by Celia Hayes
Hansi appeared, coatless and with the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up to the elbows. He had managed to set aside his cravat.
“Where to?” he asked, with grim cheer. “I hope this is not a fool’s errand—that she took it in her head to go pick wildflowers or shop for ribbons. That doesn’t sound like our Hannah-chick, though. Not the flighty thoughtless sort of wench at all.”
“She went with Porfirio, not five minutes ago,” Sam blurted.
His uncle cocked his head to one side and asked, “Right then—what was he driving?”
“A pair of brown geldings,” Sam answered, swallowing the last of his toast. “Not matched—the off had white feet on the fore and a blaze on his nose. Hitched to an open barouche, painted dark green with black trim. Are we going after?”
“Of course,” Hansi answered curtly.
Sam dusted off his hands and muttered, “Well, the finish to a heels-up in Kansas was never this interesting, unless there was gunplay involved.” Disbelieving he added, “You can’t possibly think that our Hannah has gone off with Porfirio!”
“I don’t think,” Dolph said between his teeth, “until we catch up to them and we know!”
“Hannah?” Sam laughed out loud. “Oh, this is a joke indeed! Somber and psalm-reading Hannah with Porfirio, the ladies’ delight of two nations and God knows how many counties? Pull the other leg; that one has jingly spurs on! He’s twice her age! If you want to spin a jest for me, at least make it one that is credible!”
“The sooner we go, the sooner we will sort this all out,” Hansi observed. The three of them followed him through the house and past the maids, the household staff sleepily going about their duties, cleaning up the detritus of the party. Dolph handed Magda up into the light trap, Sam scrambled into the back, and Hansi took up the reins.
As they bowled briskly down the gravel drive, Hansi said, “Into town, first. It’s early, yet, and they have just a short lead.”
“Try Commerce Street,” Dolph ordered, “and then Porfirio’s house—the little place in the old village.” At Magda’s raised eyebrow, Dolph added, “He has another place there . . . for entertaining his friends.” Magda kept her thoughts on that to herself, but Hansi grunted knowingly.
In the end, they had gone no farther than halfway down Main Street and the main square overlooked by the grand new Cathedral edifice with its half-constructed towers, trimmed with gothic stone lace. Among the carriages waiting at the foot of the steps was a green barouche, drawn by a pair of brown and white horses. The great wooden doors stood open to admit a scattering of the devout on this Friday morning.
“There!” Sam said breathlessly. “Over there!”
“I see!” Hansi responded. He jerked on the reins, sending the trap plunging across traffic, narrowly missing a dray with a load of barrels and eliciting a storm of curses not only from the driver but several pedestrians picking their way carefully across the middle of the square.
Porfirio sat on the barouche’s driver’s seat, smoking one of those little Mexican cigarillos. His head turned at the sudden noise of their passage across the square. Tossing the cigarillo aside, he leaped down and faced them, smiling—not a trace of unease or guilt on his face, only his usual assurance.
He called out jauntily, “Good morning, Madame Becker, Patrón. And how amazed I am, that you should be here so early after the ball!”
Dolph shot out of Hansi’s trap before the wheels even stopped rolling. “Where is she!” he shouted, in response to Porfirio’s greeting.
“Rudolph!” Magda cried out in horror, not waiting for Sam or Hansi to hand her down from the trap. “What are you thinking!? How can you even think this . . . this vileness!”
“Where is she!” Dolph demanded again. “Damn it, what have you done—”
“She is within,” Porfirio answered quietly. He caught Dolph’s arm as the younger man raised it as if to strike him. “Patrón, control yourself. This is not what you think.” It seemed to Magda that he regarded Dolph not with anger, but with a kind of resigned sorrow.
“What am I supposed to think, when my sister tells me a blatant falsehood and departs five minutes later with you?” Dolph was pale with rage, would have wrenched himself free from Porfirio’s hand, but that the older man held him with such strength.
“Alas, if it were any other young lady, you might have rightful cause to assume . . . what you have assumed.” A flash of amusement lit Porfirio’s face, as brief as a flash of summer lightning, but then he shook his head with seeming regret. “And a sweet flattery it is, Patrón—but no. Señorita Hannah is as a daughter or sister to me. She asked of me a favor this morning.”
“What kind of favor!” Dolph snapped, and lowered his voice from an angry shout. “Why did she ask it of you in particular? Tell me that!”
By that time, Hansi had set the brake and tethered his team to a nearby railing. “Yes, tell us,” he rumbled, taking Magda by the elbow. Looking shrewdly at Porfirio, at the ornate stone bulk of San Fernando rising up behind them, he added, “You would not be helping my niece run away with some penniless suitor—no more than you would run away with her yourself. Be silent, lad,” he admonished Dolph, as the latter opened his mouth. “Let him speak—what is the meaning of this sudden excursion?”
“I think,” Porfirio replied, with suave confidence, “the explanation should best come from Señorita Hannah. I had often begged her to share her confidences with you.”
A small group of worshippers emerged from the Cathedral door at the top of the stairs. Hearing their footsteps and soft voices, Porfirio turned his head. “She is here,” he added quietly.
Hannah rushed towards them and exclaimed, “Mama—Onkel Hansi!” Then to Porfirio she said worriedly, “What did they do to you! Oh, Dolph—you didn’t strike him, he was only doing as I asked!”
“Nothing, little Señorita Hannah,” Porfirio answered. “I am untouched; slightly bruised by the Patrón’s mistrust, but undamaged. Señorita Hannah—querida,” he added with infinite tenderness, “you really must tell them.”
“Yes, I suppose I must.” Hannah was eerily composed. “Only please don’t blame Porfirio; none of this is anything to do with him, except that he sometimes enabled me to come here secretly.”
“But why?” Magda took her daughter’s hands. “What was so secret, that we must not know of it?! You left us to assume the worst, Hannah-my-chick.”
“I have been taking instruction in the Catholic faith,” Hannah answered, with quiet strength. She looked levelly at all their faces, “And that I wish to take vows as a religious.”
“Oh, child!” Magda felt as though she wanted to weep, but couldn’t. This was too deep, too sudden for tears. “Why could you not have told us, straight away?”
“Because I did not want to cause you worry, until I was entirely sure.” Hannah returned their gaze, tranquil and composed, utterly at ease. “And yesterday as I watched Marie and Mr. Menges exchange their vows, it came to me that I was not meant for that. I have been called to a vocation. It was as someone was speaking to me, had been speaking to me for many months. And once I knew this and accepted that calling—then I was at peace, seeing the path laid out straight before me. I could but follow, Mama, Onkel Hansi. I am sorry to have distressed you all; I had only one thought this morning—to come here to confession and then to the convent.”
There was a sudden silence, as if they were in a bubble, the morning bustle in Main Square unheard, even as they stood in the middle of it. Dolph looked abashed, mumbling an apology to Porfirio.
Sam said, cheerily, “Oh, sister—that sudden faint rumble coming from under the earth to the north of us—that will be Opa, rolling over in his grave.”
“Sam!” Magda hissed, chiding him for such levity.
“You are resolved on this?” Hansi asked with careful consideration. “It is not some sudden rash impulse?”
Hannah shook her head. “No, Onkel. Be assured that I had considered long and carefully.
It is a life vow.” Her eyes, clear and grey-blue, without a speck of artifice in their depths, met theirs honestly. “And taken before God. Be assured, Mama—Onkel Hansi—I am resolved upon this course. I am of age, so whether or not I have your consent and blessing, I mean to do it. I would rather have it,” for a brief moment, Hannah looked very young, as if pleading for that one thing, “but if I do not, then I do not.”
“You mean to lock yourself away from the world.” Magda wept to think of Hannah, in a coarse black robe, her head covered with a wimple and veil.
But Hannah smiled in fond amusement, “Oh, no Mama, not locked away from the world! We are very much in the world. I shall be a teacher, with a schoolroom full of boys and girls; in the world, just not of it!”
“It is no less an honor,” Porfirio murmured, “among the old families, to have a daughter in one of the holy sisterhoods. In old Spain, there was a convent in Burgos where the mother-abbess was second only to the Queen herself.”
“Nonetheless, I think we should be discussing this matter,” Hansi interjected, “at length and elsewhere than the street. No, don’t look like that, child,” he added as Hannah looked towards Porfirio. “We shall not lock you up and feed you only bread and water hoping you will repent of this notion.”
“It is not a notion,” Hannah returned gravely, “I am quite resolved on it.”
Hansi held up his hand, “No one has argued anything of the sort,” he answered. “But such an irrevocable step, child! Your mother and I, your brothers—may we be entirely sure of your commitment to it? After all, it was news to us, not two minutes ago. Can you allow us a little longer to become comfortable with it?”
“Of course,” Hannah acquiesced and allowed Hansi to hand her up into the trap. “But I shall not be discouraged from this purpose, Onkel. I have delayed long enough.”
Porfirio tipped his hat to her and said, “I will send word to the convent this very hour, telling them of your wish to enter.” He also accepted Dolph’s rather embarrassed apology, “Think nothing of it, Patrón—you thought only of your sister and her safety.”
* * *
“In the world, but not of it,” Magda mused, when she and Lottie talked of this. “She was indeed quite fixed upon that purpose. Of course, we realized that at once. We talked to the Mother Abbess, to the priest who had given her instruction. They, like us, wished that she be firm in her dedication, and have every opportunity to turn aside. She went into the religious life so joyously, never looking backwards.”
“Nannie was truly happy,” Lottie said. “I visited her often, when my children were small. She was so very good with them, I used to think it such a waste, that she would not have her own children! But then I was very young myself, and did not understand.”
“She did have children,” Magda said. “A whole orphanage full of them. She was very much loved, your sister.”
“So she was.” Lottie threaded her embroidery needle. “Her face was most serene when they found her, after the great storm passed. I talked to one of those who searched for the bodies of the sisters and the children. Nannie had a baby in her arms and seven other children tied to her with clothesline. Some of the older boys survived. They told their rescuers that as the great storm crashed in onto the building, they were singing a hymn to Mary, Queen of the Waves.”
“Your sister understood about children’s fears,” Magda said. “Understood very well—for once she had been afraid herself. One is often haunted by the past,” she added, almost irrelevantly.
“Haunted, Mama?” Lottie asked. “How do you mean?”
“Now and again, when I have ventured into town, or to the ranch, I think I see fleetingly, the face of one whom I loved or knew, someone who has gone from this life . . .like your Opa, in the face of an old man playing chess, or your sister, in the habit of a nun, coming down the steps of the San Fernando cathedral. I could have sworn a man I saw in the lobby of the St. Anthony was Hansi, a big man with dark hair! And then he turned his head, and he was as much a stranger as he had been familiar a second before.”
“That is very curious, Mama,” Lottie said, after a moment. She sounded as if she tried to hide her concern. “Does this happen often?”
“Not often,” Magda answered, though she did so untruthfully. Of late, the momentary illusion of a dear and familiar presence had occurred with increasing frequency. That very afternoon, she had looked out from the parlor window into the street outside, and thought she saw a young man with the reins of a brown horse in his hands; a tall young man in an old-fashioned fringed leather coat, whose wheat-pale fair hair gleamed briefly in the twilight under the trees across the road. It seemed that he smiled at her with serene affection, and that the vision lingered for longer than the usual eye-blink of time. Curiously, she found these brief illusions, these visitations, rather comforting, but felt it wiser to make no mention of them to Lottie. The child would worry so. Lottie had a horror of mental afflictions, a lively fear of what that might portend. She had loved Carl Becker very much, and he had loved her—loved her so deeply that he gave himself up to his enemy rather than endanger her and the children. It made perfect sense that he would make these fleeting appearances.
“We have been so long apart,” Magda remarked out loud, but fortunately not loud enough for anyone but Mouse to hear.
Chapter Eighteen: The Cattle Baron
“It seemed so very odd to have a sister going to become a nun!” Lottie remarked, drawing Magda out of her contemplations. “The sisters at school all seemed so very otherworldly, so mysterious, in their dark medieval robes. Almost romantic. Really, most of us girls were quite sure that each of them had been tragically disappointed in love. Well, the pretty ones, at least. And the homely ones were too plain to have had a romance and what else might they do with their lives, anyway? And here was Nannie, as ordinary a girl as could be found anywhere, set on becoming one of them!”
“I hope you and Grete did not quiz her with too many questions,” Magda chided her daughter.
“In truth, Mama, we did not! Only the ones that we truly wondered about! She was very sensible and straightforward about it all. She told us she wanted to be a teacher and she did not think she was suited for marriage. All of the dancing and flirting and holding hands and whispering in corners, it bored her. It just wasn’t something she felt an enthusiasm for. And that the convent always felt like a home to her, a home that drew her in, where she felt safe.” Lottie threaded her needle with a new color of wool worsted and continued, “She said that she felt as protected at the Ursuline school as she had as a child, when Papa looked after you all; that the love of Christ gave her strength to face anything in the world. She said several times that she felt drawn to the religious life, that it was something that she must do. Not because anything forced her obedience, but because it was right for her do so. She told us it was a joy to take up that work that had been set for her to do, and we should not think of her vocation as a tragedy.”
“And so it was,” Magda agreed, “for she went joyfully to vows as postulant as ever a bride ever went to her wedding. With more joy than I went to my wedding, for I was having second thoughts about the whole matter! I had never seen your sister look so happy. She glowed with it, as if she were lit from within.”
“A bride of Christ,” Lottie mused. “And I do not think she ever looked back with regret. She was truly one of the chosen, although it made all the rest of us very sad, to know that she would spend the rest of her days apart from us, more apart than if she had married and gone to another part of the country with her husband. It was quite saddening for us, wasn’t it, Mama?”
“Not for myself so much,” Magda agreed. “I came to see the matter through her eyes, of course—she was my child and I loved her very dearly. What she wanted to do with her life was by her choice. It did leave your brothers quite baffled, being men and young and not as well-acquainted with the hearts of women as they assumed themselves to be!”
“And Auntie Liesel?,�
�� Lottie deftly sent the blunt steel needle through the mesh of the Berlin wool-work she had on her hoop, That set off another of her spells, didn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” Magda answered. “She took to her rooms. Not so much because of Hannah, but because Marie had married and gone to Friedrichsburg, and she was done with the grand distraction of planning the wedding. Only Grete was still at home to console her. Your Aunt was always at an extreme in her emotions.”
“I know.” Lottie deftly anchored the end of her yarn, snipped it short and threaded the needle with another color. “Always on top of the tallest tower or in the deepest cellar, as you and Opa always said. So Onkel Hansi then came up with a means to divert her from her imagined woes?”
“Yes, Lottchen. He also meant to remove her entirely from where she might hear so much about campaigns against the Indians. That was about the time they were at last being forced to submit to the Reservation, to cease their constant raids into settled country and to disgorge the many captives they held. Each time there was a great to-do about this or that child or youth being returned to his or her home, your aunt was. . .”
“Distraught,” Lottie agreed. “I remember, so many scenes where she would begin to weep and wail herself into hysterical palpitations, begging us to send yet more letters or to call upon anyone who might have more intelligence of Willi’s sad fate. Grete and I took to coming and hiding in the cottage, when she had those spells—for of course, it had been more than ten years by then. Poor Grete could hardly recall much more than a sketch of small details, more like the memory of a bad dream than anything else. But Auntie Liesel would fruitlessly quiz her over and over again.”
“Her doctors finally advised Hansi to take her away, as far away as possible,” Magda nodded. “To take a cure, and he had already begun thinking of a long visit to Germany, to our old home. Dolph and Peter talked much of buying pedigreed blood-stock in England, so it seemed to your uncle that such purposes could be all agreeably combined. Also, he thought to divert me; Hannah was in seclusion for her novitiate. ‘It’s like a caterpillar, weaving a chrysalis for itself, in peace and quiet,’ Sam said to me, by way of explaining, ‘and at the end of it, becoming a butterfly. But you can’t go peeking into the chrysalis! It ruins the whole thing.’ He and Hannah were always close. Of all of us, he understood her best and accepted her vocation most readily.”