Only an instant he gave to it all, but in that instant he made certain
that every man and woman on the place was at prayers, except the old
Indian woman, who squatted with covered head in the hall, and himself.
His movements were no longer aimless. He retreated swiftly to the
veranda, and tossed the cigarro into the garden. One glance he gave the
wooden-like figure of the old Indian. Only as a last resort would he
attempt to pass that way, but if the windows were not barred--
They were not. Ana had gone against her aunt's Mexican rule, which was
that all fresh air should be excluded from a sick-room; and while that
lady and all her servants exclaimed against the admission of air, they
let the blame lie on the shoulders of Ana, and no one closed the window.
It swung wide to the wind of the west, and on the couch within, Bryton
could see Raquel's face.
The lids were closed over the violet eyes, and the lips were apart,
showing the white teeth. It was still so light that he could see the
little flush on the cheeks against the white pillow, and on her right
hand one little old ring of plain gold. On the left hand shone the red
gold of her new wedding-ring.
She looked so pathetically young and so utterly alone, as she lay there,
that all the man in him arose in protest, and a mist of tears blinded
him for a moment to the beauty of her face.
"Poor little one," he whispered, "my poor little broken Dona
Espiritu--my one lady of the spirit!"
The sound of the words did not wake her, but the sense of them reached
her some way; for she opened her eyes suddenly, and without any shadow
of wonder they rested on his face.
"I waited a long time," she said at last, "then I heard your voice, and
I knew you were coming to me."
He set his lips tightly, and nodded, but did not speak.
"I waited a long time," she repeated, as a child appealing for
understanding. "Did they tell you I thought you were dead?"
[Illustration: "THEN I HEARD YOUR VOICE"]
He nodded assent. No one had told him so, but the words explained much.
"You said you would come back if you lived, and you never came, and they
told me--the padre told me--that you were dead!"
"So I am," he said, gently; "and they told me, my lady of the spirit,
that you had taken the final vow of the convent--that the night, our one
night, was a thing you were forgetting under a black veil. Child, child!
they lied to us, and now--"
"Forgetting?" she said, slowly. "How does one forget a night like that,
when we walked out of the wilderness into the day together? You never
came back; and I--I wanted to be in the world where you had been, so
I--"
"I know," he whispered, gently; "I know, my dona of the spirit."
He had not meant to touch her,--only to look at her and speak to her
once, and then ride wherever fate might take him.
But she reached her hands to him, and with a smothered groan he knelt by
her couch and his arms were around her.
"Don't weep like that!" she whispered, and laid her hand on his head.
"I have wept enough for two, since our carriages passed and I found you
had not died. And you--you knew all the time."
"I knew when I saw you kneel in your wedding-veil and take that
oath--not until then. I heard his mother say that he was the man you
loved; and, soul of mine! you had not said as much as that in words to
me. So I--"
"You heard that? Then you know the life I have to live." He nodded,
without lifting his head from the pillow of her arm. There are some
things hard to face with open eyes, but she felt the shudder that passed
over him. Through the opened window came the rise and fall of many
murmuring voices repeating the rosary. In the gold-of-Ophir rose-tree
two birds fluttered and called to each other in the very whisper of bird
notes. The soft lavender-grays of a Californian nightfall were sifting
through the warm light of the afterglow, and away there in the west
stretched bars of blood red, the last trace of the dying day. All the
sequestration of the hour was about them, all the hush of the pause,
before the final plunge of their day into the shadows, and the two souls
were enveloped by the atmosphere of that ever-recurring tragedy of the
hours, and of lives.
How long he knelt there he did not know. She felt his lips on her
wrist, and felt rather than heard the broken words he was
whispering--the wild, mad words he had meant not to say, as he had meant
not to touch her; then her eyes grew bright as the stars picking their
way through the vault of blue, and the golden-haired woman of the
carriage belonged to a feverish phantasy of the past hours. She might
exist, that golden-haired creature of beauty, but the real life of the
man who knelt there in the dusk belonged only to her, to her always,
through the bond of one starlit Mexican night of witchery, and this last
hour of the California day.
Nothing made any difference now; though she lived in a hell of purgatory
all her waking life, the bonds of their dream life would be closer than
all else--always, always!
She felt suddenly well and strong. Ah, there was so much in the world to
live for! Though they never met, never spoke again, this hour of the
tryst would be his through all her life--her hour of a rosary of the
heart.
A girl's voice in the patio came softly through the dark in an old
Spanish hymn. It was Juanita, and the service of prayer was ending in
the usual duo; one of the vaqueros with a fine barytone voice was
singing the echoing stanzas of praise.
It was the signal for dispersing, but the man at the couch did not know
that. Neither did he know that the crouched form of the Indian was no
longer in the hall. She was waiting in the dusk at the door, and she was
clutching with a claw-like hand at the robe of the padre, and muttering,
"He is there--it is true. He is there--and she is again bewitched. Now
you will help me to kill the American?"
The padre looked at her sharply, and then motioned to Ana, who was close
behind.
"Remain with the others. Make some excuse to keep them there--another
hymn--anything. And be quick--quick!"
Startled though she was, Ana obeyed, and from the door of the hall he
heard again the voice of Juanita; this time it was in a favorite known
to all, and the volume of sound told him that Don Enrico himself was
joining in the refrain, and that no one would leave the patio until the
finale was reached.
No candle burned now in the hall. Polonia had blown it out, that no ray
might enter the half-open door of the inner room. She would have gone
with the padre, but the sudden vigorous grasp of his hand on her
shoulder stopped her where she stood, and without a word being spoken,
she knew better than to follow.
Quickly as a cat of the hills, the padre crossed the hall and stood
where he could see the open window and the kneeling man, and the hand of
Raquel on his bent head.
"Every night when the dusk comes it will be our time of the day," she
was saying. "They told me you were dead, else--but you know. I think the
mad hours have gone by for me; I can go on living if--if you do not
forget."
The listening priest could not hear what the man said, but she heard,
and smiled, and sighed.
"There is one thing," she said, hesitatingly: "the ring, you have worn
it a year--and--"
"I know," and he lifted his head. "We need no visible emblem, you and I.
I put it back on your finger, my lady of the spirit,--Dona Espiritu;--a
pledge of renunciation, and a reminder of the rosary of the dusk."
She took from her right hand the little gold band and gave it to him,
and in its place he slipped the onyx ring of the Aztec eagle and
serpent.
"I did not tell you what that ring means to my people," she said, as he
kissed it in its new resting-place. "Maybe I never can tell you. I--I
thought I could be stronger if I wore it on my own hand, for--for the
reason that my heart went out of my bosom to follow it, and--and I rode
my horse as fast and as far as I could from you, because I--was
afraid."
"Good God!" whispered the man. "You don't know what you are saying.
Remember that I dare not touch your lips, and that I love you--love
you--love you!"
Then the nestling birds in the gold-of-Ophir rose were startled from
their repose by the man who strode through the open window and walked
blindly out into the garden.
The padre watched the girl's face on the pillow for a moment, and heard
her sobs, and retreated softly to the hall, where he met the others; and
at Dona Ana, when they were alone a moment, he smiled with a certain
elation.
"Look distressed no longer, little one," he said, reassuringly. "You
have helped me to a good day's work, very good. Listen! I like your new
American friend very much, and when you go to San Juan I count on you to
help to make him welcome there. He is going to do me a good turn with
Rafael Arteaga, and I forgive him all the horses he helped to save for
the army men. He does not know it, but he is going to be my good friend,
that fine Americano. He is so fine and so strong, Ana, that he thinks he
can put a woman he loves in a niche of the memory, as we put statues of
the saints in the niches of the altar-places."
"What do you say?" she queried, perplexed by his smile and words.
"And that though the woman loves him so much that she kisses her own
hands where his lips have been, and though he loves her so much that he
is half mad at denial, yet he will leave her always there in the little
niche of the altar,--just above his head, but in reach of his hands; and
the hands will never try to lift her down, Anita. He will only look at
her as he rides past, and leave her there to remember."
"I think you have gone mad," said Ana, sharply. "What did the Indian
witch tell you in the hall?"
"Ask her!" he suggested. But when Ana did so, she met only scowls and
gutturals. And even the sound sleep of Raquel, and the absolute freedom
from delirium, brought nothing but suspicion to the heart of old
Polonia. It was witchcraft, like all the rest, and the padre should have
put the malediction on the Americano when he had so good a chance. Above
all, he should not have let him ride away in safety.
[Music: _Indian Reveille._]