Upon the following day, Ashley Ward went again to the gateway,—not
merely to breathe the fresh air and enjoy the view, but irresistibly
attracted by the remembrance of the taciturn warder. The more he
reflected upon the emotion the man had shown when his eyes first rested
upon him, a stranger, as he had entered the vestibule; the more he
thought upon the guarded replies to the questions he had asked
concerning the young American who had been there years before,—the more
convinced he became that there had been a mystery which had led to his
kinsman’s death, and that Pedro, if he would, could divulge it.
Was it possible the man himself was the assassin? The perplexed youth
began to sound Pepé cautiously as to the reputation Pedro had borne. But
the young fellow was absorbed in other matters, of which Ashley rightly
conjectured Chinita was the vital point, and was wandering and curt in
his answers. Yet he seemed to feel that Ashley divined, if he did not
comprehend, his pain, and so attached himself to him and followed him
about, much as might a wounded dog some stranger who had spoken to him
with an accent of pity in his voice.
So when Ashley went to the gateway, it was Pepé’s arm that aided him,
though with the impatience of a young man he protested against this need
of a crutch, and had actually walked steadily enough across the court,
under the gaze of Doña Feliz and Chinita, who happened to be in the
window; but he had been glad to clutch at Pepé as they entered the
vestibule. The lad was not trembling then, but erect and flushed:
Chinita had smiled upon him as he passed.
Pedro was standing in the gateway, shading his eyes with his hand, and
gazing toward the cañon which opened behind the reduction-works. He did
not notice Ashley and Pepé, but presently began to mutter: “Yes, it is
they. Don Rafael has had a lucky journey. Go thou, Chinita, and tell
Doña Feliz the master and her daughter-in-law and children will be here
for the noon dinner.”
Pepé laughed derisively. “You forget, Pedro,” he said; “it is the _niña_
Chinita, and the Señorita Chinita now; even if she heard, she is scarce
likely to run at your bidding. But are you sure the Señor Administrador
comes there? If so, I will myself go and tell them.”
“Go then, go!” cried Pedro, impatiently. “I am not blind, though old
usage sometimes misleads me, and I talk like a dotard. Yes, yes. There
comes the carriage down the cañon, and Don Rafael himself on his gray,
and Gabriel and Panchito; I can almost distinguish their very faces.”
So could Ashley, for the air was brilliantly clear, and the travellers
had yielded to the inspiring influences natural at the sight of home,
and allowed their horses to break into a mad pace, far different from
the methodic gait of ordinary travel.
Pepé, in spite of repressed excitement, had gone at his usual lounging
and listless pace to inform Doña Feliz of the approach of her son, and a
little group of villagers had assembled around Pedro, when a lithe,
active young figure brushed by them and leaped upon the stone bench at
Ashley’s side. He glanced up, and to his surprise saw Chinita, her hair
flying, her eyes bright with anticipation. Putting her finger upon her
lip as he was about to speak, as if to enjoin silence, she pressed
herself close to the wall. There was a long narrow niche where she
stood, and it received almost her entire figure. No one but Ashley and
Pepé, who came with haste behind her, had noticed her.
“Hush! hush!” she whispered. “Chata will look for me here,—here where I
used to stand. Ay, Pepé, you were a good lad to warn me in time, so I
could slip away. Doña Isabel will never miss me,—she is at her prayers;
and Doña Feliz is wild with joy that her son comes home again.”
The excited girl had spoken in the softest of voices, yet Pedro heard
her. But the rest of the gathering crowd were craning their necks and
straining their eyes in the direction in which the approaching
travellers were to be seen.
Pepé looked up at the ardent and gypsy-like young creature, as though
she were a saint, and Ashley with a glance of genuine admiration and
sympathy. He knew not whom she was thus eager to welcome, but it
thrilled and surprised him that she should manifest such lively
affection. Both the young men instinctively drew near as if to shield
her, and stood one on either side, almost hiding her.
“That is right; but you will stand away and let her see me when the
carriage drives by,” she whispered, placing a hand on Pepé’s shoulder.
“_Dios mio_, how my heart beats! She will cry with joy when she sees me,
with silk skirts and all so fine. And Doña Rita and the _niña_
Rosario,—how they will open wide their eyes!” And she broke into a low
laugh, which to Ashley’s ears was too full of a sort of malicious
triumph to be merry.
The time of waiting seemed long; it was indeed far longer than Chinita
had counted upon. “They will miss me from the house; they will look for
me here!” she whispered again and again in an agony of impatience.
Strangely enough, the adults of the gaping throng, who were intent on
watching the approach of the travellers, had not noticed her; but three
or four children arrayed themselves in a wondering row, pointing their
fingers at her with ejaculations of “Look! look!” but were checked from
uttering more by Pepé’s warning frowns and Chinita’s own imploring
gestures.
Ashley was beginning to realize that there must be much that was absurd
in the scene. Surely, never was so strange a background made for a group
of gossiping peasants as this of the eager-eyed and beautiful girl,
leaning from her niche in the massive stone-wall between the two young
men—the one the type of aristocratic refinement and delicacy; the other
of swarthy, ignorant, half-tamed savagery—who served as caryatids, upon
whom she leaned alternately in her excitement, seeming herself to
partake of the nature of each.
The carriage with its group of outriders now rapidly approached. “Ah!
ah!” exclaimed Chinita, “the horses are plunging at the tree where the
American was murdered. They say the creatures can always see him there,
Señor. Ah, now they have passed; they come gayly, they come straight. It
is not only the Señor Administrador and the servants, there are
strangers too. I am glad! I am happy! I love to see new faces!”
“Be silent!” whispered Pepé, hurriedly; “all the world will hear if you
sing so loud. _Carrhi!_ the soldier sees you!”
It was true; though the villagers had been too intent upon welcoming the
new-comers to heed Chinita, and the carriage flashed by so rapidly the
inmates could have caught but a glimpse of color against the cold gray
wall, a stranger in a travel-stained uniform started as his eyes fell
upon her, and checked his horse so suddenly that it reared.
“The Virgin of our native land!” he muttered in a sort of patriotic and
admiring wonder. “Ah, what a beautiful creature!” he added, as the girl
he had for a moment classed as a saint sprang from her niche to the
bench and thence to the ground, and darted through the crowd to the
inner court,—where by this time the carriage had stopped and its inmates
were descending.
Ashley sank upon the bench with a sudden access of weariness. Pedro,
oblivious of his vicinity, crouched rather than sat beside him. The
gatekeeper’s nerves doubtless were weak. The carriage that had driven
into the court was the same in which Herlinda Garcia had departed years
before; as it dashed by him he could have sworn he saw her face framed
in the window. He had seen, as had Chinita, the sad and gentle
countenance of Chata. Grief reveals strange likenesses.
When Chinita reached the carriage door, she found it blocked by the
descending travellers and those who welcomed them. Doña Rita was so slow
in carefully placing her feet from step to step, and paused so often to
answer salutations, that there was ample time for the young officer to
reach the spot and extend a hand to Rosario who followed her. Her
blushes and coy smiles; the air with which she drew back and with which,
with a little shriek, she pulled her dress over her tiny foot lest it
might be seen; the soft glances which she threw from beneath her long
lashes,—formed a pretty piece of by-play, quite intelligible to all
beholders, but for that time certainly quite thrown away upon the
stranger.
Ten minutes before, to have held for a few brief minutes the tips of
Rosario’s fingers would have been to him ecstasy. Now he was scarcely
conscious that they were within his own, and his eyes were fixed upon
Chinita as she stood breathlessly waiting for Chata. Never in his life,
he thought, had he seen such a face. The changeable yet ever radiant
expression was like the dazzle of warm sunshine through scented leaves;
the shimmer of rebellious hair was a divine halo, though the sparkle of
the dusky eyes declared a daring soul more fit for earthly adventure
than ethereal joys.
Rosario’s eyes followed his gaze. She had heard the strange tale of Doña
Isabel’s intervention in the fate of the waif. She had wondered whether
the high-born lady could have seen anything in the girl’s face that
attracted her; and that moment more decidedly than ever she answered
“No,” yet realized that here was a face to bewitch men. She tossed her
head and passed on. Doña Feliz stopped her to embrace her, and meanwhile
the two early playmates met.
“Life of my soul!” cried Chinita. “How I have longed for you! Did you
not see me perched in the niche of the wall? Ay, how Doña Isabel would
frown if she knew!”
“I saw only the tall, fair man,” answered Chata in a low voice. She was
pale and trembled: “I thought first it was the ghost of the American. Oh
God, what a shock!”
Chinita laughed merrily. “What! a coward still, and with the old stories
we used to tell still first in your mind? Ah, I have tales to tell now
will be worth your hearing.” She bent low and added in a whisper, “Have
they not told you? I have the place of the Señorita Herlinda now! I have
her room. I think sometimes she must be dead, and I have risen in her
stead. Do I look like a ghost, Chata?”
“Hush, hush!” entreated Chata. “Oh Chinita, I wish I never had gone
away. Oh, how shall I live now? How can I bear it?”
At that moment Doña Feliz approached, and evading her proffered embrace
the young girl bent her head on the arm of the woman and burst into
tears. Chinita stood confounded; the light and joyousness died out of
her face; a certain half-savage look of inquiry came over it. She turned
abruptly to the young officer,—
“What have they done to her?” she demanded.
“Chinita,” said a cold, impassive voice, “this gentleman is a stranger
to you. It is not seemly that you stand here questioning him;” and with
an imperious wave of her hand, Doña Isabel seemed actually to force the
two apart.
Almost unconsciously the young man drew back, bowing low, and Chinita
turned to the staircase; yet as she obeyed the movement of Doña Isabel’s
hand a furious rage possessed her. As she stepped upon the first stair,
some demon prompted her to wind her arm around Chata’s neck and raise
her tear-stained face.
“I am going to the Señorita Herlinda’s room,” she said. “I am there in
her place; and—” here she stopped, laughed, and threw a glance over her
shoulder—“there is the American!”
Her last words had been prompted by a glimpse of Ashley Ward as he
crossed the court. He caught the appellation, and bowed and smiled.
Chinita ran up the stairs, and Doña Isabel stood rigid with a face like
death. Her eyes were resting however on Chata’s countenance.
The young girl had shrunk within Doña Feliz’s protecting arm. Had Doña
Isabel turned her eyes upon the woman’s defiant yet apprehensive face,
it might have been a revelation to her; but she looked at Don Rafael.
“Your daughter has a strange face and strange ways for a ranchero’s
daughter,” she said, with an attempt at irony; but it failed. Her face
worked painfully as she added, “She reminds me of those I would forget.
We have strange fancies as we grow old.”
A laugh sounded from the window above. She started and looked up, then
dropped her head again and turned slowly away.
Chata gazed after her awestruck, though she knew not why. Her manner was
so different from that of the proud and haughty dame she had pictured.
Don Rafael looked from Doña Isabel to his mother. Both these women, it
seemed to him, had grown wonderfully aged since they had met, but a
month or so before. There was a subtile antagonism between them—these
two who loved each other, as only such deep intense natures can—which
tore and harried them far more than actual hate could have done.
“What hast thou, my life?” Doña Feliz whispered to Chata. “Art thou not
happy? Have strange tales been told thee?” and she looked keenly at her
daughter-in-law, who had smiled and courtesied in vain as Doña Isabel
went by.
“My mother,” said Doña Rita in her softest voice, “the child is weary;
she must rest. Heed not this silly child, Don Fernando. Thank Heaven,
Rosario is not so fanciful!”
But Don Fernando was not thinking of Rosario, or of Chata either for
that matter, but of how he had slunk away from his chief to prosecute a
love-affair that he had believed no power could make less than a matter
of life or death to him; and how in a moment it had become lighter than
air. The boyish perversity with which he had determined, even at the
risk of offending his patron, to continue his courtship of Rosario
Sanchez, trusting to fate or her father’s generosity to make marriage
with her possible, faded from his mind like a dream, and with it her
image; and in its place rose the arch mocking face of the “little saint
of the Wall.” Proved she angel or demon, he felt that she was henceforth
the genius of his destiny. He was a vain and profligate adventurer; but
all the same the arrow had found his heart, not as a thousand times
before to inflict a passing scratch, but to bury itself in its inmost
core.
All had taken place in a few short moments. While the horses were being
unharnessed and led away; while the villagers were still crowding around
the carriage, and Doña Rita’s baskets and packages were being lifted
out; while a few words of greeting were exchanged,—emotions and passions
had sprung into being that were to make the seemingly prosaic household
a very vortex of conflicting elements.
The young American, who thought himself but a looker-on, was also not
unmoved. Like Doña Isabel, he said within himself, “That young girl has
a strange face and strange ways for the daughter of a Mexican. And yet
what know I of Mexicans or their ways? This is a strange atmosphere, and
fills my brain with strange fancies. Perhaps out of them all I shall
evolve some reality. May the Fates grant me again such a chance as I had
to-day of speaking to the wild gypsy Chinita! Nothing has happened here,
I can well believe, that she cannot tell me of. But after the escapade
of to-day, she will hardly escape the vigilance of her duenna again. Ah,
here comes the young soldier—too travel-stained to be as dashing as is
his custom, no doubt. He looks a gay bird with sadly bedraggled
feathers.”
Pepé apparently approved of him as little, as he passed by to the room
assigned him. The peasant did not cease from lounging against the wall
or bare his head as an inferior should.
“Insolent barbarian!” muttered Don Fernando, in a revival of his usual
contempt for the peasantry, as the swarthy young fellow scowled at him,
he neither guessed nor cared why. What could such a vagabond have to do
with the Señora Garcia’s _protégée_? He would serve when the time came,
to make one, in the independent troop he, Fernando, would raise: such
worms as he were only fit to serve men. There were wild rumors afloat of
the wonderful fortune of that phœnix Benito Juarez. What if he, Ruiz,
should join his standard? There was a strange fire and exultation in the
young man’s veins. He had been tied to a resistless fate long enough,—he
would break his trammels, and by one daring act free himself forever
from control, from tutelage, from Ramirez.