The next morning Casa Grande was thrown into consternation. Valencia
Menendez was in a raging fever, and had to be held in her bed.
After breakfast I sent for Estenega and told him of what I had seen.
In the first place I had to tell some one, and in the second I thought
to end his infatuation and avert further trouble. "You firebrand!" I
exclaimed, in conclusion. "You see the mischief you have worked! You
will go, now, thank heaven--and go cured."
"I will go,--for a time," he said. "This mood of hers must wear
itself out. But, if I loved her before, I worship her now. She is
magnificent!--a woman with the passions of hell and the sweetness of
an angel. She is the woman I have waited for all my life,--the only
woman I have ever known. Some day I will take her in my arms and tell
her that I understand her."
"Diego," I said, divided between despair and curiosity, "you have
fancied many women: wherein does your feeling for Chonita differ? How
can you be sure that this is love? What is your idea of love?"
He sat down and was silent for a moment, then spoke thoughtfully:
"Love is not passion, for one may feel that for many women; not
affection, for friendship demands that. Not even sympathy and
comradeship; one can find either with men. Nor all, for I have felt
all, yet something was lacking. Love is the mysterious turning of one
heart to another with the promise of a magnetic harmony, a strange
original delight, a deep satisfaction, a surety of permanence, which
did either heart roam the world it never would find again. It is the
knowledge that did the living body turn to corruption, the spirit
within would still hold and sway the steel which had rushed unerringly
to its magnet. It is the knowledge that weakness will only arouse
tenderness, never disgust, as when the fancy reigns and the heart
sleeps; that faults will clothe themselves in the individuality of the
owner and become treasures to the loving mind that sees, but worships.
It is the development of the highest form of selfishness, the
passionate and abiding desire to sacrifice one's self to the happiness
of one beloved. Above all, it is the impossibility to cease to love,
no matter what reason, or prudence, or jealousy, or disapproval, or
terrible discoveries, may dictate. Let the mind sit on high and argue
the soul's mate out of doors, it will rebound, when all is said and
done, like a rubber ball when the pressure of the finger is removed.
As for Chonita she is the lost part of me."
He left that day, and without seeing Chonita again. Valencia was in
wildest delirium for a week; at the end of the second every hair on
her head, her brows, and her eyelashes had fallen. She looked like a
white mummy, a ghastly pitiful caricature of the beautiful woman whose
arrows quivered in so many hearts. They rolled her in a blanket and
took her home; and then I sought Chonita, who had barely left her
room and never gone to Valencia's. I told her that I had witnessed the
curse, and described the result.
"Have you no remorse?" I asked.
"None."
"You have ruined the beauty, the happiness, the fortune, of another
woman."
"I have done what I intended."
"Do you realize that again you have raised a barrier between yourself
and your religion? You do not look very repentant."
"Revenge is sweeter than religion."
Then in a burst of anger I confessed that I had told Estenega. For a
moment I thought her terrible hatred was about to hurl its vengeance
at me; but she only asked,--
"What did he say?"
Unwillingly, I repeated it, but word for word. And as I spoke, her
face softened, the austerity left her features, an expression of
passionate gratitude came into her eyes.
"Did he say that, Eustaquia?"
"He did."
"Say it again, please."
I did so. And then she put her hands to her face, and cried, and
cried, and cried.