Читать книгу Mariposilla - Mary Stewart Daggett - Страница 6

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The San Gabriel Valley, in December, is pleasant to look upon. Not as winsome as in February, when the Carnival of the year is born, but serenely beautiful. Cleansing rains have polished every ridge of the Sierra Madre, until purple cañons shine out like treasures of amethyst, while clearly defined spurs, shot with softest green, reflect the promises of the Spring.

"Old Baldy," the hoary sire of the range, gleams like a high priest. To the south, shaggy "Gray Back," and still beyond, San Jacinto, a lone fortress of alabaster on a turquoise sea, emphasize again the boundaries of the horizon. The misty veil of the long summer has lifted, disclosing an unbroken line of ravishing landscape. Every leaf and bud in the valley breathes with fresh lungs. The meadow lark, tilting upon the topmost tip of the highest pine, sings to the sky a jubilate in three pure syllables. Birds are wooing sweethearts fearlessly, for now time must not be lost, and home sites must be secured in the lacy pepper trees, before the poppies cover the foothills, or baby-blue-eyes and cream-cups fringe the roadsides.

Everything is noisy with awakening life. The rich earth teems with ambitions. Volunteer seeds are springing enthusiastically to the surface. Timid wild flowers are peeping forth each day to test the possibilities of an early season, heralded even now by the irrepressible Al Filerea, which runs riot in all directions, unconscious of its doom when the plowman invades the land.

Then it is that the oranges begin to glow like gold among green shadows, and naked deciduous trees to flush with the faintest pink of returning life. So intoxicating is the air that the saddest invalid beams with renewed hope, almost forgetting his burden beneath the delicious blue of the peaceful sky.

At the foot of the Sierra Madre lies Pasadena—"Crown of the Valley"—so named from its imperial situation. An established and aristocratic nucleus for its surrounding towns, few places are so rich in conditions to palliate or allay the sorrows and disappointments of the usual life.

South of this beautiful town, where wealth and culture have displaced the primitive ranch, ordaining in its place extensive villa sites, ornate with lawns of blue grass, bordered by rose gardens and ornamental shrubbery, stretch the fertile acres of San Gabriel. Still utilitarian in their scheme, these acres comprise ranches that radiate for miles in all directions from the Old Mission, like spokes from an antiquated hub. Close to the old church are the houses and stores of the once thriving village, now, alas! dusky with memories of the Señora, the captivating Señorita, the valiant Don, and the watchful Padre.

Defenseless in its degeneracy, the place now boasts a motley population of low-bred Mexicans and narrow-eyed Celestials. Still, when the old Spanish bells call to the early Sabbath mass, if one is observing, he may find among the weather-beaten countenances of the Mexicans, often marked with the high cheek bone of the Indian, true descendants of the early aristocracy, holding aloof from the horde, absorbed in prayers, that alone are the same since the ranches were ruthlessly divided and railroads allowed to invade.

Yet the Spanish homes that remain in the valley are mere echoes of former times, but tiny specks upon the map of the real estate dealer, which have miraculously escaped the clutches of strangers. Although humble, a few of these homes are strikingly picturesque.

On a retired road, sheltered on either side by mammoth pepper trees, east of the Mission by several miles, lived the Doña Maria Del Valle. Her little ranch was all that she had saved from her husband's estate, and she ever scorned its importance when she told indignantly how her husband's father had once held a splendid principality comprising four thousand acres.

"Now, alas! we own nothing," she said, resting, a moment, her dark hands from their incessant labor at the exquisite drawn work. "My child will be always poor, she will grow like the Americans, caring not for the past. It is cruel indeed that she saw not her noble father Don Arturo. Had he but lived, with his learning and accomplishments, his child would rejoice that she was born a Del Valle! Now she listens not patiently to the tale of former days, for in the Convent she has met American girls, and thinks only to imitate them, hoping to gain for herself a strange husband who loves not her people. Our dear Arturo she scorns! driving him far away by her wicked disobedience; for when she laughed at his love he could no longer endure to behold her."

Unhappy indeed was the Doña Maria when indulging in such confidences; but not often did she speak of her troubles, for so poor had the family become, that, to support her aged mother and the pretty Mariposilla, she was compelled to work constantly at the drawn work, learned in her youth as a pastime, now, alas! one of her chief sources of revenue.

It was owing to her reduced circumstances that the proud Doña Maria had received under her roof Marjorie and myself, for she loved not the Americans; but, as she told me artlessly one day, "Only the Americans now have gold.

"Once it was not so. We, too, had gold in abundance, but we loved not our gold as the Americans love theirs, to keep in the bank. We loved gold because it gave us joy to buy land, and cattle, and jewels, and lace."

Yes, it was simply for our gold that Marjorie and I had been received under the roof of the Del Valles. Still, when once the arrangement had been entered upon, the Doña Maria was all that we could desire as a hostess.

Marjorie stole each hour into the hearts of the old grandmother and the proud disappointed daughter, aging so fast under stress of multiplied troubles, that she needed just such an appealing interest as my delicate child to call into action the unselfish side of her noble nature. Before we had lived long at the ranch our lives were running together as smoothly as if we all rejoiced in the same blood.

The house of the Doña Maria Del Valle was not the original ranch house, but a smaller adobe, built after many of the broad acres had been bartered away by the taking of imperfect securities, the worthlessness of which the happy-go-lucky owners had failed to comprehend until too late to obviate the consequences.

"We understood not the laws and the papers of the Americans," the Doña Maria explained, as we sat, one sunshiny morning, upon the sheltered veranda. "One day we owned all the land in the valley for many miles, the next day we owned not so much, and at last only the little that is left."

To me, the fifteen remaining acres appeared most desirable, for I was not then versed in the matter of fruit culture. I did not understand that orange trees differ one from another in point of perfection as widely as do people.

It was some time before I learned that in the early settlement of the valley disastrous experiments had been made. Many of the first trees planted had yielded an inferior variety of fruit, not lucrative in a market each year growing more critical, as the country became settled by determined agriculturists, who possessed, not only cash capital, but brains stimulated by college education and practical experience. Such men soon discovered that it was unprofitable to irrigate or nurture for long a tree that was not all that a tree of its kind should be.

Consequently there had been frequent upheavals of earth; many old orchards were regarded by the experienced as worthless, the owners preferring to replant with the best varieties of budded trees, even though a considerable time must elapse before a revenue would result. Unfortunately, the orange ranch of the Doña Maria Del Valle was a poor one. It was planted with a flavorless variety of seedling, which yielded an income quite insufficient for the demands of the family. From an æsthetic point of view the grove appeared the Garden of the Hesperides. The staunch, far-reaching limbs of the old trees drooped opulently beneath the golden balls that invited the "Forty Thieves," who, happening to be "tenderfeet," ate with wry faces and discourteous exclamations the fruit that a native would have scorned to touch. For in California oranges are not ripe in December. Not until the late spring, when the sun has used persistently his winsome inducements, does the fruit consent to assume its luscious perfection.

Turning from the highway, the ranch of the Doña Maria Del Valle was entered from between two mammoth century plants, whose giant spears made formidable the approach to the long avenue leading to the house. The drive was shaded by gnarled old pepper trees, uniting from each side their fantastic branches to form an elfin tunnel of lacy shade. On the ground, thickly scattered, lay dartlike leaves, and scarlet berries shading from rich to pale, until a long oriental rug seemed spread for the court of an expected princess.

At the end of the Avenue stood the low adobe, covered with ivy and the famous Gold of Ophir rose, which at Easter illuminated the veranda and roof with the lights and shadows of forty thousand blooms. Not far from the house two giant palms—honored patriarchs of the valley—reared their trembling feathers to the sky. Like grim sentinels, true to a trust, they guarded in dumb eloquence the story of the past.

Before reaching the house the drive divided, encircling within the arms of its curve a soft oval cushion of Bermuda grass that in December is brown and unpromising, but in the spring grows green remaining so through the long summer, making no imperative demand for water, and being at all seasons as soft to the feet as the most luxurious rug. It is the grass created for the invalid. He alone appreciates the thick, delicious mat, which hoards for his bloodless feet thousands of warm sunbeams that cheat his physician into the belief that he is eminent, when he discovers his patient escaping his professional clutches.

Added to the tropical effect of full-grown palms and riotous shrubbery, the guardian Sierra Madre was ever flashing rich shadows and tender patches of light, that, in the clear, prismatic air, reflected countless expressions into the hearts of the flowers and onto the surface of the leaves.

Such was the home of the Doña Maria Del Valle. Here Mariposilla had been born, sixteen years before, five months after the death of her father, Don Arturo.