Part 3 (2/2)
”But if I choose to charge him with explanations that I can not make myself without derogating from the time-honored hospitality of the casa, that is another thing. It is not,” said Dona Maria, with a certain ma.s.sive dignity, that, inconsistent as it was with the weakness of her argument, was not without impressiveness, ”it is not yet, Blessed Santa Maria, that we are obliged to take notice ourself of the pretensions of every guest beneath our roof like the match-making, daughter-selling English and Americans. And THEN Pereo had tact and discrimination. Now he is mad! There are strangers and strangers.
The whole valley is full of them--one can discriminate, since the old families year by year are growing less.”
”Surely not,” said Maruja, innocently. ”There is the excellent Ramierrez, who has lately almost taken him a wife from the singing-hall in San Francisco; he may yet be s.n.a.t.c.hed from the fire. There is the youthful Jose Castro, the sole padrono of our national bull-fight at Soquel, the famous horse-breaker, and the winner of I know not how many races. And have we not Vincente Peralta, who will run, it is said, for the American Congress. He can read and write--truly I have a letter from him here.” She turned back the folded slip of Captain Carroll's note and discovered another below.
Mrs. Saltonstall tapped her daughter's hand with her fan. ”You jest at them, yet you uphold Pereo! Go, now, and sleep yourself into a better frame of mind. Stop! I hear the Doctor's horse. Run and see that Pereo receives him properly.”
Maruja had barely entered the dark corridor when she came upon the visitor,--a gray, hard-featured man of sixty,--who had evidently entered without ceremony. ”I see you did not wait to be announced,”
she said, sweetly. ”My mother will be flattered by your impatience.
You will find her in the patio.”
”Pereo did not announce me, as he was probably still under the effect of the aguardiente he swallowed yesterday,” said the Doctor, dryly. ”I met him outside the tienda on the highway the other night, talking to a pair of cut-throats that I would shoot on sight.”
”The mayordomo has many purchases to make, and must meet a great many people,” said Maruju. ”What would you? We can not select HIS acquaintances; we can hardly choose our own,” she added, sweetly.
The Doctor hesitated, as if to reply, and then, with a grim ”Good-morning,” pa.s.sed on towards the patio. Maruja did not follow him. Her attention was suddenly absorbed by a hitherto unnoticed motionless figure, that seemed to be hiding in the shadow of an angle of the pa.s.sage, as if waiting for her to pa.s.s. The keen eyes of the daughter of Joseph Saltonstall were not deceived. She walked directly towards the figure, and said, sharply, ”Pereo!”
The figure came hesitatingly forward into the light of the grated window. It was that of an old man, still tall and erect, though the hair had disappeared from his temples, and hung in two or three straight, long dark elf-locks on his neck. His face, over which one of the bars threw a sinister shadow, was the yellow of a dried tobacco-leaf, and veined as strongly. His garb was a strange mingling of the vaquero and the ecclesiastic--velvet trousers, open from the knee down, and fringed with bullion b.u.t.tons; a broad red sash around his waist, partly hidden by a long, straight chaqueta; with a circular sacerdotal cape of black broadcloth slipped over his head through a slit-like opening braided with gold. His restless yellow eyes fell before the young girl's; and the stiff, varnished, hard-brimmed sombrero he held in his wrinkled hands trembled.
”You are spying again, Pereo,” said Maruja, in another dialect than the one she had used to her mother. ”It is unworthy of my father's trusted servant.”
”It is that man--that coyote, Dona Maruja, that is unworthy of your father, of your mother, of YOU!” he gesticulated, in a fierce whisper.
”I, Pereo, do not spy. I follow, follow the track of the prowling, stealing brute until I run him down. Yes, it was I, Pereo, who warned your father he would not be content with the half of the land he stole!
It was I, Pereo, who warned your mother that each time he trod the soil of La Mision Perdida he measured the land he could take away!” He stopped pantingly, with the insane abstraction of a fixed idea glittering in his eyes.
”And it was YOU, Pereo,” she said, caressingly, laying her soft hand on his heaving breast, ”YOU who carried me in your arms when I was a child. It was you, Pereo, who took me before you on your pinto horse to the rodeo, when no one knew it but ourselves, my Pereo, was it not?”
He nodded his head violently. ”It was you who showed me the gallant caballeros, the Pachecos, the Castros, the Alvarados, the Estudillos, the Peraltas, the Vallejos.” His head kept time with each name as the fire dimmed in his wet eyes. ”You made me promise I would not forget them for the Americanos who were here. Good! That was years ago! I am older now. I have seen many Americans. Well, I am still free!”
He caught her hand, and raised it to his lips with a gesture almost devotional. His eyes softened; as the exaltation of pa.s.sion pa.s.sed, his voice dropped into the querulousness of privileged age. ”Ah, yes!--you, the first-born, the heiress--of a verity, yes! You were ever a Guitierrez. But the others? Eh, where are they now? And it was always: 'Eh, Pereo, what shall we do to-day? Pereo, good Pereo, we are asked to ride here and there; we are expected to visit the new people in the valley--what say you, Pereo? Who shall we dine to-day?' Or: 'Enquire me of this or that strange caballero--and if we may speak.'
Ah, it is but yesterday that Amita would say: 'Lend me thine own horse, Pereo, that I may outstrip this swaggering Americano that clings ever to my side,' ha! ha! Or the grave Dorotea would whisper: 'Convey to this Senor Presumptuous Pomposo that the daughters of Guitierrez do not ride alone with strangers!' Or even the little Liseta would say, he!
he! 'Why does the stranger press my foot in his great hand when he helps me into the saddle? Tell him that is not the way, Pereo.' Ha!
ha!” He laughed childishly, and stopped. ”And why does Senorita Amita now--look--complain that Pereo, old Pereo, comes between her and this Senor Raymond---this maquinista? Eh, and why does SHE, the lady mother, the Castellana, shut Pereo from her councils?” he went on, with rising excitement. ”What are these secret meetings, eh?--what these appointments, alone with this Judas--without the family--without ME!”
”Hearken, Pereo,” said the young girl, again laying her hand on the old man's shoulder; ”you have spoken truly--but you forget--the years pa.s.s.
These are no longer strangers; old friends have gone--these have taken their place. My father forgave the Doctor--why can not you? For the rest, believe in me--me--Maruja”--she dramatically touched her heart over the international complications of the letters of Captain Carroll and Peralta. ”I will see that the family honor does not suffer. And now, good Pereo, calm thyself. Not with aguardiente, but with a bottle of old wine from the Mision refectory that I will send to thee. It was given to me by thy friend, Padre Miguel, and is from the old vines that were here. Courage, Pereo! And thou sayest that Amita complains that thou comest between her and Raymond. So! What matter? Let it cheer thy heart to know that I have summoned the Peraltas, the Pachecos, the Estudillos, all thy old friends, to dine here to-day. Thou wilt hear the old names, even if the faces are young to thee. Courage! Do thy duty, old friend; let them see that the hospitality of La Mision Perdida does not grow old, if its mayordomo does. Faquita will bring thee the wine. No; not that way; thou needest not pa.s.s the patio, nor meet that man again. Here, give me thy hand. I will lead thee. It trembles, Pereo! These are not the sinews that only two years ago pulled down the bull at Soquel with thy single la.s.so! Why, look! I can drag thee; see!” and with a light laugh and a boyish gesture, she half pulled, half dragged him along, until their voices were lost in the dark corridor.
Maruja kept her word. When the sun began to cast long shadows along the veranda, not only the outer sh.e.l.l of La Mision Perdida, but the dark inner heart of the old casa, stirred with awakened life. Single hors.e.m.e.n and carriages began to arrive; and, mingled with the modern turnouts of the home party and the neighboring Americans, were a few of the c.u.mbrous vehicles and chariots of fifty years ago, drawn by gayly trapped mules with bizarre postilions, and occasionally an outrider.
Dark faces looked from the balcony of the patio, a light cloud of cigarette-smoke made the dark corridors the more obscure, and mingled with the forgotten incense. Bare-headed pretty women, with roses starring their dark hair, wandered with childish curiosity along the broad veranda and in and out of the French windows that opened upon the grand saloon. Scrupulously shaved men with olive complexion, stout men with accurately curving whiskers meeting at their dimpled chins, lounged about with a certain unconscious dignity that made them contentedly indifferent to any novelty of their surroundings. For a while the two races kept mechanically apart; but, through the tactful gallantry of Garnier, the cynical familiarity of Raymond, and the impulsive recklessness of Aladdin, who had forsaken his enchanted Palace on the slightest of invitations, and returned with the party in the hope of again seeing the Princess of China, an interchange of civilities, of gallantries, and even of confidences, at last took place. Jovita Castro had heard (who had not?) of the wonders of Aladdin's Palace, and was it of actual truth that the ladies had a bouquet and a fan to match their dress presented to them every morning, and that the gentlemen had a champagne c.o.c.ktail sent to their rooms before breakfast? ”Just you come, Miss, and bring your father and your brothers, and stay a week and you'll see,” responded Aladdin, gallantly. ”Hold on! What's your father's first name? I'll send a team over there for you to-morrow.” ”And is it true that you frightened the handsome Captain Carroll away from Amita?” said Dolores Briones, over the edge of her fan to Raymond. ”Perfectly,” said Raymond, with ingenuous frankness. ”I made it a matter of life or death. He was a soldier, and naturally preferred the former as giving him a better chance for promotion.” ”Ah! we thought it was Maruja you liked best.” ”That was two years ago,” said Raymond, gravely. ”And you Americanos can change in that time?” ”I have just experienced that it can be done in less,” he responded, over the fan, with bewildering significance. Nor were these confidences confined to only one nationality. ”I always thought you Spanish gentlemen were very dark, and wore long mustaches and a cloak,” said pretty little Miss Walker, gazing frankly into the smooth round face of the eldest Pacheco--”why, you are as fair as I am,” ”Eaf I tink that, I am for ever mizzarable,”
he replied, with grave melancholy. In the dead silence that followed he was enabled to make his decorous point. ”Because I shall not ezcape ze fate of Narcissus.” Mr. Buchanan, with the unrestrained and irresponsible enjoyment of a traveler, entered fully into the spirit of the scene. He even found words of praise for Aladdin, whose extravagance had at first seemed to him almost impious. ”Eh, but I'm not prepared to say he is a fool, either,” he remarked to his friend the San Francis...o...b..nker. ”Those who try to pick him up for one,”
returned the banker, ”will find themselves mistaken. His is the prodigality that loosens others' purse-strings besides his own, Everybody contents himself with criticising his way of spending money, but is ready to follow his way of making it.”
The dinner was more formal, and when the mistress of the house, ma.s.sive in black silk, velvet and gold embroidery, moved like a pageant to the head of her table, where she remained like a sacerdotal effigy, not even the presence of the practical Scotchman at her side could remove the prevailing sense of restraint. For a while the conversation of the relatives might have been brought with them in their antique vehicles of fifty years ago, so faded, so worn, and so springless it was.
General Pico related the festivities at Monterey, on the occasion of the visit of Sir George Simpson early in the present century, of which he was an eyewitness, with great precision of detail. Don Juan Estudillo was comparatively frivolous, with anecdotes of Louis Philippe, whom he had seen in Paris. Far-seeing Pedro Guitierrez was gloomily impressed with a Mongolian invasion of California by the Chinese, in which the prevailing religion would be supplanted by heathen temples, and polygamy engrafted on the Const.i.tution. Everybody agreed however, that the vital question of the hour was the settlement of land t.i.tles--Americans who claimed under preemption and the native holders of Spanish grants were equally of the opinion.
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