Book: Ramona

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Prepared by David Reed haradda@aol.com or davidr@inconnect.com





Ramona

by Helen Hunt Jackson




I

IT was sheep-shearing time in Southern California, but
sheep-shearing was late at the Senora Moreno's. The Fates had
seemed to combine to put it off. In the first place, Felipe Moreno
had been ill. He was the Senora's eldest son, and since his father's
death had been at the head of his mother's house. Without him,
nothing could be done on the ranch, the Senora thought. It had
been always, "Ask Senor Felipe," "Go to Senor Felipe," "Senor
Felipe will attend to it," ever since Felipe had had the dawning of a
beard on his handsome face.

In truth, it was not Felipe, but the Senora, who really decided all
questions from greatest to least, and managed everything on the
place, from the sheep-pastures to the artichoke-patch; but nobody
except the Senora herself knew this. An exceedingly clever woman
for her day and generation was Senora Gonzaga Moreno,-- as for
that matter, exceedingly clever for any day and generation; but
exceptionally clever for the day and generation to which she
belonged. Her life, the mere surface of it, if it had been written,
would have made a romance, to grow hot and cold over: sixty
years of the best of old Spain, and the wildest of New Spain, Bay
of Biscay, Gulf of Mexico, Pacific Ocean,-- the waves of them all
had tossed destinies for the Senora. The Holy Catholic Church had
had its arms round her from first to last; and that was what had
brought her safe through, she would have said, if she had ever said
anything about herself, which she never did,-- one of her many
wisdoms. So quiet, so reserved, so gentle an exterior never was
known to veil such an imperious and passionate nature, brimful of
storm, always passing through stress; never thwarted, except at
peril of those who did it; adored and hated by turns, and each at
the hottest. A tremendous force, wherever she appeared, was
Senora Moreno; but no stranger would suspect it, to see her gliding
about, in her scanty black gown, with her rosary hanging at her
side, her soft dark eyes cast down, and an expression of mingled
melancholy and devotion on her face. She looked simply like a
sad, spiritual-minded old lady, amiable and indolent, like her race,
but sweeter and more thoughtful than their wont. Her voice
heightened this mistaken impression. She was never heard to speak
either loud or fast. There was at times even a curious hesitancy in
her speech, which came near being a stammer, or suggested the
measured care with which people speak who have been cured of
stammering. It made her often appear as if she did not known her
own mind; at which people sometimes took heart; when, if they
had only known the truth, they would have known that the speech
hesitated solely because the Senora knew her mind so exactly that
she was finding it hard to make the words convey it as she desired,
or in a way to best attain her ends.

About this very sheep-shearing there had been, between her and
the head shepherd, Juan Canito, called Juan Can for short, and to
distinguish him from Juan Jose, the upper herdsman of the cattle,
some discussions which would have been hot and angry ones in
any other hands than the Senora's.

Juan Canito wanted the shearing to begin, even though Senor
Felipe were ill in bed, and though that lazy shepherd Luigo had not
yet got back with the flock that had been driven up the coast for
pasture. "There were plenty of sheep on the place to begin with,"
he said one morning,-- "at least a thousand;" and by the time they
were done, Luigo would surely be back with the rest; and as for
Senor Felipe's being in bed, had not he, Juan Canito, stood at the
packing-bag, and handled the wool, when Senor Felipe was a boy?
Why could he not do it again? The Senora did not realize how time
was going; there would be no shearers to be hired presently, since
the Senora was determined to have none but Indians. Of course, if
she would employ Mexicans, as all the other ranches in the valley
did, it would be different; but she was resolved upon having
Indians,-- "God knows why," he interpolated surlily, under his
breath.

"I do not quite understand you, Juan," interrupted Senora Moreno
at the precise instant the last syllable of this disrespectful
ejaculation had escaped Juan's lips; "speak a little louder. I fear I
am growing deaf in my old age."

What gentle, suave, courteous tones! and the calm dark eyes rested
on Juan Canito with a look to the fathoming of which he was as
unequal as one of his own sheep would have been. He could not
have told why he instantly and involuntarily said, "Beg your
pardon, Senora."

"Oh, you need not ask my pardon, Juan," the Senora replied with
exquisite gentleness; "it is not you who are to blame, if I am deaf. I
have fancied for a year I did not hear quite as well as I once did.
But about the Indians, Juan; did not Senor Felipe tell you that he
had positively engaged the same band of shearers we had last
autumn, Alessandro's band from Temecula? They will wait until
we are ready for them. Senor Felipe will send a messenger for
them. He thinks them the best shearers in the country. He will be
well enough in a week or two, he thinks, and the poor sheep must
bear their loads a few days longer. Are they looking well, do you
think, Juan? Will the crop be a good one? General Moreno used to
say that you could reckon up the wool-crop to a pound, while it
was on the sheep's backs."

"Yes, Senora," answered the mollified Juan; "the poor beasts look
wonderfully well considering the scant feed they have had all
winter. We'll not come many pounds short of our last year's crop, if
any. Though, to be sure, there is no telling in what case that --
Luigo will bring his flock back."

The Senora smiled, in spite of herself, at the pause and gulp with
which Juan had filled in the hiatus where he had longed to set a
contemptuous epithet before Luigo's name.

This was another of the instances where the Senora's will and Juan
Canito's had clashed and he did not dream of it, having set it all
down as usual to the score of young Senor Felipe.

Encouraged by the Senora's smile, Juan proceeded: "Senor Felipe
can see no fault in Luigo, because they were boys together; but I
can tell him, he will rue it, one of these mornings, when he finds a
flock of sheep worse than dead on his hands, and no thanks to
anybody but Luigo. While I can have him under my eye, here in
the valley, it is all very well; but he is no more fit to take
responsibility of a flock, than one of the very lambs themselves.
He'll drive them off their feet one day, and starve them the next;
and I've known him to forget to give them water. When he's in his
dreams, the Virgin only knows what he won't do."

During this brief and almost unprecedented outburst of Juan's the
Senora's countenance had been slowly growing stern. Juan had not
seen it. His eyes had been turned away from her, looking down
into the upturned eager face of his favorite collie, who was leaping
and gambolling and barking at his feet.

"Down, Capitan, down!" he said in a fond tone, gently repulsing
him; "thou makest such a noise the Senora can hear nothing but
thy voice."

"I heard only too distinctly, Juan Canito," said the Senora in a
sweet but icy tone. "It is not well for one servant to backbite
another. It gives me great grief to hear such words; and I hope
when Father Salvierderra comes, next month, you will not forget to
confess this sin of which you have been guilty in thus seeking to
injure a fellow-being. If Senor Felipe listens to you, the poor boy
Luigo will be cast out homeless on the world some day; and what
sort of a deed would that be, Juan Canito, for one Christian to do
to another? I fear the Father will give you penance, when he hears
what you have said."

"Senora, it is not to harm the lad," Juan began, every fibre of his
faithful frame thrilling with a sense of the injustice of her
reproach.

But the Senora had turned her back. Evidently she would hear no
more from him then. He stood watching her as she walked away, at
her usual slow pace, her head slightly bent forward, her rosary
lifted in her left hand, and the fingers of the right hand
mechanically slipping the beads.

"Prayers, always prayers!" thought Juan to himself, as his eyes
followed her. "If they'll take one to heaven, the Senora'll go by the
straight road, that's sure! I'm sorry I vexed her. But what's a man to
do, if he's the interest of the place at heart, I'd like to know. Is he to
stand by, and see a lot of idle mooning louts run away with
everything? Ah, but it was an ill day for the estate when the
General died,-- an ill day! an ill day! And they may scold me as
much as they please, and set me to confessing my sins to the
Father; it's very well for them, they've got me to look after matters.
Senor Felipe will do well enough when he's a man, maybe; but a
boy like him! Bah!" And the old man stamped his foot with a not
wholly unreasonable irritation, at the false position in which he
felt himself put.

"Confess to Father Salvierderra, indeed!" he muttered aloud. "Ay,
that will I. He's a man of sense, if he is a priest," -- at which slip of
the tongue the pious Juan hastily crossed himself,-- "and I'll ask
him to give me some good advice as to how I'm to manage
between this young boy at the head of everything, and a doting
mother who thinks he has the wisdom of a dozen grown men. The
Father knew the place in the olden time. He knows it's no child's
play to look after the estate even now, much smaller as it is! An ill
day when the old General died, an ill day indeed, the saints rest his
soul!" Saying this, Juan shrugged his shoulders, and whistling to
Capitan, walked towards the sunny veranda of the south side of the
kitchen wing of the house, where it had been for twenty odd years
his habit to sit on the long bench and smoke his pipe of a morning.
Before he had got half-way across the court-yard, however, a
thought struck him. He halted so suddenly that Capitan, with the
quick sensitiveness of his breed, thought so sudden a change of
purpose could only come from something in connection with
sheep; and, true to his instinct of duty, pricked up his ears, poised
himself for a full run, and looked up in his master's face waiting
for explanation and signal. But Juan did not observe him.

"Ha!" he said, "Father Salvierderra comes next month, does he?
Let's see. To-day is the 25th. That's it. The sheep-shearing is not to
come off till the Father gets here. Then each morning it will be
mass in the chapel, and each night vespers; and the crowd will be
here at least two days longer to feed, for the time they will lose by
that and by the confessions. That's what Senor Felipe is up to. He's
a pious lad. I recollect now, it was the same way two years ago.
Well, well, it is a good thing for those poor Indian devils to get a
bit of religion now and then; and it's like old times to see the
chapel full of them kneeling, and more than can get in at the door;
I doubt not it warms the Senora's heart to see them all there, as if
they belonged to the house, as they used to: and now I know when
it's to be, I have only to make my arrangements accordingly. It is
always in the first week of the month the Father gets here. Yes; she
said, 'Senor Felipe will be well enough in a week or two, he
thinks.' Ha! ha! It will be nearer two; ten days or thereabouts. I'll
begin the booths next week. A plague on that Luigo for not being
back here. He's the best hand I have to cut the willow boughs for
the roofs. He knows the difference between one year's growth and
another's; I'll say that much for him, spite of the silly dreaming
head he's got on his shoulders."

Juan was so pleased with his clearing up in his mind as to Senor
Felipe's purpose about the time of the sheep-shearing, that it put
him in good humor for the day,-- good humor with everybody, and
himself most of all. As he sat on the low bench, his head leaning
back against the whitewashed wall, his long legs stretched out
nearly across the whole width of the veranda, his pipe firm wedged
in the extreme left corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets,
he was the picture of placid content. The troop of youngsters
which still swarmed around the kitchen quarters of Senora
Moreno's house, almost as numerous and inexplicable as in the
grand old days of the General's time, ran back and forth across
Juan's legs, fell down between them, and picked themselves up by
help of clutches at his leather trousers, all unreproved by Juan,
though loudly scolded and warned by their respective mothers
from the kitchen.

"What's come to Juan Can to be so good-natured to-day?" saucily
asked Margarita, the youngest and prettiest of the maids, popping
her head out of a window, and twitching Juan's hair. He was so
gray and wrinkled that the maids all felt at ease with him. He
seemed to them as old as Methuselah; but he was not really so old
as they thought, nor they so safe in their tricks. The old man had
hot blood in his veins yet, as the under-shepherds could testify.

"The sight of your pretty face, Senorita Margarita," answered Juan
quickly, cocking his eye at her, rising to his feet, and making a
mock bow towards the window.

"He! he! Senorita, indeed!" chuckled Margarita's mother, old
Marda the cook. "Senor Juan Canito is pleased to be merry at the
doors of his betters;" and she flung a copper saucepan full of not
over-clean water so deftly past Juan's head, that not a drop touched
him, and yet he had the appearance of having been ducked. At
which bit of sleight-of-hand the whole court-yard, young and old,
babies, cocks, hens, and turkeys, all set up a shout and a cackle,
and dispersed to the four corners of the yard as if scattered by a
volley of bird-shot. Hearing the racket, the rest of the maids came
running,-- Anita and Maria, the twins, women forty years old, born
on the place the year after General Moreno brought home his
handsome young bride; their two daughters, Rosa and Anita the
Little, as she was still called, though she outweighed her mother;
old Juanita, the oldest woman in the household, of whom even the
Senora was said not to know the exact age or history; and she, poor
thing, could tell nothing, having been silly for ten years or more,
good for nothing except to shell beans: that she did as fast and well
as ever, and was never happy except she was at it. Luckily for her,
beans are the one crop never omitted or stinted on a Mexican
estate; and for sake of old Juanita they stored every year in the
Moreno house, rooms full of beans in the pod (tons of them, one
would think), enough to feed an army. But then, it was like a little
army even now, the Senora's household; nobody ever knew exactly
how many women were in the kitchen, or how many men in the
fields. There were always women cousins, or brother's wives or
widows or daughters, who had come to stay, or men cousins, or
sister's husbands or sons, who were stopping on their way up or
down the valley. When it came to the pay-roll, Senor Felipe knew
to whom he paid wages; but who were fed and lodged under his
roof, that was quite another thing. It could not enter into the head
of a Mexican gentleman to make either count or account of that. It
would be a disgraceful niggardly thought.

To the Senora it seemed as if there were no longer any people
about the place. A beggarly handful, she would have said, hardly
enough to do the work of the house, or of the estate, sadly as the
latter had dwindled. In the General's day, it had been a free-handed
boast of his that never less than fifty persons, men, women and
children, were fed within his gates each day; how many more, he
did not care, nor know. But that time had indeed gone, gone
forever; and though a stranger, seeing the sudden rush and muster
at door and window, which followed on old Marda's letting fly the
water at Juan's head, would have thought, "Good heavens, do all
those women, children, and babies belong in that one house!" the
Senora's sole thought, as she at that moment went past the gate,
was, "Poor things! how few there are left of them! I am afraid old
Marda has to work too hard. I must spare Margarita more from the
house to help her." And she sighed deeply, and unconsciously held
her rosary nearer to her heart, as she went into the house and
entered her son's bedroom. The picture she saw there was one to
thrill any mother's heart; and as it met her eye, she paused on the
threshold for a second,-- only a second, however; and nothing
could have astonished Felipe Moreno so much as to have been told
that at the very moment when his mother's calm voice was saying
to him, "Good morning, my son, I hope you have slept well, and
are better," there was welling up in her heart a passionate
ejaculation, "O my glorious son! The saints have sent me in him
the face of his father! He is fit for a kingdom!"

The truth is, Felipe Moreno was not fit for a kingdom at all. If he
had been, he would not have been so ruled by his mother without
ever finding it out. But so far as mere physical beauty goes, there
never was a king born, whose face, stature, and bearing would set
off a crown or a throne, or any of the things of which the outside of
royalty is made up, better than would Felipe Moreno's. And it was
true, as the Senora said, whether the saints had anything to do with
it or not, that he had the face of his father. So strong a likeness is
seldom seen. When Felipe once, on the occasion of a grand
celebration and procession, put on the gold-wrought velvet mantle,
gayly embroidered short breeches fastened at the knee with red
ribbons, and gold-and-silver-trimmed sombrero, which his father
had worn twenty-five years before, the Senora fainted at her first
look at him,-- fainted and fell; and when she opened her eyes, and
saw the same splendid, gayly arrayed, dark-bearded man, bending
over her in distress, with words of endearment and alarm, she
fainted again.

"Mother, mother mia," cried Felipe, "I will not wear them if it
makes you feel like this! Let me take them off. I will not go to
their cursed parade;" and he sprang to his feet, and began with
trembling fingers to unbuckle the sword-belt.

"No, no, Felipe," faintly cried the Senora, from the ground. "It is
my wish that you wear them;" and staggering to her feet, with a
burst of tears, she rebuckled the old sword-belt, which her fingers
had so many times -- never unkissed -- buckled, in the days when
her husband had bade her farewell and gone forth to the uncertain
fates of war. "Wear them!" she cried, with gathering fire in her
tones, and her eyes dry of tears,-- "wear them, and let the
American hounds see what a Mexican officer and gentleman
looked like before they had set their base, usurping feet on our
necks!" And she followed him to the gate, and stood erect, bravely
waving her handkerchief as he galloped off, till he was out of
sight. Then with a changed face and a bent head she crept slowly
to her room, locked herself in, fell on her knees before the
Madonna at the head of her bed, and spent the greater part of the
day praying that she might be forgiven, and that all heretics might
be discomfited. From which part of these supplications she derived
most comfort is easy to imagine.

Juan Canito had been right in his sudden surmise that it was for
Father Salvierderra's coming that the sheep-shearing was being
delayed, and not in consequence of Senor Felipe's illness, or by the
non-appearance of Luigo and his flock of sheep. Juan would have
chuckled to himself still more at his perspicacity, had he overheard
the conversation going on between the Senora and her son, at the
very time when he, half asleep on the veranda, was, as he would
have called it, putting two and two together and convincing
himself that old Juan was as smart as they were, and not to be kept
in the dark by all their reticence and equivocation.

"Juan Can is growing very impatient about the sheep-shearing,"
said the Senora. "I suppose you are still of the same mind about it,
Felipe,-- that it is better to wait till Father Salvierderra comes? As
the only chance those Indians have of seeing him is here, it would
seem a Christian duty to so arrange it, if it be possible; but Juan is
very restive. He is getting old, and chafes a little, I fancy, under
your control. He cannot forget that you were a boy on his knee.
Now I, for my part, am like to forget that you were ever anything
but a man for me to lean on."

Felipe turned his handsome face toward his mother with a beaming
smile of filial affection and gratified manly vanity. "Indeed, my
mother, if I can be sufficient for you to lean on, I will ask nothing
more of the saints;" and he took his mother's thin and wasted little
hands, both at once, in his own strong right hand, and carried them
to his lips as a lover might have done. "You will spoil me,
mother," he said, "you make me so proud."

"No, Felipe, it is I who am proud," promptly replied the mother;
"and I do not call it being proud, only grateful to God for having
given me a son wise enough to take his father's place, and guide
and protect me through the few remaining years I have to live. I
shall die content, seeing you at the head of the estate, and living as
a Mexican gentleman should; that is, so far as now remains
possible in this unfortunate country. But about the sheep-shearing,
Felipe. Do you wish to have it begun before the Father is here? Of
course, Alessandro is all ready with his band. It is but two days'
journey for a messenger to bring him. Father Salvierderra cannot
be here before the 10th of the month. He leaves Santa Barbara on
the 1st, and he will walk all the way,-- a good six days' journey, for
he is old now and feeble; then he must stop in Ventura for a
Sunday, and a day at the Ortega's ranch, and at the Lopez's,-- there,
there is a christening. Yes, the 10th is the very earliest that he can
be here,-- near two weeks from now. So far as your getting up is
concerned, it might perhaps be next week. You will be nearly well
by that time."

"Yes, indeed," laughed Felipe, stretching himself out in the bed
and giving a kick to the bedclothes that made the high bedposts
and the fringed canopy roof shake and creak; "I am well now, if it
were not for this cursed weakness when I stand on my feet. I
believe it would do me good to get out of doors."

In truth, Felipe had been hankering for the sheep-shearing himself.
It was a brisk, busy, holiday sort of time to him, hard as he worked
in it; and two weeks looked long to wait.

"It is always thus after a fever," said his mother. "The weakness
lasts many weeks. I am not sure that you will be strong enough
even in two weeks to do the packing; but, as Juan Can said this
morning, he stood at the packing-bag when you were a boy, and
there was no need of waiting for you for that!"

"He said that, did he!" exclaimed Felipe, wrathfully. "The old man
is getting insolent. I'll tell him that nobody will pack the sacks but
myself, while I am master here; and I will have the sheep-shearing
when I please, and not before."

"I suppose it would not be wise to say that it is not to take place till
the Father comes, would it?" asked the Senora, hesitatingly, as if
the thing were evenly balanced in her mind. "The Father has not
that hold on the younger men he used to have, and I have thought
that even in Juan himself I have detected a remissness. The spirit
of unbelief is spreading in the country since the Americans are
running up and down everywhere seeking money, like dogs with
their noses to the ground! It might vex Juan if he knew that you
were waiting only for the Father. What do you think?"

"I think it is enough for him to know that the sheep-shearing waits
for my pleasure," answered Felipe, still wrathful, "and that is the
end of it." And so it was; and, moreover, precisely the end which
Senora Moreno had had in her own mind from the beginning; but
not even Juan Canito himself suspected its being solely her
purpose, and not her son's. As for Felipe, if any person had
suggested to him that it was his mother, and not he, who had
decided that the sheep-shearing would be better deferred until the
arrival of Father Salvierderra from Santa Barbara, and that nothing
should be said on the ranch about this being the real reason of the
postponing, Felipe would have stared in astonishment, and have
thought that person either crazy or a fool.

To attain one's ends in this way is the consummate triumph of art.
Never to appear as a factor in the situation; to be able to wield
other men, as instruments, with the same direct and implicit
response to will that one gets from a hand or a foot,-- this is to
triumph, indeed: to be as nearly controller and conqueror of Fates
as fate permits. There have been men prominent in the world's
affairs at one time and another, who have sought and studied such
a power and have acquired it to a great degree. By it they have
manipulated legislators, ambassadors, sovereigns; and have
grasped, held, and played with the destinies of empires. But it is to
be questioned whether even in these notable instances there has
ever been such marvellous completeness of success as is
sometimes seen in the case of a woman in whom the power is an
instinct and not an attainment; a passion rather than a purpose.
Between the two results, between the two processes, there is just
that difference which is always to be seen between the stroke of
talent and the stroke of genius.

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