Maruja
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10 MARUJA
by BRET HARTE
MARUJA
CHAPTER I
Morning was breaking on the high road to San Jose. The long lines
of dusty, level track were beginning to extend their vanishing
point in the growing light; on either side the awakening fields of
wheat and oats were stretching out and broadening to the sky. In
the east and south the stars were receding before the coming day;
in the west a few still glimmered, caught among the bosky hills of
the canada del Raimundo, where night seemed to linger. Thither
some obscure, low-flying birds were slowly winging; thither a gray
coyote, overtaken by the morning, was awkwardly limping. And
thither a tramping wayfarer turned, plowing through the dust of the
highway still unslaked by the dewless night, to climb the fence and
likewise seek the distant cover.
For some moments man and beast kept an equal pace and gait with a
strange similarity of appearance and expression; the coyote bearing
that resemblance to his more civilized and harmless congener, the
dog, which the tramp bore to the ordinary pedestrians, but both
exhibiting the same characteristics of lazy vagabondage and semi-
lawlessness; the coyote's slouching amble and uneasy stealthiness
being repeated in the tramp's shuffling step and sidelong glances.
Both were young, and physically vigorous, but both displayed the
same vacillating and awkward disinclination to direct effort. They
continued thus half a mile apart unconscious of each other, until
the superior faculties of the brute warned him of the contiguity of
aggressive civilization, and he cantered off suddenly to the right,
fully five minutes before the barking of dogs caused the man to
make a detour to the left to avoid entrance upon a cultivated
domain that lay before him.
The trail he took led to one of the scant water-courses that
issued, half spent, from the canada, to fade out utterly on the hot
June plain. It was thickly bordered with willows and alders, that
made an arbored and feasible path through the dense woods and
undergrowth. He continued along it as if aimlessly; stopping from
time to time to look at different objects in a dull mechanical
fashion, as if rather to prolong his useless hours, than from any
curious instinct, and to occasionally dip in the unfrequent pools
of water the few crusts of bread he had taken from his pocket.
Even this appeared to be suggested more by coincidence of material
in the bread and water, than from the promptings of hunger. At
last he reached a cup-like hollow in the hills lined with wild
clover and thick with resinous odors. Here he crept under a
manzanita-bush and disposed himself to sleep. The act showed he
was already familiar with the local habits of his class, who used
the unfailing dry starlit nights for their wanderings, and spent
the hours of glaring sunshine asleep or resting in some wayside
shadow.
Meanwhile the light quickened, and gradually disclosed the form and
outline of the adjacent domain. An avenue cut through a park-like
wood, carefully cleared of the undergrowth of gigantic ferns
peculiar to the locality, led to the entrance of the canada. Here
began a vast terrace of lawn, broken up by enormous bouquets of
flower-beds bewildering in color and profusion, from which again
rose the flowering vines and trailing shrubs that hid pillars,
veranda, and even the long facade of a great and dominant mansion.
But the delicacy of floral outlines running to the capitals of
columns and at times mounting to the pediment of the roof, the
opulence of flashing color or the massing of tropical foliage,
could not deprive it of the imperious dignity of size and space.
Much of this was due to the fact that the original casa--an adobe
house of no mean pretensions, dating back to the early Spanish
occupation--had been kept intact, sheathed in a shell of dark-red
wood, and still retaining its patio; or inner court-yard,
surrounded by low galleries, while additions, greater in extent
than the main building, had been erected--not as wings and
projections, but massed upon it on either side, changing its rigid
square outlines to a vague parallelogram. While the patio retained
the Spanish conception of al fresco seclusion, a vast colonnade of
veranda on the southern side was a concession to American taste,
and its breadth gave that depth of shadow to the inner rooms which
had been lost in the thinner shell of the new erection. Its
cloistered gloom was lightened by the red fires of cardinal flowers
dropping from the roof, by the yellow sunshine of the jessamine
creeping up the columns, by billows of heliotropes breaking over
its base as a purple sea. Nowhere else did the opulence of this
climate of blossoms show itself as vividly. Even the Castilian
roses, that grew as vines along the east front, the fuchsias, that
attained the dignity of trees, in the patio, or the four or five
monster passion-vines that bestarred the low western wall, and told
over and over again their mystic story--paled before the sensuous
glory of the south veranda.
As the sun arose, that part of the quiet house first touched by its
light seemed to waken. A few lounging peons and servants made
their appearance at the entrance of the patio, occasionally
reinforced by an earlier life from the gardens and stables. But
the south facade of the building had not apparently gone to bed at
all: lights were still burning dimly in the large ball-room; a tray
with glasses stood upon the veranda near one of the open French
windows, and further on, a half-shut yellow fan lay like a fallen
leaf. The sound of carriage-wheels on the gravel terrace brought
with it voices and laughter and the swiftly passing vision of a
char-a-bancs filled with muffled figures bending low to avoid the
direct advances of the sun.
As the carriage rolled away, four men lounged out of a window on
the veranda, shading their eyes against the level beams. One was
still in evening dress, and one in the uniform of a captain of
artillery; the others had already changed their gala attire, the
elder of the party having assumed those extravagant tweeds which
the tourist from Great Britain usually offers as a gentle
concession to inferior yet more florid civilization. Nevertheless,
he beamed back heartily on the sun, and remarked, in a pleasant
Scotch accent, that: Did they know it was very extraordinary how
clear the morning was, so free from clouds and mist and fog? The
young man in evening dress fluently agreed to the facts, and
suggested, in idiomatic French-English, that one comprehended that
the bed was an insult to one's higher nature and an ingratitude to
their gracious hostess, who had spread out this lovely garden and
walks for their pleasure; that nothing was more beautiful than the
dew sparkling on the rose, or the matin song of the little birds.
The other young man here felt called upon to point out the fact
that there was no dew in California, and that the birds did not
sing in that part of the country. The foreign young gentleman
received this statement with pain and astonishment as to the fact,
with passionate remorse as to his own ignorance. But still, as it
was a charming day, would not his gallant friend, the Captain here,
accept the challenge of the brave Englishman, and "walk him" for
the glory of his flag and a thousand pounds?
The gallant Captain, unfortunately, believed that if he walked out
in his uniform he would suffer some delay from being interrogated
by wayfarers as to the locality of the circus he would be
pleasantly supposed to represent, even if he escaped being shot as
a rare California bird by the foreign sporting contingent. In
these circumstances, he would simply lounge around the house until
his carriage was ready.
Much as it pained him to withdraw from such amusing companions, the
foreign young gentleman here felt that he, too, would retire for
the present to change his garments, and glided back through the
window at the same moment that the young officer carelessly stepped
from the veranda and lounged towards the shrubbery.
"They've been watching each other for the last hour. I wonder
what's up?" said the young man who remained.
The remark, without being confidential, was so clearly the first
sentence of natural conversation that the Scotchman, although
relieved, said, "Eh, man?" a little cautiously.
"It's as clear as this sunshine that Captain Carroll and Garnier
are each particularly anxious to know what the other is doing or
intends to do this morning."
"Why did they separate, then?" asked the other.
"That's a mere blind. Garnier's looking through his window now at
Carroll, and Carroll is aware of it."
"Eh!" said the Scotchman, with good-humored curiosity. "Is it a
quarrel? Nothing serious, I hope. No revolvers and bowie-knives,
man, before breakfast, eh?"
"No," laughed the younger man. "No! To do Maruja justice, she
generally makes a fellow too preposterous to fight. I see you
don't understand. You're a stranger; I'm an old habitue of the
house--let me explain. Both of these men are in love with Maruja;
or, worse than that, they firmly believe her to be in love with
THEM."
"But Miss Maruja is the eldest daughter of our hostess, is she
not?" said the Scotchman; "and I understood from one of the young
ladies that the Captain had come down from the Fort particularly to
pay court to Miss Amita, the beauty."
"Possibly. But that wouldn't prevent Maruja from flirting with
him."
"Eh! but are you not mistaken, Mr. Raymond? Certainly a more
quiet, modest, and demure young lassie I never met."
"That's because she sat out two waltzes with you, and let you do
the talking, while she simply listened."
The elder man's fresh color for an instant heightened, but he
recovered himself with a good-humored laugh. "Likely--likely.
She's a capital good listener."
"You're not the first man that found her eloquent. Stanton, your
banking friend, who never talks of anything but mines and stocks,
says she's the only woman who has any conversation; and we can all
swear that she never said two words to him the whole time she sat
next to him at dinner. But she looked at him as if she had. Why,
man, woman, and child all give her credit for any grace that
pleases themselves. And why? Because she's clever enough not to
practice any one of them--as graces. I don't know the girl that
claims less and gets more. For instance, you don't call her
pretty?" . . .
"Wait a bit. Ye'll not get on so fast, my young friend; I'm not
prepared to say that she's not," returned the Scotchman, with good-
humored yet serious caution.
"But you would have been prepared yesterday, and have said it. She
can produce the effect of the prettiest girl here, and without
challenging comparison. Nobody thinks of her--everybody
experiences her."
"You're an enthusiast, Mr. Raymond. As an habitue of the house, of
course, you--"
"Oh, my time came with the rest," laughed the young man, with
unaffected frankness. "It's about two years ago now."
"I see--you were not a marrying man."
"Pardon me--it was because I was."
The Scotchman looked at him curiously.
"Maruja is an heiress. I am a mining engineer."
"But, my dear fellow, I thought that in your country--"
"In MY country, yes. But we are standing on a bit of old Spain.
This land was given to Dona Maria Saltonstall's ancestors by
Charles V. Look around you. This veranda, this larger shell of
the ancient casa, is the work of the old Salem whaling captain that
she married, and is all that is American here. But the heart of
the house, as well as the life that circles around the old patio,
is Spanish. The Dona's family, the Estudillos and Guitierrez,
always looked down upon this alliance with the Yankee captain,
though it brought improvement to the land, and increased its value
forty-fold, and since his death ever opposed any further foreign
intervention. Not that that would weigh much with Maruja if she
took a fancy to any one; Spanish as she is throughout, in thought
and grace and feature, there is enough of the old Salem witches'
blood in her to defy law and authority in following an unhallowed
worship. There are no sons; she is the sole heiress of the house
and estate--though, according to the native custom, her sisters
will be separately portioned from the other property, which is very
large."
"Then the Captain might still make a pretty penny on Amita," said
the Scotchman.
"If he did not risk and lose it all on Maruja. There is enough of
the old Spanish jealousy in the blood to make even the gentle Amita
never forgive his momentary defection."
Something in his manner made the Scotchman think that Raymond spoke
from baleful experience. How else could this attractive young
fellow, educated abroad and a rising man in his profession, have
failed to profit by his contiguity to such advantages, and the fact
of his being an evident favorite?
"But with this opposition on the part of the relatives to any
further alliances with your countrymen, why does our hostess expose
her daughters to their fascinating influence?" said the elder man,
glancing at his companion. "The girls seem to have the usual
American freedom."
"Perhaps they are therefore the less likely to give it up to the
first man who asks them. But the Spanish duenna still survives in
the family--the more awful because invisible. It's a mysterious
fact that as soon as a fellow becomes particularly attached to any
one--except Maruja--he receives some intimation from Pereo."
"What! the butler? That Indian-looking fellow? A servant?"
"Pardon me--the mayordomo. The old confidential servitor who
stands in loco parentis. No one knows what he says. If the victim
appeals to the mistress, she is indisposed; you know she has such
bad health. If in his madness he makes a confidante of Maruja,
that finishes him."
"How?"
"Why, he ends by transferring his young affections to her--with the
usual result."
"Then you don't think our friend the Captain has had this
confidential butler ask his intentions yet?"
"I don't think it will be necessary," said the other, dryly.
"Umph! Meantime, the Captain has just vanished through yon
shrubbery. I suppose that's the end of the mysterious espionage
you have discovered. No! De'il take it! but there's that
Frenchman popping out of the myrtlebush. How did the fellow get
there? And, bless me! here's our lassie, too!"
"Yes!" said Raymond, in a changed voice, "It's Maruja!"
She had approached so noiselessly along the bank that bordered the
veranda, gliding from pillar to pillar as she paused before each to
search for some particular flower, that both men felt an uneasy
consciousness. But she betrayed no indication of their presence by
look or gesture. So absorbed and abstracted she seemed that, by a
common instinct, they both drew nearer the window, and silently
waited for her to pass or recognize them.
She halted a few paces off to fasten a flower in her girdle. A
small youthful figure, in a pale yellow dress, lacking even the
maturity of womanly outline. The full oval of her face, the
straight line of her back, a slight boyishness in the contour of
her hips, the infantine smallness of her sandaled feet and narrow
hands, were all suggestive of fresh, innocent, amiable youth--and
nothing more.
Forgetting himself, the elder man mischievously crushed his
companion against the wall in mock virtuous indignation. "Eh,
sir," he whispered, with an accent that broadened with his
feelings. "Eh, but look at the puir wee lassie! Will ye no be
ashamed o' yerself for putting the tricks of a Circe on sic a
honest gentle bairn? Why, man, you'll be seein' the sign of a limb
of Satan in a bit thing with the mother's milk not yet out of her!
She a flirt, speerin' at men, with that modest downcast air? I'm
ashamed of ye, Mister Raymond. She's only thinking of her
breakfast, puir thing, and not of yon callant. Another
sacrilegious word and I'll expose you to her. Have ye no pity on
youth and innocence?"
"Let me up," groaned Raymond, feebly, "and I'll tell you how old
she is. Hush--she's looking."
The two men straightened themselves. She had, indeed, lifted her
eyes towards the window. They were beautiful eyes, and charged
with something more than their own beauty. With a deep brunette
setting even to the darkened cornea, the pupils were blue as the
sky above them. But they were lit with another intelligence. The
soul of the Salem whaler looked out of the passion-darkened orbits
of the mother, and was resistless.
She smiled recognition of the two men with sedate girlishness and a
foreign inclination of the head over the flowers she was holding.
Her straight, curveless mouth became suddenly charming with the
parting of her lips over her white teeth, and left the impress of
the smile in a lighting of the whole face even after it had passed.
Then she moved away. At the same moment Garnier approached her.
"Come away, man, and have our walk," said the Scotchman, seizing
Raymond's arm. "We'll not spoil that fellow's sport."
"No; but she will, I fear. Look, Mr. Buchanan, if she hasn't given
him her flowers to carry to the house while she waits here for the
Captain!"
"Come away, scoffer!" said Buchanan, good-humoredly, locking his
arm in the young man's and dragging him from the veranda towards
the avenue, "and keep your observations for breakfast."
CHAPTER II
In the mean time, the young officer, who had disappeared in the
shrubbery, whether he had or had not been a spectator of the scene,
exhibited some signs of agitation. He walked rapidly on,
occasionally switching the air with a wand of willow, from which he
had impatiently plucked the leaves, through an alley of ceanothus,
until he reached a little thicket of evergreens, which seemed to
oppose his further progress. Turning to one side, however, he
quickly found an entrance to a labyrinthine walk, which led him at
last to an open space and a rustic summer-house that stood beneath
a gnarled and venerable pear-tree. The summerhouse was a quaint
stockade of dark madrono boughs thatched with red-wood bark,
strongly suggestive of deeper woodland shadow. But in strange
contrast, the floor, table, and benches were thickly strewn with
faded rose-leaves, scattered as if in some riotous play of
children. Captain Carroll brushed them aside hurriedly with his
impatient foot, glanced around hastily, then threw himself on the
rustic bench at full length and twisted his mustache between his
nervous fingers. Then he rose as suddenly, with a few white petals
impaled on his gilded spurs and stepped quickly into the open
sunlight.
He must have been mistaken! Everything was quiet around him, the
far-off sound of wheels in the avenue came faintly, but nothing
more.
His eye fell upon the pear-tree, and even in his preoccupation he
was struck with the signs of its extraordinary age. Twisted out of
all proportion, and knotted with excrescences, it was supported by
iron bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay. He
tried to interest himself in the various initials and symbols
deeply carved in bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he
turned back to the summer-house, he for the first time noticed that
the ground rose behind it into a long undulation, on the crest of
which the same singular profusion of rose-leaves were scattered.
It struck him as being strangely like a gigantic grave, and that
the same idea had occurred to the fantastic dispenser of the
withered flowers. He was still looking at it, when a rustle in the
undergrowth made his heart beat expectantly. A slinking gray
shadow crossed the undulation and disappeared in the thicket. It
was a coyote. At any other time the extraordinary appearance of
this vivid impersonation of the wilderness, so near a centre of
human civilization and habitation, would have filled him with
wonder. But he had room for only a single thought now. Would SHE
come?
Five minutes passed. He no longer waited in the summer-house, but
paced impatiently before the entrance to the labyrinth. Another
five minutes. He was deceived, undoubtedly. She and her sisters
were probably waiting for him and laughing at him on the lawn. He
ground his heel into the clover, and threw his switch into the
thicket. Yet he would give her one--only one moment more.
"Captain Carroll!"
The voice had been and was to HIM the sweetest in the world; but
even a stranger could not have resisted the spell of its musical
inflection. He turned quickly. She was advancing towards him from
the summer-house.
"Did you think I was coming that way--where everybody could follow
me?" she laughed, softly. "No; I came through the thicket over
there," indicating the direction with her flexible shoulder, "and
nearly lost my slipper and my eyes--look!" She threw back the
inseparable lace shawl from her blond head, and showed a spray of
myrtle clinging like a broken wreath to her forehead. The young
officer remained gazing at her silently.
"I like to hear you speak my name," he said, with a slight
hesitation in his breath. "Say it again."
"Car-roll, Car-roll, Car-roll," she murmured gently to herself two
or three times, as if enjoying her own native trilling of the r's.
"It's a pretty name. It sounds like a song. Don Carroll, eh! El
Capitan Don Carroll."
"But my first name is Henry," he said, faintly.
"'Enry--that's not so good. Don Enrico will do. But El Capitan
Carroll is best of all. I must have it always: El Capitan
Carroll!"
"Always?" He colored like a boy.
"Why not?" He was confusedly trying to look through her brown
lashes; she was parrying him with the steel of her father's glance.
"Come! Well! Captain Carroll! It was not to tell me your name--
that I knew already was pretty--Car-roll!" she murmured again,
caressing him with her lashes; "it was not for this that you asked
me to meet you face to face in this--cold"--she made a movement of
drawing her lace over her shoulders--"cold daylight. That belonged
to the lights and the dance and the music of last night. It is not
for this you expect me to leave my guests, to run away from
Monsieur Garnier, who pays compliments, but whose name is not
pretty--from Mr. Raymond, who talks OF me when he can't talk TO me.
They will say, This Captain Carroll could say all that before
them."
"But if they knew," said the young officer, drawing closer to her
with a paling face but brightening eyes, "if they knew I had
anything else to say, Miss Saltonstall--something--pardon me--did I
hurt your hand?--something for HER alone--is there one of them that
would have the right to object? Do not think me foolish, Miss
Saltonstall--but--I beg--I implore you to tell me before I say
more."
"Who would have a right?" said Maruja, withdrawing her hand but not
her dangerous eyes. "Who would dare forbid you talking to me of my
sister? I have told you that Amita is free--as we all are."
Captain Carroll fell back a few steps and gazed at her with a
troubled face. "It is possible that you have misunderstood, Miss
Saltonstall?" he faltered. "Do you still think it is Amita that
I"--he stopped and added passionately, "Do you remember what I told
you?--have you forgotten last night?"
"Last night was--last night!" said Maruja, slightly lifting her
shoulders. "One makes love at night--one marries in daylight. In
the music, in the flowers, in the moonlight, one says everything;
in the morning one has breakfast--when one is not asked to have
councils of war with captains and commandantes. You would speak of
my sister, Captain Car-roll--go on. Dona Amita Carroll sounds
very, very pretty. I shall not object." She held out both her
hands to him, threw her head back, and smiled.
He seized her hands passionately. "No, no! you shall hear me--you
shall understand me. I love YOU, Maruja--you, and you alone. God
knows I can not help it--God knows I would not help it if I could.
Hear me. I will be calm. No one can hear us where we stand. I am
not mad. I am not a traitor! I frankly admired your sister. I
came here to see her. Beyond that, I swear to you, I am guiltless
to her--to you. Even she knows no more of me than that. I saw
you, Maruja. From that moment I have thought of nothing--dreamed
of nothing else."
"That is--three, four, five days and one afternoon ago! You see, I
remember. And now you want--what?"
"To let me love you, and you only. To let me be with you. To let
me win you in time, as you should be won. I am not mad, though I
am desperate. I know what is due to your station and mine--even
while I dare to say I love you. Let me hope, Maruja, I only ask to
hope."
She looked at him until she had absorbed all the burning fever of
his eyes, until her ears tingled with his passionate voice, and
then--she shook her head.
"It can not be, Carroll--no! never!"
He drew himself up under the blow with such simple and manly
dignity that her eyes dropped for the moment. "There is another,
then?" he said, sadly.
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