XIX.
Once within the court, Chinita paused and looked around her cautiously. The doors of the lower rooms stood open, and she might have entered any one of them unnoticed and found a shelter for the night. But she was in no mood for solitude. Indeed it was hard for her to check a certain wild impulse that seized her, as she saw a faint glimmer of light which streamed through a slight opening of a door on the upper corridor, and that urged her to rush at once into the presence of Doña Isabel and claim recognition. To what relationship, and to what rights, she did not ask herself; a positive though undefined certainty that Doña Isabel herself would know, and would be forced to yield her justice, possessed her.
Chinita was now a child neither in stature nor mind, but though so young in years, had reached the first development of her powers with the mingled precocity of the Indian and Spaniard, fostered by a clime that seems the very elixir of passion. She had been maturing rapidly in the last few months, and as she stood that night in the faint starlight, the last trace of childhood seemed to drop visibly from her. She folded her arms on her breast, and sighed deeply,—not for sorrow, but as if she breathed a life that was new to her, and her lungs were oppressed by the weight of a strange and too heavily perfumed atmosphere.
In her absorption Chinita was unconscious that she was observed,—but it chanced that Don Rafael Sanchez and his mother had just left the Señora Doña Isabel, and were passing through the upper corridor to their own apartments. The gallery was wide and they were in the shadow, but a stray gleam of light touched the upturned face of the girl and exhibited it in strong relief within the framing of her waving hair. As they caught sight of it, they involuntarily paused to look at her.
“I do not wonder,” whispered Feliz “that such a face is an accusing conscience to Doña Isabel. There is a strange familiarity in every feature; and what a spirit, too, she has,—one even to glory in strife!”
Don Rafael nodded. “There has always seemed to me something in that child to mark her as the offspring of a dominant family,” he said; “it is inevitable that she must break the lines an adverse Fate has cast about her. Others such as she stretch out a hand to Vice; if something better comes to her, who are we to hinder it?”
The brow of Doña Feliz contracted. “Ay, Rafael,” she murmured, “what a change a few miserable years have wrought! Once I was a sister to Doña Isabel, and now—”
“You are no traitress,” interposed Don Rafael, “and it is by circumstance only that the change has come. Console yourself, dear mother, and remember we are pledged. Though we seem false to her mother, only so can we be true to Herlinda.”
He breathed the name so low that even Doña Feliz did not hear it; she listened rather to the beating of the heart that seemed to repeat without cessation the name of one so loved and lost. “How strange it is, Rafael,” she said presently, “that I have such persistent, such mocking dreams, which against my reason, against all precedent, create in me the belief that all is not ended for Herlinda Garcia.”
Don Rafael looked at her musingly.
“There is a man called Juarez who has dreams such as yours,” he said; “but they are of the freedom of a race, not of one woman alone. But he is hardly able to work miracles. Yet, mother, this truly is the time of prodigies; what think you this boy, the young American that Doña Isabel brought hither, calls himself?”
“I have asked him,” she said, “but he did not understand me. Oh, Rafael! my heart stood still when I saw him first; yet after all he is not so very like—”
“Yet he has the same name, Mother. It may be but chance; those Americans are half barbarians as we know,—they forget the saints, and seek to glorify their great men by giving their children as Christian names the surnames of those who have distinguished themselves inbattle or statesmanship. Sometimes, too, a mother proud of the surname of her own family gives it to her son. It may have been so with this man. When I gave him pen and paper, and bade him write his name, it was thus: ‘Ashley Ward.’”
The name as spoken by Don Rafael was mispronounced, would have been hardly recognizable in the ears of him who owned it; yet to Doña Feliz it was like a trumpet blast. “Strange! strange! strange!” she repeated again and again. “Can it be mere chance?”
“That we shall soon know,” said Don Rafael. “These Americans blurt out their affairs to the first comer, expecting help from every quarter. There is no rain that falls but that they fancy it is to water their own field. Nay, mother,” as Doña Feliz made a movement toward the stairway, “go not near the man to-night; he has fever, and is in need of quiet. Old Selsa is with him, and he can need no better care. He is safe to remain here many days; let him rest in peace now. And do you, mother, try to sleep; you are weary and worn.”
With the filial solicitude of a true Mexican, the man, already middle-aged, took his mother’s hand fondly and led her to the door of her own apartment. There she detained him long in low and earnest conversation, and when on leaving her he looked down into the court it was entirely deserted.
In glancing around her, Chinita’s eyes had caught no glimpse of the figures above, perhaps because they had been diverted by a faint glimmer of light at one angle of the courtyard; and remembering that this came from the room to which the wounded man had been carried, she darted swiftly and noiselessly toward it, and in a moment had pushed the door sufficiently ajar to admit of her entrance, and had passed in. She arrested her footsteps at the foot of the narrow bed, which extended like a bier from the wall to the centre of the room. There was not another article of furniture in the apartment, except a chair upon which the sick man’s coat was thrown; but Chinita’s eyes, accustomed to the vault-like and vacant suites of square cells that made up the greater part of the vast building, were struck with no sense of desolation. A slender jar of water, and a number of earthen utensils ofdifferent forms and shapes, containing medicaments and food, were gathered upon the floor near the bed’s head; and on a deep window-ledge was placed a sputtering tallow-candle, which had already half filled with grease the clay sconce in which it was sunk.
As Chinita leaned over the foot of the bed and peered through her unkempt locks at its occupant, he looked up with a start, and presently said something in an appealing tone, which certainly touched her more than the words, could she have understood them, would have done. He had in fact exclaimed in English, with an unmistakable American intonation, “Heavens, what a gypsy! and what can she want here in this miserable jail they have left me in?”
She thought he had perhaps asked for water, so she gave him some, which was not unacceptable,—though it irritated him that after giving him the cup, she took up the candle and held it close to his face while he drank. She was in the mood for new impressions however rather than for kindness, and the sight of a strange face pleased her. Burning with fever though he was, and tossing with all the impatience natural to his condition, he could not but notice the totally unaffected ease with which she made her inspection. He might have been a curly-headed infant instead of a man, so utterly unconcernedly did she look into his dark-blue eyes, and note the broad white brow upon which his damp yellow hair clustered, even touching lightly with her finger the firm white throat bared by the opened collar sufficiently to expose the clumsily arranged dressings on the woundedshoulder.shoulder.Instantly, with a few deft movements, she made them more comfortable, for which the young man thanked her in a few of the very scanty words of Spanish at his command,—at which she laughed, not ironically, but with a sort of nervous irrelevance, thinking to herself the while, “He is beautiful—bless me, yes! as beautiful as they say the murdered American was! Who knows? this one may come from the same district! It must be but a little place, his country,—there cannot be such a very great world outside the mountains yonder; they touch heaven everywhere. Look now, how white his arms are, and his brow, where the sun has not touched it! and how red his cheeks!But that must be with the fever.” And so half audibly she made her comments upon the wounded stranger, seemingly entirely unconscious or regardless that there was any mind or soul within this body she so frankly admired,—lifting his unwounded arm sometimes, or turning his face into better view, as she might have done parts of a mechanism that pleased her.
“Evidently she thinks me wooden,” he said with a gleam of humor in his eyes. “As I am dumb to her, she believes me also senseless and sightless. Thanks, for taking away that ill-smelling candle,” as with the offending taper in her hand she passed to the other side of the bed. Then she stopped and laughed, and he remembered that he had seen the old woman who had been left in charge of him arrange her sheepskins there and throw herself upon them. Until the young girl had come, old Selsa’s snores had vexed him; since that he had forgotten them, though now they became audible again. As Chinita laughed, she placed the candle-stick upon the window-ledge and looked around her, stretching herself and yawning. The hour was late for her, the diversion caused by sight of the blond stranger and the little service she had rendered him had relaxed the tension of her mind, and she felt herself aweary; the shadows fell dark in every corner of the room,—there was something grewsome in its aspect even to Chinita’s accustomed eyes. It subdued her wild and reckless mood, and she scanned the place narrowly for something upon which she might lie. Presently the young man saw her glide toward the sleeping nurse, and deftly, with a half mischievous, half triumphant expression upon her face, draw out one of the sheepskin mats upon which the old woman was lying, and taking it to the opposite side of the bed arrange it to her liking upon the brick floor, and sinking upon it softly and daintily as a cat might have done, compose herself to sleep.
The candle on the window-sill sputtered and flickered; old Selsa snored in her corner, seemingly undisturbed by the abstraction of a part of her bed; the shadows in the apartment grew longer and longer; the eyelids of the young girl closed, her regular breathing parted her full lips. The young man had painfully raised himself upon one arm, and assured himself of this. He himself wasdropping off into snatches of slumber which promised to become profound, when suddenly with a start he found himself wide awake, and staring at a draped figure which had noiselessly glided into his chamber. Save for the candle it bore he would have thought it a visitant from another world; but his first surprise over, he recognized it as that of a woman. He was conscious that his heart beat wildly; his fever had returned. Where had he seen this pale proud face, these classic features, these dark penetrating eyes? For a moment again he felt as if swinging between heaven and earth, between life and death. Ah! yes, he comprehended,—he had been brought thither in some swaying vehicle, and this woman had been beside him; she perhaps had saved his life.
He murmured a word of thanks, but she did not notice it. “Señor,” she said in a voice soft in courtesy, “I pray you forgive me that I had for a little time forgotten my guest. I trust you lack for nothing? Ah! what—alone?” and with a frown, she made a motion as if to awaken the servant Selsa. He understood the gesture though not the words, and stopped her by one as expressive.
“No, no!” he exclaimed. “I too shall sleep; and she is old. I would not awaken her. See, if I need anything a touch of my hand will rouse this girl,”—and the young man indicated by a turn of his head and arm the recumbent figure which his visitor had not observed.
With some curiosity she moved to the opposite side of the bed, and bending over lightly removed the fringe of the reboso which shaded the face of the sleeper. Doña Isabel started, and a slight exclamation escaped her lips as she turned hurriedly away,—as hurriedly returning, and shading the candle with her hand, that its light might not fall upon the eyes of the sleeper, she gazed upon the young girl long and earnestly. Unmindful of herself, she suffered the full glare of the candle to illuminate her own countenance; and as he looked upon it, the young American thought it might serve as the very model for the mask of tragedy. Nothing more pitiless, more remorseless, more sombre than its expression could be imagined; yet as she gazed, a flush of shame rose from neck to brow. Her eyes clouded, her breath came with a quick gasp. She stoodfor a moment clasping the rod at the foot of the bed with her white nervous hand; she looked at the American fixedly, yet she seemed to have no consciousness that she herself was seen; and presently, with the slow movement of a somnambulist, so absorbing was her thought, she turned to the door.
Ashley was watching her intently; suddenly her light was extinguished, and she vanished as if dissolved in air. He was calm enough to remember that she had spoken to him, to know that she could be no phantom of his imagination, and to suppose that upon stepping into the corridor she had extinguished her light, and sped noiselessly along the wall to some other apartment; yet for a long time a feeling of mystery oppressed him, and he could not sleep. A vague consciousness of some strange influence near him kept him feverish, with all his senses on the alert; yet he heard no movement of the woman who crouched within the doorway, leaning against the cold wall, and who during the long silent night passed in review the strange events that had brought her—the Señora Isabel Garcia de Garcia—to guard the slumbers of a foundling, the foster-child of a man so low in station as the gate-keeper of her house.