Marta and Magdalena were sisters. Orphans from early childhood, they
were living wretchedly under the protection of a kinswoman of their
mother,--a kinswoman who had taken them in for charity and who at every
step made them feel, by her taunting and humiliating words, the weight
of their obligation. Everything would seem to tend toward tightening the
knot of love between those two sister souls,--not merely the bond of
blood, but those of poverty and suffering, and yet there existed between
Marta and Magdalena a mute rivalry, a secret antipathy explicable only
by a study of their characters, as utterly contrasted as were their
physical types.
Marta was overbearing, strong in her passions and of a rough directness
in the expression of her feelings; she did not understand either
laughter or tears, and so had never wept nor laughed. Magdalena, on the
other hand, was gentle, affectionate, kind, and more than once had been
seen to laugh and weep together, as children do.
Marta’s eyes were blacker than night and from under her dark lashes
there sometimes seemed to leap fiery sparks as from a burning coal.
The blue eyes of Magdalena appeared to swim in liquid light behind the
golden curve of her blond lashes. And everything in them was in keeping
with the different expression of their eyes. Marta, thin, pale, tall,
stiff of movement, her dark, crisp hair shading her brow and falling
upon her shoulders like a velvet mantle, formed a singular contrast to
Magdalena, white and pink, _petite_, with the rounded face and figure of
babyhood, and with golden tresses encircling her temples like the gilded
halo about the head of an angel.
Despite the inexplicable repulsion which each felt for the other, the
two sisters had lived up to this time on terms of indifference that
might have been mistaken for peace and affection; there had been no
caresses to quarrel over, nor partialities to envy; equal in misfortune
and affliction, Marta, withdrawn into herself, had borne her troubles in
a proud, self-centered silence; and Magdalena, finding no response in
her sister’s heart, would weep alone when the tears involuntarily rushed
into her eyes.
They had not a sentiment in common; they never confided to one another
their joys and griefs, and yet the only secret which each had striven to
hide in the depths of her soul had been divined by the other with the
marvelous instinct of love and jealousy. Marta and Magdalena had in fact
set their hearts on one and the same man.
The passion of the one was a stubborn desire, born of a wilful and
indomitable character; in the other, love was manifest in that vague,
spontaneous tenderness of youth, which, needing an object on which to
spend itself, takes the first that comes. Both guarded the secret of
their love, for the man who had inspired it would perchance have made
mock of a devotion which could be interpreted as an absurd ambition in
penniless girls of lowly birth. Both, despite the distance which
separated them from their idol, cherished a faint hope of winning him.
Hard by the village, and above a height which dominated the country
round about, there was an ancient castle abandoned by its owners. The
old women, in their evening gossips, would relate a marvellous story
about its founders. They told how the King of Aragon, finding himself at
war with his enemies, his resources exhausted, forsaken by his allies
and on the point of losing the throne, was sought out one day by a
shepherdess of those parts, who, after revealing to him the existence of
certain subterranean passages by means of which he could go through the
Moncayo without being perceived by his enemies, gave him a treasure in
fine pearls, precious stones of the richest, and bars of gold and
silver; with these the king paid his troops, raised a mighty army and,
marching beneath the earth one whole night long, fell the next day upon
his adversaries and routed them, establishing the crown securely on his
head.
After he had won so distinguished a victory, the story goes that the
king said to the shepherdess: “Ask of me what thou wilt, and even though
it be the half of my kingdom, I swear I will give it thee on the
instant.”
“I wish no more than to go back to the keeping of my flock,” replied
the shepherdess. “Thou shalt keep only my frontiers,” rejoined the king,
and he gave her lordship over all the boundary, and bade her build a
stronghold in the town nearest the borders of Castile; here dwelt the
shepherdess, married to one of the king’s favorites, a husband noble,
gallant, valiant and, as well, lord over many fortresses and many fiefs.
The astonishing account given by Uncle Gregorio of the Moncayo gnomes,
whose secret haunt was in the village fountain, set soaring anew the
wild dreams of the two enamored sisters, for it formed a sequel, so to
speak, to the hitherto unexplained tradition of the treasure found by
the fabled shepherdess--treasure whose remembered gleam had troubled
more than once their wakeful, embittered nights, flashing before their
imaginations like a fragile ray of hope.
The evening following their afternoon meeting with Uncle Gregorio, all
the other girls of the village chatted in their homes about the
wonderful story he had told them. Marta and Magdalena preserved an
unbroken silence, and neither that evening, nor throughout the following
day, did they exchange a single word on this matter, the theme of all
the talk throughout the hamlet and text of all the neighbors’
commentaries.
At the usual hour, Magdalena took her water-jar and said to her sister:
“Shall we go to the fountain?” Marta did not answer, and Magdalena said
again: “Shall we go to the fountain? If we do not hurry, the sun will
have set before we are back.” Marta finally replied shortly and roughly:
“I don’t care about going to-day.” “Neither do I,” rejoined Magdalena
after an instant of silence during which she kept her eyes fastened on
those of her sister, as if she would read in them the cause of her
resolution.