But there was no warmth, no food, no drink. A couple of candles glowed. A padre knelt. Two neophytes were at work patching a hole in the wall. The caballero paced back and forth in the narrow aisle, listening to the beating of the storm outside, wondering whether a fray would speak to him and offer relief.
The neophytes went out, and in time the padre followed. The caballero did not speak as he passed, for he felt that the other would not answer. He wondered whether the entire world had turned against him. He contrasted his present condition with the hospitality he had received at Santa Barbara and San Fernando, and in the adobe house of Gonzales at Reina de Los Angeles. He longed for the companionship of the aged Indian at San Luis Rey de Francia, for his poor hut and coarse food and hard bunk.
And then his pride returned to him in a surge. He would seek sanctuary in no chapel where his presence was not welcomed by all!
Out into the rain he went again, across the plaza, down the slope to where he had picketed his horse. Back and forth he ran to warm his blood. The sky darkened, the night came. He saw the lights in the buildings again, and the odours of cooking food almost drove him frantic. In the guest house, someone was singing. He guessed that it was Señorita Anita Fernandez.
He spent that night in the orchard under the big palm, shivering because of the cold and his wet clothes, miserable because of his hunger, and when the dawn came, and the storm had not abated, he went back to the horse with an armful of dry grass he had found in the corner by the orchard wall.
Bravado came to him now. He took the guitar from beneath his cloak, and, standing out on the slope where all could see, he played and sang at the top of his voice.
Still it rained, and the creek grew broader, flooding the highway and threatening the plaza wall. The caballero sat on the muddy ground, his cloak over his head, huddled forward, grim, awaiting the end of the rain.
“The poor man!” observed Señora Vallejo, watching from a window of the guest house.
“He has brought it upon himself,” Señor Lopez reminded her. “Had he returned when I warned him he would have been in comfort somewhere along the highway long since.”
“If the rain could but wash his soul as it does his body!” sighed Anita, standing closer to the big fireplace.