And thus in that remote hacienda—a little world in itself, with all the
mingled elements of wealth and poverty, and all those subtile
differences of caste and character which form society, in circles small
as well as great—began a drama, which to the initiated was of deep and
absorbing interest. To the common mind despair and agony can have no
existence if they do not declare themselves in groans and tears, and to
such Herlinda’s deep pallor and her silence revealed nothing; but there
were a few who watched in solemn apprehension, feeling hers to be like
the intense and sulphurous calm with which Nature awaits the coming of
the tempest.
But there were indeed few who saw in her any change other than the
events and anxieties of the time rendered natural. At first indeed there
had been whispers in corners, and half-pitying, half-fearful shrugs and
glances; but almost from the day of Ashley’s burial a new and fearful
cause of public interest drew attention from Herlinda, from her pallor
and her wide-eyed gaze of horror, to the consideration of a more
personal anxiety.
The common people declared that from the night of the murder, death,
unsatisfied with one victim, had hovered over the hacienda. The rains
which should have fallen after the long dry winter, with cleansing and
copious force, flooding the ravines and carrying away the accumulated
impurities of months, had but moistened and stirred the infected mud of
the stagnant water-courses and set loose the fevers which lingered in
their depths. Years afterward the peasants dated many a widowhood and
orphanage from those plague-stricken weeks. There was one death or more
in every hut, and even the great house did not escape its quota of
victims. One after another, members of the families of the clerks and
officers succumbed,—the major-domo of the courts among the first, and
then Mademoiselle La Croix, who indeed, it was afterward observed, had
from the first sickened and fallen into a dejection, from which it was
almost impossible she should rally. The governess was the object of the
most devoted care even from the usually cold and stately Doña Isabel,
while the panic-stricken Herlinda, careless of her own danger, bent over
her with agonized and fruitless efforts to recall the waning life, or
soothe the parting and remorseful soul.
But in all that terrible time this was the only event that seemed to
touch or rouse her; for the rest, one might have thought those dreadful
days but the ordinary calendar of Herlinda’s life. Indeed, it is to be
supposed that they suited so well the desolation of her spirit, and that
they presented so congruous a setting to her melancholy, that it became
merged and absorbed as it were in her surroundings, and so was
unperceived, save as the fitting humor of a time when ease and mirth
would have been an insult to the general woe.
Doña Isabel had announced her intention of replacing the director of the
reduction-works; but time went on, and in the general consternation
produced by the epidemic nothing was done. There was much sickness at
the works; many of the most experienced hands died; and one day when the
clerk in charge was at the crisis of the fever, the men who were not
incapacitated from illness went by common consent to the _tienda_ to
stupefy themselves with fiery native brandy; and Doña Isabel, who was
fearlessly passing from one poor hovel to another, aiding the village
doctress and the priest in their offices, ordered the mules to be taken
from the _tortas_, and the stamps to be stopped. Thus, as the masses
half mixed lay upon the floors, they gradually dried and hardened; and
as the great stone wheels ceased to turn in the beds of broken ores, so
for years upon years they remained, and the works at Tres Hermanos
gradually fell into ruin,—a fit haunt for the ghost which, as years went
by, was said to haunt their shades. But this was long afterward, when
the memory of the handsome and hapless youth had become almost as a
myth, mingled with the thousand tales of blood which the fluctuating
fortunes of years of international and civil war made as common as they
were terrible.
This fertile spot until now had been singularly free from the terror and
disorder that had affected the greater part of the country; and though
sharing the excitement of party feeling, the actual demands of strife
had never invaded it. But quick upon the typhoid, when the peasants who
had been spared began to think of repairing their half-ruined hovels,
many of them were summoned away with scant ceremony. Don Julian Garcia
appeared at the hacienda, his uniform glittering with gold braid,
buttons, and lace, the trappings of his horse more gorgeous even than
his own dress. He was raising a troop to join his old commander, Santa
Anna, who had returned in triumph to the land from which he had been
banished, to lead the arms of his countrymen against the foreign foe,
which already had begun its victorious march within the sacred borders
of their country. In a word, the American War had begun, and involved
all factions in one common cause, giving a rallying cry to leaders of
every party, to which even the most ignorant among the people responded
with intuitive and unquestioning ardor.
Don Julian was uncertain in his politics, but not in his hatreds. He
heard the tale of the murder of the American with complacency; the
taking off of one of the heretics seemed to him natural enough,—it was
scarcely worth a second thought, certainly not a pause in his work of
collecting troops. If Isabel, he commented, had writhed under wounded
patriotism as he had done, the American would never have had an
opportunity of finding so honorable a service in which to die. Evidently
the grudge of some bold patriot, this. What would you? Mexicans were
neither sticks nor stones!
Herlinda heard and trembled; a faint hope, a half-formed resolve, had
wakened in her breast when she had heard of the arrival of Don Julian.
He was a distant cousin, a man of some influence in the family. She
remembered him as more frank and genial than others of her kindred. An
impulse to break the seal of silence came over her, as she heard his
voice ringing through the courts and the clank of his spurs upon the
stairs; but it was checked by the first distinct utterance of his lips,
which, like all that followed, was a denunciation of the perfidious, the
insatiable, the licentious and heretical Americans. For the first time,
to the indifference with which she had regarded the desirability of
establishing her position as the acknowledged wife of Ashley was added a
sensation of fear. What had been in her mind an undefined and incomplete
idea of the anger and scorn which the knowledge of her daring would
cause among her family connections, became now a terrifying dread as the
impetuous but unrepented act assumed the proportions of treason. The
words which at the first opportunity she would have spoken died upon her
lips, and she became once more hopeless, impassive, unresisting, cold,
waiting what time and fate should bring.
And time passed on unflinchingly, and fate was unrelenting. Carmen,
after a slight attack of fever, had been sent to some relative in
Guanapila, and there she still remained. Doña Isabel’s household
consisted only of herself, Herlinda, and the aged priest her cousin Don
Francisco de Sales, who though in his dotage still at long intervals
read Mass in the chapel, baptized infants, and muttered prayers over the
dying or dead, not the less sincere because he who breathed them himself
stood so far within the shadow of the tomb. The old man was kindly in
his senility, and spent long hours dozing in the chair of the
confessional, while penitents whispered in his ear their faults and
sins, for which they never failed to obtain absolution, little imagining
that the placid mind of the old man, even when by chance he was awake,
dwelt far more upon the scenes of his youth than the follies and
wickednesses of the present. Sometimes he babbled harmlessly of days
long past, even of sights and doings far from clerical; but the priestly
habit was second nature, and even if he heeded the confidences reposed
in him, in his weakest moments they never escaped his lips. To him
Herlinda was free to go and disburden her mind, complying with the
regulations of her Church, and seeking relief to her troubled soul. To
him, too, Doña Isabel resorted; and these two women with their tales of
woe, which as often as repeated escaped his memory, roused faintly
within his heart an echo of the pain which he uneasily and confusedly
remembered dwelt in the world, from which he was gliding into the peace
beyond.
Sometimes at the table, or as he sat with them in the corridor,—the
priest in the sunshine, they in the shade,—he looked at them with
puzzled inquiry in his gaze, which changed to mild satisfaction at some
caress or fond word; for this gentle old man was tenderly beloved, with
a sort of superstitious reverence. Even Doña Isabel attributed a special
sanctity to his blessing, looking upon him as an automaton of the
Church, which without consciousness of its own would—certain springs of
emotion being touched—respond with admonition or blessing, fraught with
all the authority of the Supreme Power. Doña Isabel, as a devout
Romanist, had ever been scrupulous in the observances of her Church,
submitting to the spiritual functions of the clergy absolutely, while
she detested and openly protested against their licentiousness and
greed, as also their pernicious interference in worldly affairs.
Therefore throughout her life, and especially during her widowhood, she
had studiously avoided the more popular clergy, and had sought the
oracle of duty through some clod of humanity, who, though dull, should
be at least free from vices,—choosing by preference one of her own
family to be the repository of her secrets and the judge of her motives
and actions. Unconsciously to herself, while outwardly and even to her
own conscience fulfilling the requirements of her Church, she had
interpreted them by her own will, which, in justice let it be said, had
often proved a wise and loyal one; in a word, Doña Isabel Garcia, with
exceptional powers within her grasp, had skilfully and astutely freed
herself from those trammels which might at the present crisis have
forced her into a diametrically opposite course from that which she had
determined to pursue, or would at least have forced her to acknowledge
to her own mind the doubtful nature of deeds that she now suffered
herself to look upon as meritorious. For years, unconsciously, her will
had imbued the judgments of her spiritual adviser, as the Padre
Francisco was called, and it was not to be supposed that she should
cavil now, when with complacent alacrity he echoed yea to her yea, and
nay to her nay,—and as she left him, sank back into his chair with a
faint wonder at her tale, to forget it in his next slumber, or until
recalled to him by the anguished outpourings of Herlinda, for whom he
found no words of guidance other than those which throughout his life he
had given to young maidens in distress, the commendable ones, “Do as
your mother directs;” though, as he listened to her words, the tears
would pour down his cheeks, and pitying phrases fall from his trembling
lips. Poor Herlinda would be comforted for a moment by his simple human
sympathy,—even weeping perhaps, for at such times the blessed relief of
tears was given her,—yet found in her darkness no light, either human or
divine.
Had Mademoiselle La Croix lived, Herlinda would doubtless have received
from her the impetus to throw herself upon the pity and protection of
her cousin Don Julian, which in spite of his prejudices he could
scarcely have refused; for the governess, though she was at first
stunned and terrified by the knowledge of the invalidity of the
marriage, was no coward, and would have braved much to reinstate the
girl she had through compassion—and, she had with a pang been obliged to
own, through cupidity—aided to bring into a false position. But she had
scarcely recovered her bewildered senses, the more bewildered by the
incomprehensible calm of Doña Isabel, when she was attacked by the
fever,—to which she succumbed a month before the appearance of the
doughty warrior, whose blustering fierceness would not have appalled her
or deterred her from urging Herlinda to lay before him the matter, whose
vital importance the stunned young creature failed to comprehend.
Later it burst upon her, but it was then too late,—Don Julian had
marched away with his troops. She was alone,—no help, no counsellor
near. Alone? Ah, no! there were human creatures near, who could behold
and suspect and shake the head. Herlinda awoke to the shame of her
position, as a bird in a net, striving to fly, first learns its danger.
O God! where should she fly? Were these careless, laughing women as
unconscious as they seemed? Where might she hide herself from these
languid, soft eyes, which suddenly might become hard and cruel with
intelligence? Herlinda drew her reboso around her, and with flushing
cheek traversed the shadiest corridors in her necessary passages from
room to room, her eyes, large with apprehension, burning beneath her
downcast lids. Every day she grew more restless, more beautiful. She
walked for hours in the walled garden, which the servants never entered.
They began to whisper, forgetting the gossip of months before, that the
chances of war were secretly stealing the gayety and buoyancy of
Herlinda’s youth, by keeping from her side the playmate of her
childhood, her lover Vicente Gonzales. Feliz smiled when a garrulous
servant spoke thus one day, but ten minutes later entered the room of
Doña Isabel.
The next morning it was known that the Señorita Herlinda was to have
change, was to go to the capital, that Mecca of all Mexicans. Doña
Isabel and Feliz were to accompany her. The clerks and overseers
wondered, and shook their heads wisely. They had heard wild tales of the
political factions which rendered the city unsafe to woman as to man;
Santa Anna’s brief dictatorship had ended in trouble. Still, in that
remote district nothing was known with certainty, and these bucolic
minds were not given to many conjectures upon the motives or movements
of their superiors. If anything could arouse surprise, it was the fact
that the ladies were not to travel by private carriage, as had been the
custom of the Garcias from time immemorial, attended by a numerous
escort of armed rancheros; but being driven to the nearest post where
the public diligence was to be met, were to proceed by it most
unostentatiously upon their way. This aroused far more discussion than
the fact of the journey itself; though it was unanimously agreed that if
Doña Isabel could force herself to depart from the accustomed dignity of
the family, and indeed preserve a slight incognito upon the road, her
chances of making the journey in safety would be greatly increased.
Her resolve once made it was acted upon instantly, no time being allowed
for news of her departure to spread abroad and to give the bandits who
infested the road opportunity to plan the _plajio_, or carrying off, of
so rich a prize as Doña Isabel Garcia and her daughter would have
proved. And thus, early one November morning,—when the whole earth was
covered with the fresh greenness called into growth by the rainy season
which had just passed, and the azure of a cloudless sky hung its perfect
arch above the valley, seeming to rest upon the crown-like circlet of
the surrounding hills,—Herlinda passed through the crowd of dependents
who, as usual on such occasions, gathered at the gates to see the
travellers off. Doña Isabel, who was with her, was affable, smiling and
nodding to the men, and murmuring farewell words to the nearest women;
but Herlinda was silent, and it was not until she was seated in the
carriage that she threw back the reboso which she had drawn to her very
eyes, revealing her face, which was deadly pale. As she gazed
lingeringly around, half sadly, half haughtily, with the proud curve of
the lip (though it quivered) which made all the more striking her
general resemblance to her beautiful mother, a thrill, they knew not of
what or why, ran through the throng. For a moment there was a profound
silence, in the midst of which the aged priest raised his hand in
blessing. Suddenly a flash of memory, a gleam of inspiration, came over
him; he turned aside the hand of Doña Isabel, which had been extended in
farewell, and laid his own upon the bowed head of her daughter. “Fear
not, my daughter,” he said, “thou art blessed. Though I shall see thee
no more, my blessing, and the blessing of God, shall be with thee.”
The old man turned away, leaning heavily upon Doña Rita, the wife of the
administrador, who led him tenderly away, and a few minutes later he was
sitting smiling at her side, while without were heard the farewell cries
of the women. “May God go with you, Niña! May you soon return! Adios,
Niña! more beautiful than our patron saint! Adios, and joy be with
thee!” And in the midst of such good wishes, as Herlinda still leaned
from the window, a smile upon her lip, her hand waving a farewell, the
carriage drove away and the people dispersed; leaving Pedro, the
gate-keeper, standing motionless in the shadow of the great door-post,
his eyes riveted on the sands at his feet, but seeing still the glance
of agony, of warning, of entreaty, which had darted from Herlinda’s
eyes, and seemed to scorch his own.