The hilltops were flooded with sunshine when the party from Tres
Hermanos reached them; the atmosphere was so clear, that looking back
over the broad valley, spread with fields of maize and beans, and the
half-tropical luxuriance of fruit and flower, Ashley could distinguish
every break and fret on the massive front of the great house, and
recognized with a feeling almost of awe the tall, slender figure
standing upon the centre balcony. She waved her hand in token of
God-speed. Strange, inscrutable woman! She had bidden him go forth as
the minister of fate, she had furnished him with servants, horses,
money, arms,—yet had spoken no word. Ashley felt as though he were an
enchanted knight in an enchanted land!
The traveller bade adieu to Don Alonzo in sight of his cousin’s grave;
then, followed by his two servants, rode rapidly onward in the direction
taken the day before by the troops and Doña Isabel, by Ramirez and
Reyes,—indifferent which he first should encounter, confident that
sooner or later the full significance of the impulse that had led him
upon his Quixotic journey to Mexico would be revealed. The little cloud
no bigger than a man’s hand had grown so great as to overshadow his
earth and heavens. He rode on as in a dream. The day passed, the night
came, and the party was still alone. The guide had mistaken the way.
That night they encamped but a league from the village of Las Passas.
Ashley slept neither better nor worse for that; there was no voice to
tell him it could be more to him or his than a score of other villages
which lay in the recesses of these wild mountains. The next day he left
it to the right, and set his face toward El Toro.
Meanwhile the march of the troops had been as rapid as the nature of the
country, broken by deep ravines and at first offering a tortuous ascent
to the table-lands, would allow. To Chinita, though the slow movement of
the carriage was irksome and irritating, and the clouds of dust that
rose from beneath the tread of the horses obscured the sights which in
their novelty delighted and filled her with exultation of a new and
expanding life, the hours passed as though winged by enchantment. In the
joyous clamor of the camp followers and the scarcely less restrained
hilarity of the troops, in the tramp of the horses, the clanking of
arms, there was a subtile music that aroused all the energies of her
adventurous spirit, and imbued her with an animation which like a flame
within a crystal vase seemed visibly to fill and surround her whole
being with strength and beauty.
Had the country passed over been as dull and uninteresting as it was in
fact wild and picturesque, the effect of movement and change would have
been still the same to her; for hers was a mind to be affected by the
various phases of humanity rather than of inanimate nature. The
landscape in truth offered to her view little of novelty, for in her
childhood she had wandered where she listed, and her lithe young limbs
had been as untiring as her curiosity. The succeeding cañons and hills,
the slopes and cactus-planted valleys, were but counterparts of those
which she had explored on every side of the plain on which Tres Hermanos
stood. With ready tact she avoided recalling her unwatched, untended
childhood to the mind of Doña Isabel, who received with a distaste which
seemed of the nature of regretful shame any allusion to the life from
which the girl who now called her _Tia_ (aunt) had been rescued.
The use of this appellation had been brought about by Ruiz, in his
evident uncertainty as to how the apparent relationship between his
patroness and her _protégée_ should be defined. He had tentatively
alluded to Doña Isabel as the godmother of Chinita, a designation which
some conscientious scruple led her to reject. The word _Tia_ is used by
Mexicans as a term of respect toward an elder as often as in actual
acknowledgment of relationship; and when with some daring Chinita one
day applied it to Doña Isabel, in answering some remark of the young
captain, the lady allowed it to pass unchallenged; and gradually “_mi
Tia_ Isabel” took the place of the formal “Señora,” which hitherto had
helped to keep their intercourse as reserved and cold as when Chinita
still stood at the gate at Pedro’s side, and Doña Isabel had furtively
glanced at her glowing beauty, and felt the hand of remorse pressing
upon her heart.
The haughty lady felt it still; and that it was which made her lenient
to a score of faults in this young girl that in her own children would
have been deemed almost unpardonable. She did not admit that she loved
her,—it is doubtful if she really did,—yet she strove by all the arts of
which the long repression of her nature made her capable to win the
heart of the girl, who she saw with suspicious intuition beheld in her
one who had wronged her, and was even now withholding her birthright.
Doña Isabel bestowed rich presents, but never a caress; perhaps Chinita
would have spurned the last as lightly as she received the first. Ruiz,
admitted to a certain intimacy by the necessities of the time, was
impressed by the entire absence of any sense of obligation with which
the young girl took her place with Doña Isabel, as if she had never
known one more humble, while there was something in the cold and stately
manner of Doña Isabel which seemed to shrink before the imperious force
of character of her young companion.
It was at their first halt that Doña Isabel had, with unexpected
hospitality, sent to invite Ruiz to share their midday meal; and,
evidently with some effort, at the same time she bade the servant extend
the invitation to the young American. Ruiz presented himself with due
acknowledgments, but Ashley was nowhere to be found: he and his servant
Pepé had disappeared from the ranks. No one remembered having seen them
since they ascended the face of the hill of the graveyard; doubtless, it
was surmised, the young man had grown weary, and had unceremoniously
returned to Tres Hermanos.
Doña Isabel’s face clouded. Upon the next day she had hoped to part
company with her unwelcome guest forever; and now,—part of her purpose
in leaving the hacienda was already frustrated. Ruiz was scarcely less
disquieted; a glance at Chinita’s triumphant countenance confirmed his
apprehensions. Pepé, at least, had not returned to the hacienda, he was
assured. The officer had had it in his mind to have the servant strictly
watched; but it had not occurred to him that upon the first day he would
attempt to evade him and fulfil Chinita’s wild project of summoning
Ramirez. He inwardly cursed his own folly and the duplicity of Ashley,
whom he hitherto had not for a moment supposed in sympathy with the
plot. He and the young American had even laughed at it together as the
foolish dream of an imaginative girl. Now to the suspicious officer’s
apprehensions was added a burning jealousy. For Chinita’s sake the
American had doubtless made her cause his own; and with such an ally,
Ruiz reflected, it was not impossible that he might see himself
confronted by the man who he knew well never forgave a slight, never
left unrevenged an injury.
The manner of Ruiz was so grave and abstracted that day, that Doña
Isabel was inclined to credit him with far more depth and earnestness
than as the reputed suitor of Rosario, or the airy and flippant recreant
follower of the notorious Ramirez, she had attributed to him. Ruiz had
the art of involuntarily suiting his demeanor and conversation to those
in whose company he was thrown. There was no conscious hypocrisy in
this, for the desire to please was natural to him, and often served him
in good stead in the absence of genuine feeling, and even under the
sting of wounded self-love held him silent, and masked his resentment.
Many a time in his life-long intercourse with Ramirez had he chafed
under the General’s haughty patronage and made no sign; and it was only
when he found himself thwarted in what was for the moment his strongest
passion, that he began to question the designs of the chieftain to whom
he owed all the fortune which birth or talents combine to make possible
to other men.
Ruiz was the son of Tio Reyes, a life-long follower of Ramirez, for whom
the chieftain had been sponsor, and toward whom he had with minute
conscientiousness directed every worldly advantage which his means and
position rendered possible. To Ramirez, Ruiz—who was known by the name
of his mother (a not uncommon custom where her family renders the
cognomen more honorable than that of the father)—owed the chance which
had made him a soldier of fortune instead of a laborer in the village
where his brothers and sisters plodded and toiled, in absolute ignorance
of the father who had forsaken them.
Ruiz’s knowledge of this strengthened his resolution to ignore the past,
and suffer no ill-timed revelations to interfere with his determination
to win at one step love and fortune by gaining the hand of the
_protégée_, of Doña Isabel,—a purpose he was certain Ramirez would
oppose, for in a moment of confidence the General had intimated that it
was to a daughter of his own, in accordance with a promise made long
years before to Reyes, that the young man was to be united; it was for
this destiny his future had been shaped, his fortunes moulded.
At any previous time the ambition of Ruiz would have been fully
satisfied; his whole desire would have been to meet this promised bride,
and by his marriage strengthen the interest which the caprice or
affection of Ramirez alone caused to be centred upon him, and which,
though often burdensome and tyrannous, was apparently the young man’s
sole passport to success. Even when in pique and half-timorous defiance
he took advantage of his separation from Ramirez to follow Rosario to
Tres Hermanos, it was with no fixed resolution to tempt fortune alone.
His short-lived passion and his independence and anger would have died
together, had not his love for Chinita and the unexpected opportunities
thrust upon him opened before him a prospect of advancement and triumph
far above his wildest dreams, and completed his treason to his early
patron, without teaching him the lesson of truth either to the new cause
or to the mistress to which he was sworn.
In the eyes of Doña Isabel Ruiz was but the hireling whose faith was
purchased for Gonzales; in those of Chinita, the devoted follower of
Ramirez; in his own—well, time and circumstance would decide.
Like thousands of others who took part in the strife that rent and
decimated Mexico, Ruiz had but little conception of the points at issue.
He had simply followed the lead of the popular chieftain to whom
circumstances had attached him. He had learned by observation that
wealth flowed from the coffers of the clergy into the hands of Ramirez,
who scattered it lavishly to all about him,—dissipating the greater part
in luxurious living in cities, and the maintenance of hordes of
followers in towns and cañons of the mountains, and with ready
superstition returning much to the source whence it came, for never a
follower of his kept child unchristened or burial Mass unsaid for want
of means to purchase the services of a priest.
Ramirez had appeared to the young imagination of Ruiz absolute and
ubiquitous. There were few daring deeds done that he had not shared in;
scarce a town been seized and its merchants arrested until the forced
loans demanded from them were paid, scarce a train of wagons laden with
silver stopped, scarce a _pronunciamiento_ with its excitement and rapid
exchange of power and property effected, that he had taken no part in.
He had been found wherever fighting or plunder were. He had taken a
bloody part in the repulse of the Liberals at the City of Mexico, where
the names of Zuloaga the President and of Miramon alike were made
infamous. He had shared in the futile attacks upon Vera Cruz, where
Juarez at the head of the Provisional Government maintained with
stubborn tenacity, with a handful of followers, the most important
stronghold upon the seaboard, promulgating those unprecedented
resolutions and decrees which revealed to the minds of the people that
of which they had never hitherto dreamed,—namely, the separation of
Church and State; the suppression of the monasteries, which like
vampires had for generations drained the resources and absorbed the
intellect of the people; and the secularization of those immense
treasures which, donated by the faithful to feed the hungry and the
sick, train the orphans, maintain the glory and worship of God, had
become the means of oppression and bloodshed, and were the thews and
sinews of the civil war, in which the clergy strove to maintain the
abuses of the past and forge fresh chains for the future.
In a country where the dogmas of Catholicism were as the oracles of God,
where every heart was bound either by the truths or the superstitions of
Rome, or in most cases by both inseparably, the magnitude of the task
assumed by the astute and resolute Juarez was almost beyond the
comprehension of those bred in the lands which have never groaned
beneath the yoke of ecclesiastical tyranny. Any premature act, any
unguarded word, might become the cause of offence; and yet it was no
time for hesitation or timorous questioning.
Juarez knew the time and the temper of his countrymen; and environed
though he was, virtually imprisoned in one small town upon the seashore,
his influence reached to the most remote districts of the interior. And
although the armies of the clergy swept the country from sea to sea, in
obscure fastnesses rose daring bands in tens and twenties and hundreds,
who promulgating the new promises of liberty sent forth by Juarez,
maintained them with a tenacity of purpose that made defeat impossible.
Worsted in one quarter, they arose in another, employing with
unscrupulous daring every means that cunning or audacity could bring
within their power,—claiming the excuse of necessity for those acts of
rapine and cruelty in the satisfaction of personal enmities, the warfare
upon the women and children, and the thousand barbarous deeds which make
the history of that time a continual record of horrors. Had example been
necessary, they would have found it in the career of the opposing
forces; but in truth it was a time when the attributes of patriot and
plunderer, soldier and bandit, became inextricably confused; so that,
perhaps as completely to himself as to others, the average actor in that
bloody drama became a baffling and unsatisfying enigma.
Such was the mental condition of Ruiz, though it did not occur to him to
define it. Attached to the clerical party by long association, and by
the uninterrupted prosperity which he had shared with Ramirez,—who since
separating himself from Gonzales had followed an independent career, in
which he had found the highest bidders for his services among the crafty
leaders of the old régime (who to their rich gifts added the indulgences
of the Church, to which no soul however blood-stained and conscienceless
could remain indifferent),—when Ruiz declared himself to Don Rafael a
convert to the Liberal cause, it was but as a precautionary measure
recommended by Doña Rita; and it was only when he saw in Doña Isabel a
patroness more powerful than the one he had abandoned, added to his
resolution to make himself independent of the man who had hitherto
controlled as well as defended him, that he in reality inclined to the
faction which day by day seemed gathering strength, and likely to become
the dominant power.
But though his political views thus shaped themselves to meet Doña
Isabel’s, Ruiz was no more faithful to her purposes than to those of
Chinita. To abandon Gonzales to his fate at El Toro,—for he did not
doubt that Ramirez would return with overwhelming numbers to the
destruction of its insufficient garrison,—and at the same time to win
the confidence of Doña Isabel and that of the troops under his command,
thereafter seizing the first opportunity of having himself proclaimed
their permanent leader and marching to join Juarez, whose cause was
becoming strengthened day by day by fresh accessions from the interior,
became his dream. Thus he hoped to blind Chinita by an apparent
inability rather than disinclination to further her designs, mislead
Doña Isabel, and secure for himself a position which should render it
not absurd or incredible that he should aspire to the hand of a
_protégée_ of the Garcias, and to the dower which he shrewdly suspected
he might of right demand.
All these plans were not perfected in a day, and the defection of Ashley
Ward and his servant seriously interfered in the ambitious captain’s
calculations; but he allowed no trace of uneasiness to appear in those
rare intervals when he found an opportunity to exchange a few words with
the impatient Chinita.
Unconsciously also, Doña Isabel herself aided to establish a bond of
confidence between them. When the long irregular column, with banners
flying, driving before it the lowing cattle, whose numbers grew less
after each night’s slaughter, and followed by the motley line of women
and children with the rude equipage of the camp, would be fairly in
motion after the confusion of the early start, Ruiz would rein his
prancing steed at the side of the carriage and deferentially place
himself at the orders of the ladies. On these occasions his manner was
one of perfect respect to both, of entire concurrence in the dictates
and desires of Doña Isabel, and of half-indifferent, half-amused
rejection of the immature and inconsequent conjectures and opinions of
the girl, for whose beauty he exhibited a timid but irresistible
recognition, which flattered while it disarmed the suspicious mind of
Doña Isabel. She believed him still the ardent admirer of Rosario,—a
thing which, she reflected, was under the circumstances most fortunate.
In the freshness and animation of those morning hours conversation
became natural and easy, and the events and names which were upon every
tongue furnished food for abundant reminiscence and comment. Doña Isabel
was eloquent in praise of Gonzales, who to his success at El Toro had
added others in the neighborhood, which together with the occupation of
Guanapila had made the entire district the undisputed territory of
Liberalism. Ruiz assented to her enthusiasm with an ardor which seemed
but natural in a youth who having separated himself from one powerful
patron, should desire to place himself beneath the protection of
another; and a comparison of the two, which should explain his defection
from the first, followed in natural course; and with carefully chosen
words, whose meaning held a subtile relation to the thoughts and
predilections of his two auditors, he spoke of the intrepid and
unscrupulous Ramirez.
More than once Doña Isabel, in the midst of his talk, sank back in the
carriage lost in deep and painful thought, as the wild and terrible
deeds in which that lawless man had figured recalled to her mind the
horrors of her youth. Deeds such as these might have been planned and
executed by the boy who had once been the pride, as he was afterward the
bane, of her life, had he lived; but he was dead. Yes, thank God! though
her heart had bled inwardly for long years; he had made no sign since
the tale of his end came—he was dead!
While she was thus lost in thought, Chinita listened with glowing cheek
and eyes. Ruiz knew of the meeting with Ramirez to which she looked back
with such peculiar and unwearying fascination; and discerning in her
admiration of his former leader an unfailing means of rousing in her a
personal attraction which in her passionate nature might become an
absorbing love, he carefully refrained from giving her any hint of his
real sentiments toward her hero, and spared no covert word, no mute
eloquence of his dark and expressive eyes, to increase an enthusiasm
which had already led her into such strange defiance of the plans of
Doña Isabel. To reinstate her hero in the power from which he had fallen
became Chinita’s dream, the aspiration of her soul.
On the fifth night of their journey it chanced that they entered a
village, where Doña Isabel and her servants were enabled to find a
shelter, which after the restricted and insufficient accommodation of
tents seemed absolutely luxurious, primitive and rude though it was.
Doña Isabel wearied with travel, and depressed with anxiety at the
unaccountable delay of Gonzales, who she had supposed would have
hastened to take command of the troops that her energy and bounty had
provided, had early retired to the room assigned her. Chinita had
reluctantly accompanied her, for a fandango was in progress in the great
kitchen, the charcoal brasiers flaming red against the dark walls of
yellow-washed adobe, and shining upon the bronzed faces of a group of
swarthy men, who strummed upon stringed instruments of various shapes
and sizes; while another group of mingled men and women went through the
rhythmic motions of the dance, with which the young girl, gazing from
her cell-like retreat across the court, had long been so familiar.
Chinita had never danced since the night that she had fled from the
wedding _fiesta_ into the waiting arms of Doña Isabel. She had thought
of the scene and its pleasures only with anger and disgust; and yet as
she looked into the red glare and watched the swaying figures, she
longed to rush in and throw herself among them. To her, as to Doña
Isabel, the time of suspense was growing unbearably long; she was mad
for action. Unreasonably, she felt that there among their caste she
might find Pedro, Pepé,—some one who would do her bidding, who would not
dare put her off as Ruiz was doing with tantalizing promises.
Chinita knew that instead of following the most direct paths as Doña
Isabel had commanded, the route on various pretexts had been
changed,—she supposed to make communication with Ramirez possible. She
had no reason to doubt the good faith of Ruiz, yet she was impatient and
miserable. A straggler upon the road had given them the news that
Ramirez had been seen upon the hills with a forlorn and ill-armed troop,
which bore evidence of the ill fortune which the defeat at El Toro had
inaugurated. She had conceived a violent and unreasonable antagonism to
Gonzales, who from his whilom associate had become the successful
opponent and rival of the man whom by the childish gift of an amulet she
had fancied herself endowing with invincible good fortune. Even as she
grew older, her faith in the magic powers of a charm which had been the
creation of a wizard, and had been blessed by Holy Church, scarcely grew
less; and the remembrance of it undoubtedly strengthened the fealty so
strangely sworn. Besides, a purpose had arisen in her mind of appealing
to Ramirez to establish her position in the house of Garcia, by wresting
from Doña Isabel an acknowledgment which would give her rights and a
certain status (though clouded it might be) where now she was but the
recipient of favors,—the peasant born raised to a dignity which was a
mere scoff and jest to the ready wit of the sarcastic and epigrammatic
rancheros. Chinita knew them well. Were not their gifts and prejudices
her own?
Musing thus, the girl glanced from the barred window where she stood
back through the gloom of the apartment to the bed where Doña Isabel was
lying,—already asleep. The yellow light of a candle just touched the
lady’s pale face; it was contracted with that habitual expression of
pain which the darkness of night permitted to the proud and suffering
woman, but which in the day, or under the eye of even the most
unobservant, she banished resolutely, though its shadow rested ever
uncomprehended, unpitied.
There was something in the lassitude of Doña Isabel’s figure, the
hopeless grief upon the countenance, which for the first time suggested
to Chinita the possibility that emotions deeper than that pride of birth
which was as great in degree in herself, though neither as pure in
principle nor bounded by the conventionalities of caste, had actuated
the deeds and embittered the life of her who to the eye had been so
absolute, so unassailable. With a feeling of awe Chinita took a step
toward the sleeper, when a sound drew her glance to the court. Into the
motley throng of lounging soldiers and _arrieros_, with their mules
feeding and stamping around them, two belated travellers forced their
way. It was the voice of one of them that had startled the watcher, and
claimed instantly all her thoughts, setting her heart beating stiflingly
as she sprang to the lattice and pressed her face eagerly against the
iron bars.
The red light from the kitchen was augmented by the flame of a smoking
torch, as a servant came forward to take the horse of the foremost
rider. When he leaped lightly from his saddle, pushing back his broad
hat, Chinita recognized the American, while a woman ran across the court
and clasped the arm of the other as he alighted: it was Juana, the wife
of Gabriel.
“Hist! hist!” said the man in a low voice, “no crying nor screaming. The
Señor and I are here on business that would please your captain but
little. By good fortune he is camped to-night at the outskirts of the
village, and dare not leave his post. Tell me, Juana,—and not a word to
Gabriel when thou seest him,—where is Chinita?”
Before Juana could gather her wits to reply, a hand was thrust through
the bars almost at the speaker’s shoulder; but it was Ashley who first
saw it. He took it for an instant in his own, and bent over it. “I must
speak with you, Chinita,” he said; “join me in the corridor as soon as
the house is quiet. I have much to say.”
It was not the voice of a lover that spoke, but it thrilled her as that
of a prophet. “Speak low,” she answered, breathlessly, “Doña Isabel
sleeps close by; but I will escape,—yes, I will come to you. Is not
Juana with you? She must take my place here. The door is locked; the key
is in the hand of Doña Isabel. But I will have it, trust me; the Senora
sleeps heavily.”
The girl’s face glowed with excitement; she was ready for any adventure,
the more daring the more welcome. Ashley Ward looked at her with a
strange pride and admiration: this was a nature that no shame could
crush, no outward fate dismay!
Chinita, standing at the grating, feeling an almost unrestrainable
desire to burst into wild laughter and tears, was for some time utterly
silent, waiting the hour when, the revelry over, sleep would fall upon
the house. Ashley drew into the shade of the corridor. The inn was but a
caravansary; there was none to notice who came or went. In the laughing,
chattering crowd he was virtually alone. The thoughts that came to him
as the fires faded, as the noisy revellers strolled one by one to their
sleeping-places, and the pale light of the stars shining down upon that
strange scene showed Pepé wrapped in his blanket, standing sentinel at
his side, were indescribable. A phantasmagoria seemed to glide before
him, in which Mary, his cousin, the ordinary places, scenes, and
associates of his youth, Ramirez, Chata, all the strange actors in this
drama, in new and ill-comprehended scenes, passed by; and in the midst
the door of a chamber cautiously opened, and the girl of the siren face,
which the very voice of fate had seemed to bid him seek in this far
land, stepped eagerly and lightly forth to meet him.