For the Soul of Rafael Part 19

"Well, they told me she would not notice heretics, but one heretic was the only person she noticed in this carriage. How she looked at you! I told you she had nasty staring eyes, like augers boring through one. Did you see, Dona Maria? Did you not fear she would disgrace us all by leaping into the carriage?"

Dona Maria's black, bead-like eyes were regarding the young man curiously.

"It may be a custom of Mexico for ladies to show attention to strange men in that way," she observed, guardedly. "It may be so. I had never heard of it. The new lady of the Mission is teaching San Juan many new things, but I do not think she will teach it that sort of manners. They do not compare well with the American ladies' manners--no?"

"I fancy it was only as your escort she was gracious enough to turn and look at me; she might have fancied I was known to her. She looks very young."

"You would forget she was young if you heard her talk to the padre,"

returned Dona Maria, significantly. "It was enough to bring a malediction on all our heads to listen to it!"

"The bishop has forgiven her; at least it looks so."

"Oh, she is clever! He thinks she is a saint, this bishop. But the padre knows!"

She did not add, "and I know," but her thin cold lips with their satisfied smile suggested as much, and Bryton, observing it, felt anew that the girl from Mexico had a strong team to fight in Dona Maria and the padre.

[Music: _The Magpie's Reveille_ (Indian Gambling Song)]

"A'a'a'i-ne! A'a'a'i-ne!

Ta'a'-ni-aine! Ta'a'-ni-aine!

Bita alkaigi dike yiska ne.

Gayelka'! Gayelka'!"

TRANSLATION.

The magpie, the magpie, here underneath, In the white of his wings are the footsteps of the morning.

It dawns! It dawns!

[Music]

CHAPTER IX

When the night was old, and others slept, Raquel Arteaga crept in silence to the bedside of the old Indian woman of the hill tribe who had been her nurse, who was still her maid, and who was the one link she kept near her of the old life.

"Tia Polonia, awake!" she said, briefly; and as the woman did so, frightened and full of questions, her mistress held up her hand and rested herself on the side of the pallet, regarding the dark old face with doubt.

"Thy husband, beloved,--he has--"

"It is not my husband this time, Polonia. He is quite safe at the gaming-table, and will come in at sunrise with empty pockets. It is not my husband. It is--" She paused a long time, scrutinizing every feature of the old woman, who grew gray of visage under those smouldering eyes, and her hands shook.

"Darling, little one, thou art so like thy mother; more than ever when angry, and it is night; and I--Holy G.o.d! It is like a ghost comes to my bed to--to--ah, Dona Espiritu--mia!--what is the anger in thine eyes?"

"Can a dead woman be angry?" demanded her mistress drearily, the beautiful curved mouth quivering for an instant. "And it is a dead woman they have made of me--all of you! You lied to me, Polonia, when you brought word to me he had died there in Mexico!"

The old woman covered her face with her hands, and sank back whimpering on the pallet.

"I trusted you, and you lied to me, all of you!" the girl repeated in a hopeless tone of finality. "All these months he has been alive, and I have not known. You liars--liars--liars accursed!"

The old woman uttered a smothered shriek, and buried her face in the blankets.

"Not the curse, beloved, not the curse!" she begged, tremulously, "the curse of your people. It means--it means--Ai! not the curse, little one!

Thou hast only meant to frighten me to tell you how it was, and I will--I will! Only, child of the spirits, Dona Espiritu, bring not the curse!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "YOU LIED TO ME--ALL OF YOU!"]

She cowered and mumbled in a sort of palsied fear, but the girl sat there untouched by her misery, looking at her drearily. Perhaps she had some slight hope of denial, but Polonia's gray face put that out of her reach.

"Sit up," she commanded, and the old woman hastily scrambled into a sitting posture, but with her hands over her eyes, her body still rocking with fear. "Why did you do it?"

Never before had Tia Polonia heard those hard cold tones from her "querida"--her little one--her nursling of other days. This girl sitting there erect in the glimmering light of the candle was really Dona Espiritu of the tribe of the kings.

"Excellencia," she muttered, "it is true; I did sin. But the padre gave me the word. He said your soul was lost; that the man had bewitched you as--as your little mother had been bewitched when she--when she left religion for your father, and in the end they both died--and so soon!--and--and I wanted you to live, Excellencia! and I wanted your soul to live; and--so it was I took the word of the padre to you, and told you he was dead--and wished that he was dead--but it was all no use at all! On his hand when the fever burned was your ring--it kept him alive and he could not die, and all day and all night he said, 'Dona Espiritu! Dona Espiritu!' The padre heard, and I heard. The American brother, he heard too, and asked the Indios who was Dona Espiritu, and where did she live, that he might send for her. But it was no use. The padre made them all afraid for your soul, so that I told you the lie.

Now it is all said, and my life is going out of my body at the curse of your anger."

In fact, the fear in the old creature had worked on her own nerves, so that her final words were very faint. She spoke as one half swooning, and put out her hand in pitiful plea for help.

"Ah--the good padre," said the girl, bitterly. "Well, you see how it has all ended. The padre died, and has gone to G.o.d to answer for the lie; and the man he wished dead is alive--alive--alive, and oh--Mother of G.o.d! is happy with--with--"

Her cold self-control melted in a flood of tears, and she flung herself face down on the pallet beside the frightened Indian woman, her form shaken with shuddering sobs of absolute despair.

The dawn was near. All the night she had walked in her room alone, stunned and wordless over this thing she could not fight, or reason, or pray away; and now, having heard it all,--even of his calls for her when unconscious,--she had let fall for the first time the cold mask she had worn since the death of Dona Luisa, and since the significance of her vow had been revealed to her by the days and nights of Rafael's life.

She wept in a wild abandonment of grief at the hopeless vista of years reaching on to the edge of the world where death is. It had all been dreary enough before; but now--

When the birds began their welcome of the day she was still lying p.r.o.ne, but silent. The tempest of feeling had pa.s.sed, and her Indian woman stroked her hair softly, and waited, and did not speak. At last she rose, and looked out on the yellowing light touching the purple of the mountains.

"This is only a dream of the night, Polonia," she said, with a great sigh; "sleep again, and forget it all."

But the old woman clung with trembling hands to the folds of the girl's gown, and rested her cheek on the silken slippers.

"And the curse, darling? what of the curse of the lie?"

"Curses come home to the people who utter them," said the girl, drearily. "On my head they all lie--the curse by which I was made blind for a little, little while of life, and which now allows me to see when it is too late. The curse of G.o.d has followed our people; no blessing of the Church can wipe it out."

"But I--I--beloved?"

"The sin that is for love is not so black a sin, and it was your love the padre trusted to--your fear that I was bewitched and lost. But it is all over; we are in a new land, and this is a new life."

"And--he is happy--without thee?"

"I have seen his wife; people call her beautiful. I saw him almost touching her, yet I did not scream."

"Mother of G.o.d! his wife!"