For the Soul of Rafael

by Marah Ellis Ryan

"Rafael!" she gasped, frightened at the white fury of his face; but he held up his hand.

"I swear she shall open her door to admit the women she slighted, first at Los Angeles and again in your home. She will find she has an Arteaga for a master. She shall open her door; she shall receive her; she shall make up for the insult to your home. By God, she shall make up, with interest!"

Then he strode out of the door, leaving Doña Refugia in a cold terror lest the guest of whom he spoke had heard his words through the closed door of Ana's room. It had been given to Mrs. Bryton on the arrival of the party an hour before, and though the door was closed, who could tell that his words might not have been heard there?

But the window on the veranda was open, and Doña Refugia breathed a sigh of relief when, a few minutes later, she saw Mrs. Bryton's fair face emerge from a bower of clematis in the garden. She had been admiring the beauty of the lilies out there, and looked like one herself,—so cool, so sweetly childish in her little appeals for admiration of the beautiful blooms she loved. Rafael met her there, and was enslaved anew by the blue eyes, as he bent over her tiny hand and kissed it furtively, and walked with her to show her Doña Refugia's carnation-beds, and under the starlight help her to see the beauties of the San Joaquin garden.

But old Polonia, who had heard his words to Doña Refugia, and who watched the two walking in the starlight, muttered in her Indian jargon, "Have a care, Don Rafael; have a care!"

Despite Rafael's doubt, it was all true about the ambush. It was quite true, and very awful. It had occurred in the morning, and Bryton had missed it only by his stay that night at the ranch. But he was also quite right when he said the two girls had left the ranch for other reasons. Raquel was quietly preparing to leave, when the word came warranting her in taking Ana. The two rode south with few words, each so wrapped in her own reasons for going that she gave no thought to the reasons of the other.

They found the town panic-stricken. Don Juan Alvara was ill, and Padre Andros absent at San Luis Rey. Raquel rode into the plaza white and weak from the long ride, but sat erect to hear of the things done and the things needed for the dead.

It was almost dark. While Ysadora the cook prepared supper, Ana questioned concerning a padre who had ridden a San Joaquin horse to San Juan that morning, but no one had seen him. Later, the animal was found grazing along Trabuco Creek. Evidently, some one had passed with a wagon or a herd going south, and had given the padre help on the way; beyond that, no one thought, except Ana, and what she thought she did not say.

Raquel walked through the little hall of the Mission into what had once been the garden of the padres, the little enclosed bit at the back of the belfry built after the falling of the tower. It was the one little corner from which the world seemed shut out. Under the carved doorway she passed into the old domed vestry with its stone centre cut, or worn by the dripping water, into the semblance of a leering face; "the devil's face," it was called, and people looked from its queer smile to the twisted serpent-like carving over what had once been the arch to the church itself, and wondered what the strange carvings meant, and found no one to answer. They were only a sign left by an unknown Mexican sculptor a half-century ago.

Raquel glanced at them and shuddered, and passed out into the great unroofed, beautiful place of fluted pillars and carven cornices.