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Talbot of Ursula

(This story first appeared in the Anglo-Saxon Review, and is republished by kind permission of Mrs. George Cornwallis-West)

I

The Senora as usual had written a formal little note in the morning asking John Talbot to eat his birthday dinner at the Rancho de los Olivos.  Although he called on the Senora once a week the year round, she never offered him more than a glass of angelica or a cup of chocolate on any other occasion; but for his natal day she had a turkey killed, and her aged cook prepared so many hot dishes and dulces of the old time that Talbot was a wretched man for three days.  But he would have endured misery for six rather than forego this feast, and the brief embrace of home life that accompanied it.

The Senora and the padre of the Mission were Talbot’s only companions in Santa Ursula, although for political reasons he often dropped in at the saloon of the village and discussed with its polyglot customers such affairs of the day as penetrated this remote corner of California.  And yet for twenty-three years he had lived in Santa Ursula, year in and year out, save for brief visits to San Francisco, Sacramento, and the Southern towns.

Why had he stayed on in this God-forsaken hole after he had become a rich man?  He asked himself the question with some humor as he walked up and down the corridor of the Mission on this his fortieth birthday; and he had asked it many times.

To some souls the perfect peace, the warm drowsy beauty of the scene would have been a conclusive answer.  Two friars in their brown robes passed and repassed him, reading their prayers.  Beyond the arches of the corridor, abruptly below the plateau on which stood the long white Mission, was, so far as the eye was responsible, an illimitable valley, cutting the horizon on the south and west, cut by the mountains of Santa Barbara on the east.  The sun was brazen in a dark-blue sky, and under its downpour the vast olive orchard which covered the valley looked like a silver sea.  The glittering ripples met the blue of the horizon sharply, crinkled against the lower spurs of the mountain.  As a bird that had skimmed its surface, then plunged for a moment, rose again, Talbot almost expected to see it shake bright drops from its wings.  He sighed involuntarily as he reflected that in the dark caves and arbors below it was very cool, far cooler than he would be during an eight-mile ride under the mid-day sun of Southern California.  Then he remembered that the Senora’s sala was also dark and cool, and that part of his way lay through the cotton-woods and willows by the river; and he smiled whimsically again.  He had salted his long sojourn at Santa Ursula with much philosophy.

One mountain-peak, detached from the range and within a mile of the Mission, was dense and dark with forest, broken only here and there by the bowlders the earth had flung on high in her restless youth.  There was but a winding trail to the top, and few had made acquaintance with it.  John Talbot knew it well, and that to which it led—­a lake in the very cup of the peak, so clear and bright that it reflected every needle of the dark pines embracing it.