by Texas
Trinidad did behave herself for the first half of that night's paseo, but as the girls rounded a corner by the church steps Dorotea gasped 'Oh!' and Trinidad looked forward. Then she, too, gasped.
Joining the men's circle in an easy, indifferent manner came the most engaging young man either girl had ever seen. He would have been spectacular even had his face not been so pleasing, for he was an outstanding blond among all the dark-haired Saltillo youths,
and so graceful that he seemed to move without his feet actually touching the ground. He was one of those fortunate men who would always be slim, and he would retain that air of youthful excitement, that devastating smile, those bright eyes filled with wonder. Age would not wither him nor years increase his girth. He was now nineteen, a mere five feet five inches tall, weighing no more than a hundred and forty pounds, and so he would remain.
When the young man came abreast, Trinidad threw caution away and smiled directly at him. To her dismay, she realized that he was smiling at Dorotea, and she at him.
Although Senorita Dorotea Galindez had been a very proper young lady when none of the passing men interested her particularly, she became a very skilled young temptress when someone as intriguing as this newcomer came her way. She now lost all interest in Trinidad, and since she would encounter the stranger twice in each complete turn of the circle, as soon as she completed one pass she began preparing for the next, so that although the young man would be meeting many girls in his round, he would meet none more obviously affected or more eager to make his acquaintance than Dorotea. She saw to that.
So the enchanted evening progressed, one of the most compelling and confusing that Trinidad would ever know: the beauty of Saltillo, the grandeur of the new church, moonlight filling the plaza, the smell of flowers, this handsome stranger, but most of all, watching a determined young woman of fifteen planning her moves to entrap a devastating young man of nineteen who was making his own plans to entrap her. Trinidad was by no means watching this as one detached, she wished desperately that the young fellow had saved his smiles for her, and the more often she saw him the more she liked him, but she was sensible enough to know that Dorotea had stepped in before her, so she contented herself with watching Dorotea's skill.
Bells sounded in the dark tower. Annoyed pigeons flew over the plaza briefly and returned to their roost above the bells. A watchman started his rounds, nodding to the citizens as they made their way home. The flowers of Saltillo dozed and Trinidad de Saldana, agitated as never before, clasped her grandfather's hand with unwonted emotion and whispered as he led her back to the inn: 'Saltillo is so wonderful, Grandfather, and Tejas seems so bleak.'
Dorotea, up betimes and asking a thousand questions, had much to report when the Saldanas came down for eleven o'clock chocolate: 'He's French. He comes from New Orleans. His family owns large vineyards in France, but his father manufactures mining things and ships them to Vera Cruz for the capital.'
'What's he doing in Saltillo?' Don Ramon asked, and Dorotea said brightly: 'Oh, he's looking to see if we have any mines in places like Bejar and Monclova.' Then she winked at Trinidad: 'And he's going to San Luis Potosi to see if he can sell a marvelous new machine to the people there. His name is Rene-Claude d'Ambreuze. He speaks fine Spanish, and he's stopping at the other inn.'
'So he's in business?' Don Ramon said huffily, but Engracia, gazing in wonder at the self-satisfied girl, asked: 'How did you learn where he's staying?'
'I know people. I asked the porters in the plaza.'
'When is he going to Potosi?' Don Ramon asked, and Trinidad's heart almost stopped, for she immediately visualized this godlike young man joining their party for the three hundred miles to the mining capital, and before anyone could speak further she saw herself and Rene-Claude—what a heavenly name!—cantering across the high plains of Mexico, she in the lead, he avidly in pursuit.
'He'll be here soon/ she heard Dorotea say, at which Engracia asked sternly: 'You didn't speak to him? Without an introduction?'
'No,' Dorotea said pertly, arranging her dress. 'I told his innkeeper to suggest that he stop by.'
'My dear child,' Engracia protested, 'that was indeed forward. It was even brazen.'
'Look!' And down the narrow street that joined the two inns came the young Frenchman, threading his way through the rubble that had collected overnight, sunlight on his pale hair, that smile on his lips.
is this the inn of Sefior Galindez?' he asked, his slight accent betraying the fact that he was not Spanish. He had barely asked the question when he saw Dorotea; recognizing her, he bowed low and said with great charm and no sense of extravagance: 'The young princess I saw last night.'
Trinidad noticed all this and also that he stood at attention, waiting to be asked properly to join their party. Don Ramon rose, brought his heels together, and bowed like the grandee he was: 'Young sir, my family and I would be most honored if you would sit with us and tell us what's happening in that strange city of New Orleans.'
The young man bowed with equal gravity and said in a voice so low that Trinidad could barely hear: 'I am Rene-Claude d'Ambreuze, and I would be most honored to join you and your two daughters.'
Tm of the Galindez family,' Dorotea said boldly as he took his
seat beside her. These are the Saldanas of Bejar in Tejas. And this is my dear friend Trinidad de Saldana.'
Rene-Claude scarcely acknowledged the introduction, for little Trinidad seemed quite youthful compared to the dazzling Dorotea. 'I passed through Bejar some weeks ago. Very small. But this Saltillo! Ah, this is a little Paris.'
'Have you been to Paris?' Trinidad found herself blurting out.
'I was born in Paris.'
'Oh, what is it like?' For the first time young D'Ambreuze looked directly at Trinidad, saw her brilliant eyes, her strangely formed mouth, and thought what a pleasing sister she'd make.
'I know little of Paris,' he said honestly. 'They took me away when I was a child.' Then, turning as was proper to Don Ramon, he said: 'New Orleans, on the other hand! Ah! Queen of the Mississippi.'
'Is the Mississippi really so big?' Trinidad asked.
He turned once more to face her inquisitive eyes: 'Saltillo could be tossed between its banks and we'd all be lost.'
It was a splendid day in that spring of 1789, with Rene-Claude paying great attention to Don Ramon, much courtesy to Senora Engracia, and distinct respect to the Galindez elders; he had been well reared by loving aunts and governesses, and he showed it. At four-thirty in the afternoon he took lunch, Mexican style, with the Saldanas, again sitting with Dorotea, and at eight in the evening he helped Engracia escort the two girls to the paseo, where he saluted them graciously each time he passed.
On the next day two things happened to disturb Trinidad: through unladylike questioning she learned that whereas the Saldanas were going to leave Saltillo three days hence, Rene-Claude's business interests would hold him here for two more weeks, which meant that she would be leaving the young Frenchman entirely to Dorotea. And swinging around a corner of the inn late that afternoon, she came upon him and Dorotea eagerly kissing and clinging to each other. They did not see her, and she drew back, flushed and trembling, as if she herself had participated in this embrace. While she did not begrudge Dorotea her good fortune, she was chagrined that she had not been the girl in Rene-Claude's arms.
When she joined her grandfather for lunch, which was served at five, she found that her mother was staying in bed to rest for the next leg of the journey. Alone with Don Ramon, she felt immeasurably old, as if she were coeval with him, and she spoke in that way: 'I doubt that New Orleans will ever be a Spanish city.'
'It is now, silly girl.'
'But I mean truly. French ways, they seem to be very strong wherever the French go.'
'Now, what do you know about French ways, young lady?'
She did not say so, but she felt that she knew an enormous amount, really, an enormous amount. Then she heard her grandfather speaking.
<
br /> 'I've always thought that God placed Spain where He did to keep things organized.' Don Ramon arranged dishes and rolls to represent Europe. 'Lesser nations all around her. Portugal here, and what a sorry land that is. France up here, a bunch of troublemakers. England over here, accch!' The harsh guttural showed what he thought of England. 'And down here the despicable Moors, enemies of God and man.' In the center of this maelstrom of failed nations and infidels he placed a bright orange: 'Spain: God's bastion of reason, and stability, and all the things that represent goodness in this life.'
'Then why has England grown so strong?' Trinidad asked like a philosopher. 'From what we hear, that is?'
'God is preparing them for a fall. They strayed from the true religion, and it's impossible that Protestants should ever triumph. That's why los Estados del Norte ... .'
The table now became North America: 'Up here the French used to be, but they could never govern themselves, as we've seen in New Orleans. Over here godless americanos, who are doomed.'
'They won their freedom from England,' Trinidad said.
'With French help. Two godless nations fighting it out. And here . . .' Now the orange became Tejas: 'In the middle of this mess, Tejas, Spanish to the core, God's bastion, just as in Europe.' He patted the orange, reveling in its security, and said: 'God arranges these things according to His grand design. Believe me, Trinidad, Tejas is not where it is by accident. And you're not in Tejas by accident. Your destiny is to rear Spanish sons who will build there cities much finer than New Orleans.'
But three days south of Saltillo, during the long ride to Potosi, even Don Ramon had to wonder whether God did not sometimes forget His assignment in Tejas, for the Saldana caravan, traveling with three other families heading for the capital, came upon a detachment of soldiers marching north, bringing with them the latest gang of conscripts destined for duty in Bejar. And what a sickening lot they were.
'My God!' Don Ramon cried. 'You're not taking them to Tejas?'
'We are,' the commander of the troops said. 'I chain them only when we stop at night.'
And well he might! For he had in his charge a sweeping of Mexican jails: a group of seven who were spared hanging if they would serve in the north, sixteen younger men whose families had abandoned them shortly after birth, and a score who had proven themselves to be worthless workers. Behind them trailed a scruffy collection of women, young and old, whose lives were somehow entangled with those of the prisoners. They were indeed prisoners, and to call them settlers or soldiers was preposterous.
'You're turning them loose in Tejas?' Don Ramon cried in disbelief.
'No great worry. Two-thirds of them will run away and get back to the capital before I do.'
Don Ramon studied the sorry detachment and whispered a suggestion to the commander: 'Couldn't you march them into a swamp 7 Or just shoot them?'
The commander chuckled: 'The really bad ones we send to Yucatan. These are what we call the hopefuls.'
Don Ramon had to laugh, but the experience fortified his resolve to find for his granddaughter a respectable Spanish husband.
On the nineteenth day after their departure from Saltillo two of the soldiers bringing up the rear galloped forward. 'Party overtaking us from the rear,' one reported.
Everyone turned around, and saw that the soldiers were right; a column of some kind was approaching at a worrisome speed, and a hasty consultation took place. The commander asked: 'Am I right? No unit is supposed to be on this road?'
'None that we know of, sir.'
'Comanche 7 '
'I think so.'
Men instinctively fingered their guns.
'Women to the front! Immediate!' The captain hesitated: 'I mean to the rear, as we face them.'
The approaching column, which appeared to be some fifteen or sixteen Indians, must have seen the soldiers halt and take up defensive positions, but on they came, and as the dust rose, Don Ramon, his white hair unprotected by any hat, rode back to take position in front of the women: 'You are not to cry panic. You are not to run. I will hold them off.' He saluted his two women, but the effect of his words was lost when Trinidad cried joyously: 'It's Rene-Claude!' And deftly she spurred her horse and dashed out to meet the Frenchman, whose party had left Saltillo almost two weeks later than the Saldanas but had been able, by means of long rides each day, to overtake them.
It was a lively meeting there in the great empty upland of Mexico, with blue mountains in the distance and spring flowers covering the swales. Soldiers from both groups swapped stories, and the two other merchants who had been invited by young D'Ambreuze to join his entourage talked with Don Ramon about conditions in both Coahuila and Te]as.
But the two who reveled most in the fortunate meeting were Trinidad and Rene-Claude, for without the distracting presence of Dorotea Galindez, the young Frenchman was free to discover what a delightful young woman Trinidad was. They rode their horses ahead of the line, or off to one side, chattering easily and endlessly. One morning Trinidad thought: Today I wish he would try to kiss me, and when they were off toward the mountains he did just that. She encouraged him at first, then pushed him away and said: 'I saw you kissing Dorotea,' and he explained: 'Sometimes that happens, but this is forever.'
'Did you enjoy kissing her?' she asked, and he said: 'Of course, but it was your funny little smile I saw at night when I was alone.'
'You may kiss me,' she said, leaning across her horse's neck.
When they were in the presence of the elders they had to be more circumspect; then they sat and talked, and one evening Trmidad asked him to explain his name.
'Many French boys have two names, like mine. And the little d' is your de. Means the same, the place where your family came from, an honorable designation.' He tried to teach her how to pronounce his last name with a French twirl, and when her tongue could not master it he accused her of being dull-witted.
'How about you?' And she mimicked him by saying Trinidad the way he did, with heavy accent on the last syllable as if it really were dod, rhyming with nod. 'It's not that way at all,' she protested, it's dthodth. Soft ... a whispering song.'
Now it was he whose tongue became twisted, but at last, with her gentle coaching, he mastered this beautiful name: 'Tree-nee-dthodth! It really is a song!' And so they continued, two young people in love, finding music in each other's names, respect for each other's traditions.
In fact, the pair became so open in their affection that Don Ramon told Engracia: 'Well or sick, you must go out and act as duena for your child.' Then, in some confusion but with his jaw set, he ordered Trinidad to get into the wagon and sit with Engracia while he rode ahead to talk with the young Frenchman.
There is always the matter of honor, young man. Surely you will agree to that?'
D'Ambreuze, bewildered that Trinidad had left him and that
Don Ramon had taken her place, mumbled something about men always being beholden to the demands of honor: 'Duels, and things like that.' He spoke as if he certainly did not expect to be challenged to a duel.
'1 mean,' Don Ramon said, turning sideways on his horse, 'those ancient rules which have always governed the behavior of gentlemen.'
'Oh, that! Yes. Women first into the carriage. Men to hold the horses lest they bolt. Oh, yes!' He spoke with such enthusiasm that one might have thought he was Europe's champion of the ancient rules, that he would lay down his life in furtherance of them.
'I mean the subtler kind, young man.'
'Well . . .' Rene-Claude's voice trailed off, for now he was truly bewildered.
it has always been a rule among gentlemen, rigorously observed by all who presume to call themselves that . .' Now Don Ramon hesitated. 'Are you a gentleman 7 ' Before Rene-Claude could respond, he added: 'I mean, your father is in trade, isn't he 7 ' He spat out the words distastefully.
The young man drew to attention: 'The D'Ambreuze family own large vineyards near Beaune, and do you know where Beaune is? Burgundy, its own principality. No one o
wns large vineyards there unless they're gentlemen. Nobility, really.'
'But in New Orleans, your father is in trade?'
'My father's an inventor. He devises machines used in mines. I'm a gentleman, so educated and trained, as were my greatgrandfather before me and his greatgrandfather before him. But more important, I'm a Burgundian.'
'Well, yes,' Don Ramon said, shifting his weight to bring his face closer to D'Ambreuze. 'What I mean, there's a rule among gentlemen that no one can come into another man's castle and seduce his daughter. Not while the visitor is a guest in the castle.'
D'Ambreuze said nothing, for now he knew the burden of the old man's warning. By joining the Saldana party without an invitation, he had assumed the role of guest whether he intended so or not, and he was bound by the most ancient code not to take advantage of the daughter of the house, not while he was in this privileged position. In the fluid life of San Luis Potosi or on the wide avenues of the capital he might feel free to seduce her, if his charms and stratagems prevailed, but not while he was a guest in the home, as it were, of Don Ramon.
it would never have occurred to me to take advantage,' he said.
it occurred to me,' Don Ramon replied. 'Now shall we stop for our morning rest 7 '
It was this unnecessary halt which made up the minds of the two guest merchants: 'We do not like to say this, but this dallying . . . these picnics. . . we're wasting valuable time. Our soldiers too, they want to move ahead.'
'We shall. I've been inconsiderate of you gentlemen, and I'm sorry,' and Rene-Claude announced to the group resting by the side of the road—a rather good highway now, since it had been in use two centuries longer than the miserable roads in Tejas— that he and his company must, reluctantly, forge ahead. He went to Trinidad, and taking her by the hands, he drew her to him and embraced her in front of the others, then bowed low as if wearing a plumed hat in the old days: 'Mademoiselle, we shall meet again in Potosi, or Mexico, or New Orleans, but wherever it is, it will be heaven.' Saluting Don Ramon and the soldiers who would be staying with the slower party, he went to the head of his column and led his entourage across the beautiful spaces of upland Mexico.