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By Helen Hunt Jackson: Alessandro
The Indian sheep-shearers arrived at sunset, just as Ramona hurried to the brook to wash an altar-cloth. Her face aglow, she bent over the stones, all unconscious that Alessandro, captain of the shearing band, beholding her, stood spellbound.
When Father Salvierderra led the household sunrise hymn next morning, a new rich barytone voice thrilled Ramona strangely. "I never heard anything like it," she told Felipe. "That is Alessandro, old Pablo's son--a splendid fellow. He plays the violin beautifully, the old San Luis Rey music. His father was bandmaster there." Sheep-shearing began most unfortunately. Felipe, up too soon from a long illness, suffered a relapse while packing the dusty fleeces. Only Alessandro could soothe his delirium; accordingly, Alessandro was persuaded to remain until the invalid should recover.
As Felipe improved, he lived on the open veranda, lying on a rawhide bed that Alessandro made. The family sat near him. Alessandro, too, "his music a delight, his strength and fidelity a repose, his personal presence always agreeable, was freely welcome." The young Indian watched Ramona with dumb devotion. "Such eyes," she mused, "like a saint, so solemn, so mild. I am sure he is very good." She ceased to regard him as an Indian. How could she understand this new feeling? Felipe was the only young man she had ever known. One thought possessed Alessandro after old Juan Canito, the head shepherd, told him of Ramona's parentage: "The senorita has Indian blood. . . . The senora loves her not." When Ramona wept at the senora's unkindness, he trembled so that Felipe read his secret. "If only my mother could think it," reflected generous Felipe, "it would be best to have Alessandro stay here as overseer, and then they might be married."
The crisis came when Ramona's eyes dimmed with tears because she feared Alessandro's father would not let him remain permanently on the ranch. "Senorita," he cried, "tears have come into your eyes. Then you will not be angry if I say that I love you!" "I know, Alessandro; I am glad of it. I love you!" "Oh, senorita, do you mean that you will go with me? You cannot mean that!" "Yes, I will go with you!"
And then, as they stood locked in each other's arms, the senora discovered them! "Shameful creature!" she cried, smiting Ramona's protesting lips. She hustled the girl to her room and locked her in.
Alessandro, watching sadly all that night, heard two wood-doves calling, "Love?" "Here." "Here" "My Ramona is like the gentle wood-dove," though he. "If she is my wife my people will call her Majel the Wood-Dove." In vain Felipe tried to persuade his mother. In vain she coaxed and threatened Ramona. The jewels which were to be Ramona's dowry, if she married worthily, were no temptation. When the senora scornfully declared, "Your mother was an Indian, a low, common Indian," the girl was truly glad. "Why do you object to my marrying Alessandro?" she demanded. "I am of his people. The jewels you can give to the Church. I shall marry Alessandro." Felipe sent Alessandro home to Temecula until the storm should blow over. But the long-dreaded Americans in their search for more land had just taken possession of that peaceful village. Dragged out of his own house by force, old Pablo died of grief. Alessandro buried him, and then in utter misery came back to bid Ramona farewell. "Dearest senorita, I have no home," he faltered. "My father is dead; my people have been driven out of their village. I am only a beggar now." But Ramona felt no fear of privations. "Take me with you!" she cried. After long pleading she overruled his wiser arguments, and that night they slipped away, with Baba, Ramona's own horse.
No trace of the lovers was found, for those Indians who knew Alessandro's whereabouts purposely misled inquirers; and at San Diego, where they were married, Ramona had given Alessandro's pet name for her, "Majella," to be entered on the register.
Their first home was near Alessandro's cousin in San Pasquale, where the Indians received Ramona gladly. She was very happy in her new life "under the sky." She accepted a tiny brush hut as cheerfully as the comfortable adobe which Alessandro soon built and which she beautified beyond belief. Gleefully she led Baba when he plowed the first furrows in their fields. But Alessandro's anxiety rarely left him. When he heard that the Mexican pueblo paper of San Pasquale was worthless, that all the village lands belonged to the Americans in Washington, he lost hope. "I think I shall go mad," he said. When American ranchers appeared, he sold house and crop and moved to Saboba, seeking a place the Americans did not want. On the way to Saboba they nearly perished in a snowstorm, but were saved by an easy-going Tennesseean family, the Hyers, with whom they became friends. Already Ramona's heart had been wrung at hearing of Father Salvierderra's death. Now came a new grief--she feared for Alessandro's reason. Could he bear another blow? "Eyes-of-the-Sky," their baby girl, never recovered from her exposure to the storm and died on the way to the agency doctor who would not come to her. White men began to encroach and to be insulting. "We will hide forever," declared Alessandro. Leaving horses and wagon in San Bernardino with the Hyers for the winter, they went to a tiny valley, almost inaccessible, folded high on Mt. San Jacinto's slopes. "Here we are safe!" exulted Ramona. "Pears like she'd gone klar out'er this yer world inter another," mused Aunt Ri Hyer, as she sat weaving carpets and gazing up at the shining mountain in the southern horizon.
When Alessandro saw the brown eyes of his second daughter he sighed, "It is an ill gift to have the eyes of Alessandro; they look ever on woe." Now began attacks of mental distress--wild flights from imaginary white pursuers. Sometimes he tried to drive flocks he fancied were his own. One fatal day he galloped home on a strange horse, taken by mistake during one of his "sicknesses." "Senior, I will explain--" But Farrar, the enraged owner, shot him dead in the midst of his explanations.
Child in arms, Ramona ran for help to the nearest village, Cahuilla. Then came oblivion.
Ten days afterward she opened her eyes. Aunt Ri was beside her and--Felipe! He had recognized Baba in San Bernardino, and from the Hyers had learned the whole sad story. "I have been searching for you all this time," he whispered. "I am alone, dear. There is no one now but you to take care of me." In Mexico, Felipe made a new home and there Ramona became his loving, loyal wife. But when the wood-doves called, she heard a voice saying, "Majella!" That was her only secret from her husband.
SCOTT SIR WALTER SCOTT'S struggle to pay his debts was as heroic as anything in his most heroic novel. He was fifty-five years old when the printing-firm in which he was a secret partner failed and left him responsible for debts of $650,000. His wife died a few weeks later; he himself faced a probable mental breakdown, as he had had a slight attack of aphasia, an inability to remember the meaning of words. Yet he refused to go through bankruptcy, although he had had no part in incurring this mountainous debt. All that he asked from his creditors was time. This secured, he buckled sternly to his task.
He wrote doggedly and well, if not with the old fire. In two years he had paid off more than $200,000. To make money more quickly he turned from novels to a "Life of Napoleon," which brought him nearly $100,000. His mind began to fail, but he struggled on. "Count Robert of Paris" and Castle Dangerous" were written after paralytic shocks. Racked by physical sufferings and with hardly more than half a brain, he so devoted himself to work that within five years more than half of the great debt had been paid. His last year was made happy by a merciful hallucination. He conceived the idea that he had paid every creditor in full. About $250,000 actually remained unpaid at his death, but this was reduced by insurance to $150,000. This, too, was paid from copyrights, and fifteen years later the last claim was discharged. No one had helped him. He had paid in full by his own unaided labor.
KENILWORTH