For the Soul of Rafael Part 20

"I heard her name,--it was enough. His I did not need to ask; I remembered."

"But--dear one--it is better that he is married. Pardon, beloved--I am at thy feet, and I feel thy heartache. But, after all, is it not to thank the saints that he is married?"

"Perhaps. Otherwise, he might say to me some day, 'Come!' And the witchcraft of the ring might hold, and--"

"Holy Mother! and then--"

"And I--G.o.d knows what I might do, Polonia."

And then the old Indian woman was left alone, mumbling prayers and crossing herself.

Later she got up and went to the priest of Our Lady of the Angels and brought a bottle of holy water to sprinkle on the threshold of the street door, and all sides of Dona Raquel's room, that no curse of witchcraft or bad dream of the night might have power over the days.

It was broad daylight when Rafael came home whistling gayly a dance of melody. He had been gifted with unusual good luck, and his pockets were full of gold pieces. He threw a buckskin sack of coin on his wife's bed before he noticed that she was not lying there.

"Hola! Raquelita mia! There is plenty to pay for ma.s.ses; your priests always want money for that sort of thing. Since you look after my soul, I pay for the prayers when I have good luck."

Raquel arose from where she knelt at the little altar in the corner.

"Oh, is that where you are? What need to pay the priests when you do enough praying for an army?"

She smiled absently, but did not speak. He stood watching her as she brushed her ma.s.s of dark, slightly waving hair.

"Let your woman do that," he said at last, with perfunctory solicitude.

"It tires your arm, and I don't want you tired to-day. There is a picnic, and we should go."

"Which of our friends make it?"

"It is Dona Maria Downing, who, as our one neighbor down the country, wants to add to the entertainment Los Angeles gives you. It is to make peace with the bishop, I think; at least, so it looks. He is invited.

You can help them to be friends. Is that not the duty of us both as good Catholics?"

She halted in her task and looked at him quietly. He was plainly set on being very agreeable, for some reason; too seldom had he mentioned their faith but to scoff at the rigid rules of his mother and his wife.

"You want it very much," she said; "but why? You do not care at all for Dona Maria's personal peace with the bishop. That can be arranged without a picnic to the hills. It only needs that they give back, of their own free will, that which belongs to the Church, and make a confession that it was wrongly held."

"If you would only talk to her of this graciously, instead of demanding it," persisted Rafael, gently, "much could be effected. Dona Angela thinks for certain--"

"Dona Angela?"

"Oh, I mean her--the relative who is with her now--the Mrs. Bryton who drove with her yesterday. The bishop asked who she was--you remember?"

"I remember," she said, quietly, though a little shudder touched her.

"But I am tired of this town, Rafael. I meant to tell you so this morning. I want to ride home to-day. Dona Maria's merry-makings do not attract me. Our business here is over; let us go."

"Holy G.o.d! but you are a wife for a man!" he cried in sudden fury. "I weigh you down with jewels and silks and laces, and you would bury them all with yourself in that old rat-hole of a Mission. I wish to G.o.d the padre and Dona Maria had blown down every brick of it before you saw the accursed place!"

"Accursed? The Church of G.o.d? Rafael!"

"Ay, accursed, since you will know!" he repeated. "Every old Indian of San Juan can tell you that."

"Some Indian, perhaps, who has had to be whipped by the padres," she remarked, with quiet scorn.

"You don't believe me?" he cried. "Well, you shall! Sit down--sit down and listen for once, and you will be glad to keep out of the curse-haunted place."

She regarded him with a little tolerant smile, and drew a serape of blue around her, and curled herself on the foot of the bed and waited.

"It is early for stories," she observed; "but since it is your pleasure--"

"Not any pleasure has any of it been to me from first to last," he retorted, "nor any pleasure will it be to whoever holds it! You think you are strong, your saints will help you! But no saint ever put on an altar--not even that of the Virgin herself--can take off the curse from San Juan till the altar is bathed in human blood, as the tiles of the floor have been bathed--that is the curse of Sahirit."

She stared at him with wide eyes and blanching face.

"Until the altar is bathed in human blood, as the tiles of the floor have been," she whispered. "Rafael! That--that is of a religion older than the life of Christianity in Mexico. G.o.d of G.o.ds! Does it follow me here?"

"Follow _you_!" and he laughed contemptuously; "it is a story older than our grandfathers. Only the old Indians whisper it now each time ill luck comes to any of us--and I've had enough! When they picked up Miguel tramped into the earth by the cattle, only the white men would help--no Indian; they knew it was the curse coming true."

"Tell me," she said, briefly. Her lips were white, and she shuddered with cold, and drew the serape close.

"You'd rather hear some old Indian tell it," he answered; "they make one chill when they count on their fingers and toes the things the curse has brought. We had a curse of our own in the Arteaga family: my mother was always in prayer because of that; she never knew that Miguel had bought an interest in another."

"Go on--tell me! How comes the rule of the Aztec altar to this Christian temple?"

"Aztec? I did not say Aztec. I know nothing of their mummeries. But it can't be that--there have been no Aztecs since the time of Cortez and the priests."

"I--I have heard there is one hill tribe still refusing the saints, and giving the sun wors.h.i.+p," she said, slowly. "But go on; tell me!"

"Sun-wors.h.i.+p! yes, that's the thing!" he cried. "A man, who was a heretic of Mexico and a great builder of stone, killed a priest and a woman down there. Some say the woman was his wife. He was to have his head cut off for it, but word went down from here that such a man was needed by the priests of San Juan; they wished to build a stone church instead of adobe brick, as all the others were, if only a master mason could be sent to them. They had soldiers to guard him, even if the man chanced to be a convict, as many of the guards had been, and they got the viceroy to help; and in the end the heretic who had killed a priest was sent to San Juan. The old Indios say he looked as big as two men, and he worked as he pleased. When the padres interfered he sat down and looked at the piles of stone and did nothing, and nothing could move him. They could have shot and buried him, but that would not build their church, which was to be the finest in the Californias. So they had to let him alone, and he built it as pleased himself. Their ground plan only he accepted. It was like a cross, as you see it now, but on no other part of the church was any symbol of Christianity--only stars and other things which some say are flowers and some say are suns and moons, and on the corner-stone and key-stone of the high altar is carved a thing no Christian can read, not even the padres--and somewhere in those symbols is held the curse."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "R[~U]ELAS ME FECIT. ME LLAMA SAN JUAN. 1796."]

"Who says? Did he?"

"He? No; he died laughing, and refused the blessing of the priest. One thing only he said when he read the words on the oldest bell, as he built a place in the tower for it. The name of the maker is on the bell; you can see it yet; it is Ruelas. 'So Ruelas made you--iron-tongue,' a soldier heard him say, 'and your name is San Juan. Well, Senor Ruelas, you only have your name in this work. The good padres will see that my name is forgotten, but instead of a name, I will leave myself, and so long as stone stands on stone I will call louder and farther than your iron tongue when rung your loudest! When the storms of centuries shall beat out every star and moon and sun in the stone of the temple, the man from Culiacan will be remembered here in Sahirit.'"

"Sahirit?"

"The Indian name for the valley was 'Quanis Savit Sahirit'; you can see it on the church records."

"And it means?"

"No one knows, and no one cares; it may mean another curse, for all I know. The Indios either do not know or will not tell."

"But--" and she drew in a long breath of relief--"what the man from Culiacan said to the bell--the thing the soldier heard--was not a curse; it was only that the beautiful work should be remembered."

"Oh, yes, that! But there was a prophecy years before, when the corner-stone was set in its place and blessed by the padres, and the Indios were all there on their knees saying a rosary, and the viceroy and all the dignitaries. An Indian hunter was also there from the south, and he was a stranger. He looked at the thing carved on the corner-stone, and he looked at the builder, who leaned against the wall and laughed when the holy water touched it; and the stranger crossed himself, for his mother was a convert; but to the captain of the guard he said the thing I told you, and the captain of the guard was of my father's family. So it was repeated down to our time."

"But the words--he said what of a prophecy?"

"He said human blood, and not holy water, must baptize the stones and the altar of a temple with those signs. He was afraid the padre would put malediction on him if he told him that the blessing of a Christian saint was not so strong as the G.o.ds of the Indians, but he would not stand or kneel beside the lines where the church was to be, and he would not tell why he was afraid. He said he did not know what would happen there: it might be a tidal wave from the sea in sight, or it might be a pestilence, for the people were very wicked and very dirty, but it was marked with a sign for evil, and it would be well if the walls never went higher."