XXI
Concha, after her father left her, sat for a long while in an attitudeof such complete repose that Sturgis, watching her miserably from theveranda, remembered the consolations of his sketch book; and he wasable to counterfeit the graceful, proud figure, under the wall androses, before she stirred.
Concha had sent her father away deeply puzzled. When, after embracingher with unusual emotion, he had informed her of his consent to hermarriage, she had received the news as a matter of course, her hopesand desires having mounted too high to contemplate a fall. Then theCommandante, after dwelling at some length upon his discussions withthe Governor and the priests, and admonishing her against conceivingherself too important a factor in what might prove to be an alliance ofinternational moment (she had laughed merrily and called him the mostcallous of parents and subtlest of diplomats), had announced with sometrepidation and his most official manner that the consent of the Popeand the King would be sought by Rezanov in person, involving a delayand separation of not less than two years. But to his surprise she didnot fling herself upon his neck with blandishments and tears. Shemerely became quite still, her light high spirits retreating as abreeze might before one of Nature's sudden and portentous calms. DonJose, after a fruitless attempt to recapture her interest, mounted hishorse and rode away; and Concha sat down on a bench under the wall andthought for an hour without moving a finger.
Her first sensation was one of bitter anger and disappointment withRezanov. He had, apparently, in the first brief interview with theirtribunal, given his consent to this long delay of their nuptials.
Her thoughts since his advent had flown on many journeys and knownlittle rest. She had been rudely awakened and stripped of her girlishillusions in those days and nights of battle between pride and herdazzled womanhood when, in the new humility of love, she believedherself to be but one of a hundred pretty girls in the eyes of thisaccomplished and fortunate Russian. The interval had been brief, butnot long enough for the grandeur in her nature to awaken almostconcurrently with her passions, and she had planned a life, in which,guided and uplifted by the star of fidelity, and delivered from thefrivolous and commonplace temptations of other women, she should devoteherself to the improvement and instruction not only of the Indians butof the youth of her own class. The schools founded by the estimableand enterprising Borica had practically disappeared, and she was by farthe best educated woman in California. For such there was a manifestand an inexorable duty. She would live to be old, she supposed, likeall the Arguellos and Moragas; but hidden in her unspotted soul wouldbe the flame of eternal youth, fed by an ideal and a memory that wouldoutlive her weary, insignificant body. And in it she would find hercourage and her inspiration, as well as an unwasting sympathy for thoseshe taught.
Then had come the sudden and passionate wooing of Rezanov. All otherideals and aspirations had fled. She had alternated between the tragicextremes of bliss and despair. So completely did the ardor of hernature respond to his, so fierce and primitive was the cry of her egofor its mate, that she cared nothing for the distress of her parentsnor the fate of California. There is no love complete without thisearly and absolute selfishness, which is merely the furiousdetermination of the race to accomplish its object before the spiritawakens and the passions cool.
Last night life had seemed serious; she had been girlishly,romantically happy. It is true that her heart had thumped against thewall as he kissed her, and that she had been full of a wild desire tosing, although she could hardly shape and utter the words that dancedin her throbbing brain. But she had been conscious through it all ofthe romantic circumstance, of the lonely beauty of the night, of thedelightful wickedness of meeting her lover in the silence and the dark,even with a wall ten feet high between them. For the wall, indeed, shehad been confusedly and deliciously grateful.
And this was what a man's love came to: ardors by night and expedienceby day! Or was it merely that Rezanov was the man of affairs always,the lover incidentally? But how could a man who had seemed the veryepitome of all the lovers of all the world but a few hours before,contemplate, far less permit, a separation of years? Poor Conchagroped toward the great unacceptable fact of life the whole, lit bylove its chief incident; and had a fleeting vision of the waste landsin the lives of women occupied only with matrimony. But she droppedher lashes upon this unalluring vision, and as she did so, inevitablyshe began to excuse the man.
None knew better than she every side of the great question that wasshaking not only her life but California itself. Appeal from thedictum of state and clergy would be a mere waste of time. The onlyalternative was flight. That would mean the wreck of Rezanov's avowedpurposes in coming to this quarter of New Spain, and perhaps of othersshe dimly suspected. It would mean the very acme of misery for hisSitkans, and an indefensible blow to the Company. It might even provethe fatal mistake in his career, for which his enemies were ever on thealert. He was not communicative about himself except when he had anobject in view, but he had told her something of his life, and hisofficers and Langsdorff had told more. He was no silly caballerowarbling and thrumming at her grating when she longed for sleep, but aman in his forties whose passions were in the leash of a remarkablyacute and ambitious brain. She even thrilled with pride in hisstrength, for she knew how he loved her; and although his part wasaction, her stimulated instincts taught her that she would rarely belong from his mind. And what was she to seek to roll stumbling blocksinto the career of a man like that? In this very garden, for four longdays, she had dreamed exalted dreams of the manifold gifts she shoulddevelop for his solace at home and his worldly advancement. She hadonce felt all a girl's impatience when her mother's tears made herfather's departure on some distant mission more difficult than need be,and although she knew now that her capacity for tenderness was asgreat, she resolved to mould herself in a larger shape than that.
But she sighed and drooped a little. The burden of woman's waitingseemed already to have descended upon her. Two years were long--long.There might be other delays. He might fall ill; he had been ill beforein that barbarous Russian north. And in all that time it was doubtfulif she received a line from him, a hint of his welfare. The Boston andBritish skippers came no more, and it was certain that no Russian shipwould visit California again until the treaty was signed and officialnews of it had made its slow way to these uttermost shores. She hadresented, in her young ambition and indocility, the chance that hadstranded her, equipped for civilization, on this rim of the world, butnever so much as in that moment, when she sat with arrested breath andrealized to the full the primitive conditions of a country thousands ofmiles from the very outposts of Europe, and with never the sight of aletter that did not come from Spain or one of her colonies.
"Would that we lived a generation later," she thought with a heavysigh. "Progress is almost automatic, and to a land as fertile anddesirable as this the stream must turn in due course. But not in mytime. Not in my time."
She rose and leaned her elbows in the embrasure of the grille, whereSantiago had restored the bars, and looked out over the fields of grainplanted by the padres, the immense sand dunes beyond that shut thelovely bay from sight; the hills embracing the primitive scene in afrowning arc. With all her imagination it was long before she couldpicture a great city covering that immense and almost deserted space.A pueblo in time, perhaps, for Rezanov had awakened her mind to theimportance of the harbor as a port of call. Many more adobe homeswhere the sand was not hot and shifting, a few ships in the bay whenSpain had been compelled to relax her jealous vigilance--or--whoknew?--perhaps!--a flourishing colony when the Russian bear haddevoured the Spanish lion. She knew something and suspected more ofthe rottenness and inefficiency of Spain, and, were Russia a nation ofRezanovs, what opposition in California against the tide thunderingdown from the north? Then, perhaps, the city that had travelled fromthe brain of the Russian to hers when the fog had rolled over theheights; the towers and palaces and bazaars, the thousand l
ittle goldendomes with the slender cross atop; the forts on the crags and thevillas in the hollows, and on all the island and hills. But when sheand her lover were dust. When she and her lover were dust.
But she was too young and too ardent to listen long to the ravens ofthe spirit. Two years are not eternity, and in happiness the pastrolls together like a scroll and is naught. She fell to dreaming. Herlips that had been set with the gravity of stone relaxed in warmcurves. The color came back to her cheek, the light to her eyes. Shewas a girl at her grating with the roses poignant above her, and theworld, radiant, alluring, and all for her, swimming in the violet hazebeyond.