Part 17

There was no table set. The fires burned at the corners of the plaza, and the women stood over them, dispensing the fragrant contents of the jars to all comers. Yet in this apparent informality the strictest decorum was observed, and not a mouthful was swallowed or a drink of _pulque_ or milky _chia_, without a friendly interchange of courtesies, which rather increased than grew less as the hours flew by.

The proverb is true that at a wedding the bride eats least; and at that of the Mexican peasant the saying becomes a law. Juana was too well drilled in the proprieties to touch a morsel of the delicacies offered her, but wore constantly the air of timid resignation with which she had met the assumed indifference of her spouse, who resolutely avoided casting even a glance in the direction where she held her court,—the women crowding with ever increasing admiration to view her after each change of toilet, as they might have done to examine a gorgeous picture, commenting loudly upon the taste of the dresser and the liberality of the groom. But nothing could be more satisfactory to her than this feigned indifference of her husband. “Is not Gabriel an angel?” she took occasion to ask Chinita, as for the tenth time she was changing her apparel. “Imagine to yourself twelve changes of clothing, and he acts as if the hiring of them were nothing! What a difference between him and Pancho Orteago, who was married at Easter! Four beggarly suits were all he provided for Anita, and not one silk among them; and he actually was quite close to her again and again, with mouth open, as if he would eat her! Such an idiot! He would have spoken to her if he had had the chance. I should think she was half dead with mortification! Such foolishness in public! Her mother cried with vexation; and no wonder, with such a slur cast on the family!”

“Yet it has been like a marriage of turtle-doves!” cried Chinita. “Let us see, little woman, if thou wilt say that of thy own six months hence!”

Juana shrugged her shoulders and returned to her seat, with her eyes more coyly cast down, and a dejected mien, which might not have been altogether assumed; for, too earnest in acting her part even to take food in private, she was not unnaturally almost spent with the long and ceremonious state which for perhaps the only time in her life she was called upon to maintain.

By this time, torches of fat pine were blazing at every door-post, and the strumming of harps and guitars and many primitive instruments became incessant. Groups of men, drowsy or hilarious, as the mezcal and pulque they had drunk chanced to affect them, were stretched on the ground, lazily watching and criticising the slow and untiring movements of the fandango; now and then one would spring up, to place himself before some dusky partner, who would raise the song in her shrill monotone, swaying and bending her body in unison with the gliding steps, which seemed as untiring as they were fascinating.

Occasionally the shrill song of the women was enlivened by the snapping of the fingers and thumbs of the men; and more than once, though it had been forbidden, the sharp crack of a pistol-shot indicated the irrepressible excitement of some enthusiastic dancer. As the night wore on, the click of the castanets became more frequent, and the weird and tender refrain of _La paloma_ gave place to a bacchanalian chorus. Yet this chorus ever bore an undertone of pathos and sentiment which seemed to render impossible the absolute frenzy and rudeness of mirth that would be apt to characterize such scenes in other lands,—though the element of danger that lurked within began to show itself in scornful glances, and the contemptuous turning of shoulder or head.

The night was chilly and dark, for it was the rainy season, and there was no moon; but the light from scores of torches and from the tripod of burning pitch set in the middle of the plaza illuminated the entire village. The great house was set so high that the lurid glare reached no farther than its gates; yet while its massive façade was in comparative darkness, from its windows the scene of revelry was glowingly distinct, and irresistibly attracted even the indifferent gaze of Doña Isabel.

Late in the evening she stepped into her balcony; Doña Feliz joined her, and they wrapped themselves in their black rebosos, and silently regarded the scene. The dances and sports of the peasantry had been familiar to them from their childhood. A pleasurable excitement thrilled the veins of each as they gazed. This gayety was as far beneath them as the follies of our life may be beneath the pleasures of angels, yet pleased the exalted sense of kindly interest in the affairs of plebeian humanity. They began to murmur to each other something of this feeling, when suddenly both became silent. A single figure had caught the glances of both. It was that of Chinita, who, scornful and cool while the slow _afforados_ and _jarabes_ were in progress, had yielded to the seductive strains of the waltz, and was drawn from her station at Juana’s side by a rural beau from a neighboring village. The two whirled in the mazy dance, presently beginning a series of improvised changes, possible only to the subtle grace of youth under the spell of excitement wrought to its height by music, wine, and amorous flattery. One by one the other couples ceased dancing, the fingers of the musicians flew over their instruments, and the swift feet of Chinita and her partner kept time. Sometimes they swept together around the circle formed by the admiring onlookers; anon Chinita, lifting her arms to the cadence of the music, waved her swain away, and circled round him like a bird poising for descent, then glided again to his arms; or turning one bare shoulder from which the reboso had fallen, looked back upon him with soft, languorous eyes which challenged pursuit, while she fled with the speed of the wind.

The circle were enraptured, and broke into loud _vivas_, or joined in the words of the air to which the pair were dancing. Pedro stood with the rest, watching with shining eyes; but at his side was a young woman, whose dark brows were drawn together in a spasm of rage. This was Elvira, a young widow, to whom the stranger was plighted, and who in the utter abandonment of her lover to the dance with another younger and fairer than herself, found a fair excuse for the mad jealousy that surged through heart and brain, and convulsed her features. But there was none to notice her; all eyes were bent upon the dancers, when a sudden turn brought them both before the infuriated woman. Seizing a knife from the belt of the unconscious Pedro, she sprang toward Chinita, with intent to wreak the usual vengeance of the jealous country-woman by slashing her across the cheek or mouth, and thus destroying her beauty forever. But quick as a flash Pepé, the derided but faithful, threw himself between them, receiving the blow in his arm; but shouting and gesticulating with pain, he made ridiculous a scene which might have been heroic.

This was no uncommon incident at such gatherings, and roused more laughter than dismay. The dance suddenly ceased. Chinita, panting with exertion, threw herself with a cry for protection upon Pedro, who in rage had involuntarily grasped for the missing knife that had so nearly accomplished so foul a work; and Benito, recalled to his allegiance by this undoubted proof of his Elvira’s devotion, turned to her with words of mingled reproach and endearment. Pepé, in spite of his outcry, was quite unnoticed in the general excitement until his sister the bride, forgetting her dignity, forced her way through the crowd and bound her large lace handkerchief over the bleeding wound.

“Thou shalt come home!” said Pedro, resolutely, as Chinita struggled in his grasp, with a half defined intention of assailing the woman who had assaulted her, and who was being led sobbing away by her repentant lover. “What will the Señora think of thee?” he added in a whisper. “She is on her balcony.”

Chinita glanced up. She could see nothing against the great blank wall that loomed in the near distance, but a sensation of acute shame overcame her. She suddenly remembered that which in her brief delirium she had forgotten. She turned from the throng as though they had been serpents, and fled up the path to the gate, dashing against it breathless. The postern was open. She felt for it with her hands and darted through, coming full upon Doña Isabel. Feliz followed her lady, both looking like spectres under the rough stone arch of the vestibule, with its grim garniture of serpents and fierce-eyed wild beasts.

“Wretched girl!” cried Doña Isabel, as Chinita stopped like a deer at bay. “Wretched girl!” grasping her with a grip of steel, yet shaking as with ague. “Hast thou a wound? Is the mark of shame on thy face already? My God! Oh, child! Canst thou not speak?”

“I will kill her!” gasped Chinita, too much excited herself to be surprised by the agitation of Doña Isabel, or to wonder at her presence. “To-morrow I will find her and give her such a blow as she would have given me. What will her Benito care for her then?”

“What is he to thee?” cried Doña Isabel, catching the girl by the wrist, and looking into her eyes,—“he or any such _canalla_? Come thou with me!—with me, I say!” She threw a glance, half inquiring, half defiant, at Feliz, who stood with her eyes cast down, her face strangely white, yet inexpressive. “Come thou with me,” she reiterated, scanning the girl from her unkempt shock of tawny curls to her unshod feet. A blush passed over the usually colorless and haughty face of the lady, as she added slowly, “before it is too late.”

The girl and the mistress of Tres Hermanos looked at each other searchingly; then Doña Isabel turned and led the way across the court. Chinita followed her with head erect and sparkling eyes. Pedro entered at the instant, but his foster daughter did not hear him; but Feliz, who gave way that the strangely associated lady and girl might pass, looked up, and her eyes met those of the gatekeeper. Pedro approached with his Indian, cat-like silence of movement, and found her standing as if in a dream. The eyes of the man filled with tears. He was too lowly to manifest resentment at the studied reserve he believed Doña Feliz had for years preserved toward him, while still she had made him her tool. He and such as he were made for use. Yet inferior as he was, they had been workers in a common cause, and their common purposes seemed now frustrated at a word.

He bent humbly and touched the fringe of her reboso.

“Have I done well, Doña Feliz?” he queried in a broken voice. “Alas! I can do no more. You see how blood flows to blood, as the brooks turn to the river.”

Feliz started. “Strange! strange!” she muttered. She turned upon Pedro a glance of mingled pity and deprecation. She seemed about to say more, but paused. “Thou art a good man, Pedro,” she presently whispered. “Thou hast done a greater work than thou guessest. Be content. Thou knowest the child’s nature,—Chinita will not suffer with Doña Isabel; but she who thrust from her bosom the dove will perchance warm the adder into life.”

“No, no!” cried the man, vehemently. “Cruel, bitter woman! Chinita hath been my child, and though she turn from me I will hear no evil of her. I will live or die for her!” The unwonted outburst ended in a sob, and before he could speak again, Doña Feliz had passed across the court, but—strange condescension!—she had seized his hand and pressed it to her lips, in irresistible homage to a devotion as pure and unselfish as that of the loftiest knight who ever drew sword in the cause of helpless innocence.

Pedro turned to his alcove dazed, stunned. To him it was as if a star should leave its place in heaven to touch the vilest clod upon the highway. A very miracle!

XXIII.

Although Doña Rita had left her home upon a sad errand, and her tears flowed fast when on embracing her mother she beheld upon her countenance the shadow of death, that first startling impression vanquished, she allowed herself to be deceived by the fitful brightness that hovers over the consumptive; and as days passed on she felt a pleased sense of freedom and relaxation, and her return to her early home, which had been undertaken as a pilgrimage, assumed much of the character of an ordinary visit of pleasure.

Doña Rita was a member of a large family, of whom most had married; so that her parents, relieved from cares that had long pressed upon them, were enabled to live in the little town of El Toro with an ease and comfort from which in their narrow circumstances they had necessarily been debarred while the children were dependent. They were, strictly speaking, people of the class known as _medio_ _pelo_, or “the half-clothed order,” as far below the aristocrat as above the plebeian; and Rita Farias had been thought to have risen greatly in life when she became the wife of Rafael Sanchez, though he was then but a clerk, the son of the administrador of Tres Hermanos, with no prospect of succeeding soon to his honors. But as the pious neighbors said when they heard of the early death of the bridegroom’s father, “God blessed her with both hands,” of which one held marriage, and the other death; so Doña Rita was accustomed when she at rare intervals visited her parents to be looked upon with ever increasing respect. Such silken skirts and rebosos as she wore were seldom seen within the quiet precincts of El Toro.

Doña Rita herself was not quite clear upon the point as to whether or not her native place could be considered to rival “the City,” as Mexico was called _par excellence_, or even Guadalajara, which she had heard was a labyrinth of palaces; but Rosario who had seen El Toro declared to Chata that nothing could be finer, and Chata herself was quite convinced of that when opening her eyes suddenly upon the clear moonlight night on which the diligence stopped before the door of the inn, she first looked out upon the plaza.

The two girls shivered a little in their sudden awakening, as, scarcely knowing how, they were lifted from the diligence and stood upon their feet at the door of the inn, with an injunction to watch the basket, the five parcels tied in paper or towels, the drinking-gourd, the bottle of claret, and the young parrot which their mother had brought with her as a suitable gift to her declining relative. With habitual obedience they did as they were bid, more than once rescuing a parcel from the long, skinny claw of a blear-eyed hag, who crouched in the shadow of the wall whining for alms, while at the same time they cast their admiring glances at the really beautiful church upon which the white rays of the moonlight streamed, converting it for the nonce into a symmetrical pile of virgin snow or spotless alabaster. The priest’s house, a long low building with numerous barred windows, stood on one side of it, while an angle of the square was formed by a mass of buildings, the frowning walls of which were apparently unpierced by door or window. This was a convent. Later the children learned to know well the gardens it enclosed, and also the taste of the wonderful confections the sweet-faced sisters made. The other buildings seemed poor and small in comparison to those, with the exception of the inn which rose gloomily behind them, a solitary rush-light burning palely in the yawning vestibule, and the torches flaming in the courtyard, where benighted travellers were loudly bargaining for lodgings,—no hope of supper presenting itself at that late hour.

While Rosario and Chata were noticing these things with wide-open eyes but with ill suppressed yawns, Don Rafael and Doña Rita were returning the salutations of the concourse of friends who had come to meet them; and as soon as the children had been embraced in succession by each affectionate cousin or punctilious friend, they were hurried across the plaza upon the side where the shadows lay black as ink, and with a regretful glance at the seeming palaces of marble that rose on either hand were conducted with much kindly help and cheerfulness over the rough cobble-stones along a narrow street of single-storied houses, above the walls of which, as if piercing the roofs, rose at intervals tall slender trees, indicating the well-planted courts within. Reaching the more scattered portions of the town where the moonlight shone clear over open fields and walled gardens and orchards, with low adobe houses scattered among them, they at last entered, somewhat to the disappointment of Chata, a rather pretentious house which fronted directly upon the street. She was consoled upon the following day to find a garden at the back, where a triangle of pink roses of Castile, larkspur, and red geraniums grew, almost choking with their luxuriance the beds of onions and chiles, and rivalling in glory of color the “manta de la Virgin” or convolvulus, which entirely covered the half-ruinous stone-wall—the gaps filled with tuñas and magueys—which divided the cultivated land from the thickets of mesquite and cactus that lay beyond.

In the garden the children spent many hours while their mother sat chatting at the side of the invalid, who rallied wonderfully as she heard the endless tales of her daughter’s prosperity; though like many another _nouveau riche_, Doña Rita had her fancied self-denials to complain of. One of the clerks at the hacienda had a wife whose father had given her a string of pearls as large as cherries upon her wedding day, while she the wife of the administrador was left to blush over the shabby necklace—not a bead of which was bigger than a pea—which Rafael had gone in debt to give her on her wedding day, and which until the advent of the fortunate Doña Gomesinda she had thought most beautiful; and then too her dearest friend had a daughter who would inherit a fine house of three rooms or more in that very town, and money and jewels fit for a _hacendado’s_ daughter; and it was quite possible that she would marry—who could tell? it might even be an attorney or an official,—while with two to endow (and it was well known that Rafael loved to enjoy as he went), Heaven only knew to what her own flesh and blood were doomed! There was Rosario for example,—and her own grandmother, who would not be prejudiced, could judge if there was a prettier or more daintily-bred girl in the whole town,—what chance was there that an officer or an attorney, or indeed any one but a clerk, a ranchero, or a poor shop-keeper, should pretend to their alliance when they could give so poor a dower with their daughter? Doña Rita’s eyes filled with tears, and decidedly she was obliged to compress her lips very tightly to prevent herself from uttering further complaint; for since Rosario had with true Mexican precocity burst into the full glory of young womanhood, this had become a very real grievance to her mother, but one of which, with the awe of the promoted as well as trained daughter and wife, she had seldom ventured to hint of either to Doña Feliz or Don Rafael.

As Rosario had outgrown her sister in physique, so had she also in womanly dignity and apparent force of intellect At least she thought of matters, and even to her admiring mother and female relatives began to give weighty opinions upon affairs which either wearied Chata or interested her little. The grandfather, old Don José Maria, used to sit under a fig-tree watching with disapproving eyes as Chata darted hither and thither chasing a butterfly or ruby-throated humming-bird, or with her lap full of flowers or neglected sewing pored over some entrancing book lent her by the village priest (he was a man whose ideas, had he not been the Santo Padre, would have been the last that should have been tolerated in the bringing up of sedate and simple maidens); and those same eyes lighted with pride as they fell on Rosario, beating eggs to a froth to mix with honey and almonds for her grandfather’s delectation, or bending over a brasier of ruddy charcoal watching anxiously the cooking of the _dulce_, of which already more successes than failures showed her a born artist. Then again sometimes, when Don José came in the cool of the evening from the plaza where he had been to buy his jar of pulque or his handful of garlic, he could see his favorite sitting demurely in the upper balcony with her head bent over her needle, listening it is true to that _maldito libro_, “that pernicious book,” which Chata was reading, but as far as he could see doing no other harm, unless the very fact of a young and pretty girl looking into the street was a harm in itself,—but _Maria Purissima!_ one must not be too rigorous with one’s own flesh and blood: like others before him and more who will come after, Don José Maria forgot in tenderness to the grandchildren the discipline he had thought absolutely necessary with the preceding generation.

Chata, too, thought it delightful to sit on the balcony and peer through the wooden railing at the long stretch of sand which led far away where the houses dwindled into a few half-ruinous hovels, where children and dogs throve as well as the bristling cacti. On Sunday mornings very early, as the mother and daughters came from Mass along that road, they used to be covered with dust thrown up by the scores of plodding donkeys who wended their way to the plaza laden with charcoal and vegetables, eggs and screaming fowls. Doña Rita and her daughters would cover their faces with their rebosos, and trip daintily by, scarcely appeased by the admiring salutations and apologies of the drivers, who pulling off their rough straw hats apostrophized the dust and the scorching sun and the clumsy donkey, “by your license be the name spoken!”

Sometimes more distinguished wayfarers passed over the road and turned into the inn, or rode on to the barracks which lay quite at the opposite extremity of the little town; for it happened that a company of soldiers were quartered there. They were for the most part well clad in a gay uniform of red and blue, and every man had a profusion of stripes on his sleeves or lace on his cap. No one knew and no one asked whether they were Mochos or Puros, Conservatives or Liberals,—for the nonce they were Ramirez’s men. This General had been a Liberal the month before, and was suspected of favoring the clergy at this time. Who could tell? Who knew what he might be on the morrow? In the night all cats are gray; in times of perplexity all soldiers are patriots. The ragged urchins of El Toro threw up their hats for the soldiers of Ramirez, and the discreet householders leaned from their balconies every evening to hear the little band play, and to exult for a brief quarter of an hour in the mild excitement inseparable from a garrison town.

Chata and Chinita had delighted in the distant music, and had caught glimpses of the soldiers, as disenchanting as those of the rude grimy structures they had in the moonlight imagined to be marble palaces; they had gazed up and down the dusty street and watched the noisy ragged urchins play “Toro” with a big-horned, long-haired, decrepit goat, with crowds of half naked elfin-faced girls as spectators, until they were actually beginning to weary of the attractions of the town and long for home,—when one day the beat of a drum was heard and a squad of soldiers went filing past, with a young officer riding at their head, who threw a glance so killing at the balcony where the young girls stood that, whether intended to reach her or not, it pierced the heart of Rosario on the instant.