellow-flowered musk. The Senora'spassion for musk she had inherited from her mother. It was so strongthat she sometimes wondered at it; and one day, as she sat with FatherSalvierderra in the veranda, she picked a handful of the blossoms, andgiving them to him, said, "I do not know why it is, but it seems to meif I were dead I could be brought to life by the smell of musk."

  "It is in your blood, Senora," the old monk replied. "When I wa
s last inyour father's house in Seville, your mother sent for me to her room,and under her window was a stone balcony full of growing musk, which sofilled the room with its odor that I was like to faint. But she saidit cured her of diseases, and without it she fell ill. You were a babythen."

  "Yes," cried the Senora, "but I recollect that balcony. I recollectbeing lifted up to a window, and looking down into a bed of bloomingyellow flowers; but I did not know what they were. How strange!"

  "No. Not strange, daughter," replied Father Salvierderra. "It would havebeen stranger if you had not acquired the taste, thus drawing it in withthe mother's milk. It would behoove mothers to remember this far morethan they do."

  Besides the geraniums and carnations and musk in the red jars, therewere many sorts of climbing vines,--some coming from the ground, andtwining around the pillars of the veranda; some growing in great bowls,swung by cords from the roof of the veranda, or set on shelves againstthe walls. These bowls were of gray stone, hollowed and polished,shining smooth inside and out. They also had been made by the Indians,nobody knew how many ages ago, scooped and polished by the patientcreatures, with only stones for tools.

  Among these vines, singing from morning till night, hung theSenora's canaries and finches, half a dozen of each, all of differentgenerations, raised by the Senora. She was never without a youngbird-family on hand; and all the way from Bonaventura to Monterey, itwas thought a piece of good luck to come into possession of a canary orfinch of Senora Moreno's 'raising.

  Between the veranda and the river meadows, out on which it looked, allwas garden, orange grove, and almond orchard; the orange grove alwaysgreen, never without snowy bloom or golden fruit; the garden neverwithout flowers, summer or winter; and the almond orchard, in earlyspring, a fluttering canopy of pink and white petals, which, seen fromthe hills on the opposite side of the river, looked as if rosy sunriseclouds had fallen, and become tangled in the tree-tops. On either handstretched away other orchards,--peach, apricot, pear, apple pomegranate;and beyond these, vineyards. Nothing was to be seen but verdure orbloom or fruit, at whatever time of year you sat on the Senora's southveranda.

  A wide straight walk shaded by a trellis so knotted and twisted withgrapevines that little was to be seen of the trellis wood-work, ledstraight down from the veranda steps, through the middle of the garden,to a little brook at the foot of it. Across this brook, in the shadeof a dozen gnarled old willow-trees, were set the broad flat stonewashboards on which was done all the family washing. No long dawdling,and no running away from work on the part of the maids, thus close tothe eye of the Senora at the upper end of the garden; and if they hadknown how picturesque they looked there, kneeling on the grass, liftingthe dripping linen out of the water, rubbing it back and forth on thestones, sousing it, wringing it, splashing the clear water in eachother's faces, they would have been content to stay at the washing dayin and day out, for there was always somebody to look on from above.Hardly a day passed that the Senora had not visitors. She was stilla person of note; her house the natural resting-place for all whojourneyed through the valley; and whoever came, spent all of his time,when not eating, sleeping, or walking over the place, sitting with theSenora on the sunny veranda. Few days in winter were cold enough, andin summer the day must be hot indeed to drive the Senora and her friendsindoors. There stood on the veranda three carved oaken chairs, and acarved bench, also of oak, which had been brought to the Senora for safekeeping by the faithful old sacristan of San Luis Rey, at the time ofthe occupation of that Mission by the United States troops, soon afterthe conquest of California. Aghast at the sacrilegious acts of thesoldiers, who were quartered in the very church itself, and amusedthemselves by making targets of the eyes and noses of the saints'statues, the sacristan, stealthily, day by day and night after night,bore out of the church all that he dared to remove, burying somearticles in cottonwood copses, hiding others in his own poor littlehovel, until he had wagon-loads of sacred treasures. Then, still morestealthily, he carried them, a few at a time, concealed in the bottom ofa cart, under a load of hay or of brush, to the house of the Senora, whofelt herself deeply honored by his confidence, and received everythingas a sacred trust, to be given back into the hands of the Church again,whenever the Missions should be restored, of which at that time allCatholics had good hope. And so it had come about that no bedroom in theSenora's house was without a picture or a statue of a saint or of theMadonna; and some had two; and in the little chapel in the garden thealtar was surrounded by a really imposing row of holy and apostolicfigures, which had looked down on the splendid ceremonies of the SanLuis Rey Mission, in Father Peyri's time, no more benignly than theynow did on the humbler worship of the Senora's family in its diminishedestate. That one had lost an eye, another an arm, that the oncebrilliant colors of the drapery were now faded and shabby, only enhancedthe tender reverence with which the Senora knelt before them, her eyesfilling with indignant tears at thought of the heretic hands whichhad wrought such defilement. Even the crumbling wreaths which had beenplaced on some of the statues' heads at the time of the last ceremonialat which they had figured in the Mission, had been brought away withthem by the devout sacristan, and the Senora had replaced each one,holding it only a degree less sacred than the statue itself.

  This chapel was dearer to the Senora than her house. It had been builtby the General in the second year of their married life. In it her fourchildren had been christened, and from it all but one, her handsomeFelipe, had been buried while they were yet infants. In the General'stime, while the estate was at its best, and hundreds of Indians livingwithin its borders, there was many a Sunday when the scene to bewitnessed there was like the scenes at the Missions,--the chapel full ofkneeling men and women; those who could not find room inside kneelingon the garden walks outside; Father Salvierderra, in gorgeousvestments, coming, at close of the services, slowly down the aisle, theclose-packed rows of worshippers parting to right and left to let himthrough, all looking up eagerly for his blessing, women giving himofferings of fruit or flowers, and holding up their babies that he mightlay his hands on their heads. No one but Father Salvierderra had everofficiated in the Moreno chapel, or heard the confession of a Moreno. Hewas a Franciscan, one of the few now left in the country; so revered andbeloved by all who had come under his influence, that they would waitlong months without the offices of the Church, rather than confesstheir sins or confide their perplexities to any one else. From thisdeep-seated attachment on the part of the Indians and the older Mexicanfamilies in the country to the Franciscan Order, there had grown up,not unnaturally, some jealousy of them in the minds of the later-comesecular priests, and the position of the few monks left was not wholly apleasant one. It had even been rumored that they were to be forbiddento continue longer their practice of going up and down the country,ministering everywhere; were to be compelled to restrict their laborsto their own colleges at Santa Barbara and Santa Inez. When somethingto this effect was one day said in the Senora Moreno's presence, twoscarlet spots sprang on her cheeks, and before she bethought herself,she exclaimed, "That day, I burn down my chapel!"

  Luckily, nobody but Felipe heard the rash threat, and his exclamation ofunbounded astonishment recalled the Senora to herself.

  "I spoke rashly, my son," she said. "The Church is to be obeyed always;but the Franciscan Fathers are responsible to no one but the Superior oftheir own order; and there is no one in this land who has the authorityto forbid their journeying and ministering to whoever desires theiroffices. As for these Catalan priests who are coming in here, I cannotabide them. No Catalan but has bad blood in his veins!"

  There was every reason in the world why the Senora should be thus warmlyattached to the Franciscan Order. From her earliest recollections thegray gown and cowl had been familiar to her eyes, and had representedthe things which she was taught to hold most sacred and dear. FatherSalvierderra himself had come from Mexico to Monterey in the same shipwhich had brought her father to be the commandante of the Santa BarbaraPresidio; a
nd her best-beloved uncle, her father's eldest brother, wasat that time the Superior of the Santa Barbara Mission. The sentimentand romance of her youth were almost equally divided between thegayeties, excitements, adornments of the life at the Presidio, and theceremonies and devotions of the life at the Mission. She was famed asthe most beautiful girl in the country. Men of the army, men of thenavy, and men of the Church, alike adored her. Her name was a toastfrom Monterey to San Diego. When at last she was wooed and won by FelipeMoreno, one of the most distinguished of the Mexican Generals, herwedding ceremonies were the most splendid ever seen in the country.The right tower of the Mission church at Santa Barbara had been justcompleted, and it was arranged that the consecration of this towershould take place at the time of her wedding, and that her wedding feastshould be spread in the long outside corridor of the Mission building.The whole country, far and near, was bid. The feast lasted three days;open tables to everybody; singing, dancing, eating, drinking, and makingmerry. At that time there were long streets of Indian houses stretchingeastward from the Mission before each of these houses was built a boothof green boughs. The Indians, as well as the Fathers from all the otherMissions, were invited to come. The Indians came in bands, singing songsand bringing gifts. As they appeared, the Santa Barbara Indians wentout to meet them, also singing, bearing gifts, and strewing seeds onthe ground, in token of welcome. The young Senora and her bridegroom,splendidly clothed, were seen of all, and greeted, whenever theyappeared, by showers of seeds and grains and blossoms. On the thirdday, still in their wedding attire, and bearing lighted candles in theirhands, they walked with the monks in a procession, round and round thenew tower, the monks chanting, and sprinkling incense and holy wateron its walls, the ceremony seeming to all devout beholders to give ablessed consecration to the union of the young pair as well as to thenewly completed tower. After this they journeyed in state, accompaniedby several of the General's aids and officers, and by two FranciscanFathers, up to Monterey, stopping on their way at all the Missions, andbeing warmly welcomed and entertained at each.

  General Moreno was much beloved by both army and Church. In many of thefrequent clashings between the military and the ecclesiastical powershe, being as devout and enthusiastic a Catholic as he was zealous andenthusiastic a soldier, had had the good fortune to be of materialassistance to each party. The Indians also knew his name well, havingheard it many times mentioned with public thanksgivings in the Missionchurches, after some signal service he had rendered to the Fatherseither in Mexico or Monterey. And now, by taking as his bride thedaughter of a distinguished officer, and the niece of the Santa BarbaraSuperior, he had linked himself anew to the two dominant powers andinterests of the country.

  When they reached San Luis Obispo, the whole Indian population turnedout to meet them, the Padre walking at the head. As they approached theMission doors the Indians swarmed closer and closer and still closer,took the General's horse by the head, and finally almost by actual forcecompelled him to allow himself to be lifted into a blanket, held highup by twenty strong men; and thus he was borne up the steps, acrossthe corridor, and into the Padre's room. It was a position ludicrouslyundignified in itself, but the General submitted to it good-naturedly.

  "Oh, let them do it, if they like," he cried, laughingly, to PadreMartinez, who was endeavoring to quiet the Indians and hold them back."Let them do it. It pleases the poor creatures."

  On the morning of their departure, the good Padre, having exhausted allhis resources for entertaining his distinguished guests, caused tobe driven past the corridors, for their inspection, all the poultrybelonging to the Mission. The procession took an hour to pass. Formusic, there was the squeaking, cackling, hissing, gobbling, crowing,quacking of the fowls, combined with the screaming, scolding, andwhip-cracking of the excited Indian marshals of the lines. First camethe turkeys, then the roosters, then the white hens, then the black, andthen the yellow, next the ducks, and at the tail of the spectaclelong files of geese, some strutting, some half flying and hissing inresentment and terror at the unwonted coercions to which they weresubjected. The Indians had been hard at work all night capturing,sorting, assorting, and guarding the rank and file of their novelpageant. It would be safe to say that a droller sight never was seen,and never will be, on the Pacific coast or any other. Before it was donewith, the General and his bride had nearly died with laughter; and theGeneral could never allude to it without laughing almost as heartilyagain.

  At Monterey they were more magnificently feted; at the Presidio, at theMission, on board Spanish, Mexican, and Russian ships lying in harbor,balls, dances, bull-fights, dinners, all that the country knew offestivity, was lavished on the beautiful and winning young bride. Thebelles of the coast, from San Diego up, had all gathered at Monterey forthese gayeties, but not one of them could be for a moment compared toher. This was the beginning of the Senora's life as a married woman.She was then just twenty. A close observer would have seen even then,underneath the joyous smile, the laughing eye, the merry voice, a lookthoughtful, tender, earnest, at times enthusiastic. This look was thereflection of those qualities in her, then hardly aroused, which madeher, as years developed her character and stormy fates thickened aroundher life, the unflinching comrade of her soldier husband, the passionateadherent of the Church. Through wars, insurrections, revolutions,downfalls, Spanish, Mexican, civil, ecclesiastical, her standpoint,her poise, remained the same. She simply grew more and more proudly,passionately, a Spaniard and a Moreno; more and more stanchly andfierily a Catholic, and a lover of the Franciscans.

  During the height of the despoiling and plundering of the Missions,under the Secularization Act, she was for a few years almost besideherself. More than once she journeyed alone, when the journey was byno means without danger, to Monterey, to stir up the Prefect ofthe Missions to more energetic action, to implore the governmentalauthorities to interfere, and protect the Church's property. Itwas largely in consequence of her eloquent entreaties that GovernorMicheltorena issued his bootless order, restoring to the Church all theMissions south of San Luis Obispo. But this order cost Micheltorena hispolitical head, and General Moreno was severely wounded in one of theskirmishes of the insurrection which drove Micheltorena out of thecountry.

  In silence and bitter humiliation the Senora nursed her husband backto health again, and resolved to meddle no more in the affairs of herunhappy country and still more unhappy Church. As year by year shesaw the ruin of the Missions steadily going on, their vast propertiesmelting away, like dew before the sun, in the hands of dishonestadministrators and politicians, the Church powerless to contend with theunprincipled greed in high places, her beloved Franciscan Fathers drivenfrom the country or dying of starvation at their posts, she submittedherself to what, she was forced to admit, seemed to be the inscrutablewill of God for the discipline and humiliation of the Church. In a sortof bewildered resignation she waited to see what further sufferingswere to come, to fill up the measure of the punishment which, for somemysterious purpose, the faithful must endure. But when close uponall this discomfiture and humiliation of her Church followed thediscomfiture and humiliation of her country in war, and the near andevident danger of an English-speaking people's possessing the land,all the smothered fire of the Senora's nature broke out afresh. Withunfaltering hands she buckled on her husband's sword, and with dry eyessaw him go forth to fight. She had but one regret, that she was not themother of sons to fight also.

  "Would thou wert a man, Felipe," she exclaimed again and again in tonesthe child never forgot. "Would thou wert a man, that thou might go alsoto fight these foreigners!"

  Any race under the sun would have been to the Senora less hateful thanthe American. She had scorned them in her girlhood, when they cametrading to post after post. She scorned them still. The idea of beingforced to wage a war with pedlers was to her too monstrous to bebelieved. In the outset she had no doubt that the Mexicans would win inthe contest.

  "What!" she cried, "shall we who won independence from Spain, be
beatenby these traders? It is impossible!"

  When her husband was brought home to her dead, killed in the last fightthe Mexican forces made, she said icily, "He would have chosen to dierather than to have been forced to see his country in the hands ofthe enemy." And she was almost frightened at herself to see how thisthought, as it dwelt in her mind, slew the grief in her heart. She hadbelieved she could not live if her husband were to be taken away fromher; but she found herself often glad that he was dead,--glad that hewas spared the sight and the knowledge of the things which happened;and even the yearning tenderness with which her imagination picturedhim among the saints, was often turned into a fierce wondering whetherindignation did not fill his soul, even in heaven, at the way thingswere going in the land for whose sake he had died.

  Out of such throes as these had been born the second nature which madeSenora Moreno the silent, reserved, stern, implacable woman they knew,who knew her first when she was sixty. Of the gay, tender, sentimentalgirl, who danced and laughed with the officers, and prayed and confessedwith the Fathers, forty years before, there was small trace left now,in the low-voiced, white-haired, aged woman, silent, unsmiling,placid-faced, who manoeuvred with her son and her head shepherd alike,to bring it about that a handful of Indians might once more confesstheir sins to a Franciscan monk in the Moreno chapel.