say that!” he said. “Faith, it will be little the Senorita gets more than enough for her bread, may be, out of the Moreno estate. Hark ye, Alessandro; if you will not tell, I will tell you the story of the Senorita. You know she is not of the Moreno blood; is no relation of theirs.”
“Yes,” said Alessandro; “Margarita has said to me that the Senorita Ramona was only the foster-child of the Senora Moreno.”
“Foster-child!” repeated Juan Can, contemptuously, “there is something to the tale I know not, nor ever could find out; for when I was in Monterey the Ortegna house was shut, and I could not get speech of any of their people. But this much I know, that it was the Senora Ortegna that had the girl first in keeping; and there was a scandalous tale about her birth.”
If Juan Can’s eyes had not been purblind with old age, he would have seen that in Alessandro’s face which would have made him choose his words more carefully. But he went on: “It was after the Senora Ortegna was buried, that our Senora returned, bringing this child with her; and I do assure you, lad, I have seen the Senora look at her many a time as if she wished her dead. And it is a shame, for she was always as fair and good a child as the saints ever saw. But a stain on the blood, a stain on the blood, lad, is a bitter thing in a house. This much I know, her mother was an Indian. Once when I was in the chapel, behind the big Saint Joseph there, I overheard the Senora say as much. She was talking to Father Salvierderra, and she said, ‘If the child had only the one blood in her veins, it would be different. I like not these crosses with Indians.'”
If Alessandro had been civilized, he would at this word “Indian” have bounded to his feet. Being Alessandro, he stood if possible stiller than before, and said in a low voice, “How know you it was the mother that was the Indian?”
Juan laughed again, maliciously: “Ha, it is the Ortegna face she has; and that Ortegna, why, he was the scandal byword of the whole coast. There was not a decent woman would have spoken to him, except for his wife’s sake.”
“But did you not say that it was in the Senora Ortegna’s keeping that the child was?” asked Alessandro, breathing harder and faster each moment now; stupid old Juan Can so absorbed in relish of his gossip, that he noticed nothing.
“Ay, ay. So I said,” he went on; “and so it was. There be such saints, you know; though the Lord knows if she had been minded to give shelter to all her husband’s bastards, she might have taken lease of a church to hold them. But there was a story about a man’s coming with this infant and leaving it in the Senora’s room; and she, poor lady, never having had a child of her own, did warm to it at first sight, and kept it with her to the last; and I wager me, a hard time she had to get our Senora to take the child when she died; except that it was to spite Ortegna, I think our Senora would as soon the child had been dead.”
“Has she not treated her kindly?” asked Alessandro, in a husky voice.
Juan Can’s pride resented this question. “Do you suppose the Senora Moreno would do an unkindness to one under her roof?” he asked loftily. “The Senorita has been always, in all things, like Senor Felipe himself. It was so that she promised the Senora Ortegna, I have heard.”
“Does the Senorita know all this?” asked Alessandro.
Juan Can crossed himself. “Saints save us, no!” he exclaimed. “I’ll not forget, to my longest day, what it cost me, once I spoke in her hearing, when she was yet small. I did not know she heard; but she went to the Senora, asking who was her mother. And she said I had said her mother was no good, which in faith I did, and no wonder. And the Senora came to me, and said she, ‘Juan Canito, you have been a long time in our house; but if ever I hear of your mentioning aught concerning the Senorita Ramona, on this estate or anywhere else in the country, that day you leave my service!’ — And you’d not do me the ill-turn to speak of it, Alessandro, now?” said the old man, anxiously. “My tongue runs away with me, lying here on this cursed bed, with nothing to do,– an active man like me.”
“No, I’ll not speak of it, you may be assured,” said Alessandro, walking away slowly.
“Here! Here!” called Juan. “What about that plan you had for making a bed for Senor Felipe on the verandah Was it of raw-hide you meant?”
“Ah, I had forgotten,” said Alessandro, returning. “Yes, that was it. There is great virtue in a raw-hide, tight stretched; my father says that it is the only bed the Fathers would ever sleep on, in the Mission days. I myself like the ground even better; but my father sleeps always on the rawhide. He says it keeps him well. Do you think I might speak of it to the Senora?”
“Speak of it to Senor Felipe himself,” said Juan. “It will be as he says. He rules this place now, from beginning to end; and it is but yesterday I held him on my knee. It is soon that the old are pushed to the wall, Alessandro.”
“Nay, Juan Canito,” replied Alessandro, kindly. “It is not so. My father is many years older than you are, and he rules our people to-day as firmly as ever. I myself obey him, as if I were a lad still.”
“What else, then, but a lad do you call yourself, I wonder?” thought Juan; but he answered, “It is not so with us. The old are not held in such reverence.”
“That is not well,” replied Alessandro. “We have been taught differently. There is an old man in our village who is many, many years older than my father. He helped to carry the mortar at the building of the San Diego Mission, I do not know how many years ago. He is long past a hundred years of age. He is blind and childish, and cannot walk; but he is cared for by every one. And we bring him in our arms to every council, and set him by my father’s side. He talks very foolishly sometimes, but my father will not let him be interrupted. He says it brings bad luck to affront the aged. We will presently be aged ourselves.”
“Ay, ay!” said Juan, sadly. “We must all come to it. It is beginning to look not so far off to me!”
Alessandro stared, no less astonished at Juan Can’s unconscious revelation of his standard of measurement of years than Juan had been at his. “Faith, old man, what name dost give to yourself to-day!” he thought; but went on with the topic of the raw-hide bed. “I may not so soon get speech with Senor Felipe,” he said. “It is usually when he is sleepy that I go to play for him or to sing. But it makes my heart heavy to see him thus languishing day by day, and all for lack of the air and the sun, I do believe, indeed, Juan.”
“Ask the Senorita, then,” said Juan. “She has his ear at all times.”
Alessandro made no answer. Why was it that it did not please him,– this suggestion of speaking to Ramona of his plan for Felipe’s welfare? He could not have told; but he did not wish to speak of it to her.
“I will speak to the Senora,” he said; and as luck would have it, at that moment the Senora stood in the doorway, come to ask after Juan Can’s health.
The suggestion of the raw-hide bed struck her favorably. She herself had, in her youth, heard much of their virtues, and slept on them. “Yes,” she said, “they are good. We will try it. It was only yesterday that Senor Felipe was complaining of the bed he lies on; and when he was well, he thought nothing could be so good; he brought it here, at a great price, for me, but I could not lie on it. It seemed as if it would throw me off as soon as I lay down; it is a cheating device, like all these innovations the Americans have brought into the country. But Senor Felipe till now thought it a luxury; now he tosses on it, and says it is throwing him all the time.”
Alessandro smiled, in spite of his reverence for the Senora. “I once lay down on one myself, Senora,” he said, “and that was what I said to my father. It was like a wild horse under me, making himself ready to buck. I thought perhaps the invention was of the saints, that men should not sleep too long.”
“There is a pile of raw-hides,” said Juan, “well cured, but not too stiff; Juan Jose was to have sent them off to-day to be sold; one of those will be just right. It must not be too dry.”
“The fresher the better,” said Alessandro, “so it have no dampness. Shall I make the bed, Senora?” he asked, “and will the Senora permit that I make it on the veranda? I was just asking Juan Can if he thought I might be so bold as to ask you to let me bring Senor Felipe into the outer air. With us, it is thought death to be shut up in walls, as he has been so long. Not till we are sure to die, do we go into the dark like that.”
The Senora hesitated. She did not share Alessandro’s prejudice in favor of fresh air.
“Night and day both?” she said. “Surely it is not well to sleep out in the night?”
“That is the best of all, Senora,” replied Alessandro, earnestly. “I beg the Senora to try it. If Senor Felipe have not mended greatly after the first night he had so slept, then Alessandro will be a liar.”
“No, only mistaken,” said the Senora, gently. She felt herself greatly drawn to this young man by his devotion, as she thought, of Felipe. “When I die and leave Felipe here,” she had more than once said to herself, “it would be a great good to him to have such a servant as this on the place.”
“Very well, Alessandro,” she replied; “make the bed, and we will try it at once.”
This was early in the forenoon. The sun was still high in the west, when Ramona, sitting as usual in the veranda, at her embroidery, saw Alessandro coming, followed by two men, bearing the raw-hide bed.
“What can that be?” she said. “Some new invention of Alessandro’s, but for what?”
“A bed for the Senor Felipe, Senorita,” said Alessandro, running lightly up the steps. “The Senora has given permission to place it here on the veranda, and Senor Felipe is to lie here day and night; and it will be a marvel in your eyes how he will gain strength. It is the close room which is keeping him weak now; he has no illness.”
“I believe that is the truth, Alessandro,” exclaimed Ramona; “I have been thinking the same thing. My head aches after I am in that room but an hour, and when I come here I am well. But the nights too, Alessandro? Is it not harmful to sleep out in the night air?”
“Why, Senorita?” asked Alessandro, simply.
And Ramona had no answer, except, “I do not know; I have always heard so.”
“My people do not think so,” replied Alessandro; “unless it is cold, we like it better. It is good, Senorita, to look up at the sky in the night.”
“I should think it would be,” cried Ramona. “I never thought of it. I should like to do it.”
Alessandro was busy, with his face bent down, arranging the bedstead in a sheltered corner of the veranda. If his face had been lifted, Ramona would have seen a look on it that would have startled her more than the one she had surprised a few days previous, after the incident with Margarita. All day there had been coming and going in Alessandro’s brain a confused procession of thoughts., vague yet intense. Put in words, they would have been found to be little more than ringing changes on this idea: “The Senorita Ramona has Indian blood in her veins. The Senorita Ramona is alone. The Senora loves her not. Indian blood! Indian blood!” These, or something like them, would have been the words; but Alessandro did not put them in words. He only worked away on the rough posts for Senor Felipe’s bedstead, hammered, fitted, stretched the raw-hide and made it tight and firm, driving every nail, striking every blow, with a bounding sense of exultant strength, as if there were suddenly all around him a new heaven and a new earth.
Now, when he heard Ramona say suddenly in her girlish, eager tone, “It must be; I never thought of it; I should like to try it,” these vague confused thoughts of the day, and the day’s bounding sense of exultant strength, combined in a quick vision before Alessandro’s eyes,– a vision of starry skies overhead, Ramona and himself together, looking up to them. But when he raised his head, all he. said was, “There, Senorita! That is all firm, now. If Senor Felipe will let me lay him an this bed, he will sleep as he has not slept since he fell ill.”
Ramona ran eagerly into Felipe’s room, “The bed is all ready on the veranda,” she exclaimed. “Shall Alessandro come in and carry you out?”
Felipe looked up, startled. The Senora turned on Ramona that expression of gentle, resigned displeasure, which always hurt the girl’s sensitive nature far worse than anger. “I had not spoken to Felipe yet of the change, Ramona,” she said. “I supposed that Alessandro would have informed me when the bed was ready; I am sorry you came in so suddenly. Felipe is still very weak, you see.”
“What is it? What is it?” exclaimed Felipe, impatiently.
As soon as it was explained to him, he was like a child in his haste to be moved.
“That’s just what I needed!” he exclaimed. “This cursed bed racks every bone in my body, and I have longed for the sun more than ever a thirsty man longed for water. Bless you, Alessandro,” he went on, seeing Alessandro in the doorway. “Come here, and take me up in those long arms of yours, and carry me quick. Already I feel myself better.”
Alessandro lifted him as if he were a baby; indeed, it was but a light burden now, Felipe’s wasted body, for a man much less strong than Alessandro to lift.
Ramona, chilled and hurt, ran in advance, carrying pillows and blankets. As she began to arrange them on the couch, the Senora took them from her hands, saying, “I will arrange them myself;” and waved Ramona away.
It was a little thing. Ramona was well used to such. Ordinarily it would have given her no pain she could not conceal. But the girl’s nerves were not now in equilibrium. She had had hard work to keep back her tears at the first rebuff. This second was too much. She turned, and walked swiftly away, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
Alessandro saw it; Felipe saw it.
To Felipe the sight was, though painful, not a surprise. He knew but too well how often his mother hurt Ramona. All he thought now, in his weakness, was, “Alas! what a pity my mother does not love Ramona!”
To Alessandro the sight was the one drop too much in the cup. As he stooped to lay Felipe on the bed, he trembled so that Felipe looked up, half afraid.
“Am I still so heavy, Alessandro?” he said smiling.
“It is not your weight, Senor Felipe,” answered Alessandro, off guard, still trembling, his eyes following Ramona.
Felipe saw. In the next second, the eyes of the two young men met. Alessandro’s fell before Felipe’s. Felipe gazed on, steadily, at Alessandro.
“Ah!” he said; and as he said it, he closed his eyes, and let his head sink back into the pillow.
“Is that comfortable? Is that right?” asked the Senora, who had seen nothing.
“The first comfortable moment I have had, mother,” said Felipe. “Stay, Alessandro, I want to speak to you as soon as I am rested. This move has shaken me up a good deal. Wait.”
“Yes, Senor,” replied Alessandro, and seated himself on the veranda steps.
“If you are to stay, Alessandro,” said the Senora, “I will go and look after some matters that need my attention. I feel always at ease about Senor Felipe when you are with him. You will stay till I come back?”
“Yes, Senora,” said Alessandro, in a tone cold as the Senora’s own had been to Ramona. He was no longer in heart the Senora Moreno’s servant. In fact, he was at that very moment revolving confusedly in his mind whether there could be any possibility of his getting away before the expiration of the time for which he had agreed to stay.
It was a long time before Felipe opened his eyes. Alessandro thought he was asleep.
At last Felipe spoke. He had been watching Alessandro’s face for some minutes. “Alessandro,” he said.
Alessandro sprang to his feet, and walked swiftly to the bedside. He did not know what the next word might be. He felt that the Senor Felipe had seen straight into his heart in that one moment’s look, and Alessandro was preparing for anything.
“Alessandro,” said Felipe, “my mother has been speaking to me about your remaining with us permanently. Juan Can is now very old, and after this accident will go on crutches the rest of his days, poor soul! We are in great need of some man who understands sheep, and the care of the place generally.”
As he spoke, he watched Alessandro’s face closely. Swift changing expressions passed over it. Surprise predominated. Felipe misunderstood the surprise. “I knew you would be surprised,” he said. “I told my mother that you would not think of it; that you had stayed now only because we were in trouble.”
Alessandro bowed his head gratefully. This recognition from Felipe gave him pleasure.
“Yes, Senor,” he said, “that was it. I told Father Salvierderra it was not for the wages. But my father and I have need of all the money we can earn. Our people are very poor, Senor. I do not know whether my father would think I ought to take the place you offer me, or not, Senor. It would be as he said. I will ask him.”
“Then you would be willing to take it?” asked Felipe.
“Yes, Senor, if my father wished me to take it,” replied Alessandro, looking steadily and gravely at Felipe; adding, after a second’s pause, “if you are sure that you desire it, Senor Felipe, it would be a pleasure to me to be of help to you.”
And yet it was only a few moments ago that Alessandro had been turning over in his mind the possibility of leaving the Senora Moreno’s service immediately. This change had not been a caprice, not been an impulse of passionate desire to remain near Ramona; it had come from a sudden consciousness that the Senor Felipe would be his friend. And Alessandro was not mistaken.
IX
WHEN the Senora came back to the veranda, she found Felipe asleep, Alessandro standing at the foot of the bed, with his arms crossed on his breast, watching him. As the Senora drew near, Alessandro felt again the same sense of dawning hatred which had seized him at her harsh speech to Ramona. He lowered his eyes, and waited to be dismissed.
“You can go now, Alessandro,” said the Senora. “I will sit here. You are quite sure that it will be safe for Senor Felipe to sleep here all night?”
“It will cure him before many nights,” replied Alessandro, still without raising his eyes, and turning to go.
“Stay,” said the Senora. Alessandro paused. “It will not do for him to be alone here in the night, Alessandro.’
Alessandro had thought of this, and had remembered that if he lay on the veranda floor by Senor Felipe’s side, he would also lie under the Senorita’s window.
“No, Senora,” he replied. “I will lie here by his side. That was what I had thought, if the Senora is willing.”
“Thank you, Alessandro,” said the Senora, in a tone which would have surprised poor Ramona, still sitting alone in her room, with sad eyes. She did not know the Senora could speak thus sweetly to any one but Felipe. “Thank you! You are kind. I will have a bed made for you.”
“Oh, no.” cried Alessandro; “if the Senora will excuse me, I could not lie on a bed. A raw-hide like Senor Felipe’s, and my blanket, are all I want. I could not lie on any bed.”
“To be sure,” thought the Senora; “what was I thinking of! How the boy makes one forget he is an Indian! But the floor is harder than the ground, Alessandro,” she said kindly.
“No, Senora,” he said, “it is all one; and to-night I will not sleep. I will watch Senor Felipe, in case there should be a wind, or he should wake and need something.”
“I will watch him myself till midnight,” said the Senora. “I should feel easier to see how he sleeps at first.”
It was the balmiest of summer nights, and as still as if no living thing were on the earth. There was a full moon, which shone on the garden, and on the white front of the little chapel among the trees. Ramona, from her window, saw Alessandro pacing up and down the walk. She had seen him spread down the raw-hide by Felipe’s bed, and had seen the Senora take her place in one of the big carved chairs. She wondered if they were both going to watch; she wondered why the Senora would never let her sit up and watch with Felipe.
“I am not of any use to anybody,” she thought sadly. She dared not go out and ask any questions about the arrangements for the night. At supper the Senora had spoken to her only in the same cold and distant manner which always made her dumb and afraid. She had not once seen Felipe alone during the day. Margarita, who, in the former times, — ah, how far away those former times looked now! — had been a greater comfort to Ramona than she realized,– Margarita now was sulky and silent, never came into Ramona’s presence if she could help it, and looked at her sometimes with an expression which made Ramona tremble, and say to herself, “She hates me; She has always hated me since that morning.”
It had been a long, sad day to Ramona; and as she sat in her window leaning her head against the sash, and looked at Alessandro pacing up and down, she felt for the first time, and did not shrink from it nor in any wise disavow or disguise it to herself, that she was glad he loved her. More than this she did not think; beyond this she did not go. Her mind was not like Margarita’s, full of fancies bred of freedom in intercourse with men. But distinctly, tenderly glad that Alessandro loved her, and distinctly, tenderly aware how well he loved her, she was, as she sat at her window this night, looking out into the moonlit garden; after she had gone to bed, she could still hear his slow, regular steps on the garden-walk, and the last thought she had, as she fell asleep, was that she was glad Alessandro loved her.
The moon had been long set, and the garden, chapel-front, trees, vines, were all wrapped in impenetrable darkness, when Ramona awoke, sat up in her bed, and listened. All was so still that the sound of Felipe’s low, regular breathing came in through her open window. After hearkening to it for a few moments, she rose noiselessly from her bed, and creeping to the window parted the curtains and looked out; noiselessly, she thought; but it was not noiselessly enough to escape Alessandro’s quick ear; without a sound, he sprang to his feet, and stood looking at Ramona’s window.
“I am here, Senorita,” he whispered. “Do you want anything?”
“Has he slept all night like this?” she whispered back.
“Yes, Senorita. He has not once moved.”
“How good!” said Ramona. “How good!”
Then she stood still; she wanted to speak again to Alessandro, to hear him speak again, but she could think of no more to say. Because she could not, she gave a little sigh.
Alessandro took one swift step towards the window. “May the saints bless you, Senorita,” he whispered fervently.
“Thank you, Alessandro,” murmured Ramona, and glided back to her bed, but not to sleep. It lacked not much of dawn; as the first faint light filtered through the darkness, Ramona heard the Senora’s window open.
“Surely she will not strike up the hymn and wake Felipe,” thought Ramona; and she sprang again to the window to listen. A few low words between the Senora and Alessandro, and then the Senora’s window closed again, and all was still.
“I thought she would not have the heart to wake him,” said Ramona to herself. “The Virgin would have had no pleasure in our song, I am sure; but I will say a prayer to her instead;” and she sank on her knees at the head of her bed, and began saying a whispered prayer. The footfall of a spider in Ramona’s room had not been light enough to escape the ear of that watching lover outside. Again Alessandro’s tall figure arose from the floor, turning towards Ramona’s window; and now the darkness was so far softened to dusk, that the outline of his form could be seen. Ramona felt it rather than saw it, and stopped praying. Alessandro was sure he had heard her voice.
“Did the Senorita speak?” he whispered, his face close at the curtain. Ramona, startled, dropped her rosary, which rattled as it fell on the wooden floor.
“No, no, Alessandro,” she said, “I did not speak.” And she trembled, she knew not why. The sound of the beads on the floor explained to Alessandro what had been the whispered words he heard.
“She was at her prayers,” he thought, ashamed and sorry. “Forgive me,” he whispered, “I thought you called;” and he stepped back to the outer edge of the veranda, and seated himself on the railing. He would lie down no more. Ramona remained on her knees, gazing at the window. Through the transparent muslin curtain the dawning light came slowly, steadily, till at last she could see Alessandro distinctly. Forgetful of all else, she knelt gazing at him. The rosary lay on the floor, forgotten. Ramona would not finish that prayer, that day. But her heart was full of thanksgiving and gratitude, and the Madonna had a better prayer than any in the book.
The sun was up, and the canaries, finches, and linnets had made the veranda ring with joyous racket, before Felipe opened his eyes. The Senora had come and gone and come again, looking at him anxiously, but he stirred not. Ramona had stolen timidly out, glancing at Alessandro only long enough to give him one quick smile, and bent over Felipe’s bed, holding her breath, he lay so still.
“Ought he to sleep so long?” she whispered.
“Till the noon, it may be,” answered Alessandro; “and when he wakes, you will see by his eye that he is another man.”
It was indeed so. When Felipe first looked about him, he laughed outright with pure pleasure. Then catching sight of Alessandro at the steps, he called, in a stronger voice than had yet been heard from him, “Alessandro, you are a famous physician. Why couldn’t that fool from Ventura have known as much? With all his learning, he had had me in the next world before many days, except for you. Now, Alessandro, breakfast! I’m hungry. I had forgotten what the thought of food was like to a hungry stomach. And plenty! plenty!” he called, as Alessandro ran toward the kitchen. “Bring all they have.”
When the Senora saw Felipe bolstered up in the bed, his eye bright, his color good, his voice clear, eating heartily like his old self, she stood like a statue in the middle of the veranda for a moment; then turning to Alessandro, she said chokingly, “May Heaven reward you!” and disappeared abruptly in her own room. When she came out, her eyes were red. All day she moved and spoke with a softness unwonted, indeed inconceivable. She even spoke kindly and without constraint to Ramona. She felt like one brought back from the dead.
After this, a new sort of life began for them all. Felipe’s bed on the veranda was the rallying point for everything and everybody.. The servants came to look up at him, and wish him well, from the garden-walk below. Juan Can, when he first hobbled out on the stout crutches Alessandro had made him of manzanita wood, dragged himself all the way round the house, to have a look at Senor Felipe and a word with him. The Senora sat there, in the big carved chair, looking like a sibyl with her black silk banded head-dress severely straight across her brow, and her large dark eyes gazing out, past Felipe, into the far south sky. Ramona lived there too, with her embroidery or her book, sitting on cushions on the floor in a corner, or at the foot of Felipe’s bed, always so placed, however,– if anybody had noticed, but nobody did, — so placed that she could look at Felipe without looking full at the Senora’s chair, even if the Senora were not in it.
Here also came Alessandro many times a day,– sometimes sent for, sometimes of his own accord. He was freely welcome. When he played or sang he sat on the upper step of the stairs leading down to the garden. He also had a secret, which he thought all his own, in regard to the positions he chose. He sat always, when Ramona was there, in the spot which best commanded a view of her face. The secret was not all his own. Felipe knew it. Nothing was escaping Felipe in these days. A bomb-shell exploding at their feet would not have more astonished the different members of this circle, the Senora, Ramona, Alessandro, than it would to have been made suddenly aware of the thoughts which were going on in Felipe’s mind now, from day to day, as he lay there placidly looking at them all.
It is probable that if Felipe had been in full health and strength when the revelation suddenly came to him that Alessandro loved Ramona, and that Ramona might love Alessandro, he would have been instantly filled with jealous antagonism. But at the time when this revelation came, he was prostrate, feeble, thinking many times a day that he must soon die; it did not seem to Felipe that a man could be so weak as he was, and ever again be strong and well. Side by side with these forebodings of his own death, always came the thought of Ramona. What would become of her, if he were gone? Only too well he knew that the girl’s heart would be broken; that she could not live on alone with his mother. Felipe adored his mother; but he understood her feeling about Ramona.
With his feebleness had also come to Felipe, as is often the case in long illnesses, a greater clearness of perception. Ramona had ceased to puzzle him. He no longer asked himself what her long, steady look into his eyes meant. He knew. He saw it mean that as a sister she loved him, had always loved him, and could love him in no other way. He wondered a little at himself that this gave him no more pain; only a sort of sweet, mournful tenderness towards her. It must be because he was so soon going out of the world, he thought. Presently he began to be aware that a new quality was coming into his love for her. He himself was returning to the brother love which he had had for her when they were children together, and in which he had felt no change until he became a man and Ramona a woman. It was strange what a peace fell upon Felipe when this was finally clear and settled in his mind. No doubt he had had more misgiving and fear about his mother in the matter than he had ever admitted to himself; perhaps also the consciousness of Ramona’s unfortunate birth had rankled at times; but all this was past now. Ramona was his sister. He was her brother. What course should he pursue in the crisis which he saw drawing near? How could he best help Ramona? What would be best for both her and Alessandro? Long before the thought of any possible union between himself and Ramona had entered into Alessandro’s mind, still longer before it had entered into Ramona’s to think of Alessandro as a husband, Felipe had spent hours in forecasting, plotting, and planning for them. For the first time in his life he felt himself in the dark as to his mother’s probable action. That any concern as to Ramona’s personal happiness or welfare would influence her, he knew better than to think for a moment. So far as that was concerned, Ramona might wander out the next hour, wife of a homeless beggar, and his mother would feel no regret. But Ramona had been the adopted daughter of the Senora Ortegna, bore the Ortegna name, and had lived as foster-child in the house of the Morenos. Would the Senora permit such a one to marry an Indian?
Felipe doubted. The longer he thought, the more he doubted. The more he watched, the more he saw that the question might soon have to be decided. Any hour might precipitate it. He made plan after plan for forestalling trouble, for preparing his mother; but Felipe was by nature indolent, and now he was, in addition, feeble. Day after day slipped by. It was exceedingly pleasant on the veranda. Ramona was usually with him; his mother was gentler, less sad, than he had ever seen her. Alessandro was always at hand, ready for any service,– in the field, in the house,– his music a delight, his strength and fidelity a repose, his personal presence always agreeable. “If only my mother could think it,” reflected Felipe, “it would be the best thing, all round, to have Alessandro stay here as overseer of the place, and then they might be married. Perhaps before the summer is over she will come to see it so.”
And the delicious, languid, semi-tropic summer came hovering over the valley. The apricots turned golden, the peaches glowed, the grapes filled and hardened, like opaque emeralds hung thick under the canopied vines. The garden was a shade brown, and the roses had all fallen; but there were lilies, and orange-blossoms, and poppies, and carnations, and geraniums in the pots, and musk,– oh, yes, ever and always musk. It was like an enchanter’s spell, the knack the Senora had of forever keeping relays of musk to bloom all the year; and it was still more like an enchanter’s spell, that Felipe would never confess that he hated it.’ But the bees liked it, and the humming-birds,– the butterflies also; and the air was full of them. The veranda was a quieter place now as the season’s noon grew near. The linnets were all nesting, and the finches and the canaries too; and the Senora spent hours, every day, tirelessly feeding the mothers. The vines had all grown and spread out to their thickest; no need any longer of the gay blanket Alessandro had pinned up that first morning to keep the sun off Felipe’s head.
What was the odds between a to-day and a to-morrow in such a spot as this? “To-morrow,” said Felipe, “I will speak to my mother,” and “to-morrow,” and “to-morrow;” but he did not.
There was one close observer of these pleasant veranda days that Felipe knew nothing about. That was Margarita. As the girl came and went about her household tasks, she was always on the watch for Alessandro, on the watch for Ramona. She was biding her time. Just what shape her revenge was going to take, she did not know. It was no use plotting. It must be as it fell out; but that the hour and the way for her revenge would come she never doubted.
When she saw the group on the veranda, as she often did, all listening to Alessandro’s violin, or to his singing, Alessandro himself now at his ease and free in the circle, as if he had been there always, her anger was almost beyond bounds.
“Oh, ho! like a member of the family; quite so!” she sneered. “It is new times when a head shepherd spends his time with the ladies of the house, and sits in their presence like a guest who is invited! We shall see; we shall see what comes of all this!” And she knew not which she hated the more of the two, Alessandro or Ramona.
Since the day of the scene at the artichoke-field she had never spoken to Alessandro, and had avoided, so far as was possible, seeing him. At first Alessandro was sorry for this, and tried to be friendly with her. As soon as he felt assured that the incident had not hurt him at all in the esteem of Ramona, he began to be sorry for Margarita. “A man should not be rude to any maiden,” he thought; and he hated to remember how he had pushed Margarita from him, and snatched his hand away, when he had in the outset made no objection to her taking it. But Margarita’s resentment was not to be appeased. She understood only too clearly how little Alessandro’s gentle advances meant, and she would none of them. “Let him go to his Senorita,” she said bitterly, mocking the reverential tone in which she had overheard him pronounce the word. “She is fond enough of him, if only the fool had eyes to see it. She’ll be ready to throw herself at his head before long, if this kind of thing keeps up. ‘It is not well to speak thus freely of young men, Margarita!’ Ha, ha! Little I thought that day which way the wind set in my mistress’s temper! I’ll wager she reproves me no more, under this roof or any other! Curse her! What did she want of Alessandro, except to turn his head, and then bid him go his way!”
To do Margarita justice, she never once dreamed of the possibility of Ramona’s wedding Alessandro. A clandestine affair, an intrigue of more or less intensity, such as she herself might have carried on with any one of the shepherds,– this was the utmost stretch of Margarita’s angry imaginations in regard to her young mistress’s liking for Alessandro. There was not, in her way of looking at things, any impossibility of such a thing as that. But marriage! It might be questioned whether that idea would have been any more startling to the Senora herself than to Margarita.
Little had passed between Alessandro and Ramona which Margarita did not know. The girl was always like a sprite,– here, there, everywhere, in an hour, and with eyes which, as her mother often told her, saw on all sides of her head. Now, fired by her new purpose, new passion, she moved swifter than ever, and saw and heard even more, There were few hours of any day when she did not know to a certainty where both Alessandro and Ramona were; and there had been few meetings between them which she had not either seen or surmised.
In the simple life of such a household as the Senora’s, it was not strange that this was possible; nevertheless, it argued and involved untiring vigilance on Margarita’s part. Even Felipe, who thought himself, from his vantage-post of observation on the veranda, and from his familiar relation with Ramona, well informed of most that happened, would have been astonished to hear all that Margarita could have told him. In the first days Ramona herself had guilelessly told him much,– had told him how Alessandro, seeing her trying to sprinkle and bathe and keep alive the green ferns with which she had decorated the chapel for Father Salvierderra’s coming, had said: “Oh, Senorita, they are dead! Do not take trouble with them! I will bring you fresh ones;” and the next morning she had found, lying at the chapel door, a pile of such ferns as she had never before seen; tall ones, like ostrich-plumes, six and eight feet high; the feathery maidenhair, and the gold fern, and the silver, twice as large as she ever had found them. The chapel was beautiful, like a conservatory, after she had arranged them in vases and around the high candlesticks.
It was Alessandro, too, who had picked up in the artichoke-patch all of the last year’s seed-vessels which had not been trampled down by the cattle, and bringing one to her, had asked shyly if she did not think it prettier than flowers made out of paper. His people, he said, made wreaths of them. And so they were, more beautiful than any paper flowers which ever were made,– great soft round disks of fine straight threads like silk, with a kind of saint’s halo around them of sharp, stiff points, glossy as satin, and of a lovely creamy color. It was the strangest thing in the world nobody had ever noticed them as they lay there on the ground. She had put a great wreath of them around Saint Joseph’s head, and a bunch in the Madonna’s hand; and when the Senora saw them, she exclaimed in admiration, and thought they must have been made of silk and satin.
And Alessandro had brought her beautiful baskets, made by the Indian women at Pala, and one which had come from the North, from the Tulare country; it had gay feathers woven in with the reeds,– red and yellow, in alternate rows, round and round. It was like a basket made out of a bright-colored bird.
And a beautiful stone bowl Alessandro had brought her, glossy black, that came all the way from Catalina Island; a friend of Alessandro’s got it. For the first few weeks it had seemed as if hardly a day passed that there was not some new token to be chronicled of Alessandro’s thoughtfulness and good-will. Often, too, Ramona had much to tell that Alessandro had said,– tales of the old Mission days that he had heard from his father; stories of saints, and of the early Fathers, who were more like saints than like men, Alessandro said,– Father Junipero, who founded the first Missions, and Father Crespi, his friend. Alessandro’s grandfather had journeyed with Father Crespi as his servant, and many a miracle he had with his own eyes seen Father Crespi perform. There was a cup out of which the Father always took his chocolate for breakfast,– a beautiful cup, which was carried in a box, the only luxury the Father had; and one morning it was broken, and everybody was in terror and despair. “Never mind, never mind,” said the Father; “I will make it whole;” and taking the two pieces in his hands, he held them tight together, and prayed over them, and they became one solid piece again, and it was used all through the journey, just as before.
But now, Ramona never spoke voluntarily of Alessandro. To Felipe’s sometimes artfully put questions or allusions to him, she made brief replies, and never continued the topic; and Felipe had observed another thing: she now rarely looked at Alessandro. When he was speaking to others she kept her eyes on the ground. If he addressed her, she looked quickly up at him, but lowered her eyes after the first glance. Alessandro also observed this, and was glad of it. He understood it. He knew how differently she could look in his face in the rare moments when they were alone together. He fondly thought he alone knew this; but he was mistaken. Margarita knew. She had more than once seen it.
It had happened more than once that he had found Ramona at the willows by the brook, and had talked with her there. The first time it happened, it was a chance; after that never a chance again, for Alessandro went often seeking the spot, hoping to find her. In Ramona’s mind too, not avowed, but half consciously, there was, if not the hope of seeing him there, at least the memory that it was there they had met. It was a pleasant spot,– cool and shady even at noon, and the running water always full of music. Ramona often knelt there of a morning, washing out a bit of lace or a handkerchief; and when Alessandro saw her, it went hard with him to stay away. At such moments the vision returned to him vividly of that first night when, for the first second, seeing her face in the sunset glow, he had thought her scarce mortal. It was not that he even now thought her less a saint; but ah, how well he knew her to be human! He had gone alone in the dark to this spot many a time, and, lying on the grass, put his hands into the running water, and played with it dreamily, thinking, in his poetic Indian fashion, thoughts like these: “Whither have gone the drops that passed beneath her hands, just here? These drops will never find those in the sea; but I love this water!”
Margarita had seen him thus lying, and without dreaming of the refined sentiment which prompted his action, had yet groped blindly towards it, thinking to herself: “He hopes his Senorita will come down to him there. A nice place it is for a lady to meet her lover, at the washing-stones! It will take swifter water than any in that brook, Senorita Ramona, to wash you white in the Senora’s eyes, if ever she come upon you there with the head shepherd, making free with him, may be! Oh, but if that could only happen, I’d die content!” And the more Margarita watched, the more she thought it not unlikely that it might turn out so. It was oftener at the willows than anywhere else that Ramona and Alessandro met; and, as Margarita noticed with malicious satisfaction, they talked each time longer, each time parted more lingeringly. Several times it had happened to be near supper-time; and Margarita, with one eye on the garden-walk, had hovered restlessly near the Senora, hoping to be ordered to call the Senorita to supper.
“If but I could come on them of a sudden, and say to her as she did to me, ‘You are wanted in the house’! Oh, but it would do my soul good! I’d say it so it would sting like a lash laid on both their faces! It will come! It will come! It will be there that she’ll be caught one of these fine times she’s having! I’ll wait! It will come!”
X
IT came. And when it came, it fell out worse for Ramona than Margarita’s most malicious hopes had pictured; but Margarita had no hand in it. It was the Senora herself.
Since Felipe had so far gained as to be able to be dressed, sit in his chair on the veranda, and walk about the house and garden a little, the Senora, at ease in her mind about him, had resumed her old habit of long, lonely walks on the place. It had been well said by her servants, that there was not a blade of grass on the estate that the Senora had not seen. She knew every inch of her land. She had a special purpose in walking over it now. She was carefully examining to see whether she could afford to sell to the Ortegas a piece of pasture-land which they greatly desired to buy, as it joined a pasturage tract of theirs. This bit of land lay farther from the house than the Senora realized, and it had taken more time than she thought it would, to go over it; and it was already sunset on this eventful day, when, hurrying home, she turned off from the highway into the same shortcut path in which Father Salvierderra had met Ramona in the spring. There was no difficulty now in getting through the mustard tangle. It was parched and dry, and had been trampled by cattle. The Senora walked rapidly, but it was dusky twilight when she reached the willows; so dusky that she saw nothing — and she stepped so lightly on the smooth brown path that she made no sound — until suddenly, face to face with a man and a woman standing locked in each other’s arms, she halted, stepped back a pace, gave a cry of surprise, and, in the same second, recognized the faces of the two, who, stricken dumb, stood apart, each gazing into her face with terror.
Strangely enough, it was Ramona who spoke first. Terror for herself had stricken her dumb; terror for Alessandro gave her a voice.
“Senora,” she began,
“Silence! Shameful creature!” cried the Senora. “Do not dare to speak! Go to your room!”
Ramona did not move.
“As for you,” the Senora continued, turning to Alessandro, “you,” — she was about to say, “You are discharged from my service from this hour,” but recollecting herself in time, said,– “you will answer to Senor Felipe. Out of my sight!” And the Senora Moreno actually, for once in her life beside herself with rage, stamped her foot on the ground. “Out of my sight!” she repeated.
Alessandro did not stir, except to turn towards Ramona with an inquiring look. He would run no risk of doing what she did not wish. He had no idea what she would think it best to do in this terrible dilemma.
“Go, Alessandro,” said Ramona, calmly, still looking the Senora full in the eye. Alessandro obeyed; before the words had left her lips, he had walked away.
Ramona’s composure, and Alessandro’s waiting for further orders than her own before stirring from the spot, were too much for Senora Moreno. A wrath, such as she had not felt since she was young, took possession of her. As Ramona opened her lips again, saying, “Senora,” the Senora did a shameful deed; she struck the girl on the mouth, a cruel blow.
“Speak not to me!” she cried again; and seizing her by the arm, she pushed rather than dragged her up the garden-walk.
“Senora, you hurt my arm,” said Ramona, still in the same calm voice. “You need not hold me. I will go with you. I am not afraid.”
Was this Ramona? The Senora, already ashamed, let go the arm, and stared in the girl’s face. Even in the twilight she could see upon it an expression of transcendent peace, and a resolve of which no one would have thought it capable. “What does this mean?” thought the Senora, still weak, and trembling all over, from rage. “The hussy, the hypocrite!” and she seized the arm again.
This time Ramona did not remonstrate, but submitted to being led like a prisoner, pushed into her own room, the door slammed violently and locked on the outside.
All of which Margarita saw. She had known for an hour that Ramona and Alessandro were at the willows, and she had been consumed with impatience at the Senora’s prolonged absence. More than once she had gone to Felipe, and asked with assumed interest if he were not hungry, and if he and the Senorita would not have their supper.
“No, no, not till the Senora returns,” Felipe had answered. He, too, happened this time to know where Ramona and Alessandro were. He knew also where the Senora had gone, and that she would be late home; but he did not know that there would be any chance of her returning by way of the willows at the brook; if he had known it, he would have contrived to summon Ramona.
When Margarita saw Ramona shoved into her room by the pale and trembling Senora, saw the key turned, taken out, and dropped into the Senora’s pocket, she threw her apron over her head, and ran into the back porch. Almost a remorse seized her. She remembered in a flash how often Ramona had helped her in times gone by,– sheltered her from the Senora’s displeasure. She recollected the torn altar-cloth. “Holy Virgin! what will be done to her now?” she exclaimed, under her breath. Margarita had never conceived of such an extremity as this. Disgrace, and a sharp reprimand, and a sundering of all relations with Alessandro, — this was all Margarita had meant to draw down on Ramona’s head. But the Senora looked as if she might kill her.
“She always did hate her, in her heart,” reflected Margarita; “she shan’t starve her to death, anyhow. I’ll never stand by and see that. But it must have been something shameful the Senora saw, to have brought her to such a pass as this;” and Margarita’s jealousy again got the better of her sympathy. “Good enough for her. No more than she deserved. An honest fellow like Alessandro, that would make a good husband for any girl!” Margarita’s short-lived remorse was over. She was an enemy again.
It was an odd thing, how identical were Margarita’s and the Senora’s view and interpretation of the situation. The Senora looking at it from above, and Margarita looking at it from below, each was sure, and they were both equally sure, that it could be nothing more nor less than a disgraceful intrigue. Mistress and maid were alike incapable either of conjecturing or of believing the truth.
As ill luck would have it,– or was it good luck? — Felipe also had witnessed the scene in the garden-walk. Hearing voices, he had looked out of his window, and, almost doubting the evidence of his senses, had seen his mother violently dragging Ramona by the arm,– Ramona pale, but strangely placid; his mother with rage and fury in her white face. The sight told its own tale to Felipe. Smiting his forehead with his hand, he groaned out: “Fool that I was, to let her be surprised; she has come on them unawares; now she will never, never forgive it!” And Felipe threw himself on his bed, to think what should be done. Presently he heard his mother’s voice, still agitated, calling his name. He remained silent, sure she would soon seek him in his room. When she entered, and, seeing him on the bed, came swiftly towards him, saying, “Felipe, dear, are you ill?” he replied in a feeble voice, “No, mother, only tired a little to-night;” and as she bent over him, anxious, alarmed, he threw his arms around her neck and kissed her warmly. “Mother mia!” he said passionately, “what should I do without you?” The caress, the loving words, acted like oil on the troubled waters. They restored the Senora as nothing else could. What mattered anything, so long as she had her adoring and adorable son! And she would not speak to him, now that he was so tired, of this disgraceful and vexing matter of Alessandro. It could wait till morning. She would send him his supper in his room, and he would not miss Ramona, perhaps.
“I will send your supper here, Felipe,” she said;. “you must not overdo; you have been walking too much. Lie still.” And kissing him affectionately, she went to the dining-room, where Margarita, vainly trying to look as if nothing had happened, was standing, ready to serve supper. When the Senora entered, with her countenance composed, and in her ordinary tones said, “Margarita, you can take Senor Felipe’s supper into his room; he is lying down, and will not get up; he is tired,” Margarita was ready to doubt if she had not been in a nightmare dream. Had she, or had she not, within the last half-hour, seen the Senora, shaking and speechless with rage, push the Senorita Ramona into her room, and lock her up there? She was so bewildered that she stood still and gazed at the Senora, with her mouth wide open.
“What are you staring at, girl?” asked the Senora, so sharply that Margarita jumped.
“Oh, nothing, nothing, Senora! And the Senorita, will she come to supper? Shall I call her?” she said.
The Senora eyed her. Had she seen? Could she have seen? The Senora Moreno was herself again. So long as Ramona was under her roof, no matter what she herself might do or say to the girl, no servant should treat her with disrespect, or know that aught was wrong.
“The Senorita is not well,” she said coldly. “She is in her room. I myself will take her some supper later, if she wishes it. Do not disturb her.” And the Senora returned to Felipe.
Margarita chuckled inwardly, and proceeded to clear the table she had spread with such malicious punctuality two short hours before. In those two short hours how much had happened!
“Small appetite for supper will our Senorita have, I reckon,” said the bitter Margarita, “and the Senor Alessandro also! I’m curious to see how he will carry himself.”
But her curiosity was not gratified. Alessandro came not to the kitchen. The last of the herdsmen had eaten and gone; it was past nine o’clock, and no Alessandro. Slyly Margarita ran out and searched in some of the places where she knew he was in the habit of going; but Alessandro was not to be found. Once she brushed so near his hiding-place that he thought he was discovered, and was on the point of speaking, but luckily held his peace, and she passed on. Alessandro was hid behind the geranium clump at the chapel door; sitting on the ground, with his knees drawn up to his chin, watching Ramona’s window. He intended to stay there all night. He felt that he might be needed: if Ramona wanted him, she would either open her window and call, or would come out and go down through the garden-walk to the willows. In either case, he would see her from the hiding-place he had chosen. He was racked by his emotions; mad with joy one minute, sick at heart with misgiving the next. Ramona loved him. She had told him so. She had said she would go away with him and be his wife. The words had but just passed her lips, at that dreadful moment when the Senora appeared in their presence. As he lived the scene over again, he re-experienced the joy and the terror equally.
What was not that terrible Senora capable of doing? Why did she look at him and at Ramona with such loathing scorn? Since she knew that the Senorita was half Indian, why should she think it so dreadful a thing for her to marry an Indian man? It did not once enter into Alessandro’s mind, that the Senora could have had any other thought, seeing them as she did, in each other’s arms. And again what had he to give to Ramona? Could she live in a house such as he must live in,– live as the Temecula women lived? No! for her sake he must leave his people; must go to some town, must do — he knew not what — something to earn more money. Anguish seized him as he pictured to himself Ramona suffering deprivations. The more he thought of the future in this light, the more his joy faded and his fear grew. He had never had sufficient hope that she could be his, to look forward thus to the practical details of life; he had only gone on loving, and in a vague way dreaming and hoping; and now,– now, in a moment, all had been changed; in a moment he had spoken, and she had spoken, and such words once spoken, there was no going back; and he had put his arms around her, and felt her head on his shoulder, and kissed her! Yes, he, Alessandro, had kissed the Senorita Ramona, and she had been glad of it, and had kissed him on the lips, as no maiden kisses a man unless she will wed with him,– him, Alessandro! Oh, no wonder the man’s brain whirled, as he sat there in the silent darkness, wondering, afraid, helpless; his love wrenched from him, in the very instant of their first kiss,– wrenched from him, and he himself ordered, by one who had the right to order him, to begone! What could an Indian do against a Moreno!
Would Felipe help him? Ay, there was Felipe! That Felipe was his friend, Alessandro knew with a knowledge as sure as the wild partridge’s instinct for the shelter of her brood; but could Felipe move the Senora? Oh, that terrible Senora! What would become of them?
As in the instant of drowning, men are said to review in a second the whole course of their lives, so in this supreme moment of Alessandro’s love there flashed through his mind vivid pictures of every word and act of Ramona’s since he first knew her. He recollected the tone in which she had said, and the surprise with which he heard her say it, at the time of Felipe’s fall, “You are Alessandro, are you not?” He heard again her soft-whispered prayers the first night Felipe slept on the veranda. He recalled her tender distress because the shearers had had no dinner; the evident terribleness to her of a person going one whole day without food. “O God! will she always have food each day if she comes with me?” he said. And at the bare thought he was ready to flee away from her forever. Then he recalled her look and her words only a few hours ago, when he first told her he loved her; and his heart took courage. She had said, “I know you love me, Alessandro, and I am glad of it,” and had lifted her eyes to his, with all the love that a woman’s eyes can carry; and when he threw his arms around her, she had of her own accord come closer, and laid one hand on his shoulder, and turned her face to his. Ah, what else mattered! There was the whole world; if she loved him like this, nothing could make them wretched; his love would be enough for her,– and for him hers was an empire.
It was indeed true, though neither the Senora nor Margarita would have believed it, that this had been the first word of love ever spoken between Alessandro and Ramona, the first caress ever given, the first moment of unreserve. It had come about, as lovers’ first words, first caresses, are so apt to do, unexpectedly, with no more premonition, at the instant, than there is of the instant of the opening of a flower. Alessandro had been speaking to Ramona of the conversation Felipe had held with him in regard to remaining on the place, and asked her if she knew of the plan.
“Yes,” she said; “I heard the Senora talking about it with Felipe, some days ago.”
“Was she against my staying?” asked Alessandro, quickly.
“I think not,” said Ramona, “but I am not sure. It is not easy to be sure what the Senora wishes, till afterward. It was Felipe that proposed it.”
This somewhat enigmatical statement as to the difficulty of knowing the Senora’s wishes was like Greek to Alessandro’s mind.
“I do not understand, Senorita,” he said. “What do you mean by ‘afterward’?”
“I mean,” replied Ramona, “that the Senora never says she wishes anything; she says she leaves everything to Felipe to decide, or to Father Salvierderra. But I think it is always decided as she wishes to have it, after all. The Senora is wonderful, Alessandro; don’t you think so?”
“She loves Senor Felipe very much,” was Alessandro’s evasive reply.
“Oh, yes,” exclaimed Ramona. “You do not begin to know how much. She does not love any other human being. He takes it all. She hasn’t any left. If he had died, she would have died too. That is the reason she likes you so much; she thinks you saved Felipe’s life. I mean, that is one reason,” added Ramona, smiling, and looking up confidingly at Alessandro, who smiled back, not in vanity, but honest gratitude that the Senorita was pleased to intimate that he was not unworthy of the Senora’s regard.
“I do not think she likes me,” he said. “I cannot tell why; but I do not think she likes any one in the world. She is not like any one I ever saw, Senorita.”
“No,” replied Ramona, thoughtfully. “She is not. I am, oh, so afraid of her, Alessandro! I have always been, ever since I was a little girl. I used to think she hated me; but now I think she does not care one way or the other, if I keep out of her way.”
While Ramona spoke these words, her eyes were fixed on the running water at her feet. If she had looked up, and seen the expression in Alessandro’s eyes as he listened, the thing which was drawing near would have drawn near faster, would have arrived at that moment; but she did not look up. She went on, little dreaming how hard she was making it for Alessandro.
“Many’s the time I’ve come down here, at night, to this brook, and looked at it, and wished it was a big river, so I could throw myself in, and be carried away out to the sea, dead. But it is a fearful sin, Father Salvierderra says, to take one’s own life; and always the next morning, when the sun came out, and the birds sang, I’ve been glad enough I had not done it. Were you ever so unhappy as that, Alessandro?”
“No, Senorita, never,” replied Alessandro; “and it is thought a great disgrace, among us, to kill one’s self. I think I could never do it. But, oh, Senorita, it is a grief to think of your being unhappy. Will you always be so? Must you always stay here?”
“Oh, but I am not always unhappy!” said Ramona, with her sunny little laugh. “Indeed, I am generally very happy. Father Salvierderra says that if one does no sin, one will be always happy, and that it is a sin not to rejoice every hour of the day in the sun and the sky and the work there is to do; and there is always plenty of that.” Then, her face clouding, she continued: “I suppose I shall always stay here. I have no other home; you know I was the Senora’s sister’s adopted child. She died when I was little, and the Senora kindly took me. Father Salvierderra says I must never forget to be grateful to her for all she has done for me, and I try not to.”
Alessandro eyed her closely. The whole story, as Juan Can had told it to him, of the girl’s birth, was burning in his thoughts. How he longed to cry out, “O my loved one, they have made you homeless in your home. They despise you. The blood of my race is in your veins; come to me; come to me! be surrounded with love!” But he dared not. How could he dare?
Some strange spell seemed to have unloosed Ramona’s tongue to-night. She had never before spoken to Alessandro of her own personal history or burdens; but she went on: “The worst thing is, Alessandro, that she will not tell me who my mother was; and I do not know if she is alive or not, or anything about her. Once I asked the Senora, but she forbade me ever to ask her again. She said she herself would tell me when it was proper for me to know. But she never has.”
How the secret trembled on Alessandro’s lips now. Ramona had never seemed so near, so intimate, so trusting. What would happen if he were to tell her the truth? Would the sudden knowledge draw her closer to him, or repel her?
“Have you never asked her again?” he said.
Ramona looked up astonished. “No one ever disobeyed the Senora,” she said quickly.
“I would!” exclaimed Alessandro.
“You may think so,” said Ramona, “but you couldn’t. When you tried, you would find you couldn’t. I did ask Father Salvierderra once.”
“What did he say?” asked Alessandro, breathless.
“The same thing. He said I must not ask; I was not old enough. When the time came, I would be told,” answered Ramona, sadly. “I don’t see what they can mean by the time’s coming. What do you suppose they meant?”
“I do not know the ways of any people but my own, Senorita,” replied Alessandro. “Many things that your people do, and still more that these Americans do, are to me so strange, I know nothing what they mean. Perhaps they do not know who was your mother?”
“I am sure they do,” answered Ramona, in a low tone, as if the words were wrung from her. “But let us talk about something else, Alessandro; not about sad things, about pleasant things. Let us talk about your staying here.”
“Would it be truly a pleasure to the Senorita Ramona, if I stayed?” said Alessandro.
“You know it would,” answered Ramona, frankly, yet with a tremor in her voice, which Alessandro felt. “I do not see what we could any of us do without you. Felipe says he shall not let you go.”
Alessandro’s face glowed. “It must be as my father says, Senorita,” he said. “A messenger came from him yesterday, and I sent him back with a letter telling him what the Senor Felipe had proposed to me, and asking him what I should do. My father is very old, Senorita, and I do not see how he can well spare me. I am his only child, and my mother died years ago. We live alone together in our house, and when I am away he is very lonely. But he would like to have me earn the wages, I know, and I hope he will think it best for me to stay. There are many things we want to do for the village; most of our people are poor, and can do little more than get what they need to eat day by day, and my father wishes to see them better off before he dies. Now that the Americans are coming in all around us, he is afraid and anxious all the time. He wants to get a big fence built around our land, so as to show where it is; but the people cannot take much time to work on the fence; they need all their time to work for themselves and their families. Indians have a hard time to live now, Senorita. Were you ever in Temecula?”
“No,” said Ramona. “Is it a large town?”
Alessandro sighed. “Dear Senorita, it is not a town; it is only a little village not more than twenty houses in all, and some of those are built only of tule. There is a chapel, and a graveyard. We built an adobe wall around the graveyard last year. That my father said we would do, before we built the fence round the village.”
“How many people are there in the village?” asked Ramona.
“Nearly two hundred, when they are all there; but many of them are away most of the time. They must go where they can get work; they are hired by the farmers, or to do work on the great ditches, or to go as shepherds; and some of them take their wives and children with them. I do not believe the Senorita has ever seen any very poor people.”
“Oh, yes, I have, Alessandro, at Santa Barbara. There were many poor people there, and the Sisters used to give them food every week.”
“Indians?” said Alessandro.
Ramona colored. “Yes,” she said, “some of them were, but not like your men, Alessandro. They were very different; miserable looking; they could not read nor write, and they seemed to have no ambition.”
“That is the trouble,” said Alessandro, “with so many of them; it is with my father’s people, too. They say, ‘What is the use?’ My father gets in despair with them, because they will not learn better. He gives them a great deal, but they do not seem to be any better off for it. There is only one other man in our village who can read and write, besides my father and me, Senorita; and yet my father is all the time begging them to come to his house and learn of him. But they say they have no time; and indeed there is much truth in that, Senorita. You see everybody has troubles, Senorita.”
Ramona had been listening with sorrowful face. All this was new to her. Until to-night, neither she nor Alessandro had spoken of private and personal matters.
“Ah, but these are real troubles,” she said. “I do not think mine were real troubles at all. I wish I could do something for your people, Alessandro. If the village were only near by, I could teach them, could I not? I could teach them to read. The Sisters always said, that to teach the ignorant and the poor was the noblest work one could do. I wish I could teach your people. Have you any relatives there besides your father? Is there any one in the village that you — love, Alessandro?”
Alessandro was too much absorbed in thoughts of his people, to observe the hesitating emphasis with which Ramona asked this question.
“Yes, Senorita, I love them all. They are like my brothers and sisters, all of my father’s people,” he said; “and I am unhappy about them all the time.”
During the whole of this conversation Ramona had had an undercurrent of thought going on, which was making her uneasy. The more Alessandro said about his father and his people, the more she realized that he was held to Temecula by bonds that would be hard to break, the more she feared his father would not let him remain away from home for any length of time. At the thought of his going away, her very heart sickened. Taking a sudden step towards him, she said abruptly, “Alessandro, I am afraid your father will not give his consent to your staying here.”
“So am I, Senorita,” he replied sadly.
“And you would not stay if he did not approve of it, of course,” she said.
“How could I, Senorita?”
“No,” she said, “it would not be right;” but as she said these words, the tears filled her eyes.
Alessandro saw them. The world changed in that second. “Senorita! Senorita Ramona!” he cried, “tears have come in your eyes! O Senorita, then you will not be angry if I say that I love you!” and Alessandro trembled with the terror and delight of having said the words.
Hardly did he trust his palpitating senses to be telling him true the words that followed, quick, firm, though only in a whisper,– “I know that you love me, Alessandro, and I am glad of it!” Yes, this was what the Senorita Ramona was saying! And when he stammered, “But you, Senorita, you do not — you could not –” “Yes, Alessandro, I do — I love you!” in the same clear, firm whisper; and the next minute Alessandro’s arms were around Ramona, and he had kissed her, sobbing rather than saying, “O Senorita, do you mean that you will go with me? that you are mine? Oh, no, beloved Senorita, you cannot mean that!” But he was kissing her. He knew she did mean it; and Ramona, whispering, “Yes, Alessandro, I do mean it; I will go with you,” clung to him with her hands, and kissed him, and repeated it, “I will go with you, I love you.” And then, just then, came the Senora’s step, and her sharp cry of amazement, and there she stood, no more than an arm’s-length away, looking at them with her indignant, terrible eyes.
What an hour this for Alessandro to be living over and over, as he crouched in the darkness, watching! But the bewilderment of his emotions did not dull his senses. As if stalking deer in a forest, he listened for sounds from the house. It seemed strangely still. As the darkness deepened, it seemed still stranger that no lamps were lit. Darkness in the Senora’s room, in the Senorita’s; a faint light in the dining-room, soon put out,– evidently no supper going on there. Only from under Felipe’s door streamed a faint radiance; and creeping close to the veranda, Alessandro heard voices fitfully talking,– the Senora’s and Felipe’s; no word from Ramona. Piteously he fixed his eyes on her window; it was open, but the curtains tight drawn; no stir, no sound. Where was she? What had been done to his love? Only the tireless caution and infinite patience of his Indian blood kept Alessandro from going to her window. But he would imperil nothing by acting on his own responsibility. He would wait, if it were till daylight, till his love made a sign. Certainly before long Senor Felipe would come to his veranda bed, and then he could venture to speak to him. But it was near midnight when the door of Felipe’s room opened, and he and his mother came out, still speaking in low tones. Felipe lay down on his couch; his mother, bending over, kissed him, bade him good-night, and went into her own room.
It had been some time now since Alessandro had left off sleeping on the veranda floor by Felipe’s side. Felipe was so well it was not needful. But Felipe felt sure he would come to-night, and was not surprised when, a few minutes after the Senora’s door closed, he heard a low voice through the vines, “Senor Felipe?”
“Hush, Alessandro,” whispered Felipe. “Do not make a sound. To-morrow morning early I will see you, behind the little sheepfold. It is not safe to talk here.”
“Where is the Senorita?” Alessandro breathed rather than said.
“In her room,” answered Felipe.
“Well?” said Alessandro.
“Yes,” said Felipe, hoping he was not lying; and this was all Alessandro had to comfort himself with, through his long night of watching. No, not all; one other thing comforted him,– the notes of two wood-doves, that at intervals he heard, cooing to each other; just the two notes, the call and the answer, “Love?” “Here.” “Love?” “Here,” — and long intervals of silence between. Plain as if written on a page was the thing they told.
“That is what my Ramona is like,” thought he, “the gentle wood-dove. If she is my wife my people will call her Majel, the Wood-Dove.”
XI
WHEN the Senora bade Felipe good-night, she did not go to bed. After closing her door, she sat down to think what should be done about Ramona. It had been a hard task she had set herself, talking all the evening with Felipe without alluding to the topic uppermost in her mind. But Felipe was still nervous and irritable. She would not spoil his night’s rest, she thought, by talking of disagreeable things. Moreover, she was not clear in her own mind what she wished to have done about Alessandro. If Ramona were to be sent away to the nuns, which was the only thing the Senora could think of as yet, there would be no reason for discharging Alessandro. And with him the Senora was by no means ready to part, though in her first anger she had been ready to dismiss him on the spot. As she pursued her reflections, the whole situation cleared itself in her mind; so easily do affairs fall into line, in the plottings and plannings of an arbitrary person, who makes in his formula no allowance for a human element which he cannot control.
Ramona should be sent in disgrace to the Sisters’ School, to be a servant there for the rest of her life. The Senora would wash her hands of her forever. Even Father Salvierderra himself could not expect her any longer to keep such a shameless creature under her roof. Her sister’s written instructions had provided for the possibility of just such a contingency. Going to a secret closet in the wall, behind a life-size statue of Saint Catharine, the Senora took out an iron box, battered and rusty with age, and set it on the bed. The key turned with difficulty in the lock. It was many years since the Senora had opened this box. No one but herself knew of its existence. There had been many times in the history of the Moreno house when the price of the contents of that box would have averted loss and misfortune; but the Senora no more thought of touching the treasure than if it had been guarded by angels with fiery swords. There they lay, brilliant and shining even in the dim light of the one candle,– rubies, emeralds, pearls, and yellow diamonds. The Senora’s lip curled as she looked at them. “Fine dowry, truly, for a creature like this!” she said. “Well I knew in the beginning no good would come of it; base begotten, base born, she has but carried out the instincts of her nature. I suppose I may be grateful that my own son was too pure to be her prey!” “To be given to my adopted daughter, Ramona Ortegna, on her wedding day,” — so the instructions ran,– “if she weds worthily and with your approval. Should such a misfortune occur, which I do not anticipate, as that she should prove unworthy, then these jewels, and all I have left to her of value, shall be the property of the Church.”
“No mention as to what I am to do with the girl herself if she proves unworthy,” thought the Senora, bitterly; “but the Church is the place for her; no other keeping will save her from the lowest depths of disgrace. I recollect my sister said that Angus had at first intended to give the infant to the Church. Would to God he had done so, or left it with its Indian mother!” and the Senora rose, and paced the floor. The paper of her dead sister’s handwriting fell at her feet. As she walked, her long skirt swept it rustling to and fro. She stooped, picked it up, read it again, with increasing bitterness. No softness at the memory of her sister’s love for the little child; no relenting. “Unworthy!” Yes, that was a mild word to apply to Ramona, now. It was all settled; and when the girl was once out of the house, the Senora would breathe easier. She and Felipe would lead their lives together, and Felipe would wed some day. Was there a woman fair enough, good enough, for Felipe to wed? But he must wed; and the place would be gay with children’s voices, and Ramona would be forgotten.
The Senora did not know how late it was. “I will tell her to-night,” she said. “I will lose no time; and now she shall hear who her mother was!”
It was a strange freak of just impulse in the Senora’s angry soul, which made her suddenly remember that Ramona had had no supper, and led her to go to the kitchen, get a jug of milk and some bread, and take them to the room. Turning the key cautiously, that Felipe might not hear, she opened the door and glided in. No voice greeted her; she held her candle high up; no Ramona in sight; the bed was empty. She glanced at the window. It was open. A terror seized the Senora; fresh anger also. “She has run off with Alessandro,” she thought, “What horrible disgrace.” Standing motionless, she heard a faint, regular breathing from the other side of the bed. Hastily crossing the room, she saw a sight which had melted a heart that was only ice; but the Senora’s was stone toward Ramona. There lay Ramona on the floor, her head on a pillow at the feet of the big Madonna which stood in the corner. Her left hand was under her cheek, her right arm flung tight around the base of the statue. She was sound asleep. Her face was wet with tears. Her whole attitude was full of significance. Even helpless in sleep, she was one who had taken refuge in sanctuary. This thought had been distinct in the girl’s mind when she found herself, spite of all her woe and terror, growing sleepy. “She won’t dare to hurt me at the Virgin’s feet,” she had said; “and the window is open. Felipe would hear if I called; and Alessandro will watch.” And with a prayer on her lips she fell asleep.
It was Felipe’s nearness more than the Madonna’s, which saved her from being roused to hear her doom. The Senora stood for some moments looking at her, and at the open window. With a hot rush of disgraceful suspicions, she noted what she had never before thought of, that Alessandro, through all his watching with Felipe, had had close access to Ramona’s window. “Shameful creature!” she repeated to herself. “And she can sleep! It is well she prayed, if the Virgin will hear such!” and she turned away, first setting down the jug of milk and the bread on a table. Then, with a sudden and still more curious mingling of justness in her wrath, she returned, and lifting the coverlet from the bed, spread it over Ramona, covering her carefully from head to foot. Then she went out and again locked the door.
Felipe, from his bed, heard and divined all, but made no sound. “Thank God, the poor child is asleep!” he said; “and my poor dear mother feared to awake me by speaking to her! What will become of us all to-morrow!” And Felipe tossed and turned, and had barely fallen into an uneasy sleep, when his mother’s window opened, and she sang the first line of the sunrise hymn. Instantly Ramona joined, evidently awake and ready; and no sooner did the watching Alessandro hear the first note of her voice, than he struck in; and Margarita, who had been up for an hour, prowling, listening, peering, wondering, her soul racked between her jealousy and her fears,– even Margarita delayed not to unite; and Felipe, too, sang feebly; and the volume of the song went up as rounded and melodious as if all hearts were at peace and in harmony, instead of being all full of sorrow, confusion, or hatred. But there was no one of them all who was not the better for the singing; Ramona and Alessandro most of all.
“The saints be praised,” said Alessandro. “There is my wood-dove’s voice. She can sing!” And, “Alessandro was near. He watched all night. I am glad he loves me,” said Ramona.
“To hear those two voices.” said the Senora; “would one suppose they could sing like that? Perhaps it is not so bad as I think.”
As soon as the song was done, Alessandro ran to the sheepfold, where Felipe had said he would see him. The minutes would be like years to Alessandro till he had seen Felipe.
Ramona, when she waked and found herself carefully covered, and bread and milk standing on the table, felt much reassured. Only the Senora’s own hand had done this, she felt sure, for she had heard her the previous evening turn the key in the lock, then violently take it out; and Ramona knew well that the fact of her being thus a prisoner would be known to none but the Senora herself. The Senora would not set servants to gossiping. She ate her bread and milk thankfully, for she was very hungry. Then she set her room in order, said her prayers, and sat down to wait. For what? She could not imagine; in truth, she did not much try. Ramona had passed now into a country where the Senora did not rule. She felt little fear. Felipe would not see her harmed, and she was going away presently with Alessandro. It was wonderful what peace and freedom lay in the very thought. The radiance on her face of these two new-born emotions was the first thing the Senora observed as she opened the door, and slowly, very slowly, eyeing Ramona with a steady look, entered the room. This joyous composure on Ramona’s face angered the Senora, as it had done before, when she was dragging her up the garden-walk. It seemed to her like nothing less than brazen effrontery, and it changed the whole tone and manner of her address.
Seating herself opposite Ramona, but at the farthest side of the room, she said, in a tone scornful and insulting, “What have you to say for yourself?”
Returning the Senora’s gaze with one no less steady, Ramona spoke in the same calm tone in which she had twice the evening before attempted to stay the Senora’s wrath. This time, she was not interrupted.
“Senora,” she said slowly, “I tried to tell you last night, but you would not hear me. If you had listened, you would not have been so angry. Neither Alessandro nor I have done anything wrong, and we were not ashamed. We love each other, and we are going to be married, and go away. I thank you, Senora, for all you have done for me; I am sure you will be a great deal happier when I am away;” and Ramona looked wistfully, with no shade of resentment, into the Senora’s dark, shrunken face. “You have been very good to do so much for a girl you did not love. Thank you for the bread and milk last night. Perhaps I can go away with Alessandro to-day. I do not know what he will wish. We had only just that minute spoken of being married, when you found us last night.”
The Senora’s face was a study during the few moments that it took to say these words. She was dumb with amazement. Instantaneously, on the first sense of relief that the disgrace had not been what she supposed, followed a new wrath, if possible hotter than the first; not so much scorn, but a bitterer anger. “Marry! Marry that Indian!” she cried, as soon as she found voice. “You marry an Indian? Never! Are you mad? I will never permit it.”
Ramona looked anxiously at her. “I have never disobeyed you, Senora,” she said, “but this is different from all other things; you are not my mother. I have promised to marry Alessandro.”
The girl’s gentleness deceived the Senora.
“No,” she said icily, “I am not your mother; but I stand in a mother’s place to you. You were my sister’s adopted child, and she gave you to me. You cannot marry without my permission, and I forbid you ever to speak again of marrying this Indian.”
The moment had come for the Senora Moreno to find out, to her surprise and cost, of what stuff this girl was made, — this girl, who had for fourteen years lived by her side, docile, gentle, sunny, and uncomplaining in her loneliness. Springing to her feet, and walking swiftly till she stood close face to face with the Senora, who, herself startled by the girl’s swift motion, had also risen to her feet, Ramona said, in a louder, firmer voice: “Senora Moreno, you may forbid me as much as you please. The whole world cannot keep me from marrying Alessandro. I love him. I have promised, and I shall keep my word.” And with her young lithe arms straight down at her sides, her head thrown back, Ramona flashed full in the Senora’s face a look of proud defiance. It was the first free moment her soul had ever known. She felt herself buoyed up as by wings in air. Her old terror of the Senora fell from her like a garment thrown off.
“Pshaw!” said the Senora, contemptuously, half amused, in spite of her wrath, by the girl’s, as she thought, bootless vehemence, “you talk like a fool. Do you not know that I can shut you up in the nunnery to-morrow, if I choose?”
“No, you cannot!” replied Ramona,
“Who, then, is to hinder me.” said the Senora, insolently.
“Alessandro!” answered Ramona, proudly.
“Alessandro!” the Senora sneered. “Alessandro! Ha! a beggarly Indian, on whom my servants will set the dogs, if I bid them! Ha, ha!”
The Senora’s sneering tone but roused Ramona more. “You would never dare!” she cried; “Felipe would not permit it!” A most unwise retort for Ramona.
“Felipe!” cried the Senora, in a shrill voice. “How dare you pronounce his name! He will none of you, from this hour! I forbid him to speak to you. Indeed, he will never desire to set eyes on you when he hears the truth.”
“You are mistaken, Senora,” answered Ramona, more gently. “Felipe is Alessandro’s friend, and — mine,” she added, after a second’s pause.
“So, ho! the Senorita thinks she is all-powerful in the house of Moreno!” cried the Senora. “We will see! we will see! Follow me, Senorita Ramona!” And throwing open the door, the Senora strode out, looking back over her shoulder.
“Follow me!” she cried again sharply, seeing that Ramona hesitated; and Ramona went; across the passage-way leading to the dining-room, out into the veranda, down the entire length of it, to the Senora’s room,– the Senora walking with a quick, agitated step, strangely unlike her usual gait; Ramona walking far slower than was her habit, and with her eyes bent on the ground. As they passed the dining-room door, Margarita, standing just inside, shot at Ramona a vengeful, malignant glance.
“She would help the Senora against me in anything,” thought Ramona; and she felt a thrill of fear, such as the Senora with all her threats had not stirred.
The Senora’s windows were open. She closed them both, and drew the curtains tight. Then she locked the door, Ramona watching her every movement.
“Sit down in that chair,” said the Senora, pointing to one near the fireplace. A sudden nervous terror seized Ramona.
“I would rather stand, Senora,” she said.
“Do as I bid you.” said the Senora, in a husky tone; and Ramona obeyed. It was a low, broad armchair, and as she sank back into it, her senses seemed leaving her. She leaned her head against the back and closed her eyes. The room swam. She was roused by the Senora’s strong smelling-salts held for her to breathe, and a mocking taunt from the Senora’s iciest voice: “The Senorita does not seem so over-strong as she did a few moments back!”
Ramona tried to reason with herself; surely no ill could happen to her, in this room, within call of the whole house. But an inexplicable terror had got possession of her; and when the Senora, with a sneer on her face, took hold of the Saint Catharine statue, and wheeling it half around, brought into view a door in the wall, with a big iron key in the keyhole, which she proceeded to turn, Ramona shook with fright. She had read of persons who had been shut up alive in cells in the wall, and starved to death. With dilating eyes she watched the Senora, who, all unaware of her terror, was prolonging it and intensifying it by her every act. First she took out the small iron box, and set it on a table. Then, kneeling, she drew out from an inner recess in the closet a large leather-covered box, and pulled it, grating and scraping along the floor, till it stood in front of Ramona. All this time she spoke no word, and the cruel expression of her countenance deepened each moment. The fiends had. possession of the Senora Moreno this morning, and no mistake. A braver heart than Ramona’s might have indeed been fearful, at being locked up alone with a woman who looked. like that.
Finally, she locked the door and wheeled the statue back into its place. Ramona breathed freer. She was not, after all, to be thrust into the wall closet and left to starve. She gazed with wonder at the old battered boxes. What could it all mean?
“Senorita Ramona Ortegna,” began the Senora, drawing up a chair, and seating herself by the table on which stood the iron box, “I will now explain to you why you will not marry the Indian Alessandro.”
At these words, this name, Ramona was herself again,– not her old self, her new self, Alessandro’s promised wife. The very sound of his name, even on an enemy’s tongue, gave her strength. The terrors fled away. She looked up, first at the Senora, then at the nearest window. She was young and strong; at one bound, if worst came to worst, she could leap through the window, and fly for her life, calling on Alessandro.
“I shall marry the Indian Alessandro, Senora Moreno,” she said, in a tone as defiant, and now almost as insolent, as the Senora’s own.
The Senora paid no heed to the words, except to say, “Do not interrupt me again. I have much to tell you;” and opening the box, she lifted out and placed on the table tray after tray of jewels. The sheet of written paper lay at the bottom of the box.
“Do you see this paper, Senorita Ramona?” she asked, holding it up. Ramona bowed her head. “This was written by my sister, the Senora Ortegna, who adopted you and gave you her name. These were her final instructions to me, in regard to the disposition to be made of the property she left to you.”
Ramona’s lips parted. She leaned forward, breathless, listening, while the Senora read sentence after sentence. All the pent-up pain, wonder, fear of her childhood and her girlhood, as to the mystery of her birth, swept over her anew, now. Like one hearkening for life or death, she listened. She forgot Alessandro. She did not look at the jewels. Her eyes never left the Senora’s face. At the close of the reading, the Senora said sternly, “You see, now, that my sister left to me the entire disposition of everything belonging to you,”
“But it hasn’t said who was my mother,” cried Ramona. “Is that all there is in the paper?”
The Senora looked stupefied. Was the girl feigning? Did she care nothing that all these jewels, almost a little fortune, were to be lost to her forever?
“Who was your mother?” she exclaimed, scornfully, “There was no need to write that down. Your mother was an Indian. Everybody knew that!”
At the word “Indian,” Ramona gave a low cry.
The Senora misunderstood it. “Ay,” she said, “a low, common Indian. I told my sister, when she took you, the Indian blood in your veins would show some day; and now it has come true.”
Ramona’s cheeks were scarlet. Her eyes flashed. “Yes, Senora Moreno,” she said, springing to her feet; “the Indian blood in my veins shows to-day. I understand many things I never understood before. Was it because I was an Indian that you have always hated me?”
“You are not an Indian, and I have never hated you,” interrupted the Senora.
Ramona heeded her not, but went on, more and more. impetuously. “And if I am an Indian, why do you object to my marrying Alessandro? Oh, I am glad I am an Indian! I am of his people. He will be glad!” The words poured like a torrent out of her lips. In her excitement she came closer and closer to the Senora. “You are a cruel woman,” she said. “I did not know it before; but now I do. If you knew I was an Indian, you had no reason to treat me so shamefully as you did last night, when you saw me with Alessandro. You have always hated me. Is my mother alive’? Where does she live? Tell me; and I will go to her to-day. Tell me! She will be glad that Alessandro loves me!”
It was a cruel look, indeed, and a crueller tone, with which the Senora answered: “I have not the least idea who your mother was, or if she is still alive, Nobody ever knew anything about her,– some low, vicious creature, that your father married when he was out of his senses, as you are now, when you talk of marrying Alessandro!”
“He married her, then?” asked Ramona, with emphasis. “How know you that, Senora Moreno?”
“He told my sister so,” replied the Senora, reluctantly. She grudged the girl even this much of consolation.
“What was his name?” asked Ramona.
“Phail; Angus Phail,” the Senora replied almost mechanically. She found herself strangely constrained by Ramona’s imperious earnestness, and she chafed under it. The tables were being turned on her, she hardly knew how. Ramona seemed to tower in stature, and to have the bearing of the one in authority, as she stood before her pouring out passionate question after question. The Senora turned to the larger box, and opened it. With unsteady hands she lifted out the garments which for so many years had rarely seen the light. Shawls and ribosos of damask, laces, gowns of satin, of velvet. As the Senora flung one after another on the chairs, it was a glittering pile of shining, costly stuffs. Ramona’s eyes rested on them dreamily.
“Did my adopted mother wear all these?” she asked, lifting in her hand a fold of lace, and holding it up to the light, in evident admiration.
Again the Senora misconceived her. The girl seemed not insensible to the value and beauty of this costly raiment. Perhaps she would be lured by it.
“All these are yours, Ramona, you understand, on your wedding day, if you marry worthily, with my permission,” said the Senora, in a voice a shade less cold than had hitherto come from her lips. “Did you understand what I read you?”
The girl did not answer. She had taken up in her hand a ragged, crimson silk handkerchief, which, tied in many knots, lay in one corner of the jewel-box.
“There are pearls in that,” said the Senora; “that came with the things your father sent to my sister when he died.”
Ramona’s eyes gleamed. She began untying the knots. The handkerchief was old, the knots tied tight, and undisturbed for years. As she reached the last knot, and felt the hard stones, she paused. “This was my father’s, then.” she said.
“Yes,” said the Senora, scornfully. She thought she had detected a new baseness in the girl. She was going to set up a claim to all which had been her father’s property. “They were your father’s, and all these rubies, and these yellow diamonds;” and she pushed the tray towards her.
Ramona had untied the last knot. Holding the handkerchief carefully above the tray, she shook the pearls out. A strange, spicy fragrance came from the silk. The pearls fell in among the rubies, rolling right and left, making the rubies look still redder by contrast with their snowy whiteness.
“I will keep this handkerchief,” she said, thrusting it as she spoke, by a swift resolute movement into her bosom. “I am very glad to have one thing that belonged to my father. The jewels, Senora, you can give to the Church, if Father Salvierderra thinks that is right. I shall marry Alessandro;” and still keeping one hand in her bosom where she had thrust the handkerchief, she walked away and seated herself again in her chair.
Father Salvierderra! The name smote the Senora like a spear-thrust, There could be no stronger evidence of the abnormal excitement under which she had been laboring for the last twenty-four hours, than the fact that she had not once, during all this time, thought to ask herself what Father Salvierderra would say, or might command, in this crisis. Her religion and the long habit of its outward bonds had alike gone from her in her sudden wrath against Ramona. It was with a real terror that she became conscious of this.
“Father Salvierderra?” she stammered; “he has nothing to do with it.”
But Ramona saw the change in the Senora’s face, at the word, and followed up her advantage. “Father Salvierderra has to do with everything,” she said boldly. “He knows Alessandro, He will not forbid me to marry him, and if he did –” Ramona stopped. She also was smitten with a sudden terror at the vista opening before her,– of a disobedience to Father Salvierderra.
“And if he did,” repeated the Senora, eyeing Ramona keenly, “would you disobey him?”
“Yes,” said Ramona.
“I will tell Father Salvierderra what you say,” retorted the Senora, sarcastically, “that he may spare himself the humiliation of laying any commands on you, to be thus disobeyed.”
Ramona’s lip quivered, and her eyes filled with the tears which no other of the Senora’s taunts had been strong enough to bring. Dearly she loved the old monk; had loved him since her earliest recollection. His displeasure would be far more dreadful to her than the Senora’s. His would give her grief; the Senora’s, at utmost, only terror.
Clasping her hands, she said, “Oh, Senora, have mercy! Do not say that to the Father!”
“It is my duty to tell the Father everything that happens in my family,” answered the Senora, chillingly. “He will agree with me, that if you persist in this disobedience you will deserve the severest punishment. I shall tell him all;” and she began putting the trays back in the box.
“You will not tell him as it really is, Senora,” persisted Ramona. “I will tell him myself.”
“You shall not see him! I will take care of that!” cried the Senora, so vindictively that Ramona shuddered.
“I will give you one more chance,” said the Senora, pausing in the act of folding up one of the damask gowns. “Will you obey me? Will you promise to have nothing more to do with this Indian?”
“Never, Senora,” replied Ramona; “never!”
“Then the consequences be on your own head,” cried the Senora. “Go to your room! And, hark! I forbid you to speak of all this to Senor Felipe. Do you hear?”
Ramona bowed her head. “I hear,” she said; and gliding out of the room, closed the door behind her, and instead of going to her room, sped like a hunted creature down the veranda steps, across the garden, calling in a low tone, “Felipe! Felipe! Where are you, Felipe?”
XII
THE little sheepfold, or corral, was beyond the artichoke-patch, on that southern slope whose sunshine had proved so disastrous a temptation to Margarita in the matter of drying the altar-cloth. It was almost like a terrace, this long slope; and the sheepfold, being near the bottom, was wholly out of sight of the house. This was the reason Felipe had selected it as the safest spot for his talk with Alessandro.
When Ramona reached the end of the trellised walk in the garden, she halted and looked to the right and left. No one was in sight. As she entered the Senora’s room an hour before, she had caught a glimpse of some one, she felt almost positive it was Felipe, turning off in the path to the left, leading down to the sheepfold. She stood irresolute for a moment, gazing earnestly down this path. “If the saints would only tell me where he is!” she said aloud. She trembled as she stood there, fearing each second to hear the Senora’s voice calling her. But fortune was favoring Ramona, for once; even as the words passed her lips, she saw Felipe coming slowly up the bank. She flew to meet him. “Oh, Felipe, Felipe!” she began.
“Yes, dear, I know it all,” interrupted Felipe; “Alessandro has told me.”
“She forbade me to speak to you, Felipe,” said Ramona, “but I could not bear it. What are we to do? Where is Alessandro?”
“My mother forbade you to speak to me!” cried Felipe, in a tone of terror. “Oh, Ramona, why did you disobey her? If she sees us talking, she will be even more displeased. Fly back to your room. Leave it all to me. I will do all that I can.”
“But, Felipe,” began Ramona, wringing her hands in distress.
“I know! I know!” said Felipe; “but you must not make my mother any more angry. I don’t know what she will do till I talk with her.