There are days which are crowded with events; days so bursting with
happenings that a single twenty-four hours will not suffice to tell the
tale. There are other days so blank and uneventful that one sighs for
very weariness when one thinks of them. It is not well to wish time
away, but such days are worse than useless. It is, however, of one of
the former that this chapter relates. To a little community like that
surrounding San Isidro and Palmacristi, to say nothing of Troja, the day
on which Agueda carried the note for Raquel was full of events.
When Escobeda went from Raquel's room, slamming the door after him, the
terrified girl dropped on her knees before Ana. All her courage seemed
to have flown. She bent her head and laid it in Ana's lap, and then
tears rained down and drenched Ana's new silk apron.
"Ana," she whispered, "Ana, who is there to help me?"
Ana sighed and sniffed, and one or two great drops rolled off her brown
nose and splashed down on the back of Raquel's dark head.
"There is no one but you and God, Ana."
"Holy Mother! child, do not be so irreverent."
"Can you steal out into the corridor and down the two little steps, and
into the rum room, Ana, and hear what is being said?"
"I am too heavy; that you know, Señorita. The boards creak at the very
sound of my name. I am tall, my bones are large. Such persons cannot
trip lightly; they tip the scales at a goodly number of pounds. Holy
Mother! If he should catch me at it!" and Ana shivered, her tears drying
at once from fright.
"You could very well do it if you chose. Listen, Ana. If he takes me
away, I shall die. Now I tell you truly, Ana, I will never go to that
government house alive; that you may as well know. Get me my mother's
dagger, Ana."
Ana arose and went to a bureau drawer. The drawer squeaked as she pulled
at the knobs.
A far door was heard opening. "What is that?" roared Escobeda.
"I am packing the child's trunks, Señor. How can I pack them unless I
may open the drawer?" There was a sound of retreating footsteps and the
closing of the door. Raquel looked at Ana, who was kneeling upon the
floor, searching in the drawer.
"Ah! here it is," said Ana. "But you will not use it, sweet?"
"Not unless I must," said Raquel. She sighed. "Not unless I must. I do
not want to die, Ana. I love my life, but there is a great horror over
there." She nodded her head in the direction of the Port of Entry. "When
that horror comes very near me, then I--" Raquel made as if she would
thrust the dagger within her breast. Ana shuddered.
"I shall not see it," she said. "But I advise it, all the same, if you
must."
She drew the girl up to her, and cried helplessly upon her neck.
"Can't you think a little for me, Ana? It is hard always to think for
one's self."
"No," said Ana, shaking her head, "I never have any fresh thoughts. I
always follow."
"Then, dear Ana, just tiptoe down and listen. It is the last thing that
I shall ever ask of you, Ana."
Ana, her eyes streaming with tears, took her slippers--those tell-tale
flappers--from her feet, and went to the door. She turned the knob
gently and pushed the door outward without noise. As she opened it she
heard Escobeda's voice, raised in angry tones.
"Go now! now! while he is scolding," whispered Raquel. "He will not hear
you. I must know what he is saying to that man. Do you think it is the
Señor Silencio's messenger?"
Ana nodded and put her finger to her lip. She crept noiselessly along
the passage. Raquel, listen as she would, heard nothing of Ana's
footsteps, for Escobeda was still swearing so loudly as to drown every
other sound.
Raquel went to the bureau, and took from the drawer a piece of kid. She
seated herself and began to polish her weapon of defence. "Of death,"
said Raquel to herself. "If I am forced--"
She peeped out, but Ana had turned the corner, and was hidden from
sight. Ah! she must be in the rum room now, where she could both peer
through the cracks and hear all that was said on either side. Suddenly a
far door was violently wrenched open, and Raquel heard Escobeda's steps
coming along the corridor. Where was Ana, then? Raquel's heart stood
still. Escobeda came on until he reached the door of Raquel's chamber.
The girl did not alter her position, and but for her flushed cheeks
there was no sign of agitation. She bent her head, and rubbed the
shining steel with much force.
"Where is that lazy Ana?"
Raquel raised her innocent eyes to his.
"Did you call, uncle? Well, then, she must have gone to the kitchen."
"You lie," said Escobeda.
Raquel's cheeks reddened still more.
"Perhaps I do, uncle. At all events, she is not here."
"What have you there?"
Escobeda had stooped towards the girl with hand outstretched, but she
had sprung to her feet in a moment, and stood at bay, the dagger held,
not in a threatening attitude, but so that it could be turned towards
the man at any moment.
"It is my mother's dagger, uncle."
"What are you doing with it?"
"Polishing it for my journey, uncle."
"Give it to me."
"Why should I give it to you, uncle?"
"Because I tell you to."
Raquel's hair had fallen down; she was scantily clothed. Her cheeks were
ablaze. She looked like a tigress brought to bay.
"Do you remember my mother, uncle?"
"I remember your mother; what of her?"
"Do you know what she said to me at the last--at the last, uncle?"
"I neither know nor care," said Escobeda. "Hand me the knife."
"My mother told me," said Raquel, still polishing the blade and changing
its direction so that the point was held towards Escobeda--"my mother
told me to keep this little thing always at hand. It has always been
with me. You do not know how many times I have had the thought to turn
it upon you"--Escobeda started and paled--"when your cruelties have been
worse than usual. Sometimes at night I have thought of creeping,
creeping along the hall there, and going to the side of your bed--"
"You murderess!" shouted Escobeda. "So you would do that, would you? It
is time that you came under the restraint that you will find over there
in the government town. Do you hear? Give me the knife. It was like that
she-dev--"
"I can hear quite well with it in my hand," said Raquel. "You may say
whatever comes into your head, only about my mother. That I will not
bear. Speak of her gently, I warn you--I warn you--"
"Do you know who the man was who came to me just now?"
"The Señor Silencio?" said Raquel, breathless, her eyes flashing with a
thousand lights.
"No, it was not the Señor Silencio." Raquel's eyelids drooped. "But it
was the next thing to it. It was that villain, Rotiro. I could have
bought him, as well as Silencio. A little rum and a few pesos, and he is
mine body and soul. But I do not want him. I have followers in plenty--"
"Those who follow you for love?" said Raquel, with sly malice in her
tone.
Escobeda flashed a dark and hateful look upon her.
"It makes no difference why they follow me. They are all mine, body and
soul, just as you are mine, body and soul."
"Are you going to tell me why Rotiro came here to-day?" asked Raquel.
"Yes, that is what I came to tell you. I came purposely to tell you
that. The Señor Silencio sent me a letter by the villain Rotiro."
"For me?" asked Raquel, breathless. "Oh, uncle! Let me see it, let me--"
"No, it was to me. But I will tell you its contents. I will tell you
gladly. He offers you his hand in marriage."
"Oh, uncle!"
The girl's eyes were dancing. She blushed and paled alternately; then
drew a long sigh, and waited for Escobeda to speak further.
"From your appearance, I should judge that you wish me to accept him for
you."
"Oh, uncle!" Again the girl drew short, quick breaths. She gazed eagerly
into Escobeda's face. "Can you think anything else? Now I need not go
away. Now I need not be longer a burden upon you. Now I shall have a
home! Now--I--shall--be--" The girl hesitated and dropped her voice, and
then it died away in a whisper. But one meaning could be drawn from
Escobeda's cunning screwed-up eyes, his look of triumph, his smile of
wickedness.
They stood gazing at each other thus for the space of a few seconds,
those seconds so fraught with dread on the one side, with malice and
triumphant delight on the other.
"Your mother hated me, Raquel. Perhaps she never had the kindness to
tell you that. I found her when she was dying. You remember, perhaps,
when she asked you, her little girl, to withdraw for a while, that she
might speak with me alone?"
"I remember, uncle," said Raquel, panting.
"It was not to be wondered at that she preferred your father to me. She
had loved me first. She was my father's ward. But when he came, with his
handsome face and girlish ways, she threw me aside like a battered doll.
She said that I was cruel, but she never discovered that until she fell
in love with your father. She ran away with him one night when I was at
the city on business for my father. The doting old man could not keep a
watch upon them, but I followed their fortunes. She never knew that it
was I who had him followed to the mines, where he thought he had
discovered a fortune, and killed him in the cold and dark--"
"Are you a devil?" asked Raquel.
"His bones, you can see them now, Raquel; they were never buried--they
lie up there on the floor of the old--"
The dagger slipped from Raquel's fingers, and she slid to the floor.
"No, I did not tell her that I should take out my vengeance upon her
child. I knew my time would come. Silencio's offer is of as much value
as if written in the sand down there by the river, the--"
Ana came in at the doorway. Escobeda stooped and picked up the dagger.
"She will hardly need this," he said, as he stuck it in his belt.
When Raquel opened her eyes Ana was bending over her, as usual in floods
of tears, drenching the girl alternately with warm water from her tender
eyes and cold water from the perron.
Raquel sat up and looked about her as one dazed. She clutched at the
folds of her dress. The piece of kid lay in her hand.
"Oh, Ana!" she sobbed, "he has taken it away. All that I had. My only
protection."
Ana arose and quietly closed the door.
"Sweet," she said, "I have good news for you."
"What is it?" asked Raquel, sitting up, all interest, her dull eyes
brightening.
"I crept along the hall," said Ana, "and when I reached the rum room I
slipped in and closed the door softly, and listened through the cracks.
When he came here, I slipped out to the kitchen, and there I have been
ever since."
"But the good news," asked Raquel. "Quick! Ana, tell me."
"He was sitting at his desk, the Señor Escobeda, his back to the door,
so unlike any other gentleman. If they must rage, they stand up and do
it. But there he sat, swearing by all the gods at something. I saw that
that man Rotiro from Palmacristi had run out of the counting-house, and
was peeping in at the door; and I listened, hoping to find out
something, and I have, sweet, I have."
"Well! well! Ana, dear Ana, hasten! hasten!--"
"I have found out that the Señor Don Gil asks your hand in marriage."
Raquel sank down again in a heap on the floor.
"Is that all, Ana?" she said.
"All! And what more can the Señorita want than to have a gentleman,
rich, handsome, devoted, offer her his hand in honourable marriage?"
"I only want one thing more, Ana dear," said Raquel, sadly, "the power
to accept it."
"The power to accept it?" said Ana, questioningly. "Is the child mad?"
"He twits me with it. He says that I shall not accept him, the Señor Don
Gil. He says that I shall go in any case to the government town. He has
taken away my dagger. I cannot even kill myself, Ana. Oh! what am I to
do? Gil! Gil! Come and save me."
At this heavy steps were heard coming along the corridor. The door was
burst open with a blow of Escobeda's fist.
"You need not scream or call upon your lover, or on anybody else. You
have no one to aid you."
"No one but God, and my dear Ana here," said Raquel.
"One is about as much use as the other," said Escobeda, laughing. "Call
as loud as you will, one is quite deaf and the other helpless."
Raquel rose to her feet.
"Will you leave my room?" she said with dignity.
"I will leave your room, because I have done all that I came to do."
"You have broken the child's heart, Señor," said Ana, with unwonted
courage, "if that is what you came to do."
"If I can break her spirit, that is all I care for," said Escobeda.
"You will never break my spirit," said Raquel. She stood there so
defiant, the color coming and going in her face, her splendid hair
making a veil about her, that Escobeda looked upon her with the
discriminating eye of fresh discovery.
"By Heaven," he said, "you are more beautiful than ever your mother was!
If I had not promised the Governor--"
"Spare her your insults," said Ana, her indignation aroused. She pushed
the door against his thick figure, and shot the bolt. They heard
Escobeda's laugh as he flung it back at them. "What shall we do now?"
asked Raquel. "Shall I drop from the window and run away? There must be
some one who will aid me."
Ana approached the closely drawn jalousies. She put her long nose to a
crack and peered down. The slight movement of the screen was seen from
the outside.
"It is you that need not look out, Anita Maria," came up to her in
Joyal's rasping voice. "This is not the front door."
"He has been quick about it," said Ana. "No matter, sweet, we must pack.
Some one must help us. When the Señor Silencio gets that devilish
message he must do something."
"What was the devilish message, Ana?" asked Raquel.
"Do not ask me, child; just hateful words, that is all."
Raquel put her young arms round Ana's old thin shoulders.
"Promise me one thing, Ana," she said.
"Promise! Who am _I_ to make promises, sweet? All that I can, I will.
That you must know."
"When I am gone, Ana"--Raquel looked searchingly at Ana and repeated the
words solemnly--"when I am gone, promise that you will go to the Señor
Silencio. Say to him--"
"But how am I to get there, sweet? I should have to wear my waist that I
keep for the saints' days. I--"
"Get there? Do you suppose if you asked me I would not find a way? My
uncle Escobeda will be gone. Remember he will be gone, Ana! There will
be no one to watch you, and you talk of clothes! You will not wear them
out in one afternoon, and when I am Señora"--Raquel halted in her
voluble speech and blushed crimson--"he, my uncle, would be glad to have
you go and say that he has taken me away. Nothing would please him
better. Now, promise me that when I am gone you will go to the Señor
Silencio, and tell him where he has taken me. Tell him that I accept his
offer. Tell him that if he loves me, he will find a way to save me. Tell
him that I sent him a note by that pretty Agueda from San Isidro--"
"You should not speak to such as she--"
"She seemed sweet and good. She carried my note, Ana. I must always be
her friend. Tell him--"
A loud thud upon the door.
Escobeda had stolen up softly, and was chuckling to himself outside in
the passage.
"Ana has my permission to go and tell him all about how you love him,
Muchacha. That will make it even more pleasant for me. I thank you for
helping me carry out my plans, but for the present, Ana had better pack
your things, and quickly. The sun is getting over to the west, and you
must start within two hours' time."
Raquel threw her arms round Ana and strained her to her childish breast.
"You will go, dear Ana, you promise me, do you not? You will go?"
"I will," said the weeping Ana, "even if I must go in my Sunday shoes."