The arrival of Doña Isabel at the house of her daughter brought a change
into the life of Chata that might have been considered even more dreary
and oppressive than the semi-imprisonment to which she had thus far been
subjected, though she was spoken of as an honored guest. In fact this
change was most welcome to the young girl; for while it afforded her
even less freedom of movement, it gave a sufficient reason for her
seclusion, as also occupation both to body and mind.
What had been the nature of the communication that Ramirez had made to
Doña Carmen, Chata knew not, but it had evidently impressed that lady
with a deep sense of responsibility. In those days there were even in
the quietest times no regular mails into the country districts, and this
gave a ready pretext to Doña Carmen for resisting all attempts to
communicate with the household at Tres Hermanos. The highways, infested
as they were by roving bands of soldiers and banditti, were indeed
scarcely safe for the transmission of even peaceful intelligence; and
thus none reached Guanapila from the hacienda, and Chata, and in a
lesser degree Doña Carmen herself, endured a painful uncertainty as to
the condition of Don Rafael and of Doña Feliz and others whom Chata had
left stricken with the dreaded fever. Day by day she had awaited news;
day by day she had hoped for the appearance of Doña Isabel and
Chinita,—while Doña Carmen, after listening with astonishment and some
manifestations of displeasure to the account Chata gave of the departure
of her mother from Tres Hermanos under the escort of troops destined to
the relief of Gonzales, gave the opinion that the destination she would
seek would be El Toro rather than Guanapila.
“My sister the religious is at present there,” she said; and Chata with
glowing face, and lips that trembled at the memory, told her of the
chance glimpse she had once caught of the beautiful and saintly nun.
Doña Carmen’s eyes filled with tears, and she silently embraced the
girl; the little incident drew Chata nearer to her heart. “Ah, child,”
she would say, “I never have known, I never could conjecture, why our
beautiful Herlinda chose so sad a life,—it must be sad to be shut away
from this fair world, from sweet companionship, from love. Yes, Herlinda
might have chosen from among a score of the handsomest and noblest of
cavaliers. And then our mother,—how she loved her! one might see it
through all her sternness. I never knew the truth, yet I am sure a great
and terrible sorrow caused Herlinda to enter a convent. She had no
inherent fitness, no liking natural or acquired, for such a life.”
Doña Carmen was not accustomed to speak thus freely of family affairs.
She had much of the characteristic reticence of the Garcias. Chata met
many of the younger members from time to time. They were too well bred
to show any curiosity concerning her; but among the servants of the
household and of others, there was much gossip as to how and why she had
come, and what relationship she bore to the husband of Doña Carmen, who,
kind and amiable man that he was, seemed to take peculiar pleasure in
her companionship. But the arrival of Doña Isabel in an apparently dying
condition turned all thoughts into a new channel.
From the first, Chata had entreated to be allowed to take her part in
nursing the stricken lady, but had been gently refused. Thereafter, the
husband of Doña Carmen used often to see their young guest gliding
restlessly about the house vainly seeking some distraction for her
anxious thoughts. He did not know the secret pain that tormented her. He
would gladly have facilitated her return if he could to that Don Rafael
from whom in a mad freak the mountain chieftain had stolen her; yet
there were circumstances,—there were reasons for not offending one so
powerful. Who knew? Guanapila was of course under Liberal rule to-day,
but what would it be to-morrow? The cautious man shrugged his shoulders
and said something of this to Chata, who smiled and thought him good to
care, yet wondered with all his goodness and his years,—the years that
had not brought in their train any additional attractiveness to his
person,—that Doña Carmen loved him. Was it as she had heard, that his
riches had beguiled one already passing rich?
Since she had left El Toro, Chata had become a woman. Change of scene
had given impetus to the somewhat retarded development of her physique,
and mental anxiety had stimulated her mind and given to it an intuitive
appreciation of causes and events that is generally gained by innocent
and unsuspicious natures, such as hers, only after long experience.
Thus she comprehended fully, as she would not have done a few months
before, the gravity of the step Chinita had taken in separating herself
from Doña Isabel. Ruiz had not spared the woman he loved in the few
brief sentences he had passionately uttered: love was with him but a
devouring flame, ready to destroy its object either in the struggle of
attainment or in the fury of baffled desire. Chata blushed even in
secret when she remembered the aspersions he had cast upon the friend of
her childhood. She knew the innate purity of the girl’s mind, though it
had been developed amid surroundings which might well have tainted it.
She knew her pride: even when she was but the barefoot foster-child of
Pedro the gatekeeper, Chinita had held Pepé and his mates as far apart
from her as the dogs that followed them or the mules they tended. Dogs
and mules she liked well and made serve her needs, as also she did the
lads. Chata did not doubt that Pepé now as ever had proved himself the
slave of Chinita’s will. Perhaps it was to Tres Hermanos she had gone.
Although knowing as she did the fascination that Ramirez had always
exerted over the girl’s mind, she could not but fear that led not by
reckless passion but by a spirit of devotion at which Ruiz had sneered,
yet in which Chata herself recognized the peculiar strength and
determination of Chinita’s character, the impulsive creature might
actually have sought an entrance to the camp to urge the plan that she
conceived was to further the glory of the Church and the interest of him
whom she had made the hero of her imagination. That Ashley Ward was in
any way concerned in the disappearance of Chinita, either as a principal
or an accessory, Chata indignantly refused to believe. Her heart beat
suffocatingly as she thought of him. No, no! he was not a man to entice
a girl to her ruin.
And as days went by news reached Chata that strengthened this
conviction. The American was engaged in deeds of a far different
character. In his way he was beginning to fill the minds and occupy the
conversation of people as much as Ramirez had ever done. They gave him a
new name, as those at the hacienda had done; but Conservatives and
Liberals alike wondered at and exaggerated his exploits, until Ashley
had won a reputation for reckless bravado quite foreign to his true
character,—which was exhibiting itself in the most careful and nice
calculations of chances, the whole tending toward the fulfilment of the
task to which he had dedicated himself; namely, the downfall of the
unpunished and unrepentant murderer of John Ashley.
Chata recognized this, and was filled with emotions perhaps more
conflicting, more strange, than had ever before met in the breast of so
young a girl. They held her thoughts by day and night. Oh that she had
never left Ramirez! Oh that she could speak but for a few moments with
Ashley! But she was powerless; and meanwhile what was the fate of
Chinita? What that impending over the man she was in duty bound to
warn,—to love if it were possible?
But before these reflections had reached this point, an employment that
prevented them from becoming utterly overwhelming was afforded her.
Chata no longer wandered aimlessly about the house, but kept the strict
seclusion of Doña Isabel’s apartment, to which she had been hastily
summoned one night by Doña Carmen herself.
“My mother talks so strangely,” she had said in a low voice, pressing
her hands to her white and frightened face. “No, I cannot comprehend
what she says; but I cannot have the servants about her. They might
imagine unspeakable things. Oh, what tales and rumors they might set
afloat! No, no! I will not have them here, with their suspicions and
evil thoughts. But you,—you are innocent and frank; you will not torture
into strange meanings the mutterings of a diseased imagination.”
“No, no!” answered Chata, reassuringly. “It was the same with Doña
Feliz. Sometimes she talked so strangely, so sadly, one was forced to
weep, and then again to laugh; yes, in all my trouble I laughed. But I
will not now, Doña Carmen; only let me be useful. Doña Isabel did not
seem to like me when she was at the hacienda, so I kept as much as
possible out of her sight. She said my face was not such as Don Rafael’s
daughter should have; and after all,” she added sadly, “she was right.”
What passed in that sick chamber through those long days and nights Doña
Carmen and Chata never repeated, even to each other. Perhaps they could
not, all was so disconnected, so improbable, and through all her
delirium the patient held so great a restraint over her utterances.
Sometimes one escaped her that startled and commanded attention; but the
next invariably contradicted it, and it was impossible to form a
connected theory even had Chata tried. But that great sorrows, events to
cause constant and secret care and remorse, had taken place in the life
of Doña Isabel, and that they concerned Chinita closely, was abundantly
clear. What pathetic appeals, what wild ravings, in which the names of
those who had lived in the past,—of her husband, her mother, her
brother, and of Herlinda,—were constantly mingled with those of the
American and Chinita. And friends or servants followed each other in
endless yet confusing succession; yet of them all the name of Chinita
was the most frequent. The present grief combined all others; in Chinita
seemed centred the agonies and loves of her lifetime.
Chata listened with a sort of envy. Ah, if it had been given to her to
raise such a passion of feeling! She found herself from day to day
leaning with infinite tenderness over this woman, who had seemed so
cold, but whose heart was now revealed as a very volcano of repressed
and seething emotions. She was grateful and deeply touched that Doña
Isabel in her delirium clung to her fondly, calling her “Mother,” or
“Quina,” which Doña Carmen told her was the name of a cousin she had
dearly loved. Even after she had recognized her when the delirium was
past as the daughter of Don Rafael, she seemed pleased to have her
there; though she said querulously, “It is strange you are only a little
country girl. But Feliz has good blood in her; it has been transmitted
to you,—there is nothing of Rita, nothing of Rafael himself.”
After that she made no further comment; but her eyes often followed the
movements of Chata with a puzzled expression painful to see. One day
after she had become convalescent, Doña Carmen spoke of this. “Whom does
she remind you of?” she asked lightly.
“I cannot tell; I do not know,” Doña Isabel answered wearily. “Perhaps
it is of Chinita. Oh! I can think of nothing but Chinita. Are they still
looking for her, as I have prayed,—as I have commanded?”
“Mother,” said Doña Carmen, solemnly, “who is Chinita? Why should you
care so much?”
The face of Doña Isabel grew rigid. “Shall I tell you what you have
uttered in your delirium?” continued Doña Carmen, looking fixedly into
her mother’s eyes. “Shall I ask you if you spoke the truth, or if what I
have gathered—here a word, there a word—is but a dreadful fancy? Mother,
Mother! if it is the truth, no wonder that the fate of this girl is on
your soul! No wonder Herlinda—”
She paused affrighted. In her excitement she had said far more than she
had intended. What if her mother in her delicate condition should sink
beneath this cruel attack,—should faint, should die? Carmen threw
herself down beside the couch with a prayer for forgiveness.
Doña Isabel in the first surprise had clasped her hands over her heart.
Slowly the pale hue of life returned to her face. “Carmen,” she
whispered faintly, “speak! speak! After all these years, accusation—even
from my own child—is more bearable than silence. O my God, I meant
well!—it was for Herlinda’s sake. Yet what remorse, what agony I have
suffered!”
The two women sank into each other’s arms. There had ever been a barrier
of reserve between them,—in a moment it was swept away. Doña Isabel
poured out her heart. It was Carmen who withheld what might have been
revealed; a conviction seized her that there was much in this strange
family mystery yet undeclared, and of which Doña Isabel knew nothing;
and that her mother’s mind was in no condition to be perplexed by
further doubts and complications. She left the room and went to her
husband.
“Chulita my beautiful one,” he said anxiously, as she was about to leave
him an hour later, “thou wilt do nothing rash? Yet I will not forbid
thee. In truth, but that robberies and abductions are so common upon the
roads, I would go with thee myself.”
“Not for the world!” exclaimed Doña Carmen in genuine consternation.
“They would seize thee and carry thee into the mountains. But as for
me,—I promise thee no robber shall think me worth a second thought. But
hold thee ready,—the desire may come to her at a moment’s thought, and I
would not leave thee without warning; I would not have thee unprepared.”