“It is all yours, senor,” he said, with a gesture including the little house and all the grape-vines and orange blossoms and oleanders. “It is poor and small, but it is yours—and we—”
Sebastiano’s dark eyes rested for an instant on a little window under the eaves where a jasmine vine wreathed a thick tangle of green, starred with white flowers. And as he looked a voice broke through the fragrant barrier singing a careless, broken bit of song—
“White, white is the jasmine flower;
Let its stars light thee.”
“It is Pepita,” said José. “She always sings when she is pleased. It is always a good sign.”
If her singing was a sign of pleasure, then she must have been enjoying her life greatly in the days that came afterward, for she was singing continually. As she went about her work there was always the shadow of a smile on her lips and in her eyes, as if her thoughts amused her. And she was in such gay spirits that José was enchanted. He had only one vague source of trouble: all the rest had turned out so well! It had all occurred just as he had dreamed, but scarcely dared to hope, in those by-gone days when he had been hard-worked and ill-fed and ill-clad. He had a good place, and what seemed by comparison incredibly good wages. He had the nice little house, and Pepita had holiday garments as gay and pretty as any other girl, and looked, when dressed in them, gayer and ten times prettier than all the rest.
That was what he had looked forward to most of all, and his end was attained. And when he walked out with her, all the young fellows who were allowed to come near—and many who were not—fell in love. Yes, it was true; he saw it himself and heard it on every side. It would take the fingers of both hands to count those who were frankly enamoured, beginning with Carlos and Manuel. But it was at this point that the vague trouble came in. And it was Pepita herself who caused it, by her treatment of her adorers. To say that she dealt out scorn to them would be to say too much; she simply dealt out nothing—and less. They might come and go; they might follow and gaze and sigh—she did not even deign to seem to know they did so, unless by chance one became too pertinacious, and then she merely transfixed him with a soft, cruelly smiling eye. “She will not marry any of them,” said José to Jovita in bewilderment.
“That will come soon enough,” said Jovita. “She is pretty, and it makes her a little fool—all girls are like that; but one of these days you may look out—it will be all over. She is just the one to blaze up all at once.”
“I do not think she is a fool like other girls,” said José, with gravity. “But she does not seem to care about love; she does not seem to know. She is not even sorry for them when they are miserable.” He did not consider himself when he thought of her marriage; in truth he put himself in the background, for if some other man filled her life and her heart his vocation would be gone, and there would be some dull hours for him before he could become used to it. But he had an innocent feeling that without this love, of which all men talked so much, the life he wished to be bright would not be quite complete. She was too pretty and too good never to be married—never to have a home of her own and some fine fellow to love the dust she walked on. He himself was only José, and a brother was, after all, a poor substitute for a lover who could talk and sing and make jokes, and wear such a dashing air that she would be proud of him.
“That is it,” he said, sagely, to himself. “A woman must have some one to be proud of, and she could never be proud of me. If I were Sebastiano now, it would be different.”
He stopped suddenly and rubbed his head, as his habit was when he was startled or confused, and his face became rather red. Perhaps this was because he remembered that among all the rest, the magnificent, the illustrious, the beautiful Sebastiano was the one to whom she showed least grace. In fact it was almost mysterious, her manner toward him. They had seen him often—he had come in many evenings to sit under the vines; when they went out for pleasure it somehow happened that they nearly always met him; but when he joined them Pepita became at once possessed of some strange wilful spirit. Upon reflection José found that he had never yet heard her speak to him: it appeared to him as he thought it over that she always by some device avoided answering directly what he said to her.