That succession of events designated as Time passed rapidly or slowly,
as was the fate of the beneficiary or the sufferer from its flight or
its delay. In some cases the milestones seemed leagues apart, in others
but a short foot of space separated them.
To Beltran the hours of the night dragged slowly by, when, as was often
the case, he lay half awake in a delirious dream of joy, longing for
dawn to break the gloom that he might come again within the magic of
that presence which had changed the entire world for him.
To Agueda the hours of the night flew on wings. As she heard the crowing
of the near and distant cocks answering each other from coloñia or river
patch, or conuco, she sighed to herself. "It is nearly four o'clock,
soon it will be five, then six, and the next stroke, oh, God! seven!"
For then would the cheery voice which could no longer wait call from the
veranda, "How are you this morning, little cousin?" and the answer from
that dainty interior would be, "Quite well, Cousin Beltran, if the
cocks could be persuaded not to roost directly under the floor of my
room, and keep me awake half the night."
Then Agueda must attend to the early breakfast. Trays must be sent to
the rooms of the visitors, and for two hours would the Señor impatiently
pace the veranda or the home enclosure, awaiting the reappearance of his
goddess.
There was no sign of the wearing effect of sleeplessness on the
shell-like face when that important little lady appeared upon the
veranda, clothed in some wonderful arrangement of diaphanous material,
which was to Beltran's vision as the stage manager's dream of the
unattainable in costume. With the joyous greeting there was offered a
jasmine or allemanda flower or bougainvellia bracht for the girdle
bouquet, which often Beltran assisted in arranging, as was a cousin's
right; and in return, if Felisa was very good-natured, there followed
the placing of a corresponding bud or blossom in Beltran's buttonhole by
those small, plump fingers, loaded down with their wealth of shining
rings.
It was at this time that Agueda received a shock which, as a preliminary
to her final fate, more than all conveyed to her mind how things were
going. It was early morning. Juana had brought to Agueda's room the
fresh linen piled high in the old yellow basket. Together they laid the
articles on chairs and table, selecting from the pile those that needed
a few stitches. Agueda sat herself down by the window to mend. She took
up her needle and threaded it, then let her hands fall in her lap, as
had become her custom of late. Her head was turned to the grove outside,
and her gaze rested among the leaves and penetrated their vistas without
perceiving anything in grove or trocha.
She had heard Beltran moving about in his room, but he had thrown the
door wide and gone whistling down the veranda toward that latest goal of
his hopes. She heard the gay greeting, and the distant faint response,
then a laugh at some sally of fun. Agueda looked wearily at the pile of
starched cleanliness, and took up her work again. How hateful the
drudgery seemed! Before this--in other days--time was--when--
It was a homely bit of sewing, a shirt of the Señor's, which needed
buttons. This recalled to Agueda that the last week's linen had been
neglected by her. It had been put away as it came from Juana's hands.
With sudden decision she determined now to face the inevitable, to
accept the world as it had become to her, all in a moment, as it were.
Agueda arose and dropped the linen from her lap to the floor. She had
never been taught careful ways. All that she knew of such things had
come to her by intuition, and her action showed the dominant strain of
her blood--not the exactness of a trained servant, but the carelessness
of a petted child of fortune. She stepped over the white mass at her
feet and went to the door that led from her room to Beltran's. She
walked as one who has come to a sudden determination. Of late she had
not been there, except to perform some such service as the present
moment demanded. She seized the knob in her hand, and turned it round,
pressing the weight of her young body against the door. Instead of
bursting hurriedly into the room, as was her wont, she found the door
unyielding. Again she tried it, twisting the knob this way and that.
She was about to call upon one of the men to come to her aid, as the
door had stuck fast, when suddenly she stopped, standing where the
exertion had left her. Her colour fled, her lips grew bloodless, she
leaned dizzy and sick against the door. On the floor, at her feet, she
had caught sight of a small shaving that had pushed itself through the
crack underneath. She put her hand to her side as if a physical pain had
seized her. She ran to the door of her room which opened upon the outer
and more secluded veranda. Passing through this, she walked with
trembling steps to the doorway of Beltran's room. She could hear his gay
badinage down at the end of the house, where she knew that Felisa was
sipping her chocolate inside her room, while he called impatiently to
know when she would be ready for the excursion of the day.
Agueda entered Beltran's room and walked swiftly to the communicating
door. Ah! it was as she had feared. Some shavings upon the floor, and a
new bolt, put there she knew not when, perhaps when she was up in the
field on the previous day, attested to the verity of her suspicion. What
did Beltran fear? That, remembering the old-time love and confidence,
she should take advantage of it and of her near proximity, and when all
the coloñia slept, go to him and endeavour to recall those past days,
try to rekindle the love so nearly dead? Nearly dead! It must be quite
so, when he could remind her thus cruelly, if silently, that a new order
of things now reigned at San Isidro.
Agueda appreciated, now perhaps for the first time fully, that her life
had changed, that she had become now as the Nadas and the Anetas of this
world. She closed her lips firmly as this thought came to her. Well, if
it were so, she must bear it. Like Aneta, she had not been "smart," but
unlike the Anetas of this life, she would learn something from her
misfortune, and be henceforth self-respecting, so far as this great and
overwhelming blow would allow. Never again should Beltran feel that he
had the right to bestow upon her a touch or a caress, however delicate,
however gentle. They were separated now for good and all. She saw it as
she had never seen it before. All along she had been hoping against
hope. She had constantly remembered Beltran's words that first week of
Felisa's stay: "They will be going home soon, and then all will be as
before." She saw now that Beltran had deceived himself, even while he
was deceiving her. He could not turn them out, as he had once said to
her, but he had now no wish to turn them out, nor did they wish to go.
He was lost to her, but even so, with the memory of what had been,
Beltran should respect her. He should find that, as she was not his
chattel, she would not be his plaything while he made love to that other
respectable girl, who would tolerate no advances which were not preceded
by a ceremony and the blessing of the church. Foolish, foolish Agueda!
Had she been "smart," she might have welcomed Felisa as her cousin,
instead of appearing as the slighted thing she now felt herself to be.
And then, again, her soul rebelled at such a view of the case. His wife!
What humiliation were hers to be Beltran's wife, and see what she saw
now every day, the proof of his love for this fair-haired cousin of his,
while she, his wife, looked on helpless. Then, indeed, would she have
been in his power. Now she was free--free from him, free to respect
herself, even in her shame.
As Felisa has been likened to a garden escape in point of looks, so
might one liken Agueda to a garden escape in point of what people
designate as morals. Agueda had never heard of morals as such. She had
had no teaching, only the one warning which Nada had given her, and
that, she considered, she had followed to the letter.
Agueda had stood intrenched within a garden whose soil was virtue. She
did not gaze with curiosity, nor did she care to look, over the palings
into the lane which ran just outside. She stood tall and splendid as a
young hollyhock, welcoming the sun and the dew that Heaven sent down
upon her proud young head. But though fate had surrounded her with this
environment, whose security she had never questioned, her inheritance
had placed her near the palings. Those other great white flowers that
stood in the middle of the garden could never come to disaster. But
Agueda, unwittingly, had been thrust to the wall. Love's hand had pushed
itself between the palings of the fence that surrounded her garden and
had bent the proud stalk and drawn it through into the outer lane. While
Beltran showed his love for her, she did not feel that she had escaped
from her secure stand inside. Her roots were strong and embedded in the
soil of virtue, and wanton love would never find a place within her
thoughts or feelings. She did not realise the loss of dignity. "All for
love," had been her text and creed. The remedy, if remedy were needed,
had been close at hand. It had been offered her. She had only to stretch
out her hand and take it, and draw back within her garden, showing no
bruise or wound, but happy in that she could still rear herself straight
and proud among the company of uninjured stalks. But though the remedy
had been at hand, Agueda had not grasped it with due haste. Unmindful of
self, she had allowed the opportunity to escape her, and now she could
not spring back among those other blooms whose freshness had never been
tarnished. Alas! She found herself still in the muddy lane. She had been
plucked and worn and tossed down into the rut along the roadside, where
she must forever lie, limp and faded.
What boots it to dwell upon the sufferings of a breaking heart? Hearts
must ache and break, just as souls must be born and die, for thus fate
plans, and the world goes on the same.
Things went on the same at the plantation of San Isidro. Don Noé made no
motion to leave it, and Felisa was happier than she had ever been, and
so for once was in accord with her father. Beltran dreaded from day to
day the signal for their departure, but it did not come.
Uncle Adan moved among all these happenings with a soul not above cacao
seed and banana suckers. He kept tally at the wagon-train or in the
field, and if he thought of Agueda at all it was with a shrug of the
shoulders and the passing reflection: "She is as the women of her race
have been. It is their fate." For she was surely of that race, though
only tradition and not appearance was witness to the fact.
As for Agueda, no one about her could say what she felt or thought. She
remained by herself. What she must see, that she saw. That which she
could keep from knowing, she dulled her mind to receive, and refused to
understand or to accept. She endeavoured to become callous to all
impressions. One would have said that she did not care, that her passing
fancy for Beltran, as well as his for her, had died a natural death. And
yet, so contradictory is woman's nature, when placed in such straits as
those which now overwhelmed her, that sometimes a fierce curiosity awoke
within her, and then she would pass, to all appearance on some household
errand bent, within the near neighbourhood of Beltran and his cousin.
They, grown careless, as custom encourages, always gave her something
to weep over. Then for a time she avoided them, only to return again to
her foolish habit of inquiry.
Agueda grew deathly in pallor, and thin and weary looking. Her face had
lost its brightness. Gaze where she would, she saw nothing upon her
horizon but dark and lowering clouds. Sometimes she opened her drawer to
look for a moment at the sewing, discarded now these many weeks, but she
did no more than glance at it. "It will not be needed," she said to
herself, with prophetic determination.
She might have said with Mildred: "I was so young. I loved him so. I had
no mother. God forgot me, and I fell." As for pardon, Agueda did not
think of that. Consciously she had committed no sin.
Not that she ever argued the matter out with herself. She would never
have thought of continuing Mildred's plaint, and saying, "There may be
pardon yet," although she felt, if she did not give expression to the
feeling in words, "All's doubt beyond. Surely, the bitterness of death
is past." There could be no "blot on the escutcheon" of Agueda. She had
no escutcheon, as had Browning's heroine, though perhaps some drops of
blood as proud coursed through her veins. She was not introspective. She
did not reason nor argue with herself about Beltran's treatment of her.
It was only that suddenly the light had become darkness, the sun had
grown black and cold. There was no more joy in life, everything had
finished for her. Truly, the bitterness of death was past.