“José Ramirez is my father!”
Had her words been a thunderbolt hurled at Ashley’s feet, they could not
have astounded him more. The daughter of Ramirez!
“I do not believe it! I cannot believe it!” he exclaimed, with no
thought for courteous words. “Oh, that is a tale for a jealous lover!
but I am not one. Anything, anything rather than that, Señorita, would
serve to explain the reason of your presence here!”
“Why have I spoken?” cried the young girl with tears. “Why have I broken
my promise, and only to be disbelieved and scorned? O, Señor, I know not
what it was in you that wrung the words from me! Did he not command me
to be silent till he gave me leave to speak? He is my father, yet I have
disobeyed his first command. In the letter the woman brought me, two
days after he left El Toro, and in which he commanded me to meet him
here upon this day, he enjoined secrecy again and again; and yet I
forgot. Miserable girl that I am!”
Ashley had lived among Mexicans long enough to learn something of their
ideas of filial duty. No matter how vile, how cruel, how debased the
parent may be, the duty of the child is perfect obedience and respect;
the petted infant in its most wilful moments ceases its passionate cries
to kiss the father’s hand; the young man deprives himself, his wife and
children, to minister to his aged parents; he who cannot or will not
work, esteems it a pious act to become a bandit upon the highway rather
than that his father or mother shall look to him for food or even for
luxuries in vain,—and thus he comprehended the remorse of this
conscience-stricken child, as the conviction rushed over him that her
belief might indeed be true. There was that in the contour of her face
which resembled that of Ramirez more markedly than the mere general type
that in her babyhood had given her that resemblance to Rosario, which
daily grew less, and indeed had never been apparent to Ashley; though in
her face he had traced resemblances which had puzzled and bewildered
him, and which as he gazed upon her now became still more confusing.
As they had been conversing, Ashley and Chata had gradually drawn near
to the door, where the light fell full upon the agitated girl. Yes, in
the square brows, the heavily fringed lids resting upon the olive
cheeks,—too broad beneath the eyes for beauty, but singularly delicate
about the mouth and chin,—so far she resembled Ramirez; or was it but a
common Aztec type? The mouth itself, sensitive, refined,—which should
have parted but for laughter,—quivered with emotion, and the large gray
eyes she lifted to Ashley’s were singularly grave and earnest. Where had
he seen such a mouth, such eyes? The contrasts and combinations in the
face confused him. Never had he seen its counterpart, yet fancy might
under other circumstances have led him upon wild theories. That face
familiar, yet strange, had haunted him since he had first seen it.
Vainly he had sought in his memory for some picture, some dream, with
which to connect it. Now, though he had seen Ramirez, though Chata
declared herself his child, the same feeling of uncertainty, of
tantalizing familiarity yet strangeness, remained; the association of
one with the other did not even momentarily satisfy him. He was not
conscious that the face appealed to his imagination rather than to his
memory, or that it had always awakened an interest different from that
with which he had looked upon others. Certainly its beauty had not
delighted him; even as he looked at her now, the witching, glowing,
ever-changing countenance of Chinita rose before him. “Strange!
strange!” he murmured. “What can be the mystery that from the first has
seemed to hover around you, to separate you from the rest?”
“Ah, yes!” she said humbly. “I have realized that myself. Oh, for a
long, long time I have felt as a stranger among them all,—they so good,
so true; and I—O God, who am I? Ah, I used to pity Chinita, but they
have given her her proper place. It must have been a worthy one, or Doña
Isabel would not have made her her child. But when they separate me from
Don Rafael what shall I be?”
“Do not think of it. He—this Ramirez—is gone, perhaps never to return,”
said Ashley, soothingly. “And if not, why should you go with him? Appeal
to Don Rafael, to Doña Feliz.”
“Doña Rita has told me already that would be worse than useless,”
replied Chata. “Don Rafael and Doña Feliz have already interfered in his
plans for me; to thwart him further would be to make him their deadly
enemy. Oh, you know not, Señor, what men like Don José Ramirez will do;
and yet he is my father!”
Her voice failed in an agony of terror and shame. Ashley’s words died on
his lips. Here was a grief he could hardly understand, against which he
could offer no advice to one whose education and mind were so different
from his own. What could he say to her to lessen the burden of her
grief? Surely not, as he would have done to Chinita, that she should
strive to content herself in a destiny which would raise her from an
obscure station to wealth,—for the revolutionary chieftain, he supposed,
had never-failing resources,—and to a certain dignity, as the daughter
of a popular hero. He could have imagined Chinita as glorying in such a
position, and Rosario as reigning with a thousand airs and graces in the
miniature court around her; but here was a child, a very child,
shrinking from the possible contact with cruel and conscience-hardened
adventurers, and stricken to the heart by the thought of losing the
heritage of an honest name.
Presently Chata spoke again, as though to speak to this stranger in whom
she had involuntarily confided was, in spite of her self-reproach, to
lay her long repression, her doubts and fears, before a shrine. Almost
incoherently, in the rapid utterance of overwhelming excitement, she
poured forth the story of the interview of Ramirez and Doña Rita which
she had overheard in the garden at El Toro. In her earnestness she did
not even omit the project which had been discussed for uniting her
future with that of Ruiz. Ashley’s teeth became set and his lips pressed
each other as he listened. Here indeed was confirmation of the villain’s
claim; and yet—and yet—
“It cannot be!” he interrupted. “I cannot believe it. You say yourself,
your very being recoils from him—ah, it must be for some deep cause you
hate him so! And I too—I hate him. Did I not tell you I have a long
arrear of wrong to settle, and—”
“You!” she ejaculated wonderingly. “What wrong can he have done to you?
Was it he who robbed and wounded you?”
“No, no!” he answered. “Those were but the chances of travel. There is
something far greater than that; but while you believe him to be your
father, I will not talk to you of avenging myself. I should be a brute
indeed to add a feather’s weight to your trouble. Do not think of that
again; but believe me, there is some mystery neither of us understands.
The truth may be far from what you think it. I will demand it of Don
Rafael, of Doña Feliz—they must know.”
She was looking at him wonderingly, almost in awe, with those large,
clear, gray eyes, which seemed to have in them the reflection of a
purer, calmer sky than the intense and fiery one beneath which she was
born. As he looked at her, her very dress seemed a disguise, so entirely
did she seem disassociated from the scenes in which he found her.
“Ah,” she said hopelessly, clasping her hands, “you do not know my
people as I do. I have not asked Don Rafael or Doña Feliz to tell me the
secret of my birth. They have concealed it for some weighty reason, and
until the time comes when they judge it right for me to know, I might
plead with them in vain. By going to them I should but lose their love,
and become the object of their suspicion and doubt. Oh, I could not
endure that, I would not endure it! Doña Rita is changed, is cold,
distrustful; and why should I by useless haste bring their anger upon
her? No, no, Señor, I beg, I entreat you, say nothing to Don Rafael. Let
me be in peace as long as I may. My father has not come to-day; perhaps
he has forgotten me!”
“You reason wildly,” said Ashley. “I cannot understand these strange
duplicities; yet I know it is quite true I should gain nothing by direct
questioning. What have I ever gained? No, it is to Doña Isabel I will
go, and to Ramirez himself. But promise me, Chata,” he added earnestly,
“promise me, by all you hold most sacred, never to leave the hacienda to
meet him or any messenger of his. Promise for your own sake, and I swear
I will leave no measure untried to free you from this strange bondage.”
He had expressed himself with difficulty throughout, but she caught his
meaning eagerly. “Oh, if I dared to promise!” she murmured. “But it is
the duty of the child to obey. Besides, he would tell me the truth; even
this very day I thought I should have known the wretched story,—oh, I am
sure it is a wretched one! Well, I have a respite,—a little respite. Go,
Señor; you have been kind,—be kind still by being silent. I must go; the
sun will soon set. Ah, unfortunate that I am, the men will be coming in
from the fields, the women will be at their doors,—how shall I ever
return without being seen?”
Here was indeed a difficulty. The strictly nurtured girl had never in
her life been outside the precincts of the village alone; that she then
should be, and with a young man, would occasion endless gossip. The two
involuntary culprits looked at each other with blank faces,—Ashley in
absolute dismay, for he had heard of the strict requirements of Mexican
customs and etiquette, and knew to what cruel innuendo this young girl
had exposed herself. He realized then for the first time how great her
courage had been in venturing forth in obedience to the command of
Ramirez.
“Chata, Chata! for God’s sake,” he cried, “go at once! I will remain.
Your mad freak will be pardoned this time, when they see you are alone.”
“Alone!” she echoed, a crimson flush suffusing her face as she fully
realized the significance of his words, and saw that with a sudden
faintness he leaned against the wall, spent with excitement and fatigue.
“Yes, yes,” he said wearily, “none will know I am here. The night will
soon pass; in the morning I will wander in to one of the huts. They will
fancy I was lost on the mountain. None will think—you will be safe.”
“I _am_ safe,” said the girl with sudden resolution. “Would a woman of
your own country leave you to hunger and shiver through all the night in
a desolate place like this? Ah,” she added with a long-drawn breath and
a tremor, “even ghosts are here.”
Ashley smiled. “I do not fear them,” he said. “I fear but for you. Go!
go at once! And yet before you go, promise!—promise me never to run
these risks again; never in any place to meet Ramirez!”
In his earnestness he clasped her hand and gazed eagerly into her limpid
eyes. “I promise, yes, I promise,” she said hurriedly. “But I will not
leave you,—weak, fasting, fainting!”
She looked up at him with the angelic pity in her face that innocent
children feel before they have learned distrust. Ashley read the perfect
trust, the perfect guilelessness, of her tender nature. Rather, he
thought, would he die than cast a cloud upon her name; and what, after
all, would matter the privations of a few hours? That he must not be
seen in the neighborhood for some time after her unusual wanderings was
a foregone conclusion. How should he combat her resolution? Truly, this
gentle girl had deep springs of action within her. For duty and right
she could be a very heroine.
As these thoughts passed through his mind, a sudden breeze stole through
the open gate and reached the lobby; there was a faint smell of cactus
flowers, and a rustle of the dry grass. The effect was weird and
ghostly. A shadow fell between them. Had the sun plunged down beneath
the western hills? They glanced up and started apart,—Doña Feliz was
before them.
The ordinarily grave and self-possessed woman was for a moment the most
agitated of the three. She gasped for breath. She had been walking fast,
but it was not that alone which caused the earth apparently to reel
beneath her. She had found Chata, whose disappearance from the hacienda
she had discovered at the moment when a cry had run through the house
that the horse of the young American had returned riderless; that the
youth had doubtless met an evil fate. She had found them both,—and
together!
She pressed her hands over her eyes as though to shut out some horrid
vision; a moan broke from her lips,—then she caught Chata in her arms
and glared at Ashley with concentrated anguish and fury. Had one guilty
thought possessed him, or had he meditated a doubtful act, her glance
would have covered him with confusion. As it was, he read in her
expressive face and gesture a volume of deep and terrible significance,
far different from that which an anxious duenna ordinarily casts upon
the imagined trifler with the affections of her charge. Nothing of that
assumption of virtuous indignation, yet of flattered satisfaction, which
in the midst of remonstrance gives indication of a certain sympathy and
inclination to condone the offence in consideration of its cause, was
apparent. Doña Feliz evidently had in her mind no lover’s venial
follies. This meeting was to her a tragedy,—the very culmination of
woes.
Ashley read something of this in her expression and gesture, and
hastened to reassure her, by giving a partial account of the reasons of
his return. The anxious guardian of innocence would perhaps have thought
his turning aside at the instance of Pepé to view his cousin’s grave,
his lingering there, the departure of the servant, the flight of his
horse, all a fabrication, but for the meeting with his cousin’s
murderer, which the young man recounted with startling brevity and
force, unconsciously regaining in the recital much of the excitement and
deep indignation which had thrilled him at the time of the encounter,
and which had gradually subsided amid the new complications that Chata’s
words had opened before him.
Involuntarily Ashley refrained from any allusion to the fact that the
young girl had ventured forth to meet this man Ramirez; and acute though
she was, it did not suggest itself to Doña Feliz, who seemed lost in
wonder at the almost miraculous chance which after so many years had
brought into contact the secret murderer and him whose mission it seemed
to avenge the innocent blood. In his recital, Ashley had not mentioned
the name of the self-confessed assassin. Doña Feliz did not ask
it,—perhaps she inferred that it remained unknown to him,—yet Ashley was
certain his identity was no problem to her. Had she guessed the secret
all these years? Had she screened the guilty and fostered the innocent,
at the same time?
Deep as was her interest in his tale, full as was her acceptance of the
fact that the meeting of Ashley Ward and Chata was purely accidental,
Doña Feliz did not exhibit a tithe of that horror and dismay which was
depicted upon the countenance of Chata, who listened breathlessly,—her
lips apart, her hair pushed back, her startled eyes opened wide. Ashley
would gladly have recalled his words as he looked at her. Every particle
of color had faded from her face.
In her absorption in Ashley’s words, Doña Feliz had ceased to regard or
even remember the young girl, who suddenly recalled herself to that
lady’s mind.
“Doña Feliz,” she murmured in an agonized and pleading voice, “when my
mother forsook me, why did you not suffer me to die? Oh why, why did I
live to hear such horrors, to know such wretchedness as this?”
As if in a frenzy, before either thought to stop her, or found words
with which to answer or recall her, she ran out from the lobby,—her
small figure passing unimpeded through the cactus-guarded gateway,—and
fled across the plain toward the hacienda. She was young and
strong,—excitement lent wings to her feet. Doña Feliz and Ashley
standing together in the gateway looked at each other in amazement. The
girl continued her flight until she reached the outskirts of the
village. There a horseman stopped her. Even at that distance they
recognized Don Rafael, and saw that Chata clung to him passionately when
he dismounted.
“She is safe!” murmured Doña Feliz. “Rafael will know how to account for
her presence with him.”
“Yes,” thought Ashley; “these Mexicans fortunately know how to coin a
plausible tale as well for a good cause as for a bad one.”
They saw that Don Rafael, placing Chata on his horse before him, had
turned in the direction of the hacienda, and was signalling to the
vaqueros lingering in uncertainty at the gate.
“They will be here in a few moments, Señor,” said Doña Feliz, calmly.
“We must lock the gates and conceal the keys. You must be found outside
of, not within, these walls.”
Ashley assented, and within a few moments, and in silence, their
necessary task was accomplished. Doña Feliz then led the way toward the
village, walking rapidly as though impelled by the agitation of her
thoughts or a desire to escape question. Ashley kept pace with her with
some effort, though the chill which had come with the grayness of
evening over the landscape revived and strengthened him. The breeze was
whistling in the tall corn in the fields as they passed them; the cattle
were lowing in the yards; the distant sound of horses’ feet was
beginning to be heard; the riders like gray columns were seen
approaching. Ashley laid his hand upon the arm of Doña Feliz. She turned
and looked at him. His face was to her a volume of reproach and
question. Her voice broke forth in a great sob.
“Ashley! Ashley!” she exclaimed, “do you not comprehend that a vow
stronger than death controls me? Ask me nothing, but follow the
indications which the good God—Fate—Providence—has given you. The time
may come—for strange things are happening in our land—when I may be free
once more. Now I may only watch and wait and pray. Ah! what hard tasks
for a woman such as I am! But I have vowed; I cannot retract!”
“You are wrong!” cried Ashley. “How strange that a woman of so much
intelligence, of a conscience so pure, can suffer herself to be led by
the spurious customs and traditions that pride and priestcraft together
have fastened upon her people! But your very reticence, Doña Feliz,
confirms my beliefs. I will go as you recommend, as my own judgment
urged me, to follow the clew I have so unexpectedly obtained. Do not
think that a vulgar and wolfish desire for vengeance alone actuates me;
but justice must be done. Even for Chata’s sake, this man must not be
suffered to continue his course unchecked.” He would have added more,
but Gabriel and Pancho, the vaqueros, came galloping up with vivas and
cries of welcome.
“Praised be our Holy Mother, and all the saints!” exclaimed one. “Don
Rafael told us you were safe. Who would have thought the Señora and the
niña Chatita would have found you no farther away than deaf and blind
Refugio’s? Ay, Doña Feliz, without seeking, finds more than will a dozen
unlucky ones, though they have spectacles and lanterns to aid them. In
the name of reason, Don ’Guardo, how happened your nag to throw you and
gallop back thus? He is manageable enough with any of us—” and there was
a suspicion of irony in the solicitude of the horseman, which did not
escape Ashley as he answered,—
“To-morrow you shall have the whole tale. These roads of yours are no
place for a man to linger on alone. But for the present, remember I have
a wound not too well healed, and am more anxious for supper than for
recounting adventures.”
“Ah! ah! he was stopped on the road by banditti,—and has escaped.” The
vaqueros regarded Ashley with vastly increased respect. Their numbers
were augmented as they neared the hacienda; and when the party reached
the gates, wild rumors of Ashley’s prowess were already flying from
mouth to mouth.
Ashley did not present an imposing figure as he passed in between the
crowds of admiring women; but he served to turn their thoughts from the
unprecedented appearance of Chata, which was but unsatisfactorily
explained by Don Rafael’s ready fiction that she and Doña Feliz had been
piously visiting at the hut of old Refugio, and that upon the arrival of
Ashley there, the young girl had hastened to meet her father, and give
him news of the American’s safety.
“Doña Feliz is even too careful of her grandchildren,” said some of the
more liberal. “What harm would have come to the maiden from a walk of a
few minutes, or a few words spoken, with an honorable young man such as
he seems to be? Now, if it were Don Alonzo, or that gay young Captain
Ruiz, for example!”
Rosario, who had been leaning over the balcony as Ashley arrived, heard
something of what was said, and smiled. She was not at all ready to
believe that Chata’s walk had extended only as far as the hut of blind
Refugio; and that it had not been made in company with Doña Feliz she
was quite certain. But she had no time just then to interest herself in
Chata’s affairs,—her own were far too engrossing; for the new clerk whom
Carmen, at Doña Isabel’s request, had sent from Guanapila, evidently was
much more intent upon studying the charms of Rosario than his new
duties, and in seeking favor in her eyes than in those of the
administrador himself. The new clerk was Don Alonzo, and Don Alonzo was
a handsome fellow, with the face of an angel, Doña Rita said,—a contrast
indeed to that little brown monkey Captain Ruiz; and Rosario smiled
coyly, and did not gainsay her.
The next morning at an unusually early hour this same Don Alonzo tapped
on Ashley’s door. “Pardon, Señor,” he said, “but the horses and servants
are ready, and I have orders myself to accompany you beyond the
boundaries of Tres Hermanos.”
The announcement was not a surprise. Ashley had arranged his departure
with Don Rafael upon the preceding evening. He dressed hastily, and
while partaking of his cup of chocolate, glanced often around him, in
expectation of the appearance of Don Rafael or his mother; but in vain.
The American could no longer hope to learn at a parting moment what each
had chosen to withhold. Irrationally, and against all likelihood, he
ventured to hope that Chata might steal forth for a farewell word. He
laughed at himself afterward for the thought, saying that the air of
intrigue had begun to affect his own brain.
Sooner than was usual, even in that land of early movement, Don Alonzo
warned him it was growing late. It was not too late or early for Rosario
to wave her little brown hand from her mother’s window in token of
adieu. Ashley did not see it, but he for whom it was intended did. So
with more foreboding and reluctance than he could have imagined possible
but a few hours before, Ashley once more rode forth from Tres
Hermanos,—this time with a definite object, from which he felt there
could be no turning back, no possible end but his own death or the
downfall of a man to whom but yesterday he had been utterly indifferent,
but who to-day was inseparable from all his thoughts, his passions, his
purposes,—Ramirez the _revolucionario_, the declared murderer of John
Ashley, the declared father of the young girl who seemed the very
incarnation of honor and sensibility, of tenderness and purity.