Though the three Marias, as Don Rafael had called them, thus entered
upon life, or at least into that of the hacienda of Tres Hermanos,
almost simultaneously, except at their baptism they found nothing in
common. On that occasion, a few days later than that of which we have
written, the aged priest, in the name of the Trinity, severally blessed
Fiorentina, Rosario, and Dolores,—each name as was customary being
joined to that of the virgin Queen of Heaven; but as they left the
church their paths separated as widely as their stations differed.
Dolores, for whom in vain—were it designed to subdue or chasten her—was
chosen so sad a name, was taken to the dusky little hut, a few rods from
the gate, that was, when he chose to claim it, Pedro’s home, and there
cared for by his niece Florencia with an uncertain and somewhat
fractious tenderness, and nourished at the breast of whomsoever happened
to be at hand. She passed through babyhood, losing her prettiness with
the golden tinge of her hair, and as she grew older looking with
wide-opened eyes out from a tangle of dark elf-locks, which explained
the survival of her baby pet-name Chinita, or “little curly one.”
Meanwhile the two children at the great house were seldom seen below
stairs, so cherished and guarded was their infancy. Rosario grew a
sturdy, robust little creature, with straight shining brown hair, drawn
back, as soon as its length would permit, from her clear olive temples,
in two tight braids, leaving prominent the straight dark eye-brows that
defined her low forehead. Long curling lashes shaded her large black
eyes,—true Mexican eyes, in which the vivacity of the Spaniard and the
dreamy indolence of the Aztec mingled, producing in youth a bewitching
expression perhaps unequalled in any other admixture of races. She had,
too, the full cheeks, of which later in life the bones would be proved
too high, and the slightly prominent formation of jaw, where the lips,
too full for beauty, closed over perfect teeth of dazzling whiteness.
Rosario was indeed a beauty, according to the standard of her country;
and Florentina so closely followed the same type, that she should have
been the same, but there was a certain lack of vividness in her coloring
which beside her sister gave her prettiness the appearance of a dimly
reflected light. Rosario was strong, vivid, dominant; Florentina, sweet,
unobtrusive, spirituelle,—though they had no such fine word at Tres
Hermanos for a quality they recognized, but could not classify; and so
it came about, as time went on, and Rosario romped and played and was
scolded and kissed, reproved and admired, that Florentina grew like a
fragrant plant in the corner of a garden, which receives, it is true,
its due meed of dew and sunshine, but is unnoticed, either for praise or
blame, except when some chance passer-by breathes its sweet perfume, and
glances down in wonder, as sometimes strangers did at Florentina. In the
family, ignoring the fine name they had chosen for her, they called her
little “snub-nose,”—Chata,—not reproachfully, but with the caressing
accent which renders the nicknames of the Spanish untranslatable in any
other tongue.
So time passed on until the children were four years old. The little
Chinita made her home at the gateway rather than at the hut with
Florencia, who by this time had married and had children of her own, and
indeed felt no slight jealousy at the open preference her uncle showed
for his foundling. For Pedro was a man of no vices, and his food and
clothing cost him little; so in some by-corner a goodly hoard of
sixpences and dollars was accumulating, doubtless, for the ultimate
benefit of the tiny witch who clambered on his knees, pulled his hair,
and ate the choicest bits from his basin unreproved; who thrust out her
foot or her tongue at any of the rancheros who spoke to her, or with
equally little reason fondled and kissed them; and who at the sight of
the administrador or clerk or Doña Feliz, shrank beneath Pedro’s striped
blanket, peeping out from its folds with half-terrified, half-defiant
eyes, which softened into admiration as Doña Rita and her children
passed by.
They also in their turn used to look at her with wonder, she was so
different from the score or more of half-naked, brown little figures
that lolled on the sand or in the doorways of the huts, or crept in to
Mass to stare at them with wide-opened black eyes. They used to pass
these very conscious of their stiffly-starched pink skirts, their
shining rebosos, and thin little slippers of colored satin. But though
this wild little elf crouching by Pedro’s side was as dirty and as
unkempt as the other ranchero children, they vaguely felt that she was a
creature to talk to, to play with, not to dazzle with Sunday finery,—for
even so young do minds begin to reason.
As for Chinita, after the rare occasions when she saw the children of
the administrador, she tormented Pedro with questions. “What sort of a
hut did they live in? What did they eat? Where did their pretty pink
dresses come from?”
This last question Pedro answered by sending by the first woman who went
to the next village for a wonderful flowered muslin, in which to her
immense delight Chinita for a day glittered like a rainbow, but which
the dust and grime soon reduced to a level with the more sombre tatters
in which she usually appeared. When these were at their worst, Doña
Feliz sometimes stopped a moment to look at her and throw a reproving
glance at Pedro; but she never spoke to him of the child either for good
or ill.
One day, however,—it was the day, they remembered afterward, on which
the Padre Francisco celebrated Mass for the last time,—the two little
girls accompanied by their mother and followed by their nurse went to
the church in new frocks of deep purple, most wonderful to see. Chinita
could not keep her eyes off them, though Rosario frowned majestically,
drawing her black eyebrows together and even slyly shaking a finger half
covered with little rings of tinsel and bright-colored stones. But the
other child, the little Chata, covertly smiled at her as she half
guiltily turned her gaze from the saint before whose shrine she was
kneeling; and that smile had so much of kindliness, curiosity,
invitation in it that Chinita on the instant formed a desperate
resolution, and determined at once to carry it through.
Now, it had happened that from her earliest infancy Pedro had forbidden
her to be taken, or later to go, into the court upon which the
apartments of the administrador opened. Everywhere else,—even into the
stables where the horses and mules, for all Pedro’s confidence, might
have kicked or trodden her; to the courtyard where the duck-pond was; to
the kitchen, where more than once she had stumbled over a pot of boiling
black beans—anywhere, everywhere, might she go except to the small court
which lay just back of the principal and most extensive one. How often
had Chinita crossed the first, and in the very act of peeping through
the doorway of the second had been snatched back by Pedro and carried
kicking and screaming, tugging at his black hair and beard, back to the
snake-hung vestibule to be terrified by some grim tale into submission;
or on occasion had even been shut up in the hut to nurse Florencia’s
baby,—if nursing it could be called, where the heavy, fat lump of infant
mortality was set upon the ragged skirt of the other rebellious infant,
to pin her to her mother earth. Florencia perhaps resented this mode of
punishment more than either of the victims, for they began with screams
and generally ended by amicably falling asleep,—the straight coarse
locks of the little Indian mingling with the brown curls, still tinged
with gold and reddened at the tips by the sun, of the fairer-skinned
girl.
Upon this day, Chinita in her small mind resolved there should be no
loitering at the doorway; and scarcely had the two demure little maidens
passed into the inner court and followed their mother up the stairway,
when she darted in and looked eagerly around. There was nothing terrible
there at all,—an open door upon the lower floor showing the brick floor
of a dining-room, where a long table set for a meal stood, and a boy was
moving about in sandalled feet making ready for the mid-day dinner.
There was a great earthen jar of water sunk a little in the floor of a
far corner, and some chairs scattered about. A picture of the Virgin of
Guadalupe, under which was a small vessel of holy water, met her eyes as
she glanced in. She turned away disappointed and went to another door,
that of a sitting-room, as bare and uninviting as the dining-room, but
with an altar at one end, above which stood a figure of Mary with the
infant Jesus in her arms. Even the saints in the church were not so
gorgeous as this. Chinita gazed in admiration and delight; if she could
have taken the waxen babe from the mother’s arms she would have sat down
then and there in utter absorption and forgetfulness. As it was, she
crossed herself and ran out among the flower-pots in the courtyard and
anxiously looked up. Yes, there leaning over the railings of the
corridor were those she sought. At sight of her Rosario screamed with
delight, her budding aristocratic scruples yielding at once to the
charms of novelty. Chata waved her hand and smiled, both running eagerly
to descend the stairs and grasp their new play-fellow.
“What is your name?” asked both in a breath. “Why are you always with
Pedro, at the gate? Who is your mother, and why have you got such funny
hair? Who combs it for you? Doesn’t it hurt?”
Chinita answered this last question with a rueful grimace, at the same
time putting one dirty little finger on Rosario’s coral necklace,—a
liberty which that damsel resented with a sharp slap, which was
instantly returned with interest, much to Rosario’s surprise and Chata’s
dismay.
At the cry which Rosario uttered, following it up with sobs and
lamentations, both Doña Feliz and Doña Rita appeared. Rosario flew to
her mother. “Oh, the naughty cat! the bad, wicked girl! she scratched
me! she slapped me!” she cried, between her sobs.
Chata followed her sister, still keeping Chinita’s hand, which she had
caught in the fray. “Poor Rosario! poor little sister,” she said
pityingly; “but, _Mamacita_, just look where Rosa slapped the poor
pretty Chinita,” and she softly smoothed the cheek which Chinita
sullenly strove to turn away.
“Why, it is that wretched little foundling of Pedro’s!” cried Doña Rita,
indignantly, as she wiped Rosario’s streaming cheeks. “Get you gone, you
fierce little tigress! Chata, let go her hand; she will scratch you, she
may bite you next.”
“Oh, no,” cooed Chata, quite in the ear of the ragged little fury beside
her; while Doña Feliz, who had been silent, placed her fingers under the
chin of the little waif, and lifted her face to her gaze. “Be not angry
at a children’s quarrel,” she said; “they will be all the better friends
for it later.”
“But I don’t wish them to be friends,” cried Doña Rita,—though the
absolute separation of classes rendered intimate association possible
and common between them which neither detracted from the dignity of the
one caste, nor was likely to arouse emulation in the other. “What a
wild, savage little fox! No, no, my lamb, she shall not come near thee
again!”
But the mother’s lamb was of another mind, for suddenly she stopped
crying, pulled the new-comer’s ragged skirt, and said, “Come along, I’ll
show you my little fishes;” and in another moment, to Doña Rita’s
amazement and Doña Feliz’s quiet amusement, the three children were
leaning together, chatting and laughing, over the edge of the stone
basin in the centre of the court.
In the midst of their play, a sudden fancy seized Doña Feliz. Catching
up a towel that lay at hand, she half-playfully, half-commandingly
caught the elf-like child and washed her face. What a smooth soft skin,
what delicately pencilled brows appeared! how red was the bow of that
perfect little mouth! Doña Rita sighed for very envy; Doña Feliz held
the little face in her hands, and looked at it intently. But Chinita,
already rebellious at the water and towel, absolutely resented this; and
in spite of the cries of the children she broke away and ran from the
courtyard, arriving breathless at the knees of Pedro, to cover herself
with the grimy folds of his blanket.
Little by little he drew from her what had passed, comforting her though
he made no audible comment; and an hour later Doña Feliz, catching sight
of the child, wondered how it had been possible for her to get her face
so dirty in so short a time, though a suspicion of the truth soon caused
her to smile gravely. While Chinita had been telling her adventures,
Pedro had drawn his grimy fingers tenderly over her cheeks, in this way
at once resenting Doña Feliz’s interference, curiosity, interest,
whatever it was, and manifesting his sympathy with the aggrieved one.
Nor did he scold the child for her intrusion to the court, or forbid her
to go again; and when after some days of hesitation, anger, and
irresistible attraction she found her way thither, she wore on her neck
a string of coral beads which made Rosario cry out with envy, and which
Chata regarded with wide-eyed and solemn admiration.