A FAMILY IN SPANISHTOWN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 44, 7 August 1891, Page 27

A FAMILY IN SPANISHTOWN.

(By Mabia. Louisa Pool, in the Overland Monthly.')

PICTURE to yourself a lovely woman who reclines indolently, her drapery gracefully about her, who meets your look witn eyes that have both sparkle and softness in them, whose whole attitude is bewilderingly Buggestive of all manner of charm ; a woman with whom you fall in love with reckless abandon at first sight. That is Santa Barbara. A saint, is sbe 1 No, indeed, she possesses not one single hint, save her name, that she is saintly in any way, except however, that she has an air as if she expected to be worshipped. Do you say there has enough been written about Santa Barbara? In truth, there have been many fair pages covered in her description ; but enough ? Who can say enough of Cleopatra, for instance ? And every one who takes pen is hand has a fond hope that he will, perchance, write something that shall more truly describe this bit of earth's enchantment than any other words have ever done, Enthusiasm ought to have the limntn? power. To speak con amore ought, to be to speak to the point. An I love is not blind ;on tbe contrary, i i is the sharpest sighted of nil the emotious. Bat could love itself fiad any fliw in the sight that meets the game when the steamboat slowly rouad* tbe Cattle Rjok Point, and shows the town waiting in tranquil loveliness to receive her new adorers ? The Pacific had not been kind ; she rarely is so. She had been very unkind almost al l the way from S\o Francisco, and nearly all our passengere were hollow eyed and pallid when they gathered on the deck to catch the first glimpse of their haven. Everybody had not been sick. There was one wouoan from Masschusetts, with a small dog as her sole companion. She had been perfpc*ly well, and whiln she ministered to those that were Bick, sbe took no pains to disguise the fact that sbo despised them for their weakness. She freely gave out the information that she had come across the continent partly for her health, and partly to visit a brother who had come here six years ago because he thought he was consumptive. lie had become well and manied, and settled. He had married a Spanish woman, his sister had always understood ; but she s'posed Spanish women were human beings. She said tbis doubtfully, however, as if the chances were greatly in favour of a Spanish woman being a kind of a gorilla. Any way, this unmarried Bister was thus far on the way to see how Lemuel was getting along. I, too, was a Yankee woman from Massachusetts, and was coming here for my health. The worst aspect of my own case was that I was not well stockel with money, and my view in this new world must be from a humble standpoint, I must be continually count. ng the cost of this and the cost of that. If in this sketch there be too much of the first person, singular, it i 9 because I know no other way in which to give a record of a personal experience — and this experience has, it seems to me, been very different from that of the ordinary tourist who visits this country. Oa this moment of arrival all my natural anxieties and apprehensions were for tbe moment overwhelmed in the emotions excited by the view, every moment growing more beautiful, as the steamer stretched along over tha glassy water of the bay. There were the hills for background, and there the snowy towers of the Miß3ion ; there the valley curving along tbe shore, which is not of white sand, but of a glistening yellow. Everbody was exclaiming at this or that beauty ; those who had been here before were pointing out places to newcomers and talking

eagerly. The houses) with their gay roofs stood among trees, and looked to us like so many nests in a paradise. Of course there mi some one telling loudly nnd emphatically that we ought to have come overland from San Buenaventura ; that the town looked very well, certainly, this way, but jost come up that other way, and we should not think this was much in comparison. Then we should have coma through acres of orange groves ; we should have had the Pacific on one side, and the mountains on the other. So the man's distinct assertive voice flowed on as we neared the long wharf, where wore men, women and children waiting to welcome the San Francises boat. Already I imagined myself walking up and down that wharf, blown up by the wild salt wiod, my eyes filled now with that sweep of ocean, now with the low outlines of the mesa, or with the larger beauty of the mountain range further off. " GraciouH I I do believe there is Lemuel himself I" said Lemuel's sister close at my elbow, squeezing the dog in her arms, and in hex excitement squeezing him too bard. " Yes, it is certainly Lemuel," she went on. " What would they say in the Hancock neighbourhood to see him in a thing like that ha has on his Bhoulders I— and that hat ? It's all his wife's doings. What can you expect of an outlandish woman 7" I looked more closely at that cluster of men nearest the wharf's end. I saw a figure with a Bhabby, bluish round cape on its shoulder* and an enormous felt hat on its head. It seemed preposterous that any man without a blue-black beard and jet black eyes should hava covered his head in that way. This person had thin sandy whiskers , and pale, weak eyes, a stoop in his shoulders and a generally ineffective aspect that made it incredible that he should be kin to the alert energetic spinster at my side. " His aunt Jane never would know him," murmured Miss Hancock. Her dog squirmed and yelped in her arms ; the boat bumped against the planks, and passengers hustled one another ; several of the gentlemen took off their hats; I saw the man in the sombrero wave his hand ; then we all hurried to get our bags and parcels and to go ashore. Now returned to my mind in renewed force my anxieties as to what I should do. There seemed nothing for me but to go first to a hotel, wbile I looked around aad tried to find a cheap place in which to live. Bit what a hole in my purse a few days would make. As I went solitary among the crowd up the wbarf, I looked off at tbe mountains again, and wished that I had a hut on one of their sides. Tbe sky Hbove those mountains was " blue as Italy," blue as one's dream of Italy. The air had an indescribable sweetness which appeared at once to heal and stimulate. Lemuel and his sister were ahead of me, he slouching, and she erect as the historical darning needle stucJr in a board. Lemuel looked as if he would know all about everything that was cheap. I hurried up to him and asked him if he could direct me to a boardiog honte where the prices were moderate. He looked at me a moment in a wavering way he had. At last he replied : — " I s'poee you ain't lookin' for style ?" I told him I did not propose to spend my money for style. He shuffled his feet meditatively, and looked down at them. " If you ain't any objections to going out of Spanishtown I don't see why we can't acomydate ye there," he said, " and you'll be company for Clarissy here," glancing at his sister ; who remarked that she was sure she would be glad to have me in the house. What was I that I should object to Spanishtown ? I would try it at any rate. Besides, I had very little idea as to what the place really was. Of course, I had read about Santa Barbara, but my readings had only given me general impressions, not details. But I was soon to lose details in profusion of a certain kind. I did not know how far we walktd. The streets were wide, and we were beneath the Bhade of great eucalyptus trees, and what our guide said were pepper trees. Could it be poEsible it was the first of December ? Tbe gardens in *>hicb the houses stood were filled with a thousand strange flowers ; there was green grass at the edges of the siJewalki. It was a miracle. How is the New Knglander to believe his senses when be first lands upon this b essed bit of tbe Pacific coast? Winter has been annihilated, swept from the face of the earth, for in a place like thia it is difficult to believe that there is snow or cold anywhere. Lemuel Hancock kept looking round proudly at us. " 'Taint much like home, is it ?" he asked. We turned a corner, and came to a small two-wheeled cart, on the bottom of which was sitting a boy of nine or ten. He was gazing at us with such entire absorption that his whole being seemed to consist of a pair of coal black eyes that did not blink in the least. To my great Burpnse Mr Hancock stopped at this cart and put our satchel into it. I now saw th it between the shafts was hitched a yellow pony, so small that it appeared a cruelty to make him draw tbe cart without anything in it. " I guess you can climb in somehow," said Lemuel. " I was afraid you might be tired or not used to walking, or something. I dou't like to walk myself,"

He climbed in first and then palled us in, but not without considerable difficulty. Clarissy's terrier at first refused violently to be pat in, and his mistress Baid she didn't know as she could blame him much. To this remark Lemuel replied that be guessed we should be glad enough of the cart and pony, too, before a week was out. There want another such pony this side of the Rockies. Miss Hancock confided to me that she hoped there was not — one was enough. " Set right down," said Lemuel, " and make yourself comfortable. It'll take us some little time to get there, and I've got some errands to do for my wife." The pony started ; he actually pulled the cart and its load, and did not seem distressed either. True, he only went at a walk, and the very slowest kind of a walk at that. I did sot know then through what streets we went. I cared to know little. I was content to sit and breathe that divine air, to gaze off at the mountains, on the Bea, to listen to the deep music of the waves as they rolled in upon the unseen beaches. On those beaches 1 would walk, out among those foothills I would wander. Who could stay beneath a roof at any moment, when he could have a sky like that above his head ? Remember, it was the first time in my life I had ever been out of New England. Had I stepped off this world into one of tbe stars I could hardly have felt the newness and the strangeness more. I believe it was still more strange that I should find here a man in a blue cape and a sombrero who talked and looked like a Yankee of the illiterate class. An Indian, I verily believe, would have confused me less. I could not adjust my ideas ; they were running in hopeless riot through my mind. And to be invited to sit down flat on tha bottom of a cart, and to accept the invitation, does not tend to clear one's intellect. The boy who had been the first occupant of our vehicle was still present, and had not for an instant intermitted his fixed gaze. The terrier bad snuffed at this boy with scornful suspicion, and had then returned to the arms cf its mistress . On each side of the spacious roadway were cottages more or less ornamented, and the profuse greenery among which tbey stood made them attractive. But every thicg was very modern, and there was a tinge of disappointment in that aspect, though 1 did not know what I had expected. It could not have been in any such places as these that these festivities of which Dana wrote more than fifty years ago wore held. Surely that was Santa Barbara where he was, and how Spanish and novel tbe reaiing of it had been. Was everything old torn down to make room for these bright-hued villas ? Finally, after many long stoppings, when Lemuel would disappear into some store and remain hidden a great while, the pony leisurely turned a corner, and directly all was different. Tae new life was behind me. It was like a chaDge of ecene in a theatre. Even the language of the few people strolling on the s'reets was different. Let that language be a patois if it would ; 1 should cot know it from purest Castilian. It sounded softf t and lazy to my ear, and how leisurely the people moved ! I waß glad of it ; I wanted to get away from all hurry. Were those adobe houses — those low, rambling, dingy structures with red tiles on the roof, and with utterly new suggestions to me ? " P'raps you've he«ird of the old Gerry place 1 " said Lemuel, looking over his sboulder at up. "That's it," pointing to a building of adobo which bore a kind of protesting evidence of former prosperity. It was rather spacious, it was built on three sides round a court, it was low ; it stood looking out toward the sea as if it had watched that water for many a year. How deeply shady was that wide verandah, and how many love tales had been told in its shadow 1 How was I to know then tbat what our yuide called the " Gerry place" was really the historic " De la Guerre House," and tbat here, right here, was where Dana saw the dance. There were no gay modern cottages back yonder in tint day. No Americans had come then with bustling activities and innovations. But thank Fortune I — even now Santa Barbara is not aa active place. It is a place in which to rest. Men and women lounging on verandahs, smoking, or looking too lazy to emoke, nodded at Lemuel, and stared languidly at us as we passed at the slowest possible pace at which a live tbing could move. The sun caressed us as we eat on the cart bottom, and the tky smiled benignly. Why should we hurry anywhere? Even the children in tbe s reets did not hurry with their day. They were brightly clad, and the colouis showed well against the background of dull adobe walls. We went by what looked like an old and neglected public garden, where everything was in a tangle of vines and trees. Presently tbe pony sauntered up to a very low adobe house, where room after room had been built on, with a verandah running in front of them. Having sauntered ip, the pony stopped as if we were at home. A hound with three puppies tumbling over her on the verandah «vere the only living things visible. A thicket of green vines was clambering nearly everywhere, over the house, and up to the rocf ; covering the small windows ; takiDg possession, as it were.

" Here we be," said Lemuel, cheerfully mod begin to descend. " I guess Inez is resting somewhere. She wouldn't know when to expect us. We'll go right in." After some ineffectual attempts we also descended from the cart, and went and stood near the hound family, while Lemuel disappeared in the dark interior. We waited a good while, hearing no Bound save the murmur of the vine leaves and a soft, but penetrating, mild roar from the set* which was glittering out there to the west. This verandah commanded an enticing view of the ocean. The old Spaniards who bnilt thaw houses had an unerring taste as to whereto put their dwellings. Miss Hancock's terrier, whose name was James — never Jim — improved this time to become acquainted with the hound puppies and their mother. This acquaintance appeared to be highly agreeable all round, and James was soon in the midst of a wild romp, all the dogs flying back and forth across the verandah with entire disregard toward anything and everything. We kept on waiting. lat last sat down on a bench which was placed against the house wall, but my companion stood frigidly upright, waiting for her sister-in-law to come and welcome her. She did not speak save once, to remark that she supposed they did things differently in California from what they did in Massachusetts ; and when a man had marriei an outlandish woman one didn't know what to expect. At last from some remote apartment in the dusk of the hoase we heard voices, and the Bound grew nearer. We naturally thought that Lemuel had found his wife and was approaching with her. It was Lemuel, indeed, but he was accompanied by the boy who had been in the cart. " She's been a rest in', just as I thought," he said, while bis ion resumed his interrupted gaze at us. " You can come right along now." " I hope your wife is not sick," said Wss Hancock, stiffly. ** " Oh, no ; she all right," was the response. We followed him through three low, dingy rooms, which yet had something interesting about them. They had also a decided odour of garlic, which was so thorough as to give the impression ttut it was also permanent. In the fourth room I saw a curious fireplace, set directly in the corner. There was a heap of red coals on this ttree-cornered hearth, in front of which sat a woman in a large-flowered, bright-coloured cotton gown, which swept along over the dark floor. My first glimpse of her showed a cigarette in her mouth, but this was immediately removed and held between her fingers, while she turned her head towards us, but did not rise. Mr Hancock took his sister by the hand and led her up to }hii wife. •• Here sbe is," he said, whether referring to his wife or Bister I could not tell. " Clarice-see is welcome, very much welcome," said Inez, putting out the hand that did not hold the cigarette. She dwelt long upon the last syllable of Miss Hancock's name, and made it sound very unlike itself.

(Concluded in our next.)