When Chiquita entered the garden, she had just returned from an Indian
Mission School for girls, some ten miles distant from Santa Fé, whither
she rode once a week to instruct its pupils in the art of blanket and
basket weaving; an art which she had practiced from her earliest days.
Her affair with Don Felipe was bad enough, and though she had been
generally condemned for it, her woman's prerogative was recognized
nevertheless. But for a lady, and ward of a priest, to dance in public
and for money, was a thing unheard of; and gossip was fast giving her an
unenviable reputation. This latest escapade, as it was generally termed,
had nearly cost her her position in the school. When, however, it was
taken into consideration that her services were gratuitous and that it
would be impossible to replace her by any one else half as competent,
the directors of the institution discreetly demurred, deciding that it
would be better to humor the caprices of this fair barbarian who ruled
supreme in her department.
The greeting which took place between her and Blanch was cordial enough
to all outward appearances. Considering the tension and delicacy of the
situation, the volcanic nature of the two and the intense longing of
each to fly at the other and settle their differences then and there,
the self-control of the two was commendable in the extreme.
"Do you ride much, Señorita?" asked Blanch, eyeing critically her
riding-skirt and wondering how it was that such an antiquated cut could
sit her so well.
"I don't think I could live without a horse," replied Chiquita. "I often
think I must have been born on one; at least, I can't remember the day
when I first learned to ride. It was good to get back here after my six
years at school for the sake of riding, if for nothing else. I don't
believe either of you know what the real joys of riding are," she went
on, pulling the glove from her right hand and sipping the chocolate
which Bessie had handed her.
"Not until one has passed weeks and months in the saddle at a time does
one thoroughly realize what riding means, or appreciate the worth and
companionship of a horse." She paused, and a look of longing came into
her large, lustrous eyes, as the memory of her early life came back to
her, when she, with her people, roamed free through the land.
"_Dios!_ but I have been unhappy ever since you came, Señorita," she
resumed, changing the subject abruptly and addressing Blanch. "The
knowledge that you are constantly near him almost drives me mad at
times. And your dresses--they haunt me in my dreams! I never before
imagined that dress was of so much importance in this world." She was so
outspoken and withal so natural, that both Blanch and Bessie burst into
a peal of good-natured laughter in which Chiquita joined.
"We women," she continued, taking another sip of chocolate, "have
nothing to fall back upon except our old antiquated Spanish
costumes--you can imagine what we would look like in the modern clothes
we procured here. I have never been placed in such a ridiculous position
before, and if I only knew that you were as miserable as I am, I think I
might begin to enjoy the humor of the situation." Again all three
laughed.
"Ah, love, what a thing is love!" she sighed, placing her slender gloved
hand over her heart. "It makes one as miserable as it does happy." Then
suddenly turning to Blanch, she asked: "Have you always dressed like
that?"
"I have always tried to live up to a certain standard," replied Blanch.
"And how long have you known him?"
"Oh! as long as I can remember--twenty years, perhaps."
"Twenty years, and always looked like that and not married to him? Sweet
Mother of God!" she cried in the quaintest tone imaginable, sinking back
in her chair. "Had I known him as many weeks I had either married him or
killed myself!"
"Nobody takes love so seriously as that!" laughed Blanch.
"Ah! you have never loved him!" she said, after a short silence.
"Why do you suppose I am here?" returned Blanch.
"Then how could you have lived near him all these years without marrying
him?"
"It was a mistake, I admit," answered Blanch good-humoredly. "But you
must understand that we don't regard love in quite the same light as you
do. We don't make a great fuss about it and talk of killing ourselves,
and that sort of thing. We get married when we find it convenient."
"Ah, yes, I know," answered Chiquita, "but I'm sure you can never be as
much to him as I can. What have you endured, what have you suffered to
make you feel and realize the full significance of love?"
"Do you imagine," asked Blanch in surprise, "that there is any less of
the woman in me because I have been spared the things which you perhaps
have been forced to endure, or that one must first suffer before one is
capable of loving?"
"No, I don't think that, for love is a thing like sleep, it comes upon
us unawares. But it seems to me I am better fitted for him than you are;
that my love, tempered by my life's experience, must be fuller and
deeper and richer than that which you have to offer him. What," she
continued, "do you really know of life? Not the social side of it, of
which your life has been so full, but life as it really is? Were you
born under the open heavens? Have you slept on the hard, cold ground,
exposed to the weather, or nearly perished of hunger and thirst? Could
you feed and clothe yourself from the naked earth without the assistance
of others? Have you seen men, women and children starve, or ruthlessly
struck down by your side, or nursed them through some terrible scourge
like the smallpox?
"All your life you have been protected and cared for, while all my life
I have been obliged to face the reality of things, forced to work, to
procure the simple necessities of life. I have carried wood and water,
cooked, and fed and clothed myself and others with the materials
provided by my own hands. And yet, when I look back upon my life, I
would not surrender one hour of the true happiness the day's work
brought with it could I thereby have escaped the suffering and
bitterness it often entailed. Barren though my life may appear from your
point of view, I know it to be infinitely rich in comparison to yours,
for, as I have said, you have never known what life really means--never
experienced its hardships, never beheld the bright face of danger, nor
tasted the joys of the great free life in the open, the simple daily
life devoid of the cares of civilized men, without which the life of a
man can never be complete, be he what he may.
"'Where the foot rests, that is home,' is a saying among my people; a
truth, that so far as my experience goes, has never been gainsaid."
In spite of themselves and the fact that they could not wholly
comprehend the weight and significance of her words, they were
fascinated by her discourse, emphasized and illustrated as it was by the
dramatic intensity of her gestures and expression.
"Señorita," said Blanch at last, breaking the silence that ensued, "I
believe you are still at heart the savage, or better, the nomad you were
when you lived in the wilderness."
"When I lived in the Garden of Eden, in God's world, not man's, is what
you mean," she replied.
"Do you never have a desire to return to it?" asked Bessie.
"The old days can never be effaced," answered Chiquita. "My thoughts
continually revert to them when, as a little girl, I used to set meat
and drink before my father and his guests as they sat in a circle about
the fire in the center of his lodge or in our house and smoked the long
red clay pipes, or, after the crops were harvested, roamed through the
land during the hunting season; sometimes afoot, at other times in
canoes or on horseback. There are times when such an insatiable longing
for the old life seizes me that I become almost unmanageable. I long to
throw myself down in the open--lie close in the embrace of Mother Earth,
and breathe the smoke of the camp-fire. My unrest is like that of the
birds when the spell of the spring and the autumn comes upon them and
the migratory instinct seizes them, or like that of the great herds of
reindeer in the North which travel each year to the sea to drink of its
salty waters, and which, if prevented, die."
"Do you know," said Bessie to Blanch a little later, when they were
alone in their room, "she's fascinating when she talks like that."
"Ah! that's just where the danger lies," answered Blanch. "Think of what
might happen if she starts talking like that to Jack--it's just what
he's waiting to hear."