_ CHAPTER XXXI
An hour later they assembled in the plaza to start for the bear hunt. Reinaldo was not of the party.
Estenega lifted Chonita to her horse and stood beside her for a moment while the others mounted. He touched her hand with his:
"We could not have a more beautiful night," he said, significantly. "And I have often wished that my father had included this spot when he applied for his grant. I should like to live with you here. Even when the winds rage and hurl the rain through the very window pane, I know of no more enchanting spot than Fort Ross. The Russians are going; some day I will buy it for you."
She made no reply, but she did not withdraw her hand, and he held it closely and glanced slowly about him. Always, despite his bitter intimacy with life, in kinship with nature, perhaps in that moment it had a deeper meaning, for he saw with double vision: She was there; and, with him, sensible not only of the beauty of the night, but of the indefinable mystery which broods over California the moment the sun falls. Perhaps, too, he was troubled by a vague foreboding, such as comes to mortals sometimes in spite of their limitations: he never saw Fort Ross again.
On the horizon the fog crouched and moved; marched like a battalion of ocean's ghosts; suddenly cohered and sent out light puffs of smoke, as from the crater of a spectral volcano. The moon, full and bright and cold, hung low in the dark sky: one hardly noted the stars. The vast sweep of water was as calm as a lake, dark and metallic like the sky, barely reflecting the silver light between. But although calm it was not quiet. It greeted the forbidding rocks beyond the shore, the long irregular line of stark, storm-beaten cliffs, with ominous mutter, now and again throwing a cloud of spray high in the air, as if in derisive proof that even in sleep it was sensible of its power. Occasionally it moaned, as if sounding a dirge along the mass of stones which storms had hurled or waves had wrenched from the crags above,--a dirge for beheaded Russians, for him who had walked the plank, or for the lover of Natalie Ivanhoff.
Here and there the cliffs were intersected by deep straggling gulches, out of whose sides grew low woods of brush; but the three tables rising successively from the ocean to the forest on the mountain, were almost bare. On the highest, between two gulches, on a knoll so bare and black and isolated that its destiny was surely taken into account at creation, was a tall rude cross and a half hundred neglected graves. The forest seemed blacker just behind it, the shadows thicker in the gorges that embraced it, the ocean grayer and more illimitable before it. "Natalie Ivanhoff is there in her copper coffin," said Estenega, "forgotten already."
The curve of the mountain was so perfect that it seemed to reach down a long arm on either side and grasp the cliffs. The redwoods on its crown and upper slopes were a mass of rigid shadows, the points, only, sharply etched on the night sky. They might have been a wall about an undiscovered country.
"Come," cried Rotscheff, "we are ready to start." And Estenega sprang to his horse.
"I don't envy you," said the Princess Helene from the veranda, her silveren head barely visible above the furs which enveloped her. "I prefer the fire."
"You are warmly clad?" asked Estenega of Chonita. "But you have the blood of the South in your veins."
They climbed the steep road between the levels, slowly, the women chattering and asking questions, the men explaining and advising. Estenega and Chonita having much to say, said nothing.
A cold volume of air, the muffled roar of a mountain torrent, rushed out of the forest, startling with the suddenness of its impact. Once a panther uttered its human cry.
They entered the forest. It was so dark here that the horses wandered from the trail and into the brush again and again. Conversation ceased; except for the muffled footfalls of the horses and the speech of the waters there was no sound. Chonita had never known a stillness so profound; the giant trees crowding together seemed to resent intrusion, to menace an eternal silence. She moved her horse close to Estenega's and he took her hand. Occasionally there was an opening, a well of blackness, for the moon had not yet come to the forest.
They reached the summit, and descended. Half-way down the mountain they rode into a farm in a valley formed by one of the many basins.
The Indians were waiting, and killed a bullock at once, placing the carcass in a conspicuous place. Then all retired to the shade of the trees. In less than a half-hour a bear came prowling out of the forest and began upon the meal so considerately provided for him. When his attention was fully engaged, Rotscheff and the officers, mounted, dashed down upon him, swinging their lassos. The bear showed fight and stood his ground, but this was an occasion when the bear always got the worst of it. One lasso caught his neck, another his hind foot, and he was speedily strained and strangled to death. No sooner was he despatched than another appeared, then another, and the sport grew very exciting, absorbing the attention of the women as well as the energies of the men.
Estenega lifted Chonita from her horse. "Let us walk," he said. "They will not miss us. A few yards farther, and you will be on my territory. I want you there."
She made no protest, and they entered the forest. The moon shone down through the lofty redwoods that seemed to scrape its crystal; the monotone of the distant sea blended with the faint roar of the tree-tops. The vast gloomy aisles were unbroken by other sound.
He took her hand and held it a moment, then drew it through his arm. "Now tell me all," he said, "They will be occupied for a long while. The night is ours."
"I have come here to tell you that I love you," she said. "Ah, can _I_ make _you_ tremble? It was impossible for me not to tell you this; I could not rest in my retreat without having the last word with you, without having you know me. And I want to tell you that I have suffered horribly; you may care to know that, for no one else in the world could have made me, no one else ever can. Only your fingers could twist in my heart-strings and tear my heart out of my body. I suffered first because I doubted you, then because I loved you, then the torture of jealousy and the pangs of parting, then those dreadful three months when I heard no word. I could not stay at Casa Grande; everything associated with you drove me wild. Oh, I have gone through all varieties! But the last was the worst, after I heard from you again, and all other causes were removed, and I knew that you were well and still loved me: the knowledge that I never could be anything to you,--and I could be so much! The torment of this knowledge was so bitter that there was but one refuge,--imagination. I shut my eyes to my little world and lived with you; and it seemed to me that I grew into absolute knowledge of you. Let me tell you what I divined. You may tell me that I am wrong, but I do not believe that you will. I think that in the little time we were together I absorbed you.
"It seemed to me that your soul reached always for something just above the attainable, restless in the moments which would satisfy another, fretted with a perverse desire for something different when an ardent wish was granted, steeped, under all wanton determined enjoyment of life, with the bitter knowing of life's sure impotence to satisfy. Could the dissatisfied darting mind loiter long enough to give a woman more than the promise of happiness?--but never mind that.
"With this knowledge of you my own resistless desire for variety left me: my nature concentrated into one paramount wish,--to be all things to you. What I had felt vaguely before and stifled--the nothingness of life, the inevitableness of satiety--I repudiated utterly, now that they were personified in you; I would not recognize the fact of their existence. _I_ could make you happy. How could imagination shape such scenes, such perfection of union, of companionship, if reality were not? Imagination is the child of inherited and living impressions. I might exaggerate; but, even stripped of its halo, the substance must be sweeter and more fulfilling than anything else on this earth at least. And I knew that you loved me. Oh, I had _felt_ that! And the variousness of your nature and desires, although they might madden me at times, would give an extraordinary zest to life. I was The Doomswoman no longer. I was a supplementary being who could meet you in every mood and complete it; who would so understand that I could be man and woman and friend to you. A delusion? But so long as I shall never know, let me believe. An extraordinary tumultuous desire that rose in me like a wave and shook me often at first, had, in those last sad weeks, less part in my musings. It seemed to me that that was the expression, the poignant essence, of love; but there was so much else! I do not understand that, however, and never shall. But I wanted to tell you all. I could not rest until you knew me as I am and as you had made me. And I will tell you this too," she cried, breaking suddenly, "I wanted you so! Oh, I needed you so! It was not I, only, who could give. And it is so terrible for a woman to stand alone!"
He made no reply for a moment. But he forgot every other interest and scheme and idea stored in his impatient brain. He was thrilled to his soul, and filled with the exultant sense that he was about to take to his heart the woman compounded for him out of his own elements.
"Speak to me," she said.
"My love, I have so much to say to you that it will take all the years we shall spend together to say it in."
"No, no! Do not speak of that. There I am firm. Although the misery of the past months were to be multiplied ten hundred times in the future, I would not marry you."
Estenega, knowing that their hour of destiny was come, and that upon him alone depended its issues, was not the man to hesitate between such happiness as this woman alone could give him, and the gray existence which she in her blindness would have meted to both: his bold will had already taken the future in its relentless grasp. But, knowing the mental habit of women, he thought it best to let Chonita free her mind, that there might be the less in it to protest for hearing while his heart and passion spoke to hers.
"It seems absurd to argue the matter," he said, "but tell me the reasons again, if you choose, and we will dispose of them once for all. Do not think for a moment, my darling, that I do not respect your reasons; but I respect them only because they are yours; in themselves they are not worthy of consideration."
"Ay, but they are. It has been an unwritten law for four generations that an Estenega and an Iturbi y Moncada should not marry; the enmity began, as you should know, when a member of each family was an officer in a detachment of troops sent to protect the Missions in their building. And my father--he told me lately--loved your father's sister for many years,--that was the reason he married so late in life,--and would not ask her because of her blood and of cruel wrongs her father had done his. Shall his daughter be weak where he was strong? You cast aside traditions as if they were the seeds of an apple; but remember that they are blood of my blood. And the vow I made,--do you forget that? And the words of it? The Church stands between us. I will tell you all: the priest has forbidden me to marry you; he forbade it every time I confessed; not only because of my vow, but because you had aroused in me a love so terrible that I almost took the life of another woman. Could I bring you back to the Church it might be different; but you rule others; no one could remould you. You see it is hopeless. It is no use to argue."
"I have no intention of arguing. Words are too good to waste on such an absurd proposition that because our fathers hated, we, who are independent and intelligent beings, should not marry when every drop of heart's blood demands its rights. As for your vow,--what is a vow? Hysterical egotism, nothing more. Were it the promise of man to man, the subject would be worth discussing. But we will settle the matter in our own way." He took her suddenly in his arms and kissed her. She put her arms about him and clung to him, trembling, her lips pressed to his. In that supreme moment he felt not happiness, but a bitter desire to bear her out of the world into some higher sphere where the conditions of happiness might possibly exist. "On the highest pinnacle we reach," he thought, "we are granted the tormenting and chastening glimpse of what might be, had God, when he compounded his victims, been in a generous mood and completed them."
And she? she was a woman.
"You will resist no longer," he said, in a few moments.
"Ay, more surely than ever, now." Her voice was faint, but crossed by a note of terror. "In that moment I forgot my religion and my duty. And what is so sweet,--it cannot be right."
"Do you so despise your womanhood, the most perfect thing about you?"
"Oh, let us return! I wanted to kiss you once. I meant to do that. But I should not--Let us go! Oh, I love you so! I love you so!"
He drew her closer and kissed her until her head fell forward and her body grew heavy. "I shall think and act now, for both," he said, unsteadily, although there was no lack of decision in his voice. "You are mine. I claim you, and I shall run no further risk of losing you. Oh, you will forgive me--my love--"
Neither saw a man walking rapidly up the trail. Suddenly the man gave a bound and ran toward them. It was Reinaldo.
"Ah, I have found thee," he cried. "Listen, Don Diego Estenega, lord of the North, American, and would-be dictator of the Californias. Two hours ago I despatched a vaquero with a circular letter to the priests of the Department of the Californias, warning them each and all to write at once to the Archbishop of Mexico, and protest that the success of your ambitions would mean the downfall of the Catholic Church in California, and telling them your schemes. Thou art mighty, O Don Diego Estenega, but thou art powerless against the enmity of the Church. They are mightier than thou, and thou wilt never rule in California. Unhand my sister! Thou shalt not have her either. Thou shalt have nothing. Wilt thou unhand her?" he cried, enraged at Estenega's cold reception of his damnatory news. "Thou shouldst not have her if I tore thy heart from thy body."
Estenega looked contemptuously across Chonita's shoulder, although his heart was lead within him. "The last resource of the mean and down-trodden is revenge," he said. "Go. To-morrow I shall horsewhip you in the court-yard of Fort Ross."
Reinaldo, hot with excitement and thirst for further vengeance, uttered a shriek of rage and sprang upon him. Estenega saw the gleam of a knife and flung Chonita aside, catching the driving arm, the fury of his heart in his muscles. Reinaldo had the soft muscles of the cabellero, and panted and writhed in the iron grasp of the man who forgot that he grappled with the brother of a woman passionately loved, remembered only that he rejoiced to fight to the death the man who had ruined his life. Reinaldo tried to thrust the knife into his back; Estenega suddenly threw his weight on the arm that held it, nearly wrenching it from its socket, snatched the knife, and drove it to the heart of his enemy.
Then the hot blood in his body turned cold. He stood like a stone regarding Chonita, whose eyes, fixed upon him, were expanded with horror. Between them lay the dead body of her brother.
He turned with a groan and sat down on a fallen log, supporting his chin with his hand. His profile looked grim and worn and old. He stared unseeingly at the ground. Chonita stood, still looking at him. The last act of her brother's life had been to lay the foundation of her lover's ruin; his death had completed it: all the South would rise did the slayer of an Iturbi y Moncada seek to rule it. She felt vaguely sorry for Reinaldo; but death was peace; this was hell in living veins. The memory of the world beyond the forest grew indistinct. She recalled her first dream and turned in loathing from the bloodless selfishness of which it was the allegory. Superstition and tradition slipped into some inner pocket of her memory, there to rattle their dry bones together and fall to dust. She saw only the figure, relaxed for the first time, the profile of a man with his head on the block. She stepped across the body of her brother, and, kneeling beside Estenega, drew his head to her breast.
[THE END]
Gertrude Atherton's fiction/novel: Doomswoman: An Historical Romance of Old California
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