On the Frontier. Bret Harte
of late you gather overmuch of roses and syringa, excellent in their way and in moderation, but still not to be compared with the flower of Holy Church, the lily.”
“But lilies don’t look well on the refectory table, and against the adobe wall,” returned the acolyte, with a pout of a spoilt child; “and surely the flowers cannot help being sweet, any more than myrrh or incense. And I am not frightened of the heathen Americanos either NOW. There was a small one in the garden yesterday, a boy like me, and he spoke kindly and with a pleasant face.”
“What said he to thee, child?” asked Father Pedro, anxiously.
“Nay, the matter of his speech I could not understand,” laughed the boy, “but the manner was as gentle as thine, holy father.”
“‘St, child,” said the Padre impatiently. “Thy likings are as unreasonable as thy fears. Besides, have I not told thee it ill becomes a child of Christ to chatter with those sons of Belial? But canst thou not repeat the words—the WORDS he said?” he continued suspiciously.
“‘Tis a harsh tongue the Americanos speak in their throat,” replied the boy. “But he said ‘Devilishnisse’ and ‘pretty-as-a-girl,’ and looked at me.”
The good father made the boy repeat the words gravely, and as gravely repeated them after him with infinite simplicity. “They are but heretical words,” he replied in answer to the boy’s inquiring look; “it is well you understand not English. Enough. Run away, child, and be ready for the Angelus. I will commune with myself awhile under the pear trees.”
Glad to escape so easily, the young acolyte disappeared down the alley of fig trees, not without a furtive look at the patches of chickweed around their roots, the possible ambuscade of creeping or saltant vermin. The good priest heaved a sigh and glanced round the darkening prospect. The sun had already disappeared over the mountain wall that lay between him and the sea, rimmed with a faint white line of outlying fog. A cool zephyr fanned his cheek; it was the dying breath of the vientos generales beyond the wall. As Father Pedro’s eyes were raised to this barrier, which seemed to shut out the boisterous world beyond, he fancied he noticed for the first time a slight breach in the parapet, over which an advanced banner of the fog was fluttering. Was it an omen? His speculations were cut short by a voice at his very side.
He turned quickly and beheld one of those “heathens” against whom he had just warned his young acolyte; one of that straggling band of adventurers whom the recent gold discoveries had scattered along the coast. Luckily the fertile alluvium of these valleys, lying parallel with the sea, offered no “indications” to attract the gold seekers. Nevertheless to Father Pedro even the infrequent contact with the Americanos was objectionable; they were at once inquisitive and careless; they asked questions with the sharp perspicacity of controversy; they received his grave replies with the frank indifference of utter worldliness. Powerful enough to have been tyrannical oppressors, they were singularly tolerant and gentle, contenting themselves with a playful, good-natured irreverence, which tormented the good father more than opposition. They were felt to be dangerous and subversive.
The Americano, however, who stood before him did not offensively suggest these national qualities. A man of middle height, strongly built, bronzed and slightly gray from the vicissitudes of years and exposure, he had an air of practical seriousness that commended itself to Father Pedro. To his religious mind it suggested self-consciousness; expressed in the dialect of the stranger it only meant “business.”
“I’m rather glad I found you out here alone,” began the latter; “it saves time. I haven’t got to take my turn with the rest, in there”—he indicated the church with his thumb—“and you haven’t got to make an appointment. You have got a clear forty minutes before the Angelus rings,” he added, consulting a large silver chronometer, “and I reckon I kin git through my part of the job inside of twenty, leaving you ten minutes for remarks. I want to confess.”
Father Pedro drew back with a gesture of dignity. The stranger, however, laid his hand upon the Padre’s sleeve with the air of a man anticipating objection, but never refusal, and went on.
“Of course, I know. You want me to come at some other time, and in THERE. You want it in the reg’lar style. That’s your way and your time. My answer is: it ain’t MY way and MY time. The main idea of confession, I take it, is gettin’ at the facts. I’m ready to give ‘em if you’ll take ‘em out here, now. If you’re willing to drop the Church and confessional, and all that sort o’ thing, I, on my side, am willing to give up the absolution, and all that sort o’ thing. You might,” he added, with an unconscious touch of pathos in the suggestion, “heave in a word or two of advice after I get through; for instance, what YOU’D do in the circumstances, you see! That’s all. But that’s as you please. It ain’t part of the business.”
Irreverent as this speech appeared, there was really no trace of such intention in his manner, and his evident profound conviction that his suggestion was practical, and not at all inconsistent with ecclesiastical dignity, would alone have been enough to touch the Padre, had not the stranger’s dominant personality already overridden him. He hesitated. The stranger seized the opportunity to take his arm, and lead him with the half familiarity of powerful protection to a bench beneath the refectory window. Taking out his watch again, he put it in the passive hands of the astonished priest, saying, “Time me,” cleared his throat, and began:—
“Fourteen years ago there was a ship cruisin’ in the Pacific, jest off this range, that was ez nigh on to a Hell afloat as anything rigged kin be. If a chap managed to dodge the cap’en’s belayin-pin for a time, he was bound to be fetched up in the ribs at last by the mate’s boots. There was a chap knocked down the fore hatch with a broken leg in the Gulf, and another jumped overboard off Cape Corrientes, crazy as a loon, along a clip of the head from the cap’en’s trumpet. Them’s facts. The ship was a brigantine, trading along the Mexican coast. The cap’en had his wife aboard, a little timid Mexican woman he’d picked up at Mazatlan. I reckon she didn’t get on with him any better than the men, for she ups and dies one day, leavin’ her baby, a year-old gal. One of the crew was fond o’ that baby. He used to get the black nurse to put it in the dingy, and he’d tow it astern, rocking it with the painter like a cradle. He did it—hatin’ the cap’en all the same. One day the black nurse got out of the dingy for a moment, when the baby was asleep, leavin’ him alone with it. An idea took hold on him, jest from cussedness, you’d say, but it was partly from revenge on the cap’en and partly to get away from the ship. The ship was well inshore, and the current settin’ towards it. He slipped the painter—that man—and set himself adrift with the baby. It was a crazy act, you’d reckon, for there wasn’t any oars in the boat; but he had a crazy man’s luck, and he contrived, by sculling the boat with one of the seats he tore out, to keep her out of the breakers, till he could find a bight in the shore to run her in. The alarm was given from the ship, but the fog shut down upon him; he could hear the other boats in pursuit. They seemed to close in on him, and by the sound he judged the cap’en was just abreast of him in the gig, bearing down upon him in the fog. He slipped out of the dingy into the water without a splash, and struck out for the breakers. He got ashore after havin’ been knocked down and dragged in four times by the undertow. He had only one idea then, thankfulness that he had not taken the baby with him in the surf. You kin put that down for him: it’s a fact. He got off into the hills, and made his way up to Monterey.”
“And the child?” asked the Padre, with a sudden and strange asperity that boded no good to the penitent; “the child thus ruthlessly abandoned—what became of it?”
“That’s just it, the child,” assented the stranger, gravely. “Well, if that man was on his death-bed instead of being here talking to you, he’d swear that he thought the cap’en was sure to come up to it the next minit. That’s a fact. But it wasn’t until one day that he—that’s me—ran across one of that crew in Frisco. ‘Hallo, Cranch,’ sez he to me, ‘so you got away, didn’t you? And how’s the cap’en’s baby? Grown a young gal by this time, ain’t she?’ ‘What are you talkin about,’ ez I; ‘how should I know?’ He draws away from me, and sez, ‘D– it,’ sez he, ‘you don’t mean that you’ . . . I grabs him by the throat and makes him tell me all. And then it