Part 41

This thought indeed entered the mind of a man who riding through the drizzling rain caught a glimpse of the unusual light through the unguarded doorway, and reining his horse gazed curiously in. At first the place seemed to him full of women and jaded beasts; then he saw there were but four of each, and that one of the human creatures was a man,—a priest. The women,—good heavens! they were the Señora Doña Isabel Garcia, and the girl whom he had once seen under circumstances almost as extraordinary,—she whom he knew as the daughter of Ramirez and the foster-child of Don Rafael. Of the other woman he scarcely thought, yet he instinctively guessed she was Doña Carmen. Ashley Ward looked round in bewilderment. Only that day some definite account of what had occurred at Tres Hermanos had reached him, told by a man who had been with the administrador and his mother in their vain endeavors to trace the girl who had been so boldly spirited away. The search had been long delayed because of the illness of Doña Feliz; but once begun, it had been prosecuted with untiring zeal. Not a village, scarce a hut throughout that region had been unvisited, yet all in vain.

Ashley had heard the tale with deepest sympathy. Oh inconceivable obtuseness! that it had not once occurred to him or to Gonzales that the girl of whom they had heard as sojourning with Doña Carmen, and whom he had believed to be Chinita, might prove to be her vanished playmate,—simply because the remembrance of the house of Doña Carmen had slipped from their minds when their supposed knowledge of the movements of Chinita made Doña Carmen’s young guest no longer an object of interest to them, simply because the means adopted by Ramirez for the security of Chata would never have suggested themselves to minds less daring, less original than his own. Ashley Ward turned from the doorway dazed. The presence of these personages in such a place, at such a time, seemed unreal, bewildering, ominous.

Upon the heavy sand the horse that Ashley rode had made so little noise that it had not roused the miserable travellers as they cowered wet and shivering around the sputtering fire, upon which the priest with unhesitating hands threw some dry portion of a wooden railing and the broad cover of a sacred book of music. Vain sacrifice! for being of parchment it but curled and blackened, yet would not burn any more than would the bare stone floor upon which the welcome embers lay.

Turning back a few paces Ward encountered the carriage he had accompanied thither. With bowed heads, endeavoring thus to shelter their faces from the mist, General Gonzales and the servant Pedro rode, one on either side of the heavy travelling carriage. Just as Ward appeared they caught sight of the light. The coachman and his helper, half dead as they were from want of sleep, saw it too, and all the mules were stopped as though transfixed. The men began to mumble prayers, crossing themselves with unction. Gonzales, following his habit of caution as well as the motion of Ward, rode softly forward to reconnoitre.

Before the occupants of the carriage had time to question the meaning of the stoppage, Gonzales had returned. His face was white with excitement as he dismounted and opened the door of the vehicle.

“Señorita,” he said in a voice that shook from suppressed emotion, “a wonderful thing has happened!”

Herlinda leaned eagerly forward. She caught the gleam of the light and the grim outline of the chapel against the leaden sky. “Is my child—Leon, my uncle—here?” she gasped.

“No, no! that would not be so strange; we may perhaps at any moment encounter them. But your mother, your sister,—they are in yonder church, drenched, wretched; travellers seemingly more anxious, more eager than ourselves. From a word I heard, they too seek—your child.”

Gonzales spoke the last two words with evident difficulty and repugnance. Herlinda did not notice that. She scarce had heard more than the words, “Your mother, your sister.” In trembling haste she descended from the carriage. Instinctively she clasped the arm of Ashley Ward to support her through the inequalities of the roadway; and followed by Gonzales and Pedro, who had dismounted, she sped with surprising fleetness to the open door of the chapel.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, those within sprang to their feet in terror. Even the brutes hurtled together within the very rail of the altar, leaving free the space between the fire and the low arch beneath which the intruders stood. The women stood panting, their hands clasped upon their hearts, their lips parted, their eyes staring wildly. Doña Isabel was foremost. She first saw as in a vision her daughter, whom she believed still within convent walls, supported by the arm of the American. She sank upon her knees; her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth.

“Mother,” said Herlinda in a voice which gave conviction of the reality of her presence, “I am no ghost. The convents have been opened,—I am free. Where is my daughter? You took her from me,—give her back to me. My child! my child!”

She advanced into the chapel with a gesture so earnest, so impassioned, that it seemed that of concentrated power and anguish combined.

Doña Isabel bowed her head on her hand. Under the red light of the fire her form seemed to shrink and wither.

“Have mercy! oh, Herlinda, have mercy!” she moaned. “Your child is not here. I am seeking her, oh with what grief, what anguish! Ah, my God, it is true,—all, all that you can say to me!” She raised her eyes and they fell upon Gonzales. “I thought to save your honor and mine. That there still might be love and joy for you, I gave the child to Feliz to do with as she would. I did not think, I could not think—”

“Cruel, cruel mother!” cried Herlinda, “and false Feliz! Oh, what reproaches will be bitter enough, sharp enough, to heap upon her! She promised me she would love my child, care for it, protect it,—yes, even from you, unnatural mother that you were! Yet together you have degraded, perhaps brought about the ruin of, my child! I have been shut in from all the world,—and yet I am not the weak girl I was. No, the heart and brain of a woman grow even in utter darkness. You had no right to thrust my child away. No, she was mine,—come disgrace, come scorn, what would, she was mine. You tore her from me,—give her back to me!”

While this extraordinary scene took place, Chata with indescribable emotion recognized the pale impulsive face of the nun of El Toro,—so pale still, so worn, yet so strangely young, and lighted by the intense and resolute spirit of a wronged and noble woman.

“Yes, give me back my child!” reiterated Herlinda. “Ah, Mother, I read your heart; I know now better than I did then your motives for utterly ignoring, utterly denying my connection with the American. Your brother killed him: it was to shelter him, Leon Vallé, as much as to hide what you believed my shame, that you tore my baby from me. You resolved that there should be neither wonder nor question that could incriminate your idol. Oh, a sister’s love, a sister’s sacrifice is beautiful; but where in all the world before has it been stronger, more prescient than that of the mother for her child?”

Doña Isabel raised her hands above her head as though to ward off some crushing blow. Carmen rushed forward and caught her sister’s hand. “Herlinda,” she cried, “say no more. I am your sister—I am Carmen! Oh, I have always known there was a mystery; yet I have loved you, believed you true, believed you pure. You were almost a child,—you knew not the evil!”

“I was not a child!” returned Herlinda, proudly, yet clasping her sister with a grateful joy. “For all my trusting love I would not have stooped to sin. I was married. Yes,” she added defiantly, “though all the world deny it, I was married. God grant that I may one day stand before my husband’s murderer,—oh, with that word I will overwhelm him. What! he, the ravisher, the assassin, think to avenge _my_ honor!”

The form of the excited woman dilated as she spoke. Through the dim chapel her voice pealed with a ring of purity and truth, more clear than the tone of silver bells. There was a clamor of answering voices. Even the priest started forward, but Chata caught his flowing gown and whispered him in broken accents,—

“Oh, for the pity of God hide me. Let her not see me! Oh, this is too terrible, too terrible!” She shook with dread. “Madre Sanctissima, it will kill me if her eyes fall upon me! I am the daughter of the man she seeks. O Virgin of Succors, pity me!”

The burly person of the priest supported and sheltered the stricken and trembling girl. “Courage, courage!” he whispered. “Thou shalt plead for him. For thy sake she will forego the claims of justice,—she will forgive!” He naturally attributed her emotion to apprehensions for her father’s fate. “Yes, even I will plead with her.”

But in the brief space of this interference there had been a movement at the door, and a strange voice was heard. Gonzales—who throughout had stood just back of Herlinda, chafing that he was not at her side, for he would have championed her before the world—disappeared for a moment; then returning, strode forward to the fire and raised Doña Isabel with a not unkindly though imperious hand.

“Señora,” he said, “I have this moment heard news of Ramirez, brought by an escaped prisoner, one of your own men, Pepé Ortiz by name. As we suspected, the defeated and desperate chief is on his way to, perhaps has entered, Las Parras. There is no time to be lost. With him—accusing him, for such was her mad purpose—we may find your daughter’s child. Oh, would to God,” he added with fervor, “I had known this horrible blight upon Herlinda’s young life! I would have sheltered, I would have sustained her. I would have appealed to Rome.”

Doña Isabel looked at Gonzales in a dazed way, slightly swaying as she stood. “Thou wert ever noble, ever true,” she said dreamily. “Thou lovedst her. But Leon? She spoke of Leon. Then it is true! He did indeed murder the American. But he is dead; he is dead.”

The mind of the poor lady seemed wandering. She stood looking about her with an awful smile. Gonzales saw that she did not connect the name of Ramirez with her brother. Illness, exertion, and the intense emotions of that hour had made it impossible for her to receive any fresh impressions, or even to recall those that perhaps had once faintly suggested themselves and had faded. She was conscious of but one thought, one hope. “Herlinda’s child, Herlinda’s child!” she repeated again and again. “O God, to find, to give back the child!”

The agonized woman would have clasped the hand of Gonzales appealingly, but he had turned and led Herlinda from the place. Chata, gliding toward Doña Isabel, drew the arm of the suffering lady around her neck, and murmuring fond words, thus stood supporting her. And thus some moments later Ashley Ward found them. The young girl seemed in his eyes the very embodiment of Tenderness supporting Despair.

Ashley took her hand. “Oh, Chata!” he said, “what a fearful error this has been! And Chinita, where shall we find her? Poor girl, poor girl! God grant she has not found that man; the horrible fascination he held over her might prove more fatal than her newly-sworn hatred. Come, come, let us hasten. It is at least certain that Ramirez is at this moment in Las Parras.”

“Chinita!” cried Chata, her heart sickening. “What, is Chinita the child of Doña Herlinda? I love her, but oh she—the Señorita Herlinda! No, no, it cannot be!”

Ashley smiled drearily. “The eagle is sometimes found in a dove’s nest,” he said. “Ah, with such a mother what a glorious woman that strange defiant creature might have become! But what powers for good have been debased in those low associations among which she was thrown!”

The young man stopped, remembering Doña Isabel; but she had moved away. She was already at the door. Gonzales, who was returning for her, led her silently to the carriage. The widow who had been with Herlinda had dismounted and joined Chata and the priest, as they issued from the gloomy chapel. The poor woman looked confused and wretched; it was a comfort to her to hear the muttered benediction of the friar.

Chata mounted the sorry beast on which she had come, despite the remonstrance of Ashley. “No, no, I cannot bear the accusing gaze of the Señorita Herlinda,” she protested. “You, Don ’Guardo, know who I am. My place is at Leon Vallé’s side, not here. O God, would that it were not so!”

The rain had ceased. There was a streak of dawn in the sky. The road lay like a pale yellow serpent, which grew brighter as they followed its sinuous twinings among the hills. There was a slight accident, which detained the carriage; but Chata, accompanied by Pepé,—who had recognized her with amazement, and who gave her a brief account of all that had happened in the life of Chinita since they had parted,—hastened on as speedily as was possible to her jaded beast. Just at the dawn she found herself entering the straggling town; and suddenly the mass of verdure beyond a broken wall which they were skirting, and over which she was gazing with eyes as heavy as the dripping herbage, sparkled as with a thousand diamonds. The sun had risen; and facing it—his eyes so dazzled that the figures upon the roadway were to him like the scattered trees, mere black, shapeless masses—was the object of her dread, yet also at that moment of her fondest anguish bloody and travel-stained with the marks of battle and flight upon him, the wreck of what she had last seen him.

Filial duty and womanly pity supplied the place of that love which she could not conjure even then, and with a cry she drew rein at the prostrate gate; and to the amazement of Pepé, who knew nothing of the relations between the young girl and the defeated chieftain, she sprang to the ground and rushed to the embrace of the hunted man. Looking back she saw the others approaching, and sought to repel them by an entreating gesture. Her voice was heard in warning; but Ramirez heeded it no more than he did the sound of wheels and the tread of horses on the roadway. He had known of late such strange vicissitudes and such unaccountable experiences, which had been so unforeseen, often so disastrous yet fleeting, that they seemed the phantasmagoria of a frightful dream. These noises, these figures, were but the same to his stunned senses. But this girl in his arms, who called him father,—she was real flesh and blood, and thrilling with life. He clung to her with rapture; and as he would have done in a dream, he saw her there without surprise,—only with a vague bewilderment, a fear that she too would fade away. No! She clung to him with tears, as though seeking to protect him from some menaced danger.

Ah, he understood: this man who had reached them was the American who had accused him at the grave of him whom he had murdered. Great God! Had beings of this world and the other combined against him? There was Pedro, or his ghost; there too was Herlinda! Yes, though it was years since he had seen her, and then only for a moment in her lover’s arms, he knew her instantly.

Ramirez recoiled before her glance. His arms fell from Chata. The released nun, who had not known that the young girl had been of their company, thrust her aside, then caught her hand and looked searchingly into her face. Her own face quivered as she looked. It grew whiter and whiter still, as Chata raised her eyes and returned the gaze.

“I saw you from the convent grate—at El Toro,” said Herlinda, breathlessly.

Carmen’s face brightened like that of one who solves a joyful mystery. Chata sighed deeply.

“Chata,” cried Ashley, who divined what must be in the mind of Herlinda, “speak! Tell the Señorita that you are not her daughter. Her suspense is terrible!”

But Chata could not utter a word. Ramirez broke into a laugh. He himself heard that betrayal of his over-strained nerves with a shudder. He would not have laughed had his will served. Why should he laugh? Then the shame, he thought, of this poor Herlinda had been complete. She had a child; she had come to the avenger of her shame hoping to find the lost proof of her frailty. Even his sister Doña Isabel was crying wofully, “Oh Leon, Leon, is it thou? Art thou the Ramirez my poor Chinita loved? Oh, in pity give her back to me! I will forgive all—yes, even Norberto’s death—if thou wilt give Herlinda her child.”

“You are all mad!” cried Ramirez, recalled to himself. “What know I of Herlinda’s child, or even that she exists? I only know that this is mine,” he laid his hand upon Chata,—“she of whom you thought to cheat me. Ah, had I known there was another infant to claim your secret love,” he added mockingly, “I could have better disposed of my own!”

While the unrepentant brother of Doña Isabel was saying this, Pedro in gruff and surly accents was reminding him of the girl who had stopped him upon the road years before, and had given him an amulet. Yes, the impatient listener remembered her; he had heard her name,—Chinita; that was the girl of whom Rafael had spoken, she who had been the foundling of the gatekeeper. A vision of the unkempt, witch-like creature who had startled his horse, as she stood under that accursed mesquite-tree, rose before him. Was that Herlinda’s child? She stood still with her hand upon Chata, gazing upon her incredulously. Ramirez threw it off in sudden passion.

“Uncle Leon,” said Herlinda humbly, hopelessly, “you killed my husband. Oh, I would forgive you that, could you give me my child! Oh, when I saw this girl here—” she dropped her face into her hands and wept.

“Shame on you!” cried Ramirez. The sight of woman’s tears irritated him, and Herlinda’s assertion of her marriage made blacker still a deed whose silent, stealthy consummation had ever been to him a secret cause of shame. “What though I killed your lover, was it not to avenge the honor of the Garcias?”

“The honor of those you had disgraced!” cried the outraged woman scornfully,—“of her whose life you had crushed! No, your hand was ready for murder, your heart delighted in blood,—and so you killed my love, without a word of warning; and because in your vile, cruel heart you could believe no woman pure, no man just, you thus brought in an instant desolation and ruin upon me!” Ramirez shrank before the indignant pathos of her voice. “Ah,” she added, “all, all this I would forgive—O God, have I not prayed to thee and thy saints for grace to forgive?—if I could but behold my child. They tell me she has followed you,—one says because of the strange infatuation your mad career presents to her; another, that she may avenge her wrongs, her father’s murder. I warn you! beware! such a girl is not to be scorned.”

“I know nothing of her,” cried Ramirez, vehemently. “Here is your mother—Pedro; they have known the girl, they should render you an account of her. As for me, there is a man here who upon the grave of him I killed declared himself his avenger: it is to him I will answer for that deed.”

Ashley Ward involuntarily drew his sword, eager for the offered combat; but Pedro and Gonzales threw themselves between the two men. “This is neither the time nor the place,” exclaimed Gonzales; while Herlinda cried, “Do not touch my uncle for your life! My mother, my mother!”

Doña Isabel had indeed thrown herself upon her knees before the priest, and frantically implored his interposition. As he raised her he was seen to speak; but no one heard his words, for shrill female voices in altercation added to the confusion of the moment, and every eye was turned in the direction whence they came.

“Let me go! let me go! I will hear no more! I will wait no longer! He will escape. Oh, it is not with such weak words I will speak!”

Two female figures issued panting from the covert,—it seemed that the elder woman had striven to hold the other back, but the younger had triumphed. Doña Isabel uttered a cry of infinite gratitude and joy. Chata caught and held the girl as she came. “Chinita! thank God,” she cried, “you are here!”

Pedro in an ecstasy seized the robe of Herlinda. “There, there,” he cried, “is your child! your beautiful child!”

“Yes!” cried Chinita in mad excitement which only burning words could relieve. Not then could she pause for fond greetings or reverent tears; the sight of Ramirez seemed at once to fire yet absorb her wildest passions. She sprang toward him, as one may suppose the lion’s whelp faces a tiger that in some fierce struggle has filled the air with the scent of blood. The very aroma arouses and maddens its kindred nature. With an outburst of eloquence which like arrows tipped with venom seemed to sting and paralyze the object upon which they were directed, she assailed Ramirez with the story of his crimes; and separated from the picturesque and daring events that had accompanied and disguised them, and told with dramatic eloquence and vivid anger, they thrilled every listener with shuddering abhorrence and dismay. Blackest of all, she pictured the murder of John Ashley. Ramirez himself seemed visibly to shrink and wither before her scathing words, while Herlinda pressed her hands over her ears, entreating her to cease. The agonized woman could not endure the vivid rendition, for the girl unconsciously acted out, as she conceived, the scene of midnight murder.

From the moment of Chinita’s appearance, Ramirez had seemed overwhelmed as by the sight of some unearthly being; and while she spoke his eyes riveted themselves upon her, his jaw fell, his countenance took the hue of death. Suddenly the girl burst into wild sobs and tears. Her rage was spent. “Go, go!” she said,—“you who have cursed my life, you who killed my father, you who condemned my mother to a convent and me to a beggar’s life; for was it strange they cast me out, hoping I should die? And so I should have done but for Pedro— Fiend, to pursue him with devilish tortures after so many years! Oh! that it was which brought my hate upon you. Ah, I had loved you from a child,—not with a woman’s fancy, but as though the thought of you were the very soul that was born with me. Of you I thought, for you I prayed—was it not so, Chata? It was I who gave you the amulet they said would insure life and fortune. I planned and schemed to give you wealth and power. Ah, even when I knew the cursed wrong you had done me, I could not believe, I could not realize; that murdered man had been dead so long he seemed of another world, another time,—he seemed nothing to me. But the torture of Pedro,—ah, that was real, that was of my life; it maddened me. Ah! ah! ah! it brought your downfall. You have wondered how your skill, your well-laid plans, your valor, all have failed you. It was because of me! because of us!”

Chinita turned and indicated her companion with a gesture of her hand. She saw then what had riveted the gaze of Ramirez, and rather than her words had held each witness dumb. Dolores—her face kindled into fictitious youth, her beautiful eyes gleaming with a flame that seemed to scathe—had drawn from her brows the kerchief she had worn. The act had revealed a wondrous mass of brown hair, with the russet tinge of the chestnut, gleaming in the sunlight with threads and spirals of gold. The two heads, that of Chinita and of the woman, seemed to have been modelled the one from the other, so exact was their form, and so similar the texture and color and peculiar growth of the marvellous wealth of curls that crowned them both.

Chinita drew back with dilated eyes, speechless with the overwhelming horror of conviction. Chata would have clasped her in her arms, but she drew herself away. In the woman whose wild laugh rang upon the air Chata recognized the one who had thrown herself before the horse of Ramirez, and who had lain a bruised and shameful figure upon the convent steps at El Toro.