Remember the Alamo

She remembered this conversation as she stood in the pallid dawning, and watched her father ride swiftly away. The story of the long struggle in all its salient features flashed through her mind; and she understood that it is not the sword alone that gives liberty—that there must be patience before courage; that great ideas must germinate for years in the hearts of men before the sword can reap the harvest.

The fascinating memory of Burr passed like a shadow across her dreaming. The handsome Lafayettes—the gallant Nolans—the daring Hunters—the thousands of forgotten American traders and explorers—bold and enterprising—they had sown the seed. For great ideas are as catching as evil ones. A Mexican, with the iron hand of Old Spain upon him and the shadow of the Inquisition over him, could not look into the face of an American, and not feel the thought of Freedom stirring in his heart.

It stirred in her own heart. She stood still a moment to feel consciously the glow and the enlargement. Then with an impulse natural, but neither analyzed nor understood, she lifted her prayer-book, and began to recite “the rising prayer.” She had not said to herself, “from the love of Freedom to the love of God, it is but a step,” but she experienced the emotion and felt all the joy of an adoration, simple and unquestioned, springing as naturally from the soul as the wild flower from the prairie.

As she knelt, up rose the sun, and flooded her white figure and her fair unbound hair with the radiance of the early morning. The matin bells chimed from the convent and the churches, and the singing birds began to flutter their bright wings, and praise God also, “in their Latin.”

She took her breakfast alone. The Senora never came downstairs so early. Isabel had wavering inclinations, and generally followed them. Sometimes, even her father had his cup of strong coffee alone in his study; so the first meal of the day was usually, as perhaps it ought to be, a selfishly-silent one. “Too much enthusiasm and chattering at breakfast, are like too much red at sunrise,” the doctor always said; “a dull, bad day follows it”—and Antonia’s observation had turned the little maxim into a superstition.

In the Senora’s room, the precept was either denied, or defied. Antonia heard the laughter and conversation through the closed door, and easily divined the subject of it. It was, but natural. The child had a triumph; one that appealed strongly to her mother’s pride and predilections. It was a pleasant sight to see them in the shaded sunshine exulting themselves happily in it.

The Senora, plump and still pretty, reclined upon a large gilded bed. Its splendid silk coverlet and pillows cased in embroidery and lace made an effective background for her. She leaned with a luxurious indolence among them, sipping chocolate and smoking a cigarrito. Isabel was on a couch of the same description. She wore a satin petticoat, and a loose linen waist richly trimmed with lace. It showed her beautiful shoulders and arms to perfection. Her hands were folded above her head. Her tiny feet, shod in satin, were quivering like a bird’s wings, as if they were keeping time with the restlessness of her spirit.

She had large eyes, dark and bright; strong eyebrows, a pale complexion with a flood of brilliant color in the checks, dazzling even teeth, and a small, handsome mouth. Her black hair was loose and flowing, and caressed her cheeks and temples in numberless little curls and tendrils. Her face was one flush of joy and youth. She had a look half-earnest and half-childlike, and altogether charming. Antonia adored her, and she was pleased to listen to the child, telling over again the pretty things that had been said to her.

“Only Don Luis was not there at all, Antonia. There is always something wanting,” and her voice fell with those sad inflections that are often only the very excess of delight.

The Senora looked sharply at her. “Don Luis was not desirable. He was better away—much better!”

“But why?”

“Because, Antonia, he is suspected. There is an American called Houston. Don Luis met him in Nacogdoches. He has given his soul to him, I think. He would have fought Morello about him, if the captain could have drawn his sword in such a quarrel. I should not have known about the affair had not Senora Valdez told me. Your father says nothing against the Americans.”

“Perhaps, then, he knows nothing against them.”

“You will excuse me, Antonia; not only the living but the dead must have heard of their wickedness. They are a nation of ingrates. Ingrates are cowards. It was these words Captain Morello said, when Don Luis drew his sword, made a circle with its point and stood it upright in the centre. It was a challenge to the whole garrigon, and about this fellow Houston, whom he calls his friend! Holy Virgin preserve us from such Mexicans!”

“It is easier to talk than to fight. Morello’s tongue is sharper than his sword.”

“Captain Morello was placing his sword beside that of Don Luis, when the Commandant interfered. He would not permit his officers to fight in such a quarrel. ‘Santo Dios!’ he said, ‘you shall all have your opportunity very soon, gentlemen.’ Just reflect upon the folly of a boy like Don Luis, challenging a soldier like Morello!”

“He was in no danger, mother,” said Antonia scornfully. “Morello is a bully, who wears the pavement out with his spurs and sabre. His weapons are for show. Americans, at least, wear their arms for use, and not for ornament.”

“Listen, Antonia! I will not have them spoken of. They are Jews—or at least infidels, all of them!—the devil himself is their father—the bishop, when he was here last confirmation, told me so.”

“Mother!”

“At least they are unbaptized Christians, Antonia. If you are not baptized, the devil sends you to do his work. As for Don Luis, he is a very Judas! Ah, Maria Santissima! how I do pity his good mother!”

“Poor Don Luis!” said Isabel plaintively.

“He is so handsome, and he sings like a very angel. And he loves my father; he wanted to be a doctor, so that he could always be with him. I dare say this man called Houston is no better than a Jew, and perhaps very ugly beside. Let us talk no more about him and the Americans. I am weary of them; as Tia Rachella says, ‘they have their spoon in every one’s mess.’”

And Antonia, whose heart was burning, only stooped down and closed her sister’s pretty mouth with a kiss. Her tongue was impatient to speak for the father, and grandmother, and the friends, so dear to her; but she possessed great discretion, and also a large share of that rarest of all womanly graces, the power under provocation, of “putting on Patience the noble.”

CHAPTER III. BUILDERS OF THE COMMONWEALTH

     “Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks.  Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth and kindling her undazzled eye in the full mid-day beam.”

—MILTON.     “And from these grounds, concluding as we doe,      Warres causes diuerse, so by consequence     Diuerse we must conclude their natures too:      For war proceeding from Omnipotence,     No doubt is holy, wise, and without error;      The sword, of justice and of sin, the terror.”—LORD BROOKE.

It is the fashion now to live for the present but the men of fifty years ago, the men who builded the nation, they reverenced the past, and therefore they could work for the future. As Robert Worth rode through the streets of San Antonio that afternoon, he was thinking, not of his own life, but of his children’s and of the generations which should come after them.

The city was flooded with sunshine, and crowded with a pack-train going to Sonora; the animals restlessly protesting against the heat and flies; their Mexican drivers in the pulqueria, spending their last peso with their compadres, or with the escort of soldiers which was to accompany them—a little squad of small, lithe men, with round, yellow, beardless faces, bearing in a singular degree the stamp of being native to the soil. Their lieutenant, a gorgeously clad officer with a very distinguished air, was coming slowly down the street to join them. He bowed, and smiled pleasantly to the doctor as he passed him, and then in a few moments the word of command and the shouting of men and the clatter of hoofs invaded the enchanted atmosphere like an insult.

But the tumult scarcely jarred with the thoughts of his mind. They had been altogether of war and rumors of war. Every hour that subtile consciousness of coming events, which makes whole communities at times prescient, was becoming stronger. “If the powers of the air have anything to do with the destinies of men,” he muttered, “there must be unseen battalions around me. The air I am breathing is charged with the feeling of battle.”

After leaving the city there were only a few Mexican huts on the shady road leading to his own house. All within them were asleep, even the fighting cocks tied outside were dozing on their perches. He was unusually weary, he had been riding since dawn, and his heart had not been in sympathy with his body, it had said no good cheer to it, whispered no word of courage or promise.

All at once his physical endurance seemed exhausted, and he saw the white wall and arched gateway of his garden and the turrets of his home with an inexpressible relief. But it was the hour of siesta, and he was always careful not to let the requirements of his profession disturb his household. So he rode quietly to the rear, where he found a peon nodding within the stable door. He opened his eyes unnaturally wide, and rose to serve his master.

“See thou rub the mare well down, and give her corn and water.”

“To be sure, Senior, that is to be done. A stranger has been here to-day; an American.”

“What did he say to thee?”

“That he would call again, Senor.”

The incident was not an unusual one, and it did not trouble the doctor’s mind. There was on the side of the house a low extension containing two rooms. These rooms belonged exclusively to him. One was his study, his office, his covert, the place to which he went when he wanted to be alone with his own soul. There were a bed and bath and refreshments in the other room. He went directly to it, and after eating and washing, fell into a profound sleep.

At the hour before Angelus the house was as noisy and busy as if it had been an inn. The servants were running hither and thither, all of them expressing themselves in voluble Spanish. The cooks were quarrelling in the kitchen. Antonia was showing the table men, as she had to do afresh every day, how to lay the cloth and serve the dishes in the American fashion. When the duty was completed, she went into the garden to listen for the Angelus. The young ladies of to-day would doubtless consider her toilet frightfully unbecoming; but Antonia looked lovely in it, though but a white muslin frock, with a straight skirt and low waist and short, full sleeves. It was confined by a blue belt with a gold buckle, and her feet were in sandalled slippers of black satin.

The Angelus tolled, and the thousands of Hail Maries! which blended with its swinging vibrations were uttered, and left to their fate, as all spoken words must be. Antonia still observed the form. It lent for a moment a solemn beauty to her face. She was about to re-enter the house, when she saw a stranger approaching it. He was dressed in a handsome buckskin suit, and a wide Mexican hat, but she knew at once that he was an American, and she waited to receive him.

As soon as he saw her, he removed his hat and approached with it in his hand. Perhaps he was conscious that the act not only did homage to womanhood, but revealed more perfectly a face of remarkable beauty and nobility. For the rest, he was very tall, powerfully built, elegantly proportioned, and his address had the grace and polish of a cultured gentleman.

“I wish to see Dr. Worth, Dona.”

With a gentle inclination of the head, she led him to the door of her father’s office. She was the only one in the Doctor’s family at all familiar with the room. The Senora said so many books made her feel as if she were in a church or monastery; she was afraid to say anything but paternosters in it. Isabel cowered before the poor skeleton in the corner, and the centipedes and snakes that filled the bottles on the shelves. There was not a servant that would enter the room.

But Antonia did not regard books as a part of some vague spiritual power. She knew the history of the skeleton. She had seen the death of many of those “little devils” corked up in alcohol. She knew that at this hour, if her father were at home he was always disengaged, and she opened the door fearlessly, saying, “Father, here is a gentleman who wishes to see you.”

The doctor had quite refreshed himself, and, in a house-suit of clean, white linen, was lying on a couch reading. He arose with alacrity, and with his pleasant smile seemed to welcome the intruder, as he stepped behind him and closed the door. Antonia had disappeared. They were quite alone.

“You are Doctor Robert Worth, sir?”

Their eyes met, their souls knew each other.

“And you are Sam Houston?”

The questions were answered in a hand grip, a sympathetic smile on both faces—the freemasonry of kindred spirits.

“I have a letter from your son Thomas, doctor, and I think, also, that you will have something to say to me, and I to you.”

The most prudent of patriots could not have resisted this man. He had that true imperial look which all born rulers of men possess—that look that half coerces, and wholly persuades. Robert Worth acknowledged its power by his instant and decisive answer.

“I have, indeed, much to say to you. We shall have dinner directly, then you will give the night to me?”

After a short conversation he led him into the sala and introduced him to Antonia. He himself had to prepare the Senora for her visitor, and he had a little quaking of the heart as he entered her room. She was dressed for dinner, and turned with a laughing face to meet him.

“I have been listening to the cooks quarrelling over the olla, Roberto. But what can my poor Manuel say when your Irishwoman attacks him. Listen to her! ‘Take your dirty stew aff the fire then! Shure it isn’t fit for a Christian to ate at all!’”

“I hope it is, Maria, for we have a visitor to-night.”

“Who, then, my love?”

“Mr. Houston.”

“Sam Houston? Holy Virgin of Guadalupe preserve us! I will not see the man.”

“I think you will, Maria. He has brought this letter for you from our son Thomas; and he has been so kind as to take charge of some fine horses, and sell them well for him in San Antonio. When a man does us a kindness, we should say thank you.”

“That is truth, if the man is not the Evil One. As for this Sam Houston, you should have heard what was said of him at the Valdez’s.”

“I did hear. Everything was a lie.”

“But he is a very common man.”

“Maria, do you call a soldier, a lawyer, a member of the United States Congress, a governor of a great State like Tennessee, a common man? Houston has been all of these things.”

“It is, however, true that he has lived with Indians, and with those Americans, who are bad, who have no God, who are infidels, and perhaps even cannibals. If he is a good man, why does he live with bad men? Not even the saints could do that. A good man should be in his home. Why does he not stay at home.”

“Alas! Maria, that is a woman’s fault. He loved a beautiful girl. He married her. My dear one, she did not bless his life as you have blessed mine. No one knows what his sorrow was, for he told no one. And he never blamed her, only he left his high office and turned his back forever on his home.”

“Ah! the cruel woman. Holy Virgin, what hard hearts thou hast to pray for!”

“Come down and smile upon him, Maria. I should like him to see a high-born Mexican lady. Are they not the kindest and fairest among all God’s women? I know, at least, Maria, that you are kind and fair”; and he took her hands, and drew her within his embrace.

What good wife can resist her husband’s wooing? Maria did not. She lifted her face, her eyes shone through happy tears, she whispered softly: “My Robert, it is a joy to please you. I will be kind; I will be grateful about Thomas. You shall see that I will make a pleasant evening.”

So the triumphant husband went down, proud and happy, with his smiling wife upon his arm. Isabel was already in the room. She also wore a white frock, but her hair was pinned back with gold butterflies, and she had a beautiful golden necklace around her throat. And the Senora kept her word. She paid her guest great attention. She talked to him of his adventures with the Indians. She requested her daughters to sing to him. She told him stories of the old Castilian families with which she was connected, and described her visit to New Orleans with a great deal of pleasant humor. She felt that she was doing herself justice; that she was charming; and, consequently, she also was charmed with the guest and the occasion which had been so favorable to her.

After the ladies had retired, the doctor led his visitor into his study. He sat down silently and placed a chair for Houston. Both men hesitated for a moment to open the conversation. Worth, because he was treading on unknown ground; Houston, because he did not wish to force, even by a question, a resolution which he felt sure would come voluntarily.

The jar of tobacco stood between them, and they filled their pipes silently. Then Worth laid a letter upon the table, and said: “I unstand{sic} from this, that my son Thomas thinks the time has come for decisive action.”

“Thomas Worth is right. With such souls as his the foundation of the state must be laid.”

“I am glad Thomas has taken the position he has; but you must remember, sir, that he is unmarried and unembarrassed by many circumstances which render decisive movement on my part a much more difficult thing. Yet no man now living has watched the Americanizing of Texas with the interest that I have.”

“You have been long on the watch, sir.”

“I was here when my countrymen came first, in little companies of five or ten men. I saw the party of twenty, who joined the priest Hidalgo in eighteen hundred and ten, when Mexico made her first attempt to throw off the Spanish yoke.”

“An unsuccessful attempt.”

“Yes. The next year I made a pretended professional journey to Chihuahua, to try and save their lives. I failed. They were shot with Hidalgo there.”

“Yet the strife for liberty went on.”

“It did. Two years afterwards, Magee and Bernardo, with twelve hundred Americans, raised the standard of independence on the Trinity River. I saw them them{sic} take this very city, though it was ably defended by Salcedo. They fought like heroes. I had many of the wounded in my house. I succored them with my purse.

“It was a great deed for a handful of men.”

“The fame of it brought young Americans by hundreds here. To a man they joined the Mexican party struggling to free themselves from the tyranny of old Spain. I do not think any one of them received money. The love of freedom and the love of adventure were alike their motive and their reward.”

“Mexico owed these men a debt she has forgotten.”

“She forgot it very quickly. In the following year, though they had again defended San Antonio against the Spaniards, the Mexicans drove all the Americans out of the city their rifles had saved.”

“You were here; tell me the true reason.”

“It was not altogether ingratitude. It was the instinct of self-preservation. The very bravery of the Americans made the men whom they had defended hate and fear them; and there was a continual influx of young men from the States. The Mexicans said to each other: ‘There is no end to these Americans. Very soon they will make a quarrel and turn their arms against us. They do not conform to our customs, and they will not take an order from any officer but their own.’”

Houston smiled. “It is away the Saxon race has,” he said. “The old Britons made the same complaint of them. They went first to England to help the Britons fight the Romans, and they liked the country so well, they determined to stay there. If I remember rightly the old Britons had to let them do so.”

“It is an old political situation. You can go back to Genesis and find Pharaoh arguing about the Jews in the same manner.”

“What happened after this forcible expulsion of the American element from Texas?”

“Mexican independence was for a time abandoned, and the Spanish viceroys were more tyrannical than ever. But Americans still came, though they pursued different tactics. They bought land and settled on the great rivers. In eighteen twenty-one, Austin, with the permission of the Spanish viceroy in Mexico, introduced three hundred families.”

“That was a step in the right direction; but I am astonished the viceroy sanctioned it.”

“Apodoca, who was then viceroy, was a Spaniard of the proudest type. He had very much the same contempt for the Mexicans that an old English viceroy in New York had for the colonists he was sent to govern. I dare say any of them would have permitted three hundred German families to settle in some part of British America, as far from New York as Texas is from Mexico. I do not need to tell you that Austin’s colonists are a band of choice spirits, hardy working men, trained in the district schools of New England and New York—nearly every one of them a farmer or mechanic.”

“They were the very material liberty needed. They have made homes.”

“That is the truth. The fighters who preceded them owned nothing but their horses and their rifles. But these men brought with them their wives and their children, their civilization, their inborn love of freedom and national faith. They accepted the guarantee of the Spanish government, and they expected the Spanish government to keep its promises.”

“It did not.”

“It had no opportunity. The colonists were hardly settled when the standard of revolt against Spain was again raised. Santa Anna took the field for a republican form of government, and once more a body of Americans, under the Tennesseean, Long, joined the Mexican army.”

“I remember that, well.”

“In eighteen twenty-four, Santa Anna, Victoria and Bravo drove the Spaniards forever from Mexico, and then they promulgated the famous constitution of eighteen twenty-four. It was a noble constitution, purely democratic and federal, and the Texan colonists to a man gladly swore to obey it. The form was altogether elective, and what particularly pleased the American element was the fact that the local government of every State was left to itself.”

Houston laughed heartily. “Do you know, Worth,” he said, “State Rights is our political religion. The average American citizen would expect the Almighty to conform to a written constitution, and recognize the rights of mankind.”

“I don’t think he expects more than he gets, Houston. Where is there a grander constitution than is guaranteed to us in His Word; or one that more completely recognizes the rights of all humanity?”

“Thank you, Worth. I see that I have spoken better than I knew. I was sitting in the United States Congress, when this constitution passed, and very much occupied with the politics of Tennessee.”

“I will not detain you with Mexican politics. It may be briefly said that for the last ten years there has been a constant fight between Pedraza, Guerrero, Bustamante and Santa Anna for the Presidency of Mexico. After so much war and misery the country is now ready to resign all the blessings the constitution of eighteen twenty-four promised her. For peace she is willing to have a dictator in Santa Anna.”

“If Mexicans want a dictator let them bow down to Santa Anna! But do you think the twenty thousand free-born Americans in Texas are going to have a dictator? They will have the constitution of eighteen twenty-four—or they will have independence, and make their own constitution! Yes, sir!”

“You know the men for whom you speak?”

“I have been up and down among them for two years. Just after I came to Texas I was elected to the convention which sent Stephen Austin to Mexico with a statement of our wrongs. Did we get any redress? No, sir! And as for poor Austin, is he not in the dungeons of the Inquisition? We have waited two years for an answer. Great heavens Doctor, surely that is long enough!”