The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 22
NEXT to the trying-vats stood the carpenter's house, which was the last one in the row facing on the arcade; beyond the vats was the tallow-tank, sunk deep into the ground, its top showing like a sunken turret, as has been said. Then there came a corner of the vineyard which grew up to the church-side and spread away to the boundary of the Indian village, where it came against the adobe wall that stood between.
The vines of this vineyard were not trained on trellises, but grew in luxuriant clumps from the stumps of the grape, cut back year after year, in the old-world fashion which came to California with the padres. Since the day that Cristóbal had found covert among these vines to strike down Captain del Valle, they had dropped their leaves, save for a tenacious cluster here and there, in the quick way of yellowing and dropping that a grape leaf has, the world over. It is as if the vines, exhausted by the labor of bringing their juicy burden of fruit to maturity, lose all their sap in a day, unfeeling of the leaves no longer needed to shield the vinous globules from the sun.
As the wind moved through the vineyard this night the leaves took wing like flocks of migrating birds, sometimes rising to little heights above the stems that bore them, more frequently drifting in a shower of slow-floating, listless sails, to settle with soft sighing upon their crisp-dry companions with melancholy resignation to this thankless severance after a long and faithful service.
There was more than the whisper of falling grape leaves in the vineyard; more than the low piping of the wind among bare branches, soft as the lutestrings of the night. There was the sound of many feet in soft Indian shoes, and the sound of feet unshod; and the low murmur of voices held in awe, where the people came from the village, old and young, to wait for the passing of the beautiful white lady, and uphold her suffering body on the flood of their sympathetic prayers.
For Don Juan, friend of the oppressed, was blind, and this one was pleading with the Holy Virgin to give him back his sight. She would pass that way tonight, humbly walking on her bare knees from the door of Don Geronimo's house where she lived, to the altar of the church, hoping to gain through her suffering and humility the favor of Our Blessed Señora. Four of the little girls who learned their lessons and the use of the needle under her gentle hand, were to walk beside her, clothed all in white, carrying candles to light her agonizing way. There was no secret hiding her deed or its purpose; any person who had the heart to bear her suffering, as the rough tiles cut her tender flesh, was free to come. So they came and waited for her to pass, in reverence, in tender sympathy.
That was to be the crowning of her long petition, the culmination of her sacrifice, for the good Don Juan. All hoped that Our Lady would bend low and see.
This low-whispering, sympathetic gathering extended along the open part of the arcade, where the moonlight fell through its airy, rhythmic arches, reproducing them in sharp outline of shadow on the pavement tiles. Well to the front the young women waited, many of them sitting on the pavement edge, their bright garments like gay blossoms along the way.
These were of the third generation since the Indians embraced the Christian faith. In all essentials except blood they were Spanish, and some of them, indeed, were even Spanish in blood, the children of soldiers and other exiles in California who had married Indian wives. Their common language was Spanish, their thoughts were Spanish, molded from infancy by the mission fathers. Two of these girls sat a little apart, close by the pedestal of an arch, as near to Don Geronimo's door as they could draw, as if some dearer bond of sympathy, some closer understanding, gave them the right to be the first to strew their prayers and sighs and heart-deep wishes like sweet flowers in Gertrudis Sinova's path.
"If I could do as much for poor Cristóbal!" sighed one.
"Doña Magdalena says he is safe, far away from San Fernando and the wicked soldiers," her companion said, as if in reminder of something lately discussed.
"But he is not here, he never can return. Gertrudis has Don Juan, even blind, as I would have Cristóbal if I could, both blind and deaf. I'd only ask that he could still use his tongue to tell me he loved me."
"I would want a man who could see my pretty ribbons, Inez. I think a blind man would be very tiresome in a little while."
"It is sinful to say that, Maria. Do you believe Gertrudis thinks this of Don Juan?"
"But she would rather have him with eyes to see her pretty face."
"Any girl would, of course. But between having a blind lover and a lover whose hand you never shall touch again—that is the thing, Maria. When I am old, I must sit in the sun beside the wall alone."
"Maybe another one will come in Cristóbal's place, perhaps a man from Don Juan's country."
"Why should they come here to be killed, as the soldiers want to kill Don Juan? But if one came, he could go back again; I wouldn't look at him."
"Maybe one from Mexico, then. Who knows?"
"It would not be Cristóbal, Maria. No, I am going to wait. When the cruel soldiers are gone from California, as everybody hopes to see them driven out some happy day, Cristóbal will come home, if he does not die of a lonely heart in that distant land of strangers."
"There is Padre Mateo, lighting the governor to his room—see—at the window there! Ah! he is closing the shutters, I got only a glimpse of his beard."
"When he goes in the morning to see the mill that Don Juan made you'll get a sight of him, for all the good it will do you. I wouldn't walk the length of the church to see him."
"If you would ask him," Maria spoke eagerly, animated by the sudden thought, "he might give Cristóbal a pardon. Who knows?"
"He'd order the soldiers to flog me," Inez replied, bitter beyond her years under the burden of her sorrow. "There is no pardon for an Indian who lifts his hand against the oppressor of his people. There is Doña Magdalena in her door to see if they are putting out their candles—she is looking at the governor's window. Gertrudis does not want him to see her, she has no faith in his sympathy."
"I hope my little sister will hold her candle straight," said Maria, projecting ahead for a little bit of something to worry over.
"The flame will point to heaven, no matter what way it leans," Inez said.
"There, Doña Magdalena goes in and shuts the door. She is a slow woman about some things—if she is much longer getting Gertrudis ready my little sister will go to sleep. How cold the pavement is!" she shuddered, her little brown hand spread on the tiles.
"Not so very cold," Inez denied, trying it with her palm. "It wouldn't be any softer under her bare knees if it was warm."
"The ground is warmer, and softer," said Maria, whose troubles were few and light. "I think I'd walk in the cart-track if I were in dear Gertrudis' place."
"That would be a slight to Our Señora, Maria, trying to win her favor by the easiest way. If you were doing it for someone you held dear you would go over the stones."
"Yes, over sharp stones, or hot ones, or cold ones. I would go where lions waited to tear me, as they went in the days of the martyrs—or I think I'd do it, dear Inez. I never have loved anybody yet, I am not quite sure."
"She is coming!" Inez whispered.
The girls stood, drawing into the shadow with instinctive nicety of regard, to spare Gertrudis the bold evidence, at least, of the curious interest that drew them to the vineyard edge at that late hour.
Gertrudis came alone into Don Geronimo's door, from which no gleam of light fell from within the house. There were two steps from the threshold to the pavement; on the upper one of these Gertrudis paused, her hand on the door-jamb, a bare foot put out in seeming hesitant exploration, as one advances into untried water whose icy chill is feared.
The night was clear, it being that season of the year when clouds have been so long absent from the skies as to be unreckoned in the affairs of men. The stars seemed drawn near to earth, spreading and contracting in their bright scintillation as if they panted at the barrier of space that held them back; Polaris was red close down upon the hills. Even a shred of moon is bright beyond the brightness of other moons in those serene autumn nights of California. This night the cold sphere seemed swollen with a passion of light. Gertrudis stood revealed in the shadow of Don Geronimo's wall.
She was dressed in white, like a bride. Her skirts, turned up above her knees as if she lifted them at a brookside, revealing her gleaming limbs, white as the sun-bleached linen of her spotless garb. She came with sudden resolution down the steps and stood on the pavement, assured by the silence around her, although she could see the Indians grouped along the arcade at the margin of the vineyard. There was something in their attitude of silent, sympathetic waiting that was like a sustaining hand.
Don Geronimo's house stood almost in the center of the arcade, there being something less than a hundred yards between his steps and the great door of the church. Ahead of Gertrudis the shadowy arcade stretched away broken by loops of moonlight; on one hand was the cart-track, white with dust; on the other, a little way ahead, the vineyard. In the courtyard behind her the water of the fountain could be heard plashing as it overflowed the rim of its great mossy bowl, which stood like a goblet among water hyacinths and lilies.
The little candle-bearers appeared suddenly in the door, released with their blazing tapers from the room where Doña Magdalena had held them in readiness. Gertrudis dropped to her knees; the little girls ranged beside her, two a pace or two ahead, two a distance behind. They were dressed in white; their feet were bare. White ribbons were bound around their foreheads and smooth black hair.
Gertrudis remained a little while as she had knelt, her head bowed. Along the edge of the vineyard her humble friends were strewing the rose-leaves of their ardent prayers in the way her knees, bared to this act of devotional appeal, must pass.
A little sigh sounded, a faint, soft gasp, from the breasts of those dark, grave watchers when Gertrudis lifted her face, her head thrown back a little as if she looked into heaven, and began her painful march. Her fair hair was drawn back smoothly, every joyous ripple of it pressed down and bound by the white ribbon that circled her forehead. It was a broad ribbon, worn after the fashion of the Indian girls on fiesta days. In the center of it, just between Gertrudis' eyes, there was a silver star.
Doña Magdalena closed her door without a sound. She came and stood in the center of the arcade like a sentinel, seeming to say that none was to follow the slow little procession, no matter how hard sympathy might urge. Gertrudis passed on, clasped hands pressed to her breast in attitude of appeal, her face white and holy, lifted as if to keep her eyes from calculation of what distance lay between her and the end of that painful journey.
"She sees nothing of this earth!" Inez whispered as she passed.
"She does not shrink, she puts her dear soft knees down as if they fell on cushions. But look! every step—oh, every step!"
The tiles of the pavement were worn down by the stream of feet that ran over them unceasingly. But there were little bits of granite, set into them, sharpangled and enduring; pebbles of harder substance than the red-baked soil. These stood above the worn surfaces, as if they had been sown by the hands of a calculative torturer, to tear this suppliant's tender flesh. With each step the candles of the two little girls who came behind her revealed dark spots on the chafed red tiles.
They were kneeling along the edge of the vineyard as Gertrudis passed, except here and there one whose curiosity was stronger than his piety, who stood among the vines. The murmur of low-breathed prayers rose softly; at least half the village was there, moved to compassion by this spectacle of sacrifice.
Gertrudis wavered only once in this tortuous march. She had passed more than half the distance when it seemed that the pain of her bleeding knees was more than she could bear. She stopped, swaying as if to fall. The two girls who walked ahead of her continued on, unaware of the break in the suppliant's slow march. Wrung by an agony that could not remain voiceless, Gertrudis bowed her head and cried, a sharp sob breaking the struggling compression of her brave lips, pressed hard to hold it back.
There was such anguish in the cry, such piteotis appeal, that it echoed from the hearts of those who heard it. The sound of this sympathetic weeping, bursting here and there into an uncontrollable sharp wail, frightened the candle-bearers until it seemed for a moment that they would run away screaming the terror that stared out of their wild little eyes. Gertrudis spoke softly to them, her own suffering submerged in the presence of their fear. The two leaders came back; the little procession moved on.
Doña Magdalena had arranged Gertrudis' dress in a way that it modestly covered her bared limbs when she knelt, and all but trailed over her feet. There were splashes of blood-stains on the white cloth now; on the tiles the dark spots grew broader, with a trail of trickling drops between. Gertrudis passed on resolutely, her face lifted again in the rapt fixity of her appeal. These who had the heart to look at her face as she passed the church corner and drew near the door, said it was beautifully serene. For in the measure of her suffering, founded on the profundity of her faith, she expected to be rewarded at her journey's end.
"The little ones are to stop at the door," said Maria. "The altar lights will guide her the rest of the way."
"They are turning back; it is done," Inez whispered.
The two girls rose from their knees. The four little candle-bearers came running, the flames of their tapers streaming, flying from the church door as they might have fled from a tomb. Maria darted away to meet her sister and calm her voiceless fright. Doña Magdalena advanced and spoke gently to the people, who loved her for her merciful intercessions in the past.
"She is in the care of Our Blessed Señora," Doña Magdalena said. "Go home now, good children, and leave her to her prayers."
They went away through the moonlit vineyard, drawing together in little groups of families and friends to talk in low voice of the courageous sweet lady who had walked in the pangs of her own blood to carry her appeal for poor Don Juan to the very gates of heaven.
"If anybody thinks it is not such a great thing to do," said an earnest old man whose face was wrinkled like a dried fig, "let him press his bare elbow with the weight of his body here." He scuffed his sandalled foot on the hard ground, rough with particles of disintegrated granite from the crumbling ledges of the hills.
Doña Magdalena stood a moment at her door, looking toward the church. If a thought impelled her to go to Gertrudis' side, her supreme faith that Our Señora would lift and sustain her seemed to make it almost a sacrilege. She went in, closing the door upon that sorrowful way from which even the moonlight was withdrawing, as if in pity for the dark stains upon the rugged tiles.
In the church Gertrudis lay prostrate before the altar, where she had sunk down when pain dispersed her turmoiled senses. Faith and courage had sustained her to the last step of that dolorous journey. She lay like a white dove brought down by an arrow, her arms reached out in pathetic supplication, her fair hair against the knee-worn tiles. Her white dress glimmered in the pale altar lights, the dark blotches soothed down to shadows that could not offend the eye. Her simple sacrifice was done; the utmost exertion of her devoted heart was expended. O, Calles Dolorosas of this earth! how often there are trails of blood through them of sacrifice and mercy, converging always and forever upon the sanctified altar of love.