Part 11 (2/2)
returned Sanchez, gravely.
”Killed--by his horse! sayest thou?” said Pereo, with a sudden fixed look in his eye.
”Ay, good Pereo. Dost thou not remember when the mustang bolted with him down upon us in the lane, and then thou didst say he would come to evil with the brute? He did--blessed San Antonio!--within half an hour!”
”How--thou sawest it?”
”Nay; for the mustang was running away and I did not follow. Bueno! it happened all the same. The Alcalde, Coroner, who knows all about it, has said so an hour ago! Juan brought the news from the rancho where the inquest was. There will be a funeral the day after to-morrow! and so it is that some of the family will go. Fancy, Pereo, a Guitierrez at the funeral of the Americano Doctor! Nay, I doubt not that the Dona Maria will ask thee to say a prayer over his bier.”
”Peace, fool! and speak not of thy lady mistress,” thundered the old man, sitting upright. ”Begone to the stables. Dost thou hear me? Go!”
”Now, by the Mother of Miracles,” said Sanchez, hastening from the room as the gaunt figure of the old man rose, like a sheeted spectre, from the bed, ”that was his old self again! Blessed San Antonio! Pereo has recovered.”
The next day he was at his usual duties, with perhaps a slight increase of sternness in his manner. The fulfillment of his prophecy related by Sanchez added to the superst.i.tious reputation in which he was held, although Faquita voiced the opinions of a growing skeptical party in the statement that it was easy to prophesy the Doctor's accident, with the spectacle of the horse actually running away before the prophet's eyes. It was even said that Dona Maria's aversion to Pereo since the accident arose from a belief that some a.s.sistance might have been rendered by him. But it was pointed out by Sanchez that Pereo had, a few moments before, fallen under one of those singular, epileptic-like strokes to which he was subject, and not only was unfit, but even required the entire care of Sanchez at the time. He did not attend the funeral, nor did Mrs. Saltonstall; but the family was represented by Maruja and Amita, accompanied by one or two dark-faced cousins, Captain Carroll, and Raymond. A number of friends and business a.s.sociates from the neighboring towns, Aladdin and a party from his house, the farm laborers, and a crowd of working men from his mills in the foot-hills, swelled the a.s.semblage that met in and around the rude agricultural sheds and outhouses which formed the only pastoral habitation of the Rancho of San Antonio. It had been a characteristic injunction of the deceased that he should be buried in the midst of one of his most prolific grain fields, as a grim return to that nature he was impoveris.h.i.+ng, with neither mark nor monument to indicate the spot; and that even the temporary mound above him should, at the fitting season of the year, be leveled with the rest of the field by the obliterating plowshares. A grave was accordingly dug about a quarter of a mile from his office amidst a ”volunteer” crop so dense that the large s.p.a.ce mown around the narrow opening, to admit of the presence of the mult.i.tude, seemed like a golden amphitheatre.
A distinguished clergyman from San Francisco officiated.
A man of tact and politic adaptation, he dwelt upon the blameless life of the deceased, on his practical benefit for civilization in the county, and even treated his grim Pantheism in the selection of his grave as a formal recognition of the text, ”dust to dust.” He paid a not ungrateful compliment to the business a.s.sociates of the deceased, and, without actually claiming in the usual terms ”a continuance of past favors” for their successors, managed to interpolate so strong a recommendation of the late Doctor's commercial projects as to elicit from Aladdin the expressive commendation that his sermon was ”as good as five per cent. in the stock.”
Maruja, who had been standing near the carriage, languidly silent and abstracted even under the tender attentions of Carroll, suddenly felt the consciousness of another pair of eyes fixed upon her. Looking up, she was surprised to find herself regarded by the man she had twice met, once as a tramp and once as a wayfarer at the fonda, who had quietly joined a group not far from her. At once impressed by the idea that this was the first time that he had really looked at her, she felt a singular shyness creeping over her, until, to her own astonishment and indignation, she was obliged to lower her eyes before his gaze. In vain she tried to lift them, with her old supreme power of fascination.
If she had ever blushed, she felt she would have done so now. She knew that her face must betray her consciousness; and at last she--Maruja, the self-poised and all-sufficient G.o.ddess--actually turned, in half-hysterical and girlish bashfulness, to Carroll for relief in an affected and exaggerated absorption of his attentions. She scarcely knew that the clergyman had finished speaking, when Raymond approached them softly from behind. ”Pray don't believe,” he said, appealingly, ”that all the human virtues are about to be buried--I should say sown--in that wheatfield. A few will still survive, and creep about above the Doctor's grave. Listen to a story just told me, and disbelieve--if you dare--in human grat.i.tude. Do you see that picturesque young ruffian over there?”
Maruja did not lift her eyes. She felt herself breathlessly hanging on the speaker's next words.
”Why, that's the young man of the fonda, who picked up your fan,” said Carroll, ”isn't it?”
”Perhaps,” said Maruja, indifferently. She would have given worlds to have been able to turn coldly and stare at him at that moment with the others, but she dared not. She contented herself with softly brus.h.i.+ng some dust from Captain Carroll's arm with her fan and a feminine suggestion of tender care which thrilled that gentleman.
”Well,” continued Raymond, ”that Robert Macaire over yonder came here some three or four days ago as a tramp, in want of everything but honest labor. Our lamented friend consented to parley with him, which was something remarkable in the Doctor; still more remarkable, he gave him a suit of clothes, and, it is said, some money, and sent him on his way. Now, more remarkable than all, our friend, on hearing of his benefactor's death, actually tramps back here to attend his funeral.
The Doctor being dead, his executors not of a kind to emulate the Doctor's spasmodic generosity, and there being no chance of future favors, the act must be recorded as purely and simply grat.i.tude. By Jove! I don't know but that he is the only one here who can be called a real mourner. I'm here because your sister is here; Carroll comes because YOU do, and you come because your mother can not.”
”And who tells you these pretty stories?” asked Maruja, with her face still turned towards Carroll.
”The foreman, Harrison, who, with an extensive practical experience of tramps, was struck with this exception to the general rule.”
”Poor man; one ought to do something for him,” said Amita, compa.s.sionately.
”What!” said Raymond, with affected terror, ”and spoil this perfect story? Never! If I should offer him ten dollars, I'd expect him to kick me; if he took it, I'd expect to kick HIM.”
”He is not so bad-looking, is he, Maruja?” asked Amita of her sister.
But Maruja had already moved a few paces off with Carroll, and seemed to be listening to him only. Raymond smiled at the pretty perplexity of Amita's eyebrows over this p.r.o.nounced indiscretion.
”Don't mind them,” he whispered; ”you really cannot expect to duena your elder sister. Tell me, would you actually like me to see if I could a.s.sist the virtuous tramp? You have only to speak.” But Amita's interest appeared to be so completely appeased with Raymond's simple offer that she only smiled, blushed, and said ”No.”
Maruja's quick ears had taken in every word of these asides, and for an instant she hated her sister for her aimless declination of Raymond's proposal. But becoming conscious--under her eyelids--that the stranger was moving away with the dispersing crowd, she rejoined Amita with her usual manner. The others had re-entered the carriage, but Maruja took it into her head to proceed on foot to the rude building whence the mourners had issued. The foreman, Harrison, flushed and startled by this apparition of inaccessible beauty at his threshold, came eagerly forward. ”I shall not trouble you now, Mr. Har-r-r-rison,” she said, with a polite exaggeration of the consonants; ”but some day I shall ride over here, and ask you to show me your wonderful machines.”
She smiled, and turned back to seek her carriage. But before she had gone many yards she found that she had completely lost it in the intervening billows of grain. She stopped, with an impatient little Spanish e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. The next moment the stalks of wheat parted before her and a figure emerged. It was the stranger.
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