XXIII.
Although Doña Rita had left her home upon a sad errand, and her tears flowed fast when on embracing her mother she beheld upon her countenance the shadow of death, that first startling impression vanquished, she allowed herself to be deceived by the fitful brightness that hovers over the consumptive; and as days passed on she felt a pleased sense of freedom and relaxation, and her return to her early home, which had been undertaken as a pilgrimage, assumed much of the character of an ordinary visit of pleasure.
Doña Rita was a member of a large family, of whom most had married; so that her parents, relieved from cares that had long pressed upon them, were enabled to live in the little town of El Toro with an ease and comfort from which in their narrow circumstances they had necessarily been debarred while the children were dependent. They were, strictly speaking, people of the class known asmediopelo, or “the half-clothed order,” as far below the aristocrat as above the plebeian; and Rita Farias had been thought to have risen greatly in life when she became the wife of Rafael Sanchez, though he was then but a clerk, the son of the administrador of Tres Hermanos, with no prospect of succeeding soon to his honors. But as the pious neighbors said when they heard of the early death of the bridegroom’s father, “God blessed her with both hands,” of which one held marriage, and the other death; so Doña Rita was accustomed when she at rare intervals visited her parents to be looked upon with ever increasing respect. Such silken skirts and rebosos as she wore were seldom seen within the quiet precincts of El Toro.
Doña Rita herself was not quite clear upon the point as to whether or not her native place could be considered to rival “the City,” as Mexico was calledpar excellence, or even Guadalajara, which she had heard was a labyrinth of palaces; but Rosario who had seen El Toro declared toChata that nothing could be finer, and Chata herself was quite convinced of that when opening her eyes suddenly upon the clear moonlight night on which the diligence stopped before the door of the inn, she first looked out upon the plaza.
The two girls shivered a little in their sudden awakening, as, scarcely knowing how, they were lifted from the diligence and stood upon their feet at the door of the inn, with an injunction to watch the basket, the five parcels tied in paper or towels, the drinking-gourd, the bottle of claret, and the young parrot which their mother had brought with her as a suitable gift to her declining relative. With habitual obedience they did as they were bid, more than once rescuing a parcel from the long, skinny claw of a blear-eyed hag, who crouched in the shadow of the wall whining for alms, while at the same time they cast their admiring glances at the really beautiful church upon which the white rays of the moonlight streamed, converting it for the nonce into a symmetrical pile of virgin snow or spotless alabaster. The priest’s house, a long low building with numerous barred windows, stood on one side of it, while an angle of the square was formed by a mass of buildings, the frowning walls of which were apparently unpierced by door or window. This was a convent. Later the children learned to know well the gardens it enclosed, and also the taste of the wonderful confections the sweet-faced sisters made. The other buildings seemed poor and small in comparison to those, with the exception of the inn which rose gloomily behind them, a solitary rush-light burning palely in the yawning vestibule, and the torches flaming in the courtyard, where benighted travellers were loudly bargaining for lodgings,—no hope of supper presenting itself at that late hour.
While Rosario and Chata were noticing these things with wide-open eyes but with ill suppressed yawns, Don Rafael and Doña Rita were returning the salutations of the concourse of friends who had come to meet them; and as soon as the children had been embraced in succession by each affectionate cousin or punctilious friend, they were hurried across the plaza upon the side where the shadows lay black as ink, and with a regretful glance at the seeming palaces of marble that rose on either hand were conductedwith much kindly help and cheerfulness over the rough cobble-stones along a narrow street of single-storied houses, above the walls of which, as if piercing the roofs, rose at intervals tall slender trees, indicating the well-planted courts within. Reaching the more scattered portions of the town where the moonlight shone clear over open fields and walled gardens and orchards, with low adobe houses scattered among them, they at last entered, somewhat to the disappointment of Chata, a rather pretentious house which fronted directly upon the street. She was consoled upon the following day to find a garden at the back, where a triangle of pink roses of Castile, larkspur, and red geraniums grew, almost choking with their luxuriance the beds of onions and chiles, and rivalling in glory of color the “manta de la Virgin” or convolvulus, which entirely covered the half-ruinous stone-wall—the gaps filled with tuñas and magueys—which divided the cultivated land from the thickets of mesquite and cactus that lay beyond.
In the garden the children spent many hours while their mother sat chatting at the side of the invalid, who rallied wonderfully as she heard the endless tales of her daughter’s prosperity; though like many anothernouveau riche, Doña Rita had her fancied self-denials to complain of. One of the clerks at the hacienda had a wife whose father had given her a string of pearls as large as cherries upon her wedding day, while she the wife of the administrador was left to blush over the shabby necklace—not a bead of which was bigger than a pea—which Rafael had gone in debt to give her on her wedding day, and which until the advent of the fortunate Doña Gomesinda she had thought most beautiful; and then too her dearest friend had a daughter who would inherit a fine house of three rooms or more in that very town, and money and jewels fit for ahacendado’sdaughter; and it was quite possible that she would marry—who could tell? it might even be an attorney or an official,—while with two to endow (and it was well known that Rafael loved to enjoy as he went), Heaven only knew to what her own flesh and blood were doomed! There was Rosario for example,—and her own grandmother, who would not be prejudiced, could judge if there was a prettier or more daintily-bred girl in the wholetown,—what chance was there that an officer or an attorney, or indeed any one but a clerk, a ranchero, or a poor shop-keeper, should pretend to their alliance when they could give so poor a dower with their daughter? Doña Rita’s eyes filled with tears, and decidedly she was obliged to compress her lips very tightly to prevent herself from uttering further complaint; for since Rosario had with true Mexican precocity burst into the full glory of young womanhood, this had become a very real grievance to her mother, but one of which, with the awe of the promoted as well as trained daughter and wife, she had seldom ventured to hint of either to Doña Feliz or Don Rafael.
As Rosario had outgrown her sister in physique, so had she also in womanly dignity and apparent force of intellect At least she thought of matters, and even to her admiring mother and female relatives began to give weighty opinions upon affairs which either wearied Chata or interested her little. The grandfather, old Don José Maria, used to sit under a fig-tree watching with disapproving eyes as Chata darted hither and thither chasing a butterfly or ruby-throated humming-bird, or with her lap full of flowers or neglected sewing pored over some entrancing book lent her by the village priest (he was a man whose ideas, had he not been the Santo Padre, would have been the last that should have been tolerated in the bringing up of sedate and simple maidens); and those same eyes lighted with pride as they fell on Rosario, beating eggs to a froth to mix with honey and almonds for her grandfather’s delectation, or bending over a brasier of ruddy charcoal watching anxiously the cooking of thedulce, of which already more successes than failures showed her a born artist. Then again sometimes, when Don José came in the cool of the evening from the plaza where he had been to buy his jar of pulque or his handful of garlic, he could see his favorite sitting demurely in the upper balcony with her head bent over her needle, listening it is true to thatmaldito libro, “that pernicious book,” which Chata was reading, but as far as he could see doing no other harm, unless the very fact of a young and pretty girl looking into the street was a harm in itself,—butMaria Purissima!one must not be too rigorous with one’s own flesh and blood: like others before him and more who willcome after, Don José Maria forgot in tenderness to the grandchildren the discipline he had thought absolutely necessary with the preceding generation.
Chata, too, thought it delightful to sit on the balcony and peer through the wooden railing at the long stretch of sand which led far away where the houses dwindled into a few half-ruinous hovels, where children and dogs throve as well as the bristling cacti. On Sunday mornings very early, as the mother and daughters came from Mass along that road, they used to be covered with dust thrown up by the scores of plodding donkeys who wended their way to the plaza laden with charcoal and vegetables, eggs and screaming fowls. Doña Rita and her daughters would cover their faces with their rebosos, and trip daintily by, scarcely appeased by the admiring salutations and apologies of the drivers, who pulling off their rough straw hats apostrophized the dust and the scorching sun and the clumsy donkey, “by your license be the name spoken!”
Sometimes more distinguished wayfarers passed over the road and turned into the inn, or rode on to the barracks which lay quite at the opposite extremity of the little town; for it happened that a company of soldiers were quartered there. They were for the most part well clad in a gay uniform of red and blue, and every man had a profusion of stripes on his sleeves or lace on his cap. No one knew and no one asked whether they were Mochos or Puros, Conservatives or Liberals,—for the nonce they were Ramirez’s men. This General had been a Liberal the month before, and was suspected of favoring the clergy at this time. Who could tell? Who knew what he might be on the morrow? In the night all cats are gray; in times of perplexity all soldiers are patriots. The ragged urchins of El Toro threw up their hats for the soldiers of Ramirez, and the discreet householders leaned from their balconies every evening to hear the little band play, and to exult for a brief quarter of an hour in the mild excitement inseparable from a garrison town.
Chata and Chinita had delighted in the distant music, and had caught glimpses of the soldiers, as disenchanting as those of the rude grimy structures they had in the moonlight imagined to be marble palaces; they had gazed up and down the dusty street and watched thenoisy ragged urchins play “Toro” with a big-horned, long-haired, decrepit goat, with crowds of half naked elfin-faced girls as spectators, until they were actually beginning to weary of the attractions of the town and long for home,—when one day the beat of a drum was heard and a squad of soldiers went filing past, with a young officer riding at their head, who threw a glance so killing at the balcony where the young girls stood that, whether intended to reach her or not, it pierced the heart of Rosario on the instant.
Chata had also noticed the young officer (a slender undersized young fellow, with a swarthy lean face and keen black eyes, shaded by a profusely decorated sombrero), but merely as a part of the mimic pageant,—a prominent part, for the trappings of his horse, as well as his own dress, were covered by that profusion of ornament affected by gallants whose capital was invested in the adornment of the person with which they hoped to conquer fortune; for in those days there were numberless roystering adventurers, who to a modicum of valor united a vanity and assurance which provided many a rich girl with a dashing and fickle husband, and his country with a soldier as false to Mexico as to his Doña Fulana.
It was just after this that evening after evening Rosario would lean pensively over the balcony rail, resisting Chata’s entreaties to come to the garden where there was no dust to stifle them, and where the dew would soon begin to fall upon the larkspurs and roses, and already the wide white cups of thegloria mundowere beginning to fill with perfume. The dew would chill her, the perfume sicken her, Rosario said. Chata remonstrated; Rosario smirked and smiled. Chata grew vexed; she thought the smile in mockery of her. She need not have lost her sweet temper,—Rosario was thinking of a far different person. The young captain was walking slowly down the opposite side of the street; he had just laid his hand on his heart. It was on him Rosario smiled.
Doña Rita, discreetest of mothers, was not one to leave her daughters to their own devices unwatched. It was she who always accompanied them in their walks or to Mass; yet curiously enough the young captain found means to slip a tiny note into Rosario’s ready hand, asshe knelt on the grimy stone floor of the church. Obviously, Doña Rita could not be in two places at once, and she usually knelt behind Chata, who needed perhaps some maternal supervision at her devotions; and it came about that the space behind Rosario was occupied by some stranger. It was Don José Maria who first noticed that quite as a matter of course that stranger grew to be the Captain Don Fernando Ruiz; and quite accidentally it happened that thereafter the mother and daughters went to an earlier Mass. Don José Maria was not so early a riser as Don Fernando was; so he was not there, while the young soldier was in his usual place.
Chata was perhaps a stupid little creature,—Rosario it is quite certain would never have done such a silly thing; but one day when Don Fernando had pressed a note into the hand which was nearest to him, and which in the confusion of dispersal happened to be that of the smaller sister, she gave it in some indignation to her mother. It was full of violent protestations of affection, and entreated the life of his life to give her lover hope; it was signed her “agonized yet adoring Fernando.”
Doña Rita showed herself capable of great self-control; she said sadly that she would not ask which had been guilty of attracting such impassioned admiration, but she assured the girls she was heart-broken. When she reached the house, after first carefully closing the door that her father might not hear, she rated them both soundly. Chata did not think it strange they should both be thought guilty; she assumed that Rosario was as innocent as herself. Doña Rita, giving Rosario the note to read, that she might learn for herself the daring and presumption of which man is capable, forgot in her indignation to reclaim it. An hour afterward Chata saw Rosario read it over in secret, and was scandalized to see her kiss it; and late that day, as they stood as usual on the balcony (the little mother, as Chata remarked, was so forgiving!), she caught Rosario’s hand spasmodically as Fernando passed by, but the girl released it with some impatience and slyly kissed the tips of her fingers,—and Chata, with a pang of awakening, realized that her sister had not been and was not so innocent of coquetry as she had assumed, and thenceforth suffered indescribable tortures between her sense of loyalty to her sister and duty to her mother.
Rosario’s ideal of truth was in accordance with that which surrounded her; to be silent when speech was undesirable, to equivocate pleasantly where plain speaking would be harsh, to tell a lie gracefully where truth would offend,—this was her natural creed, which she had never questioned. But Chata, unknown to herself, had never accepted it; her soul was like certain material objects which resist the dyes that other substances at once absorb. It was not enough for her to give the truth when it was asked,—it was a torture, an unnatural crime, to her to withhold it. She would not indeed have done so in this case, had not Rosario in a manner put her upon her honor the very next day.
The washerwoman had been there, and Rosario, who was an embryo housewife, had been deputed to attend her, and Chata, who had gladly escaped the duty, ran to the bedroom when she saw the servant depart to congratulate her sister on the dispatch she had made; when Rosario closing the door mysteriously, cried: “Look! look what he has sent me! Is it not beautiful, charming, divine?” and she held up to the light her hand, on the first finger of which glittered a ring.
Truth to tell, Chata was dazzled; at that moment her own insignificance and the womanliness and beauty of Rosario were more than ever apparent. She gazed at Rosario with greater admiration than on the ring, beautiful though it was. Here was a sister just her own age, yet a woman with an actual lover! Oh!
“What will our mother say?” she began in an awed voice, when Rosario, her womanly dignity gone, began to spring up and down, screaming yet laughing, “Ay, Dios mio!” throwing her hand over her shoulder and slipping it into the loose neck of her dress. “Oh, my life! the creature is down my back! it is crawling now on my shoulder! No, no, grandfather,” for Don José Maria had entered, “it is Chata who will help me. No, my mother! Ay, it is gone now! I would not have you frightened, it was but one of those bright little beetles that live on the roses;” and she contemptuously tossed something out of the window, and Chata saw with speechless wonder that the ring which had been on her finger was gone. The bauble at least had slipped into a secure hiding-place, and Chatareally could not determine whether the beetle had ever existed or no.
An air of delightful mystery began to pervade not only the house but the quiet street all the way from the plaza, which Don Fernando Ruiz crossed at intervals in the long, dull, sultry days. It became quite a diversion to the initiated to watch what clever turns and doublings he would make, and with what assumed indifference he would linger by the fruit-stand at the corner, where old Antonina sold tuñas or a few poor figs and lumps of roasted cassava root. She made quite a fortune from the young captain, who seemed bent on dazzling her bleared eyes; for every day, and sometimes three or four times in a day, he appeared resplendent in uniform of blue and red, or a riding suit of buckskin embroidered in silver, or perhaps, when his mood was sombre, in black hung with silver buttons, and more than once in a suit of velvet and embossed leather, with buttons of gold set with brilliants, and riding a horse with accoutrements so splendid that Doña Rita declared he must be as rich as the Marquis of Carabas himself, and without any apparent consistency embraced Rosario with tears.
Truth to tell, Doña Rita was a match-maker born, and though her talents had lain dormant during the years she had spent at the hacienda, they had not declined; and it was natural that she should find a quiet exultation in exerting them in favor of her daughter, for young though Rosario was, her precocity and the custom of the country and period rendered it perfectly natural that marriage should present itself in her immediate future.
A vision of it rose before the impassioned girl like a star, though there was a period of clouds and mourning when her grandmother died, and Chata, sobbing in the garden or moving sadly about the darkened rooms, wondered that Rosario could smile over those pink notes she was always stealing into corners to pore over. During the nine days that her mother remained within doors receiving visits of condolence, the notes indeed were the aliment upon which Rosario’s fancy fed; for Doña Rita, though the little drama of courtship had undoubtedly made less absorbing to her the tragedy of illness and death, was too strict an observer of the proprieties to allow her maternal affection to betrayher at such a time into permitting even a shutter to be left ajar, or to suffer her daughter to approach a window to satisfy herself by a momentary peep as to whether the love-lorn captain was on his accustomed beat or no. It was a time however when without offence the veriest stranger might leave a card and word of sympathy, and this he never failed to do from day to day. Doña Rita would glance at the bit of cardboard with an affectation of indifference, but it would always shortly disappear from the table, and with the cruel sarcasm of childish intolerance Chata would suggest to Rosario its suitability for baking the little puffs of sugar and almonds upon, which she was so deft at compounding.
At last thenovenaof grief was ended, and taking her aged father’s arm Doña Rita dutifully led him into the street to breathe the air. Rosario knew that at that hour the captain was on duty at the barracks, but nevertheless could not resist the opportunity of stepping into the balcony and gazing upon the scene from which she had been so long debarred. A neighbor across the way greeted her with a significant smile; and somewhat piqued, Rosario drew back, half closed the shutters with a hesitating hand, and then dropping on the floor in the long ray of sunlight that streamed through the aperture, set herself to the ever entrancing task of re-reading her lover’s letters.
As she sat there opening them one by one and after perusal leaving them unfolded in her lap, she became so absorbed that she did not notice the passage of time until a footstep sounded behind her, and glancing up she saw with trepidation that her grandfather was ushering in a tall and imposing stranger, whose military garb made her heart beat madly, for a wild thought of Fernando Ruiz flashed through her mind. Her confusion was not lessened by perceiving that the visitor was a man of more advanced age and infinitely greater assumption of rank. The telltale letters were in her lap, though involuntarily she had dropped her reboso over them; but she dared not rise lest they should drop in a shower around her, and she equally feared the anger of her grandfather and the condemnatory surprise of the visitor.
“I pray you enter the house, Señor! Pass in, sir, pass in!” she heard her grandfather say in his smoothest tones.“My daughter will be here almost immediately; but she stopped at the convent for a moment to buy a blessed candle to place before the altar of Our Lady of Succors. She will be honored indeed by this visit. Take care, Señor, the room is somewhat dark, but I will open a shutter.Valgame Dios, what have we here?” as he caught sight of the bent figure sitting in the narrow streak of sunshine. “Caramba, niña, rise! rise, I say! seest thou not the Señor General?”
“Ay, but I have the cramp in my poor foot, my grandfather,” cried Rosario in a voice of lamentation, vainly endeavoring under cover of the reboso to make some disposal of the letters which rustled alarmingly. “No, Señores, by Blessed Mary my patroness, let me alone!” she cried, as both her grandfather and the stranger attempted to help her,—the latter with a faint gleam of amusement in his eyes, the former with genuine consternation depicted on his face. “Ay, Chata,” for by this time her sister had appeared. “Oh, but my back is broken! it is worse than when you struck me with the stick when you were trying to knock the peaches from the tree. Oh! ah! no, it is impossible for me to rise!”
In dire affright Chata knelt before her. “Oh, what shall I do?” she cried, in remorse at the remembrance of an escapade that had been almost forgotten, and in sudden fear that it might have been the cause of her sister’s present distress. “Oh, my life! I thought it was your poor foot!” and she began rubbing one small slippered member, while Rosario eagerly whispered, “Stupid one, hide me these letters!” and the mystified Chata felt her sister’s hand with a mass of fluttering papers thrust under her arm, covered with the ever useful reboso.
Involuntarily the hapless confidant pressed them to her side, and at the same moment Rosario limped from the room, inwardly raging at making so poor a figure before the General, while Chata, standing for a moment abashed, was about to follow, when a voice which bewildered her by its strange yet familiar accent said gayly, “And you, my fair Señorita, have you never a twinge of the same disorder that afflicts your sister?” and he glanced meaningly at a pink envelope, which had fallen at her feet,—at the same time covering it with his foot that it might not attractthe suspicious eye of the old man, who with profuse apologies for the informality of the reception was assuring the visitor that until that moment never had there been a healthier damsel than his granddaughter Rosario, adding with a sigh, “But the Devil robs with one hand and pinches with the other.”
Chata trembled and blushed painfully as she raised her eyes timidly to the General’s, while with a sense of the grotesque she was conscious of wondering whether he, like herself, was thinking her grandfather had suggested no complimentary agency in her grandmother’s removal to another sphere. But at the instant all present perplexities vanished in the surprise with which she recognized the face which she had seen but for a few brief hours years before,—the face of the man of whom Chinita had never grown weary of talking. “The Señor General Ramirez,” she said in a low voice, with some awe. She was more than ever bewildered by the look he had fixed upon her. She shrank back, barely dropping her hand for a moment upon that he extended toward her. She was actually inclined to be frightened, his eyes were so brilliant, his smile so eager. The foolish thought struck her that had not her grandfather been there, this strange imperious man would surely have taken her in his arms, would have kissed her! She hurried from the room to find Rosario waiting for her at the end of the corridor, alternately smothering her laughter in the folds of her dress, and angrily chafing at her sister’s delay.
“Your horrid letters!” cried Chata, thrusting them into her hands. “Here, take them, read them, laugh over them or cry, or kiss them if you will! I hope I shall never see a love-letter again in my life. He saw them,—the Señor General. I know he did. Oh, what shame!”
“Pshaw!” interrupted Rosario. “What does it matter? He will think none the worse of me. Without doubt he is come on the part of Fernando to ask for me. How proud and happy my mother will be, and how she will rail at me! It will not be difficult for me to cry as I ought, for I am mad with vexation to have appeared such a fool when I should have been so dignified. Why, the Señor will think me a child still! Does he not look likesome one we know, Chata? And yet we can never have seen him before.”
“Yes,” returned Chata, “we have seen him. He is the General José Ramirez.”
“Ah, my heart!” ejaculated Rosario, dramatically. “What a misfortune! My father hates the General Ramirez because he once had some horses driven away from the hacienda; and besides he is a good Christian and fights for the Church! Ay, unlucky Fernando, to have chosen such a messenger! But thank Heaven, it is my mother who will first hear him! Ah, there she comes!” and in irrepressible excitement Rosario grasped her sister’s hand. “Oh, child!” she added sentimentally, “you too may be asked in marriage some day!” and she sighed with an air of vastly superior experience, while Chata revolved in her mind what her playfellow Chinita would say when she told her of this unexpected meeting with the hero whom she fancied she had rendered invincible by the gift of the amulet.
Like most children of her country Chata wore a scapulary. It had lain upon her breast ever since she could remember. She drew it out and looked at it. Some day she thought she would open it; now she only made the sign of the cross, as she replaced it. Rosario in nervous unrest had left her. The cool of the evening had come; the perfume of the flowers stole in at the open window, and the breeze soothed the unusual agitation of her mind. Glad to be alone, yet anxious and perplexed, she stepped into the garden. More than once as she walked down the alley she stopped, her heart palpitating violently. She fancied she heard her name called, or that Ramirez would step from the shadow of a tree to encounter her. It was an unnatural and unchildlike mood quite new to her. It seemed to her that her grandfather’s unnecessary mention of the Devil’s name might have incited that enemy of innocence to annoy her, and she whispered anAve.
There was a large cluster of bananas just behind the house. Chata sat down there to watch the fantastic clouds which hovered where the sun had set. In her absorption in the glowing scene she was unconscious that any sound disturbed the silence around her. It was indeed but a low indistinct hum, scarcely recognizable as the sound ofhuman voices. Had she noticed them, she would have remembered that she was within a foot or two of a window which was screened from sight by the foliage, and would have withdrawn from possible discovery; but as it was, she remained there an unconscious trespasser. The first distinct sound that reached her ear at once startled and impressed her, for it was the deep voice of Ramirez uttering her own name.
“Chata, yes it was Chata I said,” he affirmed dictatorially. “Why attempt dissimulation with you, Señora? I am in no humor for trifling. Will Doña Isabel provide a dowry for your daughter? It is my fancy that Ruiz should marry the little one, and I can make or mar him. So far the boy has blundered, but if he once turns his eyes on the pretty face of Chata, he will not find the mistake irremediable.”
Chata could not credit the evidence of her senses, and remained as if rooted to the spot. She presently heard her mother sobbing: “This is an unheard of thing! A young man pays court to one child,—perhaps she is not insensible to his advances,—and his patron comes to me to bid me give him another, whom he has not perhaps even glanced at. Oh, it is too much! too much!”
“I have already told you,” said Ramirez, coldly, “that Ruiz is poor. His father was my father’s servant, and is mine; more than once he has saved my life at the risk of his own. Years ago he rendered me a service that I swore to repay in a certain manner. More than once of late I have been reminded of my promise, and the marriage of Fernando with your daughter would render its fulfilment impossible.”
“By my patron saint!” cried Doña Rita, “it is strange indeed that a poor little country girl should interfere with the projects of a man as great as yourself. But even if that is possible, why bid me give him Chata?”—adding with asperity, “have I not done enough? No, no! I will not, I cannot make my Rosario a sacrifice!”
“Caramba!” cried Ramirez, laughing, “is it so dreadful a thing that she should wait until the next lover comes,—he will be sure to come, Señora,—and that she should have a double dower to make her fairer in his eyes? for I tell you Ruiz will ask no dowry from you with the littleone. Come, come, Señora, I am not used to reasoning and pleading, yet I am not cruel. The child has been yours too long for me to tear her from your arms. It was a cunning device of Doña Isabel to hide her from me. Ah, it is not the first trick she has served me, and, like the others, she will find it turn to my advantage!”
“As Heaven is my witness,” ejaculated Doña Rita, in a voice of intense impulse and fear, “never have I breathed to mortal the secret which you seem to know! Who are you, sir? What have you to do with the child?” Suddenly, she uttered a horrified shriek. Chata, who had started from her seat with dilated eyes and lips parted, gasping for breath, heard her mother spring to her feet, and rush toward the door; heard also Ramirez follow her and apparently draw her back, remonstrating in low tones. Then she realized no more. Perhaps she fainted, though to herself there appeared no interruption of consciousness. Though she did not notice the stars come out, she beheld them at last looking down upon her, as if they heard the questions that were repeating themselves again and again in her mind. Whose child was she; who was the man who claimed the right to shape her destiny? That she was not the child of Rafael Sanchez and his wife she felt certain. Doña Rita had not denied the insinuation.
The child—all childish thoughts suddenly crushed by the overwhelming revelation she had surprised—remained in the same spot, unconscious of the passage of time, until she heard her sister—no, Rosario—calling her in anxious yet irritated tones: “Where art thou, Chata? Chata, the supper is ready; the grandfather is angry that thou art so long in the garden! Oh, here thou art!”
The two girls encountered each other in the dusk. Rosario threw her arms around the truant. “How cold thou art!” she said. “Hast thou seen a ghost here alone? Bless me! one would think the General Ramirez had brought the plague with him. My mother has shut herself up, and when I went to her door to beg her to tell me whether she was ill, she answered me, ‘The world is all ill. Go dress saints, my child, it is all that is left to thee!’ What could she have meant? Can it be after all that the General did not come from Fernando?”
Rosario stopped to wipe a tear from the corners of her eyes. Evidently she was more perplexed than dismayed. She was too young to fear the mischances and mishaps of love. Her words recalled to Chata’s mind the fate that was decreed to her,—to which she had given no second thought, in her discovery that she was not the child of those she called father and mother. Friendless, homeless, nameless,—yes, she reflected bitterly, that she hadneverbeen known by a Christian name,—she felt as though the solid earth had opened beneath her, and she was clinging desperately to some tiny twig or bough to prevent herself from being engulfed forever. She clung hysterically to Rosario, who had begun to laugh nervously. And so old Don José Maria found them, and querulously bade them go into the house; nothing but ill fortune would befall maidens who wandered alone in the dark; did they not know that the Devil stood always at the elbow of a woman after the sun set? With which second-hand and scurrilous wisdom the old philosopher ushered them into the dimly lighted dining-room. Doña Rita was there, and as the girls entered lifted her eyes, which were heavy with weeping, and for the first time in her life Chata saw in them aversion,—yes, actual fear and dislike.
The child sighed deeply, and sat down at a shaded corner. No one noticed that she ate nothing. The old man was sleepy, Doña Rita was occupied with Rosario, who grew more and more depressed. From her mother’s very kindness her daughter foreboded little good from the tidings she could give her.