Although Doña Rita had left her home upon a sad errand, and her tears
flowed fast when on embracing her mother she beheld upon her countenance
the shadow of death, that first startling impression vanquished, she
allowed herself to be deceived by the fitful brightness that hovers over
the consumptive; and as days passed on she felt a pleased sense of
freedom and relaxation, and her return to her early home, which had been
undertaken as a pilgrimage, assumed much of the character of an ordinary
visit of pleasure.
Doña Rita was a member of a large family, of whom most had married; so
that her parents, relieved from cares that had long pressed upon them,
were enabled to live in the little town of El Toro with an ease and
comfort from which in their narrow circumstances they had necessarily
been debarred while the children were dependent. They were, strictly
speaking, people of the class known as _medio_ _pelo_, or “the
half-clothed order,” as far below the aristocrat as above the plebeian;
and Rita Farias had been thought to have risen greatly in life when she
became the wife of Rafael Sanchez, though he was then but a clerk, the
son of the administrador of Tres Hermanos, with no prospect of
succeeding soon to his honors. But as the pious neighbors said when they
heard of the early death of the bridegroom’s father, “God blessed her
with both hands,” of which one held marriage, and the other death; so
Doña Rita was accustomed when she at rare intervals visited her parents
to be looked upon with ever increasing respect. Such silken skirts and
rebosos as she wore were seldom seen within the quiet precincts of El
Toro.
Doña Rita herself was not quite clear upon the point as to whether or
not her native place could be considered to rival “the City,” as Mexico
was called _par excellence_, or even Guadalajara, which she had heard
was a labyrinth of palaces; but Rosario who had seen El Toro declared to
Chata that nothing could be finer, and Chata herself was quite convinced
of that when opening her eyes suddenly upon the clear moonlight night on
which the diligence stopped before the door of the inn, she first looked
out upon the plaza.
The two girls shivered a little in their sudden awakening, as, scarcely
knowing how, they were lifted from the diligence and stood upon their
feet at the door of the inn, with an injunction to watch the basket, the
five parcels tied in paper or towels, the drinking-gourd, the bottle of
claret, and the young parrot which their mother had brought with her as
a suitable gift to her declining relative. With habitual obedience they
did as they were bid, more than once rescuing a parcel from the long,
skinny claw of a blear-eyed hag, who crouched in the shadow of the wall
whining for alms, while at the same time they cast their admiring
glances at the really beautiful church upon which the white rays of the
moonlight streamed, converting it for the nonce into a symmetrical pile
of virgin snow or spotless alabaster. The priest’s house, a long low
building with numerous barred windows, stood on one side of it, while an
angle of the square was formed by a mass of buildings, the frowning
walls of which were apparently unpierced by door or window. This was a
convent. Later the children learned to know well the gardens it
enclosed, and also the taste of the wonderful confections the
sweet-faced sisters made. The other buildings seemed poor and small in
comparison to those, with the exception of the inn which rose gloomily
behind them, a solitary rush-light burning palely in the yawning
vestibule, and the torches flaming in the courtyard, where benighted
travellers were loudly bargaining for lodgings,—no hope of supper
presenting itself at that late hour.
While Rosario and Chata were noticing these things with wide-open eyes
but with ill suppressed yawns, Don Rafael and Doña Rita were returning
the salutations of the concourse of friends who had come to meet them;
and as soon as the children had been embraced in succession by each
affectionate cousin or punctilious friend, they were hurried across the
plaza upon the side where the shadows lay black as ink, and with a
regretful glance at the seeming palaces of marble that rose on either
hand were conducted with much kindly help and cheerfulness over the
rough cobble-stones along a narrow street of single-storied houses,
above the walls of which, as if piercing the roofs, rose at intervals
tall slender trees, indicating the well-planted courts within. Reaching
the more scattered portions of the town where the moonlight shone clear
over open fields and walled gardens and orchards, with low adobe houses
scattered among them, they at last entered, somewhat to the
disappointment of Chata, a rather pretentious house which fronted
directly upon the street. She was consoled upon the following day to
find a garden at the back, where a triangle of pink roses of Castile,
larkspur, and red geraniums grew, almost choking with their luxuriance
the beds of onions and chiles, and rivalling in glory of color the
“manta de la Virgin” or convolvulus, which entirely covered the
half-ruinous stone-wall—the gaps filled with tuñas and magueys—which
divided the cultivated land from the thickets of mesquite and cactus
that lay beyond.
In the garden the children spent many hours while their mother sat
chatting at the side of the invalid, who rallied wonderfully as she
heard the endless tales of her daughter’s prosperity; though like many
another _nouveau riche_, Doña Rita had her fancied self-denials to
complain of. One of the clerks at the hacienda had a wife whose father
had given her a string of pearls as large as cherries upon her wedding
day, while she the wife of the administrador was left to blush over the
shabby necklace—not a bead of which was bigger than a pea—which Rafael
had gone in debt to give her on her wedding day, and which until the
advent of the fortunate Doña Gomesinda she had thought most beautiful;
and then too her dearest friend had a daughter who would inherit a fine
house of three rooms or more in that very town, and money and jewels fit
for a _hacendado’s_ daughter; and it was quite possible that she would
marry—who could tell? it might even be an attorney or an official,—while
with two to endow (and it was well known that Rafael loved to enjoy as
he went), Heaven only knew to what her own flesh and blood were doomed!
There was Rosario for example,—and her own grandmother, who would not be
prejudiced, could judge if there was a prettier or more daintily-bred
girl in the whole town,—what chance was there that an officer or an
attorney, or indeed any one but a clerk, a ranchero, or a poor
shop-keeper, should pretend to their alliance when they could give so
poor a dower with their daughter? Doña Rita’s eyes filled with tears,
and decidedly she was obliged to compress her lips very tightly to
prevent herself from uttering further complaint; for since Rosario had
with true Mexican precocity burst into the full glory of young
womanhood, this had become a very real grievance to her mother, but one
of which, with the awe of the promoted as well as trained daughter and
wife, she had seldom ventured to hint of either to Doña Feliz or Don
Rafael.
As Rosario had outgrown her sister in physique, so had she also in
womanly dignity and apparent force of intellect At least she thought of
matters, and even to her admiring mother and female relatives began to
give weighty opinions upon affairs which either wearied Chata or
interested her little. The grandfather, old Don José Maria, used to sit
under a fig-tree watching with disapproving eyes as Chata darted hither
and thither chasing a butterfly or ruby-throated humming-bird, or with
her lap full of flowers or neglected sewing pored over some entrancing
book lent her by the village priest (he was a man whose ideas, had he
not been the Santo Padre, would have been the last that should have been
tolerated in the bringing up of sedate and simple maidens); and those
same eyes lighted with pride as they fell on Rosario, beating eggs to a
froth to mix with honey and almonds for her grandfather’s delectation,
or bending over a brasier of ruddy charcoal watching anxiously the
cooking of the _dulce_, of which already more successes than failures
showed her a born artist. Then again sometimes, when Don José came in
the cool of the evening from the plaza where he had been to buy his jar
of pulque or his handful of garlic, he could see his favorite sitting
demurely in the upper balcony with her head bent over her needle,
listening it is true to that _maldito libro_, “that pernicious book,”
which Chata was reading, but as far as he could see doing no other harm,
unless the very fact of a young and pretty girl looking into the street
was a harm in itself,—but _Maria Purissima!_ one must not be too
rigorous with one’s own flesh and blood: like others before him and more
who will come after, Don José Maria forgot in tenderness to the
grandchildren the discipline he had thought absolutely necessary with
the preceding generation.
Chata, too, thought it delightful to sit on the balcony and peer through
the wooden railing at the long stretch of sand which led far away where
the houses dwindled into a few half-ruinous hovels, where children and
dogs throve as well as the bristling cacti. On Sunday mornings very
early, as the mother and daughters came from Mass along that road, they
used to be covered with dust thrown up by the scores of plodding donkeys
who wended their way to the plaza laden with charcoal and vegetables,
eggs and screaming fowls. Doña Rita and her daughters would cover their
faces with their rebosos, and trip daintily by, scarcely appeased by the
admiring salutations and apologies of the drivers, who pulling off their
rough straw hats apostrophized the dust and the scorching sun and the
clumsy donkey, “by your license be the name spoken!”
Sometimes more distinguished wayfarers passed over the road and turned
into the inn, or rode on to the barracks which lay quite at the opposite
extremity of the little town; for it happened that a company of soldiers
were quartered there. They were for the most part well clad in a gay
uniform of red and blue, and every man had a profusion of stripes on his
sleeves or lace on his cap. No one knew and no one asked whether they
were Mochos or Puros, Conservatives or Liberals,—for the nonce they were
Ramirez’s men. This General had been a Liberal the month before, and was
suspected of favoring the clergy at this time. Who could tell? Who knew
what he might be on the morrow? In the night all cats are gray; in times
of perplexity all soldiers are patriots. The ragged urchins of El Toro
threw up their hats for the soldiers of Ramirez, and the discreet
householders leaned from their balconies every evening to hear the
little band play, and to exult for a brief quarter of an hour in the
mild excitement inseparable from a garrison town.
Chata and Chinita had delighted in the distant music, and had caught
glimpses of the soldiers, as disenchanting as those of the rude grimy
structures they had in the moonlight imagined to be marble palaces; they
had gazed up and down the dusty street and watched the noisy ragged
urchins play “Toro” with a big-horned, long-haired, decrepit goat, with
crowds of half naked elfin-faced girls as spectators, until they were
actually beginning to weary of the attractions of the town and long for
home,—when one day the beat of a drum was heard and a squad of soldiers
went filing past, with a young officer riding at their head, who threw a
glance so killing at the balcony where the young girls stood that,
whether intended to reach her or not, it pierced the heart of Rosario on
the instant.
Chata had also noticed the young officer (a slender undersized young
fellow, with a swarthy lean face and keen black eyes, shaded by a
profusely decorated sombrero), but merely as a part of the mimic
pageant,—a prominent part, for the trappings of his horse, as well as
his own dress, were covered by that profusion of ornament affected by
gallants whose capital was invested in the adornment of the person with
which they hoped to conquer fortune; for in those days there were
numberless roystering adventurers, who to a modicum of valor united a
vanity and assurance which provided many a rich girl with a dashing and
fickle husband, and his country with a soldier as false to Mexico as to
his Doña Fulana.
It was just after this that evening after evening Rosario would lean
pensively over the balcony rail, resisting Chata’s entreaties to come to
the garden where there was no dust to stifle them, and where the dew
would soon begin to fall upon the larkspurs and roses, and already the
wide white cups of the _gloria mundo_ were beginning to fill with
perfume. The dew would chill her, the perfume sicken her, Rosario said.
Chata remonstrated; Rosario smirked and smiled. Chata grew vexed; she
thought the smile in mockery of her. She need not have lost her sweet
temper,—Rosario was thinking of a far different person. The young
captain was walking slowly down the opposite side of the street; he had
just laid his hand on his heart. It was on him Rosario smiled.
Doña Rita, discreetest of mothers, was not one to leave her daughters to
their own devices unwatched. It was she who always accompanied them in
their walks or to Mass; yet curiously enough the young captain found
means to slip a tiny note into Rosario’s ready hand, as she knelt on the
grimy stone floor of the church. Obviously, Doña Rita could not be in
two places at once, and she usually knelt behind Chata, who needed
perhaps some maternal supervision at her devotions; and it came about
that the space behind Rosario was occupied by some stranger. It was Don
José Maria who first noticed that quite as a matter of course that
stranger grew to be the Captain Don Fernando Ruiz; and quite
accidentally it happened that thereafter the mother and daughters went
to an earlier Mass. Don José Maria was not so early a riser as Don
Fernando was; so he was not there, while the young soldier was in his
usual place.
Chata was perhaps a stupid little creature,—Rosario it is quite certain
would never have done such a silly thing; but one day when Don Fernando
had pressed a note into the hand which was nearest to him, and which in
the confusion of dispersal happened to be that of the smaller sister,
she gave it in some indignation to her mother. It was full of violent
protestations of affection, and entreated the life of his life to give
her lover hope; it was signed her “agonized yet adoring Fernando.”
Doña Rita showed herself capable of great self-control; she said sadly
that she would not ask which had been guilty of attracting such
impassioned admiration, but she assured the girls she was heart-broken.
When she reached the house, after first carefully closing the door that
her father might not hear, she rated them both soundly. Chata did not
think it strange they should both be thought guilty; she assumed that
Rosario was as innocent as herself. Doña Rita, giving Rosario the note
to read, that she might learn for herself the daring and presumption of
which man is capable, forgot in her indignation to reclaim it. An hour
afterward Chata saw Rosario read it over in secret, and was scandalized
to see her kiss it; and late that day, as they stood as usual on the
balcony (the little mother, as Chata remarked, was so forgiving!), she
caught Rosario’s hand spasmodically as Fernando passed by, but the girl
released it with some impatience and slyly kissed the tips of her
fingers,—and Chata, with a pang of awakening, realized that her sister
had not been and was not so innocent of coquetry as she had assumed, and
thenceforth suffered indescribable tortures between her sense of loyalty
to her sister and duty to her mother.
Rosario’s ideal of truth was in accordance with that which surrounded
her; to be silent when speech was undesirable, to equivocate pleasantly
where plain speaking would be harsh, to tell a lie gracefully where
truth would offend,—this was her natural creed, which she had never
questioned. But Chata, unknown to herself, had never accepted it; her
soul was like certain material objects which resist the dyes that other
substances at once absorb. It was not enough for her to give the truth
when it was asked,—it was a torture, an unnatural crime, to her to
withhold it. She would not indeed have done so in this case, had not
Rosario in a manner put her upon her honor the very next day.
The washerwoman had been there, and Rosario, who was an embryo
housewife, had been deputed to attend her, and Chata, who had gladly
escaped the duty, ran to the bedroom when she saw the servant depart to
congratulate her sister on the dispatch she had made; when Rosario
closing the door mysteriously, cried: “Look! look what he has sent me!
Is it not beautiful, charming, divine?” and she held up to the light her
hand, on the first finger of which glittered a ring.
Truth to tell, Chata was dazzled; at that moment her own insignificance
and the womanliness and beauty of Rosario were more than ever apparent.
She gazed at Rosario with greater admiration than on the ring, beautiful
though it was. Here was a sister just her own age, yet a woman with an
actual lover! Oh!
“What will our mother say?” she began in an awed voice, when Rosario,
her womanly dignity gone, began to spring up and down, screaming yet
laughing, “_Ay, Dios mio!_” throwing her hand over her shoulder and
slipping it into the loose neck of her dress. “Oh, my life! the creature
is down my back! it is crawling now on my shoulder! No, no,
grandfather,” for Don José Maria had entered, “it is Chata who will help
me. No, my mother! Ay, it is gone now! I would not have you frightened,
it was but one of those bright little beetles that live on the roses;”
and she contemptuously tossed something out of the window, and Chata saw
with speechless wonder that the ring which had been on her finger was
gone. The bauble at least had slipped into a secure hiding-place, and
Chata really could not determine whether the beetle had ever existed or
no.
An air of delightful mystery began to pervade not only the house but the
quiet street all the way from the plaza, which Don Fernando Ruiz crossed
at intervals in the long, dull, sultry days. It became quite a diversion
to the initiated to watch what clever turns and doublings he would make,
and with what assumed indifference he would linger by the fruit-stand at
the corner, where old Antonina sold tuñas or a few poor figs and lumps
of roasted cassava root. She made quite a fortune from the young
captain, who seemed bent on dazzling her bleared eyes; for every day,
and sometimes three or four times in a day, he appeared resplendent in
uniform of blue and red, or a riding suit of buckskin embroidered in
silver, or perhaps, when his mood was sombre, in black hung with silver
buttons, and more than once in a suit of velvet and embossed leather,
with buttons of gold set with brilliants, and riding a horse with
accoutrements so splendid that Doña Rita declared he must be as rich as
the Marquis of Carabas himself, and without any apparent consistency
embraced Rosario with tears.
Truth to tell, Doña Rita was a match-maker born, and though her talents
had lain dormant during the years she had spent at the hacienda, they
had not declined; and it was natural that she should find a quiet
exultation in exerting them in favor of her daughter, for young though
Rosario was, her precocity and the custom of the country and period
rendered it perfectly natural that marriage should present itself in her
immediate future.
A vision of it rose before the impassioned girl like a star, though
there was a period of clouds and mourning when her grandmother died, and
Chata, sobbing in the garden or moving sadly about the darkened rooms,
wondered that Rosario could smile over those pink notes she was always
stealing into corners to pore over. During the nine days that her mother
remained within doors receiving visits of condolence, the notes indeed
were the aliment upon which Rosario’s fancy fed; for Doña Rita, though
the little drama of courtship had undoubtedly made less absorbing to her
the tragedy of illness and death, was too strict an observer of the
proprieties to allow her maternal affection to betray her at such a time
into permitting even a shutter to be left ajar, or to suffer her
daughter to approach a window to satisfy herself by a momentary peep as
to whether the love-lorn captain was on his accustomed beat or no. It
was a time however when without offence the veriest stranger might leave
a card and word of sympathy, and this he never failed to do from day to
day. Doña Rita would glance at the bit of cardboard with an affectation
of indifference, but it would always shortly disappear from the table,
and with the cruel sarcasm of childish intolerance Chata would suggest
to Rosario its suitability for baking the little puffs of sugar and
almonds upon, which she was so deft at compounding.
At last the _novena_ of grief was ended, and taking her aged father’s
arm Doña Rita dutifully led him into the street to breathe the air.
Rosario knew that at that hour the captain was on duty at the barracks,
but nevertheless could not resist the opportunity of stepping into the
balcony and gazing upon the scene from which she had been so long
debarred. A neighbor across the way greeted her with a significant
smile; and somewhat piqued, Rosario drew back, half closed the shutters
with a hesitating hand, and then dropping on the floor in the long ray
of sunlight that streamed through the aperture, set herself to the ever
entrancing task of re-reading her lover’s letters.
As she sat there opening them one by one and after perusal leaving them
unfolded in her lap, she became so absorbed that she did not notice the
passage of time until a footstep sounded behind her, and glancing up she
saw with trepidation that her grandfather was ushering in a tall and
imposing stranger, whose military garb made her heart beat madly, for a
wild thought of Fernando Ruiz flashed through her mind. Her confusion
was not lessened by perceiving that the visitor was a man of more
advanced age and infinitely greater assumption of rank. The telltale
letters were in her lap, though involuntarily she had dropped her reboso
over them; but she dared not rise lest they should drop in a shower
around her, and she equally feared the anger of her grandfather and the
condemnatory surprise of the visitor.
“I pray you enter the house, Señor! Pass in, sir, pass in!” she heard
her grandfather say in his smoothest tones. “My daughter will be here
almost immediately; but she stopped at the convent for a moment to buy a
blessed candle to place before the altar of Our Lady of Succors. She
will be honored indeed by this visit. Take care, Señor, the room is
somewhat dark, but I will open a shutter. _Valgame Dios_, what have we
here?” as he caught sight of the bent figure sitting in the narrow
streak of sunshine. “_Caramba, niña_, rise! rise, I say! seest thou not
the Señor General?”
“Ay, but I have the cramp in my poor foot, my grandfather,” cried
Rosario in a voice of lamentation, vainly endeavoring under cover of the
reboso to make some disposal of the letters which rustled alarmingly.
“_No, Señores_, by Blessed Mary my patroness, let me alone!” she cried,
as both her grandfather and the stranger attempted to help her,—the
latter with a faint gleam of amusement in his eyes, the former with
genuine consternation depicted on his face. “Ay, Chata,” for by this
time her sister had appeared. “Oh, but my back is broken! it is worse
than when you struck me with the stick when you were trying to knock the
peaches from the tree. Oh! ah! no, it is impossible for me to rise!”
In dire affright Chata knelt before her. “Oh, what shall I do?” she
cried, in remorse at the remembrance of an escapade that had been almost
forgotten, and in sudden fear that it might have been the cause of her
sister’s present distress. “Oh, my life! I thought it was your poor
foot!” and she began rubbing one small slippered member, while Rosario
eagerly whispered, “Stupid one, hide me these letters!” and the
mystified Chata felt her sister’s hand with a mass of fluttering papers
thrust under her arm, covered with the ever useful reboso.
Involuntarily the hapless confidant pressed them to her side, and at the
same moment Rosario limped from the room, inwardly raging at making so
poor a figure before the General, while Chata, standing for a moment
abashed, was about to follow, when a voice which bewildered her by its
strange yet familiar accent said gayly, “And you, my fair Señorita, have
you never a twinge of the same disorder that afflicts your sister?” and
he glanced meaningly at a pink envelope, which had fallen at her
feet,—at the same time covering it with his foot that it might not
attract the suspicious eye of the old man, who with profuse apologies
for the informality of the reception was assuring the visitor that until
that moment never had there been a healthier damsel than his
granddaughter Rosario, adding with a sigh, “But the Devil robs with one
hand and pinches with the other.”
Chata trembled and blushed painfully as she raised her eyes timidly to
the General’s, while with a sense of the grotesque she was conscious of
wondering whether he, like herself, was thinking her grandfather had
suggested no complimentary agency in her grandmother’s removal to
another sphere. But at the instant all present perplexities vanished in
the surprise with which she recognized the face which she had seen but
for a few brief hours years before,—the face of the man of whom Chinita
had never grown weary of talking. “The Señor General Ramirez,” she said
in a low voice, with some awe. She was more than ever bewildered by the
look he had fixed upon her. She shrank back, barely dropping her hand
for a moment upon that he extended toward her. She was actually inclined
to be frightened, his eyes were so brilliant, his smile so eager. The
foolish thought struck her that had not her grandfather been there, this
strange imperious man would surely have taken her in his arms, would
have kissed her! She hurried from the room to find Rosario waiting for
her at the end of the corridor, alternately smothering her laughter in
the folds of her dress, and angrily chafing at her sister’s delay.
“Your horrid letters!” cried Chata, thrusting them into her hands.
“Here, take them, read them, laugh over them or cry, or kiss them if you
will! I hope I shall never see a love-letter again in my life. He saw
them,—the Señor General. I know he did. Oh, what shame!”
“Pshaw!” interrupted Rosario. “What does it matter? He will think none
the worse of me. Without doubt he is come on the part of Fernando to ask
for me. How proud and happy my mother will be, and how she will rail at
me! It will not be difficult for me to cry as I ought, for I am mad with
vexation to have appeared such a fool when I should have been so
dignified. Why, the Señor will think me a child still! Does he not look
like some one we know, Chata? And yet we can never have seen him
before.”
“Yes,” returned Chata, “we have seen him. He is the General José
Ramirez.”
“Ah, my heart!” ejaculated Rosario, dramatically. “What a misfortune! My
father hates the General Ramirez because he once had some horses driven
away from the hacienda; and besides he is a good Christian and fights
for the Church! Ay, unlucky Fernando, to have chosen such a messenger!
But thank Heaven, it is my mother who will first hear him! Ah, there she
comes!” and in irrepressible excitement Rosario grasped her sister’s
hand. “Oh, child!” she added sentimentally, “you too may be asked in
marriage some day!” and she sighed with an air of vastly superior
experience, while Chata revolved in her mind what her playfellow Chinita
would say when she told her of this unexpected meeting with the hero
whom she fancied she had rendered invincible by the gift of the amulet.
Like most children of her country Chata wore a scapulary. It had lain
upon her breast ever since she could remember. She drew it out and
looked at it. Some day she thought she would open it; now she only made
the sign of the cross, as she replaced it. Rosario in nervous unrest had
left her. The cool of the evening had come; the perfume of the flowers
stole in at the open window, and the breeze soothed the unusual
agitation of her mind. Glad to be alone, yet anxious and perplexed, she
stepped into the garden. More than once as she walked down the alley she
stopped, her heart palpitating violently. She fancied she heard her name
called, or that Ramirez would step from the shadow of a tree to
encounter her. It was an unnatural and unchildlike mood quite new to
her. It seemed to her that her grandfather’s unnecessary mention of the
Devil’s name might have incited that enemy of innocence to annoy her,
and she whispered an _Ave_.
There was a large cluster of bananas just behind the house. Chata sat
down there to watch the fantastic clouds which hovered where the sun had
set. In her absorption in the glowing scene she was unconscious that any
sound disturbed the silence around her. It was indeed but a low
indistinct hum, scarcely recognizable as the sound of human voices. Had
she noticed them, she would have remembered that she was within a foot
or two of a window which was screened from sight by the foliage, and
would have withdrawn from possible discovery; but as it was, she
remained there an unconscious trespasser. The first distinct sound that
reached her ear at once startled and impressed her, for it was the deep
voice of Ramirez uttering her own name.
“Chata, yes it was Chata I said,” he affirmed dictatorially. “Why
attempt dissimulation with you, Señora? I am in no humor for trifling.
Will Doña Isabel provide a dowry for your daughter? It is my fancy that
Ruiz should marry the little one, and I can make or mar him. So far the
boy has blundered, but if he once turns his eyes on the pretty face of
Chata, he will not find the mistake irremediable.”
Chata could not credit the evidence of her senses, and remained as if
rooted to the spot. She presently heard her mother sobbing: “This is an
unheard of thing! A young man pays court to one child,—perhaps she is
not insensible to his advances,—and his patron comes to me to bid me
give him another, whom he has not perhaps even glanced at. Oh, it is too
much! too much!”
“I have already told you,” said Ramirez, coldly, “that Ruiz is poor. His
father was my father’s servant, and is mine; more than once he has saved
my life at the risk of his own. Years ago he rendered me a service that
I swore to repay in a certain manner. More than once of late I have been
reminded of my promise, and the marriage of Fernando with your daughter
would render its fulfilment impossible.”
“By my patron saint!” cried Doña Rita, “it is strange indeed that a poor
little country girl should interfere with the projects of a man as great
as yourself. But even if that is possible, why bid me give him
Chata?”—adding with asperity, “have I not done enough? No, no! I will
not, I cannot make my Rosario a sacrifice!”
“_Caramba!_” cried Ramirez, laughing, “is it so dreadful a thing that
she should wait until the next lover comes,—he will be sure to come,
Señora,—and that she should have a double dower to make her fairer in
his eyes? for I tell you Ruiz will ask no dowry from you with the little
one. Come, come, Señora, I am not used to reasoning and pleading, yet I
am not cruel. The child has been yours too long for me to tear her from
your arms. It was a cunning device of Doña Isabel to hide her from me.
Ah, it is not the first trick she has served me, and, like the others,
she will find it turn to my advantage!”
“As Heaven is my witness,” ejaculated Doña Rita, in a voice of intense
impulse and fear, “never have I breathed to mortal the secret which you
seem to know! Who are you, sir? What have you to do with the child?”
Suddenly, she uttered a horrified shriek. Chata, who had started from
her seat with dilated eyes and lips parted, gasping for breath, heard
her mother spring to her feet, and rush toward the door; heard also
Ramirez follow her and apparently draw her back, remonstrating in low
tones. Then she realized no more. Perhaps she fainted, though to herself
there appeared no interruption of consciousness. Though she did not
notice the stars come out, she beheld them at last looking down upon
her, as if they heard the questions that were repeating themselves again
and again in her mind. Whose child was she; who was the man who claimed
the right to shape her destiny? That she was not the child of Rafael
Sanchez and his wife she felt certain. Doña Rita had not denied the
insinuation.
The child—all childish thoughts suddenly crushed by the overwhelming
revelation she had surprised—remained in the same spot, unconscious of
the passage of time, until she heard her sister—no, Rosario—calling her
in anxious yet irritated tones: “Where art thou, Chata? Chata, the
supper is ready; the grandfather is angry that thou art so long in the
garden! Oh, here thou art!”
The two girls encountered each other in the dusk. Rosario threw her arms
around the truant. “How cold thou art!” she said. “Hast thou seen a
ghost here alone? Bless me! one would think the General Ramirez had
brought the plague with him. My mother has shut herself up, and when I
went to her door to beg her to tell me whether she was ill, she answered
me, ‘The world is all ill. Go dress saints, my child, it is all that is
left to thee!’ What could she have meant? Can it be after all that the
General did not come from Fernando?”
Rosario stopped to wipe a tear from the corners of her eyes. Evidently
she was more perplexed than dismayed. She was too young to fear the
mischances and mishaps of love. Her words recalled to Chata’s mind the
fate that was decreed to her,—to which she had given no second thought,
in her discovery that she was not the child of those she called father
and mother. Friendless, homeless, nameless,—yes, she reflected bitterly,
that she had _never_ been known by a Christian name,—she felt as though
the solid earth had opened beneath her, and she was clinging desperately
to some tiny twig or bough to prevent herself from being engulfed
forever. She clung hysterically to Rosario, who had begun to laugh
nervously. And so old Don José Maria found them, and querulously bade
them go into the house; nothing but ill fortune would befall maidens who
wandered alone in the dark; did they not know that the Devil stood
always at the elbow of a woman after the sun set? With which second-hand
and scurrilous wisdom the old philosopher ushered them into the dimly
lighted dining-room. Doña Rita was there, and as the girls entered
lifted her eyes, which were heavy with weeping, and for the first time
in her life Chata saw in them aversion,—yes, actual fear and dislike.
The child sighed deeply, and sat down at a shaded corner. No one noticed
that she ate nothing. The old man was sleepy, Doña Rita was occupied
with Rosario, who grew more and more depressed. From her mother’s very
kindness her daughter foreboded little good from the tidings she could
give her.