And yet it was again weeks and weeks before she heard another word. In
those weeks there were times when she hated José because he never once
spoke of what she wished to hear. She could not speak herself--she could
not ask questions; she could only wait--hungry and desolate. They would
not even say--these people--whether he had gone to the King of America
or not; whether he was at the other end of the world, or whether he
was only in some other city. The truth was that José had innocently
cautioned the others against speaking of one whom Pepita disliked to
hear of.
“She does not like him,” he said, sorrowfully. “Girls are like that
sometimes. It makes her angry when one talks of him.”
But slow as he was, he could not help seeing in time that something was
wrong with Pepita. Sometimes she scarcely talked at all, and she did not
flame up when Jovita grumbled; it seemed as if she scarcely heard. Her
eyes had grown bigger, too, and there was a burning light in them. They
always appeared to be asking something; often he found himself obliged
to look up, and saw them fixed upon him, as if they meant to wrest
something from him. The careless bird-like look had gone, the careless
bird-like laughter and mocking. He began gradually to fancy she was
always thinking of something that hurt and excited her. But then there
was nothing. She had all she wanted. She had as many trinkets as the
other girls; she had even more. She had so little work to do that she
had sought some outside her home to fill her spare moments, and she
loved no one. There was not a man she knew who would not have come
if she had smiled. What, then, could it be? And how pretty she was!
Prettier than ever; prettier because of the burning look in her eyes,
and--and something else he could not explain; a kind of restless grace
of movement, as if she was always on the alert.
“Are you not pleased with Madrid any longer?” he asked her once.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Do you want anything?”
“No.”
“It seems to me,” he said, slowly, and with much caution, “that you do
not amuse yourself as you did at first.”
“It is not so new,” she said; “but there is still pleasure enough.” And
for a moment she kept her great eager eyes fixed upon him, and then she
moved slowly toward him and touched him with a soft touch on his big
clumsy shoulder and said: “You are a good brother! You are a good
brother!”
“I have always loved you,” he said, with simple pride. “When we were
children, you know I always promised that you should see better days.”
She had forgotten to count the weeks and days, or to take note of
the changing seasons, when one hot day in the early summer he came
in--José--with an innocent joy in his face.
He looked questioningly at Pepita two or three times and then coughed.
“You will not mind now,” he said. “It is so long ago, and it is all
over. Sebastiano has come back. He did not go to America; he is in
Madrid to-day. He came to me in the street; he did not avoid me; he was
rejoiced to see me. It appears that it is all well with him. Afterward
Manuel told me. It appears there is a very pretty girl he met in
Lisbon--she is here now. It is said he will marry her.”
Pepita clinched her hands and stared at him with eyes that burned as
never before.
“It is not true!” she said through her teeth. “It is not true!”
José fell back two steps.
“Not true?” he stammered. “Why not? They say so.”
“A man who slays bulls as he does,” she said, “does not forget a woman
in a day.”
José was lost in amazement.
“I thought you believed nothing but ill of him,” he said. “What has
happened? You are angry--angry.”
“It is not true about the girl from Lisbon,” she said. “It is a lie they
amuse themselves with.”
Never had innocent José been so thunderstruck. This was beyond his
understanding. He was afraid to speak, and kept looking sidewise at her
as he ate his soup; but she said no more.
“What has happened?” he said to himself over and over again. “Will she
not allow him to marry another, though she does not want him herself?”
Later he went out again. It must be confessed that he went in the
hope of seeing Sebastiano, or at least hearing of him. There was
no difficulty in hearing of him. In the wine-shops and at the street
corners he was being talked of in every group. Of what else could people
speak who knew he had returned? How there would be sport--how there
would be pleasure! Life began to wear a more vivacious aspect. And what
had he not done since he had left Madrid? Such success--such adulation!
The impression among his adorers was that the whole world had been at
his feet. Here and there one could hear snatches of song of which his
name was the refrain. It was only because he so loved his own people
that he had refused the magnificent offers made by the King of America.
He had refused them; he had chosen to remain in Spain. He had come to
Madrid. Soon he would appear before them again. He had even gained in
strength and dexterity; and as to his good looks--ah! what a dashing,
handsome fellow!
José had the good luck to see him again, even to speak to him. What
fortune--what happiness! The honest fellow felt himself overjoyed. They
were to be friends again.
It was quite late when he found himself walking homeward over the white
road again. He had drunk wine enough to make him feel quite gay; and
as he went he sang now and then a verse of a song about the joys of the
bull-fight.
When he was about half-way home he thought he heard behind him the sound
of rapid feet--light feet running. He stopped and looked back. What was
it he saw, or thought he saw? Was it a small dark shape which flitted
instantly into the shadow of the trees? It looked like a woman who did
not wish to be seen. Well, he would not look, then. What was the use of
giving her trouble? He tramped on, perhaps a little more slowly. It was
late for a woman to be out on the lonely road alone. It must be past
midnight. Then the thought came to him that perhaps she wished to pass
him. In that case he might look the other way, on the opposite side of
the road. In fact, he crossed to the other side to leave the way clear,
and went on good-naturedly, singing his song loudly and all out of
tune. Yes, he had been right. Soon the footsteps drew nearer; the shadow
within the shadow slipped past--ran swiftly. But by that time they were
nearing his home, and there was a stretch of road unshaded by anything.
The shadow hesitated, darted across the white space, and José, seeing it
in the full light, uttered a cry, and started in pursuit. In but a
few moments he had reached it and held it by the arm, feeling all the
slender body breathless and panting.
[Illustration: The slender body breathless and panting 147]
“Pepita!” he cried. “It is you?”
She let the mantilla drop from her face and stood and looked at him.
“Yes,” she answered, “it is Pepita; and you need not ask--I will not
tell you. I have been to--to look at something--and I will tell you
nothing.”
He put his hand up and rubbed his forehead violently. Then he let it
drop.
“I shall not ask,” he said. “You would do no wrong. You are a good girl;
but--”
“You think I have gone mad,” she said, with a sudden change of voice
and a piteous little shiver. “Who knows? Perhaps some one has cast the
evil-eye upon me. But I have done no harm, and I shall do none.”
“No,” he said, rather stupidly. “You would do no harm. Let us go in,
then.”
And without another word they went into the house, Pepita to her bed
to be awake and gaze at the darkness, José to sit with his head in his
hands and thinking a thousand wild thoughts until he fell asleep.
He could not know that where he had been she had been also; that when
the snatches of song had been sung she had heard them; that when the
people had talked of Sebastiano she had listened; that when Sebastiano
had stood in the bright light she had stood in the shadow and watched.
She had not thought of danger or of being discovered. She had only
thought of one thing and listened for one thing--and once she had heard
this thing discussed by some chattering young chulos.
[Illustration: She is a pretty young girl 151]
“She is a pretty young girl,” they said. “Not as pretty as that other,
but handsome enough. She was a little devil, that other. But it is a
mistake for a man like him to marry. How can a man feel free to risk his
life gayly when he has a woman hung about his neck?”
“He will not,” she whispered, growing hot all over. “No, he has not
forgotten. I have given the little heart and the flowers and candles.
And he could not forget while I--He will come back.”
She struggled with the passionate persistence of a child. Since she
would not give him up, he was hers.
But she did not know what to do. There was nothing but to wait in this
fever of strange misery and unrest, which grew more cruel every day;
and at the bull-fight if he would only look--perhaps--yes, if he saw her
face, he would understand and come.
In the days before the great entertainment took place she was like
some little savage creature at bay. She could scarcely bear to hear
the voices of those who spoke to her. Once she went into the church and
threw herself upon her knees as usual, but when she looked up her eyes
were fierce.
“If he does not come,” she cried to the waxen Virgin, “I will pray to
you no more--no more.”
She knew that it was blasphemy, but she did not care; and before she
went home she bought a sharp little knife and hid it in her breast.
“This,” she whispered, “this--if it is true about the girl from Lisbon;
but it is not true.”
For many years afterward the day of the great bull-fight was remembered.
No one who saw it forgot it as long as he lived. Affairs used to date
from it in the minds of many.
A year had passed since that first brilliant day when Pepita had gone
forth in her first festal dress. She remembered it all as she dressed
herself on this other morning. The same day seemed to have come again;
the same sunshine and deep blue sky. There were the same flowers nodding
their heads; Jovita was grumbling a little in her haste, just as she had
done then; and in the looking-glass there was the same little figure in
the bright attire--the soft black hair, the red rose, the red mouth. As
she looked, a sudden triumph made her radiant.
“I have not grown ugly,” she said.
No, she had not grown ugly. She was too young and strong for that, and
excitement had flushed her into new brilliance.
When she found herself seated among the fluttering fans of rainbow
colors, that moment’s glow of exultation left her. Strangely enough, she
could not help thinking of the empty church and the waxen figure before
which she had knelt, and then of the nights when she had stood watching
by the wall, and then of the sharp little knife in her breast. And then
came the clamor of the music and the grand entry of the moving stream of
color and glitter dazzling her eyes. No; just at first she had not the
power to look. Could it be she--Pepita--who felt dizzy and could not
see? who could distinguish nothing in the splendid panorama of the
triumphal march? And what clamor, what excitement there was on every
side! “What bulls! What men!” they were saying about her.
Only she seemed, in the midst of all the loud-voiced eagerness and
delight, to sit alone, a cold little figure vaguely tormented by the
gayety and the voices and the color of fluttering fans and ribbons and
costumes. The deep rose had fled from her face; she sat with her hands
wrung on her knee and waited for one moment to come.
The great bull ran bellowing around the arena; little beribboned darts
were flung at him and stuck in his shaggy shoulders; brilliant cloaks
were flaunted in his face; taunting cries mocked him. He charged hither
and thither in blind fury, scattering men and horses, who only returned
again to the attack.
“It takes too long,” communed Pepita, “It takes too long.”
And then the voices began to call for Sebas-tiano. “Sebastiano!
Sebastiano!” on every side--even the grand ladies and their cavaliers
clapping their hands and calling also. The beauties in the high places
were always ready to see him come, and to give him a welcome when he
risked his life to amuse them.
He stepped forth in his rich dress and with his gallant bearing, a
more beautiful and gay figure than ever, it seemed the excited people
thought. He had grown finer, without doubt, they said. His face was a
little pale, but that only made more beautiful his long dark eyes, under
their dense, straight, black lashes. It was the women who said this, and
who saw the richness of his dress, the colors of his _devisa_, the
close curl of his crisp hair, the grace of his movement. The men saw his
superb limbs, his firm step, his quick glance, his bright sword.
“Come, little slayer of bulls,” they shouted, “and show us what you
would have taught the people of America.”
And it appeared they were not to be disappointed in their expectation
of sport. They saw that when he stood before the bull and made a little
mocking bow of salute, he looked into its small, furious eyes with a
smile, as it drew near--a bellowing black mass, snorting and throwing up
the dust. It was as ready to begin as he. It rushed upon him, and he was
gone. He played with it, led it on, defied it, eluded it. The flashing
sword seemed to become a score of glittering blades; the people
shouted--rose in their seats--leaned forward--laughed--mocked the
bull--cried out praises of sword and man and beast--of each leap--each
touch of the steel’s point.
“He plays with it as if it were a little lamb,” they cried. “Sebastiano!
Sebastiano!”
Of what use to tell what must be seen in all its danger to be
understood? The joy and exultation rose to fierce fever-heat, the cries
swelled higher, faces flushed and eyes sparkled and flamed, while the
brilliant figure darted, leaped, attacked, played with death as it had
done scores of times before.
Only Pepita sat without color or applause--only Pepita’s fan was
motionless amidst all the fluttering--though her breast moved up and
down, and the throbbing in her side was like the beating of a hammer.
She was speaking to herself, though her lips were closed; she was
speaking to Sebastiano.
“He will look soon,” she was saying. “He will look as he did that first
day. My eyes will make him look. They will force him to it. Listen!
it is Pepita whose eyes are on you. You must feel them. You have not
forgotten. No. And it is Pepita--Pepita!”
All the strength of her body and soul she threw into her gaze--all the
fire of her young wildly beating heart and throbbing pulses.
“You must hear,” she said. “Pepita! Pepita!”
And unconsciously she leaned forward so that her white face and great
eyes, and the little black head with the rose burning in its hair, stood
out among the faces of those about her.
And he looked up and saw her, and their eyes met; and without knowing
she started to her feet.
No one knew, no one but herself saw, how it happened: even she did not
understand until all was past. Their eyes met, as they had done on the
day a year before. No, not as they had done then, but with a strange
new look. Sebastiano started; the arena swam before him; there was a
second--a fatal second in which he saw only a small face without color
and the red rose which was the color of blood. Then there was a roar
near him--a roar among the people--a wild shriek from the women. The
bull was upon him; he made a misstep, and was caught, amid the shrieks
and bellows, and flung inert far out upon the hoof-trodden dust with the
blood pouring from his side.
“But,” they said in the wine-shops at night, “when they took him up,
though they thought him gasping in death, he had not lost himself; and
as they carried him out they came upon a girl--the one who is called
‘the pretty sister of José’--her brother was taking her away. She looked
like one dead three days; and Sebastiano--there is a man for you!--tore
the _devisa_ from his shoulder and dropped it at her feet; and she
snatched it up--all wet with his blood--and thrust it in her breast, and
dropped like a stone. It is said that he loved her, and she had a devil
of a temper and treated him badly. He is a good fellow--her brother
José--and wept like a child for Sebastiano, and has begged to be allowed
to nurse him, and Sebastiano will have it so.”
“I am strong as an ox,” José had said, weeping. “I can watch like a dog.
I want neither sleep nor food, if it comes to that; and once when one of
my comrades fell from a scaffold I was the only one who could nurse him
without killing him with the pain. He will tell you that I nursed him
well, and was never tired.”
“Let him stay,” said Sebastiano.
In his struggle with death, which lasted so long, it was always the
large form and simple, anxious face of José he saw when he knew what
passed around him, and even when the fever brought him delirious visions
he was often vaguely conscious of his presence. For himself, he did not
know whether he was to live or die; but one night he found out.
It was a beautiful night which came after a long day in which those
about his bed had looked at him with pitying eyes, and at last a priest
had come and absolved him of his sins, and left him with a solemn,
kindly blessing, with a soul clear of stain and ready for paradise.
He had fallen asleep afterward, and had dreamed not of heaven but of
earth, of a red rose in soft black hair, and of a passionate little face
whose large eyes glowed upon him.
And suddenly he was wide awake, and found his dream a living truth.
José was no longer in the room. The moonlight made everything clear, and
upon the floor beside him knelt Pepita, her eyes fixed upon his.
[Illustration: Dios! Dios! he murmured 163]
“Dios! Dios!” he murmured.
“Hush!” she said. “Do not speak. It is Pepita. Look at me. They said
that perhaps to-night you would die. I have prayed until I can pray no
more, and when I came to José the tears were falling from his eyes, and
he said perhaps you would not see the day. Then I showed him the little
knife hidden in my breast, and told him if he did not let me come to you
alone I would not live. I said I could force you to remain on earth.
I love you--I love you. It has all happened, that which you said would
happen; and when the _devisa_ fell at my feet I hid it in my breast with
the other which was there before. And because I love you so, you cannot
die. I will do anything you say I must do. I am Pepita, and I give
myself to you. I would give my blood and my life and my soul for you.
Every night I have waited by the wall in the hope that you would come.
I have watched you when you did not see me. If you had not come I should
have killed myself; if you die, I will drive the knife to its hilt in my
heart. I can love more than those women who love so easily and so often.
I knew nothing about it when I was so proud and mocked you. I know now.
Mother of God! it is like a thousand deaths when one cannot see the face
one wants. What hunger night and day!--one is driven mad by it!”
She bent more closely over him, crushing his un wounded hand against her
heart--searching his soul with her look.
“They said there was a girl in Lisbon whom you loved,” she said. “I knew
it was a lie.”
“Yes,” he whispered, “it was a lie. Kiss me on the mouth.”
His arm curved itself around her neck, and the red lips which had mocked
melted upon his own.
“Did you suffer?” he murmured.
She began to sob like a child, as she had sobbed at the feet of the
Virgin.
“I told you that you would suffer! It was the same thing with me. Saints
of Heaven! human beings cannot bear that long. I shall not die, and I
will make you forget the pain. Stay with me, and let me see your eyes
and touch your lips every hour, that I may know you are Pepita, and that
you have given yourself to me.”
“I will stay through all the day and night,” she answered. “They cannot
make me go away if I do not wish it. They always give me my way. I have
always had it--the Virgin herself has given it to me.”
It seemed this was true. In a few months from then the people who
strolled in the Public Garden on Sunday looked at a beautiful young
couple who walked together.
“There are two who are mad with love for each other,” it was said.
“Sebastiano and his wife. She is the one he threw his _devisa_ to when
he thought himself a dead man. They used to call her ‘the pretty sister
of Jose.’”