Doña Isabel Garcia had been born within the walls of Tres Hermanos, her
father having been part owner of the estate, and her mother the daughter
of an impoverished gentleman of the neighboring city of Guanapila. Doña
Clarita had been a most beautiful woman, whose attractions had been
utilized to prop the falling fortunes of her house by her marriage with
the elderly but kindly proprietor Don Ignacio Garcia.
At the time of her marriage, Clarita Rodriguez was very young, and with
the habits of submission universal among her countrywomen would probably
have taken kindly to her fate, never doubting its justice, but that from
her balcony she had one day seen a young officer of the city troop ride
by in all the magnificence of the military uniform of the period. A
dazzling vision of gold lace and braid, clanking spurs and sabre, and of
eyes and teeth and smile more dazzling still, haunted her for weeks. Yet
that might have passed, but that the vision glided from the eye to the
heart, when on one luckless night, at the governor’s ball, Pancho Vallé
was introduced to her, and they twice were partners in that lover’s
delirium the slow and voluptuous _danza_. As they moved together in the
dreamy measure, a few low words were exchanged,—commonplace perhaps but
not harmless, and by one at least never to be forgotten. Afterward an
occasional missive penned in most regular characters upon daintily
tinted paper came to her hands through some complaisant servant. But Don
Ranulfo Rodriguez was too jealous a guardian to suffer many such to
escape him, and had been far too wise in his generation to place it in
his daughter’s power to engage in such dangerous pastime as the
production of replies to unwelcome suitors. Like most other girls of her
age and position, Clarita had been strenuously prevented from learning
to write, and it is doubtful if she ever knew the exact import of
Vallé’s perfumed missives, although her heart doubtless guessed what her
eyes could not decipher.
Whether Vallé’s impassioned glances meant all they indicated or not,
certain it was that he had not ventured to declare himself to the father
as a suitor for the fair Clarita’s hand, when Don Ignacio Garcia stepped
in and literally carried away the prize. The courtship had been short,
the position of the groom unassailable. Clarita shed some tears, but the
delighted father declared they were for joy at her good fortune; and
they were indeed of so mixed a character—baffled love, wounded pride,
and an irrepressible sense of triumph at her unexpected promotion—that
she herself scarce cared to analyze them. She danced with Vallé once
again on the occasion of her marriage; again a few words were spoken,
and the passionate heart of Clarita was pierced with a secret dart,
which never ceased to rankle.
Don Ignacio Garcia conducted her immediately to the hacienda, where his
jealous nature found no cause for suspicion; and there the little Isabel
was born; and on beholding the wealth of maternal affection which the
young wife lavished upon her child, the husband forgot the indifference
that had sometimes chafed him, and for a few brief months imagined
himself beloved. This egotistic delusion was never dispelled, for at its
height, upon the second anniversary of their wedding day, when taking
part in a bull-chase, Don Ignacio’s horse swerved as he urged him to the
side of the infuriated animal; a moment’s hesitancy was fatal; the horse
was ripped open by the powerful horn of the bull, and plunging wildly,
fell back upon his luckless rider, whose neck was instantly broken. It
was an accident which it seemed incredible could have happened to a man
so skilled in horsemanship as was Don Ignacio. The spectators were for a
moment dumb with horror and surprise, then with groans and shrieks
rushed to the rescue, but only to lift a corpse. Doña Clarita with a
wild shriek had fainted as the horse plunged back, and upon regaining
her senses, threw herself in an agony of not unremorseful grief upon the
body of her husband. It was, however, of that violent character which
soon expends itself; and before the funeral obsequies were well over,
she began to look around the narrow horizon of Tres Hermanos, and
remember, if not rejoice, that she was free to go beyond it.
Don Gregorio, the cousin of Clarita’s husband’s, though a mere boy, had
been brought up on the estate, and was competent to take charge, and the
administrador and clerks were trusty men; so there was no absolute
reason why the young widow should remain to guard her interests and
those of her child, and it seemed but natural she should return to her
father’s house, at least during the first months of her sorrow. Thither
indeed she went. She had dwelt there before, a dependent child, to be
disposed of at her father’s will; she returned to it a rich widow,
profuse of her favors but tenacious of her rights, one of which all too
soon proclaimed itself to be that of choosing for herself a second
husband. A month or two after her arrival in the city, Don Pancho Vallé
returned from some expedition in which patriotism and personal gain were
deftly combined, with the halo of success added to his personal
attractions, and was quick to declare an unswerving devotion to the
divinity at whose shrine he had worshipped but doubtfully while it
remained ungilded by the sun of prosperity. Whether Clarita had learned
to read or not, certain it is that Don Pancho’s impassioned missives met
with a response more satisfactory than pen and ink alone could give, for
immediately after the expiration of the year due to the memory of Don
Ignacio, she became the wife of the gay soldier.
Don Pancho and his wife were both young, both equally delighted in
excitement and luxury; and within an incredibly short time the ample
resources which had seemed to them boundless were perceptibly narrowed.
To the taste for extravagant living, for gorgeous apparel, for numerous
and magnificent horses, shared by them in common, were added a
passionate love of gambling, and a scarcely less expensive one for
military enterprises of an independent and half guerilla order, on the
part of Don Pancho; and thus a few years saw the wife’s fortune reduced
to an encumbered interest in the lands of Tres Hermanos.
Don Pancho in spite of numerous infidelities still retained his
influence over the heart and mind of Clarita; and one night in play
against Don Gregorio Garcia—who, like other caballeros, occasionally
engaged in a game or two for pastime—he staked the last acre of her
estate, knowing she would refuse him nothing, and lost. For a moment he
looked blank,—a most unwonted manifestation of dismay in so practised a
gambler,—then laughed and shook hands with his fortunate opponent. There
was a laughing group around him, condoling with him banteringly, for
Pancho Vallé had never seemed to make any misfortune a serious matter,
when a pistol-shot was heard. For a moment no one realized what had
happened; the young officer stood in his gay uniform, smiling still, his
gold-mounted pistol in his hand, then fell heavily forward. The ball had
passed through his heart. His widow had the satisfaction of seeing by
the smile that remained on his handsome countenance that he had died as
joyously as he had lived; not a trace of care showed that aught deeper
than mere pique and caprice had moved him. “Angel of my life!” she
cried, when her first burst of grief was over, “thou wert beginning to
make my heart ache, for I had nothing more to give thee!”
This was her only word of reproach, if reproach it might be called. For
love that woman would have yielded even her life, and never have known
the hollowness of her idol. Grief did the work that ingratitude and
neglect—nay absolute cruelty—would perhaps never have effected, and in a
few short months destroyed her life. As she was dying she called her
daughter to her. “Isabel,” she said, “thou hast wealth, thy brother has
nothing; swear to me by the Virgin and thy patron saint, that thou wilt
be as a mother to him, that thou wilt refuse him nothing that thy hand
can give! Money, money, money, is what makes men happy!” That had been
the creed her life’s experience had taught her. For money her father had
sold her; for that the husband she adored had given her fair words and
caresses. “As thou wouldst have thy mother’s blessing, promise me that
Leon shall never appeal to thee in vain!”
Isabel Garcia was but a child, and the boy Leon but three years younger;
yet as she looked upon her dying mother she solemnly promised to fill
her place, to take upon herself the rôle of sacrifice, which her
religion taught her was that of motherhood. Poor Clarita! little had she
understood a mother’s highest duties,—to warn, to guide, to plead with
God for the beloved. The mere yielding of material things,—to clothe
herself in sackcloth, that the child might be robed in purple, to walk
barefoot that he might ride in state, to hunger that he might be
delicately fed,—she had pictured these things to herself as the purest
sacrifices, and surely the only ones to appeal to the hearts of such men
as she had known; and the young Isabel entered upon her task with her
mother’s precepts deeply engraved upon her heart, her mind all
uninstructed, awaiting the iron finger of experience to write upon it
its lessons.
After their mother’s death, the young brother and sister, mere children
both, went to live in the house of some elderly relatives, who with
generous though not always judicious kindness strove to forget the
faults of the father by ignoring them when they became apparent in the
boy. The uncle of Isabel, the Friar Francisco, became their tutor, but
taught them little beyond the breviary. What could a woman need with
more? As for Leon, he took more kindly to the lasso and saddle, to the
pistol and sword, than to the book or pen,—and even while still a child
in years, more passionately still to the gaming table. Though his elders
with a shake of the head remembered his father’s fate, and sometimes
pushed the boy half laughingly away from the monté table, or of a Sunday
afternoon sent him out to the bull-ring for his diversion, where he was
a mere spectator, rather than to the cock-pit, where he became a
participant, yet the question did not present itself as one at all of
questionable morals: every one gambled on a feast day, or at a social
game among one’s friends. Perhaps of all those by whom he was
surrounded, no one felt any serious anxiety for Leon except the young
girl who with premature solicitude warned him of the evil, even as she
supplied the means to indulge his wayward tastes.
Leon was a brilliant rather than a handsome boy, promising to be well
grown; and his lithe, vigorous figure showed to good advantage in his
gay riding-suits, whether of sombre black cloth with silver buttons set
closely down the outer seam of the pantaloons and adorning the short
round jacket, or in loose _chapareras_ of buckskin bound by a scarlet
sash and bedizened with leather fringes,—a costume that perhaps served
to betray the Indian strain in his blood, which ordinarily was detected
only by a slight prominence of the cheek bones and a somewhat furtive
expression in the soft dark eyes. At unguarded moments, however, perhaps
when he fancied himself unobserved and was practising with his pistol or
sabre, those eyes could flash with concentrated fire, so that more than
once Isabel had been constrained to call out: “Leon, Leon, you frighten
me! You look like the great cat when he pounces upon a harmless little
bird and crushes it for the very joy of killing!”
Then Leon would laugh, and the soft, dreamy haze would rise again over
the eyes as he would turn upon her. “Ha!” he would say, “you will never
be a man, Isabel; you will never understand why I love the sights and
sounds that throw you poor women into fainting fits and tears. Ha!
Isabel, if I were you I’d not stay in this dull house with a couple of
old women to guard me, when you might go to the hacienda and be free as
air.”
“Nonsense,” Isabel would retort; “what could I do there other than here?
I could not turn herdsman or vaquero, nor even ride out to the fields to
see how the crops were flourishing, nor roam like an Indian through the
mountains.”
“But _I_ would!” Leon would cry enthusiastically; and with his longing
ardor for the free life of a country gentleman, with its barbaric luxury
and wild sports, he thus first put into the young girl’s mind the
thought of favoring the suit which her cousin, Don Gregorio Garcia,
began to urge.
Don Gregorio had married young, soon after the death of Ignacio Garcia
whom he succeeded in the management of the estate of which they had been
joint owners; but his wife had died leaving him without an heir, and the
first grief assuaged, it was but natural after the passage of years that
the widower should weary of his loneliness. There were many reasons why
his thoughts should turn to his distant cousin Isabel, for though she
was many years younger than himself, such disparity of age was not
unusual; the marriage would unite still more closely the family
fortunes, and effectually prevent the intrusion of any undesirable
stranger; and above all, Isabel was gracious and queenly and beautiful
enough to charm the heart even of an anchorite, and Don Gregorio was far
from being one. Indeed, in his very early years he had given indications
of a partiality for a far more adventurous career than he had finally,
by force of circumstances, been led to adopt. Thus he sympathized
somewhat with Leon’s restless activity, and quite honestly secured the
boy’s alliance,—no slight advantage in his siege of the heart of Isabel.
This, perhaps more than the good-will of the rest of the family, enabled
Don Gregorio to approach so nearly to Isabel’s inmost nature that he
learned far more of the strength of purpose and capability for
passionate devotion possessed by the young untrained girl than any other
being had done, and for the first time in his life knew a love far
deeper and purer than any passion which mere physical charms could
awaken. Such a love appealed to Isabel. She was perhaps constitutionally
cold to sexual charms, but eminently susceptible to the sympathetic
attrition of an appreciative mind, while her heart could translate far
more readily the rational outpourings of friendship than the wild
rhapsodies of passion. Thus, although Isabel would have shrunk from a
man who in his ardor would have demanded of her affection some sacrifice
of the unqualified devotion that she had vowed to her brother, she
seemed to find in Don Gregorio one who could understand and applaud the
exaggerated devotion to the ideal standard of filial and sisterly duty
which she had unconsciously erected upon the few utterly irrational
words of a weak and dying woman.
The first four years of Isabel’s married life passed uneventfully. Leon
was constantly near her, and was the life of the great house, which
despite the crowd of retainers that frequented it would without him have
proved but a dull dwelling for so young a matron, with no illusions in
regard to the staid and kindly husband, who was rather a friend to be
consulted and revered than a lover to be adored,—for although Don
Gregorio worshipped his beautiful young wife, he was at once too mindful
of his own dignity, and too wary of startling Isabel’s passionless
nature, to manifest or exact romantic and exhaustive proofs of
affection. He used sometimes to mutter to himself: “‘The stronger the
flame the sooner the wood is burnt;’ better that the substance of love
should endure than be dissipated in smoke!”
Don Gregorio was somewhat of a philosopher; and as such, as soon as the
glamour thrown over him by Leon’s brilliant but inconsequent sallies of
wit, and his daring and dashing manner, was dimmed, and above all as
soon as his unreasoning sympathy with Isabel’s predispositions settled
into a calm and sincere desire for her certain happiness and welfare, he
began to look with some suspicion upon traits which had at first
attracted him as the natural outcome of an ardent and generous nature.
Friar Francisco had accompanied the young brother and sister to the
hacienda, partly to minister in the church, and partly as tutor to Leon;
but in the latter capacity he found little exercise for his talents.
Upon one pretext or another the boy at first evaded and later absolutely
refused study; but he joined so heartily in the labors as well as
pleasures of hacienda life,—he was so ready in resource, so untiring in
action, so companionable alike to all classes, that Nature seemed to
have fitted him absolutely for the position that he was apparently
destined to fill in life. Yet though he was the prince of rancheros, the
life of the city sometimes seemed to possess an irresistible attraction
for him; and after months perhaps spent among the employees of the
hacienda, in riding with the vaqueros or in penetrating the recesses of
the mountain, even sleeping in the huts of charcoal burners, or in caves
with rovers of still more doubtful reputation, he would suddenly weary
of it all, and followed by a servant or two ride gayly down to the city
to see how the world went there.
At first Don Gregorio had no idea how much those visits cost Isabel; but
as time went on, and rumors reached them of the boy’s extravagant mode
of life, Isabel became anxious and Don Gregorio indignant. Some
investigation showed that a troop of young roysterers who called him
captain were maintained in the mountains, and that a thousand wild
freaks which had mystified the neighboring villages and haciendas might
be traced to these mad spirits, among whom Don Gregorio shrewdly
conjectured might be found many of the most daring young fellows, both
of the higher and lower orders, who had one by one mysteriously
disappeared during the few months preceding Leon’s eighteenth birthday.
Leon only laughed when taxed with his guerilla following, and although
as he managed it it was a somewhat costly amusement, it was not an
unusual or an altogether useless one in those days of anarchy; for no
one could say how soon the fortunes of war might turn an enemy upon the
land and stores of Tres Hermanos, and even Don Gregorio was not
displeased to find the most refractory of his retainers placed in a
position to defend rather than imperil the interests of the estate. As
to the escapades of city life he found them less pardonable, for they
consisted chiefly in mad devotion to the gaming-table, which Leon was
never content to leave until his varying fortunes turned to disaster and
his wild excitement was quelled by the tardy reflection that his
sister’s generosity would be taxed in thousands to pay the folly of a
night.
Before the age of twenty Leon Vallé had run the gamut of the vices and
extravagances peculiar to Mexican youths, and large as the resources of
Doña Isabel were, he had begun to encroach seriously upon them; for true
to her mother’s request, she had never refused to supply his demands for
money, though of late she had begun to make remonstrances, which were
received half incredulously, half sullenly, as though he realized
neither their justice nor their necessity. Isabel was now a mother, her
daughter Herlinda having been born a year after her marriage, and their
son Norberto, the pride and hope of Don Gregorio, three years later; and
naturally the young mother longed to consider the interests of her
children, which so far as her own property was concerned seemed utterly
obliterated and overwhelmed by the mad extravagances of her brother.
Strangely enough, Don Gregorio attempted no interference with his wife’s
disposal of her income, though it seemed not improbable that at no
distant day even the lands would be in jeopardy. Perhaps he foresaw that
as her means to gratify his insatiable demands declined, so gradually
Leon’s strange fascination over his sister would cease; for inevitably
his restless spirit would draw him afar to find fresh fields for
adventure, since in those days, when the great struggle between Church
and State was beginning and foreign complications were forming, such a
leader as he might prove to be would find no lack of occasion for daring
deeds and reckless followers, nor scarcity of plunder with which to
repay the latter.
Whatever were his thoughts, Don Gregorio guarded them well, saying
sometimes either to Leon himself, or to some friend who expressed a half
horrified conjecture as to where such absolute madness must end, “See
you not, ’t is foolish to squeeze the orange until one tastes the
bitterness of the rind?” He expected some sudden and violent reaction in
Isabel’s mind and conduct. But though she began to show she realized and
suffered, she bore the strain put upon her with royal fortitude. Youth
can hope through such adverse circumstances, and it always seemed to her
that one who “meant so well” as Leon, must eventually turn from
temptation and begin a new and nobler career.
At last what appeared to Isabel the turning point in her brother’s
destiny was reached. He became violently enamored of the beautiful
daughter of a Spaniard, one Señor Fernandez, who of a family too
distinguished to be flattered by an alliance with a mere attaché of a
wealthy and powerful house, was so poor as to be willing to consider it
should a suitable provision be made to insure his daughter’s future
prosperity. The beautiful Dolores was herself favorably inclined toward
the gay cavalier, who most ardently pressed his suit,—the more ardently
perhaps that he was piqued and indignant that the wary father utterly
refused to consider the matter until Don Gregorio or Doña Isabel herself
should formally ask the hand of his daughter, presenting at the same
time unmistakable assurances of Leon’s ability to fulfil the promises he
recklessly poured forth.
That Leon had turned from his old evil courses seemed as months passed
on an absolute certainty. Not even the administrador himself could be
more utterly bound to the wheel of routine than he. To see his changed
life, his absolute repugnance even to the sports suitable to his age,
was almost piteous; his whole heart and mind seemed set upon atonement
for the folly of the past, and in preparation for a life of toil and
anxiety in the future. For in examining into her affairs, Doña Isabel
found that her income was largely overdrawn; Leon’s extravagances,
together with heavy losses incurred in the working of the
reduction-works, had so far crippled her resources that it was only by
stringent effort, and an appeal to Don Gregorio for aid, that she was
enabled so to rehabilitate the fortunes of Leon that he could hope to
win the prize which was to make or mar his future.
Doña Isabel was as happy as the impatient lover himself when she could
place in his hands the deeds of a small but productive estate, famous
for the growth of the maguey, from which the sale of pulque and mescal
promised a never failing revenue. The money had been raised largely
through concessions made by Don Gregorio, and was to be repaid from the
income of Isabel’s encumbered estate, so that for some years at least it
would be out of her power to render Leon any further assistance. Don
Gregorio shook his head gravely over the whole matter; yet the fact that
the young man was virtually thrown upon the resources provided for him,
which certainly without the concentration of all his energies and tact
would be altogether insufficient for his maintenance, and also that he
had great faith in the energy of character which for the first time
appeared diverted into a legitimate channel, inclined him to believe
that at last, urged by necessity as well as love, Leon would redeem his
past and settle down into the reputable citizen and relative who was to
justify and repay the sister’s tireless and extraordinary devotion. “Or
at least,” he said to himself, “Isabel will be satisfied that no more
can or should be done; and it is worth a fortune to convince her of
that.”
Strangely enough, though Isabel had addressed herself with a frenzy of
determination to the task of securing a competency for Leon that might
enable him to marry and enter upon a life which was to relieve her of
the constant drain upon her resources, both material and mental, which
for years had been sapping her prosperity and peace, yet as she beheld
him ride away toward the town in which his inamorata dwelt to make the
final arrangements for his marriage, her heart sank within her; and
instead of relief and thankfulness, she felt a frightful pang of
apprehension, she knew not why, as if a prophetic voice warned her that
her own hand had opened the door to a chamber of horrors, through which
the smiling youth would pass and drag her as he went.
Isabel threw herself upon her husband’s breast in an agony which he
could not comprehend, but which he gently soothed, happy to feel that to
him she turned in the first moment of her abandonment,—for indeed she
felt that she who had given her substance, her sympathy, her faith, all
of which a sister’s life is capable, was indeed abandoned, and all for a
fresh young face, a word, a smile. Leon was a changed man, but all her
devotion had not worked the miracle; another whose love could be as yet
but a fancy had accomplished what years of sacrifice from her had
striven for in vain!
There was something of jealousy, but far more of the pain of baffled
aspiration in the thought, and through it all that dreadful doubt, that
sickening dread as to whether she had done well thus to strip herself of
the power to minister to him. It seemed, even against her reason,
impossible that Leon could be beyond the pale of her bounty; she had
been so accustomed to plan, to think, to plot for him, that she could
not grasp the thought that henceforth he was to live without her, that
she was to know him happy, joyous, at ease, and she no longer be the
immediate and ministering Providence which made him so.
After the infant Carmen was born, the mother’s thoughts turned into
other channels. As she looked at this child, the thought for the first
time came to her, that some day it might be possible that her children
would inherit some material good from her. Their father was a rich man,
yet there was a pleasure in the thought that her children, her daughters
most especially, would be pleased by a mother’s rich gifts, would
perhaps from her receive the dower that would make them welcome in the
homes of the men they might love. Isabel began to indulge in the
maternal hopes and visions of young motherhood, and to feel the security
that a still hopeful mind may acquire, after years of secret and
harassing cares have passed.
The usual visits of ceremony had passed between the contracting
families; the Señor Fernandez had declared himself satisfied with the
generous provisions which had been made for the young couple; the house
was set in order, and an early day named for the wedding. Some days of
purest happiness followed the tearful anxiety with which Dolores had
awaited the negotiations that were to shape her destiny. An earnest of
the future came to her in the present of jewels, with which Leon
presaged the marriage gifts which he went to the city of Mexico to
choose,—for whether rich or poor, no Mexican bridegroom would fail of a
necklet of pearls, or a brooch and earrings of brilliants for his bride;
and with his luxurious tastes, it was not to be supposed that Leon Vallé
could fail to add to these laces and silks and velvets, fit rather for a
princess than for the future wife of a country youth whose only capital
was in house and land. Isabel had just heard of these things, and had
begun to excuse in her heart these extravagances, which seemed so
natural to a youth in love, when a remembrance flashed upon her mind
which justified the apprehensions she had felt, and which it seemed
incredible should have escaped not only her own but also Don Gregorio’s
vigilance,—Leon had gone to Mexico in the days of the feast of San
Augustin.
Isabel was too jealous of her brother’s good name, too eager to shield
him from a breath of distrust, to mention the fears that assailed her.
She called herself irrational, faithless, unjust, yet she could not rid
herself of the dread which seemed to brood above her like a cloud. And
so passed the month of June, and July brought Leon Vallé back again, and
one glance at his haggard face and bloodshot eyes revealed to Isabel
that her fears were realized. He told the tale in a few words and with a
hollow laugh.
“You will have to go to Garcia for me now, Isabel,” he said. “Your last
venture has brought me the old luck, cursed bad luck. A plague upon your
money! I thought to double or treble it, and the last cent is gone!”
“And the hacienda of San Lazaro?” queried Isabel, faintly.
“Would you believe it? Gone too! Aranda has had the devil’s own luck. ’T
was the last of the feast, Isabel. Thousands were changing hands at
every table. It seemed a cowardice not to try a stake for a fortune that
might be had for the asking. I was a fool, and hesitated till it was too
late. Had I only ventured at once! What think you happened to Leoncio
Alvarez? He played his hacienda against Esparto’s, and lost. He had
dared me not five minutes before to the venture. The devil, what a
chance I missed! His hacienda was three times the size of San Lazaro! He
bore its loss like a man. ‘What can one do, friend?’ he cried to
Esparto; ‘it has been thy luck to-day, ’t will be mine when we next
meet.’ Just then his brother Antonio came up. ‘What luck, Leoncio?’ he
said. ‘Cursed!’ he answered. ‘I have played my hacienda against
Esparto’s here, and lost it.’ Antonio shrugged his shoulders and turned
away. ‘Play mine and get it back,’ he suggested, and walked off to the
next table. The cards were dealt, and in three minutes Leoncio’s
hacienda was his own again, thrown like a ball from one hand to the
other. It was glorious play!”
“But this has nothing to do with thee,” ventured Isabel.
“No,” muttered Leon, moodily; “when _I_ ventured my hacienda and lost,
there was no Antonio to bid me play his and get it back.”
He looked at Isabel with an air of reproach. She had neither look nor
word of reproach for him, yet she felt that a mortal blow had been dealt
her. And Leon? He had laughed, though she knew that the laugh was that
of the mocking fiend Despair which possessed him; and he had bade her go
on his behalf to Garcia. She left him in desperation. She knew how
utterly fruitless such an appeal would be.
It was fruitless. Don Gregorio asked with some scorn in his voice
whether Leon thought him as weak as she had been, or as much of a madman
as himself when he had dared the chances of the tables at San Augustin.
For him, Garcia, to furnish money to the oft-tried scapegrace would be a
folly that would merit the inevitable loss it would bring. All of which,
though true enough, Don Gregorio repeated with unnecessary vehemence to
Leon himself, with the tone of irrepressible satisfaction with which he
at last saw humiliated the man who had for so long held such a
resistless fascination over his wife.
With wonderful self-restraint Leon replied not a word to the cutting
irony with which his brother-in-law referred to the mad ambition and
folly which had led to his losses, and with which Gregorio excused
himself from further assisting in the ruin of the Garcia
family,—reminding the gamester that though he had thrown away the key to
fortune which he had taken from his sister’s hand, he had still youth, a
sword, and a subtle mind, any one of which should be able to provide him
a living.
“That is true,” replied Leon, with a dangerous light in his half-closed
eyes. “Thanks for the reminder, my brother. What is the old saying? ‘A
hungry man discovers more than a thousand wise men.’”
They both laughed. It was not likely that Leon’s poverty would ever
reach the point of actual want. There at the hacienda was his home when
he cared for it; but as for money,—why as Don Gregorio had said, the key
to fortune was thrown away, and it seemed unlikely the unfortunate loser
would ever recover it.
Almost on the same day on which Leon Vallé had told his sister of his
fatal hardihood at the feast of San Augustin, there arrived, with
assurances of the profound respect of Señor Fernandez and his daughter,
the jewels and other rich gifts which Dolores had accepted as the
betrothed of Leon. With deep indignation that his explanations and
protestations had been rejected, but with a pride which prevented the
frantic remonstrances which rushed to his lips from passing beyond them,
Leon received these proofs of his dismissal, which in a few days was
rendered final by the news that the beautiful Dolores had married a
wealthier and perhaps even more ardent suitor, whom the insolence and
mockery of Fate had provided in the person of the lucky winner of San
Lazaro. Even Don Gregorio felt his heart burn with the natural chagrin
of family pride, and Isabel would have turned with some sympathy toward
the brother of whom, unconsciously to herself, she could no longer make
a hero. Strangely enough, his aspect as a suppliant for her husband’s
bounty had disrobed him of the glamour through which she had always
beheld him. When she herself was powerless to minister to him, he was no
longer a prince claiming tribute, but the undignified dependent whom she
blushed to see lounging in sullen idleness in her husband’s house. Yet
as has been said, when word of the marriage of Dolores Fernandez reached
them, they would have given him sympathy; but he had received the news
first, and collecting a half-dozen followers had mounted and ridden
madly away.
The horses they rode were Don Gregorio’s yet Leon had gone without a
word of excuse or farewell. Isabel had no opportunity to tell him that
she had no more money to give him; and in her distress at supposing him
penniless it was an immense relief to her to find that he had retained
in his possession the jewels that the father of Dolores had returned to
him. He would at least not be without resource. But soon a strange tale
reached her. The jewels torn from their settings, the stones in
fragments, the whole crushed into an utterly worthless mass, so far as
human strength and ingenuity could accomplish it, had been found upon
the pillow of the bride. The husband was jealously frantic that her
sanctuary had been invaded; the bride was hysterically alarmed, yet
flattered at this proof of her lover’s passion; and the entire community
were for days on the _qui vive_ for further developments in this drama
of love.
But none came, and soon Leon Vallé’s name was heard of as one of the
guerillas of the Texan war, where he fought for—it was not to be said
under—Santa Anna; and ere many months his name rang from one end of the
republic to the other,—the synonym of gallant daring, which in a less
exciting time might have been called ferocious bloodthirstiness.
Isabel quailed as she heard the wild tales told of him; but Don Gregorio
shrugged his shoulders and said, “Thank Heaven he turned soldier rather
than brigand!” The chief difference between the two in those days was in
name; but that meant much in sentiment.