OF DON MANUEL AND MOONLIGHT
Don Manuel sat curled up in one of the deep window-seats of the living
room at the Valdés home, and lifted his clear tenor softly in an old
Spanish love-song to the accompaniment of the strumming of a guitar.
It is possible that the young Spaniard sang the serenade impersonally,
as much to the elderly duenna who slumbered placidly on the other side
of the fireplace as to his lovely young hostess. But his eyes told
another story. They strayed continuously toward that slim, gracious
figure sitting in the fireglow with a piece of embroidery in the long
fingers.
He could look at her the more ardently because she was not looking at
him. The fringes of her lids were downcast to the dusky cheeks, the
better to examine the work upon which she was engaged.
Don Manuel felt the hour propitious. It was impossible for him not to
feel that in the past weeks somehow he had lost touch with her.
Something had come between them; some new interest that threatened his
influence.
But to-night he had again woven the spell of romance around her. As she
sat there, a sweet shadowy form touched to indistinctness by the soft
dusk, he knew her gallant heart had gone with him in the Castilian
battle song he had sung, had remained with him in the transition to the
more tender note of love.
He rose, thumbed a chord or two, then set his guitar down softly. For a
time he looked out into the valley swimming in a silvery light, and
under its spell the longing in him came to words.
"It is a night of nights, my cousin. Is it not that a house is a prison
in such an hour? Let us forth."
So forth they fared to the porch, and from the porch to the sentinel
rock which rose like a needle from the summit of a neighboring hill.
Across the sea of silver they looked to the violet mountains, soft and
featureless in the lowered lights of evening, and both of them felt it
earth's hour of supreme beauty.
"It is good to live--and to know this," she said at last softly.
"It is good to live and, best of all, to know you," he made answer
slowly.
She did not turn from the hills, made no slightest sign that she had
heard; but to herself she was saving: "It has come."
While he pleaded his cause passionately, with all the ardor of
hot-blooded Spain, the girl heard only with her ears. She was searching
her heart for the answer to the question she asked of it:
"_Is this the man?_"
A month ago she might have found her answer easier; but she felt that in
some subtle, intangible way she was not the same girl as the Valencia
Valdés she had known then. Something new had come into her life;
something that at times exalted her and seemed to make life's currents
sweep with more abandon.
She was at a loss to know what it meant; but, though she would not
confess it even to herself, she was aware that the American was the
stimulating cause. He was her enemy, and she detested him; and, in the
same breath with which she would tell herself this, would come that warm
beat of exultant blood she had never known till lately.
With all his ardor, Don Manuel never quickened her pulses. She liked
him, understood him, appreciated his value. He was certainly very
handsome, and, without doubt, a brave, courteous gentleman of her own
set with whom she ought to be happy if she loved him. Ah! If she knew
what love were.
So, when the torrent of Pesquiera's speech was for the moment dammed,
she could only say:
"I don't know, Manuel."
Confidently he explained away her uncertainty:
"A maiden's love is retiring, shy, like the first flowers of the spring.
She doubts it, fears it, hides it, my beloved, like----"
He was just swimming into his vocal stride when she cut him short
decisively:
"It isn't that way with me, Manuel. I should tell you if I knew. Tell me
what love is, my cousin, and I may find an answer."
He was off again in another lover's rhapsody. This time there was a
smile almost of amusement in her eyes as she listened.
"If it is like that, I don't think I love you, Manuel. I don't think
poetry about you, and I don't dream about you. Life isn't a desert when
you are away, though I like having you here. I don't believe I care for
you that way, not if love is what the poets and my cousin Manuel say it
is."
Her eyes had been fixed absently now and again on an approaching wagon.
It passed on the road below them, and she saw, as she looked down, that
her _vaquero_ Pedro lay in the bottom of it upon some hay.
"What is the matter? Are you hurt?" she called down.
The lad who was driving looked up, and flashed a row of white teeth in a
smile of reassurance to his mistress.
"It is Pedro, _doña_. He tried to ride that horse Teddy, and it threw
him. Before it could kill him, the _Americano_ jumped in and saved his
life."
"What American?" she asked quickly: but already she knew by the swift
beating of her heart.
"Señor Muir; the devil fly away with him," replied the boy loyally.
Already his mistress was descending toward him with her sure stride, Don
Manuel and his suit forgotten in the interest of this new development of
the feud. She made the boy go over the tale minutely, asking questions
sometimes when she wanted fuller details.
Meanwhile, Manuel Pesquiera waited, fuming. Most certainly this fellow
Gordon was very much in the way. Jealousy began to add its sting to the
other reasons good for hastening his revenge.
When Valencia turned again to her cousin her eyes were starry.
"He is brave--this man. Is he not?" she cried.
It happened that Don Manuel, too, was a rider in a thousand. He thought
that Fate had been unkind to refuse him this chance his enemy had found.
But Pesquiera was a gentleman, and his answer came ungrudgingly:
"My cousin, he is a hero--as I told you before."
"But you think him base," she cried quickly.
"I let the facts speak for me," he shrugged.
"Do they condemn him--absolutely? I think not."
She was a creature of impulse, too fine of spirit to be controlled by
the caution of speech that convention demands. She would do justice to
her foe, no matter how Manuel interpreted it.
What the young man did think was that she was the most adorable and
desirable of earth's dwellers, the woman he must win at all hazards.
"He came here a spy, under a false name. Surely you do not forget that,
Valencia," he said.
"I do not forget, either, that we flung his explanations in his face;
refused him the common justice of a hearing. Had we given him a chance,
all might have been well."
"My cousin is generous," Manuel smiled bitterly.
"I would be just."
"Be both, my beloved, to poor Manuel Pesquiera, an unhappy wreck on the
ocean of love, seeking in vain for the harbor."
"There are many harbors, Manuel, for the brave sailor. If one is closed,
another is open. He hoists sail, and beats across the main to another
port."
"For some. But there are others who will to one port or none. I am of
those."
When she left him it was with the feeling that Don Manuel would be hard
hit, if she found herself unable to respond to his love.
He was not like this American, competent, energetic, full of the
turbulent life of a new nation which turns easily from defeat to fresh
victory.
Her heart was full of sympathy, and even pity, for him. But these are
only akin to love.
It was not long before Valencia began to suspect that she had not been
told the whole truth about the affair of the outlaw horse. There was
some air of mystery, of expectation, among her _vaqueros_.
At her approach, conversation became suspended, and perceptibly shifted
to other topics. Moreover, Pedro was troubled in his mind, out of all
proportion to the extent of his wound.
She knew it would be no use to question him; but she made occasion soon
to send for Juan Gardiez, the lad who had driven him home.
From the doorway of the living-room, Juan presently ducked a bow at her.
"The _señorita_ sent for me?"
"Yes. Come in, Juan. Take that chair."
Now, though Juan had often sat down in the kitchen, he had never before
been invited to seat himself in this room. Wherefore, the warm smile
that now met him, and went with the invitation, filled him with a more
than mild surprise. Gingerly he perched himself on the edge of a chair,
twirling his dusty sombrero round and round as a relief to his
embarrassment.
"I am sorry, Juan, that you don't like me or trust me any longer," his
mistress began.
"But, _doña_, I do," exclaimed the boy, nearly falling from his chair in
amazement.
She shook her head.
"No; I can see you don't. None of you do. You keep secrets from me. You
whisper and hide things."
"But, no, _señorita_----"
"Yes. I can see it plainly. My people do not love me. I must go away
from them, since----"
Juan, having in his tender boyish heart a great love for his _doña_,
could not stand this.
"No, no, no, _señorita_! It is not so. I do assure you it is a mistake.
There is nothing about the cattle, nothing about the sheep you do not
know. It is all told--all."
"_Muy bien_. Yet you conceal what happened yesterday to Pedro."
"He was thrown----"
She stopped him with a gesture.
"I don't want to know that again. Tell me what is in the air; what is
planned for Señor Gordon; what Pedro has to do with it? Tell me, or
leave me to know my people no longer love me."
The boy shook his head and let his eyes fall before her clear gaze.
"I can tell nothing."
"Look at me, Juan," she commanded, and waited till he obeyed. "Pedro it
was that shot at this man Gordon. Is it not so?"
His eyes grew wide.
"Some one has told?" he said questioningly.
"No matter. It was he. Yesterday the American saved his life. Surely
Pedro does not still----"
She did not finish in words, but her eyes chiseled into his stolid will
to keep silent.
"The stranger invites evil. He would rob the _señorita_ and us all. He
has said he would horsewhip Pedro. He rides up and down the valley,
taunting us with his laugh. Is he a god, and are we slaves?"
"He said he would horsewhip Pedro, did he?"
"_Si señorita_; when Pedro told him to take his life, since it was his."
"And this was after Pedro had been thrown?"
"Directly after. The American is a devil, _doña_. He rode that
man-killer like Satan. Did he not already know that it was Pedro who
shot at him? Is not Pedro a sure shot, and did he not miss twice? Twice,
_señorita_; which makes it certain that this _Señor_ Gordon is a devil."
"Don't talk nonsense, Juan. I want to know how he came to tell Pedro
that he would whip him."
"He came up to the piazza when he had broken the heart of that other
devil, the man-killer, and Pedro was sitting there. Then Pedro told him
that he was the one who had shot at him, but he only laughed. He always
laughs, this fiend. He knew it already, just as he knows everything.
Then it was he said he had saved the boy to whip him."
"And that is all?"
"_Por Dios_--all" shrugged the lad.
"Are there others beside you that believe this nonsense about the
American being in league with evil?"
"It is not nonsense, _señorita_, begging your pardon," protested Juan
earnestly. "And Ferdinand and Pablo and Sebastian, they all believe it."
Valencia knew this complicated the situation. These simple peons would
do, under the impulsion of blind bigotry, what they would hesitate to do
otherwise. Let them think him a devil, and they would stick at nothing
to remove him.
Her first thought was that she must keep informed of the movements of
her people. Otherwise she would not be able to frustrate them.
"Juan, if this man is really what you think, he will work magic to
destroy those who oppose him. It will not be safe for any of my people
to set themselves against him. I know a better way to attack him. I want
to talk with Pablo and Sebastian. You must work with me. If they try to
do anything, let me know at once; otherwise they will be in great
danger. Do you understand?"
"_Si, señorita_."
"And will you let me know, quietly, without telling them?"
"_Si, señorita_."
"That is good. Now, I know my Juan trusts and loves his mistress. You
have done well. Go, now."
From the point of view of her people the girl knew it was all settled.
If the stranger whipped Pedro, the boy would kill him unless he used
magic to prevent it. If he did use it, they must contrive to nullify his
magic. There was, too, Don Manuel, who would surely strike soon, and
however the encounter might terminate, it was a thing to dread
miserably.
But, though her misery was acute, she was of a temperament too hopeful
and impulsive to give up to despair so long as action was possible.
While she did not yet know what she could do, she was not one to sit
idle while events hurried to a crisis.
Meantime she had her majordomo order a horse saddled for her to ride
over to Corbett's for the mail.