The Road to Monterey/Chapter 25
"I WILL not go and leave you among savages," Doña Carlota declared.
"Your protection is neither necessary nor desired, Doña Carlota," Helena informed her, with cold, unfriendly front.
"I know the formalities, no matter for your unruly independence, young lady. I will remain. My despised protection may be something to cling to like a bird in a gale before this day is done."
"Your protection, Doña Carlota! Your memory is short. It was you that betrayed me to savages, it was your treason that sent me to what would have been my death but for the strong arms of valiant gentlemen. You are more of a savage than the meanest here, Doña Carlota."
"Doña Carlota, Doña Carlota!" the fat little lady repeated, with contemptuous mimicry, her face flaming at the affront. "Have you forgotten my relationship, do you no longer remember your duty to your elders—well, if I am not so much older, either!"
"The door opens to your hand, Doña Carlota; it will be well to go."
"Go? I shall not go until Don Abrahan commands you to the house again, to your room. Then let us see them discharge their cannon into the house, let us see!"
"Don Abrahan is to be hung for the murder of John Toberman before the sun goes down. Now, Doña Carlota, return to your prayers."
Helena opened the door as she spoke, extending her hand in expressive invitation to be gone.
"They will not dare touch Don Abrahan!" Doña Carlota said, flaming in a fresh sweep of anger, rising with such speed as was her best from the chair where she had sat in defiance. "For every drop of his blood"
"There is no blood when they hang a man, Doña Carlota. You shall see."
"I am going directly to Don Abrahan to tell him of this threatened indignity to his person. This moment I am going."
"Pass close along the wall, Doña Carlota, and you will hear him groan," Helena said. If there was something of malicious satisfaction, of un-tempered cruelty, in her voice, in the triumphant brightness of her eyes, it was only her Castilian blood speaking, as it will assert itself on occasion unfailingly as a congenital taint.
"If these savages have laid a hand on him"
"Is it possible you have not heard, Doña Carlota? He is in his own prison, where"
"In prison! I will send at once to General Garvanza"
"He has been commanded already to attend the American general, Doña Carlota."
"American general! peon that he is, poor villain!"
"If he knew that you betrayed him, that it was your treacherous tongue that sent me out to die, he would hang you beside Don Abrahan. Keep quiet, Doña Carlota, and go."
Doña Carlota's anger left her with a draining away of blood from her hot cheeks. She seemed to sink and collapse, like some inflated toy; her anger had distended her to such importance and outstanding feather. Her voice was weak when she spoke; her fat eyes were wide with fright.
"But, my most dear little dove," she protested, in wheedling, ingratiating tone, "Don Roberto did not intend the soldiers to fire. Did you not know? Oh, never such a heartless thought in his breast. It was only to frighten you out of further plotting with the base Yankees—that was his reason, my desired."
"If you had stood where I stood, Doña Carlota, you would have known it was a lie."
"Don't tell the American general, my beautiful! I am a weak old woman; I am a thing too despicable for his noble vengeance. Let me pass to my prayers, let me pass to my prayers!"
"The door is open, Doña Carlota."
"But the cannon, the terrible cannon! It points to the house, Helena. If they fire it I shall be killed."
"That is true; that is as they intend. Perhaps you'd better ask Don Gabriel to lock you up in the cell with Don Abrahan. You can exchange confidences there, Doña Carlota."
"I—but, Helena, in prison there are rats!"
"Yes, and there is remorse, and there is penitence, three things that you could suffer with profit to your body and soul, Doña Carlota."
"Ah, you call me only Doña Carlota; you forget the tender tie of blood. But you jest, Helena; you do not mean for me to seek a safe place in prison. There must be another place—here, here with you, my little Helena—Iet me remain."
"It is impossible, Doña Carlota."
Helena was unmoved by the plea of blood, by the quaking cowardice of the weak creature who had betrayed her.
"There is no shelter; they will tear holes in the house with the cannon," Doña Carlota moaned.
"Try the houses of the poor; they are safe from the cannon," Helena suggested. "If there is one that remembers a kindness at your hands, there you will find a friend."
Doña Carlota stood looking into her niece's face with appealing eyes. She saw only denial there, the unforgiving coldness of distrust. The fear that Helena would disclose her treachery to Gabriel Henderson grew in her like the infection of a foul disease. As the small in kindness, the narrow in benevolence, the niggard in generosity invariably judge, she measured Helena's thoughts by her own, unable to see that her punishment lay only in the young woman's distrust and denial of her.
"I am afraid, I am afraid!" Doña Carlota shuddered, turning back again from the open door.
"You were a member of Don Abrahan's household many years while I was away in the convent school," Helena reminded her. "Think, Doña Carlota; there must be somebody who owes you for a kind word or deed who will repay you now."
"Oh, I fear to leave your protection."
"The general is coming this way, he is coming here, Doña Carlota. You must go; he has eyes like the magic crystal that reveals the secrets of the heart."
"There was Cecilia, if she would remember," Doña Carlota said, but doubtfully, in trepidation, one foot toward the door.
"She has a good memory. There is her house, the last one, with the goat pen under the window. Here—draw your mantilla close around your face—the general may not know you. My cloak—here, cover your dress—and be quick, or I will not answer for you."
Helena watched her from the door as she hurried away to seek sanctuary against no other danger than her own conscience and fear. Weak sycophant that she was, treacherous friend that she had been, Helena felt the humor, rather more keenly than the punishment, that attended Doña Carlota's downfall. She could not restrain a smile as she watched the pudgy figure waddling off like a Yiddish mama going from market with a goose under her arm.
Yet Helena was implacable in her determination that Doña Carlota should suffer to her full capability for the babbling that had brought this sudden cloud of tragedy into her own life. John Toberman, good friend, honest man, competent adviser, was dead as a direct result of Doña Carlota's great eagerness to win favor with Don Abrahan.
Doña Carlota was dependent on the charitable mercy of her people; she had no estate of her own. She had looked forward to a sunny room in Don Abrahan's patio for her age, when she had sent him word that her niece was hiding the American sailor on her ranch, from which betrayal all this outspreading trouble had grown.
Let her go now to the poor, and gather the harvest of her kind deeds. It would be a scant one, Helena knew. Even Doña Carlota could not recall one act out of all her years that was bearing interest to her credit among the poor.
So Doña Carlota went on to the house of Cecilia, her legs bending under her load of flesh and fright like candles in the summer heat.
Cecilia stood before her door, watching the activities in the courtyard, or as much as she could see of them, with eager eyes. Cecilia's house stood well away from the patron's mansion, as has been said, on account of the strong flavor of the goat pens, especially in rainy weather. She was responsible to the patron for the goats, although the labor of ranging them out to graze had come down to the nimbler feet of her daughter Liseta. It was all one to Don Abrahan, who worked on payment of the never-ending, and never-to-be-ended, family debt.
Cecilia had a stiff knee from a fall over a cliff in the early darkness of a winter day when Liseta was nine years old. Since that time Liseta had gone with the goats alone, becoming notable in her calling from San Gabriel to the sea. Yet there was no offer from the young men to marry Liseta, on account of her mother's debt to the patron, for many of them had hope that they might at length come clear of their own inherited obligations to Don Abrahan and walk away to shape their lives in other places.
This failure of Liseta to marry, although she was little more than a child in years, had added to the bitterness of Cecilia's heart and the sharpness of her tongue. When she could no longer go with the goats to the hills in winter and early spring, to the wide valley in summer, on account of her stiff knee, Don Abrahan had provided her a spinningwheel and set one of the ancient women who knew the art to teach her.
Cecilia never had become deft in spinning, due to her natural stubbornness and determination not to make herself over into a new value to her tyrannous patron in the days when a woman ought to take the sun in peace outside her door, with knees drawn up, eyes half closed upon her dreams. Owing to this, Don Abrahan declared her debt to him was growing instead of diminishing. That being so, Cecilia reasoned, there was no sense in working desperately against a thing that would have no end.
Cecilia was one of the most ardent secret champions of the Americans, since it was said that every person's debt would be forgiven when they came. She stood now at her door, hands idle from her task, waiting for somebody to come from the scene of activities in the courtyard and give her the latest news. Don Abrahan had been locked in his own prison, she knew. She felt now that she was free; defiance sat on her lips, gleamed in her eyes. Poor Liseta, who had watched in hope from day to day for the Americans to come marching from Monterey, had missed this great development at her own door, out with the goats since the first break of dawn.
Now who was this coming down the hill, with the head of a woman and the body of a barrel? There was nobody on that ranch, man or woman, living under the pressure of Don Abrahan's hand, who had the leisure or the substance to accumulate so much fat.
Cecilia's curiosity impelled her forward a little to meet this mystery on the way.
"I am looking for Cecilia," Doña Carlota panted, weak between terror and the labor of walking down the hill.
"Is it possible, lady?" Cecilia asked, rude mockery in her words.
She saw that Doña Carlota had not recognized her, and she was insolent in the strength of the new estate which she believed had fallen to her, making her equal to the best.
"They said she lived down here where the goats are kept. Do you know—can you tell me?"
"Just there, but she is not at home. What do you want with Cecilia? She is not accustomed to such visitors."
"Her door is open; I'll go in and wait," Doña Carlota said, passing on.
"I am taking care of her house, woman," Cecilia spoke with rude familiarity; "you can tell me what you want, as well as Cecilia herself."
"Come in, then," said Doña Carlota, entering without formality, unable even in her imagined peril to understand that a trespass could be imposed upon the poor. "Close the door—so. Now, run for Cecilia; tell her to come to me at once."
"She will come soon—the other chair, the other chair! that one was not made to hold a horse. What do you want, Doña Carlota, coming to this house?"
"You know me? But I do not remember"
"No. How should you remember? Well, what do you want?"
"I am in deadly peril; the American general threatens to hang me to a tree! Go, good thing, and call Cecilia."
"What could Cecilia do to stop him? How do you know she would try?"
"Cecilia loves me dearly, old woman—we were girls together, Cecilia and I. Do you think she will come soon?"
"She is here now, Doña Carlota. I am Cecilia."
"You Cecilia? Yes, but forgive my fright; I did not know you at the first word. But now, but now!"
"No wonder you did not know me, fat, monstrous animal!"
Cecilia, standing before her visitor, bent to bring her face near. She was rude, insulting, triumphant in her belief that the day of liberty had arrived.
"But now, dear little Cecilia, but now," Doña Carlota whimpered, abasing herself in her cowardly, foolish, unsubstantial heart before this poor creature whom she had, but a moment ago, patronized a little openly, and secretly despised in her superiority.
"No, you did not know me, Doña Carlota, because work has made me old, and a hard master has made me lame; because hunger and tears have scratched my face, and sorrow has made me gray. No, you did not know me, Doña Carlota. All the years that you lived here in Don Abrahan's house you did not have a word of remembrance of the days when we played together, little girls, when I was too small to work and you were too young to be fat."
"I do remember, dear Cecilia."
"And so do I remember. You were a stingy, greedy, selfish little pig, just a little picture of the big sow you have grown to be. When were you kind tome? When did you speak to Don Abrahan to spare my Liseta her long days on the hills with the goats?"
"Ah, but you will hide me from the savage Americans, good Cecilia—I will give you my earrings—here, here—good little Cecilia!"
"There were times when I stood by the road in the rain, and you passed in the carriage with no recollection of other years. When my Man'el died—and he was my husband; we were married by the priest—I did not feel your hand on my sad head. Now, when you need a friend, oh what a tender heart!"
"They are pointing the cannon toward the mansion, ready to fire. I cannot hide there, I cannot hide there! But here, pretty Cecilia"
"You betrayed Don Gabriel; your false tongue killed John Toberman, who never kept man or woman in slavery for a debt. It was your fat tongue, licking lies, that sent that white dove Helena to stand in the plaza before the soldiers' guns. Let the rope be a strong one that Don Gabriel puts around your neck!"
Doña Carlota forgot her station, her dignity. She precipitated herself to her knees, debasing hidalgo blood as it never had been humbled before, lifting appealing hands to the half-Indian peon woman, who drew back from her in disdain.
"Here are the rings from my fingers, the chain from my neck, my rosary—it has pearls"
"Keep it for your last prayer," Cecilia said, repelling her with hand outspread.
"There is a mantilla half made, of the finest"
"It would not make my cheeks round again, Carlota, nor cure my stiff leg. Ask them to cover your face with it when you are dead. I cannot hide you here. You must go."
"I have no more to offer you—I am poor," said Doña Carlota in despair.
"I do not hide people who betray the noble and the kind. You must leave my house this moment, Doña Carlota."
"There is no place under heaven that will hide me from them!" Doña Carlota said, her tongue stiff with terror.
"Go to the one you have wronged deepest," Cecilia counseled, laying her hand with something of tenderness, something of pity, on Doña Carlota's shoulder.
"She drove me from her!" Doña Carlota groaned.
"Go back in penitence, poor fool! The Americans do not fight women; Don Gabriel will not hang you."
Doña Carlota climbed the hill slowly, shame and contrition in her foolish, shallow mind, where fear had flooded but a little while before. Her fat face was drenched with tears, which came as easily to her as sweat on a summer day, when she appeared before Helena's door.
"You are the one I have wronged deepest. Cecilia sent me," she said.
Gabriel Henderson's straw pallet still lay in the harness-room behind Don Felipe's office. There Helena composed the weeping creature, who felt true penitence for the first time in her selfish life.