Essential Novelists - Bret Harte. Bret Harte

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СКАЧАТЬ are in the possession of your friend, Mrs. Sepulvida. You are to see her. Believe me, my friend, if you have been disappointed in not finding your Indian client, you will have a charming substitute—and one of your own race and colour—in the Donna Maria. Forget, if you can, what I have said—but you will not. Ah, Don Arturo! I know you better than yourself! Come. Let us walk in the garden. You have not seen the vines. I have a new variety of grape since you were here before."

      "I find nothing better than the old Mission grape, Father," said Arthur, as they passed down the branching avenue of olives.

      "Ah! Yet the aborigines knew it not and only valued it when found wild for the colouring matter contained in its skin. From this, with some mordant that still remains a secret with them, they made a dye to stain their bodies and heighten their copper hue. You are not listening, Don Arturo, yet it should interest you, for it is the colour of your mysterious client, the Donna Dolores."

      Thus chatting, and pointing out the various objects that might interest Arthur, from the overflowing boughs of a venerable fig tree to the crack made in the adobe wall of the church by the last earthquake, Father Felipe, with characteristic courteous formality, led his young friend through the ancient garden of the Mission. By degrees, the former ease and mutual confidence of the two friends returned, and by the time that Father Felipe excused himself for a few moments to attend to certain domestic arrangements on behalf of his new guest perfect sympathy had been restored.

      Left to himself, Arthur strolled back until opposite the open chancel door of the church. Here he paused, and, in obedience to a sudden impulse, entered. The old church was unchanged—like all things in San Antonio—since the last hundred years; perhaps there was little about it that Arthur had not seen at the other Missions. There were the old rafters painted in barbaric splendour of red and brown stripes; there were the hideous, waxen, glass-eyed saints, leaning forward helplessly and rigidly from their niches; there was the Virgin Mary in a white dress and satin slippers, carrying the infant Saviour in the opulence of lace long-clothes; there was the Magdalen in the fashionable costume of a Spanish lady of the last century. There was the usual quantity of bad pictures; the portrait, full length, of the patron saint himself, so hideously and gratuitously old and ugly that his temptation by any self-respecting woman appeared more miraculous than his resistance; the usual martyrdoms in terrible realism; the usual "Last Judgments" in frightful accuracy of detail.

      But there was one picture under the nave which attracted Arthur's listless eyes. It was a fanciful representation of Junipero Serra preaching to the heathen. I am afraid that it was not the figure of that most admirable and heroic missionary which drew Arthur's gaze; I am quite certain that it was not the moral sentiment of the subject, but rather the slim, graceful, girlish, half-nude figure of one of the Indian converts who knelt at Father Junipero Serra's feet, in childlike but touching awe and contrition. There was such a depth of penitential supplication in the young girl's eyes—a penitence so pathetically inconsistent with the absolute virgin innocence and helplessness of the exquisite little figure, that Arthur felt his heart beat quickly as he gazed. He turned quickly to the other picture—look where he would, the eyes of the little acolyte seemed to follow and subdue him.

      I think I have already intimated that his was not a reverential nature. With a quick imagination and great poetic sensibility nevertheless, the evident intent of the picture, or even the sentiment of the place, did not touch his heart or brain. But he still half-unconsciously dropped into a seat, and, leaning both arms over the screen before him, bowed his head against the oaken panel. A soft hand laid upon his shoulder suddenly aroused him.

      He looked up sharply and met the eyes of the Padre looking down on him with a tenderness that both touched and exasperated him.

      "Pardon!" said Padre Felipe, gently. "I have broken in upon your thoughts, child!"

      A little more brusquely than was his habit with the Padre, Arthur explained that he had been studying up a difficult case.

      "So!" said the Padre, softly, in response. "With tears in your eyes, Don Arturo? Not so!" he added to himself, as he drew the young man's arm in his own and the two passed slowly out once more into the sunlight.

      CHAPTER V. IN WHICH THE DONNA MARIA MAKES AN IMPRESSION.

      The Rancho of the Blessed Fisherman looked seaward as became its title. If the founder of the rancho had shown a religious taste in the selection of the site of the dwelling, his charming widow had certainly shown equal practical taste, and indeed a profitable availing of some advantages that the founder did not contemplate, in the adornment of the house. The low-walled square adobe dwelling had been relieved of much of its hard practical outline by several feminine additions and suggestions. The tiled roof had been carried over a very broad verandah, supported by vine-clad columns, and the lounging corridor had been, in defiance of all Spanish custom, transferred from the inside of the house to the outside. The interior courtyard no longer existed. The sombreness of the heavy Mexican architecture was relieved by bright French chintzes, delicate lace curtains, and fresh-coloured hangings. The broad verandah was filled with the latest novelties of Chinese bamboo chairs and settees, and a striped Venetian awning shaded the glare of the seaward front. Nevertheless, Donna Maria, out of respect to the local opinion, which regarded these changes as ominous of, if not a symbolical putting off the weeds of widowhood, still clung to a few of the local traditions. It is true that a piano occupied one side of her drawing-room, but a harp stood in the corner. If a freshly-cut novel lay open on the piano, a breviary was conspicuous on the marble centre-table. If, on the mantel, an elaborate French clock with bronze shepherdesses trifled with Time, on the wall above it an iron crucifix spoke of Eternity.

      Mrs. Sepulvida was at home that morning expecting a guest. She was lying in a Manilla hammock, swung between two posts of the verandah, with her face partially hidden by the netting, and the toe of a little shoe just peeping beyond. Not that Donna Maria expected to receive her guest thus; on the contrary, she had given orders to her servants that the moment a stranger caballero appeared on the road she was to be apprised of the fact. For I grieve to say that, far from taking Arthur's advice, the details of the adventure at the Point of Pines had been imparted by her own lips to most of her female friends, and even to the domestics of her household. In the earlier stages of a woman's interest in a man she is apt to be exceedingly communicative; it is only when she becomes fully aware of the gravity of the stake involved that she begins to hedge before the public. The morning after her adventure Donna Maria was innocently full of its hero and unreservedly voluble.

      I have forgotten whether I have described her. Certainly I could not have a better opportunity than the present. In the hammock she looked a little smaller, as women are apt to when their length is rigidly defined. She had the average quantity of brown hair, a little badly treated by her habit of wearing it flat over her temples—a tradition of her boarding-school days, fifteen years ago. She had soft brown eyes, with a slight redness of the eyelid not inconsistent nor entirely unbecoming to widowhood; a small mouth depressed at the corners with a charming, childlike discontent; white regular teeth, and the eloquence of a complexion that followed unvaryingly the spirits of her physical condition. She appeared to be about thirty, and had that unmistakable "married" look which even the most amiable and considerate of us, my dear sir, are apt to impress upon the one woman whom we choose to elect to years of exclusive intimacy and attention. The late Don José Sepulvida's private mark—as well defined as the brand upon his cattle—was a certain rigid line, like a grave accent, from the angle of this little woman's nostril to the corners of her mouth, and possibly to an increased peevishness of depression at those corners. It bore witness to the fondness of the deceased for bear-baiting and bull-fighting, and a possible weakness for a certain Señora X. of San Francisco, whose reputation was none of the best, and was not increased by her distance from San Antonio and the surveillance of Donna Maria.

      When an hour later "Pepe" appeared to his mistress, bearing a salver with Arthur Poinsett's business card and СКАЧАТЬ