FOOTNOTE:[7]Servant.
[7]Servant.
[7]Servant.
The casa at San Isidro had verandas running on either side of its long row of rooms. This row began with the kitchen, store and sleeping rooms, and ended with the comidor and sitting-room. The verandas ran the entire ninety feet in a straight line until they reached the comidor. There they turned at right angles, making thus an outer and an inner corner. These angles enclosed the dining and living rooms. The inner veranda was a sheltered nook when the rain swept up from the savannas down by the sea, the outer one a haven of delightful coolness when the sun glowed in the west and threw its scorching beams, hot and melting, into the inner corner. Here were the steps leading down the very slight incline into the yard and flower garden. Here, to this inner corner, were the bulls and horses driven or led, for mounting or dismounting; here the trunks and boxes of visitors were carried up and into the house; and this was what was happening now.
Agueda looked on listlessly as Felisa's large trunk and basket trunk and Don Noé's various boxes andportmanteaus were deposited with reproachful thumps upon the floor. The peons who had carried them, shining with moisture, dripping streams of water, wiped their brows with hardened forefingers, and snapped the drops from nature's laboratory off on to the ground. They had carried the luggage slung upon poles across country. For this duty six or eight of them were required, for there was no cart road the way that they must come, as the broad camino ran neither to the boat landing, nor extended to the plantation of San Isidro.
The men stood awkwardly about. One could see that they were expectant of a few centavos in payment for this unusual labour. Don Noé kept himself religiously secluded upon the corner of the outer veranda. He well knew that the luggage had arrived. The struggle up the steps, the shuffle of men's feet, the scraping sort of hobble from callous soles, reached his ear. The heavy setting down of boxes shook the uncarpeted bare house, but Don Noé was consciously oblivious of all this. He had come to pay a long visit, and thus redeem a depleted bank account. Should he begin at the first hour to throw away money among these shiftless peons? Beltran had doubtless plenty of them. Such menial work came within the rule of the general demand. To be sure, he had brought many small boxes and portmanteaus. Don Noé thoughtit a sure sign of a gentleman to travel with all the small pieces that he and a porter or two could carry between them.
A good-sized trunk would easily have held Don Noé's wardrobe, but there was a certain amount of style in staggering out of a car or off a steamer, loaded down with a parcel of canes, fishing-rods, and a gun-case, while the weary servant, who did not care a fig for glory, stumbled along behind with portmanteaus, bags, and hat boxes. It is quite true, as Felisa sometimes reminded Don Noé, that he had never caught a fish or shot a bird. Style, however, is asine qua non, and reputation, however falsely obtained, if the methods are not exposed, stands by a man his whole life long. Self-valuation had Uncle Noé. From his own account, he was a very remarkable man. And as he usually talked to those who knew nothing of his past, they accepted his statements, perforce, as the truth.
The dripping peons hung about the steps. Their shirts clung to their shoulders, but those the sun would dry. Don Noé sat quiet as a mouse upon the angle of the outer veranda.
Agueda came toward the lingerers.
"It is you that need not wait, Eduardo Juan, nor you, Garcia Garcito. The Don Beltran will see that you get some reward."
"A ching-ching?" suggested the foremost, slyly.
"I suppose so," said Agueda, wearily.
She retraced her steps along the veranda, the men trooping after. Past all the long length of the sleeping-rooms went Agueda, until she reached the storeroom. The door of this she opened with a key which hung with the bunch at her waist. She entered, and beckoned to Garcia Garcito to follow.
"Lift down the demijohn, you, Garcia Garcito, and you, Trompa, go to Juana for a glass."
Garcia Garcito entered, and raising his brawny arms to the shelf overhead, grasped the demijohn and set it upon the table. Trompa returned with the glass. Agueda measured out a drink of the rum for each as the glass was emptied by his predecessor. The men took it gratefully. Each as his turn came, approached the filter standing in the comer, watered his dram, and drank it off, some with a "Bieng," others—those of the better class—with a bow to Agueda, and a "Gracia." Eduardo Juan, more careless than the rest, snapped the drops from his drained glass upon the spotless floor, instead of from the edge of the veranda to the grass, as the others had done.
"Eduardo Juan, you know very well that that rudeness is not allowed here. Go and ask Juana for a cloth that is damp, that you may wipe those spots."
Eduardo Juan smiled sheepishly, and loped off to the wash-house. He returned with the damp cloth, got down upon his knees, and rubbed the floor vigorously.
"De Señora 'Gueda maake de Eduardo Juan pay well for his impertinences," laughed the peons.
"Bastante! Bastante!" said Agueda.
Eduardo Juan obeyed as if Agueda were the house mistress. Such had been Don Beltran's wish, and the peons were aware of it. Then Eduardo Juan jumped to the ground, and followed the other peons where they had disappeared in the direction of the stables.
When he no longer heard the scuffle of feet, Don Noé tiptoed down the veranda, and entered the room which had been assigned to him. He aroused Felisa from a waking doze on that borderland where she hovered between dreams and actuality.
She was again seated upon the aparejo. The bull was plunging through the forest, or with long strides crossing some prone giant of the woods. Beltran was near; his kind eyes gazed into hers. His arm was outstretched to steady her shaking chair. His voice was saying in protecting tones, "Do not be afraid, little cousin; you are quite safe." A pleasurable languor stole through Felisa's frame, a supreme happiness pervaded her being. She felt that she had reached a safe haven, one ofsecurity and rest. Her father had never troubled himself very much about her wishes. She had been routed out of this town, that city, according to his whims and the shortness or length of his purse. A dreamy thought floated through her brain that he could not easily leave this place, so difficult of access, more difficult of egress; so hospitable, so free! The sound of Don Noé's short feet stamping about in the adjoining room aroused Felisa from her lethargy. The absence of a carpet made itself obvious, even when an intruder tried to conceal the knowledge of his presence. Felisa now heard, in addition to the noise of tramping feet, the voice of Don Noé, fiercely swearing, and scarcely under his breath.
"Ten thousand damns," was what he said, and then emphasized it with the sentence, "Ten thousand double damns." This being repeated several times, the number mounted rapidly into the billions. Ah! This was delightful! Don Noé discomfited! She would, like a dutiful daughter, discover the reason.
Felisa sprang from her bed, a plump little figure, and ran quickly to the partition which separated her father's room from her own. This partition did not run up all the way to the roof. It stopped short at the eaves, so that through the open angle between the tops of the partition boards and thepeak of the roof one heard every sound made in an adjoining room. She placed her eye to a crack, of which there were many. The boards had sprung apart in some places, and numerous peep-holes were thus accorded to the investigating.
A scene of confusion met Felisa's gaze. All of Don Noé's portmanteaus were open and gaping wide. They were strewn about the floor, alternately with his three hat boxes, the covers of which had been unstrapped and thrown back. From each one shaking masses of bright and vari-colored flowers revealed themselves.
"That dam' girl!" said Don Noé, under his breath.
Felisa chuckled. Her only wonder was that by replacing her father's belongings with her own, and transporting her numerous gay shade hats thus sumptuously, her methods had not been discovered before.
At each change of consequence, from boat to train, from horseback to carriage, Don Noé had suggested unpacking a change of headgear for himself. Felisa had, with much prudent forethought, flattened an old panama and laid within it a travelling cap. These, with filial care, she had placed in the top of her own small steamer trunk. With one excuse or another, she had beguiled Don Noé into using them during the entire trip. At Tampa it had been a secret joy to her to see the poor manstruggling out of the train laden with the hat boxes in which her own gorgeous plumage reposed uninjured. In crossing to the island, in taking the train to the little town where the small steamer was waiting to carry them to their goal, and again, during their debarkation and stowing away in the little schooner which carried them across the bay to the spot where Don Beltran was to meet them, she had seen with supreme satisfaction the care with which her millinery was looked after, while Don Noé's assortment of hats was crowded into a small space in her own Saratoga.
"I knew it, I knew it," whispered the chuckling Felisa. And then, aloud, "What's the matter, Dad?"
Don Noé answered not. He was impatiently and without discrimination hauling and jerking the clothes from an open portmanteau. Each shirt, pair of trousers, necktie, or waistcoat was raised in air, and slapped fiercely down on the floor with an oath. Don Noé was not a nice old man, and his daughter relished his discomfiture.
"Oh, damn!" he said, for the twentieth time, as he failed of jerking a garment from the confines of a tray, and sat down with precision in an open hat box. Some pretty pink roses thrust their heads reproachfully upward between his knees. There was discernible, from the front, a wicked look oftriumph in Don Noé's small eyes. He revelled in the feeling that he was sinking, sinking down upon a bed of soft and yielding straw.
"So I say," concurred Felisa, as the last exclamation left Don Noé's lips. She sprang away from the partition and flew out of the doorway, along the veranda, and into her father's room.
"Get up at once!" she said. "Dad, do you hear? Get up at once. That is my very best, my fascinator! Get up! Do you hear me?"
She stamped her stockinged foot upon the bare floor. The pain of it made her the more angry. Don Noé sank still further, smiling and helpless.
"Get up at once!"
Two of the peons had returned along the outer veranda. They still hoped to receive a reward for their work of the morning. They lounged in at the shutter opening, and looked on with a pleased grin. The disordered room spoke loudly of Don Noé's rage; the crushed flowers and the stamp of the foot, of the Señorita's fury.
Felisa raised her eyes to the ebony faces framed between the lintels. She could not help but note their picturesque background, the yellow green of the great banana spatules, through which the tropic sunshine filtered.
"Come in here, you wretches, both of you! How dare you laugh!"
Eduardo Juan thrust a bony hand inside and unbuttoned the lower half door. He pushed through, and Paladrez followed him. They entered with a shuffle, and stood gazing at Don Noé. He, in turn, grinned at them. He was paying Felisa double—aye, treble-fold—for packing his hats in some close quarter, where, as yet, he knew not. Perhaps she had left them behind. A crack of the hat box! He was sinking lower.
"If you don't care for my best hat, Dad, I should think you would not wish to ruin your own hat box." Then, turning to Eduardo Juan, "Pull him out at once!"
Don Noé, certain that he had done all the damage possible, stretched out appealing hands. The men seized upon those aristocratic members with their grimy paws, and pulled and tugged his arms nearly out of their sockets. They got him partly to his feet, the box and flowers rising with him. Felisa saw that there was no chance of resurrection for the hat, the ludicrous side of the situation overcame her, and she laughed unrestrainedly.
"Knock it off, confound you!" screamed Don Noé, in a sudden access of rage. Felisa's return of good temper made him furious. She danced round him, taunting and jibing. "The biter bit," she sang, "the biter bit."
"Take something, anything, knock it off!" shouted Don Noé again.
Palandrez, with a wrench, tore off the cover of the hat box and released the prisoner.
"You've ruined my hat!" "You've ruined my hat box!" screamed father and daughter in unison. He shook his fist in her face.
"Get out of my room, every man jack of you!"
The gentle peons fled, a shower of garments, boots, and brushes following them. The room looked like the wreck of all propriety and reserve.
"Don't you think you've made spectacle enough of yourself?" asked Felisa, and with this parting fling she flew from her father's presence, and fell almost into the arms of Don Beltran, chance having thus favoured him. He held her close for a moment before he released her. She was pink and panting from these two contrasting experiences.
"He is often like that." She spoke fast to cover her embarrassment. "Did you ever know him before, cousin? If you did, I wonder that you asked us here."
Beltran smiled. He did not say that the visit had been self-proposed on Don Noé's part. His smile contracted somewhat as a heavy walking-shoe flew out through the open doorway and knocked the panama from his head. As Beltran stooped and recovered the hat, Felisa glanced at himshamefacedly. She noticed the wet rings of hair, streaked faintly with early grey, which the panama had pressed close to his forehead.
"I remember hearing that Uncle Noé was a young man with a temper," he said. "The family called it moods." He recalled this word from the vanishing point of the dim vista which memory flashed back to him at the moment. As Beltran spoke he glanced apprehensively at the open square in the palm-board exterior of the casa.
"Let us run away," he said, smiling down at the girl.
"Until he is sane again," agreed Felisa. She plunged into her room and caught up the discarded shoes; then springing from veranda to the short turf below, she ran with Beltran gaily toward the river. A bottle of ink shot out through the opening, and broke upon the place where they had stood.
"He is a lunatic at times," said Felisa, with a heightened colour. There was a drop upon her eyelash which Beltran suddenly wished that he dared have the courage to kiss away.
"I shall hurt my feet," she said, stopping suddenly. She dropped the shoes upon the ground, thrust her feet into them, and started again to run, her hand in Beltran's. The sun was scorching.
He took his broad panama from his head andplaced it upon hers. It fell to her pretty pink ears.
She laughed, his laughter chimed with hers, and thus, like two happy children, they disappeared within the grove which fringed the river bank.
Agueda saw them as they crossed the hot, white trocha. She saw them as they entered the grove.
"And that is the little child," she said aloud, "the little child." Then, with a sudden painful tightening at the heart, "I wonder if he knew." So quickly does the appearance of deceit excite distrust which has no foundation to build upon.
Beltran had known no more certainly than Agueda herself the age of this unknown cousin. He was guiltless of all premeditation, but to say that he was not conscious of an unmistakable joy when he found this charming young girl at the landing, and knew that she would live under the same roof with him for an indefinite period, would be to say that which is not true. Beltran was a victim of circumstances. He had not desired a change. He had not asked for it, yet when it came he accepted it, welcomed it perhaps. Had the choice between the known and the imagined been given him, he would have sought nothing better than his, until now, happy environment. "It is fate," thought Beltran.
When the cousins reached the river, Beltranparted the branches for Felisa, and she slipped out of the white heat into a soft-toned viridescence of shade. A path ran downward to the river shore. It was cut parallel with the water's flow. The path was overshadowed by thick branches. Mangoes, mamey trees, and mahoganies were there. The tall palm crowned all in its stately way. The young palms spread and pushed fan-like across the path, in intimate relation now with human kind. The time would come when no one would be able to lay a finger tip upon their stiff and glossy sprays, when their lofty tufts would look down from a vantage point of eighty or a hundred feet upon the heads of succeeding generations.
Felisa ran down the sloping path and seated herself, all fluff and laces, upon the slope of the bank. She sank into a bed of dry leaves, through which the fresh green of new-born plants was springing.
"Not there, not there!" cried Beltran, sharply. "You never know what is underneath those foot-deep leaves. Come down here, little cousin. I have a bench at the washing-stone."
They descended still lower. Her hand was still in the one by which he had raised her from the bank.
"You have closed the bench quite off from the river, cousin, with those hateful wires. I cannot get at the water or even at the broad stone there." Felisa spoke petulantly.
Beltran gazed down into the pretty face. The eyes, though not large, held the dancing light of youth. The upturned little nose and the broad mouth would not serve to make a handsome older woman, but the red lips pouted over white and even teeth, a rose flush tinted the ear and cheek, colourless curly tendrils escaped from under the large hat.
Felisa's clothes, that most important factor in a man's first attraction toward a woman, were new and strange, and of a fashion that Beltran knew must be a symptom of modernity. He was utterly unconscious that a certain fascination lay in those wonderful great figures of colour sprawling over a gauzy ground of white. He would have denied that the ribbon knot at the waist, and its counterpart upon the left shoulder, had any particular charm for him, or that the delicate aroma of the lavender of an old-fashioned bureau, which emanated from those filmy ruffles with every motion of the restless little body, had anything to do with his being so drawn toward her.
Felisa seated herself and stretched out her feet, encased in a black silk mystery of open work and embroidery. He knelt and tied the silken laces. When he had finished this absorbing task he bent suddenly lower and pressed his lips to the instep above. Felisa withdrew it quickly, blushing. Sheknew nothing of such vigourous love-making as this. The northern birds were more wary.
"My hat," she said, "please get me one."
Beltran turned and ran up the path.
"I did not dream that I should like him so much," said Felisa softly, as she gazed after him.
Beltran ran swiftly to the casa and bounded up on to the veranda. Felisa's door reached, he hesitated. Agueda stood within the room, holding a hand-glass before her face. She was gazing at her reflection. At the well-known step she started. What hopes arose within her breast! He was coming back, the first moment that he was free, to tell her that she must not mind his attentions to his cousin, that they were necessary. She would meet him with a smile, she would convince him that that hateful jealousy, which had been tearing at her vitals for the past hour or two, had no part within her being. Ah! after all her suspicion of him, she was still his first thought! She started and dropped the glass. She turned toward him, a smile of welcome parting her lips.
Beltran hardly looked at Agueda.
"A hat! a bonnet, anything!" he said. "Give me something quickly!"
She took from the table the gay hat in which Felisa had arrived, and placed it in his outstretched hand, but she did not look at him again. Healmost snatched it from her. Was not Felisa waiting bareheaded down there by the river? He sprang to the ground and hastened across the trocha. After he had entered the grove, he buried his face among the flowers, which exhaled that faint, evanescent fragrance which already spoke to him of her. Agueda sighed and placed the silver-backed mirror upon the table. Had one asked her what she had been searching for in its honest depths, she could hardly have told. Perhaps she had been wondering whether with such aids to beauty as Felisa had, she would not be as attractive. Perhaps looking to see if she had grown less sweet, less lovable in these few short hours.
"Juana," she called. "Juana!" The old crone hobbled forth quickly from the kitchen at Agueda's sharp tone. It was new to her.
"Make this room tidy," ordered Agueda. Juana wondered at the harsh note in Agueda's voice. The girl herself was unconscious that she had spoken differently than she had been wont to do, but she was filled with a defiant feeling, a fear that now the others would not treat her with the respect which Don Beltran had always demanded of them. That new pain was accountable. At the sharp note in her voice, Juana had looked inquiringly, but Agueda raised a haughty head and passed along the veranda to her own room.
Felisa heard Beltran returning. Her quick ear noted every movement, from the hurried run across the potrero and the trocha to his pushing back with impatient hand the low-sweeping branches and his hasty footfall down the path. She wondered if this new blossoming in her heart were love? She had never felt so since those first early days of adolescence, when as a young girl her trust had been deceived, ensnared, entrapped, and left fluttering with wounded wings. Should she love him? Was it worth her while? Her first word was a complaint. Experience had taught her that complaisance is a girl's worst enemy.
"Why did you place those wires there, cousin?"
For answer Beltran came close and looked down upon her shining head. Suddenly he took her in his arms and kissed her. She struggled, for she was really somewhat indignant.
"And may not cousins kiss?" asked Beltran. "Those wires were placed there to prevent the little child whom we—I—expected from falling into the river. You are scarce larger than the little child—whom we—I—pictured, but oh! how infinitely more sweet!"
He twisted one long brown finger in the ring of hair which strayed downward nearly to her eyes. Felisa withdrew her head with a quick motion. She was experiencing a mixture of feelings. Shehad come here to San Isidro with a purpose, and now, within two short hours of her arrival, she found that her purpose marched with her desires. Don Noé had said, "Felisa, do you remember your Cousin Beltran, your mother's nephew?"
"No, papa, how could I remember him? I never saw him. I have seldom heard of him."
"Ah, yes, I know," returned Don Noé, with the sudden awakening of the semi-centenarian to the fact that he is communing with a second generation. "Well, that wretched old grandfather of yours, old Balatrez, cut your mother off because she marriedme!"
"Had he seen the hat boxes?" asked Felisa, who had a humour of her own.
"Don't be impertinent. All that fine property has gone to Beltran, just because your mother marriedme! She was sister to Beltran's mother, your aunt, as you know. Now, Felisa, I intend to have that fortune back."
"How, papa? Do you intend to call upon my cousin to stand and deliver?"
"I intend you to do that, Felisa."
"I am tired of being poor, too, papa."
Felisa considered a shrinkage from eighteen to eight new gowns a summer a distinct sign of poverty. When Don Noé drew in his horns as to expenditures, the young foreign attaché who hadall but proposed to him for the hand of Felisa relaxed his attentions. Felisa had hoped to be a countess, but a title is no guarantee of perennial or even annual bread and butter, and those indispensable articles some one must provide. At the close of Don Noé's remarks, which were too extended to be repeated, Felisa had said, "I am quite ready for your cousin-hunt, papa."
A feeling akin to shame swept through her as she sat there and recalled this conversation, and realized what this new intimacy with Beltran meant to her—what it might mean in the days to come, for that he loved her at once and irrevocably her vanity gave her no chance to doubt, and she knew now that she was beginning to find this impetuous lover more than attractive. One who knew Felisa thoroughly would have said that she was beginning to care for him as much as it was in her nature to care for any one but herself.
Agueda saw all the plans which they had made together for the coming of the little child carried out by Beltran alone. She could not accompany Don Beltran and his cousin upon their different expeditions; she could not go as an equal, she would not go as an inferior. Besides which, there was never any question as to her joining them. The bull rides, the search for mamey apples, the gathering of the aguacate pears, all of which she had suggested, were taken part in by two only; so was the lingering upon the river, until Agueda shuddered to think of the miasmata which arise after nightfall and envelop the unwary in their unseen though no less deadly clutches. The walks in the moonlight, ending in a lingering beneath the old mahogany tree for a few last confidences before the return to the home-light of the casa, left no place for a third member, because of the close intimacy which naturally was part and parcel of the whole.
All had come about as Agueda had planned, with the exception that she herself was missingfrom plain, hill, and river. She had heard Beltran say: "Yes, I will take you down to the potrero, little girl, to gather the aguacates, but you must not approach the bushes, for the thorns would sting your tender hands." Agueda recalled the day when she had suggested this as one of the cautious pleasures open to the little thing for whom they two were looking; but she, Agueda, who was to have been the central figure, she, the one to whose forethought had been entrusted the planning and carrying out of these small amusements, was excluded. As the days passed by, Beltran and Agueda seldom met, except in the presence of others. She addressed him now in the third person, as "If the Don Beltran allow," or "If the Don Beltran wishes." When by chance the two stumbled upon one another, neither could get out of the way quickly enough.
It was on a day when she was forced to speak to him as to the disposition of some furniture, that her utter dejection and spiritless tone appealed to him. As he glanced at her, he noticed for the first time how large her eyes were, what hollows showed beneath them, how shrunken and thin was her cheek.
"What is it, Agueda? You treat me as a culprit."
"No, oh, no!" She shook her head sadly; then threw off the feeling apparently with a quick turn of the head. "The Señor is within his rights."Beltran's heart was touched. He drew near to her, and laid his arm about her shoulder, as he had not done now for a long time. She stooped her fine height, and drew her shoulder out from under his arm. She had no right now to feel that answering thrill; he was hers no longer. A sob, which she had tried to smother in her throat, struck him remorsefully.
"They will soon be gone, Agueda; then all will be as before."
"Nothing can ever be as before, Señor. I see it now, either for you or for me."
The wall within which she had encased herself, that dignity which silence under wrong gives to the oppressed, once broken, the flood of her words poured forth. The terrible sense of injustice overwhelmed and broke down her well-maintained reserve. She looked up at Beltran with reproach in her eyes, interrogation shining from their depths.
"Why could you not have told me, warned me, cautioned me? Ah, Nada! Nada knew." Her helplessness overcame her. Beltran had been her salvation, her teacher, her reliance. She felt wrecked, lost; she was drifting rudderless upon an ocean whose shores she could not discern. Where could she turn? Her only prop and stay withdrawn, what was there to count upon?
"I do not know the world, Beltran. My peoplenever know the world. I have never known any world but this—but this." She stretched out her despairing arms to the grey square which she had called home. "Ah! Nada, dear Nada, you knew, you knew! I never dreamt that she meant you, Beltran, you!"
Hark! It was Felisa's voice calling to him. Soon she would be here. She would see them; she would suspect. Beltran shrugged his shoulders, he pursed out his lips. The Agueda whom he had known was ever smiling, ever ready to be bent to his will. This girl was complaining, reproachful; besides which, her looks were going. How could he ever have thought her even pretty? He contrasted her in a flash with the little white thing, all soft filmy lawn and laces, and turned away to rejoin that other sweeter creature who had never given him a discontented look.
It had come to this then! Her misery could wring from him nothing more than a careless shrug of the shoulders!
She stood gazing afar off at the hillside, where the bulls were toiling upward with their loads of suckers for the planting. Some fields were yet being cleared, and the thin lines of smoke arose and poured straight upward in the still atmosphere. A faint odor of burning bark filled the air. Near by the banana leaves drooped motionless. There wereno sounds except the occasional stamp of a hoof in the stable. The silence was phenomenal. Suddenly a shrill voice broke the stillness.
"Cousin, are you coming?"
A welcome summons! He would go to the hills with Felisa, as he had promised. She should see the fields "avita"-ed. He would forget Agueda's reproaches in the light of Felisa's smiles. He shook his tall frame, as if to throw off something which had settled like a cloud upon him; he hurried along the veranda with a quick stride. The excursion to-day was to be to the palm grove upon the hill. Uncle Noé was to be one of the party. The peons were to burn the great comahen nest, for in this remote quarter of the world such simple duties made amusement for the chance guest at the coloñia.
Agueda had prepared a dainty basket over-night. The old indented spoons, the forks with twisted and bent tines, but bearing the glory and pride of the Balatrez family in the crest upon the handle, were laid in the bottom of the basket. Nothing was forgotten, from the old Señora's silver coffee pot, carefully wrapped in a soft cloth, to the worn napkins on the top with the crest in the corner, which was wearing thin and pulling away from the foundation linen. The coffee, planted, raised, picked, dried, roasted, and ground upon the plantation of San Isidro, was ready for the making; the cassavabread was toasted ready for heating at the woodland fire; the thick cream into which it was to be dipped was poured into the well-scoured can; the fresh-laid eggs were safely packed in a small basket; the mamey apples and the guavas would be picked by the peons upon the ground, and the san-coche was still bubbling in the oven. Juana, like one of Shakespeare's witches, bent over the fragrant stew, and ever, when no one was looking, she put the pewter spoon to her withered and critical lips. Where is the cook who does not taste in secret?
Palandrez would start an hour hence, taking the fast little roan, to get to the hill in time to serve the san-coche hot and savory.
Castaño, the horse which it had been Don Beltran's pleasure to break for Agueda, stood at the foot of the veranda steps. Agueda's saddle was upon its back; no other would fit Castaño. Indeed, there was no other. But there was no sentiment to Agueda about the lady's saddle. She had always ridden like the boy that she looked. Agueda walked with dragging step to her solitary chamber; she would not remain to witness Felisa's hateful affectations. She could bear it no longer; she could be neither generous nor charitable. She had seen and heard so much of Felisa's clinging to Beltran's arm, her little cries of fear, Beltran's soothing responses, that her heart wassick. She closed her door to shut out the sounds, and threw herself into her low sewing chair by the window. They would be gone presently, and then she would wander forth in an opposite direction, down by the river perhaps, or over to—where? Where could she go?
A large pile of linen lay in the basket. She had not touched it of late. Ah, no! There was no one now to make the duty a pastime, no one to come in with ringing step, and lay upon the welcoming shoulder a kindly hand—no one to twitch the tiresome sewing impatiently from her grasp, and bid her come away, to the river or to the potrero; no one to stoop and kiss the roughened finger. It was as if she had emerged into a strange and horrible land, a land of dreams whose name is nightmare, and had left behind her in that other dim world all that had been most dear. She could not awake, no matter how hard she tried.
She sat looking dully out to where the flecks of sunshine touched here and there the tropic shadows. She saw nothing. Nature was no longer a book whose every leaf held some new beauty, each page printed with ink from the great mother's alembic, telling a tale of joy that never palls.
Suddenly Agueda turned from the scene and clasped her hands over her eyes, for into her landscape had passed two figures. She had thoughtthat they would go by the river path, but they were passing along the winding way which ran through the banana walk, one seated delicate and graceful upon the accustomed chestnut, shrinking somewhat and swaying a little as if in fear, the other bent close to her and gazing into her eyes as if he could never look his fill. The old story, her story, the part of heroine played by a fresher, newer actress, the leading personality unchanged. They made a picture as they rode, one which an artist would love to paint; the flanks of the brave grey side by side with the little chestnut, the handsome lover leaning toward the pretty bundle of summer draperies, the red parasol held in his hand and shading her form from the sun making the one bit of brilliant colour in the picture. It was worthy of Vibert, but Agueda had never heard of Vibert, and the picturesqueness of the scene did not appeal to her.
"This way?" questioned the high voice. "It is the longest way, cousin, so you said this morning."
"Yes," was Beltran's answer. How plainly she heard it as the breeze blew toward the casa. "The longest way to others, but—" He bent his head and spoke lower. One had to imagine the rest. Agueda closed the shutter and threw herself upon the bed, as if she could as easily forget the picture as she could shut out the shrill voice of Felisa.
The day passed, as such days do, like an eternity.At noon-time a stranger rode down the hill toward the casa. He brought a letter for Don Beltran.
"The Señor is up in the woods," said Agueda. "I will give it to him when he returns."
"It is from the Señor Silencio. He hopes that the Señor will read it at once. The message admits of no delay."
"Do you know the palm grove up on the far hill, on the other side of the grand camino?"
"I think that I might find it," said Andres, for it was he, "but I have matters of importance at home. My little boy—El Rey—"
Andres turned away his head. Stupid Andres! Only one thing could make him turn away his head.
"Are you, then, the father of that little El Rey?"
Andres nodded.
"Give me the letter," said Agueda. "I will send it to the palm grove."
Not waiting to see Andres depart, Agueda hurried to the home potrero. There Uncle Adan was keeping tally at the sucker pile.
"Uncle Adan," she said, "is there a man who can take a message to the Señor?"
"I cannot spare another peon, Agueda—that the good God knows. What with Garcia Garcito and the Palandrez off all the morning at the palm grove, and Eduardo Juan hurrying away but a half-hourago with the san-coche, I am very short of hands. What is it that you want? Do not load the little white bull so heavily, Anito; it is these heavy weights that take the life out of them. What is it that you want, Agueda, child?"
"It is a message for the Señor, Uncle Adan. It comes from the Señor Silencio. It may be of importance."
"Very well, then; it is I who cannot go. The Señor should be at home sometimes, like other Señors. Since these visitors came I cannot get a word with him."
"The Señor is not always away, Uncle Adan," protested Agueda, faintly.
"It is true that he is not always away," said Uncle Adan, tossing a sprouted sucker into a waste pile, "but his head is, and that is as bad. He seems to take no interest in the coloñia nowadays, and I am doing much for which I have no warrant."
Agueda recalled the many times when she had seen her uncle approach Beltran with some request to make, or project to unfold, and his shrug of the shoulders, and the answer, "Don't bother me now, Adan, there's a good fellow; some other time—some other time." Agueda stood with her eyes downcast. She knew it all but too well. Every word of Uncle Adan's struck at her heart like a knife.
"But the Señor must have the letter, Uncle Adan," she persisted.
"Very well, then, child, carry it yourself. There is no one else to go."
"Is there anything that I can ride, Uncle Adan?"
"Caramba! muchacha! Castaño, certainly. Can you saddle him your—or, no! I forgot. No, Agueda; there is nothing."
"The brown bull? The letter may be important."
"The brown bull has gone to the Port of Entry for tobacco for the Señor Don Noé. No, there is nothing, child; you must walk if you will go. For me, I would leave the letter on the table in the Señor's room. That would be best."
Agueda went quickly back to the house. She took the old straw from its peg in her closet, put it upon her head without one glance at the little mirror on the wall, and ran quickly down the veranda steps. The way seemed long to her. She was not feeling strong; an unaccustomed weight dragged upon her health and spirits. All at once she saw, as if a picture had been held up to her view, that future which must be hers, toward which she was so quickly hastening. A few months—ah, God! Was it, then, to be with her as with all those others whom she had held in partial contempt—apitying contempt, it is true, but none the less contempt.
The distance seemed long to her. Time had been when she would have thought a run over to the palm grove a mere nothing, but now every step was a penance to both body and mind.
When Agueda reached the hill, she walked slowly. The day was hot, as tropical days in the valley are apt to be. She moved languidly up the hill. Arrived at the top, there was nothing to reward her gaze but the form of Don Noé, asleep under a tree; Palandrez sitting by, waving a large palm branch to keep the insects away. At a little distance the dying embers of the picnic fire paled in the sun. The place was otherwise bare of people or servants. Under the shade of some coffee bushes stood the grey and the chestnut, but of their riders nothing was to be seen. When Palandrez saw Agueda coming he put his finger on his lip. She approached him and held out the letter. He made a half motion to rise, but did not spring to his feet, as he formerly would have done at the approach of the house mistress.
"I have a letter for the Señor, Palandrez," said Agueda. "I wish that you take it to him at once."
"It is I that would oblige the Señorita," answered Palandrez, sinking back hastily into his lounging attitude, when he saw that action was required ofhim, "but I was ordered by the Señor Don Beltran to stay here, and not leave the Don Noé, unless, indeed, an earthquake should come."
"But it is a letter of importance," urged Agueda. "You must take it for me, Palandrez."
"And am I to obey the Señor or the Señorita?" asked Palandrez, in a half-defiant, half-impudent tone.
For answer Agueda turned away. She had thought of offering to keep the buzzing insects from Don Noé's bald head, but her spirit revolted at the thought of this menial service, and perhaps a slight curiosity as to where the main actors in the drama had gone, and how they were employing themselves, caused her to resolve to find Beltran herself.
"Where is the Don Beltran?" she asked of Palandrez.
"I have not seen them this half-hour, Señorita. When the feast was over the old Don laid himself down to sleep, and the Don Beltran and the new Señorita disappeared very suddenly. They went down there, in the direction of the little brook."
Palandrez waved his hand toward the further slope of the hill, and again returned to the duty of keeping Don Noé asleep, so long as he himself could remain awake.
As Agueda began to descend the slope she hearda complaining voice. She turned. Palandrez had stolen away to the edge of the hill. He had left Don Noé sleeping with the branch stuck upright beside him in the soft earth of the hilltop. The breeze waved the branch. "So," had thought Palandrez, "it will do as well as if I was there fanning El Viejo." But all in a moment the branch had fallen across Don Noé's face, and he had awakened with a start. He belaboured Palandrez well with his sharp old tongue.
"I will tell your master, the Señor. Yes, I will tell him the very moment that I see him." Palandrez bowed his tattered form and scraped his horny sole upon the ground, and exclaimed, with volubility:
"It was but muchachado,[8]Señor. I have the honour to assure the Señor that it was but muchachado, no more, no less."
Palandrez, in fear of what his own particular Señor would say of his treatment of the Señorita Felisa's father, returned hurriedly to his fanning, and Don Noé, pretending to sleep, and weary with resting, kept one eye open, so to speak, to catch him again at his muchachado.
Agueda descended the hill. When she came to the brook, she saw an old log across which some one must have lately travelled, for it was splashed withwet, and there were footmarks in the clay on the shore. She crossed, and walked quickly along the further plain, and soon heard the distant sound of voices, Felisa's high treble mingled with Don Beltran's deeper, pleasant tones. The beauty of his voice had never been so marked as now, when the thin soprano of Felisa set it off by contrast.
Following the sound of the voices, Agueda again ascended a slight rise, and before long saw in the distance the light frills of Felisa's gown showing through the trees. She knew the pastime well enough, the pastime which caused Felisa to sit upon a level with Agueda's head, and to wave up and down as if in a swing or high-poised American chair. She knew well, before she came near them, that Beltran had given Felisa the pleasure that had often been hers; that he had bent an elastic young tree over to the ground; that among its branches he had made a safe seat for Felisa, and that he was letting it spring upward, and again pressing it back to earth with regular motion, so that Felisa might ride the tree in semblance of Castaño's back; only Beltran was closer to her than he could be were they on horseback, and Felisa's nervous little screams and cries gave him reason to hold her securely and to reassure her in that ever kind and musical voice. When Felisa saw Agueda coming along the path bordered with young palms, she said, "Here comesthat girl of yours, cousin, that Agueda! What can she want?"
Beltran turned with some surprise. Agueda had never dogged his footsteps before. She had left him to work his own will, independent of her claims—claims which had no foundation, in fact. All at once he remembered those claims imagined, and he wondered if at last she had come to denounce him before Felisa.
As Agueda came onward, hurrying toward them, Beltran ceased his motion of the tree, and leaned against its trunk, touching Felisa familiarly as he did so. It was as if he arrayed himself with her against Agueda. The two seemed one in spirit.
Beltran's voice, as he questioned Agueda, showed some irritation, but its musical note, a physical thing, which he could not control if he would, was still there.
"Why have you come here? What do you want with me?" He did not use her name.
Agueda stopped and leaned against a tree. She put her hand within the bosom of her dress, brought forth the letter in its double paper, tied round with a little green cord, and held it out to Beltran. She did not speak.
"Very well, bring it to me," he said. He could not let go his hold on the tree, for fear of harm coming to Felisa, and he saw no reason whyAgueda, having come thus far, should not cover the few steps that remained between himself and her. She pushed herself away from the tree with her hand, as if she needed such impetus, and walking unevenly, she came near to Beltran and laid the letter in his hand. "The messenger said that it was important. It was Andres who brought it," said Agueda.
"Ah! from Silencio," said Beltran, awkwardly breaking the seal, because of the necessity of holding the tree in place.
He perused the short note in silence. When he raised his eyes from the page, Agueda had turned and was walking away through the vista of young palms. Her weary and dispirited air struck him somewhat with remorse.
"Agueda," he called, "stop at the hill yonder and get some coffee and rest yourself." His words did not stay her. She turned her head, shook it gravely, and then walked onward.