The announcement of the marriage of Sidney Sanderson to Gladys Carpenter reached us during the latter part of June.
We were indebted to Mrs. Wilbur for the New York papers in which we read the embellished details of the "strictly private nuptials." The several accounts agreed in pronouncing the marriage the most noteworthy matrimonial event of the early summer. The facts, in brief, were as follows:
"The beautiful bride, heiress to three millions, although in deep mourning for her father, had laid aside, only for the wedding ceremony, the somber robes of her recent bereavement. At the close of the impressive yet simple service, she had resumed her mourning, preparatory to the departure for Scotland. On the historic isle, sequestered in a romantic castle overlooking Loch Lomond, Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson would spend their honeymoon. Society had unanimously agreed that amatch more suitable in every way had seldom occurred. The high social position of both parties, the beauty and fortune of the bride, combined with the popular traits of the handsome groom, pointed unmistakably to social leadership.
"The palatial home of the late Rufus Carpenter would, doubtless, become a recognized center, when his beautiful daughter again rejoined with her chosen husband, the charmed circle of the Three Hundred."
This is the substance of what we knew. All that we would ever certainly know of the two lives in question.
For us the history of Sidney Sanderson was virtually closed. I alone claimed the privilege of imagining his uneventful end.
A creditable career he could never have. A life of indolent luxury, environed by the ordinary excitements of club life, would be the probable limit of his achievements.
His domestic life would, in time, become a monotonous restraint.
In dismissing him, I will always believe that he thought often during the years of his aimless existence of Mariposilla. Herbeautiful dark eyes, flooded with adoring love, must have haunted many of the indifferent hours spent with his highly refined, philosophical wife.
After the first cool understanding, when both the man and the woman acknowledged the disappointment that each felt in the other, their lives would run on quietly and indifferently, each moved by separate interests that enormous wealth made possible.
Their elegant home I can readily picture. Artistic rooms, undisturbed by little meddlers. Silent halls, in which echoed no voices of children.
Dark shades, often drawn close before the windows of a mansion deserted for months at a time, by reason of the protracted absence of both mistress and master, who seldom traveled in the same direction, finding, as the years made plainer the remoteness of their tastes and principles, that antipodal distances alone could insure for each a comparative comfort.
I learned from authority that Mrs. Sanderson escaped old age.
On the verge of the dreaded boundariesof infirmity her selfish energies gave way. An unexpected puff of disappointment chilled her nerve, while it extinguished, midway in its socket, the brilliant candle that had cheered no lonely heart, had illuminated no sorrowing soul.
For Mariposilla alone the announcement of Sidney's marriage contained crushing evidences of his final desertion. The poor child had always believed that her lover would return. We had never been able to convince her of the hopelessness of the dream.
Now that the blow had at last descended, we hoped for much.
Through all the long weeks we had done nothing but wait. Even now we must wait still longer. We dared not show impatience at the child's terrible grief, when she remained as one stunned, refusing, day after day, our sympathy and society.
It was only in the cool of the evening that she left her room to join the family upon the veranda. Then she would slip away by herself, hiding in the darkest corner among the vines, a listless shadow in white that we dared neither to comfort nor to rebuke.
The summer was now at its height; the days were warmer and the cool nights more welcome. The haze had thickened about the mountains; the sky was often without a cloud.
The seaside resorts were crowded with pleasure-seekers. Only the industrious ones of the Valley remained at home to attend to the immense fruit crops, ripening every hour.
The hotels and villas were undergoing repairs for the ensuing winter. Society, in a body, appeared to be rusticating at Santa Catalina.
We, too, would have gone to the sea, but sorrow held us down with a relentless grip. The once happy household of the Doña Maria Del Valle was no longer the abode of peace and joy.
Each day Mariposilla required more care, for she was now really ill. She went about the house and garden as usual, but we had thus far failed to arouse her from her grief. Each day she grew more silent and suspicious, shedding fewer tears, but refusing always to listen to a word of reproach against the man who had deceived her.
Now, in addition to the anxiety for her miserable child, another stroke had fallen upon the Doña Maria.
The angel of death had entered again her home—her aged mother was dying. Father Ramirez had administered the Holy Sacrament, and now only the most powerful opiates could relieve, temporarily, the aged sufferer, sinking away from a horrible disease that for years had been unsuspected.
To myself fell the incessant care of Mariposilla.
It was seldom now that the sad-eyed Doña Maria left her mother's chamber. She had procured a Mexican woman to superintend the household, while she devoted herself, lovingly and unceasingly, to the care of the sufferer. Day and night she watched alone, until I feared she would drop under the strain.
It was astonishing how tenaciously the aged woman lingered. Sometimes she would revive, with almost supernatural strength. Stimulated by the opiates, she would protest desperately against remaining in bed. The poor old creature seemed to think that the bed alone was responsible for her death.
In her less painful moments, when the opiates soothed without stupefying, she talked excitedly in Spanish, living always far back in the days of her prosperity.
She was again on the far-reaching rancho, riding by the side of her husband, or dispensing free hospitality to a house full of guests. Always with her were the two little daughters, Maria and Lola.
"She remembers not the sorrows which have befallen us," the Doña Maria would say with tearful eyes, that each day grew larger as the rings of sorrow deepened beneath them. "She mercifully believes that my dear sister and I are still little ones at home.
"We are continually running from her side with messages for the maids.
"Sometimes she commanded us to stop our play and go to the old church for prayers. Again, she coaxes our father to buy more jewels, that we may outshine in beauty our neighbors at the grand wedding, soon to occur upon a distant rancho, where there will be for days feasting and great joy.
"Is it not kind, dear Señora, that the old mother should depart among pleasantmemories, knowing not of my poor child's humiliation?"
As the Doña Maria spoke, the glory of unselfishness lit for a moment with saintly beauty her dark, worn face.
"Yes, dear friend," I replied, "it is kind and sweet that the loved one can go to rest in peace, but it is wrong for you to refuse relief from the heavy strain of the sick-chamber. Oblige me this once by allowing your place to be filled. You will be ill, I am sure, if you take neither air nor rest."
"Thanks, dear Señora," she replied, "I am happy for your thoughtful care; but I can now no longer take rest away from my mother. Sometimes I fall, for a few moments, asleep by her side, but I wish always to be near, that I may watch tenderly until her spirit has flown.
"I should grieve sorely if another closed forever the dear eyes."
I saw that the devoted daughter was happiest performing alone the last few duties that after death grow measurelessly sweet, and said no more. A few hours later the Doña Maria stood at my door quiet and tearless.
"Dear Señora," she said, "my mother is dead."
"What can I do?" I cried, daring not yet to presume with sympathy. Under the first cold shock of the impalpable mystery, I longed for a task that would check the dreadful, unsatisfied questions that thronged my mind.
"There is little to do. Arturo had gone for Father Ramirez.
"If only the Señora will speak to my unhappy child, I shall be most thankful. Tell her that her grandmother is no more, but restrain her from coming for a time into the chamber of death.
"Soon I shall have done all. I shall then come for my child and lead her to the dear one."
As the Doña Maria finished speaking, she vanished from my side.
As I heard her close the door of her mother's room, I knew that she would first pray before the shrine of the little Virgin.
For a moment I listened in the silence, almost longing myself to entreat comfort of the image.
I remembered how I had fainted Christmas morning, and how gladly I hadregained consciousness in the protecting presence of the little Mother. I knew that the Doña Maria would gain strength and courage before the shrine of her implicit faith, and my own heart hungered for a touch of palpable comfort.
What if the little image was only painted wood? It whispered something to the simple, aching heart that a stern theology could never say.
Alas! I knew that for myself there was nothing but blind hope and fruitless speculation. I could never have knelt before a picture or a shrine, but I envied, none the less, the Spanish woman who found peace and comfort, while I so often suffered in the dark, unsatisfied and rebellious.
When at last I heard quiet steps, I knew that the Doña Maria had arisen from her prayers. I knew that in her sorrowing heart there was a blessed faith, childlike and strong, that would help her to perform, quietly and correctly, the last sad offices for her dead.
I sought in vain about the house and garden for Mariposilla.
The child had not been away from the ranch since the news of Sidney's marriage, and her sudden absence alarmed me.
I remembered that it was Saturday. Perhaps Mariposilla had gone to the old church for confession. Arturo had the pony, and for a moment I was in despair.
Fortunately a neighbor arrived with a horse and buggy, which I borrowed.
I was determined not to alarm the Doña Maria, and drove away at once in the direction of the Old Mission. The road, for the first time, seemed long and uninteresting. The neighbor's horse was an ancient nag, who discovered at once my impatience and inexperience. He absolutely refused to accelerate his midsummer dog-trot. The persuasions of a stranger he ignored.
Despairing, I submitted, while I vaguely questioned myself as to what I should do,in case Mariposilla had not gone to the church.
When at last I caught sight of the long, gray outline, hiding among cool, green peppers, my heart seemed to stand still.
As I turned into the main approach leading to the Mission, the old bells broke suddenly the oppressive silence. Their melancholy strokes were for the dead; perhaps for the Doña Maria's mother, I thought.
Mechanically I counted the tolls, until their number had reached sixteen, then the old bells paused a moment before they again repeated the years of the youthful dead.
Upon approaching nearer I perceived that a funeral procession had just left the church. An assistant priest and a barefooted Mexican altar-boy stood framed in the arch of the ancient portal.
The sad little procession was now entering the old graveyard at the rear of the Mission. I could hear the sobs of the mourners, and my heart went out to the poor mother, garbed in faded mourning, bowed with both grief and labor.
The little coffin was borne on a bier by six swarthy young Mexicans, possibly one of them the lover of the dead girl.
The sight was pathetic, and at this particular time I felt it to be more than I could bear.
A moment later I peered into the old church—it was empty.
Where now could I go? To whom should I apply for help?
Father Ramirez was evidently not about; a strange priest had followed the funeral procession, and doubtless the old friend of the Del Valles had gone at once with Arturo.
I had probably missed passing them by taking a different road, having endeavored to shorten the distance by a cut through a ranch.
Mechanically I climbed into the buggy, believing that there was no course left but to return home for assistance, when in the distance I saw, almost like a sign from on high, the deserted hotel of East San Gabriel.
Without stopping to consider the probable absurdity of my surmise, I started the old horse upon the maddest race of his life.
In my excitement the wielding of the whip was a nervous joy.
The old bones of the beast seemed almost to crack as he leaped along the road.
All at once I seemed to be acting without reason, for when I at last entered the grounds of the deserted caravansary, there were no evidences to justify my suspicions.
The summer's silence was intense; not a human being was visible, and the desolation pervading the deserted resort was sickening as well as satisfying.
I felt that I had been absurd to believe for a moment that Mariposilla could have wished to reënter the place, and I was also convinced that, in her feeble condition, she could never have walked the distance from the ranch.
The old horse was now resting in front of the silent hotel, and my very inaction was unbearable. I racked my brain to the verge of despair, before I again hit upon a possible explanation for Mariposilla's disappearance.
Why had I not thought of it before? Why had I taken it for granted that Arturo had gone alone for Father Ramirez? The priest drove always in his own conveyance, and what could be more natural than to believe that Arturo had induced Mariposilla to accompany him upon his errand? Was it not reasonable to believethat the young people had laid aside their personal feelings at such a time, desiring to perform together a last, trifling duty to the dead grandmother?
True to the comforting inspiration, I had turned the reluctant horse to leave the grounds, when, rushing joyfully in front of the astonished brute, I beheld the hounds, Mariposilla's grayhounds, who knew where their little mistress was hiding.
Hastily hitching the horse to the nearest tree I reconnoitered at once the long veranda. Each door that I tried was locked; the windows were fastened, and the inside blinds closed.
Close at my heels followed the dogs, now wildly excited.
As a last resort, I decided to urge them to lead me.
"Dear Pachita! dear Pancho!" I cried, patting encouragingly their long, beautiful heads, while I entreated their almost human eyes to reply. "Take me to Mariposilla."
"Where is Mariposilla?" I repeated, slowly, "your dear little mistress, Mariposilla?"
For a moment, the poor brutes whinedpiteously; the next, they had darted away to the rear of the hotel.
I followed hotly, and at the corner of the house I perceived them wild with excitement at the foot of the escape ladder, leading from the ground to the upper veranda.
I needed no more to convince me of the truth.
Mariposilla had ascended the ladder which the dogs had not been able to scale. The half-frantic girl had sought to enter again the rooms once occupied by the Sandersons.
I delayed no longer. In a moment I was above, trying in vain the doors. As I approached the window of Sidney's now deserted bedroom, I perceived instantly that its glass had been shattered, and knew at once that Mariposilla was within.
For a moment, I stood rooted with apprehension; I dared not enter. A horrible dread deprived me of strength, until from within a piteous sobbing, more musical, more welcome than any sounds which I had ever before heard, told me that the child I sought was safe.
"Thank God!" I cried, springing into the room.
There, upon Sidney's deserted bed, upon his pillow, lay Mariposilla.
For a moment I shrank away, for the child had not heard me enter. I would willingly have allowed her the full extent of her strange, unusual consolation. Now that she was safe, I would have stayed with her the remainder of the afternoon, but the thought of the Doña Maria compelled me to speak.
"Dear child," I said, approaching the bed; "you must come home. We are in great distress. Your grandmother has just died."
"Just died?" she repeated, touchingly. "Why can I, too, not die? Indeed, kind Señora, I am most tired of life; I would gladly go with my grandmother."
"No, dear," I answered, "you must not want to die. It is wrong for you to remain so miserable. You should remember your dear mother, and try to recover your spirits, to be once more our good, happy child.
"Think no more of Sidney; dismiss now forever from your thoughts the selfish man who has deceived you."
Like a young tigress wounded into fury, the girl sprang from the bed.
"I blame him not," she cried, passionately. "It is the wicked, wicked Gladys who has stolen his love. I knew she would coax him from me when she sent so often her beautiful face to his mother.
"She loved him much, I was sure, but he said always that he loved her not in return; that she made him most tired, when he must listen to her learning and long words.
"That he loved none but me—poor, little Mariposilla, who knew nothing but to love him only."
"Yes, dear," I said; "you have loved as few ever love. I pity the man who has thrown lightly away your warm, true heart; but I know that after a time you will cease to pine. You will see that Sidney gave you up, not because Miss Carpenter was more beautiful, or that he loved her more, but because she had millions of dollars to make his life luxurious and idle.
"Be a brave girl," I continued, noticing with pleasure that the child had brightened visibly at my words. "Be good and brave for your own sake, and for the sake of the dear Doña Maria.
"Come home before you are missed, or your mother will be greatly distressed by your absence."
Obediently she followed me from the room, and down the ladder. As we drove away from the grounds she threw her arms about my neck and sobbed pitifully.
"Dear, kind Señora," she cried, "I will be good; indeed I will be good.
"If Sidney loves Gladys only for gold, he will yet come back! he will yet be mine!"
It was impossible for me to misunderstand the girl's passionate meaning. I trembled at the recollection of the opportunities and temptations of the winter. For the first time a terrible realization of the child's Spanish inheritances seized me. I felt that she would never acknowledge moral barriers to be a final restraint to her denied destiny; never be able to resist the undisciplined desires of her heart.
For the present I could not hope to unfold the immoral, or impossible consequences of Sidney Sanderson's return. Nothing but time and angelic patience would enable me to make plain to the ignorant girl the arbitrary laws of fate.
The sun had departed for the day, the evening had flushed and died in the cool arms of night.
In the chamber of death there was now the breathless calm which follows when all has been done.
Before the little Virgin, and about the spotless bed, where in purest linen slept the mother of the Doña Maria, holy candles had been lighted. Still unmolested stood the small stand covered with a fine drawn linen cover, upon which had rested for weeks the tumblers and bottles needed now no longer.
"See," the Doña Maria said tenderly, "see the spoon in the potion I had prepared but a moment before the poor suffering body found peace."
When I offered to remove the medicines, the devoted daughter was not willing.
"Touch not the table yet, kind Señora," she pleaded. "Wait until the dear body has been taken away; then will I findcourage to disturb the tumblers that the dear hands once held."
As the Doña Maria spoke, Mariposilla entered the room, bearing a little cross of white roses. She laid it timidly upon the breast of her grandmother; then, frightened and hysterical, she fled from the bed.
"Poor child," said the Doña Maria, "she fears death greatly. She thinks only of the fire that must at first purify the soul, not of the joys of eternity.
"Go now, Señora, retire at once for the night. You are weary and in need of rest.
"I care not for company. I will remain alone with my mother and our blessed Lady. I desire to entreat that the sufferings of the dear one may be short.
"Surely the dear Lord will have mercy upon the aged one who has already endured so much upon earth."
"Good Doña Maria," I plead, "you will surely be ill if you kneel all night in prayer. To-morrow will be a sad, hard day, and without rest you will be unfit for its strain."
"No, Señora," she replied firmly; "I shall not be ill. After midnight I shall sleep; until then I shall pray."
I saw that my persuasions were in vain, and left her alone with her dead.
As I passed through the living-room to reach my own, I was startled by a white-robed figure in front of the Virgin's picture.
The full July moon, streaming through the open door, discovered touchingly the hopeless misery of Mariposilla. She was in her nightgown, gazing piteously into the illuminated face of the unsympathetic doll above the chimney shelf.
As I approached her, she turned sadly from the picture.
In the moonlight, I saw great tears shining in her eyes.
"She loves me not; she is angry and smiles no more," she said, despairingly.
The child's lovely face expressed so perfectly the agony of desertion that I felt powerless to comfort her. Her firm belief in the Virgin's displeasure had torn from her heart its last hope. For weeks she believed that the little mother would have mercy, would intercede for her, and restore in some miraculous way her lover; but to-night the Virgin would not smile. She refused to pity her sorrowful child.
"Dear Mariposilla," I said,remembering the tactics that I sometimes employed with Marjorie; "you must not think because the Virgin refuses to smile that she is angry.
"We ourselves cannot smile. We are sad and awed by the presence of death, and surely it would be heartless for 'our Lady' to smile, when those who love and trust her are in trouble.
"You are nervous and weary. You shall room with me to-night. I have already prepared you a nice bed upon my couch."
I drew her gently in the direction of my room, persuaded that I had quieted for a time her moody fears.
"No! no!" she cried, bursting away from me; "I can not sleep. I will never sleep again."
She rushed, passionately, through the open door into the moonlight. In her bare feet, clad only in her flowing nightgown, she stood like a spirit among the dark vines and lacy shadows of the old veranda.
Her hair fell about her shoulders like a tragic veil, while a sudden agony touched her young, white face.
"You know not what I have suffered," she sobbed. "You think I shall forget, but I never shall. I can not bear that he should not be mine."
"If only he had gone away like my grandmother, I could endure never to see him again. He would then be mine! all mine, and I could go joyfully into a convent and pray always for his soul."
Her voice had grown tearless and sharp.
From the corner of the house a tall, dark form was approaching.
"Come in quickly," I whispered; "Arturo is listening."
She obeyed me now, sinking wearily, as we entered my room, upon the waiting couch.
I was devoutly thankful when I believed her to be sleeping.
She had scarcely stirred for nearly an hour, and I told myself, wearily, that I, too, might perhaps catch a little rest. The day had been a perpetual strain. I was not expecting or intending to sleep soundly, but I felt a merciful relief in lying quietly by the side of Marjorie.
For the night, at least, Mariposilla was safe. I could only hope that the morrowwould dawn more tranquilly than the trying day now, at last, over.
After the funeral, I intended to go immediately to Catalina with Marjorie and Mariposilla. I would wait no longer; the heartbroken child must leave San Gabriel at once.
I was arranging my plans most carefully, when I fell asleep from absolute exhaustion.
When I awoke, the moon was no longer casting fantastic shadows. My white walls were no longer softened by elfin touches.
The shadow vines and pepper branches had disappeared in the honest light of the July sun.
The morning was yet deliciously cool, but the day was fairly begun, even now brimful of sweet odors and bird-music.
The mockers, who had sung all night, were not yet weary, but less belligerent. At night they sometimes quarreled, but in the morning their little disagreements were adjusted.
As I delayed to open my eyes, half awake, but unwilling to shock too soon the last lingering desire to doze, I seemed tohear a familiar rebuke from the great pepper tree beyond my window.
"Señora! Señora! Señora!" called an old mocker. "Get up! get up! get up!" screamed his neighbor from the next limb.
I fancied now as I listened, that the birds had tried to awaken me in the night. Vaguely returned an ugly dream, with the ceaseless call of the persistent birds.
In a moment I remembered all. The dead grandmother, Mariposilla, the midnight cry of the mockers—"Señora! Señora! Señora!"
Mariposilla?
Where was she? When had she slipped away? Did the birds alone know?
The couch was empty. Each pillow bore the mark of the child's weary head.
In the night, while I slept, my restless captive had fled.
I sprang across the hall to her room; it was empty, and the bed undisturbed. Trembling I entered the death chamber. The Doña Maria was alone; her child was not with her.
The good woman was again before the shrine of the Virgin, repeating a lastprayer for her dead, preparatory to the painful duties of the morning.
The front window shades were closely drawn to exclude the morning sun, but looking north, to the great, quiet mountains, an open window invited the cool breath of the day.
Without understanding my motives, I took a hasty survey of the silent room. To all appearances everything was as usual.
A sheet had been drawn over the face of the dead, and the holy candles were burning low and pale.
Mariposilla's little cross of white roses was still fresh where the child had placed it, the table of medicines undisturbed except the tumbler containing the unused opiate.
Horrible discovery!
The poisonous glass was gone, and the dark, innocent-looking bottle that remained was empty.
How could I grasp the frightful suspicion? How believe that the Virgin had forgotten her child? How bear the burden of my own selfish slumbers?
Why in the night had I not understoodthe mocking-birds when they called in vain, "Señora! Señora! Señora?"
* * * * *
A few moments later Arturo bore in his arms from the arbor the lifeless body of Mariposilla.
From her beautiful face the color had faded forever.
We laid her upon her own bed, still robed in the little nightgown, for the long sleep that had closed at last the wakeful eyes.
Poor foolish, beautiful little Butterfly, her summer was now forever ended.
As I performed for the dead girl the last few loving labors, I acquitted her in my inmost heart of her terrible crime. She had meant only to rest, to forget for a time in sleep the anguish of her cruel disappointment.
When from between the great century plants, the yellow edges of their spears shining like avenging swords, passed the hearses—the black one bearing the aged Spanish woman, the white one bearing Mariposilla—I remembered the tragic blooming of the Gold of Ophir rose.
I saw again the old veranda illuminatedwith Easter glory. I saw timid buds open to full roses. Scintillating in the spring sunshine, more lustrous than all, I saw a child-bud burst into a maiden flower. I saw its petals deepen with the kisses of the sun; then I saw them pale and fall to the ground; for the sun had hidden his face.
I saw the great-hearted Doña Maria bending wearily, as she attempted to gather the scattered petals. I saw the dark Arturo kneel beside her.
Together they seemed to pray; but in the heart of the man was born a horrible curse for those two, now far away.
In my misery I saw the Demon of Selfishness, blacker than night, blacker than death.
I tried to pray—but I could only weep.
THE END.