Part 11
Though Chinita as was usual was made the scapegoat for Chata’s fault,—Doña Rita averring that the girl possessed an irresistible power for evil over her own innocent children,—Chata on this occasion felt herself most heavily punished, for Don Rafael strengthened his wife’s fiat against the dangerous temptress, the gate-keeper’s child, by absolutely prohibiting her entrance to his house. Chata wept for her playmate, and for many days Rosario moped and sulked; while Chinita hung disconsolate—as the Peri at the gate of Paradise—about the entrance to the court, finding small solace in the young fawn Pepé had given her, though she twined her arms around it and held its head against her bosom, that its large pensive eyes might seem to join in the appeal of her own. And perhaps the two aided by time and Chata’s grief might have conquered; but there was a sudden interruption of the quiet course of life at Tres Hermanos.
One day Chinita found the whole house open to her; there was no one there either to welcome or repulse her save Doña Feliz. Don Rafael, with his wife and children, had obeyed a sudden call, and had hastened to the dying bed of Doña Rita’s mother. For the first time in her life Chata had left the hacienda. Rosario had twice before gone with her mother to visit relatives, but for various reasons Chata had remained at home. Doña Rita seemed half inclined to leave her at this time also; but Don Rafael cut the matter short by ordering her few necessaries to be packed, and in a flutter of excitement, perhaps heightened by the frown upon her mother’s face, Chata took her seat in the carriage that was to bear her far beyond the circle of hills which had heretofore bounded her vision.
What a pall seemed to fall upon the place when they were all gone! First, a great stillness pervaded the court and corridors where the children’s voices were wont to ring; and then hollow, ghostly noises woke the echoes. A second court was now opened which long had been closed, though the fountains played there, and the flower-pots were all rich with bloom. The doors of rooms which before at best had been only left ajar were opened wide; and Doña Feliz, with a few of her most trusty servants, swept out the long accumulated dust, and let the light stream in upon the disused furniture. Chinita had caught glimpses of these things before, indistinct, uncertain, as though they were far memories of a past existence. She and Chata had often talked of them in days when they played at being grand ladies, and in imagination they were rich and beautiful; but when she actually stood in the broad sunshine, and saw the gilt and varnish, the variegated stuffs and great mirrors, the reality seemed a dream, from which she feared to waken. For all these material things appealed to something in the child’s nature which it appeared impossible she should have inherited from a long line of plebeian ancestors,—a something that was not a mere gaping admiration for what was bright and beautiful and dazzling by its very height of separation from the poor possibilities of her life, but which one would say had sprung directly from the influences of lavish splendor. There was an impulse toward appropriation and enjoyment in the actual touch of these attributes of an aristocratic life, an instinctive knowledge of the uses of things she had never before seen or heard of, which seemed to come as naturally into her mind as would the art of swimming to a duckling that had passed its first days in the coop with its foster-mother the hen. Nothing surprised her, and the delight she felt was not merely that of novelty, but that of the satisfaction of a long-felt want. Doña Feliz had not forbidden her entrance when she first saw her at the door of Doña Isabel’s apartment, but watched her with grave surprise as she wandered through the long rooms, sometimes picking up a fan, a hand-glass, a cup, and unconsciously assuming the very air and walk of a grand lady,—an air so natural that even in her tattered red skirt it never for a moment made her appear grotesque.
Don Rafael returned home in the midst of the work of renovation. He had left his family with the dying mother, forced to return by the exigencies of business,—but ill pleased to leave them, for the roads were full of bandits, and the country was infested with wandering bands, as dangerous in their professed military character as the openly avowed robbers. They enjoyed immunity in all their depredations and deeds of violence, because they were committed under the standard of the Governor of the State, José Ramirez,—for to his _rôle_ of military chieftain the adventurer had added that of politician. In this _rôle_ he had hastened the tottering fortunes of President Comonfort to their fall, by seizing in his name a large sum of money belonging to foreign merchants, and with it buying over the troops under his command,—first to declare him military governor, and then to join with enthusiasm the clerical forces, which sprang into being as if by magic, bringing with them money in plenty, and gay uniforms, which put to shame the rags which the Liberals wore and which the resources of the legitimate government were insufficient to replace with more attractive garb. For months the name of José Ramirez had rung through the land in alternate shouts of triumph and joy and howls of execration. The prison doors had been thrown open, and hundreds of convicts had joined his ranks, ready to die for the man who had set them free,—not for gratitude, but in an excess of admiration for a spirit more lawless, more daring, than their own.
Chinita used to stand half aloof, and listen to these things, as wild rumors of them reached the hacienda, a burning pride glowing in her heart as she heard of deeds that made men tremble and stand aghast; and in imagination she saw the tall dark man whom she had made her hero riding through the streets in the full panoply of military splendor, followed by a train of mounted soldiers as gorgeous as himself,—then the blaring band, the gay foot soldiers shouting his name, and that terrible battle-cry of “Religion y Fueros,” in which so many infernal deeds were done; and last of all a multitude of half-clad men, women, and boys and girls like herself in ragged garments, not hungry nor wretched, though with all the grime and squalor of poverty upon them. She loathed them in her heart, though she did not consciously separate herself from their kind; but often ran to the covert of the tall corn, or the shade of some tree, and sat down and drew her reboso over her head, laughing softly and breathlessly, for had she not given this man the amulet which gave him a charmed life? Sometimes she heard of attacks made upon him,—how bullets had gone crashing through his carriage windows, how in the very streets of the city, as well as on the battle-field, his horses had been shot under him; but he had never once been hurt. She was a ragged, barefoot girl, but here was something which in her own eyes enwrapped her as with velvet and ermine,—the belief that she had some part in that dazzling career that attracted the gaze, the wonder, the terror of what was to her mind the whole wide world.
Through those hot summer days Pedro saw little of his foster child; and sometimes when he did see her, she would pass by as if he were nothing to her, or would shudder sometimes when he laid his hand with gentle violence upon her arm, and forced her in from the glaring sunshine, in which she often wandered for hours, unconscious of the heat which was burning her skin browner and browner, but painting roses on her cheeks, and filling her eyes with light; and sometimes she would come softly up behind him and throw the brown tangle of her hair over his eyes, almost smothering him in the golden crispness of its ruddy ends, and kiss him wildly between his bushy eyebrows, calling herself his wicked Chinita, his naughty child, until he would draw her on his knee and wipe away her streaming tears with the tenderness but none of the familiarity of a parent, and while he did so, sigh and sigh again, and wonder what these wild moods would lead to.
When Doña Feliz began the renovation of the family apartments Pedro stole in there one day when she chanced to be quite alone, and asked if it was true that Doña Isabel would soon return; it was many years—yes, twelve and more—since she had left them; and the _niña_ Carmen, was it true that she was married? And the Señorita Herlinda? “Was it quite certain,” and his voice grew low,—“was it quite certain she was in a convent?”
“Did not Don Vicente tell you that?” queried Doña Feliz; “and his sad looks, did they not tell you? Ah, unhappy girl, where should she be but in a convent? Where else in the world should she hide, who was so at feud with life?” She started, remembering herself; but Pedro was looking at her with impassive stolidity. “Yes, yes,” she continued impatiently, “she has chosen her path; she has left the world forever.”
“But they say,” droned Pedro, monotonously, “that the convents will be opened and all the nuns be made free when the Señor Juarez takes his turn to rule. They say the day he enters the palace the dead men’s hands will open, and all their riches escape from their grasp. The silver and gold will be taken from the altars and given to the poor, and the monasteries and nunneries be pulled down, that the people may build their houses with the stones.”
Doña Feliz laughed. It was not often any sound of merriment passed her lips, and then not in scorn. “Dreams, dreams, Pedro!” she said. “Are you as foolish as the rest, and think the new law would give all the poor wealth, or even the despoiled their own? Do you think Juarez himself believes it? No, no! he is a sly fox; and while the Church and Comonfort were the lion and bear struggling over the carcass, he strives to glide in and steal the flesh. Do you think he will divide it among you hungry ones? No! these politicians are all alike, and whether with the cry of religion or liberty, fight and plot only for their own aggrandizement, and the poor country is forgotten, as it is drenched by the blood of her sons. There is not one true patriot in all this distracted land.”
She spoke rather to herself than Pedro, who shook his head with a sort of grim obstinacy. “I am thinking to go away, Doña Feliz,” he said. “You know the Señor Juarez is at liberty, and there will be bloody days soon if Zuloaga does not yield him his rightful place in Mexico. I have a mind to see a few of them. You know I was a good soldier in Santa Anna’s time, and as I sit in the gate I hear the sound of the cannon and the rattle of musketry and the voice of my old commander Gonzales, only it comes now from the lips of his son; and I feel I must go.”
Doña Feliz looked at him steadily. She knew her countryman well, and though she doubted not that something of the martial spirit of the time was stirring within him, she was equally certain that a second and more potent reason was prompting Pedro to leave Tres Hermanos; but she only said,—
“Then you wish to join Vicente Gonzales? They say he, with all his band, has thrown his fortunes in with those of Juarez. Well, well, perhaps anything was better than that he should be linked with Ramirez. If Vicente is a traitor, it is at least with a noble aim, not for mere plunder. There was something strange, forbidding, terrible, about that man Ramirez. Did you notice his face, Pedro, when he was here?”
Pedro shook his head, returning with pertinacity to his own plans. “You will talk to Don Rafael for me, will you not, Señora?” he said, with a trace of the abject whine in his tone that marked the habit of serfdom, which a few years of nominal freedom had done little to alter, “and with your good leave I will go, and take Chinita with me.” He spoke hesitatingly, as though fearful his right would be disputed.
“Take Chinita!” exclaimed Doña Feliz. “What, to a soldiers’ camp, to her ruin! You are mad, Pedro. No, she shall remain here with me. I will take her into the house. I will teach her to sew. She shall be my child rather than my servant! I—” she stopped in extreme agitation, for within the doorway the child stood.
“I will be no one’s servant!” she said, proudly drawing herself up; “and as to going to the Indian’s camp—ah, I know a better place than that,” and she nodded her head significantly. “You shall leave me, Father Pedro, with your Doña Isabel!”
Doña Feliz and Pedro started as if they had been shot.
“I came to tell you she is coming,” continued the child. “I was out beyond the granaries, letting my fawn browse on the little hill, and as I was looking toward the gorge I saw a horseman coming, and far behind him was a carriage and many men. Is all ready?” and she glanced around her with the air of a prophetess. “Hark! the courier is in the court now. Doña Isabel will not be long behind him.”
Pedro hastened from the room with an exclamation of alarmed amazement. “Go, go!” cried Feliz. “You are too late!” for she knew in her heart that it was in very fear of this visit, and to remove the child from the chance of encountering Doña Isabel, that Pedro had proposed to leave the hacienda; and here was Doña Isabel herself,—for strangely enough, neither of them doubted that what the child had assumed was true. The thoughts of Doña Feliz were inexplicable even to herself. She felt as though she was placed in some vast and gloomy theatre, with the curtain about to rise upon some strange play, which at the will of the actors might become either comedy or tragedy. Though of late she had felt certain that Doña Isabel would return to the hacienda, that very act seemed dramatic, the precursor of inevitable complications.
“Why could she not be content in the new life she had chosen?” muttered Doña Feliz. “What voice has been sounding in her ears, to call her back to resurrect old griefs, to walk among the spectres of long-silent agonies and shame? Foolish, foolish woman! Yet as the magnet attracts iron, so thy hard heart is drawn by these bitter remembrances. Go, go! thou child!” she exclaimed aloud, and almost angrily. “Doña Isabel would be vexed to see thee in her room. Go, and keep thee out of her way!” She gazed after Chinita with a look of perplexity and pain, as with a bound of irresistible excitement the girl sprang out upon the corridor, her laugh rising through the still air as if in notes of defiance. “What said the child?” muttered Doña Feliz. “‘Leave me with your Doña Isabel’?”
XVII.
From the city of Guanapila to the hacienda of Tres Hermanos the road runs almost continually through mountain defiles, where on either hand the great masses of bare rocks rise so precipitously that it seems impossible that man or beast should scale them; and here, where Nature’s aspect is most terrible, man is least to be feared. But there are intervals where broad flat ledges hang above the roadway, or where it crosses plateaus shaded by scrub-oak or mesquite and even grassy dells, where after the rains water may be found, offering charming camping-grounds during the noon-tide heat; and precisely at such places the anxious traveller has need to look to his weapons, and picket his horses and mules in such order that no sudden attack may cause a stampede among them, and that they may, if need offer, form a barricade for their defenders. In those lawless times few persons ventured forth without a military escort, and if possible sought additional security by accompanying the baggage trains which by arrangement with the party for the moment in power enjoyed immunity from attack by roving bands of soldiery, and were too formidable to be successfully assailed by the ordinary cliques of highwaymen. Seldom indeed was there found a person so reckless as to venture forth attended only by the escort his own house afforded; and daring indeed was the woman who would undertake a two days’ journey in such a manner. The least she might expect would be to find her protectors dispersed, perhaps slain, and herself a captive,—held for an exorbitant ransom, and subjected to the hardships of life in the remote recesses of the mountains, and to indignities the very report of which might daunt the most reckless or the bravest.
Yet in spite of all this, a carriage containing a lady and her maid—for such were their relative positions, though both were alike dressed in plain black gowns and the common blue reboso—entered in the early afternoon of a summer’s day the narrow gorge that led by circuitous windings through the rocks to the great gorge that formed the entrance to the wide valley of Tres Hermanos, whose entire extent offered to the eye the wondrous fruitfulness so rich and varied in itself, so startling in contrast to the desolation passed to reach it.
The midday halt had been a short one, for it was the rainy season, and progress was necessarily slow over the swollen watercourses and the obstructions of accumulated sands and pebbles, the masses of cactus and branches of trees and shrubs, which had been brought down by recent storms. At times it seemed impossible that the carriage, although drawn by four stout mules, could proceed, and from time to time the servant looked anxiously through the window. But the mistress was equal to all emergencies, herself giving directions to the perplexed driver and his assistant, and though she had been travelling for more than two days over a road usually easily passed in one, allowing no sign or word of weariness or impatience to escape her.
But this carriage and its occupants would have appeared to a passer-by the least important factor in the caravan of which it formed a part; for it was encircled and almost concealed by a band of mounted men, clad in suits of brownish leather, glimpses of the red waist-band glistening with knives and pistols showing from beneath their striped blankets, long knives and lassos hanging at their saddle-bows, rifles in their sinewy right hands, while from beneath their wide hats their keen eyes investigated sharply every jutting rock and peered into the distance with an air of half-defiant, half-fearful expectancy,—for these were men taken from her own estate, who idle retainers as they had been in her great bare house in the city where Doña Isabel Garcia had lived for years in melancholy state, thrilled with clannish fidelity to their mistress and passionate love for their _tierra_ to which they were returning, and with that vague delight in the possibility of a fight which arouses in man both chivalrous and brutish daring, as the smell of blood arouses the love of slaughter in the tamest beast.
In front of these rode the conductor of the party clad in a half-military fashion, as became the character he had earned for eccentric daring, the reputation of which perhaps more than actual bravery made him eminently successful in guiding safely the party wise or rich enough to secure his escort. This man was known as Tio Reyes, though his appearance did not justify the honorary title of Uncle, for he was still in the prime of life; but it was applied to him in tones of jesting yet affectionate respect by his followers who had joined the party with him, and adopted by the others to whom he was a stranger,—for at the last moment he had appeared just as they were leaving Guanapila, and with a brief word to the mistress, to which in much surprise and some annoyance she had agreed, had placed himself at their head.
In the rear of those we have described came four or five mules laden with provisions, necessaries for camping, and some private baggage; these were driven by _arrieros_ who ran at their sides, for the travelling pace of horses did not exceed that of those trained runners.
The journey, wearisome as it had proved, had so far been made without alarms, and upon nearing the boundaries of Tres Hermanos much of the anxiety though none of the vigilance of the escort subsided; when suddenly upon the glaring sunshine of the day, all the hotter and clearer from the recent rains, rose in the distance a sort of mist, which filled the narrow road and blurred the outline of the towering rocks. The guide paused for a moment and glanced back at the escort. Each hand grasped tighter the ready rifle; at a word the carriage was stopped, the baggage mules were driven up and enclosed within the square hastily formed by the armed men,—for upon that clear day, after the rains, the tramp of many feet was requisite to raise that cloud of dust, and these precautions were but prudent, whether the advancing troop were friends or foes.
Tio Reyes, after disposing his force to his satisfaction, rode forward with his lieutenant to meet the advancing host, which in those few moments seemed to fill the entire range of vision, though at first with confusing indistinctness, as did the sounds that came echoing from rock to rock. The cries of men rose hoarsely above a deep and rumbling undertone, which resolved itself at last into the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep,—harmless and terrified wayfarers, but driven and preceded by a troop of undisciplined soldiery, ripe for deeds more tragic than the plunder of vaqueros and shepherds, who would be more likely wisely to seek shelter in the crevices of the rocks than to defy numbers before whom they were helpless.
“Señora of my soul!” cried the servant, catching a word from one of the men, “we are lost! Virgin of Succors, pray for us! These are some of the men of his Excellency the Governor, and you know they stop at nothing. Ah, what a chance to gain money is this! Once in the mountains what may they not demand for you? _Ave Maria Sanctissima!_ Ah, Señora, if you would but have listened to the Señorita! to me!”
“Silence!” said the lady, in a tone as of one unused to hear her actions commented upon. “Silence! thou wilt be safe. If we are captured, thou wilt not be a prize worth retaining; it will be easy to induce them to take thee to Guanapila, and obtain a reward from my cousin, Don Hernando.”
“No, no!” cried the woman, brought to her senses by this quiet scorn and the startling proposition of her mistress. “Could I leave your grace? No, no! imprisonment, starvation, even to be made the wife of one of those bandits!” and a faint smile curled the damsel’s lip, for she was not ugly, and knew something of the gallantries of Ramirez’s followers,—“anything rather than desert my lady! Ay, my life! whom have we here?”
It was Tio Reyes undoubtedly, and with him was a military stranger, a gallant young fellow, and handsome, though his hands and face were covered with dust, and something like a large blood-stain defaced the breast of his blue coat. “Pardon, Señora,” he exclaimed, bowing most obsequiously and removing his wide hat, disclosing a young and vivacious countenance, “I am Rodrigo Alva, your servant, who kisses your feet, captain of this troop of horse, of the forces of his Excellency Don José Ramirez, Governor of Guanapila.”
“And I am the Señora Doña Isabel Garcia de Garcia,” responded the lady, with dignified recognition of the young man’s courteous self-introduction; “and as I am unaware of any cause for detention, I beg to be permitted to proceed toward my hacienda, which I desire to reach before night closes in.”
“It is not my desire to molest ladies,” said the captain, gallantly; “and I have besides received express orders to defend your passage and facilitate it in every way.”
“I have no acquaintance with Señor Ramirez,” said Doña Isabel in surprise; “yet more than once have I been indebted to his courtesy,” and she glanced at Tio Reyes. “He it was who sent me this worthy guide. I know not why the Señor Ramirez takes such interest in my personal safety, especially as we are politically opposed;” and she added with a daring which had somewhat of girlish archness, strange from the lips of Doña Isabel, “he has not the name of a man given to gallantries.”