The Spinners Book of Fiction | Page 5

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 Do?a 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 spared. He died in 1830--and was the first Governor of Alta California after Mexico threw off the yoke of Spain. He had power in full measure and went before these upstart conquerors came to humble the rest of us into the dust. Peace to his ashes--but perhaps you care nothing for this dear brother of my youth, never heard of him before--such a giddy thing you were; although at the last earthquake the point of his monument flew straight into the