Selected Stories of Bret Harte

“Ah, yes; he have drop, you have pick him up, he is yours. I have drop, you have pick ME up, but I am NOT yours. Good a’ night, COMANDANTE Don Esteban!”

With a light laugh she ran along beside the wall for a little distance, suddenly leaped up and disappeared in one of the largest gaps in its ruined and helpless structure. Stephen Masterton gazed after her stupidly, still holding the rose in his hand. Then he threw it away and re-entered his home.

Lighting his candle, he undressed himself, prayed fervently—so fervently that all remembrance of the idle, foolish incident was wiped from his mind, and went to bed. He slept well and dreamlessly. The next morning, when his thoughts recurred to the previous night, this seemed to him a token that he had not deviated from his spiritual integrity; it did not occur to him that the thought itself was a tacit suspicion.

So his feet quite easily sought the garden again in the early sunshine, even to the wall where she had stood. But he had not taken into account the vivifying freshness of the morning, the renewed promise of life and resurrection in the pulsing air and potent sunlight, and as he stood there he seemed to see the figure of the young girl again leaning against the wall in all the charm of her irrepressible and innocent youth. More than that, he found the whole scene re-enacting itself before him; the nebulous drapery half hidden in the foliage, the cry and the fall; the momentary soft contact of the girl’s figure against his own, the clinging arms around his neck, the brush and fragrance of her flounces—all this came back to him with a strength he had NOT felt when it occurred.

He was turning hurriedly away when his eyes fell upon the yellow rose still lying in the debris where he had thrown it—but still pure, fresh, and unfaded. He picked it up again, with a singular fancy that it was the girl herself, and carried it into the house.

As he placed it half shyly in a glass on his table a wonderful thought occurred to him. Was not the episode of last night a special providence? Was not that young girl, wayward and childlike, a mere neophyte in her idolatrous religion, as yet unsteeped in sloth and ignorance, presented to him as a brand to be snatched from the burning? Was not this the opportunity of conversion he had longed for—this the chance of exercising his gifts of exhortation that he had been hiding in the napkin of solitude and seclusion? Nay, was not all this PREDESTINED? His illness, his consequent exile to this land of false gods—this contiguity to the Mission—was not all this part of a supremely ordered plan for the girl’s salvation—and was HE not elected and ordained for that service? Nay, more, was not the girl herself a mere unconscious instrument in the hands of a higher power; was not her voluntary attempt to accompany him in his devotional exercise a vague stirring of that predestined force within her? Was not even that wantonness and frivolity contrasted with her childishness—which he had at first misunderstood—the stirrings of the flesh and the spirit, and was he to abandon her in that struggle of good and evil?

He lifted his bowed head, that had been resting on his arm before the little flower on the table—as if it were a shrine—with a flash of resolve in his blue eyes. The wrinkled Concepcion coming to her duties in the morning scarcely recognized her gloomily abstracted master in this transfigured man. He looked ten years younger.

She met his greeting, and the few direct inquiries that his new resolve enabled him to make more freely, with some information—which a later talk with the shopkeeper, who had a fuller English vocabulary, confirmed in detail.

“YES! truly this was a niece of the Mission gardener, who lived with her uncle in the ruined wing of the presidio. She had taken her first communion four years ago. Ah, yes, she was a great musician, and could play on the organ. And the guitar, ah, yes—of a certainty. She was gay, and flirted with the caballeros, young and old, but she cared not for any.”

Whatever satisfaction this latter statement gave Masterton, he believed it was because the absence of any disturbing worldly affection would make her an easier convert.

But how continue this chance acquaintance and effect her conversion? For the first time Masterton realized the value of expediency; while his whole nature impelled him to seek her society frankly and publicly and exhort her openly, he knew that this was impossible; still more, he remembered her unmistakable fright at his first expression of faith; he must “be wise as the serpent and harmless as the dove.” He must work upon her soul alone, and secretly. He, who would have shrunk from any clandestine association with a girl from mere human affection, saw no wrong in a covert intimacy for the purpose of religious salvation. Ignorant as he was of the ways of the world, and inexperienced in the usages of society, he began to plan methods of secretly meeting her with all the intrigue of a gallant. The perspicacity as well as the intuition of a true lover had descended upon him in this effort of mere spiritual conquest.

Armed with his information and a few Spanish words, he took the yellow Concepcion aside and gravely suborned her to carry a note to be delivered secretly to Miss Ramirez. To his great relief and some surprise the old woman grinned with intelligence, and her withered hand closed with a certain familiar dexterity over the epistle and the accompanying gratuity. To a man less naively one-ideaed it might have awakened some suspicion; but to the more sanguine hopefulness of Masterton it only suggested the fancy that Concepcion herself might prove to be open to conversion, and that he should in due season attempt HER salvation also. But that would be later. For Concepcion was always with him and accessible; the girl was not.

The note, which had cost him some labor of composition, simple and almost businesslike as was the result, ran as follows:

“I wish to see you upon some matter of grave concern to yourself. Will you oblige me by coming again to the wall of the Mission tonight at early candlelight? It would avert worldly suspicion if you brought also your guitar.”

The afternoon dragged slowly on; Concepcion returned; she had, with great difficulty, managed to see the senorita, but not alone; she had, however, slipped the note into her hand, not daring to wait for an answer.

In his first hopefulness Masterton did not doubt what the answer would be, but as evening approached he grew concerned as to the girl’s opportunities of coming, and regretted that he had not given her a choice of time.

Before his evening meal was finished he began to fear for her willingness, and doubt the potency of his note. He was accustomed to exhort ORALLY—perhaps he ought to have waited for the chance of SPEAKING to her directly without writing.

When the moon rose he was already in the garden. Lingering at first in the shadow of an olive tree, he waited until the moonbeams fell on the wall and its crests of foliage. But nothing moved among that ebony tracery; his ear was strained for the familiar tinkle of the guitar—all was silent. As the moon rose higher he at last boldly walked to the wall, and listened for any movement on the other side of it. But nothing stirred. She was evidently NOT coming—his note had failed.

He was turning away sadly, but as he faced his home again he heard a light laugh beside him. He stopped. A black shadow stepped out from beneath his own almond tree. He started when, with a gesture that seemed familiar to him, the upper part of the shadow seemed to fall away with a long black mantilla and the face of the young girl was revealed.

He could see now that she was clad in black lace from head to foot. She looked taller, older, and he fancied even prettier than before. A sudden doubt of his ability to impress her, a swift realization of all the difficulties of the attempt, and, for the first time perhaps, a dim perception of the incongruity of the situation came over him.

“I was looking for you on the wall,” he stammered.

“MADRE DE DIOS!” she retorted, with a laugh and her old audacity, “you would that I shall ALWAYS hang there, and drop upon you like a pear when you shake the tree? No!”

“You haven’t brought your guitar,” he continued, still more awkwardly, as he noticed that she held only a long black fan in her hand.

“For why? You would that I PLAY it, and when my uncle say ‘Where go Pepita? She is loss,’ someone shall say, ‘Oh! I have hear her tink-a-tink in the garden of the Americano, who lif alone.’ And then—it ess finish!”

Masterton began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. There was something in this situation that he had not dreamed of. But with the persistency of an awkward man he went on.

“But you played on the wall the other night, and tried to accompany me.”

“But that was lass night and on the wall. I had not speak to you, you had not speak to me. You had not sent me the leetle note by your peon.” She stopped, and suddenly opening her fan before her face, so that only her mischievous eyes were visible, added: “You had not asked me then to come to hear you make lof to me, Don Esteban. That is the difference.”

The circuit preacher felt the blood rush to his face. Anger, shame, mortification, remorse, and fear alternately strove with him, but above all and through all he was conscious of a sharp, exquisite pleasure—that frightened him still more. Yet he managed to exclaim:

“No! no! You cannot think me capable of such a cowardly trick?”

The girl started, more at the unmistakable sincerity of his utterance than at the words, whose full meaning she may have only imperfectly caught.

“A treek? A treek?” she slowly and wonderingly repeated. Then suddenly, as if comprehending him, she turned her round black eyes full upon him and dropped her fan from her face.

“And WHAT for you ask me to come here then?”

“I wanted to talk with you,” he began, “on far more serious matters. I wished to—” but he stopped. He could not address this quaint child-woman staring at him in black-eyed wonder, in either the measured or the impetuous terms with which he would have exhorted a maturer responsible being. He made a step toward her; she drew back, striking at his extended hand half impatiently, half mischievously with her fan.

He flushed—and then burst out bluntly, “I want to talk with you about your soul.”

“My what?”

“Your immortal soul, unhappy girl.”

“What have you to make with that? Are you a devil?” Her eyes grew rounder, though she faced him boldly.

“I am a Minister of the Gospel,” he said, in hurried entreaty. “You must hear me for a moment. I would save your soul.”

“My immortal soul lif with the Padre at the Mission—you moost seek her there! My mortal BODY,” she added, with a mischievous smile, “say to you, ‘good a’ night, Don Esteban.’” She dropped him a little curtsy and—ran away.

“One moment, Miss Ramirez,” said Masterton, eagerly; but she had already slipped beyond his reach. He saw her little black figure passing swiftly beside the moonlit wall, saw it suddenly slide into a shadowy fissure, and vanish.

In his blank disappointment he could not bear to re-enter the house he had left so sanguinely a few moments before, but walked moodily in the garden. His discomfiture was the more complete since he felt that his defeat was owing to some mistake in his methods, and not the incorrigibility of his subject.

Was it not a spiritual weakness in him to have resented so sharply the girl’s imputation that he wished to make love to her? He should have borne it as Christians had even before now borne slander and false testimony for their faith! He might even have ACCEPTED it, and let the triumph of her conversion in the end prove his innocence. Or was his purpose incompatible with that sisterly affection he had so often preached to the women of his flock? He might have taken her hand, and called her “Sister Pepita,” even as he had called Deborah “Sister.” He recalled the fact that he had for an instant held her struggling in his arms: he remembered the thrill that the recollection had caused him, and somehow it now sent a burning blush across his face. He hurried back into the house.

The next day a thousand wild ideas took the place of his former settled resolution. He would seek the Padre, this custodian of the young girl’s soul; he would convince HIM of his error, or beseech him to give him an equal access to her spirit! He would seek the uncle of the girl, and work upon his feelings.

Then for three or four days he resolved to put the young girl from his mind, trusting after the fashion of his kind for some special revelation from a supreme source as an indication for his conduct. This revelation presently occurred, as it is apt to occur when wanted.

One evening his heart leaped at the familiar sound of Pepita’s guitar in the distance. Whatever his ultimate intention now, he hurriedly ran into the garden. The sound came from the former direction, but as he unhesitatingly approached the Mission wall, he could see that she was not upon it, and as the notes of her guitar were struck again, he knew that they came from the other side. But the chords were a prelude to one of his own hymns, and he stood entranced as her sweet, childlike voice rose with the very words that he had sung. The few defects were those of purely oral imitation, the accents, even the slight reiteration of the “s,” were Pepita’s own:

Cheeldren oof the Heavenly King,
As ye journey essweetly ssing;
Essing your great Redeemer’s praise,
Glorioos in Hees works and ways.

He was astounded. Her recollection of the air and words was the more wonderful, for he remembered now that he had only sung that particular hymn once. But to his still greater delight and surprise, her voice rose again in the second verse, with a touch of plaintiveness that swelled his throat:

We are traveling home to God,
In the way our farzers trod,