: Stories by American Authors Volume 10 by Various - United States Social life and customs Fiction; Short stories American

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Stories by American Authors

VOLUME X

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1896

PANCHA: A STORY OF MONTEREY.

BY T. A. JANVIER.

This all happened upon a fair day now close upon three hundred years gone by. From century to century the city has grown, yet always in accord with the lines established by its founders. The houses a-building now are as the houses built three hundred years ago; and, going yet farther into the past, as the houses which were built by the Moors when they came into the Gothic peninsula, bringing with them the life and customs of a land that even then was old. So it has come to pass that the traveler who sojourns here--having happily left behind him on the farther side of the Rio Grande the bustle and confusion and hurtful toil of this overpowering nineteenth century--very well can believe himself transported back to that blessed time and country in which the picturesque was ranked above the practical, and in which not the least of human virtues was the virtue of repose.

Many a person, though, coming a stranger and with a stranger's prejudices into this gentle, lovely Mexican land, would have thought Pancha's love of home quite incomprehensible; for her home, the house in which she dwelt, was not lovely to eyes brought up with a rigorous faith in right angles and the monotonous regularity of American city walls. In point of fact, persons of this sort might have held--and, after their light, with some show of justice--that Pancha's home was not a house at all.

And it was on this happy day, as Pancha knew afterward, that her love for Pepe first began.

So, for Pancha at least, the time passed blithely on. Her mood of compassion for Pedro was forgotten, and her loss of Chona's friendship--if ever she had possessed it--caused her no great sorrow; and all because her love for Pepe filled to overflowing her loving heart.

This was the way that matters stood the next Easter, when Pepe again came up to Monterey to take part in the blessed services of the church, to see again his old father, and again to receive graciously the congratulations of his friends.

So Pepe rode lightly out from Monterey, and behind him rode not black care, but brightest joy, and after him went good wishes and great love. When he came again he would be rich, and--dearer than all other riches--Pancha would be his. Truly, a young fellow of three and twenty, who had carved his own way to so brave a fortune, might well rejoice within himself; and Pepe did rejoice with all his heart. As he rode down the valley--the valley that is scarred by the railroad now--his thoughts ran back pleasantly over the past few years of hard work in his profession; over his many successes tarnished by not a single serious failure; and still more pleasantly his thoughts ran forward into the future, when all his toil was to receive, over and above a liberal compensation, a most sweet reward. One more deal in the game that he knew so well how to play, and all the stakes would be his. No wonder that Pepe's heart was glad within him; that his soul was filled with joy.

Yet Pancha, left behind in Monterey to wait while Pepe worked, was sorrowful. As sometimes happens to us when we are confronted by the certainty of great happiness, she was possessed by a gloomy sadness that came of dark forebodings in her mind. The very greatness and sureness of this happiness awed her into doubt. She knew that to take her good fortune in this faint-hearted way was not wise in itself, and was not what Pepe would approve; and that she might please Pepe she berated herself roundly and tried to laugh away her fears--though they scarcely amounted to fears, being but shadowy doubts and unshaped thoughts in which always was a tinge of nameless dread. But scolding herself and laughing at herself were equally unavailing; therefore she betook herself to that refuge which is dear to women the world over, but which especially is dear to women in Roman Catholic lands--the refuge of prayer.

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