Part 40 (1/2)

”My children,” he said solemnly, ”my heart is wrung for you. You have broken the laws of G.o.d and of the Holy Catholic Church, and the punishments thereof are awful. Can I do anything for you, excepting to pray? You shall have my prayers, my children. But that is not enough; I cannot--ay! I cannot endure the thought that you shall be d.a.m.ned.

Perhaps”--again he stared meditatively at the stones, then, after an impressive silence, raised his eyes. ”Heaven vouchsafes me an idea, my children. I will make your punishment here so bitter that Almighty G.o.d in His mercy will give you but a few years of purgatory after death.

Come with me.”

He turned and led the way slowly to the rear of the mission buildings.

Andreo shuddered for the first time, and tightened his arm about Pilar's shaking body. He knew that they were to be locked in the dungeons.

Pilar, almost fainting, shrank back as they reached the narrow spiral stair which led downward to the cells. ”Ay! I shall die, my Andreo!” she cried. ”Ay! my father, have mercy!”

”I cannot, my children,” said the padre, sadly. ”It is for the salvation of your souls.”

”Mother of G.o.d! When shall I see thee again, my Pilar?” whispered Andreo. ”But, ay! the memory of that week on the mountain will keep us both alive.”

Padre Arroyo descended the stair and awaited them at its foot.

Separating them, and taking each by the hand, he pushed Andreo ahead and dragged Pilar down the narrow pa.s.sage. At its end he took a great bunch of keys from his pocket, and raising both hands commanded them to kneel.

He said a long prayer in a loud monotonous voice which echoed and reechoed down the dark hall and made Pilar shriek with terror. Then he fairly hurled the marriage ceremony at them, and made the couple repeat after him the responses. When it was over, ”Arise,” he said.

The poor things stumbled to their feet, and Andreo caught Pilar in a last embrace.

”Now bear your incarceration with fort.i.tude, my children; and if you do not beat the air with your groans, I will let you out in a week. Do not hate your old father, for love alone makes him severe, but pray, pray, pray.”

And then he locked them both in the same cell.

THE BELLS OF SAN GABRIEL

I

The Senor Capitan Don Luis de la Torre walked impatiently up and down before the grist-mill wherein were quartered the soldiers sent by Mexico to protect the building of the Mission of San Gabriel. The Indian workmen were slugs; California, a vast region inhabited only by savages and a few priests, offered slender attractions to a young officer craving the gay pleasures of his capital and the presence of the woman he was to marry. For months he had watched the mission church mount slowly from foundation to towers, then spread into pillared corridors and rooms for the clergy. He could have mapped in his mind every acre of the wide beautiful valley girt by mountains snowed on their crest. He had thought it all very lovely at first: the yellow atmosphere, the soft abiding warmth, the blue reflecting lake; but the green on mountain and flat had waxed to gold, then waned to tan and brown, and he was tired.

Not even a hostile Indian had come to be killed.

He was very good-looking, this tall young Spaniard, with his impatient eyes and haughty intelligent face, and it is possible that the lady in Mexico had added to his burden by doleful prayers to return. He took a letter from his pocket, read it half through, then walked rapidly over to the mission, seeking interest in the work of the Indians. Under the keen merciless supervision of the padres,--the cleverest body of men who ever set foot in America,--they were mixing and laying the adobes, making nails and tiles, hewing aqueducts, fas.h.i.+oning great stone fonts and fountains. De la Torre speculated, after his habit, upon the future of a country so beautiful and so fertile, which a dozen priests had made their own. Would these Indians, the poorest apologies for human beings he had ever seen, the laziest and the dirtiest, be Christianized and terrified into worthy citizens of this fair land? Could the clear white flame that burned in the brains of the padres strike fire in their neophytes' narrow skulls, create a soul in those grovelling bodies? He dismissed the question.

Would men of race, tempted by the loveliness of this great gold-haired houri sleeping on the Pacific, come from old and new Spain and dream away a life of pleasure? What grapes would grow out of this rich soil to be crushed by Indian slaves into red wine! And did gold vein those velvet hills? How all fruits, all grains, would thrive! what superb beasts would fatten on the thick spring gra.s.s! Ay! it was a magnificent discovery for the Church, and great would be the power that could wrest it from her.

There was a new people, somewhere north of Mexico, in the United States of America. Would they ever covet and strive to rob? The worse for them if they molested the fire-blooded Spaniard. How he should like to fight them!

That night the sentinel gave a sudden piercing shout of warning, then dropped dead with a poisoned arrow in his brain. Another moment, and the soldiers had leaped from their swinging beds of hide, and headed by their captain had reached the church they were there to defend. Through plaza and corridors sped and shrieked the savage tribe, whose invasion had been made with the swiftness and cunning of their race. The doors had not been hung in the church, and the naked figures ran in upon the heels of the soldiers, waving torches and yelling like the soulless fiends they were. The few neophytes who retained spirit enough to fight after the bleaching process that had chilled their native fire and produced a result which was neither man nor beast, but a sort of barnyard fowl, hopped about under the weight of their blankets and were promptly despatched.

The brunt of the battle fell upon the small detachment of troops, and at the outset they were overwhelmed by numbers, dazzled by the glare of torches that waved and leaped in the cavern-like darkness of the church.

But they fought like Spaniards, hacking blindly with their swords, cleaving dusky skulls with furious maledictions, using their fists, their feet, their teeth--wrenching torches from malignant hands and hurling them upon distorted faces. Curses and wild yells intermingled.

De la Torre fought at the head of his men until men and savages, dead and living, were an indivisible ma.s.s, then thrust back and front, himself unhurt. The only silent clear-brained man among them, he could reason as he a.s.saulted and defended, and he knew that the Spaniards had little chance of victory--and he less of looking again upon the treasures of Mexico. The Indians swarmed like ants over the great nave and transept. Those who were not fighting smashed the altar and slashed the walls. The callous stars looked through the apertures left for windows, and shed a pallid light upon the writhing ma.s.s. The padres had defended their altar, behind the chancel rail; they lay trampled, with arrows vibrating in their hard old muscles.

De la Torre forced his way to the door and stood for a moment, solitary, against the pale light of the open, then turned his face swiftly to the night air as he fell over the threshold of the mission he had so gallantly defended.

II