“It is only mirage.”
A long, low, adobe building, roofed with tiles of pottery clay, situated
near the banks of the river Santa Cruz. Long rows of cottonwood-trees
spread their branches nearly over the little stream, and the graceful
masses of pepper, combed to a fringe, drop their courtesied obeisance to
every passing breeze, and throw their uneasy shadows well over the
walls, neatly stuccoed with cobblestones.
The air curdles with the heat rising from the arid plain, and hangs, a
shimmering sheet of translucent vapor, between the eye and the
ever-lengthening distance, which softly melts into the Santa Rita
Mountains.
Is that a lake out of which rises the well-outlined range of nearer
hills? or a sea, throwing up billows of foam and shadow, with islands of
green glimpsing their shapes in the placid waters that encircle their
feet? And ships, with well-fashioned hulls and wide-spreading sails, and
pictured rocks, and beating breakers, and lifeboats with men tugging at
the oars. No! it is only mirage, a pretty picture written with the
electric pen of nature upon the parchment hot from the press of her
untongued fancies. In her luring tale strong men have trusted themselves
to fatal deception, and beasts, with lapping tongues, and knotted with
water greed, have gnashed their teeth at her beautiful garments of
fateful film, and lain down to die. Art has been outvied in pictorial
effects, for she filters her shadows from daintiest clouds, and borrows
her bath of oscurial glints from the unfathomed deeps of heaven. Even
austere science hides his forged shackles shamedly away, and turns with
unsatisfied scorn from the flitting gleam of her mocking brow.
“It is only mirage, one of nature’s cleverest tricks; and what more is
life?” comes once and again from parched lips and longing eyes. For,
although water, sweet and cool, drips from an _olla_ near at hand, yet,
stretched upon a bed carefully prepared of finely-stripped rawhide,
placed upon the well-beaten and smooth earth, under the sheltering roof
of a _ramada_ connecting two sections of the Gonzales _casa_, lies David
Morning, hot with fever, and still unable to leave his couch.
A little apart, and softly swaying in her hammock of scarlet and gold,
one foot lightly touching the ground, half reclines the small,
undulating figure of Murella Gonzales.
The ancient blood of Castile had never been suffered by the Gonzales
family to mingle, with the sanction of the church, with ignobler
currents. The late Señor Don Pedro, although only possessed of the
estate of a prosperous Mexican cattle rancher, was yet a Hidalgo of
Hidalgoes, who could have covered the walls of his _casa_ with his
quarterings. As for his wife, was she not an Alvarado? and—Santa
Maria!—what more would you have in the way of blood? Certainly, from her
arched instep to her wealth of blue-black hair, the Señorita Murella was
a wondrously beautiful maiden.
“Murella,” spoke the sick man, turning his emaciated face toward the
girl, “during the early days of my illness, I gave you a letter to mail,
do you remember?”
“Si, señor.”
“Do you remember how many days ago, Murella?”
“Si, señor, seventeen day,” and the small ears deepened red behind the
creamy oval face.
“Did you give Jose the letter to post?”
“Si, señor.”
“You are very kind, señorita, and I thank you.”
The girl glanced swiftly across the court at an open door wherein stood
the madroña, the customary shawl of black Spanish lace drawn tightly
across her mouth, leaving two shining black eyes fixed steadily upon
her.
“A few days more, and I shall be leaving your hospitable roof,”
continued Morning.
“Why will you not take a me with you?” said Murella, with imperturbable
gravity, and with no change of expression.
The man illy concealed his look of surprise, as he tucked the richly
embroidered pillow more firmly beneath his head, and replied kindly:—
“Such a thing could not possibly be, little girl, for more reasons than
your pretty head could contain.”
“Then you do not a lof me, and you told a me a lie,” and the dark eyes
lit with a flame of Vesuvian fires like the red light in those of a
tiger.
“What do you mean, señorita?” and a faint flush overspread his own pale
face.
“I mean you call me your beloved Ella, such name as Americans give a me,
and you hold me close in your arms, and say you will never part from me,
not for one hour—only ten day ago—and now you leave a me!”
This was an awkward situation, and Mr. Morning recognized its full
significance upon the moment. In his delirium he had used the too
familiar name, and had coupled with its use endearments which had been
compromisingly misappropriated. He reflected a moment. There was nothing
left but to tell the truth and accept the consequences. Another girl
would laugh. What would Murella do?
“Señorita,” he began slowly, “I have, as you know, been very ill, and on
several occasions have lost my way in delirium, and have been wandering
over scenes belonging to other days. Can you not forgive me if I have
called you by a name which you mistook for your own prettier one? Can
you not pardon me if in my fevered imagination I gave you for the moment
a place long ago sanctified and dedicated to forgetfulness?”
“Then why cannot you lof a me? Am I not as lofely as she?”
“You are very beautiful, Murella.”
“Machacha!” shrieked the duenna from the entrance to the _ramada_, “what
are you saying?” and then followed invective in every key, and words of
scorn in every cadence, until, pale with anger and chagrin, the girl
sprang from her hammock and ran swiftly away.
For a long time our hero lay lost in speculation. After all, it was only
a misunderstanding, and not liable to be remembered overnight. In any
event, he had not compromised the maiden, and finally he concluded—as
was indeed the truth—that the cunning señorita was all the while
cognizant of the situation, and not at all deceived, and so he dismissed
the subject from his mind.
And what was the first move of the panic-stricken maiden? Speeding
swiftly over the ground, she sank in the shadow of the ocotilla hedge
inclosure, which formed the corral, and drew cautiously from her pocket
the letter committed to her care by Morning. Reopening it, for the
envelope, sealed only with mucilage, had been carefully broken, she drew
forth a picture of the Baroness Von Eulaw, older by many years than the
name she now bore, and much thumbed and worn beside.
This unconscious incendiary Murella first regarded disdainfully for an
instant, and then deliberately spat upon it. She then proceeded to
possess herself of the contents of the letter, which was brief, and,
regarded as a wholesome irritant for a recent wound, rather ineffectual.
She spelled it out laboriously, and it read as follows:—
_To the Baroness Von Eulaw, Berlin._
You may have forgotten that several years ago, and through wholly
legitimate means, let me say in self-defense, a specimen of art, of
inestimable value to me, came into my possession. I have hitherto
deemed it no breach of honor to retain it. Finding myself very ill,
however, and warned by my physicians of the probable fatal termination
of my malady, I esteem it prudent and not less just to return to you
the last token of a mutual recognition which I have the faith to
believe is among the things that are undying.
It is, perhaps, unwillingness to pass the veil which enshrouds the
great mystery, without first vindicating myself in your esteem, that
impels me to tell you that which I have heretofore thought to keep
secret—that your letter, written in February, 1883, was accidentally
mislaid in an old desk, and was never opened or perused by me until
the day after you became the Baroness Von Eulaw.
Always yours sincerely,
DAVID MORNING.
Murella spread the letter upon the ground and pondered. Plainly it was
not a love letter, as she had expected—almost hoped! for she missed the
ecstasy and exhilaration of that desire for vengeance which is the
stimulus to passion in the breast of any true scion of the Spanish race,
and devoid of which life has little zest.
It might have been written to his grandmother for all she could gather
from its contents, and the thought suggested the duenna, with her cruel
eyes and hard, wrinkled mouth, whose duty it was to watch her from all
points of the compass. So she folded the letter, and, taking up the
picture, again scrutinized it. “Devil! devil! devil!” she broke out, as
she smote the pasteboard with her tiny soft fist. Then, folding it away
with the letter, she slipped them into her pocket, and, gliding around
the ocotilla palings, she entered her apartment through an outer door,
where she resealed the missive, and, summoning the messenger Jose, bade
him forthwith journey to Tucson, and deposit it in the post office
there.
The sun was sinking behind Tehachape Mountains, and its parting rays,
full of the color of leaf and bough, fell brightly upon the prostrate
form of the invalid, and as Murella dropped softly to the ground before
a low window, which opened upon the _ramada_, she parted her muslin
curtains and gazed devouringly upon the well-knit, shapely form, and the
broad-browed, tinted face, while the light faded, and soft voices grew
higher as the family supper hour approached, and tinkling sounds from
mandolin and guitar filled the night with music. Then, taking a last
look, she arose, and, stamping her foot upon the ground, impatiently she
ejaculated:—
“Oh, bah! He too good for anyting.”
She joined the family group at supper with a look of high disdain on her
beautiful face, but otherwise undismayed, and ate her _frijoles_ and
_tortillas_, and scrambled for the whitest _tomales_ among her younger
brothers, very much as if David Morning had overruled his physicians,
and departed for Tucson in an ambulance the day after he was wounded, as
he had once determined to do, instead of having lain there for a month,
drawing first upon her pity, and then upon her fancy, and stirring
things in her imagination generally.
Late in the moon-lit night, the soft summer winds still busy among the
boughs, a sweet girlish voice, melodiously attuned to the notes of the
mandolin, ran through the dreams of David Morning, carrying the
passionful refrain, “Oh, illustrissimo mia,” and he awoke, and still the
sweet refrain, “Oh, illustrissimo mia.”
Several days went by, summer days full of work and growth and promise
outside, and still Morning was unable to leave the Gonzales ranch. His
pulse, which the doctors declared had never regained its normal beat,
was low and intermittent, and the hectic flush never left his cheek. At
length typhoid fever was developed, and for weeks he lay at the verge of
death, and for as many weeks Murella Gonzales sat at his head by day,
and made her bed at the foot of his couch by night. The señora, the
madroña, even the cocoanut brown _machacha_ of all work, each brought
fruit and drink and delicacies to dissuade him from his delirium and
tempt him back to health, but Murella sat always with her graceful head
resting lightly against his pillow, silent, languid, and lovely.
Sometimes the doctors remonstrated and begged her to leave him, but she
only said, “_Mañana, mañana_,” and to-morrow never came. But it proved
to be only a question of time, and before the gray linings of the poplar
had slid into umber, or the pomegranate had gained its full meed of
sweet juices, David Morning was brought a picturesque basket of Indian
workmanship, quite filled with letters which had found him out, calling
him back with the imperative voices of business demands, to take his
place again with the rank and file of affairs.
So the last day came, and Murella, abandoning her customary hammock, sat
all the morning upon a thick rug spread upon the ground, exhibiting her
irritable feeling by nervously tossing the clinging folds of her lace
mantilla back over her shoulder, or tracing the figures of the rug
absently. Morning seemed lost in reverie for a long time; finally he
spoke, evidently a little doubtful where to begin.
“I do not need to tell you, señorita,” said he, “that I feel the
greatest gratitude toward the inmates of this household, and I ask you
to tell me, not what you would wish me to do for you, but what is the
wish most dear to you if I were not in the world?”
“Oh, if Señor Morning die, I shall die too.”
“Oh, no! if some fairy should wave its wand, or some Fortunatus should
drop uncounted gold at your feet, what would you do first?”
The soft eyes of Señorita Gonzales flamed as never eyes of Saxon maiden
burned, and she quickly replied, rising and drawing nearer:—
“I would have a _casa grande_.”
“And where would you have a grand _casa_, here?”
“No, no!” giving her hand a truly Delsarte sweep of motion. “Long time
ago my mother take a me to Yuma, and there I hear much talk about Castle
Dome; it is twenty, thirty miles up the great river Colorado. One time
we sail up there in steam a boat, and such a rancheria—beautiful! Great
trees, and rocks, and the Indians have been show how by the padres long
time ago, and they have beautiful trees of figs, and oranges, and lemon,
and great vines. And I have tink about it always. When I am rich a I
shall drive the Indians away, and give money for make a them not hungry,
and make a _casa_ all like a same in picture.”
“We all have our castles in Spain. Why not you, Murella?” and he drew
forth a pencil, and, spreading paper upon the table, asked her to sit
down.
“Now,” said he, “we will build this fine house upon paper. What shall we
do first?”
“We shall have a dance-house.”
Morning smiled grimly; the mining camps enjoy a monopoly of literary
phrasing, and the compound word was familiar, so he only said, “All
right, a salon for dancing.”
“Si, señor, saloon,” repeated Murella gravely, “and a grande saloon for
beautiful flowers.”
“A conservatory, of course, though that will be superfluous,” he added,
“in a country itself a hotbed for tropic bloom. Why not hanging gardens
like those of Babylon?”
“Oh, beautiful!” clasping her little fingers in ecstasy.
“Very well,” looking into her face, pencil suspended.
“And a beautiful room for a you,” and she paused for a moment, “with,
with what you call, wall like the sky before the sun a come, and morning
glory flower go all around the top,” pointing to the frieze, “a like a
your name, Señor Mia.”
Morning suddenly discovered something upon the toe of his boot, and the
girl struggled on in very bad English, but with charming enthusiasm. She
planned and he interpreted. They first laid out the grounds, availing
themselves of the groves already planted by the Indians. They covered
acres of ground with rare exotics, studding them with statuary in
creamiest marble, chiseled from designs of their own, with a Psyche and
Cupid to guard the main entrance to the park.
“What is that ting she a hold in her hand?”
“That is a torch,” explained Morning. “Psyche is the soul, and Cupid is
love, and she is going in search of him.”
“And did she find a him?” archly questioned the girl.
“I think not,” said Morning, gloomily drawing forth a fresh sheet of
paper.
“And about the _casa grande_,” continued Morning, “of what shall it be
built?”
The señorita rested her pretty chin between her two palms and meditated.
Finally she decided it should be like the cupids, of shining marble,
with agate or onyx for columns, and garnets—found in quantities in
Arizona—for smaller decorations. This most elaborate plan having been at
length crudely completed, Mr. Morning folded it, quietly saying he would
submit it to an architect.
“Not truly?” said the girl, springing to her feet with shining eyes and
hands crossed upon her breast.
“Yes, really and truly, for your own sweet self, and for your hospitable
family; and with my kindest regards and deepest gratitude.”
Murella turned very pale. Dreams were not dreamed to be so realized. Was
he teasing her?
Hitherto her self-love had made her the central figure in her own mind.
All things about her had been dwarfed and become inconsequent in her
egotistic life, because she was wholly ignorant of any possibilities
outside of the power she wielded through her beauty and her grace.
But a new element had been added to her limited experience, and it had
developed into a magician, or had it done so really? The doubt took
momentary possession of her, and she arose in an attitude of defiance,
her flashing eyes resting upon the amused but open countenance of David
Morning.
Then she knew that she looked into the face of her god, and she fled to
her room, and, sinking upon the floor, she covered her face with her
mantilla, and sobbed convulsively.