Part 16
Gregorio Garcia knew so well the peculiar ideas of honor among bandits as well as the spirit of his countrymen that perhaps he was assured that no immediate risk would follow this proclamation. The word “vengeance” rang from cliff to cliff, yet the bandits only smiled mockingly and bowed, waving a hand in token of farewell, as with what haste he might he withdrew. A turn in the gorge soon hid them from his sight, and staggering through the darkness, he hastened on with his precious burden, feeling that Norberto had fainted in his aims.
It was near midnight when Don Gregorio reached the hacienda, and needless is it to attempt to describe the joy of the mother at sight of her child, though Norberto, after one faint cry of recognition, laid his head upon her breast with a long shuddering sigh, which warned her that his strength and courage had been so overtaxed that they were, perhaps, destroyed forever.
As days passed, it seemed evident that the mind of the boy was suffering from the shock. The male relatives who during the absence of Don Gregorio had mostly dispersed to find, manlike, some distraction a-field, returned one by one to embrace him; but he turned from each with unreasoning fear and aversion, unable to distinguish between them and the strangers in whose hands he had been held a prisoner. At some of them he gazed as if fascinated, especially at his Uncle Leon; and when by any chance the latter touched him he would burst into agonizing wails, which ceased only when his father held him closely in his arms, whispering words of affection and encouragement.
Before many days it became evident that Norberto was dying. There was a constant, low, shuddering cry upon his lips, “He will kill me!—he will kill me if I tell!” and the horrified father and mother became convinced that Norberto knew at least one of his captors, and that deadly fear alone prevented him from uttering the name. They entreated him in vain; and one night the end of the tortured life drew near, and Norberto’s wailing cry was still.
The family was alone, except for the presence of Leon Vallé and a young cousin, Doctor Genaro Calderon, one of the numerous family connections; and those, with the Padre Francisco and Doña Feliz, were gathered around the bed of the dying child. The father in an agony of grief and vengeful despair stood at the head, and Doña Isabel, ghostlike and haggard from her long suspense and watching, was on her knees at the side, her eyes fixed upon the face of the child, when suddenly he opened his eyes in a wild stare upon Leon Vallé, who stood near the foot of the bed, and faintly, slowly articulated the same agonizing cry, “He will kill me if I tell!”
At that moment, as if by an irresistible impulse, Leon stretched out his hand and placed a finger on the lips of the dying boy. The eyes of Don Gregorio followed it; and then like a thunderbolt hurled through space he threw himself upon his brother-in-law, grappling his throat with a deathlike grasp. He had recognized the bruise upon the second finger of the white hand,—he had recognized the very hand. Recalled to life by the excitement of the moment, Norberto started up and exclaimed in a loud shrill voice, “Take him away! He cut my hair with his bloody knife! Oh, Uncle Leon, will you kill me?” and fell back in the death agony,—the agony that only the priest witnessed, for even Isabel turned to the mortal combat waged between her husband and her brother.
Don Gregorio was unarmed, but Leon had managed to draw a knife from his belt. The murderous dagger was poised for a blow, when a woman rushed between the combatants; Don Gregorio was flung bleeding upon the bed, Doña Feliz hurled into a corner of the apartment the dagger which she had grasped with her naked hand, and Leon Vallé rushed like a madman from the room. Before he could escape, however, he was seized, pinioned, and thrust like a wild beast into one of the solid stone rooms of the building. Don Gregorio was held by main force from accomplishing his purpose of taking the life of the unnatural bandit ere the bolts were shot upon him. He however gave immediate orders that messengers be despatched in quest of police; but by some misapprehension or intentional delay on the part of the administrador these messengers were detained till dawn, and just as they were about to set forth, a cry went through the house that the prisoner had escaped.
Gregorio Garcia rushed to the room, glanced in with wild, bloodshot eyes, and then with unrestrainable fury, sought out his wife, and grasping her arm cried in a voice as full of horror as of rage, “Traitress! You have set free the murderer of your child!”
She threw herself on her knees at his feet,—he never knew with what purpose, whether to confess her weakness or declare her innocence,—for Doña Feliz cast herself between them.
“It was I who set him free!” she exclaimed. “I love the Garcias too well to suffer them to be made a mockery of by the false mercy of such laws as ours. Think you the idol of the bandits would be sacrificed for such a trifle as a child’s life? And you, Gregorio Garcia, would you, this fury passed, avenge your injuries in the blood of your wife’s brother, robber and murderer though he be? Leon has sworn to me to hide himself forever from the family he has disgraced, under another name in another land. He has the brand of Cain upon his brow,—God will surely bring his doom upon him!”
Doña Feliz spoke like a prophetess. The superb assurance upon which she had acted, setting aside all rights of man and relegating vengeance to the Lord, did more to reconcile Don Gregorio to the escape of his enemy than all further reflection, decisive though it was in convincing him that in the disordered and anarchical state of the country, the laws would have shielded rather than punished an offender so popular as was Leon Vallé. There was perhaps, too, a comfort in the hidden hope of personal vengeance with which he waited long months to learn the retreat of the man who had done him such foul wrong.
Meanwhile the exact facts of the case were never known abroad; and when at last it was rumored that Leon Vallé had been shot by a rival guerilla chief and hung to a tree placarded as a traitor and robber, there were few to doubt the story, or to make more than a passing comment on the hard necessities of war. There seemed so much poetic justice in it, that Gregorio Garcia, who was near the end of the disease contracted through exposure and mental agony, did not for a moment doubt it, and died almost content. Indeed, the circumstances were so minutely detailed by a servant who had followed Leon in his adventurous career and who dared to face the family in order to prove the death, that even Doña Isabel herself did not question it until long months afterward, when a petty scandal stole through the land. The lady of San Lazaro had disappeared,—whether of her own free will, whether in madness she had strayed, or whether she had been kidnapped, none could conjecture. No demand for ransom came, no tidings were ever heard of the peerlessly beautiful Dolores.
It was after that time that Doña Isabel began to demand tidings of all who came to her door, and a suspicion entered her mind which became a certainty upon the night our story opened, but which no subsequent event had tended to confirm during the years that had passed since then.
This brief relation may serve to explain the strange emotions and experiences that made Doña Isabel what her full womanhood found her, and which with other events of her later life rendered possible and natural the bitter suspense and fear that held her the long night through, a watcher at the door of one who, as others had done, might find a means to pierce her heart and wound her pride, if not to awaken her deep and passionate affections.
XXII.
Chinita woke with a confused sensation of haste, and in the dim light discovered with a momentary surprise that she was in one of the chambers of the great house. Her first clear remembrance was that there was to be a wedding in the village that day, and that she must hasten to help array the bride, her old playmate Juana,—a girl scarce older than herself, but who as the daughter of the silver-smith held some pretentions to superior gentility among the village folk. She wondered that she was not in the hut with Florencia and the children, and raised herself upon one arm to peer through the gloom at the figure upon the bed; then suddenly sprang to her feet with an exclamation. The sight of the wounded man brought to memory the train of events connected with his appearance there. The young man was asleep, but even if he had been awake and in dire need of aid, Chinita would not have paused an instant; for it flashed into her mind that she must see and speak to Tio Reyes before he left. He had told her so little—nothing that she could separate as a tangible fact. She must know more. Surely it was early still,—she never slept after daybreak; he would not yet be gone. Yet in quick apprehension, which burst forth in an irate interjection at her tardy awakening, she ran out into the court.
The morning light was beaming there unmistakably, though no ray of sunlight penetrated it; and not a creature was stirring, and still hopeful the young girl hurried to the outer court. The mingled sounds of the movements of men and horses greeted her ear. Although she was late, Tio Reyes perhaps was still there. Vain hope! One glance around the great court showed her that he whom she sought was gone.
With an angry little cry, which made more than one muleteer turn to look at her with, “What has happened to thee?” on his lips, Chinita sped across the court, and caught the arm of Pedro, who was standing dejectedly outside the great gate. He crossed himself as she appeared, and his face lighted up, then clouded again as she cried, “Where are the soldiers? When did they go? Why did no one awaken me?”
The man pointed with a disdainful gesture across the plain. Florencia was standing at the door of her hut, calling in a rage to a neighbor that those worthless vagabonds had robbed her of her last handful of toasted corn; and Pedro began to explain to Chinita in his slow way that the good friends of the night before had naturally enough demanded something from the housewives upon which to breakfast, and that instead of giving it to them quietly, and thanking the Virgin that after drinking the soup they had not taken the pot, the foolish women must needs scold and bewail, as though soldiers should be saints and live on air, and as if this was the first raid that ever had been heard of, instead of a mere frolic, very different from that of the month before, when the forces of the clergy had carried off a thousand bushels of maize, without as much as a “God repay you.”
Chinita gazed eagerly toward the east, and presently burst into passionate tears. The sun, which a moment before had shown a tiny red disk above the hills, flooded the plain with light, and dazzled her vision. Through it she saw some rapidly moving figures. The man she sought was already miles away. Silently but bitterly she reproached herself. She had slept like an insensate lump, and suffered to escape her the man who could have told her so much, whom she would have forced to speak. She could, as her eyes became accustomed to the light, distinguish his very figure in the clear atmosphere; and yet he and all she would have learned were so far away.
“What wouldst thou?” demanded Pedro, gruffly; “the soldiers have carried off nothing of thine! Heaven forefend! Go to the hut and drink the atolé if there is any left, and give God the thanks!”
The broad daylight had cleared the mind of Pedro of all the sentimental fears of the night. The glamour had passed away; there stood Chinita with the old familiar ragged clothing upon her, to be talked with, caressed it might be, certainly scolded with the mock severity of old. Yes, it was the same fiery, uncertain, irascible Chinita, who, clearing her eyes of their unusual tears with a backward sweep of her small brown hand, ran down the hill,—not to the hut where Florencia stood with the water-jar, beckoning her, but in quite another direction, to join the little crowd of sympathizing friends who were gathered at the door of the silversmith.
Pepé was standing there with a gayly caparisoned donkey, destined to bear the _novia_ to the village some eight miles distant, where the lazy priest who divided his time between the sinners of that point and Tres Hermanos, had consented to earn a royal fee by uniting two poor peasants in holy matrimony. “It is but for once,” Gabriel had hopefully remarked; “and though one runs in debt for the wedding, one can hold one’s head above one’s neighbors, to say nothing of dying in peace, if a bull’s horn finds its way some unlucky day between one’s ribs.”
Gabriel was a man who honored the proprieties, and Juana was well pleased with the good fortune that had awarded her to him; though he was twice her age, and had a squint which made ludicrous his most amorous glances.
“What has happened?” cried Pepé in a disappointed tone, as Chinita darted past him. “Didst thou not say thou wouldst ride with Juana? She has been waiting for thee this half hour. The _novio_ will be on his way before her if we tarry longer, and thou knowest what that portends. The impatient lover becomes the husband never appeased! the wife shall wait many a day for him.”
“Bah!” returned Chinita, “if Juana were of my mind the _novio_ would wait so long that her turn to play at _paciencia_ would never arrive.”
“Go to!” cried a woman who stood near, “who would have imagined thou wouldst be so envious, Chinita; and thou but a child yet? But thou art one that hast been brought up between cotton, and expectest the soft places all thy life.”
“Pshaw!” answered Chinita. “Speak of what thou knowest, Señora Gomesinda; and thou, Pepé, cease making eyes at me. Thinkest thou I have nothing better to do than to ride after Juana to see her married to yon black giant of a vaquero, who will manage his wife as he does his horses,—with a thong? I tell thee as I tell her, he is not worth the beating she got when he asked for her!”
“Ay, Señora,” cried Gomesinda, shrilly, “was ever such talk from the mouth of a modest girl? What could a reasonable father and mother do for a girl when a man asks her in marriage? It is plain she must have played some tricks of our Señora Madre Eva to have beguiled him. Ay, but I remember my mother flailed me black and blue when José asked for me. I warrant you I screamed so hard the whole neighborhood knew she was doing the honorable part by me. Thank Heaven, I knew what was proper as well as another, and if I had given the man a glance from the corner of my eyes, I was willing my shoulders should suffer for it. One may tell of it when one is the mother of ten children.”
During this harangue, Chinita had slipped by her, and darted into the hut. She threw her arms around the expectant bride, who dressed in the stiffest of starched skirts, the upper one of which was of flowered pink muslin, stood waiting the finishing touches of her sponsor.
“What, thou art not ready?” cried Juana in a dejected tone, surveying Chinita with disapproving eyes. “Gabriel has twice sent messages that the sun has risen, and that the Señor Priest likes not to be kept long fasting, and thou knowest, as the priest sings the sacristan answers.”
“Ay,” said Chinita, laughing, “a lesson in patience will be good for both the priest and thy Gabriel; but it will bode thee ill if he learns it at the tavern, as I saw him doing just now. Truly, Juana, thou must go without me. I am in no humor to go so far on thy ambling donkey;” and she drew herself up with an air of hauteur, which did not escape the observant eye of the bride, who said, with a reproachful look,—
“What have I done? Did I ever give thee a sharp word, Chinita?”
For answer, Chinita threw her arms around the girl’s neck; for she was really fond of Juana, who had ever been a gentle girl, and had borne her perverse humors with a sort of admiring patience which had flattered and won the heart of the wayward one. Completely mollified, Juana pressed her cheek against Chinita’s shoulder, for she had turned her face away, and said, “But thou wilt put on thy finest clothes and sit beside me at the fandango, wilt thou not? And thou wilt help my sponsor to dress me. See! Dost thou think she has done well this time?” and the girl threw her scarf from her head and shoulders, and exhibited her long, well-oiled tresses with an air of conscious vanity.
“Nothing could be better,” declared Chinita, heartily, pulling out a loop of the bright red ribbons. “Yes, yes,” she added with some effort, “I will stay beside thee all through the feast. Thou hast ever been a good friend of mine, Juana. There, there, they are calling thee;” and she pushed her toward the door, where by this time a noisy crowd had gathered.
Instead of only one donkey, there were five or six standing there, with gay bridles and necklaces of horsehair, brightened with cords of red or blue, and with panniers covered with well-trimmed sheepskins. As the Señora Madrina said, “She who should ride upon them would think herself on cushions of down.” On the most luxurious of these rural thrones Juana was raised, and upon the others her mother and a number of her female friends, mostly in pairs, were accommodated; and with many injunctions from the bystanders to hasten, the bridal party were at last dismissed upon their way.
Laughing and chattering, the women dispersed to their huts to grind a fresh stint of maize to replace the tortillas and atolé that had been carried away by the soldiers; but Chinita sat down at the door of the adobe hut thus temporarily deserted, and with a smile of derision upon her lips watched the group of men congregated around the village shop. The bridegroom, a middle-aged man, with a dark face deeply imbrowned by the sun and seamed with scars (for he had been a soldier before he was a vaquero), stood in the midst of them, dressed in a suit of buff leather, gay with embroidery. The embossed leather sheath of his knife showed in his scarlet waist-scarf, and immense spurs clanked on his heels in response to the buttons and chains on the half-opened sides of his riding trousers of goat-skin. He was a picturesque figure—though Chinita’s accustomed eyes failed to recognize that—as he stood with his wide, silver-laced hat pushed back upon the mat of black hair that crowned his swarthy countenance, holding high the small glass of mezcal which he was about to drink in favor of the toast some comrade had proposed. Meanwhile, his companions were noisily hilarious, rallying him with impossible prophesies of good fortune, to which he listened with an air of imperturbability which was part of the etiquette of the occasion,—for in all the world can be found no greater slave to his peculiar code of manners than the Mexican ranchero.
The party on donkey-back had almost disappeared upon the horizon before it seemed to occur to the group at the tavern store that any movement was expected from them. More than once the women had stopped in their household tasks to call out a shrill “Go on! go on! By the saints, man, will you keep the priest waiting?” and still Gabriel affected the indifferent, until as if by accident he strolled toward his horse, which stood champing the bit impatiently. Immediately there was a rush of his best friends, and the triumphant one who caught the stirrup and held it as the bridegroom mounted claimed the luck-gift for the good news of the departure,—which was effected at once after a series of pirouettes and caracolling, by Gabriel’s putting spurs to his steed and galloping madly away, followed by his friends as quickly as they could throw themselves into their saddles.
The spell of the day before continued still so to rest upon her that Chinita neither joined in the cheer nor the laughter of the women, but turned slowly toward Pedro’s hut. The cravings of a healthy appetite subdued for the moment the pride that scorned the lowly home. It was natural to go there for the corn-cake and the draught of atolé or chocolate with which to break her fast. She found the share left for her; but after a mouthful or two it seemed to grow bitter to her taste. She divided it petulantly among the children who clamored around her, and in response to a call from Florencia went to Selsa’s hut where they were making tortillas for the wedding feast, arrogantly refusing to help, yet glad of accustomed companionship. Much as she resented old associations, the wrench was too great for her to separate herself from them at once, especially as she had no conception of what could or should take their place. She was like a child upon the banks of a river that separates it from the farther shore which it longs to reach, though dreading to push forth from the land it knows, rough and forlorn though it may be. There was with Chinita a strange sense of clinging to a past which was irrevocably severed from her, of impatience of a problem of the future to be solved, and of lack of will to set herself to its solution, as she went from hut to hut. The fever of her mind expended itself first in seething irony and jests, and later in a wild repentance, which manifested itself in quick embraces of the half offended women, and in practical toil, which effectually promoted the preparations for the feast, and went far to restore her to the good graces of the harassed workers. Indeed, often enough they paused in their labors to listen and laugh, as she stood at the brasiers fanning the glowing charcoal, or watching the tortillas taken from the flat _comal_ and piled in heaps upon the fringed and embroidered napkins used on such occasions of ceremony; or went from dish to dish of black beans, or red and fiery chile rich with pork or fowl; or gazed with positive admiration upon the kids and lambs, stuffed with almonds and raisins, forcemeat and olives, and other delicacies, which drawn smoking from the earthen ovens attested the generosity of the administrador toward his favorite vaquero.
Toward noon the bride and her party returned, ambling home upon their donkeys, as humbly as they had gone. Juana was conducted to her future home, and her mother-in-law, welcoming her with distant ceremony, intended to inspire respect, suffered her to touch her cheek with her lips, then led her to the inner room, where lay the apparel for her adornment,—a number of toilets being indispensable upon the occasion, and indicative of the pretensions of the bridegroom who had hired them.
Chinita, in her mingled mood of disdain and levity, had neglected to keep her promise of putting on holiday attire, and stood in some awe and much admiration before the bride as she at last appeared in the little bower or tent that had been raised for her at one side of the hut, facing upon the plaza where the feast was to be held. The little woman—for she was not fully grown—was resplendent in a stiff-flowered brocade of many colors, trimmed with real Spanish lace and bedecked with flowers, and wore a necklace and bracelets of imitation gems set in filagree, fit, as her sponsor proudly declared, for the Blessed Virgin upon the high altar.
Juana threw a glance of reproach upon Chinita; but her new dignity forbade recrimination. A shout presently announced that the bridegroom was in sight. The bride, well-drilled in her part, kept her glance fixed on the ground; and as he swept by her bower Gabriel deigned not a look, but reined in his horse at his own door with a sudden turn of the hand which almost threw the animal on its haunches, and before his stirrup could be seized had thrown himself from his saddle and was shaking hands with his friends, and immediately the feast began.