For the Soul of Rafael Part 14

"What has she to do with the railroads--she or her family? Your good Rafael does more to bring them than any one else. He sells them land; he and Don Eduardo help them to get the rights to go where they please.

Aunt Jacoba would not do that; her father and her husband would be burned at the stake before they would help these new people to use the graves of the holy fathers at San Gabriel as a road-bed!"

"Mother of G.o.d!"

Dona Luisa arose, as though to annihilate the daring speaker; but Raquel caught her and she sank back in her chair with one tremulous hand extended to the frightened Ana.

"Go on!" she said, hoa.r.s.ely. "Go on! Perjure thy soul with lies, since thou lovest them so,--lies against a son of Mother Church. Go on!"

Ana shrank, and faltered, but the accusation brought back her courage.

"If the truth is shameful, the shame is not mine," she retorted.

"Through two of the Arteaga ranches in the north has Rafael sold the right of way for the American railroad to Monterey. That it might come closer to his ranch-houses, he has let it be built across the forgotten graves of the Mission fathers. Beneath the feet of the Americanos will lie the holy apostles of our Mother Church! The Protestant heretics will wheel their pigs to market across the gardens where Ava Marias have sounded all the years of religion in California!"

Dona Luisa stared at her with white face, and her lips moved stiffly when she tried to speak. The other women and girls were clinging together in tears, and Raquel stood with her strong young arms about her, as though to guard her against the world.

Bryton, who had strolled back through the patio for a final word with Rafael, had heard nothing of the arrivals; he pushed open the door at the back, and then halted at the sight of the group there,--the women and girls frightened and weeping, the scattered wealth of silks and laces flung across chairs and tables, and the three girls with bride-like veils.

"Is it--a witchcraft?" half whispered Dona Luisa at last; but the whisper was plainly heard above the sobs of the girls, who scarcely dared to breathe. "It is a work of the fiends to snare his soul for h.e.l.l Immaculate Mother, let it not be!"

Raquel bent above her with murmured a.s.surances of divine help, and the old woman suddenly caught the hands of the girl in her own and held her, staring in her face with questioning eyes; then she spoke eagerly, fiercely.

"Your wish but a moment ago! You wished for some great work for Mother Church--to fight evil out in the world; your guardian angel heard the wish and has sent you a soul to save from the heretics,--the soul of the man you love!"

Raquel stared at her, but did not speak. Her eyes looked a bit frightened, but she rested her cheek on the frail old hands, and caressed them rea.s.suringly.

Dona Luisa lifted the gold and ebony crucifix, and held it above her head.

"Kneel!" she said; and the girls and women did so. Bryton, in the doorway, caught sight of the girl in the bride's veil, and made a movement toward her, but was checked by the voice of the mother.

"It is for the soul of the man you love, Raquel mia. Never forget that--never forget!"

"I will not forget," said the girl, gently; and at the sound of the voice Keith Bryton's jaw set in a tense, ugly way, and he stepped back into the shadow.

"Then swear by the Holy Mother of G.o.d!" said the old voice, and the crucifix above the head of the kneeling girl was held rigidly steady.

"I swear by the Holy Mother of G.o.d!"

"Swear by the blood of Christ crucified!"

"I swear by the blood of Christ crucified!"

"To stand as a guard over the soul of Rafael!" The old voice had a faintness, despite the steady words; the end of her strength had come.

The eyes of Raquel widened ever so little as she realized what she was promising. There was an involuntary pause before she spoke again, and then the absolute despair of the mother, and her one hope, swept over the girl's consciousness, and a spark of the martyr fire lit her own soul.

"To stand as guard over the soul of Rafael," said she, steadily.

"So long as you both shall live!"

"So long as--we both--shall--live."

Then the crucifix fell to the tiled floor, and the old face looked very gray, as she sank back on the chair; and Jacoba smothered a shriek at sight of her eyes; and Raquel, still on her knees, clasped her about the waist and whispered:

"Dona Luisa, Dona Luisa!"

The staring eyes regained a momentary glimmer of consciousness at the sound of the girl's voice, and she lifted her hand again as though it still held the crucifix.

"Until--the day--of--" and then the sentence trailed along into the eternal silences of the unseen land.

"Senora!" called Raquel, appealingly; but Ana caught her by the shoulder and looked in her face, and said:

"G.o.d help you, Raquel Estevan! To the recording angel she has taken that oath."

Keith Bryton closed the door on the weeping women, and walked out through the old refectory to the inner court, where he met Fernando.

"What is it, senor?" he asked. Bryton looked at him much as though he had not been there.

"I--I scarcely know," he said, dully. "You had better--"

"But you have the face of a ghost!" interrupted Fernando. "Something has happened--in there?"

"I think so," agreed the American, recovering under Fernando's curious gaze. "Some one is ill--or--"

Fernando ran past him, and Bryton walked slowly along the inner court to where the one-time baptistry lay roofless to the sky. Through an old doorway with the Aztec sun cut in the coping, he pa.s.sed into the old graveyard of the padres, and thence to the great altar-place of the old earthquake ruin. Even there the cries of the girls came to him through an open window--a wailing chorus of tragedy. Then an old Indian untied the ropes of the belfry, and the toll of death sounded along the valley.

But it seemed very far away. He stared at the half-pagan decorations of the old stonework--never the cross of Christ anywhere on them--and sat so still that two linnets lit almost at his feet and were not afraid.

"I wondered why I should stray back to this little corner of the world,"

he said at last, "and now--now I reckon I'm finding out. G.o.d! I feel like a bad dream. And my hands tied!"

He paced back and forth on the old altar-place, until the mad clatter of hoofs coming from the sea cut across the tolling of the bells and told him the lost bridegroom--the man she said she loved and would never forget--had been found.

He swore softly as he crossed the plaza to the veranda of Juan Alvara.

The old man, rolling his first cigarro of the day, was sitting there on the bench in the early sunlight.

"Don Juan," he said, holding out his hand, "I ride to catch up with the officers and go with them into the Indian country, and I may not see San Juan again for a long time. Your home has always been a pleasant place, and I thank you for many courtesies."

The old man shook his hand gravely.

"Adios! You come back to San Juan--no?"

"Perhaps not," said Bryton. "If there is anything I can do for you in Los Angeles--"

"Thanks, senor; there is nothing. My daughters go there in a week with the wedding party. For whom think you old Tomas tolls the bell?"

When informed, he stared vaguely at the Americano. Alvara was growing old. Teresa had warned them all that no one should tell him until his breakfast was over and he had had his smoke.

"Luisa! the Dona Luisa! Dead, you say?--before the wedding-day? No, senor, pardon, but you have not understood. I know Luisa Arteaga when she is still a little girl--and always. She not dying before she have marry the boy like she want."