Part 27 (2/2)
”I am no longer weak; and to-morrow I will sleep, and you shall watch.”
”Will you lie on the fern-bed then?” asked Ramona, gleefully.
”I would like the ground better,” said honest Alessandro.
Ramona looked disappointed. ”That is very strange,” she said. ”It is not so soft, this bed of boughs, that one need fear to be made tender by lying on it,” she continued, throwing herself down; ”but oh, how sweet, how sweet it smells!”
”Yes, there is spice-wood in it,” he answered. ”I put it in at the head, for Majella's pillow.”
Ramona was very tired, and she was happy. All night long she slept like a child. She did not hear Alessandro's steps. She did not hear the crackling of the fire he lighted. She did not hear the barking of Capitan, who more than once, spite of all Alessandro could do to quiet him, made the canon echo with sharp, quick notes of warning, as he heard the stealthy steps of wild creatures in the chaparral. Hour after hour she slept on. And hour after hour Alessandro sat leaning against a huge sycamore-trunk, and watched her. As the fitful firelight played over her face, he thought he had never seen it so beautiful, Its expression of calm repose insensibly soothed and strengthened him. She looked like a saint, he thought; perhaps it was as a saint of help and guidance, the Virgin was sending her to him and his people. The darkness deepened, became blackness; only the red gleams from the fire broke it, in swaying rifts, as the wind makes rifts in black storm-clouds in the heavens.
With the darkness, the stillness also deepened. Nothing broke that, except an occasional motion of Baba or the pony, or an alert signal from Capitan; then all seemed stiller than ever. Alessandro felt as if G.o.d himself were in the canon. Countless times in his life before he had lain in lonely places under the sky and watched the night through, but he never felt like this. It was ecstasy, and yet it was pain. What was to come on the morrow, and the next morrow, and the next, and the next, all through the coming years? What was to come to this beloved and loving woman who lay there sleeping, so confident, so trustful, guarded only by him,--by him, Alessandro, the exile, fugitive, homeless man?
Before the dawn, wood-doves began their calling. The canon was full of them, no two notes quite alike, it seemed to Alessandro's sharpened sense; pair after pair, he fancied that he recognized, speaking and replying, as did the pair whose voices had so comforted him the night he watched under the geranium hedge by the Moreno chapel,--”Love?” ”Here!”
”Love?” ”Here!” They comforted him still more now. ”They too have only each other,” he thought, as he bent his eyes lovingly on Ramona's face.
It was dawn, and past dawn, on the plains, before it was yet morning twilight in the canon; but the birds in the upper boughs' of the sycamores caught the tokens of the coming day, and began to twitter in the dusk. Their notes fell on Ramona's sleeping ear, like the familiar sound of the linnets in the veranda-thatch at home, and waked her instantly. Sitting up bewildered, and looking about her, she exclaimed, ”Oh, is it morning already, and so dark? The birds can see more sky than we! Sing, Alessandro,” and she began the hymn:--
”'Singers at dawn From the heavens above People all regions; Gladly we too sing.'”
Never went up truer invocation, from sweeter spot.
”Sing not so loud, my Majel,” whispered Alessandro, as her voice went carolling like a lark's in the pure ether. ”There might be hunters near who would hear;” and he joined in with low and m.u.f.fled tones.
As she dropped her voice at this caution, it seemed even sweeter than before:--
”'Come, O sinners, Come, and we will sing Tender hymns To our refuge,'”
”Ah, Majella, there is no sinner here, except me!” said Alessandro. ”My Majella is like one of the Virgin's own saints.” And indeed he might have been forgiven the thought as he gazed at Ramona, sitting there in the s.h.i.+mmering light, her face thrown out into relief by the gray wall of fern-draped rock behind her; her splendid hair, unbound, falling in tangled ma.s.ses to her waist; her cheeks flushed, her face radiant with devout and fervent supplication, her eyes uplifted to the narrow belt of sky overhead, where filmy vapors were turning to gold, touched by a sun she could not see.
”Hush, my love,” she breathed rather than said. ”That would be a sin, if you really thought it.
'O beautiful Queen, Princess of Heaven,'”
she continued, repeating the first lines of the song; and then, sinking on her knees, reached out one hand for Alessandro's, and glided, almost without a break in the melodious sound, into a low recitative of the morning-prayers. Her rosary was of fine-chased gold beads, with an ivory crucifix; a rare and precious relic of the Missions' olden times. It had belonged to Father Peyri himself, was given by him to Father Salvierderra, and by Father Salvierderra to the ”blessed child,” Ramona, at her confirmation. A warmer token of his love and trust he could not have bestowed upon her, and to Ramona's religious and affectionate heart it had always seemed a bond and an a.s.surance, not only of Father Salvierderra's love, but of the love and protection of the now sainted Peyri.
As she p.r.o.nounced the last words of her trusting prayer, and slipped the last of the golden beads along on its string, a thread of sunlight shot into the canon through a deep narrow gap in its rocky eastern crest,--shot in for a second, no more; fell aslant the rosary, lighted it; by a flash as if of fire, across the fine-cut facets of the beads, on Ramona's hands, and on the white face of the ivory Christ. Only a flash, and it was gone! To both Ramona and Alessandro it came like an omen,--like a message straight from the Virgin. Could she choose better messenger,--she, the compa.s.sionate one, the loving woman in heaven; mother of the Christ to whom they prayed, through her,--mother, for whose sake He would regard their least cry,--could she choose better messenger, or swifter, than the sunbeam, to say that she heard and would help them in these sore straits.
Perhaps there were not, in the whole great world, at that moment to be found, two souls who were experiencing so vivid a happiness as thrilled the veins of these two friendless ones, on their knees, alone in the wilderness, gazing half awe-stricken at the s.h.i.+ning rosary.
XVII
BEFORE the end of their second day in the canon, the place had become to Ramona so like a friendly home, that she dreaded to leave its shelter.
Nothing is stronger proof of the original intent of Nature to do more for man than the civilization in its arrogance will long permit her to do, than the quick and sure way in which she reclaims his affection, when by weariness, idle chance, or disaster, he is returned, for an interval, to her arms. How soon he rejects the miserable subterfuges of what he had called habits; sheds the still more miserable pretences of superiority, makes.h.i.+fts of adornment, and chains of custom! ”Whom the G.o.ds love, die young,” has been too long carelessly said. It is not true, in the sense in which men use the words. Whom the G.o.ds love, dwell with nature; if they are ever lured away, return to her before they are old. Then, however long they live before they die, they die young. Whom the G.o.ds love, live young--forever.
With the insight of a lover added to the instinct of the Indian, Alessandro saw how, hour by hour, there grew in Ramona's eyes the wonted look of one at home; how she watched the shadows, and knew what they meant.
”If we lived here, the walls would be sun-dials for us, would they not?”
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