The Spinners Book of Fiction | Page 5

calm and the strength and the peace of the old mountain,
with its dead and buried fires.
The grave closed, the mourners returned to the convent, but not in order.
At the door Teresa felt her arm taken possession of by a strong hand
with which she had had more than one disconcerting encounter.
"Let us walk," said Sister María Sal in her harsh but strong old voice. "I
have permission. I must talk of Concha tonight or I should burst. It is
not for nothing one keeps silent for years and years. I at least am still
human. And you loved her the best and have spoiled your pretty face
with weeping. You must not do that again, for the young love a pretty
nun and will follow her into the one true life on earth far sooner than an
ugly old phiz like mine."
Sister María, indeed, retained not an index of the beauty with which
tradition accredited her youth. She was a stout unwieldy old woman
with a very red face covered half over with black down, and in the
bright moonlight Teresa could see the three long hairs that stood out
straight from a mole above her mouth and scratched the girls when she
kissed them. Tonight her nose was swollen and her eyes looked like
appleseeds. Teresa hastily composed her features and registered a vow
that in her old age she would look like Sister Dominica, not like that.
She had heard that Concha, too, had been frivolous in her youth, and
had not she herself a tragic bit of a story? True, her youthful love-tides
had turned betimes from the grave beside the Mission Dolores to the
lovely nun and the God of both, and she had heard that Doña Concha
had proved her fidelity to a wonderful Russian throughout many years
before she took the veil. Perhaps--who knew?--her more conformable
pupil might have restored the worthless to her heart before he was
knifed in the full light of day on Montgomery Street by one from whom
he had won more than thousands the night before; perhaps have
consoled herself with another less eccentric, had not Sister Dominica
sought her at the right moment and removed her from the temptations

of the world. Well, never mind, she could at least be a good nun and an
amiable instructor of youth, and if she never looked like a living saint
she would grow soberer and nobler with the years and take care that she
grew not stout and red.
For a time Sister María did not speak, but walked rapidly and heavily
up and down the path, dragging her companion with her and staring out
at the beauty of the night. But suddenly she slackened her pace and
burst into speech.
"Ay yi! Ay de mi! To think that it is nearly half a century--forty-two
years to be precise--for will it not be 1858 in one more week?--since
Rezánov sailed out through what Frémont has called 'The Golden Gate'!
And forty-one in March since he died--not from the fall of a horse, as
Sir George Simpson (who had not much regard for the truth anyway,
for he gave a false picture of our Concha), and even Doctor Langsdorff,
who should have known better, wrote it, but worn out, worn out, after
terrible hardships, and a fever that devoured him inch by inch. And he
was so handsome when he left us! Dios de mi alma! never have I seen a
man like that. If I had I should not be here now, perhaps, so it is as well.
But never was I even engaged, and when permission came from Madrid
for the marriage of my sister Rafaella with Luis Argüello--he was an
officer and could not marry without a special license from the King,
and through some strange oversight he was six long years getting it--;
well, I lived with them and took care of the children until Rafaella--Ay
yi! what a good wife she made him, for he 'toed the mark,' as the
Americans say--; well, she died, and one of those days he married
another; for will not men be men? And Luis was a good man in spite of
all, a fine loyal clever man, who deserves the finest monument in the
cemetery of the Mission Dolores--as they call it now. The Americans
have no respect for anything and will not say San Francisco de Assisi,
for it is too long and they have time for nothing but the gold. Were it
not a sin, how I should hate them, for they have stolen our country from
us--but no, I will not; and, to be sure, if Rezánov had lived he would
have had it first, so what difference? Luis, at least, was