Part 30

Ruiz’s knowledge of this strengthened his resolution to ignore the past, and suffer no ill-timed revelations to interfere with his determination to win at one step love and fortune by gaining the hand of the _protégée_, of Doña Isabel,—a purpose he was certain Ramirez would oppose, for in a moment of confidence the General had intimated that it was to a daughter of his own, in accordance with a promise made long years before to Reyes, that the young man was to be united; it was for this destiny his future had been shaped, his fortunes moulded.

At any previous time the ambition of Ruiz would have been fully satisfied; his whole desire would have been to meet this promised bride, and by his marriage strengthen the interest which the caprice or affection of Ramirez alone caused to be centred upon him, and which, though often burdensome and tyrannous, was apparently the young man’s sole passport to success. Even when in pique and half-timorous defiance he took advantage of his separation from Ramirez to follow Rosario to Tres Hermanos, it was with no fixed resolution to tempt fortune alone. His short-lived passion and his independence and anger would have died together, had not his love for Chinita and the unexpected opportunities thrust upon him opened before him a prospect of advancement and triumph far above his wildest dreams, and completed his treason to his early patron, without teaching him the lesson of truth either to the new cause or to the mistress to which he was sworn.

In the eyes of Doña Isabel Ruiz was but the hireling whose faith was purchased for Gonzales; in those of Chinita, the devoted follower of Ramirez; in his own—well, time and circumstance would decide.

Like thousands of others who took part in the strife that rent and decimated Mexico, Ruiz had but little conception of the points at issue. He had simply followed the lead of the popular chieftain to whom circumstances had attached him. He had learned by observation that wealth flowed from the coffers of the clergy into the hands of Ramirez, who scattered it lavishly to all about him,—dissipating the greater part in luxurious living in cities, and the maintenance of hordes of followers in towns and cañons of the mountains, and with ready superstition returning much to the source whence it came, for never a follower of his kept child unchristened or burial Mass unsaid for want of means to purchase the services of a priest.

Ramirez had appeared to the young imagination of Ruiz absolute and ubiquitous. There were few daring deeds done that he had not shared in; scarce a town been seized and its merchants arrested until the forced loans demanded from them were paid, scarce a train of wagons laden with silver stopped, scarce a _pronunciamiento_ with its excitement and rapid exchange of power and property effected, that he had taken no part in. He had been found wherever fighting or plunder were. He had taken a bloody part in the repulse of the Liberals at the City of Mexico, where the names of Zuloaga the President and of Miramon alike were made infamous. He had shared in the futile attacks upon Vera Cruz, where Juarez at the head of the Provisional Government maintained with stubborn tenacity, with a handful of followers, the most important stronghold upon the seaboard, promulgating those unprecedented resolutions and decrees which revealed to the minds of the people that of which they had never hitherto dreamed,—namely, the separation of Church and State; the suppression of the monasteries, which like vampires had for generations drained the resources and absorbed the intellect of the people; and the secularization of those immense treasures which, donated by the faithful to feed the hungry and the sick, train the orphans, maintain the glory and worship of God, had become the means of oppression and bloodshed, and were the thews and sinews of the civil war, in which the clergy strove to maintain the abuses of the past and forge fresh chains for the future.

In a country where the dogmas of Catholicism were as the oracles of God, where every heart was bound either by the truths or the superstitions of Rome, or in most cases by both inseparably, the magnitude of the task assumed by the astute and resolute Juarez was almost beyond the comprehension of those bred in the lands which have never groaned beneath the yoke of ecclesiastical tyranny. Any premature act, any unguarded word, might become the cause of offence; and yet it was no time for hesitation or timorous questioning.

Juarez knew the time and the temper of his countrymen; and environed though he was, virtually imprisoned in one small town upon the seashore, his influence reached to the most remote districts of the interior. And although the armies of the clergy swept the country from sea to sea, in obscure fastnesses rose daring bands in tens and twenties and hundreds, who promulgating the new promises of liberty sent forth by Juarez, maintained them with a tenacity of purpose that made defeat impossible. Worsted in one quarter, they arose in another, employing with unscrupulous daring every means that cunning or audacity could bring within their power,—claiming the excuse of necessity for those acts of rapine and cruelty in the satisfaction of personal enmities, the warfare upon the women and children, and the thousand barbarous deeds which make the history of that time a continual record of horrors. Had example been necessary, they would have found it in the career of the opposing forces; but in truth it was a time when the attributes of patriot and plunderer, soldier and bandit, became inextricably confused; so that, perhaps as completely to himself as to others, the average actor in that bloody drama became a baffling and unsatisfying enigma.

Such was the mental condition of Ruiz, though it did not occur to him to define it. Attached to the clerical party by long association, and by the uninterrupted prosperity which he had shared with Ramirez,—who since separating himself from Gonzales had followed an independent career, in which he had found the highest bidders for his services among the crafty leaders of the old régime (who to their rich gifts added the indulgences of the Church, to which no soul however blood-stained and conscienceless could remain indifferent),—when Ruiz declared himself to Don Rafael a convert to the Liberal cause, it was but as a precautionary measure recommended by Doña Rita; and it was only when he saw in Doña Isabel a patroness more powerful than the one he had abandoned, added to his resolution to make himself independent of the man who had hitherto controlled as well as defended him, that he in reality inclined to the faction which day by day seemed gathering strength, and likely to become the dominant power.

But though his political views thus shaped themselves to meet Doña Isabel’s, Ruiz was no more faithful to her purposes than to those of Chinita. To abandon Gonzales to his fate at El Toro,—for he did not doubt that Ramirez would return with overwhelming numbers to the destruction of its insufficient garrison,—and at the same time to win the confidence of Doña Isabel and that of the troops under his command, thereafter seizing the first opportunity of having himself proclaimed their permanent leader and marching to join Juarez, whose cause was becoming strengthened day by day by fresh accessions from the interior, became his dream. Thus he hoped to blind Chinita by an apparent inability rather than disinclination to further her designs, mislead Doña Isabel, and secure for himself a position which should render it not absurd or incredible that he should aspire to the hand of a _protégée_ of the Garcias, and to the dower which he shrewdly suspected he might of right demand.

All these plans were not perfected in a day, and the defection of Ashley Ward and his servant seriously interfered in the ambitious captain’s calculations; but he allowed no trace of uneasiness to appear in those rare intervals when he found an opportunity to exchange a few words with the impatient Chinita.

Unconsciously also, Doña Isabel herself aided to establish a bond of confidence between them. When the long irregular column, with banners flying, driving before it the lowing cattle, whose numbers grew less after each night’s slaughter, and followed by the motley line of women and children with the rude equipage of the camp, would be fairly in motion after the confusion of the early start, Ruiz would rein his prancing steed at the side of the carriage and deferentially place himself at the orders of the ladies. On these occasions his manner was one of perfect respect to both, of entire concurrence in the dictates and desires of Doña Isabel, and of half-indifferent, half-amused rejection of the immature and inconsequent conjectures and opinions of the girl, for whose beauty he exhibited a timid but irresistible recognition, which flattered while it disarmed the suspicious mind of Doña Isabel. She believed him still the ardent admirer of Rosario,—a thing which, she reflected, was under the circumstances most fortunate.

In the freshness and animation of those morning hours conversation became natural and easy, and the events and names which were upon every tongue furnished food for abundant reminiscence and comment. Doña Isabel was eloquent in praise of Gonzales, who to his success at El Toro had added others in the neighborhood, which together with the occupation of Guanapila had made the entire district the undisputed territory of Liberalism. Ruiz assented to her enthusiasm with an ardor which seemed but natural in a youth who having separated himself from one powerful patron, should desire to place himself beneath the protection of another; and a comparison of the two, which should explain his defection from the first, followed in natural course; and with carefully chosen words, whose meaning held a subtile relation to the thoughts and predilections of his two auditors, he spoke of the intrepid and unscrupulous Ramirez.

More than once Doña Isabel, in the midst of his talk, sank back in the carriage lost in deep and painful thought, as the wild and terrible deeds in which that lawless man had figured recalled to her mind the horrors of her youth. Deeds such as these might have been planned and executed by the boy who had once been the pride, as he was afterward the bane, of her life, had he lived; but he was dead. Yes, thank God! though her heart had bled inwardly for long years; he had made no sign since the tale of his end came—he was dead!

While she was thus lost in thought, Chinita listened with glowing cheek and eyes. Ruiz knew of the meeting with Ramirez to which she looked back with such peculiar and unwearying fascination; and discerning in her admiration of his former leader an unfailing means of rousing in her a personal attraction which in her passionate nature might become an absorbing love, he carefully refrained from giving her any hint of his real sentiments toward her hero, and spared no covert word, no mute eloquence of his dark and expressive eyes, to increase an enthusiasm which had already led her into such strange defiance of the plans of Doña Isabel. To reinstate her hero in the power from which he had fallen became Chinita’s dream, the aspiration of her soul.

On the fifth night of their journey it chanced that they entered a village, where Doña Isabel and her servants were enabled to find a shelter, which after the restricted and insufficient accommodation of tents seemed absolutely luxurious, primitive and rude though it was. Doña Isabel wearied with travel, and depressed with anxiety at the unaccountable delay of Gonzales, who she had supposed would have hastened to take command of the troops that her energy and bounty had provided, had early retired to the room assigned her. Chinita had reluctantly accompanied her, for a fandango was in progress in the great kitchen, the charcoal brasiers flaming red against the dark walls of yellow-washed adobe, and shining upon the bronzed faces of a group of swarthy men, who strummed upon stringed instruments of various shapes and sizes; while another group of mingled men and women went through the rhythmic motions of the dance, with which the young girl, gazing from her cell-like retreat across the court, had long been so familiar.

Chinita had never danced since the night that she had fled from the wedding _fiesta_ into the waiting arms of Doña Isabel. She had thought of the scene and its pleasures only with anger and disgust; and yet as she looked into the red glare and watched the swaying figures, she longed to rush in and throw herself among them. To her, as to Doña Isabel, the time of suspense was growing unbearably long; she was mad for action. Unreasonably, she felt that there among their caste she might find Pedro, Pepé,—some one who would do her bidding, who would not dare put her off as Ruiz was doing with tantalizing promises.

Chinita knew that instead of following the most direct paths as Doña Isabel had commanded, the route on various pretexts had been changed,—she supposed to make communication with Ramirez possible. She had no reason to doubt the good faith of Ruiz, yet she was impatient and miserable. A straggler upon the road had given them the news that Ramirez had been seen upon the hills with a forlorn and ill-armed troop, which bore evidence of the ill fortune which the defeat at El Toro had inaugurated. She had conceived a violent and unreasonable antagonism to Gonzales, who from his whilom associate had become the successful opponent and rival of the man whom by the childish gift of an amulet she had fancied herself endowing with invincible good fortune. Even as she grew older, her faith in the magic powers of a charm which had been the creation of a wizard, and had been blessed by Holy Church, scarcely grew less; and the remembrance of it undoubtedly strengthened the fealty so strangely sworn. Besides, a purpose had arisen in her mind of appealing to Ramirez to establish her position in the house of Garcia, by wresting from Doña Isabel an acknowledgment which would give her rights and a certain status (though clouded it might be) where now she was but the recipient of favors,—the peasant born raised to a dignity which was a mere scoff and jest to the ready wit of the sarcastic and epigrammatic rancheros. Chinita knew them well. Were not their gifts and prejudices her own?

Musing thus, the girl glanced from the barred window where she stood back through the gloom of the apartment to the bed where Doña Isabel was lying,—already asleep. The yellow light of a candle just touched the lady’s pale face; it was contracted with that habitual expression of pain which the darkness of night permitted to the proud and suffering woman, but which in the day, or under the eye of even the most unobservant, she banished resolutely, though its shadow rested ever uncomprehended, unpitied.

There was something in the lassitude of Doña Isabel’s figure, the hopeless grief upon the countenance, which for the first time suggested to Chinita the possibility that emotions deeper than that pride of birth which was as great in degree in herself, though neither as pure in principle nor bounded by the conventionalities of caste, had actuated the deeds and embittered the life of her who to the eye had been so absolute, so unassailable. With a feeling of awe Chinita took a step toward the sleeper, when a sound drew her glance to the court. Into the motley throng of lounging soldiers and _arrieros_, with their mules feeding and stamping around them, two belated travellers forced their way. It was the voice of one of them that had startled the watcher, and claimed instantly all her thoughts, setting her heart beating stiflingly as she sprang to the lattice and pressed her face eagerly against the iron bars.

The red light from the kitchen was augmented by the flame of a smoking torch, as a servant came forward to take the horse of the foremost rider. When he leaped lightly from his saddle, pushing back his broad hat, Chinita recognized the American, while a woman ran across the court and clasped the arm of the other as he alighted: it was Juana, the wife of Gabriel.

“Hist! hist!” said the man in a low voice, “no crying nor screaming. The Señor and I are here on business that would please your captain but little. By good fortune he is camped to-night at the outskirts of the village, and dare not leave his post. Tell me, Juana,—and not a word to Gabriel when thou seest him,—where is Chinita?”

Before Juana could gather her wits to reply, a hand was thrust through the bars almost at the speaker’s shoulder; but it was Ashley who first saw it. He took it for an instant in his own, and bent over it. “I must speak with you, Chinita,” he said; “join me in the corridor as soon as the house is quiet. I have much to say.”

It was not the voice of a lover that spoke, but it thrilled her as that of a prophet. “Speak low,” she answered, breathlessly, “Doña Isabel sleeps close by; but I will escape,—yes, I will come to you. Is not Juana with you? She must take my place here. The door is locked; the key is in the hand of Doña Isabel. But I will have it, trust me; the Senora sleeps heavily.”

The girl’s face glowed with excitement; she was ready for any adventure, the more daring the more welcome. Ashley Ward looked at her with a strange pride and admiration: this was a nature that no shame could crush, no outward fate dismay!

Chinita, standing at the grating, feeling an almost unrestrainable desire to burst into wild laughter and tears, was for some time utterly silent, waiting the hour when, the revelry over, sleep would fall upon the house. Ashley drew into the shade of the corridor. The inn was but a caravansary; there was none to notice who came or went. In the laughing, chattering crowd he was virtually alone. The thoughts that came to him as the fires faded, as the noisy revellers strolled one by one to their sleeping-places, and the pale light of the stars shining down upon that strange scene showed Pepé wrapped in his blanket, standing sentinel at his side, were indescribable. A phantasmagoria seemed to glide before him, in which Mary, his cousin, the ordinary places, scenes, and associates of his youth, Ramirez, Chata, all the strange actors in this drama, in new and ill-comprehended scenes, passed by; and in the midst the door of a chamber cautiously opened, and the girl of the siren face, which the very voice of fate had seemed to bid him seek in this far land, stepped eagerly and lightly forth to meet him.

XXXV.

In an angle of the corridor, where from sunrise to sunset a woman usually sat, selling cigarettes and small glasses of _chia_ to the passers-by, stood a low _banquito_, which was in fact only a superfluous adobe jutting out from the massive wall. Ashley withdrew his foot from this rude stool and greeted Chinita ceremoniously, and yet with an air of protecting authority, inviting her by a gesture to be seated, saying, “So you will be less likely to be seen by any chance comer. But from necessity, I would not have asked you to speak to me here.”

The girl looked at him with a little quiver of laughter rippling her mouth, though her eyes were anxious. Evidently she was troubled with no sense of impropriety, and the thought of having eluded Doña Isabel diverted her. Instead of obeying Ashley’s invitation, she darted to Pepé’s side, caught a fold of his blanket in her hand, and drew it from his half-covered face.

“Ah, Pepito, and is it thou?” she cried breathlessly. “What news dost thou bring me? Hast thou then seen my godfather, and what does he say of the Señor General? Does he not think the plan a good one?”

Pepé shuffled uneasily to regain possession of the blanket, answering pettishly and in a stifled voice, “Is the servant to talk when the master stands by with the words ready? Go now, Chinita, you knew better than that when Florencia used to pull your ears for a saucy one!”

The girl pouted, turning to Ashley with a lowering face. She felt instinctively that what had been to her a matter of simple expediency, a means of securing the fortunes of a man who was in her imagination all that was noble and great, might have a meaner aspect to this stranger, who would perhaps think she had meant harm to Doña Isabel. Why had Pepé dragged this American into the matter at all? Idiot! Ruiz had said nothing but evil would come of it; and here was the stranger standing so straight and silent to be questioned,—and looking at her, too, with a sort of pity in the curious gaze he turned upon her. She felt half inclined to turn back to the room whence she had come; yet she said somewhat mockingly,

“It is you, Señor, who must speak, though it was the servant I sent on my errand; but perhaps you have seen Pedro and asked him my questions?”

“You had better sit down, Chinita,” answered Ashley, severely. “I should not be here to-night if it were not to tell you things hard for you to listen to, and only to learn of matters of life or death should you have consented to come. Heavens! what a strange perversity of fate that you of all others should be anxious for the welfare, infatuated with the character, of—Ramirez!”

He spoke the name as though it were a curse, and the ready flame leaped into Chinita’s eyes and cheek.

“Ah, then,” she said, in a low but intense and penetrating tone, “you have come to tell me, like the others, that he is a brigand and a wretch! It is false! He is too brave, too daring, too noble for such cowardly spirits as yours to understand! Pepé, thou wert a craven. Stupid, it was Pedro I bade thee go to, not to this pale American, who has lost all his blood through a single wound!”

Ashley smiled faintly, vexed to find himself stung by a girl’s unreasoning passion, but interposed quietly, “We lose time, Señorita, which is prudent neither for you nor for me. I beg you will listen to what I have to say. You will agree with me then that this is no hour to talk of my courage or the lack of it.”

He had stepped between her and Pepé, to whom with a strange perversity she turned as if to show her disdain for the foreigner, whose every word had a tone of reproach. A mere suggestion that the proprieties which Doña Feliz and Doña Isabel had attempted to graft upon the rude stalk of her untrained, unguarded childhood had some other meaning than an elder’s caprices, touched Chinita’s mind: a young man could know nothing of woman’s freaks and prejudices; she felt the hot blood rising to her cheek as she encountered his quiet gaze. All at once the court and corridor seemed to become wonderfully dark and still. A slight shudder ran through her frame; she drew back from the American and sat down where he had directed her, drawing her reboso close around her.

“Señor,” she said, quite humbly, “I am listening.”

Ashley did not speak at once, though Pepé seemed to urge him to do so by a motion of the head, which betokened readiness to confirm his speech; and when he began, it was at a point entirely unexpected by either listener.

“Señorita,” he said, “is it not true that when you think of an American, you have in your mind a pale-faced, mysterious, unresisting youth, gliding spectre-like about the hacienda walls, tempting by a love-song the bloody steel of some dark and daring desperado? In a word, is it not the vision—distorted, insufficient, faint—of my murdered cousin, John Ashley, that comes before you?”

The young girl started. “Yes! yes!” she said hurriedly, not knowing what she said. “At least, once I thought like that. I had not seen an American then; I did not know—”