Moreno remained silent, looking at Elena with a kind of astonishment, as though the words she had just uttered had won from him the utmost he was capable of in the way of admiration. This wonderful woman had the same thoughts that came to him so often ... but he had never dared put his faith in them....
Elena sadly threw back her shoulders.
“But it is too late to talk of such things,” she went on in a tone of discouragement.
“You have a family to work for, and I ... I am a woman with neither illusions nor hopes, I am alone, I am poor ... and I do not know what is in store for me.”
The government clerk remained pensive, his eyebrows drawn together, as though mentally contemplating a vision thoroughly distasteful to him. What he saw was a little house in the suburbs of Buenos Aires; in its modest clean little rooms were a woman and some children ... his children, his wife ... and then rapidly the vision vanished like a puff of smoke, and Moreno recovered the air of assured self-satisfaction he had displayed on first arriving that afternoon.
“I, too,” he said, “was busy thinking about a great many things last night. I couldn’t sleep, and got up very late. That’s why I didn’t have time to find out about what had happened at the Rojas’ place.... One of the things I was thinking was that it might be a good idea for me to go to Europe to look upPirovani’s daughter, and keep a closer watch over his property than I could do in Buenos Aires. Who knows? I might be able to increase his fortune considerably, if I attended strictly to business.... I am not vain enough to think that I have all the ability you attribute to me,marquesa; but it is true that I know a little arithmetic, and that I am methodical. I might be able to do at least as well as other men in business ... why not?”
A long pause followed, and finally Moreno plucked up the courage to stammer timidly,
“You might come with me to Europe,marquesa... to advise me. For, in spite of the flattering opinion you have of me, I would be so ignorant there of the things I ought to know....”
Elena started, and then, with a proud gesture, repelled this suggestion.
“How could I accept such a thing! You are mad!... But, my dear Moreno, you would find me a terrible burden!... and besides, I am a married woman, and if we travelled together, people would inevitably make the worst suppositions about us!”
In spite of her protest, she took Moreno’s hands in hers and brought her face close to his, surrounding him with the fragrant effluvia of her perfumed flesh; and at the same time, she exclaimed warmly,
“What a great big heart you have! How can I show you how much I appreciate your offering to do this?”
Moreno assumed an imploring expression as he in turn protested; what could it matter to them what people said?... Anyway, no one knew them inEurope. They could live in Paris, that marvellous city that he had so often admired and that he might never have had the chance to see, had not Pirovani’s death made it possible ... and it was for him to thank themarquesaif she should deign to accompany him and give him her invaluable counsel.
“But your family?” inquired Elena, with an austerity of intonation belied by her eyes.
With the good-natured cynicism of a rich man who firmly believes that every difficulty in life can be solved with money, he replied,
“My family can stay in Buenos Aires. I’ll see to it that they have much better quarters than they have ever had before. All that can easily be arranged with money, and everybody will be happy. As for myself, I shall of course have quite an income, for naturally I must pay myself for my work as guardian. And besides that, I shall make money in a business way.”
But Elena persisted with her refusals, although with diminishing intensity, and Moreno thought the moment propitious for trying to overcome her resistance by describing the delights of that Paris which he had never seen, and those pleasures she had grown unmindful of for having known them so well.
“It is madness,” persisted Elena, interrupting him. “I haven’t the courage to face the scandal that would surely come of it. Just imagine what people would say if we went away together!”
And then, assuming the modest, timid expression a young girl might wear if confronted with something offensive to her innocence, she murmured,
“I am not the sort of woman you think me. Menare so fearfully ready to believe everything they hear about a woman ... and Heaven only knows what people may have said to you about me!... I alone can know how unhappy I have been in my marriage. My husband is good, yes ... but he never understood me. Still, all that is a far cry from running away with another man, and giving everybody the right to talk about me!”
And then all the phrases stored in his memory from his assiduous reading of society novels came pouring out.... What did marriage amount to anyway?... And how could what people said have any weight with her? It was her right to have real love in her life, and to take it wherever she might find it ... and it was just as surely her right to “live her own life,” side by side with a man capable of making life beautiful for her, of making it worthy of all her wonderful gifts!
And as these passages culled from hundreds of novels came out, one after the other, Moreno had the satisfaction of seeing that Elena too was familiar with all these arguments, and that she too was moved and softened (just as he was himself) by his literary but none the less impassioned eloquence.
What themarquesawas actually thinking was that she had carried on this pretense of resistance long enough, and that it was now time to give in gracefully so as to clear the way for a discussion of more immediate and urgent matters. As though unaware of what she was doing, she placed her hands on his shoulders, and spoke close to him, in a scarcely audible tone, andlooking up at the farthest corner of the room, as though lost for the moment in a host of memories.
“Paris!” she murmured. “You know it from books, but they can give you only a feeble idea of what life there is really like. Oh, if you knew what a delicious experience is awaiting us there!”
Moreno took these words to be an acceptance of his proposals, and believed himself authorized by them to put his arms around her.
“You do accept then?... Oh, thank you! Thank you!”
But she gently pushed him away, checking his caresses, and with the gravity of demeanor of a woman who knows how to make clear and definite business arrangements, she said,
“If I should come to the point of saying ‘I accept’ it would be only on condition that we should leave this very day. Otherwise I may repent of my decision, and change my mind.... Besides, why should I stay in this hateful hole, when even my husband has abandoned me ... and I don’t know what has become of him ...?”
Moreno replied by nodding vigorously. They ought to take advantage of the train leaving that very afternoon. If they waited for the next, something to hinder them might develop before they could get away ... and the poor fellow actually believed that themarquesawas capable of repenting of her decision ... that he must make the most of this favorable moment.
She meanwhile was asking numerous questions, each of which constituted an article in the verbal contract that was being so definitely drawn up between them.Moreno made clear to her that his claim to the guardianship of Pirovani’s fortune was well substantiated by the papers the Italian had left. The fortune of which he would have charge was ample. By great good luck—for them—it happened that the contractor had, before the duel, entrusted all the cash he had on hand to his second. This made it possible for Moreno to pay the expenses of the trip to the capital, as well as provide funds for Elena’s establishment in a luxurious hotel there.
“And once in Buenos Aires,” he went on, “I shall assemble all the deposits Pirovani had in numerous banks there, and I’ll also try to collect what the government owes him for the work here in La Presa. I know a lot of influential people who’ll help me get that money. You’ll see that even though some people around here may think I’m a fool, I’m not so slow when it comes to making people pay me what they owe me.... And just as soon as that little matter is settled, we’ll start for Europe.”
Once more, emboldened by his own words, and certain now of Elena’s acceptance, he put his arms about her, but again she repulsed him.
“No,” she said severely, though at the same time there was a gleam of malicious amusement in the eyes she rapidly turned away from him, “I warn you that until we get to Paris I shall be no more to you than your travelling companion. Men are always ungrateful if they attain their desires too easily ... and they have been known to take advantage of a woman’s generosity, and forget all their handsome promises!”
Then she smiled with a look that promised many things, and murmured very low, dropping her eyes,
“But, as soon as we get to Paris....”
Moreno was profoundly moved by the gesture that accompanied her words.
“Paris!” At the word, the government clerk’s imagination excitedly reviewed all he had read about the episodes of the gay life led by foreigners in the French capital.
A luxurious all night restaurant, such as those he always thought of as being plentifully scattered through Montmartre, and such as those he had so often admired in movie films.... It seemed to him that he could actually hear the harsh, restless music of a jazzband ... and his eyes followed the circling of the couples dancing in a great rectangle, bordered by glittering tables.
Then themarquesacame in, gorgeously dressed ... she was leaning on his arm ... he wore a dress coat and an enormous pearl on his shirt-front. The major-domo of the establishment welcomed him with the familiar respect due a well-known customer, the women from afar cast enviously admiring glances at Elena’s jewels.... Then a groom, diminutive as a gnome, carried off the marquesa’s magnificent fur wrap that scattered a perfume through the air like that of a tropical garden.... And now he was examining the wine list, and ordering a high-priced champagne, whose very name called forth from the manager of the establishment a reverently hushed tone of admiration....
The vision vanished; he was still in Pirovani’s former house, sitting beside the woman whom he had desired with all the fervor that men isolated and lonely feel for something that seems forever beyond their reach; and now his eager and hungry eyes rested upon her.
“Paris!” he repeated. “How I want to be there with you ... Elena. For you will allow me to call you Elena, won’t you?”
TO young Watson it seemed that events were now following one another with the dizzy rapidity and the absurd lack of logical sequence characteristic of a dream, or of something equally independent of time and space.
First came shots; then there passed before his eyes several riders, some of them advancing at a gallop, while others, halting, fired at the mountaineers. In vain Piola raised both hands in the air, shouting,
“Don’t shoot, brother, we surrender!”
The men just arriving didn’t want to hear and went on firing in spite of Robledo’s shouts.
Piola’s comrade fell wounded; and at this Piola himself thought it advisable to fall to the ground and take refuge behind his horse.
The whole group of horsemen from La Presa were finally assembled on the same plateau in front of the ranch house; but Watson paid not the slightest attention to Robledo’s exclamations of astonishment at finding him there. Nor did he waste any time on thecomisario’ssalutations. Anyway these two recent arrivals promptly forgot him, and went to see what information they could get out of Piola by placing their revolver muzzles against his chest, while they demanded that he tell them what had been done with Celinda. Some of the other members of the rescueparty dismounted to have a look at the man just wounded, as well as at the one hit a few minutes earlier by don Carlos.
What most attracted Watson’s attention in the whole strange scene was the presence of his own horse there, with Cachafaz importantly straddling him and pointing accusingly at the three prisoners.
“It was those badgauchoswho took away mypatroncita! I saw them!”
But he was inconsiderately interrupted, for someone grasped him round the waist and rudely robbed him of the dignity of his commanding position by setting him down on the sand.
With a determined effort to pay no attention to the pain it caused him, Richard had made use of his one serviceable arm to get possession of his horse. The animal recognized the feel of his master in the saddle, and needed no spurring to start off at full gallop in the direction taken by Rojas.
The rancher had already been in close pursuit of Manos Duras for several minutes, and he had not given up hopes of overtaking him. It was difficult to keep the horses at a gallop on those sandy slopes, and besides, the animal Manos Duras rode had two burdens to carry; and all the while he was spurring on his horse the bandit had to keep tight hold of the still unsubdued Celinda. Rojas had the advantage of two free hands as he gave chase.
Thegauchoturned around several times, taking aim with the revolver he held in his left hand. Two bullets whistled past don Carlos. He replied with two bullets, then stopped. He had just discovered that he hadonly three more cartridges. That morning when he had started out for La Presa he had strapped on his holster case without filling the empty sockets. Only three shots more! But he had the knife he always carried for the emergencies that might arise as he rode over his property in his belt.... Besides, shooting was dangerous. He might wound Celinda.
Thegaucho, better supplied with shot, went on firing with great lavishness as he sped away.
An overwhelming indignation swept through the rancher as he perceived what Manos Duras was attempting to do.
“Shameless cattle thief! He’s aiming at my horse!”
And to the horse-loving creole, this was as despicable a crime, as just a cause for unlimited vengeance, as the injury done him, don Carlos Rojas, by robbing him of his daughter.
But in a few moments the rancher, who rode a horse as though moulded to it, felt a mortal shudder under him. Instantly he lifted his feet from the stirrups and jumped to the ground, but scarcely had his foot touched the sand when the animal fell heavily, a stream of blood pouring out of his breast like the crimson spurtings of a shattered wine cask.
The rancher stood by helplessly while the bandit sped away, holding Celinda down on the saddle-tree.... Then he concentrated all his will on the hand that held his revolver. He must kill the bandit’s horse.
And the man trembled with emotion. Not all his combats with men and wild beasts had prepared him for this. How could he, to whom a horse was like a child of his flesh, shoot one down in cold blood?...But there, growing smaller in the increasing distance, was Celinda, struggling, crying out!
He was, as a rule, a sure shot. But he fired without effect; and again he fired. Thegauchostill sped on, and don Carlos raised his revolver for the last shot. Suddenly Manos Duras’s horse staggered, slowed down and plunged to the ground, raising a cloud of dust in a last frenzied kick.
Rojas ran forward; but before he reached the struggling group Manos Duras had already extricated himself from the saddle, and, still holding Celinda, stood waiting for him, his second revolver drawn.
Don Carlos went a few steps further; but the shot that rang out passed so near his cheek that for a moment he thought it must have caught him. He dropped to the ground in order to offer the marksman a smaller target, and dragged himself along, keeping his revolver in his left hand. Thegaucho, unaware that his enemy had but one shot left, thought it was don Carlos’ intention to draw nearer so as to make sure of the effect of his bullets, and he went on firing, holding Celinda in front of him the while as a shield against her father’s shots. But the girl’s struggles to free herself from the grip of that sinewy arm shook his hand and spoiled the bandit’s aim.
“If you try one more shot, old man, I kill your daughter!”
This warning, added to the knowledge that he had but one more bullet in his cartridge chamber, forced don Carlos to content himself with slowly crawling forward over the sand, seeking the shelter of the hummocks on its surface.
But meanwhile Manos Duras became instinctively aware of the presence of a new danger. He looked about attempting to discover it; but the one menacing him from in front soon called for all his attention.
The invisible enemy recently arrived was Watson, who, when he heard shots, dismounted, and under cover of the rough desert brush, advanced Indian-fashion towards the scene of the revolver duel.
For a moment he felt tempted to fire from the back at Manos Duras; but there was danger of his wounding Celinda whose movements could not be counted on. So he returned to his horse and detached from the saddle the lassoo that theseñoritade Rojas had given him. Holding it in his right hand, he circled about through thematorralesuntil he was directly behind the bandit.
Going even this short distance caused him acute pain. Several times the thorny branches of the harsh desert growths caught at his wounded shoulder, and uncertainty made him tremble with nervousness. Would he have sufficient skill to use this primitive weapon?
He was troubled at recalling howFlor de Rio Negrohad laughed at him, in childish enjoyment of his clumsiness; but the memory of the happy rides they had had together, and the sight of her now in close peril of death or worse, brought his energy flooding back; and some of the principles instilled in him as a boy, and the methodical, practical spirit of his race, came to stiffen his courage. “Whatever you do, do it well” ... somehow that seemed to the point. Confiding in the mysterious and intangible powers that control our lives, and that from time to time, show an inexplicablepreference for some of us, and protect us from apparently inescapable dangers, Richard threw his rope, almost without looking, trusting to his luck and his sure sense of distance. Then he began pulling in, backing his horse in the brush. At the sudden resistance of the lariat, he felt the joyful assurance that he had caught his game. So savage was his joy that he pulled with both hands, though several groans escaped him for the pain he felt from the laceration of his shoulder.
And as a matter of fact the rope had caught both Manos Duras and Celinda, and suddenly they both tumbled backwards under the impact of a sudden pull.
Thegaucholet go of Celinda so as to free both hands. Even while he was being drawn along the ground he managed to get at his knife, and cut the rope that bound him. But Watson had foreseen this, and running forward, dealt him several blows on the head with the butt of his revolver. Rojas meanwhile reached the tussling group and throwing his now useless weapon down, grasped his knife.
“Leave him to me,gringo!” he gasped. “I don’t want anybody to take this job from me.... I have a right to it!”
He pushed Watson vigorously out of the way, and the latter turned to Celinda, picked her up from the ground and carried her off to a distance of a few yards. She was so stunned by the fall that she did not recognize him, but stood, passing her hands over her forehead, and gazing blankly about her, while blood tricked from the cuts on her arms and face.
Don Carlos meanwhile was almost helping Manos Duras to get to his feet.
“Stand up, son of evil!... Or you’ll be saying that I am killing you without giving you a chance! Get out your knife, and fight, damn your soul!”
Manos Duras as a matter of fact already held his knife in his hand, but the rancher, beside himself at finally having thegauchowithin reach, had not noticed it.
But scarcely had the bandit got a footing than he treacherously made a plunge toward his pursuer, trying to stab him below the belt. However, the blows dealt him by Watson had dazed him sufficiently to slow up all his movements, and the rancher had time to parry the blow with a back stroke of his left hand. Then don Carlos landed a thrust on the bandit’s chest, and another and another, in such swift succession that Manos Duras, blood pouring out from the numerous gashes he had just received, toppled over....
“The puma’s done for!” shouted don Carlos, holding up his blood dripping knife. The bandit, writhing at his feet, was uttering snorts of an agony that could only end in death.
Watson had led Celinda a certain distance away so that she should not witness this scene; but he had kept close watch of what was going on, ready to lend help if don Carlos should need it.
The two men helped Celinda to the spot where Watson had left his horse; in their anxiety lest she should see the bandit in his death agony, they almost carried her between them. But still dazed by the rapid succession of events, the girl looked about withvague dilated eyes as though she recognized nothing in her surroundings. Finally she burst into tears, and threw her arms about her father. Then, entirely unmindful of the attitude she maintained towards him when she was quite herself, she threw her arms about Watson, too, and kissed him.
Stirred by her unexpected caress, and distressed by the sight of the scratches and cuts on the girl’s face, Richard asked, anxiously,
“Did I hurt you, Miss Rojas?... But don’t you think I managed a little better with the lariat this time?”
Then the two men helped Celinda get on the horse and walked along beside her to Dead Indian ranch.
At sight of them, Robledo and the commissioner came out with a joyful welcome. In front of the ranch house stood the other men of the expedition, who, after attending in their own way to the wounds of their captives, were keeping watch over them, as well as over Piola. It had been decided to take them all to the jail in the capital of the territory on the very next day.
Meanwhile, Celinda, finding herself once more among friends, who were eagerly expressing their delight at her rescue, began to recover her usual spirits. She tried to hide her face from Watson, so that he shouldn’t see all the cuts that disfigured it; but at the same time she eyed him with a new tenderness.
“Did I really hurt you, ... Celinda?” the youth kept asking in an imploring tone, as though his emotions would not at the moment permit of his saying anything else. “But didn’t I do better with the lassoo? Didn’t I?”
After glancing about to see whether her father were near enough to overhear, she murmured, imitating his foreign accent,
“Clumsygringo! Great big stupid! I should say youdidhurt me, and you manage a lassoo as badly as possible.... But never mind! As long as you caught that bad man with me, and as long as I said that you’d have to catch me that way if you wanted me ... here I am!”
And puckering up her lips she blew him a kiss, as a kind of promise of what his reward would be when later they should find means of being alone.
At dusk the expedition reached La Presa, after a short halt at the Rojas ranch where they found Sebastiana. The half-breed, at sight of her young mistress, burst out into loud exclamations of joy, which later were transformed into cries of indignation when she saw the marks on Celinda’s face. In the midst of her indignant vituperations, themarquesa’sname escaped her, in spite of Robledo’s commands to her that she be discreet. And finally she ended up by telling Rojas all that she knew of the interview between the “señorona” and Manos Duras, and of all that she suspected it signified.
Sebastiana, quite as a matter of course, decided to remain at the ranch, and did not consider it necessary to ask don Carlos’ permission to do so. The rancher himself, however, urged Watson to stay with him until the following day, when he would accompany his guest to town.
“I have some urgent business to attend to at La Presa, just a few things to say to a certain personthere,” said don Carlos in a voice so soft it was terrifying to hear. Robledo divining his intentions tried to dissuade him from the trip.
“Leave me alone, don Manuel. I’m going to see that woman. You know what she tried to do to my girl. All I want is to pick up her skirts and give her a thrashing with this whip of mine, so....”
And he snapped the leather thong of his short riding-whip.
Convinced finally that there was no deterring don Carlos from his purpose, Robledo finally consented to being accompanied by him to the settlement. The fury of his combat with thegauchohad not yet abated in Celinda’s father, but Robledo hoped that within a few hours it would have subsided a little.
When they reached the main street, the rescue party found nearly the whole population of La Presa assembled to meet them. The men, riding ahead, gave out the news of the skirmish as they passed by the different groups and their words sped through the crowd with startling rapidity. There was general and frankly expressed rejoicing at the death of Manos Duras, as though the town had by that event been freed from a dangerous menace. Some of the men went so far as to lament the fact that thecomisarioshould have left the three prisoners under guard at Dead Squaw ranch until they could be conveyed to the prison of the territory. With that ferocity which always manifests itself in a crowd when finally it has been liberated from something that it feared, the men and women who had gathered to hear the news would have liked to tear these friends of the deadgaucho’sto pieces, in orderto be avenged for the terror he had inspired in them when he was alive.
Suddenly the throng caught at something that promised the satisfaction of its most ferocious instincts. A few of Sebastiana’s words were repeated, and in a twinkling the whole story was out. So it was the greatseñora, the “señorona” who, with Manos Duras, had planned this terrible act of vengeance! A vengeance which seemed more like the horrible things they had heard tell of, or that they themselves had seen in the movies, than anything they had ever witnessed in actual life. To think that that white-skinnedgringahad tried to kill the ranch girl, their ownFlor de Rio Negro, daughter of the land and the friend of every one of them!
Robledo, on horseback, moving back and forth from one group to another, guessed from a few phrases caught at random that the anger rising rapidly in the crowd was assuming dangerous proportions. At that very moment they were passing poor Pirovani’s former dwelling. Some of the women began crying out shrilly as they looked up at the windows.
“Down with the painted face! Death to the murderous she-dog!”
The worst insults in their feminine vocabularies were hurled through the air. Anticipating what was going to happen, Robledo changed his course and went up to the house, backing his horse up against the outside steps. But for once not even those men who were most loyal to him supported him in his purpose.
Heedless of his advice as of his commands, women and children dove under his horse or slipped behindits flanks, and the invading movement having been started, the men thronged into the basement of the house, apologizing, with a lift of their caps, as they passed in front of the engineer.
The assault of the enemy’s quarters was very rapid, every obstacle in the way of the invaders being overcome with that ease which seems characteristic of popular attacks on days of successful revolutionary outbreaks. The front door fell in, shattered by a few determined blows, and the human tide eddied for a moment around the opening, then, in surge after surge, swept into the house. Broken panes fell out of the windows, followed by all manner of projectiles, furniture, clothes, dishes, and in vain did some of the more moderate members of the crowd protest against this senseless destruction.
“But this isn’therhouse,” they were repeating. “This all belongs to don Enrique, the Italian!”
The crowd however turned a deaf ear. It preferred to believe that everything theredidbelong to the “señorona,” so as to be able to vent its rage without scrupling about other people’s property. And all the while they screamed out insults, in the hope that their words would scorch the “señorona’s” ears, just as they hoped that their hands might tear at her flesh.
But finally Robledo, still on his horse, calling out orders that went unobeyed, succeeded in gaining the attention of the crowd which had grown tired of its work of destruction. Its energies had suddenly diminished at discovering that its hoped-for victim was no longer within reach; but the real reason for its subsiding into a relative silence which allowed Robledo tomake himself heard, was the arrival of an old Spanish laborer who had retired from the works at the dam in order to carry on the business of delivering water to his customers in the town. Prodding and cursing at the miserable old nag that unwillingly drew his ramshackle cart, containing a water-tank, he daily made the rounds of La Presa; and from this conveyance he now began haranguing the mob at Pirovani’s.
“What are you doing here, blunder-heads? She’s gone!” he yelled shrilly. “I saw her in a carriage with the señor Moreno, the government fellow. They were on their way to the station to take the train to Buenos Aires.”
At once some of the men who had horses within reach offered to start off in pursuit. They had lost a good deal of time, but perhaps if they rode without any regard for their mounts they might get to Fuerte Sarmiento in time to catch the fugitive....
But some of the others shook their heads. The train would go by within less than an hour, and as it started out from the neighboring town, it rarely reached Fuerte Sarmiento late.
But the women were insistent. Let the men who had horses try to get to the station and let them drag the “señorona” back by the hair ... and while they were screaming out what they would do if they had their way, some of the males of the party were expressing the opinion that it would be an excellent plan to take up a position along the railway track, and when the train came by, shoot.... They appeared to have quite overlooked the fact which Robledo tried to point out to them, that even if they knew which particular coach contained themarquesa, there would be other travellers in it, whom they would have little excuse for murdering.
Hoarse with shouting, and convinced finally that the hated woman was now beyond their reach, they lapsed into glum silence.
Robledo seized his opportunity.
“Let her go. When she goes, Gualicho goes, and he’s troubled us enough. What we want is to keep this demon from ever coming back. If only he had been driven out long ago!”
As twilight deepened, the mob grew calmer. Supper time came, and even some of the most excitable members of the crowd decided to continue their discussion of the story either at their own homes, or at theGallego’s boliche.
Rojas, plunged in gloom, had apparently forgotten all the other events of the day, and could think of nothing but Elena’s having escaped him.
“But you don’t know how I feel about it, don Manuel!... I had something to say to her, by means of a whip.”
And with a gesture indicating how he would have done it, he went on explaining just what he considered justice would have demanded that he do to themarquesa.
From that day on, life in La Presa became a monotonous series of anxious days. Robledo was the only person of any importance left in the community. As operations at the dam remained suspended, the workmen began to drift away. Some of them, less impatient, spent their days in idleness, talking of the prospects of the Government’s ordering the works to begin again “next week.” But the order never arrived. Down there at Buenos Aires they were taking their time to consider the matter, and as the months went by, one after another of the workmen lost patience, and finally took up his pack again to escape, either on foot or by rail, from a place where there was no money coming in and where poverty was gaining headway like a plague.
Thebolichehad taken on a funereal appearance. Only a few of the old customers still came to toss off a drink before theGallego’scounter. These were all men of assured solvency, don Antonio having abruptly cut off the credit of all his other customers; to back up this resolve he kept a revolver in his money drawer, and his handsome American rifle under his chair. When out of funds, his patrons amply justified all these precautions.
“You ought to go to Buenos Aires, don Manuel,” he kept saying hopefully to Robledo. “You’re the only man from these parts they’ll listen to up there.”
The engineer, however, was as disheartened and gloomy as his surroundings. The only thing that ever drew a smile from him was the changed aspect of his partner. Watson had suddenly developed a cheerfulness which seemed to indicate that the fate of his once beloved canals was nothing to him now. According to his frank confession, the only subject that interested him was cattle raising, and he spent all of his days at the Rojas ranch.
What was the momentary paralysis of the works at the dam to him! He was young, most of his lifestretching ahead of him. Why not study cattle-farming in the meantime, especially as he hadFlor de Rio Negroto teach him, as she rode by his side through her father’s fields from sunrise to sundown?
But an incident that occurred shortly after Elena’s flight had tinged everything with black melancholy for Robledo. Gonzalez had brought him a hat that one of his compatriots had found near the river, at a distance from the camp. The engineer had recognized it at once. It was Torre Bianca’s.
For some time he had felt certain that his friend was no longer alive. Often at night, when the financial difficulties in which the works were involved kept him awake, he reconstructed the events which one morning at dawn had made Elena’s husband leave the house of the friend with whom he had taken refuge.
There could be little doubt now. Torre Bianca’s body must be at the bottom of the river.
And so it proved. The owner of thebolichecame to him again to tell him of the discovery made by some of the men who, being out of work, had gone fishing two leagues down the river. Near a reed-encircled island they expected to find some of the trout that often came down stream from Lake Nahuel-Huapi. And among the reeds they had noticed two long black objects swayed by the ripples—the legs of a drowned man.
Robledo had not the heart to examine the body, but his compatriot Gonzalez found evidence from the clothing that the drowned man was Torre Bianca.
After this, Robledo felt more inclined to yield to theGallego’sinsistent urgings that he go to Buenos Airesto make a plea for the continuance of the work on the dam. Recognizing the possibility of his being more useful to the despairing community in Buenos Aires than at La Presa, he started off for the capital and spent several months there, going from one government office to another, struggling with the entanglements of administrative red tape, and making a determined effort to provide resources in order to maintain his credit at the banks. But to his dismay he found that the business men who had up to that time given their support to his enterprise, were unwilling to put more money into the work, and little by little he became aware of the general distrust felt of everything connected with La Presa.
Winter came, and Robledo had not yet accomplished enough to feel justified in leaving Buenos Aires. There were days when, in a sudden spurt of optimism, he had hopes of accomplishing his purpose within the week. But when, armed with a new argument, he presented himself at the government bureaus, he was met with the set phrase, “Come back tomorrow.” And the tomorrow they meant, as he came to discover, was not the tomorrow following today, but something vague and nebulous in the future, a tomorrow that would never dawn.
One morning the papers brought news of the uneasiness felt in the river towns, at the unprecedentedly rapid rise of theRio Negro. The tributary streams were all bringing down enormous quantities of water and it seemed impossible that the banks of the larger stream should be able to contain the rapidly rising torrent. And this was the state of things that he hadcome to warn the government about, this was the condition that his dam, had it been nearer completion, would have been able to control!
Then came a telegram from his friends in La Presa, excitedly imploring that he come back, as though his presence possessed a miraculous power over the forces of nature itself.
He reached the town during a spell of icy cold that made him shiver in the fur-lined coat he had worn during the sharpest days of the winter. The streets of the town were deserted. The houses of wooden construction, best fitted to keep out the cold, kept their windows and doors tight shut. The roofs of the adobe buildings were crumbling, and the hurricanes from the plateau-lands had torn out the wooden frames of the windows. There was no one in sight! The only inhabitants of the place were those who had been there before the dam had been begun. To the engineer’s eyes the place looked as though ten years had elapsed since he had left it.
For days at a time he stood on the bank watching the growing volume of water in the great stream. Then the current began bringing down trees from the upper reaches of the river, and Robledo’s helpless indignation grew as he saw the danger to which all the lower river country was exposed increasing hourly. And now it was no longer trees torn from the slopes of the giant Andes, but great round enormous boulders, hidden from view, on the sandy bottom, that the stream rolled furiously along down stream.
It was not so much the danger of flood that worried Robledo as the probable fate of the unfinished wall ofthe dam. Each morning, with the methodical care of a doctor testing his patient, he examined the great dike thrown from bank to bank, the magnificent dam which, so well planned and constructed, had been left unfinished by its builders, first because of their absorbing love affairs, then because of their mortal rivalry.
The wider arm of the dam had been completed to within a few feet of the smaller one, and over these two walls the rising waters poured their volume, marking the place of the submerged obstructions with whirlpools and hissing foam.
Like all men who lead a life of danger, Robledo began to be superstitious, and as he watched the peril that was assuming gigantic proportions, he found himself addressing vague, mysterious divinities, imploring them to wreak a miracle.
“If only we can get through this winter without seeing this wall crash,” he thought. “What luck ...!”
But one morning, quite as though it were one of these sand walls that children spend hours building, and then break down at one capricious blow, the flooding waters snapped off one end of the unfinished arm, and then broke it up as though it were the least cohesive and resistant of substances; and finally, those two submerged walls, in the building of which hundreds of men and thousands of tons of heavy, hard materials had been employed, those walls that had seemed as immovable as the mountains, rolled outward, then down stream, crumbling as they went, to be tossed in fragments on the banks and on the shores of the reed-grown islands.
Robledo threw himself down on the ground in aparoxysm of weeping. Four years of work had melted away like so much sugar before his eyes. “All to do over again ... from the very beginning!”
His fellow countryman, the owner of theboliche, saw ruin staring him in the face also. In that once prosperous establishment the money-drawer beside the counter was now empty; and with his customers had vanished all his hopes of transforming his sandy acres into fertile irrigated fields. He was a poor man now, poorer than when he had come to find his fortune in this accursed spot!
TheGallegowas plunged in heavy gloom; but his faith in Robledo, and his desire to cheer him up, made the store-keeper try to appear optimistic.
“It will all come right some time,” he would say over and over again, but without conviction.
Don Manuel, however, as he watched the merciless stream continue its work of destruction, felt rage growing within him. He no longer watched the river. His eyes had the vague expression of one whose thoughts have wandered far, who sees what is hidden to others.
Canterac and Pirovani appeared before his mind’s eye as clear and distinct as though he had seen them only the day before. And then came a woman’s face, smiling, but with the look of one intent on mischief in her tawny eyes.
Through time and space this woman exerted her evil influence on this distant corner of the globe. She, not nature’s forces, was the real destroyer of the work of many men.
Robledo clenched his fists. He thought of Rojas, and of how the rancher had wanted to punish thiswoman with whip-lashings. At that moment he would have devised for her something far worse.
“Gualicho, accursed Gualicho! Betrayer and tormentor of men, destroyer of men and of things!... perish the evil hour in which I brought you here!”
“TWELVE years since I was in Paris! Ay!... How I have changed!”
As he spoke, Robledo looked pityingly at himself in the glass; he looked pityingly at himself every morning while he dressed!
He was still in vigorous health; but unquestionably age had begun to leave its marks on him. The crown of his head was now completely bald. On the other hand he had shaved off his mustache, for the simple reason that it had come to contain more white hairs than brown ones. This change, according to Robledo, made him look like a priest or a comic actor. But it was undeniable that it had restored to his appearance a certain jovial youthfulness.
He was sitting in a wicker chair in the lobby of one of the hotels that are to be found in Paris near theArc de Triomphe. Opposite him sat a young married couple, no other than Watson and Celinda.
The years that had passed had merely emphasized Richard’s features, bringing into sharper relief his athletic and tranquil beauty.Flor de Rio Negrohad now attained the ripe sweetness of a midsummer fruit. She still preserved her youthful slimness, slightly modified; she was now the mother of four children!
She no longer wore her hair cut in the style of a medieval page, nor, in public, did she indulge in thechildish exploits of the small amazon who had once been the admiration of the immigrants on the wild Patagonian plains. The time had come when she considered it her duty to assume something at least of the grave dignity to be expected in the mother of a nine year old boy. This important member of the family now sat facing his parents. His restlessness, and his impatience of maternal remonstrances soon revealed the fact that he was a self-willed and somewhat disobedient small boy; and he had already learned to seek “Uncle Manuel’s” protection whenever his less understanding parents scolded him. Meanwhile, on an upper floor of the “palace,” as most such hotels call themselves, two English nurses were occupied in watching over the play of the prosperous couple’s three younger children.
The Watsons had the characteristic appearance of those South American families who go to spend several months in Europe every year or so, and who, rich and exuberant, travel tribe-fashion, transporting their whole establishments, including all the servants, from one side of the Atlantic to the other. The Watson family was as yet but barely started, and occupied merely four staterooms on board ship, and five rooms with a general sitting room at the various hotels at which they stopped. But ten years more, with continued success in business, on its yearly trips to Europe, the family caravan would be engaging all the staterooms on one side of the steamer and occupying a whole floor in the “palaces” it patronized.
“How many things have happened since I was here last!”
Robledo’s cheerful face became grave as he remembered the struggles of those two hard years during which he had fought ill-luck and failure, in order to make it possible for the works on the Rio Negro to be taken up again.
He had known all the anxieties of rapidly accumulating debts and the demands of creditors who cannot be paid. Nearly all the inhabitants of La Presa had abandoned the town when the river destroyed the works. The infrequent travellers who journeyed that way came principally to see the ruins, like those of the dead historic cities of the old world, and viewed with astonishment here in this land where ruins were scarcely known.
But at last the government had taken up the work again. Little by little the river allowed itself to be brought under control, and finally accepted even the obstructing dam. Then it was that Robledo’s and Watson’s canals drank their first waters, letting the vivifying irrigating stream run over their oozy beds. After that had been accomplished, all that was needed was a little time to allow the miracle of water to work its own lesser miracles. Then men from all the lands of the globe began streaming into the dead settlement, eager to break up and cultivate this new soil which would ultimately belong to them.
A delicate luminous green was now creeping over the fields that had before been stretches of pebbles and dust. The dry, pricklymatorralesgave place to young shade trees. Nourished by the accumulated fertility of a soil that had slept for thousands of years, constantly refreshed by the water gliding at their feet,in a marvellously short space of time these young growths developed prodigiously.
The miserable adobe hovels, that had fallen into decay and ruin during the period of poverty and abandonment, were now replaced by brick buildings that were wide and low, with an innerpatiocopied from the Spanish architecture of the colonial period. TheGallego’sformerbolichebecame an enormous store, employing numerous clerks, where everything that might be required by customers, whose chief occupation was cultivating the miraculously redeemed soil, could be found; all manner of business was carried on at thealmacén, including a large amount of banking.
The owner of the “store” had other sources of income as well, since his barren fields too had become irrigated lands. He had even realized his dream of returning to Spain, leaving one of his clerks in charge of the business.
“I had a letter from don Antonio yesterday,” said Robledo with good-natured irony. “He wants us to go to Madrid. He wants to show off his house and his automobiles, and especially his friends. It seems that his dinner parties have been getting into the newspapers. And he says that he has received a decoration, and that one of these days he is to be presented to the king.... Lucky man!”
But at this reminder of her distant homeland, a shadow passed over Celinda’s face.
“She’s thinking of her father,” said Watson to his partner. “She can’t bear to think of La Presa, and of his being there alone. But I don’t see that we could help it if the old man wouldn’t come with us!”
Robledo nodded, and tried to cheer the down-cast Celinda. They had all done their best to persuade don Carlos to accompany them but he had not been able to make up his mind to leave the ranch. For him there was no particular interest in seeing the Europe where he had committed so many follies in his youth. No; he clung to his old illusions, he did not want to risk losing them. And besides, he was afraid that he would not have time to enjoy all the changes brought about on his estate.
“I have so few years left to live,” he explained; “I don’t want to waste them wandering about through strange places, when there are so many things to do here. Celinda is going to give me a lot of grandchildren to provide for, and I don’t want them to be beggars.”
Robledo’s irrigation ditches had been carried as far as the Rojas ranch, and had transformed the thin dry pasturage of other times into inviting meadows of alfalfa, always humid and green. The herds were fattening and multiplying prodigiously. In the early days don Carlos had had to ride miles in order to find one of his hard-horned, bony steers, as it strayed about the barren ranch in the hope of discovering some isolated patch of coarse grass. But now the steers, sleek and fat, their forelegs fairly doubling up under the weight of their accumulating flesh, stood munching the succulent alfalfa that surrounded them without their having to stir a hoof to reach it.
Besides the reasons he offered for not going with them, don Carlos, who was by this time the leading citizen of the region, felt that he would lose his importance in thosegringocountries where nobody knew his name and where no one would make a fuss over him. He had even avoided trips to Buenos Aires since the friends of his youth had died. Their sons and grandsons showed only too plainly that they didn’t know who he was! But at La Presa, where he was known as the wealthiest land-owner of the district, every one treated him with a respect verging on reverence. Moreover, he was a municipal judge there, and the immigrants, the cultivators ofchacrasor small farms, in recognition of his authority and wisdom consulted him on all sorts of subjects and accepted his decisions as gospel.
“What would I be doing in Paris?... Bragging about all I had left at home?... No, no, leave me with my own people. Let every steer chew his own cud!”
But it cost the old man something to part with his grandchildren, although the separation was not to be a long one. And when Celinda, and thegringo, her husband, came back, the oldest boy would be just old enough for his grandfather to teach him how to ride, as every good creole should.
This particular grandchild was now playing with Robledo, climbing onto his knees and delightedly diving off backwards on to the carpet.
“Carlitos, darling!” implored his mother. “Do let your uncle Manuel have a little peace!”
Then she went on, in reply to what Robledo had been saying about her father,
“It’s true that he didn’t want to come. But I can’t help feeling disappointed about his not being here to see all that we see.”
A young woman, elegantly dressed, approached the group. This was the young French governess, to whom had been deputed the education of young Carlos. It was time for him now to take a walk in theBois de Boulogne. But he didn’t want to go and all his mother’s petting did not succeed in quelling the spoiled child’s protests.
“I want to stay with uncle Manuel!”
But it seemed that uncle Manuel had to go out alone, as he told the small tyrant, quite with the air of offering him an apology.
“If you do what mama asks and go to theBoiswith Mademoiselle, I’ll tell you a story tonight, a long one, when you go to bed.”
Carlitos gave this promise a favorable reception, and without further objections, allowed himself to be carried off by his governess.
“There goes our young despot,” exclaimed Robledo, pretending immense satisfaction at being rid of him.
Celinda smiled. She knew well enough that Robledo had concentrated on this child of hers all the latent affection that childless and lonely men have it in them to expend as they draw near the boundaries of old age. He was already very rich and his fortune could not help but increase as the irrigated lands came under cultivation. Sometimes, when mention was made of his millions, he would look at Celinda’s son, dignifying him with the name of “my chief heir.” A part of his fortune would of course go to some nephews of hisin Spain, whom he had seen once or twice; but the major part of his fortune was destined to Carlitos.
For Watson’s other children he had a great deal of affection also; but this first born had come into the world during a period that for Robledo was full of bitterness and uncertainty; when all of his work was in danger of being irretrievably lost; and for this reason he had for the child that special tenderness that one reserves for the companion of evil days.
“What are you going to do this afternoon?” Robledo asked of Celinda. “The same thing as usual, I suppose?... call on the most distinguished dressmakers of theRue de la Paix, and the adjacent streets?”
Celinda, with a nod, gave her approval of this program, while Watson laughed good-humoredly.
“I’m afraid you’ll never be able to get on the boat,” warned the Spaniard gravely.
“But think how hard it is to buy anything where we come from!” exclaimed Celinda. “The place we live in is just as though it were the first week after the Creation. The only difference between us and Adam and Eve is that we have a few more neighbors, a few more clothes, and that we happen to be millionaires!”
They all laughed. But again their eyes grew dreamy as they thought of the scenes that they had helped to make. The camp at the dam had developed into what was now known as “Colonia Celinda”; and it was impossible to think of it without thinking also of the old man who was directing the development of the property, and who, as homes multiplied around him, seemedto grow smaller and smaller, while his profile took on a new sharpness of outline, making him resemble, as he stood listening to the men and women who came to him with their difficulties, a kindly but authoritative old patriarch.
And while the tentacles of the canal system were slowly creeping through the ancient basin of the Rio Negro, changing the once arid lands into fertile prairies, a stream of immigrants was bringing new money, new blood, new energy to the colony; and as they paid in year by year the purchase price of their farms, millions poured into the company’s offices.
And to Robledo there was a certain irony in the fact that wealth had come to him when he was already too old to feel the desires that tempt and divert other men. Watson’s children were already millionaires, many times over; it would never fall to their lot to know the enslaving power of toil, nor the anxieties of the need of money; and at their coming of age they would undoubtedly come to Paris to pour out on its pleasures a part of their princely inheritance, attracting attention even there by their extravagances and the glitter of their idle and useless lives. But the very force of the contrast between their lives and his amused Robledo, and with the smiling fatalism of the man who in a long lifetime has known want and bitterness, he accepted this termination of his labors, finding it quite in keeping with the usual ironies of life.
There was another contrast too, one which he often pondered, in the circumstances of his career. While he had been making himself a millionaire, one half of humanity, all that part of it separated from him by awide ocean, had been suffering the horrors of a ghastly war. The first effect of this cataclysm had been to endanger his own enterprise, for the foreign colonists on his land had hastened to abandon their farms in order to join the troops of their respective nations. Then suddenly this general exodus stopped, to be followed by a veritable flood of new colonists.
Meanwhile, violent transformations were taking place in Europe. Many of those whom twelve years earlier he had known as rich men, were now poverty-stricken, or else had disappeared. On the other hand, he, who in those days had been a mere aspirant to fortune, a colonist whose future was of the most doubtful, now felt wearied by the exaggerated dimensions of his prosperity. He thought of himself as being like the steers of his friend don Carlos, who, overwhelmed by the very plentifulness of their fodder, stood knee-deep in alfalfa on legs too slender to support their enormous weight, while they looked with eyes that showed no trace of desire at the quantities of pasturage surrounding them.
Watson and Celinda were young, they still had illusions and desires, they had innumerable uses for their wealth. Celinda knew all the pleasures of luxury, and her husband could gratify that most universal of all the desires of a lover, the desire to give Celinda everything that she wanted. But as to himself, Manuel Robledo, multi-millionaire of the Argentine, not even the most innocent pleasures reserved to old age had for him any charm. Riches had come too late; he had no time now to learn what to do with them.
The greater part of his life had been spent in aneffort to simplify, to do without comforts, and now he no longer needed, no longer desired, the things other people considered indispensable. Celinda and her husband kept an expensive automobile standing at the hotel entrance from early morning till late at night. They could not live without having this means of locomotion at their beck and call. One would suppose that these two former crack riders had possessed a car from the moment they were born. Ah, youth! What a marvellous adaptability it possesses for every kind of pleasure and luxury! Only in cases of urgent haste did Robledo remember that he could purchase the services of an automobile. But on all other occasions he preferred to walk or to employ the same means of locomotion as those used by people of moderate circumstances.
“It isn’t meanness, nor miserliness,” Celinda used to say, for with her woman’s keenness of observation, she had learned to understand Robledo. “He simply doesn’t think of these things, because they mean nothing to him.”
The two engineers started from their day-dream as they heard Celinda inquire,
“And what are you going to do this afternoon, don Manuel? Why not come with me to the dressmaker’s, so that you’ll know just what you are talking about when you make fun of women’s frivolous pastimes?”
But Robledo had other plans.
“I have a call to make, on a former classmate who wants me to help him out in a business matter ... a poor devil who’s out of luck ... but he has a scheme for manufacturing agricultural implements, and it maybe that all he needs to set him on his feet is a little capital. He has invented a new kind of plow, he writes me.”
The three friends walked slowly out to the street, and Richard and his young wife got into their car. Robledo however preferred to walk to thePlace de L’Etoile, where he took themétroto Montmartre.
It was a late spring afternoon, the air was mild, the sky soft with a golden haze. Robledo swung along with the quick step of youth. Suddenly the image of his unfortunate companion Torre Bianca crossed his mind. This was scarcely strange for when he had last been in Paris it was as his friend’s guest, and it was together that they had all three set out from the brilliant capital to seek their fortune in the deserts of northern Argentine.... Natural enough too that the thought of this other engineer friend of his whom he was at that moment going to see, who was in desperate straits also, and burdened with a family, should make him think of the ill-fatedmarqués.
Very often in the last twelve years, in the life of monotonous work that he had led, with few new impressions coming in to blot out old ones, he had thought of Torre Bianca’s tragic story and had wondered what had been Elena’s fate after her flight....
Nor was it easy to forget the woman whose evil influence persisted so long after she herself had disappeared. The old inhabitants of La Presa who had remained faithful to the land and had not abandoned the ruined town, had handed down the legend of how a woman had come to that desert community from the old world, a woman who, beautiful and possessed ofa fateful charm, had brought ruin and death to all those who had fallen under her spell. Those who knew her only from hearing the legend that had grown up about her, imagined her a kind of witch, and attributed to the vanished “Cara Pintada,” the “Painted Face,” all kinds of nameless crimes! It was even whispered that at times those who strayed in solitary spots along the river bank, caught glimpses of her, and always she brought evil upon those to whom she appeared....
On his occasional trips to Buenos Aires, Robledo had tried to get some news of that Moreno who had been the companion of Elena’s flight. But he had never been able to learn anything definite. Evidently both fugitives had vanished in the restless crowds of Europe, as completely and tracelessly as do those who sink in the frothing sea.
“She must have died,” Robledo would say to himself. “Without doubt she is dead. A woman of her kind would not be likely to live long.”
And for months at a time she would drop out of his mind; then some allusion on the part of the old inhabitants would awaken his memories of the vanishedmarquesa.
As he went down the steps of the station near theArc de Triomphe, he had quite forgotten the unlucky couple. The human tide sweeping into the depths of themétrocarried him along with it, and in a few minutes he climbed out to the street level, once more on the opposite side of the city.
As evening closed in he left his friend’s house whichwas in a modest side street, and walked along theboulevard Rochechuart, towards thePlace Pigalle.
On his evening excursions through Montmartre with South American friends, eager to enjoy the puerile and specious delights of all-night restaurants, he had never gone further than this square. Moreover the aspect of this part of Paris is by night far more pleasing than by day.
The crowds passing along the boulevard he was following were of ordinary or vulgar appearance. Evidently the Montmartre of which foreigners spoke with such enthusiasm, whose name was uttered as though it were a magic word by the members of certain youthful groups on the other side of the Atlantic, began at thePlace Pigalle. Thisboulevard Rochechuartwas like a frontier region and lacked any distinctive character of its own. Doubtless its inhabitants were poor devils expelled from Montmartre proper by the necessity of finding cheaper lodgings than were available in that famous quarter, or else they were novices in the life of pleasure, who had not yet acquired the clothes nor the manners suitable for a successful night-restaurant career.
As darkness thickened, the number of women on the street increased.... For them the kind uncertainties of twilight were a necessary assistance in their pursuit of men and bread.
Robledo passed them as though blind to their glances and deaf to their whisperings. “Young man,” he thought he heard, and “a handsome fellow.”
“Poor creatures! To get a meal they feel obliged to tell these outrageous lies....”
Suddenly his attention was drawn to one of them. There was little to distinguish her from the others. Like them she was looking at him with bold and provoking glances. But those eyes ... where had he seen those eyes?
She was dressed with a kind of poverty stricken elegance. Her clothes, old and faded, had once, long years ago, been of handsome material, and fashionable cut. From a distance they might still deceive; and she still preserved a slenderness which, with her unusual height, made one forget momentarily the ravages poverty and age had made upon her.
When she saw Robledo stopping to look at her, she smiled at him with childish sincerity. This was a promising catch, the best of the afternoon. Her prospective customer had all the appearance of being a rich foreigner wandering without his bearings in a quarter he had never strayed into before, and to which he was not likely to return. There was no time to lose.
Meanwhile Robledo stood motionless, looking at her with frowning brows as he searched his memory.
“Who is this woman?... Where the devil have I seen her?”
She too had stopped, turning back to smile and invite him with a gesture to follow her.
Robledo’s expression showed that he was alternating between surprise and doubt.
Could it be?... But he had thought her dead years ago! No, it was impossible. He had been thinking of her that very afternoon, that was why he had made this mistake.... It would be too extraordinary a coincidence....
He was still eyeing her, believing that he recognized the past in certain lines of that faded face, and confused by others which he did not recognize. But those eyes! Those eyes!
The woman smiled once more, slightly moving her head, and repeating her silent invitations. Impelled by curiosity, Robledo involuntarily made a scarcely perceptible gesture of acceptance, and she walked on. But she had taken only a few steps when she stopped before the screen door leading into a bar of squalid appearance through the smeared windows of which he saw vapid faces staring. Standing at the door of this place she winked at him and then disappeared into the interior of the filthy establishment.
Robledo stood hesitant. It disgusted him to think of having the slightest of relations with this woman, but at the same time his curiosity about her made him uncomfortable. He felt certain that if he went away without speaking with her he would forever be tormented by a persistent doubt, he would always regret not having made sure whether this phantom of Elena had really been Elena herself.
And fear of being obsessed by this doubt turned the scale of his indecision.... With a violent push he swung open the door.
Tables, a decrepit cane settee against the wall; dingy mirrors, and a counter behind which were numerous shelves full of bottles, guarded by a woman, old and monstrously fat, her face mottled with pimples and scabs.
Robledo recognized the place as one of those frequented by women, who though dependent on the day’s chance meetings for their sustenance, still wish to preserve a certain independence, though often enough they are glad to accept the services of the proprietress of the saloon to which they bring patrons, as adviser and procuress.