The Road to Monterey/Chapter 13
DON ABRAHAN'S father had built that house as the houses of men of consequence in his native country, who had daughters and dignities to guard and cherish, had built theirs since time of old. Daughters and the dignity of houses too often fall together, especially in a country where men are not to be trusted alone with women, except where bars divide them. Don Abrahan's father had set strong bars into the oak sills of the windows opening upon the patio, perhaps not so much in the belief that the women of his household were weak, as in his knowledge that the men of his nation were vile.
Don Abrahan's sisters had watched the moon through these bars; his daughters had sent their longings winging away to lovers' hearts between them. Helena Sprague, prisoner in the republic's name, under charge of a heavy crime, occupied an apartment looking upon this patio, into which many ladies had sighed.
In her room there were two windows in a little projecting balcony, a sort of stage box for witnessing the drama of adoration, somewhat higher from the ground than a tall cavalier's head. A lady might reach down her hand to be kissed by one on the outside, but her lips must remain unkissed behind the bars.
Doña Carlota occupied the adjoining room, a connecting door between, the key to which she was careful to keep close, fearful of Don Abrahan's wrath if Helena should chance to lock her out and pass an hour free from her espionage. Helena had spared her the fire and anger of her scorn for the betrayal of Henderson, which had resulted in the visitation of Don Abrahan and the attendant tragedies. Yet Helena's cold, white silence was more terrible to Doña Carlota's fleshy bosom than any torrent of words. In words one had it over, soon to forget; in silence such as this girl's there was a constant threat.
Almost immediately after the military execution of John Toberman, which Helena's pleadings had been unavailing to stay for an hour, Don Abrahan had given orders for Helena's removal to his own house. The journey had been made by carriage, under guard of soldiers, pushed rapidly, without regard for Doña Carlota's bulk, or her protestations that her bones would be broken before the descent of the pass was so much as begun.
They had arrived at Don Abrahan's house in the middle of the afternoon. Now the sun was gone from the patio, the canyons were filling with the blue haze of evening. Since her arrival Helena had not moved from the place where she sat before the window, gazing at the stern, gray hills.
She seemed a prisoner without hope, Doña Carlota thought, smiling comfortably and knowingly to herself. Youth did not understand that discipline, to be effective, to result in healthful regeneration, must inflict its pain. And this was only discipline, applied for the purpose of setting Helena's feet in the way of their duty again. Don Abrahan had told her that.
Through the connecting doorway Doña Carlota looked at the girl, her smile fat as a Benedictine friar's, a certain softness of affection in her eyes. Doña Carlota caressed the tidy slenderness of Helena's body with her affectionate glance, as if she had a half-formed notion of going over and caressing the long braid of hair that swung like a lissom vine down her back, swaying when she moved restlessly from time to time, her hand on the window-sill. That was a strong hand for a girl, Doña Carlota thought, one with the power of the Yankee captain in it, one that might well open the casement and tear out the restraining bars.
Helena was paler than youth should be, thought Doña Carlota. A little color out of a box spread artfully on the cheeks, a little darkening under the eyes in the cunning way the girls of her own youth knew so well to enhance the wistfulness of those bright gems. Yet, without the color Helena was pleasant to the eye, warm-feeling to look upon, a sense of satisfaction in the complete fineness of her face and form.
Helena was linda. There is no English word exactly for linda, which is more than pretty, not yet to say beautiful; wholesome, clean, perhaps we might say, or even fresh, or fair, but all inadequate in approach to the fine shading of that little word. A girl that did not set men mad, Doña Carlota said, but one that drew their respect and held them at the distance that men belong. From a slip, as one sees a vine grow, Doña Carlota had seen this girl struggle out of childhood and mount strong upon the trellis of life. Much like a vine, indeed, thought Doña Carlota, that ong sets in love beside the door.
Now the vine had come to blossom in the fresh, fragrant beauty of its young strength. And everybody knew, Doña Carlota said, that a vine standing alone did not come to bear the best fruit. No; there must be at least two vines, close side by side in the blossom-time to make the fruit perfect, full and sweet. Why it was so, Doña Carlota did not know, being neither a botanist nor a biologist. But that it was an eternal truth, she knew as well as the wisest.
Don Abrahan was calling outside her door. She put down her pleasant speculations, turning to answer. What a man Don Abrahan was! what impatience with a woman in his way of calling at her door! Here he must come with his business to break in and disturb her just when she was regaining her tranquillity and getting back her breath from that terrific journey through the pass.
"Don Abrahan waits your attendance," Doña Carlota announced, returning to Helena's door.
"I am weary of Don Abrahan's importunities," Helena said. Tell him that."
"I will carry no such word to Don Abrahan!" Doña Carlota returned.
"Let him wait, then."
Doña Carlota came back with all the haste she could impose on her fat legs, with all the severity she could summon out of her colorless soul.
"Aga magistrate, Don Abrahan commands your attendance," she said. "He trusts, for the dignity of this house, that it will not be necessary to say more. Will you see me humbled, called like a servant"
Helena seemed to push the words back into her aunt's mouth with the impatient sweep of her hand as she rose to obey the magistrate's summons. She stood a moment to look again out of the window as if to take farewell of a familiar and well-loved scene. When she passed slowly out of the room, head bent as if she walked under a heavy penance, Doña Carlota hastened to the window to see for herself what there might be in that fascinating landscape to hold a girl's eyes and make them reluctant to turn away.
There was the yellow road at the head of the lane of olive trees, where it curved eastward to strike the pass into the valley which they had left but a few hours since. There was bitterness, and there was scorn in Doña Carlota's voice as she spoke, beating her finger-ends against the small thick window-pane.
"It is the baseness that is in her blood that turns her eyes to watch for him, the Yankee sailor out of a dirty ship! Would to God Don Abrahan had stood him against the wall this morning along with the other one!"
Don Abrahan was alone in his office; he rose, bowing in his slow-bending, gravely courteous way, seeming to offer Helena the house and all it contained by the grand sweep of his hand when presenting her a chair. She stood, hand on the chair, as if she questioned his purpose in commanding her, and had but a moment to remain for his reply. She was pale and harried by the anguishing recollection of that morning's cruel deed, strained by an oppressive anxiety for the future, but not her own.
"If you will be seated, my child," Don Abrahan seemed to implore, so great his deference. "There may be much to say."
Don Abrahan took up certain papers from many on the table, holding them in his hand like a master about to hear his pupil recite. He sat so a little while, a cloud coming over his face, playing, as he knew well from his heritage of a thousand years of cruel men how to play, upon her suspense and fear.
"There is a matter that I would approach without giving you pain," he said. "Yet I am afraid you will misinterpret my motive, and my tongue halts."
"Does it concern the young stranger, Mr. Henderson?" Helena inquired, lifting her eyes suddenly. "Have you murdered him, too?"
"I did not intend to speak of the sailor—a trifle, a thing of no consequence."
"Since you have spoken, Don Abrahan, tell me where he is, what you are going to do with him. He was under my poor protection. I have a right to know how far my hospitality has been shamed by the armed tyrants who invaded my home."
"He is not dead; no man holds him in such account as to want his life, as far as I know. It is not the custom to honor peones who desert their masters by so much as hanging them. You understand the country's customs—you are no alien here."
"What have you done withhim? I have a right to know."
"He will be brought here today, to take up his labors again," Don Abrahan answered shortly. "Now, for this matter that I called you here to confer upon."
Don Abrahan lapsed away again into that suspended introspective pause. So the master of the torture paused in the melancholy chamber of the inquisition, calculating the utmost strain the tendons of his stretched victim could bear without snapping. The same greedy glint must have shone in his eyes as enlivened Don Abrahan's that moment, watching the young woman at the end of his great oak table over the paper's edge.
Helena sat with hands loosely clasped in her lap. Strong hands, large for a woman, Don Abrahan made note; hands that might drive a dagger into a man's heart. Her head was bent slightly. If her heart went faster for any threat in Don Abrahan's manner, her face did not reveal it. Don Abrahan watched the thin nostrils for a betraying tremor, the calm forehead for the drawing of the brows. She remained as placid outwardly as unshaken water.
"The fact of your disloyal conduct to your country has not been published yet, Helena," Don Abrahan resumed. "Fortunately, it was not necessary to reveal to the military authorities anything that implicated or involved you in order to secure the conviction of Toberman, renegade traitor, thing of the vilest!"
"He was not a traitor," Helena denied, flashing under the charge against her dead friend, surprising Don Abrahan mightily. He had looked to see her subdued to a woman's place by this. "All he worked for, all I helped him in, was for peaceful annexation to the United States."
"It is treason, even in time of peace," Don Abrahan corrected her, magisterial, severe. "Put a guard on your tongue, Helena. Such speech in the hearing of others would lead to something that I might not be able to stop."
"It was a savage deed of personal vengeance, Don Abrahan, against a man you would not have dared to face," she said.
"We will not open again what we have discussed and closed," Don Abrahan returned, harsh, final, almost savage.
"How will you answer when the strong friends of that murdered man demand an accounting of you?"
"It is folly to speak of such things, Helena. The Americans never can overcome Mexico, they are of inferior breed, their valor is in their heels. If you look forward to such a day for your own deliverance your heart will die. Your deliverer is before you; I call you here to offer you a door to liberty, to life. Do not provoke me to close it in your face."
"I believe it is a custom with you, Don Abrahan, to sell your beneficence at a price. What am I expected to pay?"
"Nothing is wanted from you, Helena, nothing is asked—but justice. There is no price, but there is such a thing as recompense."
"If you can name a wrong," she said, in the conviction of innocence.
"We shall come to that. As I have said, the fact of your treason, even of your arrest, has not been officially proclaimed. No notice of seizure has been posted on your house and lands; your effects are guarded by men whom I trust. This written evidence, sufficient, I am afraid, to bring you long imprisonment, if not death, is known only to me and my son. With it removed, with no witness to come forward to disclose what it contained, the case against you will fall."
Don Abrahan paused, eyes fixed on the warehouse across the dusty courtyard. A little while so; then he shook the paper in his hand as if to rouse himself from wandering after unprofitable things—perhaps justice and mercy were among them—tossed it from him, took up another.
"And I am certain you are coming to the price I am to pay to bring this happy end around," Helena said.
Don Abrahan was a keen man; the scorn of hee voice was not lost on him. Likewise he was a hard man, upon whom sarcasm could not make a scar.
"There is such a thing as recompense for a loss," he said, with the tentative suggestion of a bribe-seeker. "My son was to marry you. Through your refusal to carry out the contract, he loses your lands and property. I have drawn a deed, antedating this crisis in your affairs. It is one little paper balancing another, Helena. For the deed I give you this. My memory is erased; the foul crime of treason will not stand against your name."
Don Abrahan had come to it, and come to it boldly. Now that he had no further need of playing with words to lead up to his purpose in his way of ancient diplomacy, he could be as blunt as any Yankee captain that ever sailed the seas. He looked Helena straight in the eyes, his hard, thin face unsympathetic as bone.
"So the case stands," he said.
"I have heard it," she replied.
"It will be a sale for a consideration, and what consideration, indeed, is more precious to youth than life?"
"Life with honor is a precious thing, Don Abrahan. But what of General Verdugo, a greedy, unscrupulous man? What of the soldiers who rode here guarding me? Who is going to hush them and keep them still?"
"There will be no evidence—rumors are not evidence. Besides, I will send you safely out of the country. There is a British warship in the harbor now; you can pass for an American woman fleeing the dangers of the country with which your own is at war."
"I could, without much pretense," she agreed with peculiar stress. "But I am not going to sign over my property to you, Don Abrahan. You would not dare bring a charge of treason against me, a not so very far distant relation. Do you suppose the attainder could dishonor me, my name, and leave your own unclouded? No. I will not sign the deed, Don Abrahan; I will not give up my home, and all that I hold dear, to you."
"There is no other way to escape the penalty; all other doors are locked. You have the memory of Toberman fresh. The same fate threatens you; it is so near its breath moves your hair."
"I will not sign the deed, Don Abrahan."
"As God judges between us, Helena, there is no other way. General Verdugo knows enough that I must silence him at a heavy price. I would not tell you this, but your obstinate blindness wrings it from my heart."
"Let the thieves fall out, then. Maybe the innocent will profit by it."
"Innocent!" he repeated, bitterly discounting the word. "You plot to sell your country for a price"
"Of liberty to all men," she said.
"Liberty! These sweat-sour peones would get drunk on liberty; they would cut all our throats in a week."
"They would pay as they have been paid. It is the nature of man."
"And if you do not sign, Miss," Don Abrahan struck the table with the folded deed to solemnize his words, "by the sacred blood, you will be shot, as Toberman was shot!"
"I'll never sign it, Don Abrahan."
"Consider it in the night, when the terror of death comes to a man in its blackest form," he counseled. "I will give you until morning. Beyond that I cannot protect you; the matter will have passed out of my hands. Verdugo is threatening. He is a wolf; there is no mercy in his breast. He has smelled your gold, and it is like blood to a lion."
"You are all base, all cowards," she said, rising with her denunciation. "Don Abrahan Garvanza, when the United States soldiers step ashore from their ships you will meet men, such men as you heard this morning denounce you, challenge and defy you, in his bonds. You will feel this country tip toward the sea beneath their weight. Shoot me if your greed demands the sacrifice, but consider how you will answer the United States soldiers when they come marching to your door."
Helena left him. Don Abrahan, his hands cold in something that was not all rage, stood gaunt and hollow, his brown clothing loose upon his limbs, looking hard at the door through which she passed.