The Road to Monterey/Chapter 8
DONA CARLOTA, cousin of Don Abrahan, kept her candle burning late that night. She drew the drapery of her chamber window aside to show that the house was awake, herself seated discreetly out of sight of any passing eye. With crochet needle and fine silk thread she worked upon the mantilla that had employed her fingers many months, and would so employ them until the ripening of grapes.
There was a weight of trouble upon the breast of Doña Carlota that night, a haven broad enough to harbor many troubles, yet in which few had come to anchor in her placid years. She was as round and fat as an old hen pigeon, small in the face, her chin merged into her neck, her black hair pulled rigorously back from her shallow forehead in what seemed an attempt to give sternness to a countenance that had no more severity in it than a cake. Even trouble could do no more than give it a comical little look of appeal.
Between love and duty Doña Carlota had suffered these two days. At the last she had yielded to duty, as she would have deferred to religion, and the thing was done. Now she waited as it drew on toward midnight, listening for the sound of horses coming from the south. When she felt a flood of drowsiness coming over her, threatening to smother her like a clam on the beach, she fumbled beneath the half-finished mantilla for her rosary, moving her lips in a Hail Mary. In that manner of fending off sleep Doña Carlota felt that she had built a solid wall of Hail Marys around that house which harm could not surmount even with a dragon's wings. Yet she had quakings and doubts; she suffered tremors of cold fears.
At ten minutes before midnight, Doña Carlota believed she had expected too much of Don Abrahan; he would not come that night. At five minutes past the hour, as she stood with hand on the drawn drapery to let it fall and shut the candlelight from the road, a dog barked before an Indian shepherd's hut. His alarm was taken up, as a cock's crow goes onward over the land from straining throat to throat, from the edge of the world in the west to the very shores of dawn. Men came riding into the patio. Don Abrahan was at the door.
Doña Carlota hastened to open to the magistrate's command, even to the command of his presence, before his hand was lifted to the panel.
"So you have come," she said. "May Jesus protect us all! Enter, Don Abrahan."
"There is no cause for your perturbation, my good cousin,' Don Abrahan said, laughing at her magnification of a thing that he considered only commonplace, troublesome, small. "A runaway peon is not a thing to disturb your tranquillity."
"But the anger of Helena! She will blast us with the passion that has come to her from that terrible captain. When she knows that I sent for you"
"Peace, peace, Doña Carlota. Who is going to tell her, but yourself?"
"She is so shrewd, she can see through a wall, Don Abrahan."
Don Abrahan laughed again, seeming in pleasant humor for one who had ridden so far from his bed. He pinched Doña Carlota's cheek, finding no trouble to get his fingers full.
"A wall is another thing," he said. Doña Carlota was not quick at a jest. She did not understand his mirth.
Roberto entered, a pistol at his belt; Simon, the teamster, stood in the beam of Doña Carlota's candle outside the door.
"Where is the Yankee dog?" Roberto demanded, harsh, disrespectful, his hat insolently on his head.
"Gently," Don Abrahan cautioned; "not so loud. Lead us to the room where he is hidden—the house is guarded at every door; he cannot escape."
"The house, the room?" Doña Carlota gasped in scandalized amazement. "Do you believe, Don Abrahan, that my niece would conceal a man in her house? Jesus save"
"Where, then?" Roberto demanded.
"I do not know, Don Roberto; but somewhere on the ranch. The Yankee mayordomo can tell you that."
"A tree would tell as much!" Don Abrahan said. "Call Helena."
"She has heard; she is coming. There is her candle in the hall!" Doña Carlota pressed her elbows to her sides, drew her shoulders as if trying to shrink upon herself.
Helena appeared, lifting her candle high to peer beneath it at the intruders upon her midnight peace. The flaring bottom of the candlestick threw a shadow on her face, only her hair coming into the light. She was draped in a long, dark, voluminous cloak, her arms bare in its wide sleeves, the white frill of her nightdress peeping at her throat out of its austere envelopment.
"It is a late hour for a visit, Don Abrahan, Roberto," she said, looking from one to the other in questioning surprise. "I heard horsemen in my patio. What does it mean?"
"We have come to you for a man who has run away from a debt, like a thief," Don Abrahan replied. "Your mayordomo is hiding him on your ranch, I have been told. It is to your authority I appeal, as a magistrate of the law, Helena, to compel the delivery of this fugitive alien into our hands."
"My mayordomo is only obeying my orders," Helena replied.
She placed her candle on the deep window-sill, gathering her cloak closer about her neck, standing so, clasping the mantle delicately, its loose sleeve slipping down to the bend of her arm.
"You are humane, but mistaken," Don Abrahan chided her gently. "This man is a ruffianly sailor who ran away from his ship; he has committed a murderous assault on my son. He is entirely unworthy of your protection and tender sympathy."
"I am sorry that it was necessary for Roberto to suffer at his hands," she said, yet withholding from Roberto even the sympathy of her glance. "I have talked with the young sailor, Mr. Henderson. He is a gentleman; he does not deserve the hard usage you have given him, any more than he does the hard name, Don Abrahan. I intended to go down and see you about his case tomorrow."
"Then I rejoice that I have spared you so much fatigue," Don Abrahan said, inclining his thin body in graceful obeisance, sombrero in his hand.
"I am sure Mr. Henderson has repaid you, many times over, all that he ever owed you legally," Helena said. "He has told me that he came into your service in February; it is now July. You cannot rate the services of an American with those of an ignorant peon, Don Abrahan. Be generous; call it paid."
"What he owes me is another matter," Roberto said.
He had found the grace to remove his hat on Helena's appearance; in his fierce show of hungry vengeance now he let it fall, the hand that had held it clenched, the other on his pistol.
Helena surveyed him in this dramatic pose with cool curiosity, running her eyes over him as if searching the cause of his animosity against a man whom he had degraded to a servile station and now pursued in vindictive hate.
"Although I might forgive his debt as you propose, under such kindly argument by his lovely advocate, that would not free him of his assault upon my son. But you are mistaken in the matter of his debt to me; the man has lied."
"He cannot escape," Roberto said fiercely, bending toward her as he spoke, his face flushed, his eyes drawn small.
"It is impossible for him to reach the north and join the Americans who plot against our country there," Don Abrahan declared. "The road is guarded well; he cannot pass."
"I doubt if he thinks of escaping—to the north, or anywhere, at present, Don Abrahan. A man who has done no wrong has nothing to fear."
"There is no reason in the heart of youth—only fire and sympathy," Don Abrahan said. "Yankee men of this common type are brutes. This one I saw strike his captain down with a broken oar, like asavage. What weapon he held when he assaulted my son we do not know, but the bruise of it is still to be seen on his face. No, the man cannot be permitted to go free and unpunished. The safety of the community demands his correction."
"He told me he struck Roberto with his hand, and no weapon," Helena said, indignant over the charge, unwise in her revelation, as she realized almost immediately.
"So you have been alone with him again, cheek by cheek!" Roberto accused, with insolence malevolent and threatening.
"Silence!" Don Abrahan commanded, turning a stern face upon his son.
"I was not alone with him; John Toberman was present."
"What cruelty to say she was alone with a man!" said Doña Carlota. "The four angels who guard her chamber are not more innocent, Don Roberto."
"Then if you will call Toberman and order him to lead us to the sailor's hiding-place," Don Abrahan suggested, yet with the imperative inflection of a command.
"I heard him among your men; he is not one to sleep when an invasion like this is going on. Call at the door, or send Simon around to the patio."
John Toberman, mayordomo of the ranch, appeared at the front door presently with Simon, who had bounded away at Don Abrahan's nod to find him. He came into the light of Doña Carlota's candle, which she still held in her hand, its flame on a level with her stubby nose. He was bareheaded, his pistols were belted around him, his shirt was open on his grizzled neck. He came into the house without ceremony, no show of deference, and little of respect, in his bearing toward Don Abrahan and his son.
Toberman was a broad-shouldered, lean Yankee, once mate of the ship that Captain Sprague had commanded. He was sixty years of age or more, his heavy, bushy hair of a pepper-and-salt gray, his bearded face, dark as a Mexican's, keen and alert. He stood in the door, severe, questioning, a cloud of displeasure on his face.
"What does this clatter around here at this time of the night mean, Garvanza?" he demanded, fixing the magistrate with searching eyes.
"In the name of the law, to demand a fugitive who is to be judged for his crimes," Don Abrahan replied.
"You want that young man Henderson, do you? Well, if you think you're goin' to drag him back to work for you till the United States army marches in here and sets the peones free, you're mistaken. If you want to try him for slappin' your son's jaw, set the date and I'll guarantee he'll be on hand."
"There is more than you understand," Don Abrahan said coldly. "You are a Mexican citizen; it is treason for you to talk of an American army taking possession of this country. Bear that in mind when you open your mouth hastily in the future, Toberman."
Toberman seemed to grow two inches as he drew himself up, his chest swelling with no knowing what defiance. Helena lifted her hand, slightly, seeming to speak to him with her eyes. The blast of words that might have knocked Don Abrahan off his feet, and haled Toberman into court for trial on a serious charge, was checked. Toberman contented himself with adjusting his hands on his hips, in a pose that was at once expressive of defiance and disdain, and standing so in silence.
"Where is the fugitive hiding?" Don Abrahan demanded.
"You're free to go and find out," said Toberman.
"The time has come to teach these Yankees who are masters of this country," Roberto said, turning to his father in fury. "Why will you temporize with them—permit them to throw insult and defiance in your face? Give me permission and I will find a way to make this man answer, and answer with respect."
"Peace!" Don Abrahan commanded, yet with more admiration than severity. "There is a way; in due time it will be seen. Toberman, the iron hand of the law is over you; it must not, it shall not be defied. I will give you until midday tomorrow to produce this fugitive. Go about the business immediately."
"Don Abrahan, you have no right to come into my house with such commands!" Helena protested.
"Garvanza, ever since the new governor has been established in the pueblo, with the thieves and off-scourings of the Mexican prisons in his military force, you've swelled up like a toad," Toberman said. He moved forward a step as he spoke, his hand lifted, pointed finger driving his words into the magistrate's face. "I'm not taking orders from the governor, I'm not taking orders from you. I get my orders from this little lady right here, and from nobody else."
Toberman glared around as he pronounced this defiance of the constituted authorities, hands back again on his hips in convenient reach of his pistols, a fearless man who had passed through many conflicts, to whom the imminence of another was nothing but an incident in his day.
"Don Abrahan, I will pay you what this fugitive owes you, according to your own reckoning of it," Helena offered, drawing a little closer to the magistrate, closing the little group in the wide, lowwalled hall. It seemed as if defiance and appeal pressed upon Don Abrahan in the same breath.
"It cannot be permitted," Don Abrahan replied.
He retreated a step from her advance, from her white arms outstretched in supplication for permission to do this humane service.
"He is a stranger, far from home, without money, without friends," she pleaded. "I will pay it in his name—seven times the amount, Don Abrahan, if you demand it."
"It cannot be adjusted in this manner," Don Abrahan refused. "Prepare quarters in this house for me and my son, "he directed, turning gruffly to Doña Carlota.
Doña Carlota started, her growing nervousness reaching its climax in the order, given with such affront to the hospitality of that house. She shifted the position of her candle to look past it at Helena, plainly asking instructions from one whose authority she held in greater fear than Don Abrahan's wrath.
"You will know where to accommodate them," Helena said coldly. "There will be nothing more tonight, John," to Toberman, in kindness that had no taint of patronage.
Toberman left the house the way he had entered, Don Abrahan's order in little prospect of being carried out, that was plain. Doña Carlota had hastened down the hall to open the guest rooms; Don Abrahan turned to the door, where he leaned out peering into the dark, as if watching Toberman. He summoned Simon in low voice, and stood there for some time talking with his teamster in hurried manner, Simon answering with a short word here and there, interspersed in hasty eagerness.
"So you would buy a lover!" Roberto said, his breath audible in his nostrils as he leaned to whisper the insult in Helena's ear.
Helena drew away from him, her cloak gathered close, afraid of him for the fierce cruelty of his eyes. Roberto reached quickly, roughly grasping her wrist where her hand held the mantle at her throat.
"There is a dagger for a heart so false!" he said.
Don Abrahan turned from the door as Roberto flung her hand away with such gesture of contempt, such complete abandonment, that the magistrate stood stiffly, his limbs checked in their function by his great amazement.
"This is not well," he said sternly.
"False!" Helena repeated in scorn. "Who is it that has mooned and sighed under windows, and caught flowers thrown by coquettes—and worse? What have I heard from the capital of the doings of Don Roberto that would turn my heart to him or make him dear? Roberto, if there ever was any obligation to you on my part, I have been absolved from it long ago."
"You were betrothed ta me—it was a holy compact," Roberto said.
His voice shook with sickness of the shame he believed had been put upon him; he stood clenching his hands and scowling, ready, it seemed, to begin the chastisement that he had threatened.
"This is folly," Don Abrahan said, attempting to soothe their young passion with the unction of his steady word. "All the world knows there was a betrothal between you two, years ago."
"It wasn't of my making," Helena reminded him, bitterly accusing in the recollection of that bargain and conveyance, after the country's custom, "What you and my father arranged between you when I was a child cannot bind me now, Don Abrahan. I repudiate it; I throw it in your face!"
"It cannot be done so lightly," Don Abrahan said, thinking of the lands and herds, and the gold that the Yankee captain had plucked out of the air like a magician, all now in the hands of this girl, all now about to take wings and fly out of his family's reach forever. "It cannot be done so easily, Helena. There is much to consider before pulling down shame upon my house, disgrace upon your own."
"Disgrace! And she would buy a lover for a price!" Roberto groaned, burning already in the fire of humiliation.
"It is only the—the—disgraceful sort you know so well, Roberto, who have love to sell for a price," she said. "Don Abrahan, I leave you to your repose."
"Youth is too quick," said Don Abrahan regretfully, as Helena disappeared down the dark hall, leaving her candle on the window-sill to light them to such repose as the night's upheaval had left them. "Tomorrow you will repair the damage with soft words."
"Tomorrow," said Roberto portentously, "it will be another thing. I am no longer a boy. I have grown the teeth of a man this night; I can bite."