I.

Carmen found that her little pet had been taught how to pray; for each

night and morning when the devout woman began to make her orisons, the

child would kneel beside her, with little hands joined, and in a voice

sweet and clear murmur something she had learned by heart. Much as

this pleased Carmen, it seemed to her that the child's prayers could

not be wholly valid unless uttered in Spanish;--for Spanish was

heaven's own tongue,--la lengua de Dios, el idioma de Dios; and she

resolved to teach her to say the Salve Maria and the Padre Nuestro in

Castilian--also, her own favorite prayer to the Virgin, beginning with

the words, "Madre santisima, toda dulce y hermosa." . . .

So Conchita--for a new name had been given to her with that terrible

sea christening--received her first lessons in Spanish; and she proved

a most intelligent pupil. Before long she could prattle to Feliu;--she

would watch for his return of evenings, and announce his coming with

"Aqui viene mi papacito?"--she learned, too, from Carmen, many little

caresses of speech to greet him with. Feliu's was not a joyous nature;

he had his dark hours, his sombre days; yet it was rarely that he felt

too sullen to yield to the little one's petting, when she would leap up

to reach his neck and to coax his kiss, with--"Dame un beso,

papa!--asi;--y otro! otro! otro!" He grew to love her like his

own;--was she not indeed his own, since he had won her from death? And

none had yet come to dispute his claim. More and more, with the

passing of weeks, months, seasons, she became a portion of his life--a

part of all that he wrought for. At the first, he had had a

half-formed hope that the little one might be reclaimed by relatives

generous and rich enough to insist upon his acceptance of a handsome

compensation; and that Carmen could find some solace in a pleasant

visit to Barceloneta. But now he felt that no possible generosity

could requite him for her loss; and with the unconscious selfishness of

affection, he commenced to dread her identification as a great calamity.

It was evident that she had been brought up nicely. She had pretty

prim ways of drinking and eating, queer little fashions of sitting in

company, and of addressing people. She had peculiar notions about

colors in dress, about wearing her hair; and she seemed to have already

imbibed a small stock of social prejudices not altogether in harmony

with the republicanism of Viosca's Point. Occasional swarthy

visitors,--men of the Manilla settlements,--she spoke of contemptuously

as negues-marrons; and once she shocked Carmen inexpressibly by

stopping in the middle of her evening prayer, declaring that she wanted

to say her prayers to a white Virgin; Carmen's Senora de Guadalupe was

only a negra! Then, for the first time, Carmen spoke so crossly to the

child as to frighten her. But the pious woman's heart smote her the

next moment for that first harsh word;--and she caressed the motherless

one, consoled her, cheered her, and at last explained to her--I know

not how--something very wonderful about the little figurine, something

that made Chita's eyes big with awe. Thereafter she always regarded

the Virgin of Wax as an object mysterious and holy.

And, one by one, most of Chita's little eccentricities were gradually

eliminated from her developing life and thought. More rapidly than

ordinary children, because singularly intelligent, she learned to adapt

herself to all the changes of her new environment,--retaining only that

indescribable something which to an experienced eye tells of hereditary

refinement of habit and of mind:--a natural grace, a thorough-bred ease

and elegance of movement, a quickness and delicacy of perception.

She became strong again and active--active enough to play a great deal

on the beach, when the sun was not too fierce; and Carmen made a canvas

bonnet to shield her head and face. Never had she been allowed to play

so much in the sun before; and it seemed to do her good, though her

little bare feet and hands became brown as copper. At first, it must

be confessed, she worried her foster-mother a great deal by various

queer misfortunes and extraordinary freaks;--getting bitten by crabs,

falling into the bayou while in pursuit of "fiddlers," or losing

herself at the conclusion of desperate efforts to run races at night

with the moon, or to walk to the "end of the world." If she could only

once get to the edge of the sky, she said, she "could climb up." She

wanted to see the stars, which were the souls of good little children;

and she knew that God would let her climb up. "Just what I am afraid

of!"--thought Carmen to herself;--"He might let her climb up,--a little

ghost!" But one day naughty Chita received a terrible lesson,--a

lasting lesson,--which taught her the value of obedience.

She had been particularly cautioned not to venture into a certain part

of the swamp in the rear of the grove, where the weeds were very tall;

for Carmen was afraid some snake might bite the child.

But Chita's bird-bright eye had discerned a gleam of white in that

direction; and she wanted to know what it was. The white could only be

seen from one point, behind the furthest house, where the ground was

high. "Never go there," said Carmen; "there is a Dead Man there,--will

bite you!" And yet, one day, while Carmen was unusually busy, Chita

went there.

In the early days of the settlement, a Spanish fisherman had died; and

his comrades had built him a little tomb with the surplus of the same

bricks and other material brought down the bayou for the construction

of Viosca's cottages. But no one, except perhaps some wandering duck

hunter, had approached the sepulchre for years. High weeds and grasses

wrestled together all about it, and rendered it totally invisible from

the surrounding level of the marsh.

Fiddlers swarmed away as Chita advanced over the moist soil, each

uplifting its single huge claw as it sidled off;--then frogs began to

leap before her as she reached the thicker grass;--and long-legged

brown insects sprang showering to right and left as she parted the

tufts of the thickening verdure. As she went on, the bitter-weeds

disappeared;--jointed grasses and sinewy dark plants of a taller growth

rose above her head: she was almost deafened by the storm of insect

shrilling, and the mosquitoes became very wicked. All at once

something long and black and heavy wriggled almost from under her naked

feet,--squirming so horribly that for a minute or two she could not

move for fright. But it slunk away somewhere, and hid itself; the weeds

it had shaken ceased to tremble in its wake; and her courage returned.

She felt such an exquisite and fearful pleasure in the gratification of

that naughty curiosity! Then, quite unexpectedly--oh! what a start it

gave her!--the solitary white object burst upon her view, leprous and

ghastly as the yawn of a cotton-mouth. Tombs ruin soon in

Louisiana;--the one Chita looked upon seemed ready to topple down.

There was a great ragged hole at one end, where wind and rain, and

perhaps also the burrowing of crawfish and of worms, had loosened the

bricks, and caused them to slide out of place. It seemed very black

inside; but Chita wanted to know what was there. She pushed her way

through a gap in the thin and rotten line of pickets, and through some

tall weeds with big coarse pink flowers;--then she crouched down on

hands and knees before the black hole, and peered in. It was not so

black inside as she had thought; for a sunbeam slanted down through a

chink in the roof; and she could see!

A brown head--without hair, without eyes, but with teeth, ever so many

teeth!--seemed to laugh at her; and close to it sat a Toad, the hugest

she had ever seen; and the white skin of his throat kept puffing out

and going in. And Chita screamed and screamed, and fled in wild

terror,--screaming all the way, till Carmen ran out to meet her and

carry her home. Even when safe in her adopted mother's arms, she

sobbed with fright. To the vivid fancy of the child there seemed to be

some hideous relation between the staring reptile and the brown

death's-head, with its empty eyes, and its nightmare-smile.

The shock brought on a fever,--a fever that lasted several days, and

left her very weak. But the experience taught her to obey, taught her

that Carmen knew best what was for her good. It also caused her to

think a great deal. Carmen had told her that the dead people never

frightened good little girls who stayed at home.

--"Madrecita Carmen," she asked, "is my mamma dead?"

--"Pobrecita! .... Yes, my angel. God called her to Him,--your darling

mother."

--"Madrecita," she asked again,--her young eyes growing vast with

horror,--"is my own mamma now like That?" ... She pointed toward the

place of the white gleam, behind the great trees.

--"No, no, no! my darling!" cried Carmen, appalled herself by the

ghastly question,--"your mamma is with the dear, good, loving God, who

lives in the beautiful sky, above the clouds, my darling, beyond the

sun!"

But Carmen's kind eyes were full of tears; and the child read their

meaning. He who teareth off the Mask of the Flesh had looked into her

face one unutterable moment:--she had seen the brutal Truth, naked to

the bone!

Yet there came to her a little thrill of consolation, caused by the

words of the tender falsehood; for that which she had discerned by day

could not explain to her that which she saw almost nightly in her

slumber. The face, the voice, the form of her loving mother still

lived somewhere,--could not have utterly passed away; since the sweet

presence came to her in dreams, bending and smiling over her, caressing

her, speaking to her,--sometimes gently chiding, but always chiding

with a kiss. And then the child would laugh in her sleep, and prattle

in Creole,--talking to the luminous shadow, telling the dead mother all

the little deeds and thoughts of the day.... Why would God only let her

come at night?

... Her idea of God had been first defined by the sight of a quaint

French picture of the Creation,--an engraving which represented a

shoreless sea under a black sky, and out of the blackness a solemn and

bearded gray head emerging, and a cloudy hand through which stars

glimmered. God was like old Doctor de Coulanges, who used to visit the

house, and talk in a voice like a low roll of thunder.... At a later

day, when Chita had been told that God was "everywhere at the same time

"--without and within, beneath and above all things,--this idea became

somewhat changed. The awful bearded face, the huge shadowy hand, did

not fade from her thought; but they became fantastically blended with

the larger and vaguer notion of something that filled the world and

reached to the stars,--something diaphanous and incomprehensible like

the invisible air, omnipresent and everlasting like the high blue of

heaven ....