Читать книгу Folded Hills - Stewart Edward White - Страница 9

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The custom among the Spanish-Californians was—and is—to erect a name of significance, like a totem pole. The thing was built up from the firm foundation of the family name. This new infant was a Burnett by plain right of birth. But also, on its mother’s side, it was a Rivera; and the Riveras were a noble family, and should be somehow recorded. So, although he would be known as Burnett officially and commonly, on especial dress occasions the most punctilious might call him Señor Burnett y Rivera. Then there was his saint’s name, which must of course depend on the day of his birth. Next in order was a string of complimentary or memorial names, limited in number only by memory or good taste; and finally, in front of the whole procession, the familiar name by which informally he was to be known.

So it happened that this particular infant was rather remarkably labeled, even for California. In his veins flowed the blood of two races; but in his name marched the syllables of three.

Carmel, naturally, wished to call him Andrés. Andy shook his head.

“Don’t you think one is enough?” he asked. “Does it matter much to you, querida?”

“You have a name you would like,” said Carmel keenly. “What is it?”

“I think I would like to call him Joe.”

She stumbled a bit in repeating it, for the letter “j” is difficult to the Spanish.

“D-jo,” she stumbled thoughtfully. “It is a word of the teeth.” Then, catching his expression, “Who was D-jo, Andreo mío?”

“He was my best friend in life—over there, beyond the mountains,” said Andy soberly.

“You loved him much; that I see,” said Carmel.

“Much,” said Andy.

She watched the somber aloofness of his face for a moment, then placed her hands behind his head and drew him toward her.

“Come back to me, amado,” she said softly. “This friend of your heart—now—he is dead?”

“He was killed,” said Andy.

“Ah,” breathed Carmel. Then after a moment, “Sometime you must tell me.”

“Sometime; not now.”

“D-jo.” She repeated the name again softly. “And now, for the rest?”

“The rest?” echoed Andy blankly. It seemed to him that the infant was already sufficiently labeled for identification at least.

“But yes: are there no others you would honor?”

“Ramón.”

“That is good: I hoped you would say Ramón. And?”

“That is surely enough of names!” protested Andy.

“It is enough of names,” agreed Carmel, “but is it enough of honor? Are there no others so dear to your heart that you would have your son to remember?”

“There was one,” said Andy after a moment’s hesitation, “but he was an Indian.”

“An Indian!” exclaimed Carmel in a dismay she could not conceal.

“Not like these Indians you know,” cried Andy, flaming to defense. “He was not like anyone you have ever seen. He was an hidalgo, a great warrior, a true friend. He belonged to a great people.” Andy was of the reticent type of frontiersman. He rarely spoke of his past: it would never have occurred to him to do so unless stirred by especial occasion. But this was such an occasion. The simplicity of his desire to make Carmel understand freed his spirit to vividness. She listened breathless lest she break the spell. It was a living picture—the wide plains, the buffalo, the gathering peaks, the icy winds of hardship and of danger and of great deeds simply done, and through it moving figures heroic in the magnitudes of stark simplicity, the plumed Indians and the mountain men. Andy was trying, as best he might, and without thought of himself, to bring to the girl a realization of the things he had known. He succeeded; but this he did not realize or intend: that to her the great significance was himself. She gazed at him with parted lips, for if these things were splendid, by so much more was he glorious who had been of them a part. So lost was she in the vivid reality of those past days that she came to herself with a little gasp.

“Why have you not talked to me of these things before?” she demanded.

“Why—I do not know——”

“But you must tell me all, all, all!” she cried passionately. “Do you not see? If I shall love you, all of you, so must I know all about you so I may go with you in my soul through all that has been, just as we shall go together, forever, through all that shall be. No! No-no! Nothing you must not tell me, nothing; even when you were a little, little boy. Promise you shall tell me all!”

She shook him so fiercely that Andy laughed.

“Why, of course I will tell you anything you wish to know,” he agreed. “It did not occur to me you would be interested.”

“I shall make it ‘occur to you,’ ” she promised.

So it was agreed that the name of Kiasax should be added to the already imposing list. Andy wrote it all down to see how it would look: he had to laugh at the result.

Joe Ramón Kiasax —— Burnett y Rivera.

The blank stood for the missing saint’s name, which must depend on the day of the birth.

Carmel was enlightened.

“Oh!” she cried. “I did not understand! This name is the same as José, not-so? Ho, now I see heem.”

“No, not Ho; Joe!” corrected Andy.

“Then you cannot spell him so. Every californio call that Ho.” She took the quill, and in the unformed script she had learned from Father Seria she wrote:

“Djoe.”

Then, after consideration, elided the final “e”:

“Djo.”

“Thus you write, ‘Joe’,” said she with satisfaction; and so it was written, so that many people wondered but few ever knew the origin of the quaint syllable.

But the climax to the cognominal joke on the poor infant came from the fact that he was born on the day of the blessed San José, so that the blank was filled with the name José, and that neither Andy nor Carmel knew that José in Spanish is Joseph in English.

When the child was twenty days old came its padrinos, its godparents, Ramón Rivera and his fiancée, Conchita de la Questa. They rode gayly, playing guitars; and they were met at the door of the house by Andy, Carmel, and the baby; and the lot of them proceeded to Soledad, where Father Seria baptized Djo Ramón Kiasax José Burnett y Rivera in the presence of the assembled family kneeling in the blue dimness of the church. But after the ceremony, outside, they were greeted by a great acclaim of people from all the countryside, with a delirious clanging of bells, and music, and the flare of rockets. And all returned to Folded Hills, where they dutifully ate panecito, as custom required; and afterward a more satisfactory feast, and there was a great ball, and sports and meriendas such as the Californians loved.