Though Herlinda Garcia had forced a smile to her lips as she left,
perhaps forever, the house where she was born, as the carriage was
driven rapidly across the fertile valley her eyes remained fixed with
melancholy, even despairing, intensity upon the walls wherein she had
learned in her brief experience of life much that combines to make up
the sum of woman’s wretchedness.
Herlinda had ever been an imaginative child, even before she had
attained the age of seven years, at which she had been taught to
consider herself a reasoning, responsible being; she had been conscious
of vague feelings and desires, which had in a measure separated her from
her family and the people who surrounded her, and had set her in sullen
opposition to the aimless and inane occupations which served to while
away days that her eager nature longed to fill with action. Though she
had not been conscious of any especial direction into which she would
have thrown her energies, she had been most keenly conscious that she
possessed them, and early rebelled against the petty tasks that curbed
and strove to stifle them,—such tasks as the embroidering of capes and
stoles, or drawing of threads from fine linen, to be replaced with
intricate stitches of needle-work, to form the decoration of altar
cloths, or the garments of the waxen Lady of Sorrows above the altar in
the chapel, or of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the great _sala_,—as she
did also against the endless repetition of prayers, for which she
needlessly turned the leaves of her well-thumbed breviary. How she had
longed for freedom to run with the peasant children over the fields! How
many hours she had hung over the iron railing of her mother’s balcony,
and gazed upon the far hills, and wondered what sort of world lay in the
blue beyond them.
Sometimes Herlinda had attempted to talk to Vicente Gonzales of these
things when he came from the city, privileged as the son of an old
friend, and the scion of a wealthy and influential family, to form an
early intimacy with the pretty child, whom later he would meet but in
her mother’s presence with all the restrictions of Spanish etiquette.
She had always liked the proud, handsome boy, but he was far slower in
mental development than she, and could only laugh at her fancies. And so
as they grew older, and he in secret grew more fond, she had become
indifferent, restlessly longing for an expansion of her contracted and
aimless existence, yet finding no promise in the prospects of war and
political strife which began to allure Gonzales, and in which she could
not hope to take part,—and to sit a spectator was not in the nature of
Herlinda. Her mother delighted to watch the fray, to counsel and direct.
It was perhaps this trait in Doña Isabel’s character that, while it had
awakened her daughter’s admiration, had chafed and fretted her, checking
the natural expression of her lively and energetic spirit, even as the
cold and stately dignity of her manner repressed the affections which
lay ardent within her, waiting but the magnetic touch of a responsive
nature.
Such an one had not been found within her home; all were cold,
preoccupied, absorbed in the every-day affairs of life. Sometimes, when
by chance Herlinda had caught a glimpse of the repressed inner nature of
Doña Feliz, the mother of the administrador, she had felt for a moment
drawn toward her; but although all her life she had lived beneath the
same roof with her, there had occurred no special circumstance to draw
them into intimacy, or in any way lessen the barrier that difference in
age and position raised between them,—for perhaps in no part of the
world are the subtle differences of caste so clearly recognized and so
closely observed as in those little worlds, the Mexican _haciendas de
campo_.
Sometimes, in her unhappiest moods, when her unrest had become actual
pain and resolved itself into a vague but real feeling of grief,
Herlinda had thought of her father, in her heart striving to idealize
what was but an uncertain memory of an elderly, formal-mannered man,
handsome according to the type of his race,—sharp-featured, eagle-eyed,
but small of stature, with small effeminate hands which Herlinda could
remember she used to kiss, in the respectful salutation with which she
had been taught to greet him. He had died when Herlinda was eight years
old, just after the second daughter, Carmen, was born; and though Doña
Isabel seldom mentioned him, it was understood that she had loved him
deeply, and for his sake lived the life of semi-isolation which her age,
her beauty, her talents, and wealth seemed to combine to render an
unnatural choice. As she grew older, Herlinda began to wonder, and
sometimes repine, at this utter separation from the world of which in a
hurried visit to the city of Guanapila she had once caught a glimpse.
Especially was this the case after the arrival of Mademoiselle La Croix,
who was lost in wonder that any one should voluntarily resign herself to
exile even in so lovely a spot; and although she opened for Herlinda a
new world in the studies to which she directed her, they had been rather
of an imaginative than a logical kind, and stimulated those faculties
which should rather have been repressed, while personally the governess
had answered no need in the frank yet repressed and struggling nature of
her pupil.
These had been the conditions under which Herlinda had met John Ashley,
and we know with what result. As the tiny stream rushes into the river
and is carried away by its force, their waters mingling
indistinguishably, so the mind, the very soul of Herlinda had felt the
power of that perfect sympathy which, in the few short words uttered in
the pauses of a dance (for they had first met at Guanapila) and the
expressive glances of his eyes, she believed herself to have found in
the mind and heart of the alien,—a man in her mother’s employ, one whom
ordinarily she would have treated with perfect politeness, but would
have thought of as set as far apart from her own life as though they
were beings of a separate order of creation. The fact that he was a
handsome young man would primarily have had no effect upon Herlinda,
though undoubtedly it served to render to her mind more natural and
delightful the ascendency which, in spite of all obstacles, he rapidly
gained over her entire nature.
Needless is it for us to analyze the mind and character of Ashley. It is
certain he loved Herlinda passionately, and in the opposition of Doña
Isabel to his suit saw but irrational prejudice and mediæval tyranny.
His entire freedom from sordid motives, and his fears of the
consequences of delay,—knowing as he did of the desired engagement
between Herlinda and the young Vicente Gonzales,—justified to his mind a
course which the canons of honor would have forbidden, but of the
legality of which he certainly had had no question, the intricacies and
delicacies of marriage laws having engaged no share in the attention of
a somewhat adventurous youth.
This very heedlessness and activity of John Ashley’s nature had formed
an especial charm to Herlinda; she would have shrunk from and pondered
over a more cautious nature,—perhaps would have ended in loving, but she
never would have cast aside all the traditions of her youth. All her
life she had been like a bird in the cage. For a brief space she had
seen the wide expanse of the sky opening above her, she had fluttered
upward; but death had struck her down to darkness,—death, which had
pierced the strong and loving one who would have guided and protected
her! She moaned, and turned her face to the corner of the carriage. An
arm stole around her; it was that of Doña Feliz.