Chinita woke with a confused sensation of haste, and in the dim light
discovered with a momentary surprise that she was in one of the chambers
of the great house. Her first clear remembrance was that there was to be
a wedding in the village that day, and that she must hasten to help
array the bride, her old playmate Juana,—a girl scarce older than
herself, but who as the daughter of the silver-smith held some
pretentions to superior gentility among the village folk. She wondered
that she was not in the hut with Florencia and the children, and raised
herself upon one arm to peer through the gloom at the figure upon the
bed; then suddenly sprang to her feet with an exclamation. The sight of
the wounded man brought to memory the train of events connected with his
appearance there. The young man was asleep, but even if he had been
awake and in dire need of aid, Chinita would not have paused an instant;
for it flashed into her mind that she must see and speak to Tio Reyes
before he left. He had told her so little—nothing that she could
separate as a tangible fact. She must know more. Surely it was early
still,—she never slept after daybreak; he would not yet be gone. Yet in
quick apprehension, which burst forth in an irate interjection at her
tardy awakening, she ran out into the court.
The morning light was beaming there unmistakably, though no ray of
sunlight penetrated it; and not a creature was stirring, and still
hopeful the young girl hurried to the outer court. The mingled sounds of
the movements of men and horses greeted her ear. Although she was late,
Tio Reyes perhaps was still there. Vain hope! One glance around the
great court showed her that he whom she sought was gone.
With an angry little cry, which made more than one muleteer turn to look
at her with, “What has happened to thee?” on his lips, Chinita sped
across the court, and caught the arm of Pedro, who was standing
dejectedly outside the great gate. He crossed himself as she appeared,
and his face lighted up, then clouded again as she cried, “Where are the
soldiers? When did they go? Why did no one awaken me?”
The man pointed with a disdainful gesture across the plain. Florencia
was standing at the door of her hut, calling in a rage to a neighbor
that those worthless vagabonds had robbed her of her last handful of
toasted corn; and Pedro began to explain to Chinita in his slow way that
the good friends of the night before had naturally enough demanded
something from the housewives upon which to breakfast, and that instead
of giving it to them quietly, and thanking the Virgin that after
drinking the soup they had not taken the pot, the foolish women must
needs scold and bewail, as though soldiers should be saints and live on
air, and as if this was the first raid that ever had been heard of,
instead of a mere frolic, very different from that of the month before,
when the forces of the clergy had carried off a thousand bushels of
maize, without as much as a “God repay you.”
Chinita gazed eagerly toward the east, and presently burst into
passionate tears. The sun, which a moment before had shown a tiny red
disk above the hills, flooded the plain with light, and dazzled her
vision. Through it she saw some rapidly moving figures. The man she
sought was already miles away. Silently but bitterly she reproached
herself. She had slept like an insensate lump, and suffered to escape
her the man who could have told her so much, whom she would have forced
to speak. She could, as her eyes became accustomed to the light,
distinguish his very figure in the clear atmosphere; and yet he and all
she would have learned were so far away.
“What wouldst thou?” demanded Pedro, gruffly; “the soldiers have carried
off nothing of thine! Heaven forefend! Go to the hut and drink the atolé
if there is any left, and give God the thanks!”
The broad daylight had cleared the mind of Pedro of all the sentimental
fears of the night. The glamour had passed away; there stood Chinita
with the old familiar ragged clothing upon her, to be talked with,
caressed it might be, certainly scolded with the mock severity of old.
Yes, it was the same fiery, uncertain, irascible Chinita, who, clearing
her eyes of their unusual tears with a backward sweep of her small brown
hand, ran down the hill,—not to the hut where Florencia stood with the
water-jar, beckoning her, but in quite another direction, to join the
little crowd of sympathizing friends who were gathered at the door of
the silversmith.
Pepé was standing there with a gayly caparisoned donkey, destined to
bear the _novia_ to the village some eight miles distant, where the lazy
priest who divided his time between the sinners of that point and Tres
Hermanos, had consented to earn a royal fee by uniting two poor peasants
in holy matrimony. “It is but for once,” Gabriel had hopefully remarked;
“and though one runs in debt for the wedding, one can hold one’s head
above one’s neighbors, to say nothing of dying in peace, if a bull’s
horn finds its way some unlucky day between one’s ribs.”
Gabriel was a man who honored the proprieties, and Juana was well
pleased with the good fortune that had awarded her to him; though he was
twice her age, and had a squint which made ludicrous his most amorous
glances.
“What has happened?” cried Pepé in a disappointed tone, as Chinita
darted past him. “Didst thou not say thou wouldst ride with Juana? She
has been waiting for thee this half hour. The _novio_ will be on his way
before her if we tarry longer, and thou knowest what that portends. The
impatient lover becomes the husband never appeased! the wife shall wait
many a day for him.”
“Bah!” returned Chinita, “if Juana were of my mind the _novio_ would
wait so long that her turn to play at _paciencia_ would never arrive.”
“Go to!” cried a woman who stood near, “who would have imagined thou
wouldst be so envious, Chinita; and thou but a child yet? But thou art
one that hast been brought up between cotton, and expectest the soft
places all thy life.”
“Pshaw!” answered Chinita. “Speak of what thou knowest, Señora
Gomesinda; and thou, Pepé, cease making eyes at me. Thinkest thou I have
nothing better to do than to ride after Juana to see her married to yon
black giant of a vaquero, who will manage his wife as he does his
horses,—with a thong? I tell thee as I tell her, he is not worth the
beating she got when he asked for her!”
“Ay, Señora,” cried Gomesinda, shrilly, “was ever such talk from the
mouth of a modest girl? What could a reasonable father and mother do for
a girl when a man asks her in marriage? It is plain she must have played
some tricks of our Señora Madre Eva to have beguiled him. Ay, but I
remember my mother flailed me black and blue when José asked for me. I
warrant you I screamed so hard the whole neighborhood knew she was doing
the honorable part by me. Thank Heaven, I knew what was proper as well
as another, and if I had given the man a glance from the corner of my
eyes, I was willing my shoulders should suffer for it. One may tell of
it when one is the mother of ten children.”
During this harangue, Chinita had slipped by her, and darted into the
hut. She threw her arms around the expectant bride, who dressed in the
stiffest of starched skirts, the upper one of which was of flowered pink
muslin, stood waiting the finishing touches of her sponsor.
“What, thou art not ready?” cried Juana in a dejected tone, surveying
Chinita with disapproving eyes. “Gabriel has twice sent messages that
the sun has risen, and that the Señor Priest likes not to be kept long
fasting, and thou knowest, as the priest sings the sacristan answers.”
“Ay,” said Chinita, laughing, “a lesson in patience will be good for
both the priest and thy Gabriel; but it will bode thee ill if he learns
it at the tavern, as I saw him doing just now. Truly, Juana, thou must
go without me. I am in no humor to go so far on thy ambling donkey;” and
she drew herself up with an air of hauteur, which did not escape the
observant eye of the bride, who said, with a reproachful look,—
“What have I done? Did I ever give thee a sharp word, Chinita?”
For answer, Chinita threw her arms around the girl’s neck; for she was
really fond of Juana, who had ever been a gentle girl, and had borne her
perverse humors with a sort of admiring patience which had flattered and
won the heart of the wayward one. Completely mollified, Juana pressed
her cheek against Chinita’s shoulder, for she had turned her face away,
and said, “But thou wilt put on thy finest clothes and sit beside me at
the fandango, wilt thou not? And thou wilt help my sponsor to dress me.
See! Dost thou think she has done well this time?” and the girl threw
her scarf from her head and shoulders, and exhibited her long,
well-oiled tresses with an air of conscious vanity.
“Nothing could be better,” declared Chinita, heartily, pulling out a
loop of the bright red ribbons. “Yes, yes,” she added with some effort,
“I will stay beside thee all through the feast. Thou hast ever been a
good friend of mine, Juana. There, there, they are calling thee;” and
she pushed her toward the door, where by this time a noisy crowd had
gathered.
Instead of only one donkey, there were five or six standing there, with
gay bridles and necklaces of horsehair, brightened with cords of red or
blue, and with panniers covered with well-trimmed sheepskins. As the
Señora Madrina said, “She who should ride upon them would think herself
on cushions of down.” On the most luxurious of these rural thrones Juana
was raised, and upon the others her mother and a number of her female
friends, mostly in pairs, were accommodated; and with many injunctions
from the bystanders to hasten, the bridal party were at last dismissed
upon their way.
Laughing and chattering, the women dispersed to their huts to grind a
fresh stint of maize to replace the tortillas and atolé that had been
carried away by the soldiers; but Chinita sat down at the door of the
adobe hut thus temporarily deserted, and with a smile of derision upon
her lips watched the group of men congregated around the village shop.
The bridegroom, a middle-aged man, with a dark face deeply imbrowned by
the sun and seamed with scars (for he had been a soldier before he was a
vaquero), stood in the midst of them, dressed in a suit of buff leather,
gay with embroidery. The embossed leather sheath of his knife showed in
his scarlet waist-scarf, and immense spurs clanked on his heels in
response to the buttons and chains on the half-opened sides of his
riding trousers of goat-skin. He was a picturesque figure—though
Chinita’s accustomed eyes failed to recognize that—as he stood with his
wide, silver-laced hat pushed back upon the mat of black hair that
crowned his swarthy countenance, holding high the small glass of mezcal
which he was about to drink in favor of the toast some comrade had
proposed. Meanwhile, his companions were noisily hilarious, rallying him
with impossible prophesies of good fortune, to which he listened with an
air of imperturbability which was part of the etiquette of the
occasion,—for in all the world can be found no greater slave to his
peculiar code of manners than the Mexican ranchero.
The party on donkey-back had almost disappeared upon the horizon before
it seemed to occur to the group at the tavern store that any movement
was expected from them. More than once the women had stopped in their
household tasks to call out a shrill “Go on! go on! By the saints, man,
will you keep the priest waiting?” and still Gabriel affected the
indifferent, until as if by accident he strolled toward his horse, which
stood champing the bit impatiently. Immediately there was a rush of his
best friends, and the triumphant one who caught the stirrup and held it
as the bridegroom mounted claimed the luck-gift for the good news of the
departure,—which was effected at once after a series of pirouettes and
caracolling, by Gabriel’s putting spurs to his steed and galloping madly
away, followed by his friends as quickly as they could throw themselves
into their saddles.
The spell of the day before continued still so to rest upon her that
Chinita neither joined in the cheer nor the laughter of the women, but
turned slowly toward Pedro’s hut. The cravings of a healthy appetite
subdued for the moment the pride that scorned the lowly home. It was
natural to go there for the corn-cake and the draught of atolé or
chocolate with which to break her fast. She found the share left for
her; but after a mouthful or two it seemed to grow bitter to her taste.
She divided it petulantly among the children who clamored around her,
and in response to a call from Florencia went to Selsa’s hut where they
were making tortillas for the wedding feast, arrogantly refusing to
help, yet glad of accustomed companionship. Much as she resented old
associations, the wrench was too great for her to separate herself from
them at once, especially as she had no conception of what could or
should take their place. She was like a child upon the banks of a river
that separates it from the farther shore which it longs to reach, though
dreading to push forth from the land it knows, rough and forlorn though
it may be. There was with Chinita a strange sense of clinging to a past
which was irrevocably severed from her, of impatience of a problem of
the future to be solved, and of lack of will to set herself to its
solution, as she went from hut to hut. The fever of her mind expended
itself first in seething irony and jests, and later in a wild
repentance, which manifested itself in quick embraces of the half
offended women, and in practical toil, which effectually promoted the
preparations for the feast, and went far to restore her to the good
graces of the harassed workers. Indeed, often enough they paused in
their labors to listen and laugh, as she stood at the brasiers fanning
the glowing charcoal, or watching the tortillas taken from the flat
_comal_ and piled in heaps upon the fringed and embroidered napkins used
on such occasions of ceremony; or went from dish to dish of black beans,
or red and fiery chile rich with pork or fowl; or gazed with positive
admiration upon the kids and lambs, stuffed with almonds and raisins,
forcemeat and olives, and other delicacies, which drawn smoking from the
earthen ovens attested the generosity of the administrador toward his
favorite vaquero.
Toward noon the bride and her party returned, ambling home upon their
donkeys, as humbly as they had gone. Juana was conducted to her future
home, and her mother-in-law, welcoming her with distant ceremony,
intended to inspire respect, suffered her to touch her cheek with her
lips, then led her to the inner room, where lay the apparel for her
adornment,—a number of toilets being indispensable upon the occasion,
and indicative of the pretensions of the bridegroom who had hired them.
Chinita, in her mingled mood of disdain and levity, had neglected to
keep her promise of putting on holiday attire, and stood in some awe and
much admiration before the bride as she at last appeared in the little
bower or tent that had been raised for her at one side of the hut,
facing upon the plaza where the feast was to be held. The little
woman—for she was not fully grown—was resplendent in a stiff-flowered
brocade of many colors, trimmed with real Spanish lace and bedecked with
flowers, and wore a necklace and bracelets of imitation gems set in
filagree, fit, as her sponsor proudly declared, for the Blessed Virgin
upon the high altar.
Juana threw a glance of reproach upon Chinita; but her new dignity
forbade recrimination. A shout presently announced that the bridegroom
was in sight. The bride, well-drilled in her part, kept her glance fixed
on the ground; and as he swept by her bower Gabriel deigned not a look,
but reined in his horse at his own door with a sudden turn of the hand
which almost threw the animal on its haunches, and before his stirrup
could be seized had thrown himself from his saddle and was shaking hands
with his friends, and immediately the feast began.
There was no table set. The fires burned at the corners of the plaza,
and the women stood over them, dispensing the fragrant contents of the
jars to all comers. Yet in this apparent informality the strictest
decorum was observed, and not a mouthful was swallowed or a drink of
_pulque_ or milky _chia_, without a friendly interchange of courtesies,
which rather increased than grew less as the hours flew by.
The proverb is true that at a wedding the bride eats least; and at that
of the Mexican peasant the saying becomes a law. Juana was too well
drilled in the proprieties to touch a morsel of the delicacies offered
her, but wore constantly the air of timid resignation with which she had
met the assumed indifference of her spouse, who resolutely avoided
casting even a glance in the direction where she held her court,—the
women crowding with ever increasing admiration to view her after each
change of toilet, as they might have done to examine a gorgeous picture,
commenting loudly upon the taste of the dresser and the liberality of
the groom. But nothing could be more satisfactory to her than this
feigned indifference of her husband. “Is not Gabriel an angel?” she took
occasion to ask Chinita, as for the tenth time she was changing her
apparel. “Imagine to yourself twelve changes of clothing, and he acts as
if the hiring of them were nothing! What a difference between him and
Pancho Orteago, who was married at Easter! Four beggarly suits were all
he provided for Anita, and not one silk among them; and he actually was
quite close to her again and again, with mouth open, as if he would eat
her! Such an idiot! He would have spoken to her if he had had the
chance. I should think she was half dead with mortification! Such
foolishness in public! Her mother cried with vexation; and no wonder,
with such a slur cast on the family!”
“Yet it has been like a marriage of turtle-doves!” cried Chinita. “Let
us see, little woman, if thou wilt say that of thy own six months
hence!”
Juana shrugged her shoulders and returned to her seat, with her eyes
more coyly cast down, and a dejected mien, which might not have been
altogether assumed; for, too earnest in acting her part even to take
food in private, she was not unnaturally almost spent with the long and
ceremonious state which for perhaps the only time in her life she was
called upon to maintain.
By this time, torches of fat pine were blazing at every door-post, and
the strumming of harps and guitars and many primitive instruments became
incessant. Groups of men, drowsy or hilarious, as the mezcal and pulque
they had drunk chanced to affect them, were stretched on the ground,
lazily watching and criticising the slow and untiring movements of the
fandango; now and then one would spring up, to place himself before some
dusky partner, who would raise the song in her shrill monotone, swaying
and bending her body in unison with the gliding steps, which seemed as
untiring as they were fascinating.
Occasionally the shrill song of the women was enlivened by the snapping
of the fingers and thumbs of the men; and more than once, though it had
been forbidden, the sharp crack of a pistol-shot indicated the
irrepressible excitement of some enthusiastic dancer. As the night wore
on, the click of the castanets became more frequent, and the weird and
tender refrain of _La paloma_ gave place to a bacchanalian chorus. Yet
this chorus ever bore an undertone of pathos and sentiment which seemed
to render impossible the absolute frenzy and rudeness of mirth that
would be apt to characterize such scenes in other lands,—though the
element of danger that lurked within began to show itself in scornful
glances, and the contemptuous turning of shoulder or head.
The night was chilly and dark, for it was the rainy season, and there
was no moon; but the light from scores of torches and from the tripod of
burning pitch set in the middle of the plaza illuminated the entire
village. The great house was set so high that the lurid glare reached no
farther than its gates; yet while its massive façade was in comparative
darkness, from its windows the scene of revelry was glowingly distinct,
and irresistibly attracted even the indifferent gaze of Doña Isabel.
Late in the evening she stepped into her balcony; Doña Feliz joined her,
and they wrapped themselves in their black rebosos, and silently
regarded the scene. The dances and sports of the peasantry had been
familiar to them from their childhood. A pleasurable excitement thrilled
the veins of each as they gazed. This gayety was as far beneath them as
the follies of our life may be beneath the pleasures of angels, yet
pleased the exalted sense of kindly interest in the affairs of plebeian
humanity. They began to murmur to each other something of this feeling,
when suddenly both became silent. A single figure had caught the glances
of both. It was that of Chinita, who, scornful and cool while the slow
_afforados_ and _jarabes_ were in progress, had yielded to the seductive
strains of the waltz, and was drawn from her station at Juana’s side by
a rural beau from a neighboring village. The two whirled in the mazy
dance, presently beginning a series of improvised changes, possible only
to the subtle grace of youth under the spell of excitement wrought to
its height by music, wine, and amorous flattery. One by one the other
couples ceased dancing, the fingers of the musicians flew over their
instruments, and the swift feet of Chinita and her partner kept time.
Sometimes they swept together around the circle formed by the admiring
onlookers; anon Chinita, lifting her arms to the cadence of the music,
waved her swain away, and circled round him like a bird poising for
descent, then glided again to his arms; or turning one bare shoulder
from which the reboso had fallen, looked back upon him with soft,
languorous eyes which challenged pursuit, while she fled with the speed
of the wind.
The circle were enraptured, and broke into loud _vivas_, or joined in
the words of the air to which the pair were dancing. Pedro stood with
the rest, watching with shining eyes; but at his side was a young woman,
whose dark brows were drawn together in a spasm of rage. This was
Elvira, a young widow, to whom the stranger was plighted, and who in the
utter abandonment of her lover to the dance with another younger and
fairer than herself, found a fair excuse for the mad jealousy that
surged through heart and brain, and convulsed her features. But there
was none to notice her; all eyes were bent upon the dancers, when a
sudden turn brought them both before the infuriated woman. Seizing a
knife from the belt of the unconscious Pedro, she sprang toward Chinita,
with intent to wreak the usual vengeance of the jealous country-woman by
slashing her across the cheek or mouth, and thus destroying her beauty
forever. But quick as a flash Pepé, the derided but faithful, threw
himself between them, receiving the blow in his arm; but shouting and
gesticulating with pain, he made ridiculous a scene which might have
been heroic.
This was no uncommon incident at such gatherings, and roused more
laughter than dismay. The dance suddenly ceased. Chinita, panting with
exertion, threw herself with a cry for protection upon Pedro, who in
rage had involuntarily grasped for the missing knife that had so nearly
accomplished so foul a work; and Benito, recalled to his allegiance by
this undoubted proof of his Elvira’s devotion, turned to her with words
of mingled reproach and endearment. Pepé, in spite of his outcry, was
quite unnoticed in the general excitement until his sister the bride,
forgetting her dignity, forced her way through the crowd and bound her
large lace handkerchief over the bleeding wound.
“Thou shalt come home!” said Pedro, resolutely, as Chinita struggled in
his grasp, with a half defined intention of assailing the woman who had
assaulted her, and who was being led sobbing away by her repentant
lover. “What will the Señora think of thee?” he added in a whisper. “She
is on her balcony.”
Chinita glanced up. She could see nothing against the great blank wall
that loomed in the near distance, but a sensation of acute shame
overcame her. She suddenly remembered that which in her brief delirium
she had forgotten. She turned from the throng as though they had been
serpents, and fled up the path to the gate, dashing against it
breathless. The postern was open. She felt for it with her hands and
darted through, coming full upon Doña Isabel. Feliz followed her lady,
both looking like spectres under the rough stone arch of the vestibule,
with its grim garniture of serpents and fierce-eyed wild beasts.
“Wretched girl!” cried Doña Isabel, as Chinita stopped like a deer at
bay. “Wretched girl!” grasping her with a grip of steel, yet shaking as
with ague. “Hast thou a wound? Is the mark of shame on thy face already?
My God! Oh, child! Canst thou not speak?”
“I will kill her!” gasped Chinita, too much excited herself to be
surprised by the agitation of Doña Isabel, or to wonder at her presence.
“To-morrow I will find her and give her such a blow as she would have
given me. What will her Benito care for her then?”
“What is he to thee?” cried Doña Isabel, catching the girl by the wrist,
and looking into her eyes,—“he or any such _canalla_? Come thou with
me!—with me, I say!” She threw a glance, half inquiring, half defiant,
at Feliz, who stood with her eyes cast down, her face strangely white,
yet inexpressive. “Come thou with me,” she reiterated, scanning the girl
from her unkempt shock of tawny curls to her unshod feet. A blush passed
over the usually colorless and haughty face of the lady, as she added
slowly, “before it is too late.”
The girl and the mistress of Tres Hermanos looked at each other
searchingly; then Doña Isabel turned and led the way across the court.
Chinita followed her with head erect and sparkling eyes. Pedro entered
at the instant, but his foster daughter did not hear him; but Feliz, who
gave way that the strangely associated lady and girl might pass, looked
up, and her eyes met those of the gatekeeper. Pedro approached with his
Indian, cat-like silence of movement, and found her standing as if in a
dream. The eyes of the man filled with tears. He was too lowly to
manifest resentment at the studied reserve he believed Doña Feliz had
for years preserved toward him, while still she had made him her tool.
He and such as he were made for use. Yet inferior as he was, they had
been workers in a common cause, and their common purposes seemed now
frustrated at a word.
He bent humbly and touched the fringe of her reboso.
“Have I done well, Doña Feliz?” he queried in a broken voice. “Alas! I
can do no more. You see how blood flows to blood, as the brooks turn to
the river.”
Feliz started. “Strange! strange!” she muttered. She turned upon Pedro a
glance of mingled pity and deprecation. She seemed about to say more,
but paused. “Thou art a good man, Pedro,” she presently whispered. “Thou
hast done a greater work than thou guessest. Be content. Thou knowest
the child’s nature,—Chinita will not suffer with Doña Isabel; but she
who thrust from her bosom the dove will perchance warm the adder into
life.”
“No, no!” cried the man, vehemently. “Cruel, bitter woman! Chinita hath
been my child, and though she turn from me I will hear no evil of her. I
will live or die for her!” The unwonted outburst ended in a sob, and
before he could speak again, Doña Feliz had passed across the court,
but—strange condescension!—she had seized his hand and pressed it to her
lips, in irresistible homage to a devotion as pure and unselfish as that
of the loftiest knight who ever drew sword in the cause of helpless
innocence.
Pedro turned to his alcove dazed, stunned. To him it was as if a star
should leave its place in heaven to touch the vilest clod upon the
highway. A very miracle!