XXXV.
In an angle of the corridor, where from sunrise to sunset a woman usually sat, selling cigarettes and small glasses ofchiato the passers-by, stood a lowbanquito, which was in fact only a superfluous adobe jutting out from the massive wall. Ashley withdrew his foot from this rude stool and greeted Chinita ceremoniously, and yet with an air of protecting authority, inviting her by a gesture to be seated, saying, “So you will be less likely to be seen by any chance comer. But from necessity, I would not have asked you to speak to me here.”
The girl looked at him with a little quiver of laughter rippling her mouth, though her eyes were anxious. Evidently she was troubled with no sense of impropriety, and the thought of having eluded Doña Isabel diverted her. Instead of obeying Ashley’s invitation, she darted to Pepé’s side, caught a fold of his blanket in her hand, and drew it from his half-covered face.
“Ah, Pepito, and is it thou?” she cried breathlessly. “What news dost thou bring me? Hast thou then seen my godfather, and what does he say of the Señor General? Does he not think the plan a good one?”
Pepé shuffled uneasily to regain possession of the blanket, answering pettishly and in a stifled voice, “Is the servant to talk when the master stands by with the words ready? Go now, Chinita, you knew better than that when Florencia used to pull your ears for a saucy one!”
The girl pouted, turning to Ashley with a lowering face. She felt instinctively that what had been to her a matter of simple expediency, a means of securing the fortunes of a man who was in her imagination all that was noble and great, might have a meaner aspect to this stranger, who would perhaps think she had meant harm to Doña Isabel. Why had Pepé dragged this American into the matter at all? Idiot! Ruiz had said nothing butevil would come of it; and here was the stranger standing so straight and silent to be questioned,—and looking at her, too, with a sort of pity in the curious gaze he turned upon her. She felt half inclined to turn back to the room whence she had come; yet she said somewhat mockingly,
“It is you, Señor, who must speak, though it was the servant I sent on my errand; but perhaps you have seen Pedro and asked him my questions?”
“You had better sit down, Chinita,” answered Ashley, severely. “I should not be here to-night if it were not to tell you things hard for you to listen to, and only to learn of matters of life or death should you have consented to come. Heavens! what a strange perversity of fate that you of all others should be anxious for the welfare, infatuated with the character, of—Ramirez!”
He spoke the name as though it were a curse, and the ready flame leaped into Chinita’s eyes and cheek.
“Ah, then,” she said, in a low but intense and penetrating tone, “you have come to tell me, like the others, that he is a brigand and a wretch! It is false! He is too brave, too daring, too noble for such cowardly spirits as yours to understand! Pepé, thou wert a craven. Stupid, it was Pedro I bade thee go to, not to this pale American, who has lost all his blood through a single wound!”
Ashley smiled faintly, vexed to find himself stung by a girl’s unreasoning passion, but interposed quietly, “We lose time, Señorita, which is prudent neither for you nor for me. I beg you will listen to what I have to say. You will agree with me then that this is no hour to talk of my courage or the lack of it.”
He had stepped between her and Pepé, to whom with a strange perversity she turned as if to show her disdain for the foreigner, whose every word had a tone of reproach. A mere suggestion that the proprieties which Doña Feliz and Doña Isabel had attempted to graft upon the rude stalk of her untrained, unguarded childhood had some other meaning than an elder’s caprices, touched Chinita’s mind: a young man could know nothing of woman’s freaks and prejudices; she felt the hot blood rising to her cheek as she encountered his quiet gaze. All at once the court and corridor seemed to become wonderfully darkand still. A slight shudder ran through her frame; she drew back from the American and sat down where he had directed her, drawing her reboso close around her.
“Señor,” she said, quite humbly, “I am listening.”
Ashley did not speak at once, though Pepé seemed to urge him to do so by a motion of the head, which betokened readiness to confirm his speech; and when he began, it was at a point entirely unexpected by either listener.
“Señorita,” he said, “is it not true that when you think of an American, you have in your mind a pale-faced, mysterious, unresisting youth, gliding spectre-like about the hacienda walls, tempting by a love-song the bloody steel of some dark and daring desperado? In a word, is it not the vision—distorted, insufficient, faint—of my murdered cousin, John Ashley, that comes before you?”
The young girl started. “Yes! yes!” she said hurriedly, not knowing what she said. “At least, once I thought like that. I had not seen an American then; I did not know—”
“And the first American you have known has had the benefit of the preconception,” interrupted Ashley, grimly. “Well, it is something to know the secret of a contemptuous indifference which has always been so frankly expressed.” This comment was in English, and though Chinita watched the motion of his lips, their silence could not have given her better opportunity to recover her confused and startled thoughts.
“Then it is true,” she said. “You are of the family of the poor American, who was killed like a rabbit by a hawk. Why, they say that he could not have even clapped his hand on his belt, though amanfrom very instinct would draw a knife on his enemy, even in his last gasp. Is it not so, Pepito? I used to tell Chata that, when she would shed her soft tears of pity for him. Well, I could not cry, but I have watched at the mesquite-tree for the coming of his ghost a thousand times; yet I never saw it—and it was I who found his grave.”
“And it was you who bade Pepé show it me,” interrupted Ashley; “and perhaps not as a mere jest as he thought.” She nodded, looking up at him vaguely and keenly. “You thought perhaps I had come these many miles from my own country to find it?” he added. “Well,that was scarcely so; it had not presented itself to me as possible that the obscure grave of a murdered foreigner should be remembered still, and that his name should be found above it. No, I came for proofs of John Ashley’s life, not of his death. It was not even to trace his murderer or to avenge him that I came.”
She looked incredulous. “Why then should you come?” she asked. “Had you a vow? If I had known and loved the dead man, it would have been to kill the man who struck him in secret that I would have come. But it is as Captain Ruiz says,—the blood of an American runs so slowly it cools his heart, while ours is a burning torrent that causes the soul to leap and the hand to smite at a word.”
Ashley realized that impatient contempt of him was struggling with a feeling to which, with sudden apprehension of its importance, she dared not give utterance; or perhaps the idea that had long been shaping itself was for the moment obscured, but yet in the darkness and confusion was growing to an overwhelming certainty in her mind. Chinita had risen to her feet, but suddenly she sat down, covering her face with a hand which Ashley saw in the dim light shook with suppressed excitement. Her attitude was that of a listener; and in a low voice he told her of his boyhood, of the days when he had come in from school and stood at the shoulder of his grown cousin,—the young man with the silky shadow just darkening his upper lip, and with the clear frank eyes of a boy, who looked so eagerly forward into the active life of manhood, restive under the restraints and cautions that hampered him, until at last he broke away, and was no more seen, nor scarcely heard of, until the news of his early and violent death came to cast an unending gloom over the household, which before had been captious, foreboding, but ever loving, ever secretly proud of the bold, irrepressible spirit it could not chain to its standard of decorum, or tame to walk in the narrow path of uneventful and passionless existence. The years of his own youth he passed lightly by; there was nothing in them for comment until he came to the time of his aunt’s death, his inheritance of the fortune that should have been John Ashley’s, the reading of those few letters which had givento Mary Ashley such strange dreams, and which in the re-reading had filled his mind with thoughts of the same possibilities that racked her own. He spoke of them briefly in a single sentence: “We found by his letters that he believed himself married; it was to find the woman he had loved, or any trace of her, that I came.”
Chinita sat so still one might have doubted if she heard; but that very stillness convinced Ashley that she listened with an absorbing interest, too great for questioning. She could but wait breathlessly for what was to come.
“After long and vexatious wanderings I was taken wounded to Tres Hermanos,” continued the young man. “There, when my hope was almost exhausted, I heard the name that had been in my mind so long,—heard it only to make inquiries which ended in confusion, and threatened to involve me in endless complications; so at last I was glad to suffer myself to be convinced that my conjectures were the mere vagaries of an overburdened fancy, a too scrupulous conscience, and to turn my face homeward, determined that thereafter I would live my life, and take in peace the goods fortune sent me. In such a mind I rode with the troop across the plain and up the desolate hillside, along which the scattered graves of the poor lay, the mounds scarce noticeable among the rocks and cacti. Pepé remembered your jesting command; it would give him an opportunity to withdraw from the troops unheeded. He invited me to go with him to see something that would interest me. When I saw the grave, my heart began to beat; when I read the name upon the fallen cross, the blood rushed into my eyes and suffocated me; every drop in my heart accused me! There lay my cousin murdered, and in looking for a possible claimant to his name, I had forgotten him! I had forgotten that his death was still unatoned for, the murderer undiscovered, unsought, unpunished.”
Chinita dropped her hand from her face and looked up, her eyes glowing, her lips apart, her bosom rising and falling with the quick breath that came and went. Here were words she could understand; here was a spirit that touched her own.
“And then, then, then?” she muttered; and Pepéleaned out from the wall, like a gaunt shadow, to hear the narration, as if every word was too significant to allow a single one to escape him. “Then?”
“Then,” resumed Ashley, “I seemed chained to the spot. I could not tear myself away, though reason told me that to stay there was useless; to hasten forward and demand the truth from those I had hitherto shrunk from offending, the only course open to me. Reason as I would, I could not force myself to leave the spot. After a time, yielding to necessity and to my command, Pepé left me. I was alone for hours with the dead. My mind was full of him; I heard his voice; I looked into the eyes which death had closed for so many unregarded years. I saw before me that face which I had so long forgotten; but my fancy pictured him never as in life, gay, happy, resolute, but pale, bloody, corpse-like, stretching out dead hands to me and speaking with the soundless voice of those we dream of. Who remembers the tone of a voice, silent forever? Yet it echoes in our heart; it awakens our joys, our griefs, our fears; it is more powerful, more terrible, than any living voice. And so upon that day was the voice of the dead John Ashley to me. As I listened to it, I swore never to leave Mexico until the mystery of his death, as well as that of his life, was open to me; until I had called to account the villain who had cut him off so secretly, so vilely.
“While I was full of the thought, and the whole world around me seemed to stretch on every side silent, void, waiting for me to choose whither I would go, in what direction I would set out to seek the nameless object of the new absorbing passion, which seemed more vital, more essential to my being than the air I breathed, I felt a presence near me. I looked up,—a man was leaning over the wall. I instantly conjectured he was not the mere peasant his dress indicated. A sense of mysterious connection between his life and mine seized upon me; it strengthened as he crossed the wall and strode toward me over the sunken graves. He came as though under a spell; I looked upon him as if under the fascination of a serpent-like gaze. I recoiled, yet for worlds I would not have turned from him. His eyes fell upon the cross; the expression of his face, the words that sprang from his lips,—vaguethough they were,—sped to my brain with anelectricelectricthrill. I knew the man before me was John Ashley’s murderer.”
Chinita had risen. She stretched out her hand and touched the hilt of the knife in Ashley’s belt. It was the action of a moment, yet it was a question that the quick beating of her heart and the panting breath made at the instant impossible from her lips. Ashley answered it by a brief account of the combat and its interruption.
As he ended, she drew a deep breath of relief. It did not occur to him that it could be for any other than himself. It flattered and pleased him, for an instant he realized how deeply, as having in it something of the tender unreasoning fears of gentle womanhood. Yet the readiness with which she had comprehended his passion for revenge, while it justified him, had set her in a harsh and cruel aspect, which made her lithe, dark beauty forbidding, unrelenting, tiger-like. Yet this strange young creature, he thought, at once so foreign to him, and still so near, concealed after all, under the surface of incomprehensible moods and half barbaric customs, those attributes of gentleness, those instincts of justness, which amidst the perplexing differences of national manners and standards of good and evil may be distinguished and understood by every mind. At that moment Ashley felt her to be less an alien than he had ever been able before to consider her. She was not only beautiful, bewitching, but in part, at least, comprehensible.
Chinita stood silent for many moments; she had not even started when he spoke the name Ramirez. The personality of the man of whom he had spoken had been a foregone conclusion in her mind.
“It was the amulet I gave him that saved him,” she said simply; and Ashley stared at her blankly, not comprehending the meaning of her words, but only that the relief she had experienced had been rather for the aggressor than for him. Had he then been mistaken? Was she an entire stranger to the thought which so permeated his own mind that he had imagined it must be present in hers?
“Yes, the amulet that I gave him must have all the virtues Pedro told me of,” she said musingly. “So it wasthe General Ramirez who killed the American?Dios mio!he must have had good cause; yet it angers me. Ah! it is well I have time to think what cause he must have had!”
“Cause!” ejaculated Ashley, “cause!”
The girl nodded her head in an argumentative way. In the dim light Ashley could read the struggle in her mind,—indignation at the deed, dismay at its consequences, battling with attempted justification of the perpetrator. “By my patron saint!” she exclaimed at length, “it was the woman who was to blame. Why did she torture him? He must have loved her; and what was there in the American to make her false to Ramirez? Strange she should have preferred another to him!”
“For God’s sake say no more!” cried Ashley, with actual horror in his voice. “I forgot that this tale has no deeper significance to you than any other; that the American is to you simply an American, and Ramirez the hero of your own countrymen, by whose desperate deeds your imagination is dazzled, and for whom, even in the midst of horror, you find excuse, admiration, justification. To you he seems but a jealous lover, taking just revenge upon a successful rival.”
Chinita spoke not a word, but bent her head as though his words were an accusation. Her face, in the dim light, was so impassive it was impossible for Ashley to conjecture what was passing in her mind. Did she remember that he had said he had come to seek a child, and was it possible that the mystery of her own birth had not suggested to her that she might have an interest in the ghastly deed of Ramirez far deeper than would make natural or possible to her the excuse of jealousy in the perpetrator? He had learned something of the reticence and self-restraint of these people since he had come among them; yet was it possible this young girl could suspend judgment in such a cause until her own relation to it was fully ascertained? Were prejudice, education, sentiment, so much stronger than the voice of Nature? Did no instinct cry in her heart, denouncing this man, of whom she had made a hero,—no womanly pity hover over his victim? What a ready apprehension she had shown of Ashley’s own desire for vengeance! Was that simply because it was the passionstrongest in her own soul, and so gave to her ready excuse even for murder?
Under the moonlight it seemed to him that the young girl’s face grew hard as marble. No, she was not one to yield her faith lightly. This deed, which had filled the mind of Chata with dismay, and intensified a thousand-fold the horror in which she held the character of the man whom she believed it sin not to reverence and love, would in no wise shake the faith and admiration of this stronger soul, who could condone it with the thought that a woman had played the murderer false.
“Yet with all this, Señor,” she said at length, looking up, “if you have no more to tell me, I see not why this should turn me against the Señor General. For you it is different—oh, quite different; but for me,—” She paused suddenly, and Ashley saw that the hand which hung at her side was clenched till the nails marked her flesh.
Yes, the deed itself was nothing,—a trifle, at most,—but in its relation to her, how great, how terrible, it might become!
Ashley was not deceived. He felt that by a word he might fan into a resistless flame the fire that lay smouldering in that resolute heart,—a word which would be no surprise to her, which would but confirm the conviction against which, in loyalty to Ramirez, she struggled with even a certain anger against the persistent suspicion that made the legendary and unheroic figure of the American a mute denouncer, more powerful, more persuasive, than the living man who had revealed the author of the tragedy which through all her life had been so dark a mystery. It seemed to Ashley that she held her breath to listen to his next words; but he could be as hard as she was herself to this girl, whose heart seemed incapable of feeling aught but a personal injury, or any passion but revenge.
“Señorita,” he said, “I went back to the hacienda. My horse had fled; there was nothing else for me to do, if I would find means to follow this man who had suddenly become my debtor in all the dues of outraged kinship. My object was to obtain money, a horse and guide, and to regain the troop as quickly as should be possible; to denounce this murderer to Doña Isabel, and reveal the plot against her interests which had appeared to me soweak, so absolutely absurd, but which now assumed an importance commensurate with my detestation of him whom it was designed to serve. But with further thought my resolution changed. If all her agents were false,—Pedro, Ruiz, as well as you, whom I know to be” (Chinita winced),—“and Pepé should be successful in inducing Pedro to play into the hands of Ramirez, what power could Doña Isabel employ to prevent that change of leadership which it was more than probable the troops—indifferent to the cause, eager only for action and booty—would accept with acclamations? Clearly, my only course was to proceed to El Toro and arouse the too confident Gonzales, who in incomprehensible inactivity was awaiting the promised succor,—incomprehensible if the emissaries of Doña Isabel had reached him; for, as I knew, not one word in reply had been returned.
“I had much to ask of Doña Isabel Garcia,—questions which had burned upon my lips before; but reflection told me I was no more ready to ask them now than I had been; that her pride might be still as obdurate. No, there were months before me in which by gradual assault I might acquire all the knowledge I would in vain endeavor to gain by sudden force. I was confident that if by no stratagem or treason Ramirez ultimately could place himself at the head of these troops, he would be found in the field against them. I learned that he hated Gonzales as a personal, no less than a political, foe. Gonzales then was the man for me to follow. In serving Doña Isabel against the machinations of those she had so blindly trusted, I should serve myself; keep in view the mocking fiend whose downfall I had sworn, and perchance satisfy myself in regard to the still importunate doubts which had led to my presence amid these strange scenes.
“I had intended to leave the hacienda upon the very night of my return, but on my way—Well, that is nothing to the purpose; I reached it exhausted. But the early morning found me in the saddle. My strength revived with every step toward El Toro. Once we caught sight of the long line of the hacienda troop crossing the open plain. We had passed through cañons and byways, and were far in advance of them. More than once in the mountains we heard the name of Ramirez, and made widedetours of hamlets where men were gathering in twos and threes and sixes,—ragged, unkempt, unarmed for the most part, but full of enthusiasm in their leader, and confident of booty and glory. Without doubt, the reverse of Ramirez at El Toro would not remain unavenged. I realized the spell of that potent name, the very echo of which seemed to be as eloquent as the living voice of most men, chieftains and leaders though they might be.”
Chinita’s eyes glistened; she raised herself with a proud gesture, as if the involuntary tribute to the genius of the adventurer was a personal commendation.
“Though we avoided the villages,” continued Ashley, “I did not hesitate to question the few passengers we met upon the roads. These were chiefly wandering traders, stooping under their burdens of clay-ware or charcoal, adherents of no particular party, and reticent or the opposite, as their natural impulses or the supposed necessities of the time prompted. These I plied in vain for news of Pedro, of Pepé, or even of the noted Ramirez himself. Each and every one seemed to have passed, and left not even a memory behind; though from these very ranchos and hamlets I knew Doña Isabel’s troops had been drawn, and that the followers of Ramirez were daily drawing more,—forcing those they could not persuade, laughing at the protestations of the women, and feeding the adventurous ardor of the men with tales of daring exploits and promises of plunder. All this we heard, and knew the whole country was in a ferment, yet passed through it undetected, on our own part unable to catch a glimpse or hear a word of the covert from which Ramirez directed and inspired the movement. Travelling rapidly, we entered upon the third day a deep gorge, which cut the foothills of the very mountain that overshadowed the towers of the convent town toward which I was journeying. Still a painful stretch of twelve hours, of an almost pathless labyrinth of rock and sand, I was told, lay before us; and early in the evening I ordered a halt, intending to set forth before the day broke. One of my servants spoke of a spring which he knew of; and though the season was so dry that we had little hope of discovering it, we decided to push on, although at every step the horses seemed to protest against the effort,—for they had been ridden mercilessly, without change andalmost without food or rest. As we neared the spot where we hoped to find water, the aspect of the country seemed to grow even more forbidding.
“‘The dry season has swallowed it,’ said the servant dejectedly, after a careful survey of the locality. ‘There is nothing here but sand,—a dry welcome for our thirsty beasts;’ and at a signal from me he threw himself from the saddle, and tethering his panting horse, clambered up the gorge to gather a handful of dry grease-wood with which to light a fire. Meanwhile, his fellow busied himself in unpacking the few articles we had brought, and I threw myself on the ground against a rock, feeling myself more secure in that wild and secluded pass than I had done since I left the hacienda.
“The place was very still. Although it was yet daylight in the world without, the whole gorge was in shadow. The crackling of the herbage under the horses’ feet, or a low word occasionally spoken by the men, was all that broke the stillness. I suppose from thought I was gradually falling into slumber, when the sound of horses galloping, of men laughing and shouting, broke upon the air. I started to my feet and seized my arms, calling for the men; but they had disappeared; the three horses were rearing and plunging. I caught and succeeded in mounting my own; but as the cavalcade drew near, I realized that its members were so numerous and in such mad humor that it would be worse than folly for me to approach them. One of my men had recovered from his panic, and stole up to me with blanched face and wide-staring eyes. I pointed to the horses, and with wonderful dexterity he bounded into the saddle of one, and caught the bridle of the other. In as little time as it takes me to tell it, we gained the shelter of the rock. Calmed by a few low words, the horses stood motionless, and from our covert we saw the company of lawless soldiery go by.
“Ramirez was at their head; and by a cord at his bridle-rein was tied a man, who vainly strove to keep pace with the gallop of his horse. At almost every step he fell, and was struck by the hoofs of the foremost horses, whose riders leaning down brought him again to his feet with blows from the flat sides of their swords. There were perhaps thirty ruffians engaged in this brutal sport; and after them rana man at such a pace as only an Indian could maintain, even for moments, wringing his hands and praying and crying,—alternately a prayer and a curse. And in him, more by his voice, gasping and hoarse though it was, than by sight, I recognized Pepé Ortiz.”
Chinita would have screamed, but the ready hand of the peasant closed over her mouth. “The man! the man tied to the horse’s rein!” she gasped, when he released her.
“I could not see his face, and he had no breath to cry out,” said Ashley. “They passed so closely, I could have shot Ramirez like a dog. But I seemed paralyzed by horror. It did for me what perhaps a moment’s reflection would have done had I been capable of it,—it saved me from suicide. To have moved then would have been certain death. I could not comprehend the mad jests of those around the victim; but a moment after they passed I heard a sound which to all ears conveys the same meaning,—a pistol shot,—and the voice of Ramirez crying,—
“‘Caramba!the next fall would have killed him, and the dog should die only by my hand. There! I have paid the debt I owed thee,—thou knowest for what. It should have been paid thee like the other villain’s years ago. Would that I had dragged him at my horse’s rein as I have thee!’
“The man fell; a soldier, with a laugh, cut the rope; all swept on with shouts and laughter,—Ramirez the quietest among them. In a few minutes they were far up the gorge. One glance had satisfied Ramirez that his shot had reached its aim.
“None seemed to remember the panting wretch behind. I had reached the prostrate body as soon as he, and together we raised it up. Under the mask of bruises and blood and the dust of the roadway, I recognized the man I had been seeking,—Pedro Gomez.”
Pepé caught Chinita on his outstretched arm,—she had staggered as though struck by a heavy blow. Ashley sprang to her side in remorse,—he had spared her nothing in the recital; but she had not fainted. She raised herself slowly, and lifting her arms above her head, wrung her hands in speechless agony.
The man who had been murdered years before had been a shadow, a myth, in her mind. He became at that suprememoment a living presence, joining with, blent with, the martyred Pedro in denunciation of the man whom she had raised in her admiration to a pinnacle of glory. The idol of years crashed to the earth, in semblance of a demon,—and with it fell the stoicism and pride that had encased as in bands of steel the softer emotions of her nature.
“Murdered! murdered both!” she moaned at length. “Was it not enough he should bereave me even before I came into the world, but that he should so vilely slay the only creature who has loved me? Oh, my God!” she added, shuddering, “why have I been so cursed as to have given one thought to such a wretch? Oh! forgive, forgive, forgive!”