One day Pedro Gomez, half-sleeping half-meditating as he sat on the
stone bench beneath the hanging serpents that garnished the vestibule of
Tres Hermanos, thought he saw a ghost upon the stairs which led from one
corner of the wide court into which he had glanced, to the corridor of
the upper floor. An apparition of Doña Feliz, he thought, had passed up
them; and with ready superstition he decided in his own mind that some
evil had befallen her in her journeyings. He was so disturbed by this
idea that a few moments later, as her son Don Rafael passed through the
vestibule, he ventured to stop him and tell him what he had seen;
whereat Don Rafael burst into a loud laugh.
“What, do you not know,” he said, “that my mother has returned? Ah, I
remember you were at Mass this morning. She came over from the
post-house on donkey-back. A wonderful woman is my mother; but she knew
we had need of her, and she came none too soon. I opened the door to her
myself;” and Don Rafael hastened to his own apartments, where it was
understood Doña Rita his wife hourly awaited the pangs of motherhood,
and left Pedro gazing after him in open-mouthed astonishment.
In the first place nothing had been heard of the probability of the
return of Doña Feliz; in the second, the manner of her return was
unprecedented. She was a woman of some consequence at the hacienda. It
was an almost incredible thing that under any circumstances she should
arrive unexpectedly at the diligence post, and ride a league upon a
donkey’s back like the wife of a laborer. And thirdly it was a miracle
that he Pedro had himself gone to Mass that morning,—he could not
remember how it had come about,—and that discovering his absence from
the gate Don Rafael had himself performed his functions, and had not
soundly rated him for his unseasonable devotion; for Don Rafael was not
a man to confound the claims of spiritual and secular duties.
Pedro Gomez did not put the matter to himself in precisely these words;
nevertheless it haunted and puzzled him, and kept him in an unusual
state of abstraction,—which perhaps accounted for the fact that later in
the day, just at high-noon, when the men were afield and the women busy
in their huts, and Pedro had ample leisure for his siesta, he was
suddenly aroused by a voice that seemed to fall from the skies.
Springing to his feet, he almost struck against a powerful black horse,
which was reined in the doorway; and dazzled by the sun, and confused by
the unexpected encounter, he gazed stupidly into the face of a man who
was bending toward him, his broad hat pushed back from a mass of
coal-black hair, his white teeth exposed by the laugh that lighted up
his whole face as he exclaimed,—
“Here, brother! here is a good handful for thee! I found it on the road
yonder. _Caramba!_ my horse nearly stepped on it! Do people in these
parts scatter such seeds about? I fancy the crop would be but a poor one
if they did, and I saw a good growth of little ones in the village
yonder. Well, well! I have no use for such treasure; I freely bestow it
on thee,”—and with a dexterous movement the stranger placed a bundle,
wrapped in a tattered scarf, in the hands of the astounded Pedro, and
without waiting question or thanks, whichever he might have expected,
put spurs to his horse and galloped across the dusty plain.
Twice that day had Pedro Gomez been left, as he would have said,
open-mouthed. Almost unconscious of what he did, he stood there watching
the cloud of dust in which the horse and rider disappeared, until he
felt himself pulled by the sleeve, and a sharp voice asked, “In the name
of the Blessed, Tio, what have you there? Ay, Holy Babe! it is a child!”
A faint cry from the bundle confirmed these words; a tiny pink fist
thrust out gave assurance to the eyes.
Pedro Gomez, strong man as he was, trembled in every limb, and sank on a
seat breathless; but even in his agitation he resisted the efforts of
his niece to unwrap the child.
“Let it be,” he said; “I will myself look at this gift which the Saints
have sent me.”
With trembling hands he undid its wrappings. The babe was crying
lustily; red, grimacing, struggling, it was still a pretty child,—a girl
only a few days old. Around its neck, under the little dress of white
linen, was a silken cord. Pedro drew it forth, certain of what he should
find. Florencia pounced upon the blue reliquary eagerly. “Let us open
it,” she said; “perhaps we shall find something to tell us where the
babe comes from, and whose it is.”
“Nonsense!” said Pedro, decidedly; “what should we find in it but scraps
of paper scribbled with prayers? And who would open a reliquary?”
Florencia looked down abashed, for she was a good daughter of the
Church, and had been taught to reverence such things.
“No, no, girl! run to the village and bring a woman who can nourish this
starving creature;” and as the girl flew to execute her commission,
Pedro completed his examination of the child.
It was clothed in linen, finer than rancheros use even in their gala
attire, and the red flannel with white spots, called _bayeta_, was of
the softest to be procured; but beyond this there was nothing to
indicate the class to which the child belonged. Upon a slip of paper
pinned to its bosom was written the name _Maria Dolores_ (what more
natural than that such a child should bear the name, and be placed under
the protection of the Mother of Sorrows?), and upon the reverse was
“Señora Doña Isabel Garcia.” Was this to commend the waif to the care or
attention of that powerful lady? Pedro rather chose to think it a
warning against her. “What! place the bird before the hawk?” With a grim
smile he thrust the paper into his bosom. Doña Isabel was he knew not
where,—later would be time enough to think of her; meanwhile, here were
all the women and children, all the old men, and halt and lame of the
village, trooping up to see this waif, which in such an unusual manner
had been dropped into the gate-keeper’s horny palms.
Some of the women laughed; all the men joked Pedro when they saw the
child, though a yellow nimbus of hair around its head and the fineness
of its clothing puzzled them.
Pedro had hastily thrust the slip of paper into his breast, scarce
knowing why he did so; for though some instinct as powerful as if it
were a living voice that spoke, urged him to secrete the child, to rush
away with it into the fastnesses of the mountains, rather than to render
it to Doña Isabel, he did not doubt for a moment that she herself had
provided for its mysterious appearance at the hacienda, that it might be
received as a waif, and cared for by Doña Feliz as her representative.
These thoughts flashed through his mind, and he heard again Herlinda’s
despairing cry: “Watch for my child! Protect it! protect it!” Was it
possible that she had actually known that this disposition would be made
of her child? Involuntarily his arms closed around it, and he clasped it
to his broad breast, looking defiantly around.
“Tush, Pedro, give it to me!” cried one stout matron, longing to take
the little creature to her motherly breast. “What know you of nursing
infants? A drop of mother’s milk would be more welcome to it than all
thy dry hugs. Ah, here comes the Señor Administrador,” and the crowd
opened to admit the passage of Don Rafael, who attracted by the
commotion had hastened to the spot in no small anger, ordering the crowd
to disperse; but he was greeted with an incomprehensible chorus of which
he only heard the one word “baby,” and exclaimed in indignation,—
“And is this the way to show your delight, when the poor woman is at the
point of death perhaps? Get you gone, and it will be time enough to make
this hubbub when it comes.”
The women burst out laughing, the men grinned from ear to ear, and the
children fell into ecstasies of delight. Don Rafael was naturally
thinking of the expected addition to his own family, and was enraged at
what he supposed to be a premature manifestation of sympathy. Pedro
alone was grave, and stepping back pointed to the infant, which was now
quiet upon the bosom of Refugio, her volunteer nurse. “This is the child
they speak of, Señor,” he said, and in a few words related the manner in
which it had been delivered to him.
If he had expected to see any consciousness or confusion upon the face
of Don Rafael, he must certainly have been disappointed, for there was
simply the frankest and most perfect amazement, as he turned to the
woman who had stepped out a little from the crowd and held the infant
toward him. He saw at a glance that it was no Indian child,—the
whiteness of its skin, the fineness of its garments, above all the
yellow nimbus of hair, already curling in tiny rings around the little
head, struck him with wonder. He crossed himself, and ejaculated a pious
“Heaven help us!” and touched the child’s cheek with the tip of his
finger, and turned its face from its nurse’s dusky breast in a very
genuine amaze, which Pedro watched jealously. The child cried sleepily,
and nestled under the reboso which the woman drew over it, hushing it in
her arms, murmuring caressingly, as her own child tugged at her
skirts,—“There, there, sleep little one, sleep! nothing shall harm thee;
sleep, _Chinita_, sleep!”
But the little waif—whose soft curls had suggested the pet name—was not
yet to slumber; for at that moment Doña Feliz appeared. Pedro noticed as
she crossed the courtyard that she was extremely pale. Some of the women
rushed toward her with voluble accounts of the beauty of the child and
the fineness of its garments. She smiled wearily, and turned from them
to look at the foundling. A flush spread over her face as she examined
it, not reddening but deepening its clear olive tint. She looked at
Rafael searchingly, at Pedro questioningly. He muttered over his
thrice-told tale. “Was there no word, no paper?” she said, but waited
for no answer. “This is no plebeian child, Rafael. What shall we do with
it? Doña Isabel is not here, perhaps will not be here for years!”
There was a buzz of astonishment, for this was the first intimation of
Doña Isabel’s intended length of absence. In the midst of it Pedro had
taken the sleeping child from Refugio’s somewhat reluctant arm, and
wrapping it in a scarf taken from his niece’s shoulders, had laid it on
the sheepskin in the alcove in which he usually slept. This tacit
appropriation perhaps settled the fate of the infant; still Doña Feliz
looked at her son uneasily, and he rubbed his hands in perplexity. “Of
all the days in the year for a babe like this to be left here,” he said,
“when, the Saints willing, I am to have one of my own! No, no, mother,
Rita would never consent.”
“Consent to what?” she answered almost testily. “What! Because this
foundling chances to be white, would you have your wife adopt it as her
own, when after so many years of prayer Heaven has sent her a child? No,
no, Rafael, it would be madness!”
“There is no need,” interpolated Pedro, with a half-savage eagerness,
and with a look which, strangely combined of indignation and relief,
should have struck dumb the woman who thus to the mind of the
gate-keeper was revealed as the incarnation of deceit,—“there is no
need. I will keep the child; ‘without father or mother or a dog to bark
for me,’ who can care for it better? Here are Refugio and Teresa and
Florencia will nurse it for me. It will want for nothing.” A chorus of
voices answered him: “We will all be its mother.”—“Give it to me when it
cries, and I will nurse it.”—“The Saints will reward thee, Pedro!”—in
the midst of which, in answer to a call from above, Doña Feliz hastened
away, saying, “Nothing could be better for the present. Come, Rafael,
you are wanted. I will write to Doña Isabel, Pedro; she will doubtless
do something when you are tired of it. There is, for example, the asylum
at Guanapila.”
Pedro gazed after her blankly. In spite of that momentary flush on the
face, Doña Feliz had seemed as open as the day. He never ceased
thereafter to look upon her in indignant admiration and fear. Her
slightest word was like a spell upon him. Pedro was of a mind to
propitiate demons, rather than worship angels. There was something to
his mind demoniacal in this Doña Feliz.
Half an hour after she had ascended the stairs, and the idlers had
dispersed to chatter over this event, leaving the new-found babe to its
needed slumber, the woman who acted the part of midwife to Doña Rita ran
down to the gate where Pedro and his niece were standing, to tell them
that there was a babe, a girl, born to the wife of the administrador. A
boy, who was lounging near, rushed off to ring the church bell, for this
was a long-wished-for event; but before the first stroke fell on the
air, the voice of Doña Feliz was heard from the window: “Silence!
Silence! there are two. No bells, no bells!”
Two! Doña Rita still in peril! The midwife rushed back to her post. The
door was locked, and there was a momentary delay in opening it. “Where
have you been,” said Doña Feliz severely, “almost a half an hour away?”
The woman stared at her in amaze,—the time had flown! Yes, there was the
evidence,—a second infant in the lap of Doña Feliz, puny, wizened. She
dressed it quickly, asking no assistance, ordering the woman sharply to
the side of Doña Rita.
“A thousand pities,” said Don Rafael as he looked at it, “that it is not
a boy!” Then as the thought struck him, he laughed softly: “Ay, perhaps
it is for luck,—instead of the three kings, who always bring death, we
have the three _Marias_.”
Doña Rita had heard something of the foundling, and smiled faintly.
“Thank God they were not all born of one mother,” she said. “Ay! give me
my first-born here;” and with the tiny creature resting upon her arm,
and the second presently lying near, Doña Rita sank to sleep.