The Splendid Idle Forties Part 10

"Did you put that crab on my neck, senorita?"

"Si, senor."

A sulky silence of ten minutes ensued, during which Benicia sent little stones skipping down into the silvered pools, and Russell, again rec.u.mbent, stared at the horizon.

"Si you no can talk," she said finally, "I wish you go way and let Don Henry Tallant come talk to me. He look like he want."

"No doubt he does; but he can stay where he is. Let me kiss your hand, Benicia, and I will forgive you."

Benicia hit his mouth lightly with the back of her hand, but he captured it and kissed it several times.

"Your mustache feels like the cat's," said she.

He flung the hand from him, but laughed in a moment. "How sentimental you are! Making love to you is like dragging a cannon uphill! Will you not at least sing me a love-song? And please do not make faces in the tender parts."

Benicia tossed her spirited head, but took her guitar from its case and called to the other girls to accompany her. They withdrew from their various flirtations with audible sighs, but it was Benicia's merienda, and in a moment a dozen white hands were sweeping the long notes from the strings.

Russell moved to a lower rock, and lying at Benicia's feet looked upward. The scene was all above him--the great ma.s.s of white rocks, whiter in the moonlight; the rigid cypresses aloft; the beautiful faces, dreamy, pa.s.sionate, stolid, restless, looking from the lace mantillas; the graceful arms holding the guitars; the sweet rich voices threading through the roar of the ocean like the melody in a grand recitativo; the old men and women crouching like buzzards on the stones, their sharp eyes never closing; enfolding all with an almost palpable touch, the warm voluptuous air. Now and again a bird sang a few notes, a strange sound in the night, or the soft wind murmured like the ocean's echo through the pines.

The song finished. "Benicia, I love you," whispered Russell.

"We will now eat," said Benicia. "Mamma,"--she raised her voice,--"shall I tell Raphael to bring down the supper?"

"Yes, nina."

The girl sprang lightly up the rocks, followed by Russell. The Indian servants were some distance off, and as the young people ran through a pine grove the bold officer of the United States squadron captured the Californian and kissed her on the mouth. She boxed his ears and escaped to the light.

Benicia gave her orders, Raphael and the other Indians followed her with the baskets, and spread the supper of tomales and salads, dulces and wine, on a large table-like rock, just above the threatening spray; the girls sang each in turn, whilst the others nibbled the dainties Dona Eustaquia had provided, and the Americans wondered if it were not a vision that would disappear into the fog bearing down upon them.

A great white bank, writhing and lifting, rolling and bending, came across the ocean slowly, with majestic stealth, hiding the swinging waves on which it rode so lightly, shrouding the rocks, enfolding the men and women, wreathing the cypresses, rus.h.i.+ng onward to the pines.

"We must go," said Dona Eustaquia, rising. "There is danger to stay. The lungs, the throat, my children. Look at the poor old cypresses."

The fog was puffing through the gaunt arms, festooning the rigid hands.

It hung over the green heads, it coiled about the gray trunks. The stern defeated trees looked like the phantoms of themselves, a long silent battalion of petrified ghosts. Even Benicia's gay spirit was oppressed, and during the long ride homeward through the pine woods she had little to say to her equally silent companion.

IX

Dona Eustaquia seldom gave b.a.l.l.s, but once a week she opened her salas to the more intellectual people of the town. A few Americans were ever attendant; General Vallejo often came from Sonoma to hear the latest American and Mexican news in her house; Castro rarely had been absent; Alvarado, in the days of his supremacy, could always be found there, and she was the first woman upon whom Pio Pico called when he deigned to visit Monterey. A few young people came to sit in a corner with Benicia, but they had little to say.

The night after the picnic some fifteen or twenty people were gathered about Dona Eustaquia in the large sala on the right of the hall; a few others were glancing over the Mexican papers in the little sala on the left. The room was ablaze with many candles standing, above the heads of the guests, in twisted silver candelabra, the white walls reflecting their light. The floor was bare, the furniture of stiff mahogany and horse-hair, but no visitor to that quaint ugly room ever thought of looking beyond the brilliant face of Dona Eustaquia, the lovely eyes of her daughter, the intelligence and animation of the people she gathered about her. As a rule Dona Modeste Castro's proud head and strange beauty had been one of the living pictures of that historical sala, but she was not there to-night.

As Captain Brotherton and Lieutenant Russell entered, Dona Eustaquia was waging war against Mr. Larkin.

"And what hast thou to say to that proclamation of thy little American hero, thy Commodore"--she gave the word a satirical roll, impossible to transcribe--"who is heir to a conquest without blood, who struts into history as the Commander of the United States Squadron of the Pacific, holding a few hundred helpless Californians in subjection? O warlike name of Sloat! O heroic name of Stockton! O immortal Fremont, prince of strategists and tacticians, your country must be proud of you! Your newspapers will glorify you! Sometime, perhaps, you will have a little history bound in red morocco all to yourselves; whilst Castro--" she sprang to her feet and brought her open palm down violently upon the table, "Castro, the real hero of this country, the great man ready to die a thousand deaths for the liberty of the Californians, a man who was made for great deeds and born for fame, he will be left to rust and rot because we have no newspapers to glorify him, and the Gringos send what they wish to their country! Oh, profanation! That a great man should be covered from sight by an army of red ants!"

"By Jove!" said Russell, "I wish I could understand her! Doesn't she look magnificent?"

Captain Brotherton made no reply. He was watching her closely, gathering the sense of her words, full of pa.s.sionate admiration for the woman. Her tall majestic figure was quivering under the lash of her fiery temper, quick to spring and strike. The red satin of her gown and the diamonds on her finely moulded neck and in the dense coils of her hair grew dim before the angry brilliancy of her eyes.

The thin sensitive lips of Mr. Larkin curled with their accustomed humour, but he replied sincerely, "Yes, Castro is a hero, a great man on a small canvas--"

"And they are little men on a big canvas!" interrupted Dona Eustaquia.

Mr. Larkin laughed, but his reply was non-committal. "Remember, they have done all that they have been called upon to do, and they have done it well. Who can say that they would not be as heroic, if opportunity offered, as they have been prudent?"

Dona Eustaquia shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, but resumed her seat. "You will not say, but you know what chance they would have with Castro in a fair fight. But what chance has even a great man, when at the head of a few renegades, against the navy of a big nation? But Fremont! Is he to cast up his eyes and draw down his mouth to the world, whilst the man who acted for the safety of his country alone, who showed foresight and wisdom, is denounced as a violator of international courtesy?"

"No," said one of the American residents who stood near, "history will right all that. Some day the world will know who was the great and who the little man."

"Some day! When we are under our stones! This swaggering Commodore Stockton adores Fremont and hates Castro. His lying proclamation will be read in his own country--"

The door opened suddenly and Don Fernando Altimira entered the room.

"Have you heard?" he cried. "All the South is in arms! The Departmental a.s.sembly has called the whole country to war, and men are flocking to the standard! Castro has sworn that he will never give up the country under his charge. Now, Mother of G.o.d! let our men drive the usurper from the country."

Even Mr. Larkin sprang to his feet in excitement. He rapidly translated the news to Brotherton and Russell.

"Ah! There will be a little blood, then," said the younger officer. "It was too easy a victory to count."

Every one in the room was talking at once. Dona Eustaquia smote her hands together, then clasped and raised them aloft.

"Thanks to G.o.d!" she cried. "California has come to her senses at last!"

Altimira bent his lips to her ear. "I go to fight the Americans," he whispered.

She caught his hand between both her own and pressed it convulsively to her breast. "Go," she said, "and may G.o.d and Mary protect thee. Go, my son, and when thou returnest I will give thee Benicia. Thou art a son after my heart, a brave man and a good Catholic."

Benicia, standing near, heard the words. For the first time Russell saw the expression of careless audacity leave her face, her pink colour fade.

"What is that man saying to your mother?" he demanded.

"She promise me to him when he come back; he go to join General Castro."

"Benicia!" He glanced about. Altimira had left the house. Every one was too excited to notice them. He drew her across the hall and into the little sala, deserted since the startling news had come. "Benicia," he said hurriedly, "there is no time to be lost. You are such a b.u.t.terfly I hardly know whether you love me or not."

"I no am such b.u.t.terfly as you think," said the girl, pathetically. "I often am very gay, for that is my spirit, senor; but I cry sometimes in the night."

"Well, you are not to cry any more, my very darling first!" He took her in his arms and kissed her, and she did not box his ears. "I may be ordered off at any moment, and what may they not do with you while I am gone? So I have a plan! Marry me to-morrow!"

"Ay! Senor!"

"To-morrow. At your friend Blandina's house. The Hernandez like the Americans; in fact, as we all know, Tallant is in love with Blandina and the old people do not frown. They will let us marry there."

"Ay! Cielo santo! What my mother say? She kill me!"

"She will forgive you, no matter how angry she may be at first. She loves you--almost as much as I do."