XXIX.
Florencia fulfilled her mission well,—recalling skilfully to the minds of the elder gossips the events and doubts of years agone, and those suspicions, light as air, which had once before menaced the fair name and fame of her who later had been revered as a saint under the name of Sister Veronica.
It was natural after the excitement of Pedro’s disappearance had subsided that reminiscences of events in which he had figured should, in default of some new interest, rise to the stagnant surface of hacienda life, and be re-colored and adorned with suggestions probable or improbable, and that the favorite topic should be torn to shreds in its dissection, while the motive power of its appearance should in the excitement of discussion be utterly lost sight of. Florencia herself, in the interest of tracing the sequence of events, and in hearing attributed to the characters that had figured in her girlhood traits and deeds of which she had heard little or nothing at that bygone time, almost forgot that she was talking with a purpose, and therefore perhaps had a truly unprejudiced account to give to Chinita,—when she could again see her, for Doña Isabel had become a wary duenna, and the girl had had no opportunity of learning anything that might have thrown light upon the theory she had formed of her birth and parentage.
In his insufficient knowledge of the language, Ashley Ward let much of the gossip of the women who chatted about him as they performed their daily tasks pass entirely unheeded, while he pondered upon the very subjects which with more or less directness were discussed. But one morning he caught the name of Herlinda, and thenceforth all his senses were alert. Great was his surprise when he discovered this to be the name of a daughter of Doña Isabel who had been a beautiful girl when theAmerican was killed, and thenceforward his mind became preternaturally keen; so that he divined the meanings of words he had never heard before,—gestures, glances, the very inflection of a tone, became revelations to him.
Hitherto, without cogitating upon the matter, Ward had naturally assumed from hearing no reference to another that the newly married Carmen was the only child of Doña Isabel. Now he learned the tragical fate of Norberto and the existence of the elder and more beautiful daughter Herlinda, the cloistered nun; and she was for the time the theme of endless reminiscences and conjectures. Her winsome childhood; her early gayety and incomparable beauty; the open love of Gonzales; the suspected mutual attachment of the young American and the daring child, who with her mother’s pride had failed to inherit her mother’s strength of will; the murder of John Ashley; the time of the great sickness; the death of Mademoiselle La Croix; the effect of the shock and horror upon the mind and appearance of Herlinda; the scarcely whispered, faint, yet not wholly disproved suspicions which had floated over the name and fame of the daughter of a house too absolute in its ascendency and power to be lightly attacked; her removal from the hacienda; her strange rejection of the suit of one who had always been dear to her, and to whom her mother, in accordance with good and seemly usage, had pledged her; her renunciation of the world she had loved, and entrance to a convent, which she had held in horror,—all these circumstances were discussed from a dozen points of view.
And all he heard confirmed in Ashley’s mind the belief that the woman whom his cousin had loved was traced; that whether she had been actually a wife or no, she, Herlinda Garcia, the daughter of a woman whom it would be a mortal offence to approach upon such a subject, was the possible mother of a child which he could scarcely refuse to believe existed,—though here a new perplexity confronted him as (like the young officer, whom he regarded with a half-contemptuous amusement that should have prevented him from following any example set by so love-lorn a cavalier) he began to seek occasion for observing Chinita with an intensity that made her doubly the object of the jealous and ireful dislike of Rosario and hermother. To his alert and dispassionate mind circumstances pointed to this girl as the possible link between the families of Ashley and Garcia, though the most minute and patient observation only seemed to make absurd the supposition that American blood mingled in the fiery tide which filled her veins, colored her rich beauty, and vivified the scornful and stoical yet ambitious spirit, which as by a spell at the same moment repelled yet charmed both himself and the haughty Doña Isabel. What was the secret of the foundling’s influence? He cared not to analyze either his own mind or the irresistible fascination of Chinita; but that the girl, though not positively beautiful, and unmistakably repellent in her caustic yet stoical discontent and ambitious unrest, possessed a bewitching and bewildering grace far different from any he had ever beheld in woman, of whatever race or kindred, impressed him daily more and more deeply, while—But stubborn facts made speculation and efforts at inquiry alike futile.
As days passed on, a certain friendship sprang up between Ward and Don Rafael. They talked for hours over the political situation,—Ashley straining ear and mind to comprehend the administrador’s smooth and impressive utterances, and Don Rafael with grave politeness listening without a smile or gesture of amusement to the hesitating and often utterly incomprehensible attempts of the young American to deliver his opinions, or to make minute inquiry into reasons and events which often horrified as well as puzzled him. Don Rafael had the air of simplicity and candor which is so infinitely attractive to the stranger, and which presented so great a contrast to the lofty coldness of Doña Isabel and the grave and melancholy reticence of Feliz. Their demeanor left the baffling and depressing conviction that there was an infinity that they might reveal were but the right chord touched; while that of Don Rafael was satisfying in its cordiality, even while no response fulfilled the expectation that his fluent and kindly frankness appeared to encourage.
As soon as the state of his wound permitted, Ashley joined the administrador in his early morning rides to the fields and pastures, and learned much of the workings of a great hacienda. These rides were confined to the immediateneighborhood of the great house, and four or six armed men were invariably in attendance,—for, as Don Rafael explained with a smile, the administrador of the rich hacienda of Tres Hermanos was invested with the dignity of its possessors, his personal insignificance being absorbed in the state of those he represented; so that his person bore a fictitious value, and if seized by an enemy, either personal or political, would doubtless be held at a prince’s ransom, which the honor as well as the interest of his employers would force them to pay.
In the course of these rides they not infrequently approached the deserted reduction-works, and it was upon the first occasion that this happened that Don Rafael questioned the young American as to his relationship to the last director; and upon learning it, rehearsed with deep feeling the story of his murder, pointing out the very tree under which the bloody tragedy was enacted.
Ashley watched his countenance narrowly as he talked. His words, whose meaning might have been obscure to the foreigner, were rendered dramatic by the deep pathos of his tone and the expressive force of his gestures; even the men who rode behind drew near as his voice rose on the stillness of the air in a tale so foreign to the peace and beauty of the scene. As they skirted the low adobe wall and looked over upon the stagnant masses of mineral clay, the piles of broken ores, the adobe sheds and stables crumbling under rain and sun, Ashley was ready to credit the whispered words with which Don Rafael ended his narration; “Señor, it is said in the silent night, when the moon is at its full, phantoms of its old life revivify this deserted spot, and that its massive gates open at the call of a ghostly rider, who wears the form of that poor youth who after his last midnight ride came back feet foremost, recumbent, silent, from the tryst he had sallied forth to keep.”
“And did you know the woman?” gasped rather than demanded Ashley Ward.
“DidIknow the woman?” answered Don Rafael. “I know the woman? I was a stranger, and, truth to tell, no friend of Americans; a faithful husband withal, and was it likely, though he had them, this stranger would have shared secrets of a doubtful nature with me? WhenI said a ‘tryst’ I used it for want of a better word. What attraction should a man so refined, so engrossed in his affairs as this busy foreigner, find in the humble and rustic beauties of the village? For my part, I find it impossible to imagine such coarseness in a man so little likely to be governed by a base passion as Ashley appeared. You know your own people better than I can; what say you?”
“I say the same!” answered Ward, eagerly, with a keen glance at the sensitive dark face of the administrador. “Yet I know that my cousin loved; that he claimed to be married; that the lady—”
He paused,—some of the men were within hearing, listening like Don Rafael himself with rapt faces. That of Don Rafael lighted for a moment with an incredulous smile. “Ah, then therewasa woman?” he said. “That might be; but a marriage? Ah, Señor, if there had been that, all the world would have known it. You know but little of our laws if you suppose such a contract could be here secretly and legally made. If he claimed such to be the case, he was vilely deceived, or himself was—”
He stopped at the word, as if fearing to offend.
To urge the matter further seemed to Ashley worse than useless. He had learned enough of marriage laws in Mexico to feel that to mention the name of Herlinda Garcia in connection with that of Ashley was to cast upon it a slur such as could but bring upon him the resentment, and perhaps the revenge, of the family to which he was probably indebted for his very life, and certainly for a hospitality that merited respect for its liberality if not gratitude for its warmth.
“I shall never learn the truth,” he thought; “and why indeed should I seek it? My aunt was wise in her generation. Though ignorant of the possibilities or impossibilities of Mexican society and character, she wisely refrained from problems which its keenness and honor ignored or left unsolved. I will go back again in content to my houses and lands, to my silver and gold. I am despoiling no legitimate heir; and to imagine the existence of any other is an offence either to my cousin’s intelligence or honor, as well as to the chastity of a woman whom even in thought I must be a villain to asperse. Let but a momentary quiet come that I may be able toobtain the requisite funds, and I will abandon this senseless quest, and leave my murdered cousin to rest in peace in his forgotten grave, in this land of violence and mysteries.”
This was the resolve of one hour,—to be broken in the next, as the sight of a girl’s face or the sound of her voice, like a disturbing conscience, assured him that in absence the doubt, or rather the tantalizing certainty, would each day torment him more and more, and so make enjoyment of his wealth even more impossible than it had been when Mary’s sensitive imaginings had urged him upon his Quixotic errand.
Trivial and even ridiculous things often divert minds most harassed and burdened, and exert an influence when great and weighty matters would benumb or torture. It would have been impossible for Ashley Ward, in the embarrassment of his situation (for his funds in the City of Mexico were entirely cut off by its investment by the Liberals) and in the perplexity of his thoughts, to have entered with enjoyment upon any festivity or pleasure requiring exertion either of body or mind; but he was, quite unconsciously to himself, in the mood idly to view the little comedy which was enacted more and more freely before his eyes,—just as in seasons of deepest grief and anxiety one may seek mechanical employment for the eye and relief for the brain in the perusal of a tale so light that neither the strain of a nerve or a thought, nor the excitement of pleasure or pain, shall awaken emotion or burden memory.
Fernando Ruiz was too wily a youth, too courteous, too kind, to throw off at once the semblance of devotion to a goddess who had lured him to a shrine that held a divinity whose charms, in his inconstant sight, so far surpassed her own that he could not choose but transfer his worship, even were it but to be disdained and rejected. In the decorous visits he made to Doña Rita and when they met at table, he would still sigh and cast despairing glances at the bridling Rosario, who but that she intercepted others more fervent still, directed toward the upper end of the board where Doña Isabel and Chinita sat in lonely state, would have believed quite true the tale with which her mother strove to console her,—using such feeble prevaricationas is usual in Mexican families when ill news is to be ultimately communicated, in the fond hope of softening a blow which doubt and procrastination can but cause to be the more nervously dreaded. But well was Rosario convinced that though Ruiz held daily conferences with her father, and even once or more was honored by a few moments’ speech with Doña Isabel, it was not of her or of love that they spoke; and with a philosophic determination to replace with a more faithful lover the fickle admirer whom she could cease to love but would never forgive, the piqued, but lightly wounded damsel began to turn a shoulder upon the recreant soldier and her smiles upon the stranger.
Ward was perhaps singularly free from vanity, or too much absorbed to notice the honor paid him; but with a sense of angry surprise he became aware that Chinita no longer ignored the existence of the persistent languisher, who at early morning paced the court in trim riding-suit of leather, a gay serape thrown negligently over his left shoulder, his wide-brimmed hat poised at the angle whence he could see the door of her room open, and Chinita rival the sun in dazzling his enchanted eyes. At noon he stood in the self-same spot in gay uniform, from which by some miraculous process all stain and grime had disappeared; and not infrequently at evening he reappeared in the holiday dress of some clerk, who for the time had lent his jacket of black velvet trimmed with silver buttons, or his riding-suit of stamped leather and waist-scarf of scarlet silk, well pleased to fancy he was represented by the lithe young officer, who filled them with a grace that made them thenceforth of treble value in the owner’s eyes.
This masquerade might have continued indefinitely,—for Ruiz wearied no sooner of changing fine clothes than of descanting to Ashley of his sudden but undying passion for the young Chinita, whose fortunes he conceived, as the favored of Doña Isabel Garcia, would be as brilliant as her charms,—but that first, one by one, then in twos and threes, in tens and dozens, men flocked into the adjacent villages; and though reluctant to be torn from gentler pursuits, yet proud to form and command a regiment, the young adventurer was set the task of bringing order out of the wild and discordant elements,—a task forwhich the training of his life, and his peculiar knowledge of the material with which he had to work, more fitted him than any especial talent, however brilliant, in the conduct of ordinary military affairs would have done.
The young officer’s vanity was flattered, for in some occult way the responsibility of the spontaneous rally was thrown upon his shoulders, and he became the central figure in a movement which within a few days assumed a picturesque and imposing character. He himself assumed that the magic of his name had called from their rocky lairs these mountain banditti, these sturdy vaqueros, these apathetic but resolute rancheros who trooped in, bringing with them rusty carbines and shotguns, and sometimes polished Henry and Sharp’s rifles, which the enterprise of speculative Americans had introduced into the country. There was no choice of weapons, but every one brought something,—a silver-mounted pistol, worthless as pretentious, or a strong and formidable short-sword, or glittering curved sabre, forged in some mountain or village smithy.
It seemed too that by mere force of will money came into the captain’s hands, and that clothing, horses, and provisions were thus brought forth from the stores and fields of Tres Hermanos; that plans were laid, and adverse possibilities provided against, a way marked out and guides provided; and that he suddenly found himself at the head of a force more fully equipped than any he had before beheld,—men eager for adventure and battle, and clamorous to be led to join the forces of Gonzales, who while the cause with which he sympathized was meeting bloody reverses around the City of Mexico in which the Clerical forces were concentrated, was daily attracting in the interior formidable additions to the numbers of the Liberals. The tales of Conservative despotism and barbarity, which later investigations proved to have been well founded, aided much in influencing the masses to seek a change of evils, even where hopeless of any lasting benefit from the new condition of affairs which it was proposed to inaugurate.
A people who had for generations found in changes of government simply fresh despotisms and encroachments were not likely to be as enthusiastic in discussion as madfor action,—for crushing and destroying the old, and seizing upon all available booty, not as necessary to the success of their cause, but as a despoilment of the enemy. And upon this principle it within a few days happened that Tres Hermanos presented more the appearance of a forced than a voluntary contributor to the military necessities of the time. Not only the common soldiers but those who were to lead them,—most of them men as skilled in ordering the sacking of a hacienda as in defending a mountain pass or assaulting some unwary town,—had poured in and filled every vacant nook in the village huts, and occupied the long-deserted reduction-works and the ruinous huts along the watercourse, and overran the courts and yards of the great house itself.
The great conical storehouses of small grains and corn were opened and the mill invaded by the soldiers, who under the half-reluctant directions of the skilled workmen kept the somewhat primitive machinery in constant motion,—varying their employment by breaking the half-wild horses brought in from the wide pastures and talking love to the village girls, who in all their lives had never before beheld a holiday-making half so delightful.
The long-closed church too was thrown open, and a priest from the next village was busied all day long shriving the sins of those whom he shrewdly suspected were ready to raise the standard of revolt against the temporal rule of the Church, whose ghostly powers had overshadowed earth with the terrors of its supernatural dominion.
Ruiz had gained a certain fame, more as a reflection from that of the man with whom he had been associated than from any daring episodes in his own career; and he actually possessed a military training that ordinarily well filled the place of innate genius, and at other times counterfeited it. He had impressed Don Rafael as a man well suited, if hedged with precautions, to lead the forces that his representations induced Doña Isabel to send to the relief of her favorite Gonzales. A leader of more positive aspirations and declared opinions than Ruiz manifested, would not so happily have welded and moulded men of such diverse and conflicting elements,—men who, accustomed to the freedom of guerilla warfare, were moreready to be led by the glitter than the substance of authority. A man of straw, who though answering a purpose for the time could create no diversion of devotion to his own person in detriment to the supremacy of Gonzales, was sought and found in Ruiz. He was indeed the simple tool of Doña Isabel Garcia, manipulated by her administrador, yet so skilfully that he came to think himself the moving power which from an isolated farmhouse had within a few days changed Los Tres Hermanos into a military camp.
In proportion with the importance of the position into which Ruiz was forced his love and daring grew, and he remembered that many men of family as obscure, and certainly of less tact and talent than he, had crowned their fortunes by marriage with beautiful daughters of rich houses; and he even began to reflect with some dissatisfaction upon Chinita’s doubtful status, although a few days before he had despaired of rising to a height where he might dare so much as touch the hand of Doña Isabel’s favoredprotégée.
These changes of feeling were watched from day to day with amusement by Ashley Ward, and with rage by Pepé, as with despair he saw himself fading completely from the horizon of Chinita’s life, and a new and dazzling star rising upon her view. More than once Ashley Ward saw him nervously fingering the knife in his belt, as the unconscious Ruiz stood by the fountain in the moonlight and strummed the strings of a bandoline, and in the shrill tenor which seems the natural vehicle of such weird strains sang thepaloma, “the Dove,” orTe amo, “I love thee,”—sounds pleasing in any female ear, though doubtless, thought Doña Isabel, intended to reach the heart of one particular fair one; at which she smiled as she imagined this to be the pretty brown Rosario, while the tender notes in reality appealed not quite in vain to the girl who with a remarkable semblance of patience shared the seclusion of her own life.
Once only had Chinita rebelled, and that was when, instead of her usual ramble in the garden with Feliz or Doña Isabel herself, she had asked to be driven through the village, past the reduction-works, that she might see the preparations of which the distant sounds reached her.She would not be appeased at Doña Isabel’s refusal, even by the suggestion that she should stand upon the balcony of the central window, whence she could overlook the scene for miles; and so contrary was her humor that Doña Isabel was glad to agree to her sudden fancy that her old playfellow Pepé should be allowed to describe to her what he had seen. “Men see more than women,” the wilful girl exclaimed; “he will tell me something more than of the chickens that are stolen, and the number of tortillas that are eaten. Ay, Dios! I would I were a man myself, to be a soldier!”
So toward evening a message brought by Doña Feliz herself startled the sullen Pepé. Ashley Ward watched the youth with some curiosity as he sauntered across the court and ascended the stone stairs. Pepé’s dress that day was in a Saturday’s state of grime, and at best consisted of a shabby suit of yellow buckskin, from which the metal buttons had mostly dropped, and which gaped at the armholes as widely as at the waistband; and his leathern sandals and sombrero of woven grass showed signs of age, corresponding to that of the ragged blanket he wore with such an air that he might have been taken for the very king of idle loungers.
Doña Isabel glanced up at him as he muttered the customary salutation, uncovering his shock of black hair and inclining his head to her, while his black eyes furtively sought Chinita. There was nothing in his appearance for the most careful duenna to fear, and although Doña Isabel remembered that a few weeks ago those two had been equals, they now seemed as widely sundered as the poles; and knowing the prolixity with which the ordinary ranchero usually approached and gave his views upon any subject, she withdrew to the lower end of the gallery, where she might count her beads or con her thoughts undisturbed. The murmur of voices reached her with sufficient distinctness for her to know that the usual process of minute questioning and tantalizing indefiniteness of answer was in progress; and at length, soothed by the warm still air, the low song of a bird in the orange-tree which exhaled a sweet and heavy odor, and the habitual absorption of her own reflections, she failed to notice that the murmur of the voices grew less and less distinct,and indeed blended faintly with the low medley of sounds peculiar to the coming eveningtide.
“Pepé,” Chinita was saying then, in a tone a little above a whisper, “tell me, is it true that this Don Fernando Ruiz, who for love of Rosario, and to please Don Rafael and Doña Isabel, is to lead these recruits to join Don Gonzales,—tell me, is it true that he was the associate of that Ramirez who was here so many years ago?”
“It is likely,” answered Pepé, sullenly. “I have heard that he is Ramirez’s godson; and what more likely,” he added in an undertone, “than that the Devil should stand sponsor for an imp of his own blackness?”
“In that case,” said Chinita, sharply, “it is impossible Ruiz has pronounced against him. Who ever heard of a godchild drawing sword against his sponsor? It should be against his father or brother rather. Go to, Pepé, you and I know nothing of Puro or Mocho. Bah! they know not the difference one from the other themselves; but we do know Ramirez and Gonzales, and it is the first that I love. What are you frowning at, Pepé? Oh! oh! oh! you are jealous, as you used to be of Pancho and Juan and Gabriel! What an idea! Ha! ha! ha!”
“Why do you laugh so loudly?” asked Doña Isabel across the corridor, not displeased to see her merry.
“Because he was telling me how the Tia Gomesinda broke the jar over the shoulders of the brave recruit who drained it of her last boiling of corn gruel,” answered Chinita, readily. “But excuse me, Señora, I will not disturb you again;” and she turned with a conciliatory smile toward Pepé, who was regarding her with an expression of malignant idolatry,—if such an extravagant phrase may be coined, to indicate a love which was capable of destroying, but never of renouncing, its object.
“Thou art more unmannerly and more easily vexed than when thou usedst to follow me through the corn and bean fields, bending under the loads of wild fruit and flowers I piled upon thee, and then throwing them down some stony ravine because of one sharp word I would give thee. How canst thou expect ever to be aught but a poor ranchero, with a temper so unreasonable?”
“And what if I were as patient as Saint Stephen himself, what would it matter? Thou wouldst not love me,”answered the young man. “And what care I whether I am poor or rich, ranchero or soldier? It is all one now that thou art with Doña Isabel. Why, if thou wert her child she could not be more choice of thee. Those who ate from the same plate and drank from the same bowl with thee are less than the dogs who followed thee;” and he would have kicked, had it been near enough, the cur which had been Pedro’s, and which like many others had the undisputed right to the corridor, and with patient obstinacy chose to lie at Chinita’s door.
The young girl looked up with a tantalizing smile. She had been used to these speeches of covert jealousy, which she feigned to take as the envy of an ill-mannered ranchero. “Pshaw!” she said gazing at him through her half-closed lids, and yet from beneath the long lashes that veiled them casting a languorous though wholly unstudied glance, which dazzled and thrilled him, “‘friends, bacon, and wine should be old!’ What friend like an old friend? He is better than a new-found relation. It is he who will do a bidding and ask no reason for it; it is he—”
“What can I do for thee?” whispered Pepé, hoarsely. “Tell me, and thou shalt see whether I am a friend or no; and then Chinita thou wilt—”
“Sh-h!” interrupted Chinita, her finger again on her lip. “What does it matter to me who wins or loses in these senseless battles? Yet I wonder thou art not with Pedro; I would not have him sick or wounded, and alone,” and her eyes filled with tears. Pepé moved from foot to foot, and rubbed his shoulder against the wall uneasily. There was a covert reproach in her tone which he resented, and yet it pleased him too that she should be troubled: if Pedro were remembered, he could not himself be wholly forgotten.
“It is not my fault,” he muttered: “he stole away in the night. Some say after all he has not gone to Gonzales, and that the men who are gathered here may find themselves led to Ramirez. At any rate this Ruiz—who you say loves Rosario, but who sighs like a furnace when his eye lights on you, and who has worn away the post of his door writing verses to your praise with the point of his rapier—should be but little to be trusted.”
“Ah!” ejaculated Chinita, “I do not think thou lovesthim, Pepito. Thou wouldst not that he should do me a favor instead of thyself?”
“I would see him choked first with the wine in which he drinks a toast to thine eyes,” answered Pepé, hotly. “Señor Don ’Guardo and I are in the same mind about that; but it is not that he thinks thee a beauty,” he added hastily.
Chinita flushed and tossed her head proudly. “What matters it what Don ’Guardo thinks?” she said. “There could be nothing but ill luck in the favor of a man like that. Hast thou shown him the grave of the other American? Ah, thou must know where to find it. Didst thou think I did not see thee following me behind the tuñas and bushes the day I found it after I had bidden thee go back? Thou wert like Negrito there. Come here, Negrito; thou art lean and black, but I love thee;” and she stooped to pat the slinking cur. “Ah, ah! Pepito, it would be a good jest if thou wouldst show Don ’Guardo the American’s grave, and tell him Chinita bids him beware of the same fortune.”
“He would think thee a gypsy more than ever, and a saucy one,” answered Pepé. “But I know this is not the favor thou wouldst ask of me. Thou art thinking ever of Ramirez, who bewitched thee. Ask it of the Captain Ruiz rather than me. I would die for thee, but I see not how I can serve thee by turning traitor.”
Chinita started up angrily. “Am I a false-hearted wretch to ask it of thee?” she cried furiously, though in a low voice. “Ramirez fights for the side of right. Is it his fault if the Clergy are right to-day and the Liberals tomorrow? Were not he and Gonzales upon the same side when they were here years ago? Were not his men crying ‘Dios y Libertad!’ when they passed here six months ago? And suppose the cry is changed. Bah! with Doña Isabel’s men he would be of Doña Isabel’s opinion! What does it matter to him? He is a man to fight, not to sit down like Don Rafael and the major-domo, old Don Tomas, and talk, talk, talk!”
“That is very well,” said Pepé, staidly; “but why do you not tell this all to Doña Isabel? Or listen, now: to please thee I will seek Pedro,—I warrant me he is not so far away,—and I will tell him how thou wouldst haveRamirez rather than Gonzales to lead the troops; if it matters not to him,ciertoit will not to me! But I tell thee frankly I would be of those who would pull down rather than build up churches. I see no gain to be had in fighting for the Señores the bishops, who have so much already that the poor man can have nothing but leave to fast while the priests revel in plenty. Go to, Chinita! thou hast heard Pedro talk of freedom as much as I have. If Don Benito Juarez and Don Vicente and the rest of them gain the day, I—why I might be an alcalde myself, or a general; and then—well, anything thou wilt!”
Chinita laughed and nodded at him. “It is the Señor Ramirez who could bring about all that,” she said with conviction; “and, Pepé, though thou dost not love the Captain Ruiz, thou shalt take him that message from Chinita. Yes, yes! go thy way quietly to Pedro, and if there is treason, Ruiz shall work it. So the General Ramirez shall be brought over to our side, and Ruiz shall be the only man who will be blamed, if Doña Isabel is vexed.”
Pepé shook his head doubtfully. His views were no clearer than Chinita’s, but they were not additionally obscured by an unreasoning enthusiasm for a self-created hero. Doña Isabel was rising from her chair; the rattle of the wood upon the bricks startled the two speakers.
“How goes it with thy sister Juana?” asked Chinita, lightly. “She told me once she loved Gabriel because, though he was old and ugly, he would do more to please her than all the young and handsome lovers. Are they happy, do you think, or has he beaten her already, as I said he would?”
Pepé looked at her keenly and with an expression of wild hope from behind the wide hat he was holding in both hands before his face, in awkward preparation for departure. Would Chinita too marry the man who would please her? And after all it was but a little thing,—just a hint to the man whose admiration she jeered at.
“Thou canst go now, Pepé,” said Doña Isabel, approaching. “I am sure the Señorita has heard enough of the wild doings of these mad soldiers. Thank Heaven, they leave us soon! Ah, now that I think of it, thou mayst say to the Señor Americano that Captain Ruiz told me to-day he would gladly give him safe escort as far upontheir way as their roads may lie together; and—but I forgot, such messages are not for thee. I will send them by the Señor Administrador.”
Pepé muttered his adieus and bowed himself away in some confusion. Chinita looked after him meaningly; he caught her glance and then the motion of her lips. His heart beat wildly; they formed the refrain of a popular song,—
“Adios, my dearest love!”
“Adios, my dearest love!”
“Adios, my dearest love!”
“Adios, my dearest love!”
Pepé reached the court quite dizzy. Ashley Ward and Captain Ruiz were both waiting for him. His excitement had reached a crisis. He seized Ruiz by the arm. “If you would please her,” he hissed in his ear, “find Ramirez, and let him, and not Gonzales, lead the troops.”
“You are drunk!” answered Ruiz; yet he clutched the youth by the arm, and led him into his room.
Pepé came to his senses with the shock as he sank upon a stone bench against the cold, hard wall. Presently he gave a brief account of Chinita’s desires and reasons. Ruiz listened without a smile. Childish and unprincipled as they were, they were not more so than scores he had heard discussed in the course of the years of anarchy in which he had entered upon manhood. Find Ramirez, pledge him to the Liberal cause, leave it to him to gain such an ascendency over the troops that they would themselves proclaim him their leader! It was an easy task. It set him thinking, and Pepé slunk away to hope, to doubt, to despair, to hope again.
“Adios, my dearest love!”—
“Adios, my dearest love!”—
“Adios, my dearest love!”—
“Adios, my dearest love!”—
just the refrain of a song, yet it pursued and bewildered him. For less, stronger men than Pepé the ranchero have committed unimaginable crimes.
The next morning when they met in the court, Captain Ruiz stopped Pepé. “Tell her her wishes are law to me!” he said. “If she but love me, I—”
“Caramba!” cried Pepé, savagely. “Am I an old woman or a priest that I should carry your messages? She love you! she would needs have been born to lead apes, to love you.” And Pepé flung himself off in a rage, while the astounded Ruiz gazed after him in open-mouthed amazement.
“By my life, he loves her himself!” he muttered vacantly. “Señor Don ’Guardo, heard you ever such presumption? The bare-skin beggar loves the favorite—what shall we say?—niece of Doña Isabel!”
“Let us say you are both fools!” said Don ’Guardo in good round English and with a sudden rage, the motive of which was to himself inexplicable; and the discomfited captain bowed, not doubting that his own expression of disgust had been echoed.
“Caramba!a woman so beautiful gazed at by every beggar, like an image of the Virgin of Remedios carried in procession! I swear I will not forget thee, Pepito, and will keep a close eye on thee, now I know thou hast been tampered with!” continued Ruiz, hotly. “A word to the General Gonzales will be enough if he is of my mind!”
That day, in spite of Doña Isabel’s diligence, a pink note found its way to Chinita. “Good!” she said after reading it, “My General Ramirez will have the men; the Señor Gonzales will be helped, and Doña Isabel will do a double good. This is not so bad a subject,—this Ruiz; and his eyes are as black and large as those of Ramirez himself. All is well. All things will come right at last. Ah, if only what Don Rafael told Feliz one night should come true, and the convents are opened, then—”
She paused. It seemed too utterly impossible even to dream of. She looked again at her first love-letter; a twinge of remorse seized her as she thought of Rosario. She laughed, but she tore the paper into infinitesimal shreds.
What was the writer thinking? “Onward! I have gone too far to turn back even at the word of Chinita. A promise will gain her love, but the essential thing is the good-will of Doña Isabel. ‘A pearl is all the better for a golden setting!’ No treaties then with Ramirez. Though he is my godfather, I need not his patronage. Doña Isabel, a straight path, and Juarez! Forward! Ruiz, fortune favors you!”