Part 9

“I always told Doña Isabel,” interrupted Feliz, “that such freedom of intercourse between youth and maiden would but lead to weariness on one side or the other. But she was a hater of old customs. She said there was more danger in two glances exchanged from the pavement and the balcony than in hours of such youthful chat and frolic.”

“Yet this freedom was designed to bind our hearts together,” said Vicente. “The wish of Doña Isabel’s heart for years was to see us one day man and wife. Yet she changed as suddenly—more suddenly and completely than Herlinda did. What is the secret? Is not Tres Hermanos productive enough to provide dowers for two daughters? Is all this to be centred on Carmen? Rich men have immured their daughters in convents to leave their wealth undivided. Can it be that Doña Isabel—”

“Be silent!” interrupted Doña Feliz, as she might have done to a foolish child. “Let us talk no more of Herlinda, Vicente; it makes my heart sore, and can but torture thine.”

“No, it relieves me; it soothes me,” cried Vicente. “I have longed to come here to talk to you. Doña Isabel is unapproachable. She has relapsed once more into the icy impenetrability that characterized her in that terrible time so many years ago. I can just remember—”

“Let the dead rest,” cried Doña Feliz, sharply. “That is a forbidden subject in Doña Isabel’s house. You are her guest.”

Vicente accepted the reproof with a shrug of his shoulders, and Doña Feliz added, as if at once to turn his thoughts and afford the sympathy he craved, “Talk to me then, if you will, of Herlinda. Do you know where she is now?”

“Yes, in Lagos, in that dreariest of prisons the convent of Our Lady of Tribulation. Think you Maria Santisima can desire such scourgings, such long fastings, such interminable vigils as they say are practised there? God grant the scoffers are right, and that the reputed self-immolations are but imaginings,—tales of the priests to attract richer offerings to the Church shrine. When I saw it, it was groaning beneath vessels of gold and silver and wreaths of jewels. Oh, Feliz! Feliz! higher and heavier than the treasures they pile on their altars are the woes these monks and nuns accumulate upon our devoted country!”

Doña Feliz glanced around warily, but an expression of genuine acquiescence gleamed from her eyes.

“You are where I have always hoped to see you,” she said in a low tone; “but beware of a too indiscriminate zeal. They say Comonfort himself has been too hasty, must draw back—retract—”

“Retract!” cried Vicente. “Never! Down, I say, with these tyrants in priestly garments,—these robbers in the guise of saints! The land is overrun with them; their dwellings rise in hundreds in the sunlight of prosperity, and the hovels of the poor are covered in the darkness of their oppressions. The finest lands, the richest mines, the wealth of whole families have passed into their cunning and grasping hands. There is no right, either temporal or spiritual, but is controlled by them. Better let us be lost eternally than be saved by such a clergy. What, saved by bull-baiters, cock-fighters, the deluders of the widow and orphan, the oppressors of the poor!”

“You are bitter and unjust,” interrupted Doña Feliz; “remember, too, the base ministers of the Church take nothing from the sanctity of her ordinances.”

“So be it,” answered Vicente. “Perhaps,” he added, with a short laugh, “you think I have lost my senses. No, no; but my personal loss has quickened my sense of public wrongs. In losing Herlinda, I lost all that held me to the past,—old superstitions, old deceptions. The idle boyish life died then, and up sprang the discontented, far-seeing, turbulent new spirit which spurns old dogmas, breaks old chains, and cries for freedom.”

Vicente had risen to his feet; his face lighted with enthusiasm; his pain was for a moment forgotten. The listening child felt a glow at her heart, though his words were as Greek to her. Doña Feliz thrilled with a purer, more reasonable longing for that liberty which as a child she had heard proclaimed, but which had flitted mockingly above her country, refusing to touch its ground. Her enthusiasm kindled at that of the young man, though his sprung from bitterness. How many enthusiasms own the same origin! Sweetness and content produce no frantic dissatisfactions, no daring aims, no conquering endeavors.

“You belie yourself,” she said, after a pause. “It is not merely the bitterness of your heart which has made you a patriot. The needs, the wrongs, the aspirations of the time have aroused you. Had Herlinda been yours, you still must have listened to those voices. With such men as you at his call, Comonfort should not falter. The cause he espoused must triumph.”

“Humph!” muttered Vicente, doubtfully, while Feliz, with a sudden qualm at her outspoken approbation of measures subversive of an authority that her training had made her believe sanctioned by heaven cried:—

“Ave Maria Santisima! what have I said? In blaming, in casting reproach upon the clergy, am I not casting mud upon our Holy Mother the Church?”

“Feliz!” cried Vicente, impatiently, “that question too asks Comonfort. Such irrational fears as these are the real foes of progress; and so deeply are old prejudices and superstitions rooted, that they find a place in every heart; no matter how powerful the intellect, how clear the comprehension of the political situation, how scrupulous or unscrupulous the conscience, the same ghostly fears hang over all. What spells have those monks with their oppressions and their shameless lives thrown over us that we have been wax in their hands? Think of your own father,—a man of parts, generous, lofty-minded, but a fanatic. He shunned the monté table, the bull-fight, and all such costly sports as the _hacenderos_ love; he almost lived in the Church. But that could not keep misfortune from his door: his cattle died; his horses were driven away in the revolution; his fields were devastated; and he was forced to borrow money on his lands. And to whom should he look but the clergy,—who so eager to lend, who so suave and kind as they? And when he was in the snare, who so pitiless in winding it around and about him, strangling, withering his life?”

“But, Vicente,” said Feliz, in a hard, embittered voice, “in our lot there was a show of justice. If you would have a more unmitigated use of pitiless craft, think of the fate of your own cousin Inez.”

The child within the shadow of the wall was listening breathlessly. Her innate rebellion against all authority made her quick to grasp the situation; a secret detestation of the coarse-handed, loud-voiced village priest who had succeeded Padre Francisco at Tres Hermanos quickened her apprehension. She looked at Vicente with glistening eyes. “Ah, well I remember poor Inez,” he said; “forced by her father to become a nun, that at his death he might win pardon for his soul by satisfying the greed of his councillors, she implored, wept, raved, fell into imbecility, and died; and her sad story, penetrating even the thickness of convent walls, was blackened by the assertion that she was possessed of devils foul and unclean,—she, the whitest, purest soul that ever stood before the gates of heaven.”

His voice choked; he was silent and sank again into his chair. “And Comonfort,” he muttered presently, “strives to conciliate wretches such as these. He is a man, Feliz, who with all his courage believes a poor compromise better than a long fight. Ah, the world believes Mexicans savage, unappeasable, blood-thirsty. How can they be otherwise with these blind leaders who precipitate them into those ditches which they fondly hope will prove roads to liberty and peace!”

Feliz looked at him with disquietude. “What, Vicente,” she said, “are you a man to be blown about by every wind,—a mere ordinary revolutionist seeking a new chief for each fresh battle?”

Vicente flushed at the insinuation. “One cause and a _thousand_ chiefs if need be,” he said. “But there is now a man in Mexico, Feliz, who must inevitably become the head of this movement,—who, like the cause, will remain the same through all mischances. To-day he is the friend of Comonfort, but who knows? To-morrow—”

“He may be his enemy,” ejaculated Feliz. “I wonder if in all this land there can be found one man who can be faithful!”

“To-morrow,” said Vicente, completing his sentence, “he may be the friend and leader of all the lovers of freedom in Mexico; and if so, _my_ leader. I have talked with that man, and he sees to the farthest ramifications of this great canker that is eating out the very vitals of our land. You will hear of him soon, Feliz, if you have not done so already. His name is Benito Juarez.”

Feliz smiled. “What, that Indian?” she said. “It is a new thing for a gentleman of pure Spanish blood to choose such a leader. Ah, Vicente, you disappoint me! It must be this Ramirez, who has in his every movement the air of a guerilla, a free-fighter, who has infected you.”

“No,” answered Vicente, sullenly, “Ramirez has no influence over me; only the fortune of war has thrown us together,—a blustering fellow on the surface, but so deep, so astute, that none can fathom him. He is not the man I could make my friend.”

“Where does he come from?” asked Doña Feliz with interest. “There is something familiar to me in his voice or expression.”

“A mere fancy on your part,” answered Vicente; “just such a fancy as makes me glance at him sometimes as he rides silent at my side, and with a sudden start clap my hand upon my sword. I have an instinctive dread of him,—not a fear, but such a dread as I have of a deadly reptile. I wonder,” he added gloomily, “if it is to be my fate to take his life.”

Feliz shuddered. Chinita’s eyes flashed.

“And yet once I saved him, when we were fighting against the guerillas of Ortiz. He was caught in a defile of the mountains; four assailants dashed upon him at once with exultant cries; and though he fought gallantly, had I not rushed to the rescue he must have been killed there. Together we beat the villains off, and he fancies he owes me some thanks; and perhaps too I have some kindness for the man I saved,—and yet there are times when I cannot trust myself to look upon him.”

“Strange! strange indeed!” said Doña Feliz, musingly. “I have heard his name before. Is he not the man who stopped the train of wagons by which the merchants of Guanapila were despatching funds to make their foreign payments, and who took fifty thousand dollars or more to pay his troops?”

“The same,” answered Vicente; “and those troops were reinforced by a chain-gang he had released the day before,—vile miscreants every one. We quarrelled over each of these acts; but he laughed us all—the merchants, the government, myself—into good-humor again. He is one of those anomalies one detests, and admires,—crafty, daring, licentious, superstitious, yielding, cruel, all in turn and when least expected. He will rob a city with one hand, and feed the poor or enrich a church with the other. But here he comes!”

The man thus spoken of was, indeed, crossing the court with Don Rafael, who seemed to reel slightly in his walk, and was laughing and talking volubly. “Yes, yes,” he was saying, as he came within hearing, “you are right, Señor Don José; the herd of brood mares of Tres Hermanos is the finest in the country. There are more than a hundred well-broken horses in the pasture, besides scores upon scores that no man has crossed. I sent a hundred and fifty to Don Julian a month ago. Doña Isabel begrudges nothing to the cause of liberty.”

“Then I will take the other hundred to-morrow,” said Ramirez, lightly. Don Rafael stared at him blankly. There was something in the General’s face that almost sobered him. The countenance of Gonzales darkened.

“Believe me, Señor Comonfort shall know of your goodwill, and that of the excellent lady Doña Isabel,” continued Ramirez, suavely. “She will lose nothing by the complacency of her administrador,” and as he spoke, he smiled half indulgently, half contemptuously, upon Don Rafael.

“You promised me that here at least no seizures should be made,” exclaimed Don Vicente, in a low indignant voice, hot with the thought that even the men he had himself mustered and commanded were so utterly under the spell of Ramirez that upon any disagreement they were likely to shift their allegiance,—for those free companies were even less to be depended upon than the easily rebellious regulars.

“There have been no seizures, nor will there be,” answered the General, laughing. “Don Rafael and I have been talking together as friends and brothers; he has told me of his amiable family, and I him of my footsore troops.”

Vicente, silenced but enraged, glared upon Ramirez as he bade farewell to Doña Feliz. As he took her hand, he bent and lightly kissed it. The action was a common one,—Doña Feliz scarcely noticed it; her eyes rested upon her son, who shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, his garrulity checked, his gaze confused and alarmed.

“We shall be gone at daybreak. You will be glad to be rid of us,” the General said laughingly; “yet we are innocent folk, and would do you no harm. Hark! how sweetly our followers are singing,”—and, indeed, the plaintive notes of a love ditty faintly floated on the air. “My adieus to the Señora de Sanchez and her lovely children.”

While the General spoke thus, with many low bows and formal words of parting, he was quite in the shadow of the wall. Doña Feliz could scarce see his face, but Chinita’s eyes never left it. As he turned away, a sob rose in her throat; but for a sudden fear, she would have darted after him. Her blood seemed afire. There was something in the very atmosphere stirred by this man that roused her wild nature, even as the advent of its fellow casts an admonishing scent upon the air breathed by some savage beast.

Don Rafael stole away to bed, but Don Vicente and Doña Feliz continued their interrupted conversation far into the night. Chinita sat in the same place, and slumbered fitfully, and dreamed. All through her dreams sounded the voice of the General Ramirez; all through her dreams Gonzales followed him, with hand upon his sword.

It was near morning, when at last the child awoke, chilled and stiff, and found herself alone in the corridor. The moon had sunk, and only the faint light of the stars shone on the vast and silent building; but she was not afraid. She was used to dropping asleep, as did others of the peasant class, where best it suited her, and at best her softest bed was a sheep-skin. She sleepily crept to the most sheltered part of the corridor and slept again. But the stony pillow invited to no lengthy repose; and when the dawn broke, the sound of movement in the outer court quickly roused her, and she ran out just in time to see the officers hastily swallowing their chocolate, while Don Rafael, Pedro, and a crowd of laborers, shivering in their _jorongos_, were looking on, while the sumpter mules were being laden. At the village, the camp women were already making their shrill adieus, taking their departure upon sorry beasts, laden with screeching chickens, grunting young pigs, and handfuls of rice, coffee, chile, or whatever edibles they had been able to filch or beg, tied in scraps of cloth and hung from their wide panniers, where the children were perched at imminent risk of losing their balance and breaking their brown necks. It was not known, however, that such accidents had ever happened, and the women jogged merrily away, to fall into the rear when outstripped by their better mounted lords.

Don Rafael wore a gloomy face. A squad of soldiers had already been despatched for the horses; his own herders were lassooing them in the pastures, and they were presently driven past the hacienda gates, plunging and snorting. He felt that had he not in Doña Isabel’s name yielded them, they would have been forcibly seized; yet his conscience troubled him. The night before he had drunk too much; the wine had strangely affected him,—he had been maudlin and garrulous. These were times when no prudent man should talk unnecessarily, and especially to such a listener as the adventurer General José Ramirez.

The neighing and whinnying of the horses, the hollow ringing of their unshod hoofs upon the road-way, the shouts of the men, the shrill voices of the women, all combined to fill the air with unwonted sounds, and brought the family of the administrador early from their beds. As Vicente Gonzales, after shaking hands coldly with Don Rafael, rode away at the head of his band, he half turned in his saddle to glance at Doña Isabel’s balcony. At the rear of the house, a faint glow was beginning to steal up the sky and touch the tops of the trees which rose above the garden wall, and tinge with opal the square towers of the church; he remembered the good Padre Francisco, and piously breathed a prayer for his soul. The drooping rose on the balcony of what he knew to be Doña Isabel’s chamber seemed the very emblem of death and desolation. With a sigh he pulled his hat over his eyes and rode on; but the General, José Ramirez, who had been longer in his adieus, caught sight of Doña Rita in the corner balcony, leaning over her two half-dressed children. Their two heads were close together, their laughing faces side by side, their four eyes making points of dancing light behind the black bars of the balcony railing.

Don José Ramirez was in a gentle mood; a sudden impulse seized him to turn his horse and ride close to the building, turning his eyes searchingly upon the children. Both coquettishly turned their faces away. Rosario covered her eyes with her fingers, glancing coyly through them; then kissing the tips of the other hand, opened them lightly above him in an imaginary shower of kisses. No goddess could have sprinkled them more deftly than did this infantine coquette.

Ramirez answered the salute laughingly, then turned away with a frown on his brow. The slight delay had left him behind the troop, amid the dust of the restive horses. Yet he made no haste to escape the inconvenience, but yielding for the moment to some absorbing thought rode slowly. The voice of a child suddenly caused him to arrest his horse with an ungentle hand. He looked around him with a start,—an object indistinctly seen under a mesquite tree caused his heart to bound. The blood left his cheek, he shook in his saddle. His horse, as startled as he, bounded in the air, and trembled in every limb. A moment later and José Ramirez laughed aloud. His name was repeated. “What do you there, child?” he cried; “thou art a witch, and hast frightened my horse. And by my patron saint,” he added in a lower tone, “I was startled myself!”

Chinita the foundling came forward calmly, though her skirt was in tatters, and her draggled scarf scarce covered her shoulders; but there was an air about her as if she had been dressed in imperial robes. “Ah!” she said quite calmly, “it is the smell of the blood that has startled your horse; they say no animal passes here without shying and plunging, since the American was killed!”

Ramirez glanced around him with wild eyes. “Oh, you cannot see him now,” cried the child; “that happened long ago. No, no, there is nothing here that will hurt you. Why do you look at me like that? It is not I—a poor little girl—who could injure you, but men like those,” and she pointed to the columns of soldiers whose bayonets were glistening in the rising sun. Her eye seemed to single out Gonzales, though he was beyond her vision. The thought of Ramirez perchance followed hers, yet he only sat and stared at her, his eyes fixed, his body shrunken and bowed.

“See here,” she said slowly, raising herself on tiptoe, and with eager hand drawing something from beneath her clothing, “I have a charm of jet: Pedro put it on my neck when I was a baby. It will ward off the evil eye. Take it; wear it. An old man gave it to Pedro on his death-bed; he had been a soldier, a highwayman; he had fought many battles, killed many men, yet had never had a wound! Take it!” She took from her neck a tiny bit of jet, hanging from a hempen string, and thrust it into his hand.

Ramirez was astounded. He looked upon her as a vision from another world,—he who was accustomed to outbursts of strange eloquence, even from the lips of unclothed children amid those untutored peasantry. She seemed to him a thing of witchcraft. His eyes fixed themselves on the child’s face as if fascinated; he saw it grimy, vivacious, beautiful but weird, tempting, mysterious. No angel, he felt, had stopped him on his way. He took the charm mechanically, and the child, with a joyous yet mocking laugh, fled away. He roused as from a spell, called after her, tossed the charm into the air, and caught it again, and called once more, but she neither answered nor stopped. He gazed around him once again. A superstitious awe, akin to terror, crept over him; he shuddered, thrust the talisman into his belt, and put spurs to his horse.

That day, for the most part, he rode alone, and when for a time he joined Gonzales, he was silent; silent, too, was his companion, and neither one nor the other divined the thoughts of the man who rode at his side.

XV.

Years passed. The nine days’ feast of the Blessed Virgin, one of the most charming of all the year, was being celebrated with unusual pomp in the church at Tres Hermanos. Since the death of Padre Francisco, no priest had been regularly stationed there; but at the expense of Doña Isabel, one had been sent there to remain through the nine days sacred to Mary, and the people gave their whole time to devotional exercises, much to the neglect of the usual hacienda work. The crops in the fields were untended, while the men crowded to Mass in the morning, and spent their afternoons at the tavern-shop playing monté and drinking pulque; while the women and children streamed in and out of the church,—the women to witness the offering of flowers upon the altar, the children to lay them there, happy once in the year to be chief in the service of the beautiful Queen of Heaven. For though the image above the altar was blackened by time and defaced by many a scar, the robes were brilliant, and glittered with variously colored jewels of glass; the crown was untarnished, and the little yellow babe in the mother’s arms appealed to the strong maternal sentiment which lies deep in the heart of every Mexican woman.