XX.
Doña Isabel Garcia had been born within the walls of Tres Hermanos, her father having been part owner of the estate, and her mother the daughter of an impoverished gentleman of the neighboring city of Guanapila. Doña Clarita had been a most beautiful woman, whose attractions had been utilized to prop the falling fortunes of her house by her marriage with the elderly but kindly proprietor Don Ignacio Garcia.
At the time of her marriage, Clarita Rodriguez was very young, and with the habits of submission universal among her countrywomen would probably have taken kindly to her fate, never doubting its justice, but that from her balcony she had one day seen a young officer of the city troop ride by in all the magnificence of the military uniform of the period. A dazzling vision of gold lace and braid, clanking spurs and sabre, and of eyes and teeth and smile more dazzling still, haunted her for weeks. Yet that might have passed, but that the vision glided from the eye to the heart, when on one luckless night, at the governor’s ball, Pancho Vallé was introduced to her, and they twice were partners in that lover’s delirium the slow and voluptuousdanza. As they moved together in the dreamy measure, a few low words were exchanged,—commonplace perhaps but not harmless, and by one at least never to be forgotten. Afterward an occasional missive penned in most regular characters upon daintily tinted paper came to her hands through some complaisant servant. But Don Ranulfo Rodriguez was too jealous a guardian to suffer many such to escape him, and had been far too wise in his generation to place it in his daughter’s power to engage in such dangerous pastime as the production of replies to unwelcome suitors. Like most other girls of her age and position, Clarita had been strenuously prevented from learning to write, and it is doubtful if she ever knew the exact import of Vallé’s perfumedmissives, although her heart doubtless guessed what her eyes could not decipher.
Whether Vallé’s impassioned glances meant all they indicated or not, certain it was that he had not ventured to declare himself to the father as a suitor for the fair Clarita’s hand, when Don Ignacio Garcia stepped in and literally carried away the prize. The courtship had been short, the position of the groom unassailable. Clarita shed some tears, but the delighted father declared they were for joy at her good fortune; and they were indeed of so mixed a character—baffled love, wounded pride, and an irrepressible sense of triumph at her unexpected promotion—that she herself scarce cared to analyze them. She danced with Vallé once again on the occasion of her marriage; again a few words were spoken, and the passionate heart of Clarita was pierced with a secret dart, which never ceased to rankle.
Don Ignacio Garcia conducted her immediately to the hacienda, where his jealous nature found no cause for suspicion; and there the little Isabel was born; and on beholding the wealth of maternal affection which the young wife lavished upon her child, the husband forgot the indifference that had sometimes chafed him, and for a few brief months imagined himself beloved. This egotistic delusion was never dispelled, for at its height, upon the second anniversary of their wedding day, when taking part in a bull-chase, Don Ignacio’s horse swerved as he urged him to the side of the infuriated animal; a moment’s hesitancy was fatal; the horse was ripped open by the powerful horn of the bull, and plunging wildly, fell back upon his luckless rider, whose neck was instantly broken. It was an accident which it seemed incredible could have happened to a man so skilled in horsemanship as was Don Ignacio. The spectators were for a moment dumb with horror and surprise, then with groans and shrieks rushed to the rescue, but only to lift a corpse. Doña Clarita with a wild shriek had fainted as the horse plunged back, and upon regaining her senses, threw herself in an agony of not unremorseful grief upon the body of her husband. It was, however, of that violent character which soon expends itself; and before the funeral obsequies were well over, she began to look around the narrow horizon of TresHermanos, and remember, if not rejoice, that she was free to go beyond it.
Don Gregorio, the cousin of Clarita’s husband’s, though a mere boy, had been brought up on the estate, and was competent to take charge, and the administrador and clerks were trusty men; so there was no absolute reason why the young widow should remain to guard her interests and those of her child, and it seemed but natural she should return to her father’s house, at least during the first months of her sorrow. Thither indeed she went. She had dwelt there before, a dependent child, to be disposed of at her father’s will; she returned to it a rich widow, profuse of her favors but tenacious of her rights, one of which all too soon proclaimed itself to be that of choosing for herself a second husband. A month or two after her arrival in the city, Don Pancho Vallé returned from some expedition in which patriotism and personal gain were deftly combined, with the halo of success added to his personal attractions, and was quick to declare an unswerving devotion to the divinity at whose shrine he had worshipped but doubtfully while it remained ungilded by the sun of prosperity. Whether Clarita had learned to read or not, certain it is that Don Pancho’s impassioned missives met with a response more satisfactory than pen and ink alone could give, for immediately after the expiration of the year due to the memory of Don Ignacio, she became the wife of the gay soldier.
Don Pancho and his wife were both young, both equally delighted in excitement and luxury; and within an incredibly short time the ample resources which had seemed to them boundless were perceptibly narrowed. To the taste for extravagant living, for gorgeous apparel, for numerous and magnificent horses, shared by them in common, were added a passionate love of gambling, and a scarcely less expensive one for military enterprises of an independent and half guerilla order, on the part of Don Pancho; and thus a few years saw the wife’s fortune reduced to an encumbered interest in the lands of Tres Hermanos.
Don Pancho in spite of numerous infidelities still retained his influence over the heart and mind of Clarita; and one night in play against Don Gregorio Garcia—who,like other caballeros, occasionally engaged in a game or two for pastime—he staked the last acre of her estate, knowing she would refuse him nothing, and lost. For a moment he looked blank,—a most unwonted manifestation of dismay in so practised a gambler,—then laughed and shook hands with his fortunate opponent. There was a laughing group around him, condoling with him banteringly, for Pancho Vallé had never seemed to make any misfortune a serious matter, when a pistol-shot was heard. For a moment no one realized what had happened; the young officer stood in his gay uniform, smiling still, his gold-mounted pistol in his hand, then fell heavily forward. The ball had passed through his heart. His widow had the satisfaction of seeing by the smile that remained on his handsome countenance that he had died as joyously as he had lived; not a trace of care showed that aught deeper than mere pique and caprice had moved him. “Angel of my life!” she cried, when her first burst of grief was over, “thou wert beginning to make my heart ache, for I had nothing more to give thee!”
This was her only word of reproach, if reproach it might be called. For love that woman would have yielded even her life, and never have known the hollowness of her idol. Grief did the work that ingratitude and neglect—nay absolute cruelty—would perhaps never have effected, and in a few short months destroyed her life. As she was dying she called her daughter to her. “Isabel,” she said, “thou hast wealth, thy brother has nothing; swear to me by the Virgin and thy patron saint, that thou wilt be as a mother to him, that thou wilt refuse him nothing that thy hand can give! Money, money, money, is what makes men happy!” That had been the creed her life’s experience had taught her. For money her father had sold her; for that the husband she adored had given her fair words and caresses. “As thou wouldst have thy mother’s blessing, promise me that Leon shall never appeal to thee in vain!”
Isabel Garcia was but a child, and the boy Leon but three years younger; yet as she looked upon her dying mother she solemnly promised to fill her place, to take upon herself the rôle of sacrifice, which her religion taught her was that of motherhood. Poor Clarita! little hadshe understood a mother’s highest duties,—to warn, to guide, to plead with God for the beloved. The mere yielding of material things,—to clothe herself in sackcloth, that the child might be robed in purple, to walk barefoot that he might ride in state, to hunger that he might be delicately fed,—she had pictured these things to herself as the purest sacrifices, and surely the only ones to appeal to the hearts of such men as she had known; and the young Isabel entered upon her task with her mother’s precepts deeply engraved upon her heart, her mind all uninstructed, awaiting the iron finger of experience to write upon it its lessons.
After their mother’s death, the young brother and sister, mere children both, went to live in the house of some elderly relatives, who with generous though not always judicious kindness strove to forget the faults of the father by ignoring them when they became apparent in the boy. The uncle of Isabel, the Friar Francisco, became their tutor, but taught them little beyond the breviary. What could a woman need with more? As for Leon, he took more kindly to the lasso and saddle, to the pistol and sword, than to the book or pen,—and even while still a child in years, more passionately still to the gaming table. Though his elders with a shake of the head remembered his father’s fate, and sometimes pushed the boy half laughingly away from the monté table, or of a Sunday afternoon sent him out to the bull-ring for his diversion, where he was a mere spectator, rather than to the cock-pit, where he became a participant, yet the question did not present itself as one at all of questionable morals: every one gambled on a feast day, or at a social game among one’s friends. Perhaps of all those by whom he was surrounded, no one felt any serious anxiety for Leon except the young girl who with premature solicitude warned him of the evil, even as she supplied the means to indulge his wayward tastes.
Leon was a brilliant rather than a handsome boy, promising to be well grown; and his lithe, vigorous figure showed to good advantage in his gay riding-suits, whether of sombre black cloth with silver buttons set closely down the outer seam of the pantaloons and adorning the short round jacket, or in loosechaparerasof buckskin bound bya scarlet sash and bedizened with leather fringes,—a costume that perhaps served to betray the Indian strain in his blood, which ordinarily was detected only by a slight prominence of the cheek bones and a somewhat furtive expression in the soft dark eyes. At unguarded moments, however, perhaps when he fancied himself unobserved and was practising with his pistol or sabre, those eyes could flash with concentrated fire, so that more than once Isabel had been constrained to call out: “Leon, Leon, you frighten me! You look like the great cat when he pounces upon a harmless little bird and crushes it for the very joy of killing!”
Then Leon would laugh, and the soft, dreamy haze would rise again over the eyes as he would turn upon her. “Ha!” he would say, “you will never be a man, Isabel; you will never understand why I love the sights and sounds that throw you poor women into fainting fits and tears. Ha! Isabel, if I were you I’d not stay in this dull house with a couple of old women to guard me, when you might go to the hacienda and be free as air.”
“Nonsense,” Isabel would retort; “what could I do there other than here? I could not turn herdsman or vaquero, nor even ride out to the fields to see how the crops were flourishing, nor roam like an Indian through the mountains.”
“ButIwould!” Leon would cry enthusiastically; and with his longing ardor for the free life of a country gentleman, with its barbaric luxury and wild sports, he thus first put into the young girl’s mind the thought of favoring the suit which her cousin, Don Gregorio Garcia, began to urge.
Don Gregorio had married young, soon after the death of Ignacio Garcia whom he succeeded in the management of the estate of which they had been joint owners; but his wife had died leaving him without an heir, and the first grief assuaged, it was but natural after the passage of years that the widower should weary of his loneliness. There were many reasons why his thoughts should turn to his distant cousin Isabel, for though she was many years younger than himself, such disparity of age was not unusual; the marriage would unite still more closely the family fortunes, and effectually prevent the intrusion ofany undesirable stranger; and above all, Isabel was gracious and queenly and beautiful enough to charm the heart even of an anchorite, and Don Gregorio was far from being one. Indeed, in his very early years he had given indications of a partiality for a far more adventurous career than he had finally, by force of circumstances, been led to adopt. Thus he sympathized somewhat with Leon’s restless activity, and quite honestly secured the boy’s alliance,—no slight advantage in his siege of the heart of Isabel.
This, perhaps more than the good-will of the rest of the family, enabled Don Gregorio to approach so nearly to Isabel’s inmost nature that he learned far more of the strength of purpose and capability for passionate devotion possessed by the young untrained girl than any other being had done, and for the first time in his life knew a love far deeper and purer than any passion which mere physical charms could awaken. Such a love appealed to Isabel. She was perhaps constitutionally cold to sexual charms, but eminently susceptible to the sympathetic attrition of an appreciative mind, while her heart could translate far more readily the rational outpourings of friendship than the wild rhapsodies of passion. Thus, although Isabel would have shrunk from a man who in his ardor would have demanded of her affection some sacrifice of the unqualified devotion that she had vowed to her brother, she seemed to find in Don Gregorio one who could understand and applaud the exaggerated devotion to the ideal standard of filial and sisterly duty which she had unconsciously erected upon the few utterly irrational words of a weak and dying woman.
The first four years of Isabel’s married life passed uneventfully. Leon was constantly near her, and was the life of the great house, which despite the crowd of retainers that frequented it would without him have proved but a dull dwelling for so young a matron, with no illusions in regard to the staid and kindly husband, who was rather a friend to be consulted and revered than a lover to be adored,—for although Don Gregorio worshipped his beautiful young wife, he was at once too mindful of his own dignity, and too wary of startling Isabel’s passionless nature, to manifest or exact romantic and exhaustiveproofs of affection. He used sometimes to mutter to himself: “‘The stronger the flame the sooner the wood is burnt;’ better that the substance of love should endure than be dissipated in smoke!”
Don Gregorio was somewhat of a philosopher; and as such, as soon as the glamour thrown over him by Leon’s brilliant but inconsequent sallies of wit, and his daring and dashing manner, was dimmed, and above all as soon as his unreasoning sympathy with Isabel’s predispositions settled into a calm and sincere desire for her certain happiness and welfare, he began to look with some suspicion upon traits which had at first attracted him as the natural outcome of an ardent and generous nature.
Friar Francisco had accompanied the young brother and sister to the hacienda, partly to minister in the church, and partly as tutor to Leon; but in the latter capacity he found little exercise for his talents. Upon one pretext or another the boy at first evaded and later absolutely refused study; but he joined so heartily in the labors as well as pleasures of hacienda life,—he was so ready in resource, so untiring in action, so companionable alike to all classes, that Nature seemed to have fitted him absolutely for the position that he was apparently destined to fill in life. Yet though he was the prince of rancheros, the life of the city sometimes seemed to possess an irresistible attraction for him; and after months perhaps spent among the employees of the hacienda, in riding with the vaqueros or in penetrating the recesses of the mountain, even sleeping in the huts of charcoal burners, or in caves with rovers of still more doubtful reputation, he would suddenly weary of it all, and followed by a servant or two ride gayly down to the city to see how the world went there.
At first Don Gregorio had no idea how much those visits cost Isabel; but as time went on, and rumors reached them of the boy’s extravagant mode of life, Isabel became anxious and Don Gregorio indignant. Some investigation showed that a troop of young roysterers who called him captain were maintained in the mountains, and that a thousand wild freaks which had mystified the neighboring villages and haciendas might be traced to these mad spirits, among whom Don Gregorio shrewdly conjectured might be found many of themost daring young fellows, both of the higher and lower orders, who had one by one mysteriously disappeared during the few months preceding Leon’s eighteenth birthday.
Leon only laughed when taxed with his guerilla following, and although as he managed it it was a somewhat costly amusement, it was not an unusual or an altogether useless one in those days of anarchy; for no one could say how soon the fortunes of war might turn an enemy upon the land and stores of Tres Hermanos, and even Don Gregorio was not displeased to find the most refractory of his retainers placed in a position to defend rather than imperil the interests of the estate. As to the escapades of city life he found them less pardonable, for they consisted chiefly in mad devotion to the gaming-table, which Leon was never content to leave until his varying fortunes turned to disaster and his wild excitement was quelled by the tardy reflection that his sister’s generosity would be taxed in thousands to pay the folly of a night.
Before the age of twenty Leon Vallé had run the gamut of the vices and extravagances peculiar to Mexican youths, and large as the resources of Doña Isabel were, he had begun to encroach seriously upon them; for true to her mother’s request, she had never refused to supply his demands for money, though of late she had begun to make remonstrances, which were received half incredulously, half sullenly, as though he realized neither their justice nor their necessity. Isabel was now a mother, her daughter Herlinda having been born a year after her marriage, and their son Norberto, the pride and hope of Don Gregorio, three years later; and naturally the young mother longed to consider the interests of her children, which so far as her own property was concerned seemed utterly obliterated and overwhelmed by the mad extravagances of her brother.
Strangely enough, Don Gregorio attempted no interference with his wife’s disposal of her income, though it seemed not improbable that at no distant day even the lands would be in jeopardy. Perhaps he foresaw that as her means to gratify his insatiable demands declined, so gradually Leon’s strange fascination over his sister would cease; for inevitably his restless spirit would draw him afar to find fresh fields for adventure, since in those days,when the great struggle between Church and State was beginning and foreign complications were forming, such a leader as he might prove to be would find no lack of occasion for daring deeds and reckless followers, nor scarcity of plunder with which to repay the latter.
Whatever were his thoughts, Don Gregorio guarded them well, saying sometimes either to Leon himself, or to some friend who expressed a half horrified conjecture as to where such absolute madness must end, “See you not, ’t is foolish to squeeze the orange until one tastes the bitterness of the rind?” He expected some sudden and violent reaction in Isabel’s mind and conduct. But though she began to show she realized and suffered, she bore the strain put upon her with royal fortitude. Youth can hope through such adverse circumstances, and it always seemed to her that one who “meant so well” as Leon, must eventually turn from temptation and begin a new and nobler career.
At last what appeared to Isabel the turning point in her brother’s destiny was reached. He became violently enamored of the beautiful daughter of a Spaniard, one Señor Fernandez, who of a family too distinguished to be flattered by an alliance with a mere attaché of a wealthy and powerful house, was so poor as to be willing to consider it should a suitable provision be made to insure his daughter’s future prosperity. The beautiful Dolores was herself favorably inclined toward the gay cavalier, who most ardently pressed his suit,—the more ardently perhaps that he was piqued and indignant that the wary father utterly refused to consider the matter until Don Gregorio or Doña Isabel herself should formally ask the hand of his daughter, presenting at the same time unmistakable assurances of Leon’s ability to fulfil the promises he recklessly poured forth.
That Leon had turned from his old evil courses seemed as months passed on an absolute certainty. Not even the administrador himself could be more utterly bound to the wheel of routine than he. To see his changed life, his absolute repugnance even to the sports suitable to his age, was almost piteous; his whole heart and mind seemed set upon atonement for the folly of the past, and in preparation for a life of toil and anxiety in the future. For in examininginto her affairs, Doña Isabel found that her income was largely overdrawn; Leon’s extravagances, together with heavy losses incurred in the working of the reduction-works, had so far crippled her resources that it was only by stringent effort, and an appeal to Don Gregorio for aid, that she was enabled so to rehabilitate the fortunes of Leon that he could hope to win the prize which was to make or mar his future.
Doña Isabel was as happy as the impatient lover himself when she could place in his hands the deeds of a small but productive estate, famous for the growth of the maguey, from which the sale of pulque and mescal promised a never failing revenue. The money had been raised largely through concessions made by Don Gregorio, and was to be repaid from the income of Isabel’s encumbered estate, so that for some years at least it would be out of her power to render Leon any further assistance. Don Gregorio shook his head gravely over the whole matter; yet the fact that the young man was virtually thrown upon the resources provided for him, which certainly without the concentration of all his energies and tact would be altogether insufficient for his maintenance, and also that he had great faith in the energy of character which for the first time appeared diverted into a legitimate channel, inclined him to believe that at last, urged by necessity as well as love, Leon would redeem his past and settle down into the reputable citizen and relative who was to justify and repay the sister’s tireless and extraordinary devotion. “Or at least,” he said to himself, “Isabel will be satisfied that no more can or should be done; and it is worth a fortune to convince her of that.”
Strangely enough, though Isabel had addressed herself with a frenzy of determination to the task of securing a competency for Leon that might enable him to marry and enter upon a life which was to relieve her of the constant drain upon her resources, both material and mental, which for years had been sapping her prosperity and peace, yet as she beheld him ride away toward the town in which his inamorata dwelt to make the final arrangements for his marriage, her heart sank within her; and instead of relief and thankfulness, she felt a frightful pang of apprehension, she knew not why, as if a prophetic voice warned her thather own hand had opened the door to a chamber of horrors, through which the smiling youth would pass and drag her as he went.
Isabel threw herself upon her husband’s breast in an agony which he could not comprehend, but which he gently soothed, happy to feel that to him she turned in the first moment of her abandonment,—for indeed she felt that she who had given her substance, her sympathy, her faith, all of which a sister’s life is capable, was indeed abandoned, and all for a fresh young face, a word, a smile. Leon was a changed man, but all her devotion had not worked the miracle; another whose love could be as yet but a fancy had accomplished what years of sacrifice from her had striven for in vain!
There was something of jealousy, but far more of the pain of baffled aspiration in the thought, and through it all that dreadful doubt, that sickening dread as to whether she had done well thus to strip herself of the power to minister to him. It seemed, even against her reason, impossible that Leon could be beyond the pale of her bounty; she had been so accustomed to plan, to think, to plot for him, that she could not grasp the thought that henceforth he was to live without her, that she was to know him happy, joyous, at ease, and she no longer be the immediate and ministering Providence which made him so.
After the infant Carmen was born, the mother’s thoughts turned into other channels. As she looked at this child, the thought for the first time came to her, that some day it might be possible that her children would inherit some material good from her. Their father was a rich man, yet there was a pleasure in the thought that her children, her daughters most especially, would be pleased by a mother’s rich gifts, would perhaps from her receive the dower that would make them welcome in the homes of the men they might love. Isabel began to indulge in the maternal hopes and visions of young motherhood, and to feel the security that a still hopeful mind may acquire, after years of secret and harassing cares have passed.
The usual visits of ceremony had passed between the contracting families; the Señor Fernandez had declared himself satisfied with the generous provisions which had been made for the young couple; the house was set inorder, and an early day named for the wedding. Some days of purest happiness followed the tearful anxiety with which Dolores had awaited the negotiations that were to shape her destiny. An earnest of the future came to her in the present of jewels, with which Leon presaged the marriage gifts which he went to the city of Mexico to choose,—for whether rich or poor, no Mexican bridegroom would fail of a necklet of pearls, or a brooch and earrings of brilliants for his bride; and with his luxurious tastes, it was not to be supposed that Leon Vallé could fail to add to these laces and silks and velvets, fit rather for a princess than for the future wife of a country youth whose only capital was in house and land. Isabel had just heard of these things, and had begun to excuse in her heart these extravagances, which seemed so natural to a youth in love, when a remembrance flashed upon her mind which justified the apprehensions she had felt, and which it seemed incredible should have escaped not only her own but also Don Gregorio’s vigilance,—Leon had gone to Mexico in the days of the feast of San Augustin.
Isabel was too jealous of her brother’s good name, too eager to shield him from a breath of distrust, to mention the fears that assailed her. She called herself irrational, faithless, unjust, yet she could not rid herself of the dread which seemed to brood above her like a cloud. And so passed the month of June, and July brought Leon Vallé back again, and one glance at his haggard face and bloodshot eyes revealed to Isabel that her fears were realized. He told the tale in a few words and with a hollow laugh.
“You will have to go to Garcia for me now, Isabel,” he said. “Your last venture has brought me the old luck, cursed bad luck. A plague upon your money! I thought to double or treble it, and the last cent is gone!”
“And the hacienda of San Lazaro?” queried Isabel, faintly.
“Would you believe it? Gone too! Aranda has had the devil’s own luck. ’T was the last of the feast, Isabel. Thousands were changing hands at every table. It seemed a cowardice not to try a stake for a fortune that might be had for the asking. I was a fool, and hesitated till it was too late. Had I only ventured at once! What thinkyou happened to Leoncio Alvarez? He played his hacienda against Esparto’s, and lost. He had dared me not five minutes before to the venture. The devil, what a chance I missed! His hacienda was three times the size of San Lazaro! He bore its loss like a man. ‘What can one do, friend?’ he cried to Esparto; ‘it has been thy luck to-day, ’t will be mine when we next meet.’ Just then his brother Antonio came up. ‘What luck, Leoncio?’ he said. ‘Cursed!’ he answered. ‘I have played my hacienda against Esparto’s here, and lost it.’ Antonio shrugged his shoulders and turned away. ‘Play mine and get it back,’ he suggested, and walked off to the next table. The cards were dealt, and in three minutes Leoncio’s hacienda was his own again, thrown like a ball from one hand to the other. It was glorious play!”
“But this has nothing to do with thee,” ventured Isabel.
“No,” muttered Leon, moodily; “whenIventured my hacienda and lost, there was no Antonio to bid me play his and get it back.”
He looked at Isabel with an air of reproach. She had neither look nor word of reproach for him, yet she felt that a mortal blow had been dealt her. And Leon? He had laughed, though she knew that the laugh was that of the mocking fiend Despair which possessed him; and he had bade her go on his behalf to Garcia. She left him in desperation. She knew how utterly fruitless such an appeal would be.
It was fruitless. Don Gregorio asked with some scorn in his voice whether Leon thought him as weak as she had been, or as much of a madman as himself when he had dared the chances of the tables at San Augustin. For him, Garcia, to furnish money to the oft-tried scapegrace would be a folly that would merit the inevitable loss it would bring. All of which, though true enough, Don Gregorio repeated with unnecessary vehemence to Leon himself, with the tone of irrepressible satisfaction with which he at last saw humiliated the man who had for so long held such a resistless fascination over his wife.
With wonderful self-restraint Leon replied not a word to the cutting irony with which his brother-in-law referred to the mad ambition and folly which had led to his losses,and with which Gregorio excused himself from further assisting in the ruin of the Garcia family,—reminding the gamester that though he had thrown away the key to fortune which he had taken from his sister’s hand, he had still youth, a sword, and a subtle mind, any one of which should be able to provide him a living.
“That is true,” replied Leon, with a dangerous light in his half-closed eyes. “Thanks for the reminder, my brother. What is the old saying? ‘A hungry man discovers more than a thousand wise men.’”
They both laughed. It was not likely that Leon’s poverty would ever reach the point of actual want. There at the hacienda was his home when he cared for it; but as for money,—why as Don Gregorio had said, the key to fortune was thrown away, and it seemed unlikely the unfortunate loser would ever recover it.
Almost on the same day on which Leon Vallé had told his sister of his fatal hardihood at the feast of San Augustin, there arrived, with assurances of the profound respect of Señor Fernandez and his daughter, the jewels and other rich gifts which Dolores had accepted as the betrothed of Leon. With deep indignation that his explanations and protestations had been rejected, but with a pride which prevented the frantic remonstrances which rushed to his lips from passing beyond them, Leon received these proofs of his dismissal, which in a few days was rendered final by the news that the beautiful Dolores had married a wealthier and perhaps even more ardent suitor, whom the insolence and mockery of Fate had provided in the person of the lucky winner of San Lazaro. Even Don Gregorio felt his heart burn with the natural chagrin of family pride, and Isabel would have turned with some sympathy toward the brother of whom, unconsciously to herself, she could no longer make a hero. Strangely enough, his aspect as a suppliant for her husband’s bounty had disrobed him of the glamour through which she had always beheld him. When she herself was powerless to minister to him, he was no longer a prince claiming tribute, but the undignified dependent whom she blushed to see lounging in sullen idleness in her husband’s house. Yet as has been said, when word of the marriage of Dolores Fernandez reached them, they would havegiven him sympathy; but he had received the news first, and collecting a half-dozen followers had mounted and ridden madly away.
The horses they rode were Don Gregorio’s yet Leon had gone without a word of excuse or farewell. Isabel had no opportunity to tell him that she had no more money to give him; and in her distress at supposing him penniless it was an immense relief to her to find that he had retained in his possession the jewels that the father of Dolores had returned to him. He would at least not be without resource. But soon a strange tale reached her. The jewels torn from their settings, the stones in fragments, the whole crushed into an utterly worthless mass, so far as human strength and ingenuity could accomplish it, had been found upon the pillow of the bride. The husband was jealously frantic that her sanctuary had been invaded; the bride was hysterically alarmed, yet flattered at this proof of her lover’s passion; and the entire community were for days on thequi vivefor further developments in this drama of love.
But none came, and soon Leon Vallé’s name was heard of as one of the guerillas of the Texan war, where he fought for—it was not to be said under—Santa Anna; and ere many months his name rang from one end of the republic to the other,—the synonym of gallant daring, which in a less exciting time might have been called ferocious bloodthirstiness.
Isabel quailed as she heard the wild tales told of him; but Don Gregorio shrugged his shoulders and said, “Thank Heaven he turned soldier rather than brigand!” The chief difference between the two in those days was in name; but that meant much in sentiment.