Читать книгу Folded Hills - Stewart Edward White - Страница 28

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His nearest touch with such matters was through his brief contacts with Alvarado on his occasional visits to Monterey. He liked Alvarado as he remembered him before the governor had reached his ambition. Now he had sadly to admit that the político had changed. His suavity of manner had vanished; he had become querulous, given to violent explosions of resentment; suspicious; vacillating. He had taken to drinking heavily. His appearance had deteriorated. His health was bad. He complained bitterly of people and of matters of which Andy had never heard. Andy could not make head or tail of it all. Especially did Alvarado inveigh against the increasing number of foreigners, threatening the most drastic measures—which, however, he did not carry out. Apparently he had forgotten his earlier views. He raged at times against Vallejo, whom he stigmatized as a traitor bent on thwarting him. Indeed, about this time Vallejo departed for a brief period from his usual common sense and attempted, in his capacity of commander, a formal and rigid military discipline quite out of character with the California spirit. To the troops, Alvarado and Castro had always been Juanito and José. The guardhouses became crowded. Castillero was snubbed for approaching the commander too informally. An officer was overheard commenting on this to a citizen. The officer was ordered arrested; the citizen was sued. Castro himself was arrested for not arresting the officer. Guerra was ordered to the command of Santa Barbara. He begged off on the plea of ill health. Vallejo ordered him into custody for refusing, informing him that his duty was to obey without question, and then to petition for relief in due form. Some were angry; some were merely amused. Vallejo was probably merely taking his appointment too literally; had been reading up on the old Spanish discipline. It was not like him; it was a single-mindedness; it passed. There was a great party at Guerra’s house, and everybody shook hands, and Vallejo handsomely admitted that Spanish discipline would not work in an army of unpaid relatives. He returned to Sonoma, and Castro resumed command, and all was well. But he carried with him a contempt for his nephew’s slack methods, so that thenceforth he and Alvarado were at cross-purposes. Shortly Alvarado married Martina Castro, but Castro was himself too ill to attend the wedding, and had to be represented at the ceremony by José Estrada.

Most of which was, naturally, quite over Andy’s head. He knew nothing of the nagging harassments that had proved Alvarado’s fiber to be not of the final heroic quality. He was sorry; and just a little contemptuous. Thomas Larkin merely shrugged his shoulders, when Andy asked him what it was all about, and talked of books. Andy returned to Folded Hills as into fresh air from the miasms of a swamp. It was grateful to be back with the old familiar and engrossing affairs of the rancho. Carmel, it seemed to him, was more beautiful than ever. Djo was taller than his mother; promised to be as tall as himself. His sister, Amata, had surprisingly ceased to be a baby. At times she startled Andy with a glimpse, just a brief glimpse, of a woman enfolded within the petals of childhood. As Faquita had been when first he had come to the hacienda. Faquita had children of her own, had become surprisingly the matron.

The rancho, after the swift California fashion, had taken on an air of settled age. It might have stood just so for a hundred years. Its habits and customs had acquired a mellowness as of immemorial tradition extending to far horizons. The horizons were of the future as well as of the past. The surface of the current still ran smooth.