The Crusade of the Excelsior Part 25

She pressed her little brown fist, still tightly clutching her fan, against her low bodice, as if already transfixed with a secret and absorbing pa.s.sion.

"Well, you shall have d.i.c.k then," said Miss Keene, laughing; "but was it for THAT you were seeking me?"

"Mother of G.o.d! you know not then what has happened? You are a blind--a deaf--to but one thing all the time? Ah!" she said quickly, unfolding her fan and modestly diving her little head behind it, "I have ashamed for you, Miss Keene."

"But WHAT has happened?" said Hurlstone, interposing to relieve his companion. "We fancied something"--

"Something! he says something!--ah, that something was a temblor! An earthquake! The earth has shaken himself. Look!"

She pointed with her fan to the sh.o.r.e, where the sea had suddenly returned in a turbulence of foam and billows that was breaking over the base of the cross they had just quitted.

Miss Keene drew a quick sigh. Dona Isabel had ducked again modestly behind her fan, but this time dragging with her other arm Miss Keene's head down to share its discreet shadow as she whispered,--

"And--infatuated one!--you two never noticed it!"

CHAPTER V.

CLOUDS AND CHANGE.

The earthquake shock, although the first experienced by the Americans, had been a yearly phenomenon to the people of Todos Santos, and was so slight as to leave little impression upon either the low adobe walls of the pueblo or the indolent population. "If it's a provision of Nature for shaking up these Rip Van Winkle Latin races now and then, it's a dead failure, as far as Todos Santos is concerned," Crosby had said, with a yawn. "Brace, who's got geology on the brain ever since he struck cinnabar ore, says he isn't sure the Injins ain't right when they believe that the Pacific Ocean used to roll straight up to the Presidio, and there wasn't any channel--and that reef of rocks was upheaved in their time. But what's the use of it? it never really waked them up."

"Perhaps they're waiting for another kind of earthquake," Winslow had responded sententiously.

In six weeks it had been forgotten, except by three people--Miss Keene, James Hurlstone, and Padre Esteban. Since Hurlstone had parted with Miss Keene on that memorable afternoon he had apparently lapsed into his former reserve. Without seeming to avoid her timid advances, he met her seldom, and then only in the presence of the Padre or Mrs. Markham.

Although uneasy at the deprivation of his society, his present shyness did not affect her as it had done at first: she knew it was no longer indifference; she even fancied she understood it from what had been her own feelings. If he no longer raised his eyes to hers as frankly as he had that day, she felt a more delicate pleasure in the consciousness of his lowered eyelids when they met, and the instinct that told her when his melancholy glance followed her un.o.bserved. The s.e.x of these lovers--if we may call them so who had never exchanged a word of love--seemed to be changed. It was Miss Keene who now sought him with a respectful and frank admiration; it was Hurlstone who now tried to avoid it with a feminine dread of reciprocal display. Once she had even adverted to the episode of the cross. They were standing under the arch of the refectory door, waiting for Padre Esteban, and looking towards the sea.

"Do you think we were ever in any real danger, down there, on the sh.o.r.e--that day?" she said timidly.

"No; not from the sea," he replied, looking at her with a half defiant resolution.

"From what then?" she asked, with a naivete that was yet a little conscious.

"Do you remember the children giving you their offerings that day?" he asked abruptly.

"I do," she replied, with smiling eyes.

"Well, it appears that it is the custom for the betrothed couples to come to the cross to exchange their vows. They mistook us for lovers."

All the instinctive delicacy of Miss Keene's womanhood resented the rude infelicity of this speech and the flippant manner of its utterance. She did not blush, but lifted her clear eyes calmly to his.

"It was an unfortunate mistake," she said coldly, "the more so as they were your pupils. Ah! here is Father Esteban," she added, with a marked tone of relief, as she crossed over to the priest's side.

When Father Esteban returned to the refectory that evening, Hurlstone was absent. When it grew later, becoming uneasy, the good Father sought him in the garden. At the end of the avenue of pear-trees there was a break in the sea-wall, and here, with his face to the sea, Hurlstone was leaning gloomily. Father Esteban's tread was noiseless, and he had laid his soft hand on the young man's shoulder before Hurlstone was aware of his presence. He started slightly, his gloomy eyes fell before the priest's.

"My son," said the old man gravely, "this must go on no longer."

"I don't understand you," Hurlstone replied coldly.

"Do not try to deceive yourself, nor me. Above all, do not try to deceive HER. Either you are or are not in love with this countrywoman of yours. If you are not, my respect for her and my friends.h.i.+p for you prompts me to save you both from a foolish intimacy that may ripen into a misplaced affection; if you are already in love with her"--

"I have never spoken a word of love to her!" interrupted Hurlstone quickly. "I have even tried to avoid her since"--

"Since you found that you loved her! Ah, foolish boy! and you think that because the lips speak not, the pa.s.sions of the heart are stilled! Do you think your silence in her presence is not a protestation that she, even she, child as she is, can read, with the cunning of her s.e.x?"

"Well--if I am in love with her, what then?" said Hurlstone doggedly.

"It is no crime to love a pure and simple girl. Am I not free? You yourself, in yonder church, told me"--

"Silence, Diego," said the priest sternly. "Silence, before you utter the thought that shall disgrace you to speak and me to hear!"

"Forgive me, Father Esteban," said the young man hurriedly, grasping both hands of the priest. "Forgive me--I am mad--distracted--but I swear to you I only meant"--

"Hus.h.!.+" interrupted the priest more gently. "So; that will do." He stopped, drew out his snuff-box, rapped the lid, and took a pinch of snuff slowly. "We will not recur to that point. Then you have told her the story of your life?"

"No; but I will, She shall know all--everything--before I utter a word of love to her."

"Ah! bueno! muy bueno!" said the Padre, wiping his nose ostentatiously.

"Ah! let me see! Then, when we have shown her that we cannot possibly marry her, we will begin to make love to her! Eh, eh! that is the American fas.h.i.+on. Ah, pardon!" he continued, in response to a gesture of protestation from Hurlstone; "I am wrong. It is when we have told her that we cannot marry her as a Protestant, that we will make love as a Catholic. Is that it?"

"Hear me," said Hurlstone pa.s.sionately. "You have saved me from madness and, perhaps, death. Your care--your kindness--your teachings have given me life again. Don't blame me, Father Esteban, if, in casting off my old self, you have given me hopes of a new and fresher life--of"--

"A newer and fresher love, you would say," said the Padre, with a sad smile. "Be it so. You will at least do justice to the old priest, when you remember that he never pressed you to take vows that would have prevented this forever."

"I know it," said Hurlstone, taking the old man's hand. "And you will remember, too, that I was happy and contented before this came upon me.

Tell me what I shall do. Be my guide--my friend, Father Esteban. Put me where I was a few months ago--before I learned to love her."

"Do you mean it, Diego?" said the old man, grasping his hand tightly, and fixing his eyes upon him.

"I do."

"Then listen to me, for it is my turn to speak. When, eight months ago, you sought the shelter of that blessed roof, it was for refuge from a woman that had cursed your life. It was given you. You would leave it now to commit an act that would bring another woman, as mad as yourself, clamoring at its doors for protection from YOU. For what you are proposing to this innocent girl is what you accepted from the older and wickeder woman. You have been cursed because a woman divided for you what was before G.o.d an indivisible right; and you, Diego, would now redivide that with another, whom you dare to say you LOVE! You would use the opportunity of her helplessness and loneliness here to convince her; you would tempt her with sympathy, for she is unhappy; with companions.h.i.+p, for she has no longer the world to choose from--with everything that should make her sacred from your pursuit."

"Enough," said Hurlstone hoa.r.s.ely; "say no more. Only I implore you tell me what to do now to save her. I will--if you tell me to do it--leave her forever."

"Why should YOU go?" said the priest quietly. "HER absence will be sufficient."

"HER absence?" echoed Hurlstone.

"Hers alone. The conditions that brought YOU here are unchanged. You are still in need of an asylum from the world and the wife you have repudiated. Why should you abandon it? For the girl, there is no cause why she should remain--beyond yourself. She has a brother whom she loves--who wants her--who has the right to claim her at any time. She will go to him."

"But how?"

"That has been my secret, and will be my sacrifice to you, Diego, my son. I have foreseen all this; I have expected it from the day that girl sent you her woman's message, that was half a challenge, from her school--I have known it from the day you walked together on the sea-sh.o.r.e. I was blind before that--for I am weak in my way, too, and I had dreamed of other things. G.o.d has willed it otherwise." He paused, and returning the pressure of Hurlstone's hand, went on. "My secret and my sacrifice for you is this. For the last two hundred years the Church has had a secret and trusty messenger from the See at Guadalajara--in a s.h.i.+p that touches here for a few hours only every three years. Her arrival and departure is known only to myself and my brothers of the Council. By this wisdom and the provision of G.o.d, the integrity of the Holy Church and the conversion of the heathen have been maintained without interruption and interference. You know now, my son, why your comrades were placed under surveillance; why it was necessary that the people should believe in a political conspiracy among yourselves, rather than the facts as they existed, which might have bred a dangerous curiosity among them. I have given you our secret, Diego--that is but a part of my sacrifice. When that s.h.i.+p arrives, and she is expected daily, I will secretly place Miss Keene and her friend on board, with explanatory letters to the Archbishop, and she will be a.s.sisted to rejoin her brother. It will be against the wishes of the Council; but my will," continued the old man, with a gesture of imperiousness, "is the will of the Church, and the law that overrides all."

He had stopped, with a strange fire in his eyes. It still continued to burn as he went on rapidly,--

"You will understand the sacrifice I am making in telling you this, when you know that I could have done all that I propose without your leave or hindrance. Yes, Diego; I had but to stretch out my hand thus, and that foolish fire-brand of a heretic muchacha would have vanished from Todos Santos forever. I could have left you in your fool's paradise, and one morning you would have found her gone. I should have condoled with you, and consoled you, and you would have forgotten her as you did the other.