For the Soul of Rafael Part 37

"That is right," exclaimed Rafael, with nervous approval; "that is all right. Where should Senor Bryton go but where his friends are? This is his sister, Senora Bryton. It is well she is here; sick men need their own women folks about them. Raquelita, thou art white as the lilies in the garden! Get you some wine while I see to beds for the sick. It was lucky you and Ana chanced to meet them. When did Tomas reach you with the letter?"

She did not reply. Dona Maria was also asking questions, and telling her the Padre Andros had gone again to San Luis Rey for a week, and the three women entered the dining-room, leaving Rafael's question unanswered. He supposed that Raquel and Ana had ridden south at his bidding, and was elated that she had received the Dona Maria and her guest as she had--without gladness, of course, but without signs of displeasure. He divined there was a white devil of rage under her calm exterior, but that made no difference so long as she showed no outward sign of it. Evidently she had accepted the fact that he meant to be master; after that, life would be easier in Capistrano. He had always been a bit resentful of Keith Bryton's att.i.tude toward himself. Never since that dictatorial letter to San Pedro had he felt easy with him, and there was no doubt whatever that Bryton had avoided him since his marriage. But he forgot all that in the satisfaction of the news Raquel brought.

With Bryton ill in the house, there was every reason why the one woman of his family should remain under the same roof indefinitely. It would mean the breaking down of barriers against heretic invaders, and so well content was Rafael over all this that he meant to nurse Keith Bryton as the most valuable friend the fates could send him. Elated with this idea, he called Don Eduardo, and together they rode out to meet them, and at sight of them wondered that even Raquel's cool exterior had not been more ruffled at the situation: she had given them no idea of what to expect.

"Your wife, in the cause of humanity, will allow dying s.p.a.ce for a heretic," observed Don Eduardo, dryly, "but she evidently thinks them worth little attention. The man looks worse than she led us to think. We should have brought Indios and a litter to meet them."

Keith Bryton, with his head bound up so as to be almost unrecognizable, was tied on his horse and supported by the left arm of a bearded priest who rode on one side; while Dona Ana rode on the other, white-faced and tremulous, as she recognized the two men approaching.

"For the love of G.o.d, be cautious--cautious!" she whispered to the priest. And the latter drew the hood of his habit lower over his brows, to shut out the sun.

"Softly, Anita mia! From this moment I am under a vow of silence. This heretic and I have come out of the shadow of death together, he with a broken head and I with a broken arm. You can send your friends to see where three men are still unburied in the Trabuco hills. I ask of the Mission only time for silent meditation until my preserver, here, is better--or dead. I leave the words of it to you. From the moment help comes I have vowed silence. Come, come, Anita, girl. When we have blinded a woman like Raquel Arteaga for two days and nights, we need fear no eyes of men."

And it was so. The condition of the two men was warrant of Ana's recital that three refugees of Flores's bandits had a.s.saulted the priest, with the idea that he was of the vigilantes. When the Americano, by some chance, had taken a short cut across the ranges, and, hearing shots, had gone to the rescue, he found one man with a broken arm keeping his enemies at a distance with one of their own guns. He had stumbled on their camp while they slept. For the rest, Ana asked Rafael to send some one to bury the three bodies. They were too near the trail to be left like that, and would frighten horses when one rode that way.

Of the padre, who, relieved of his burden, had quietly fallen in the rear, Dona Ana told that he was a travelling monk from Mexico, who had been entertained at the San Joaquin ranch, and had a.s.sisted the Don Keith to quell a crazy uprising there. He was under a vow of silence from the moment G.o.d sent help; and--and of course there was room for him at the Mission, not with the crusty old Padre Andros, but if Rafael and Raquel would allow him a private corner, undisturbed! He did not appear to be the sort of man for Padre Andros's game-c.o.c.ks and monte games.

Rafael, glancing at the sallow, bearded face under the monk's hood, decided that she was right. The padre looked like a man given to vigils and fasts, one living the life of renunciation such as one heard of from the older records of the valley, before the secular priests had been let loose upon the land to fatten, while the parish drifted from faith.

"Padre Andros has been called to San Luis Rey; it will be a week until he returns. This man--what is his name? Libertad? That is very Mexican.

Well, the Mission is his; he can pray where he chooses. G.o.d send he prays Don Keith well again. Santa Maria! but he has a fever! Does he know one?"

Ana shook her head. He certainly did not know her, and he did not know the padre, and she felt a hesitation in telling him that the only one whose voice or hand quieted the occasional ravings of the American was that of his own wife. If she had done so, Rafael would have only thought it a great joke on Raquel, who avoided heretics. All the hours of the days and nights in the hills, Raquel Arteaga had moved like a woman in a dream, walking alone when she was not praying beside Keith Bryton's couch of pine boughs. While Ana slept the sleep of exhaustion that first night, the silent priest had gone again and again to see Bryton and hear if there was aught to do, and each time that girl was crouching there, white-faced as a spirit in the light of the waning moon, while the man on the couch moaned "Espiritu! Dona Espiritu mia!"

That was the one moan he had made since the fever had struck him, and there had been no way of quieting him. But that night, when the moans grew into cries, the silent priest saw the girl listen until she could bear it no longer, and then she went closer to him and knelt there, her hands clasped tightly behind her, and in them the golden beads of a rosary shone against her black dress.

"I am here, close beside you," she said, lowly, "always beside you in spirit--always!"

"Espiritu mia!" he muttered, and then with a great sigh of relief sank into slumber.

The priest watched the girl to see what manner of woman might be this daughter of a nun, whose father had been the gay, lawless, debonair Felipe Estevan, of whom wild stories had been told in the old days. When had he ever resisted a love appealing? The man watching her knew the girls of Mexican California too well to doubt what the result would be: the lover first, and the rosary and the prayers afterwards.

But the night waned, and the pale moon, facing the morning star, saw her still crouching there against the tree trunk. Ana thought she slept, but her husband's enemy, who had watched her through the night, knew better.

He drew Ana aside, and gave her warning.

"Tell Felipe Estevan's daughter nothing. I am the priest; that is all.

She is not the woman to think this justified," and he touched the monk's robe. "This night I heard her prayers when she thought no one listened; and, Anita, girl, forget all crazy things I said about Rafael's wife helping me to revenge."

"You said nothing about Rafael's wife," and Ana faced him with startled eyes. "You said--what was it you said? Oh, that Keith Bryton should help you--Keith Bryton, and his love for a woman who was a saint."

As she spoke, the full meaning of his words burst upon her, and she uttered a low cry of dismay.

"Barto! Holy G.o.d!--_Barto_!" she whispered.

But he caught her wrist, and his voice had a note of command in it.

"Silence! She may hear you. Forget the fool things I said there at the San Joaquin ranch. I thought I knew something of Keith Bryton, but I was mistaken. I thought I knew much of woman, but one girl at her prayers last night changed all that. We will nurse him well again, if your friends do not murder me, and then I will get him away. Some day when you and I have left all this behind us, I may tell you what I thought I knew, but not now."

"But Raquel--"

"Raquel will always be first of all the wife of Rafael Arteaga; after that she may show kindness to other human things, even the heretics. But this one heretic we will take the care of off her hands all that we can, Anita. She is not the girl to drag into a man's schemes of revenge."

"I think she bewitches you each time she comes near you," flashed Ana, resentfully. "On all other things you talk to me sense, but when it is Raquel, my one friend, you talk riddles always, and you make me feel as if I were walking beside her in the dark or blindfold. What is it you mean? That Bryton thinks of her? How could that be, when they have not met? She thought until last night that he was married, so little interest in him has she. How do you get such crazy things in your head?"

"That is true. I find they are crazy things; I confess it to you, and ask you to give no heed to my mistakes."

"It was a mistake, then, that he cared?" persisted Ana. "You were so sure--"

"It was another woman," broke in the priest, curtly. "Oh yes, there was a woman; but I was the fool when I thought I knew who the woman was; that is all."

"And Raquel is not--"

"Raquel Estevan de Arteaga is a woman men should cross themselves when they mention," he said, quietly. "She has a strength in her that is of G.o.d or the devil; she brings it from her Indian hills of Mexico, and I for one will be on the safe side and treat it with respect."

"She has bewitched you, that is all," declared Ana; but the man in the priest's robe drew her behind a giant aliso tree and kissed her on the mouth.

"Perhaps so," he agreed; "but, my Anita, it is only enough to make me pity the man she would bewitch in a different way. G.o.d! If he knew that she cared like that, his life would be a h.e.l.l."

"Why not a heaven?" asked Ana, turning to the care of the breakfast.

"Raquel spoke beautifully of a love like that last night,--a love in the inner court of life, in sanctuary, where only one other soul could kneel beside one; it was a love spiritual only."

"Only!" said the man, glancing toward the girlish figure in the serape curled against the white bark of the tree. "Only! Anita, girl, let us get the breakfast and leave love to people who have not a price set against their heads. As for that love of the inner court of life, the sanctuary, Raquel still dreams the dreams of a nun. Men and women of California are of flesh and blood, and they do not love in that way."

[Music: _La Tempestad_.]

CHAPTER XIX

Three days later, Keith Bryton opened his eyes within the white walls of a little room in the Mission. The wooden shutters of the barred window were open, and all was still. A meadow-lark called somewhere without, and he could hear down the valley the beat of the surf against the cliffs. A bearded priest sat in the window reading a book, and a woman coming from the dining-room, through the quaint old Moorish doorway stopped suddenly with a quick-caught breath of fear as his eyes opened at the rustle of her dress, and he smiled at her with a great sigh of relief.

"Dona Espiritu!" he murmured. "I knew you would come if I waited. Such a bad dream has been with me! I thought I was back in California, and you--ah! there were higher barriers around you than the convent walls, and--"

Dona Raquel stood motionless, with the little earthen olla of spring water in her two hands. Her face grew white, and she glanced at the man in the window-seat. He raised a finger of warning to his lips, and arose and came forward.

"You must not talk, Don Keith," he said, quietly. "One cup of water, since the lady brings it to you, and then to sleep again. Sleep is best."

"You were of the dream, too," muttered Bryton, fretfully, "the bad dream. Espiritu mia! tell me it is not true. I cannot think; my head--"

"Tell him, Dona Espiritu," said the man with the book. Then he gave her a glance of warning and touched his temple significantly. She crossed the room and placed the water beside him.

"What shall I tell you, Don Keith?" she asked, softly. "I am sorry you have been so ill and the bad dreams have come. This is Padre Libertad; he has nursed you very well. We must all obey him and let you sleep."

"But not to dream again," he protested. "Be kind, as you were in the hills of the temple,--give me your hand again,--then I will sleep without the h.e.l.l of dreams."

At the command of the padre, she obeyed, and he took her one hand in both of his and drew it across his lips. A shudder pa.s.sed over her at his touch, and she rested her other hand against the whitewashed wall for support.