Alessandro shook his head. He did not know what to say. Looking from one to the other, seeing the confused pain in both their faces, Ramona, laying both her hands on her breast, in the expressive gesture she had learned from the Indian women, cried out in a piteous tone: “You will not tell me! You do not speak! Then he is dead!” and she sank on her knees.
“Yes, my daughter, he is dead,” said Father Gaspara, more tenderly than that brusque and warlike priest often spoke. “He died a month ago, at Santa Barbara. I am grieved to have brought you tidings to give you such sorrow. But you must not mourn for him. He was very feeble, and he longed to die, I heard. He could no longer work, and he did not wish to live.”
Ramona had buried her face in her hands. The Father's words were only a confused sound in her ears. She had heard nothing after the words, “a month ago.” She remained silent and motionless for some moments; then rising, without speaking a word, or looking at either of the men, she crossed the room and knelt down before the Madonna. By a common impulse, both Alessandro and Father Gaspara silently left the room. As they stood together outside the door, the Father said, “I would go back to Lomax's if it were not so late. I like not to be here when your wife is in such grief.”
“That would but be another grief, Father,” said Alessandro. “She has been full of happiness in making ready for you. She is very strong of soul. It is she who makes me strong often, and not I who give strength to her.”
“My faith, but the man is right,” thought Father Gaspara, a half-hour later, when, with a calm face, Ramona summoned them to supper. He did not know, as Alessandro did, how that face had changed in the half-hour. It wore a look Alessandro had never seen upon it. Almost he dreaded to speak to her.
When he walked by her side, later in the evening, as she went across the valley to Fernando's house, he ventured to mention Father Salvierderra's name. Ramona laid her hand on his lips. “I cannot talk about him yet, dear,” she said. “I never believed that he would die without giving us his blessing. Do not speak of him till to-morrow is over.”
Ramona's saddened face smote on all the women's hearts as they met her the next morning. One by one they gazed, astonished, then turned away, and spoke softly among themselves. They all loved her, and half revered her too, for her great kindness, and readiness to teach and to help them. She had been like a sort of missionary in the valley ever since she came, and no one had ever seen her face without a smile. Now she smiled not. Yet there was the beautiful baby in its white dress, ready to be christened; and the sun shone, and the bell had been ringing for half an hour, and from every corner of the valley the people were gathering, and Father Gaspara, in his gold and green cassock, was praying before the altar; it was a joyous day in San Pasquale. Why did Alessandro and Ramona kneel apart in a corner, with such heart-stricken countenances, not even looking glad when their baby laughed, and reached up her hands? Gradually it was whispered about what had happened. Some one had got it from Antonio, of Temecula, Alessandro's friend. Then all the women's faces grew sad too. They all had heard of Father Salvierderra, and many of them had prayed to the ivory Christ in Ramona's room, and knew that he had given it to her.
As Ramona passed out of the chapel, some of them came up to her, and taking her hand in theirs, laid it on their hearts, speaking no word. The gesture was more than any speech could have been.
When Father Gaspara was taking leave, Ramona said, with quivering lips, “Father, if there is anything you know of Father Salvierderra's last hours, I would be grateful to you for telling me.”
“I heard very little,” replied the Father, “except that he had been feeble for some weeks; yet he would persist in spending most of the night kneeling on the stone floor in the church, praying.”