“Did I know the woman?” answered Don Rafael. “I know the woman? I was a stranger, and, truth to tell, no friend of Americans; a faithful husband withal, and was it likely, though he had them, this stranger would have shared secrets of a doubtful nature with me? When I said a ‘tryst’ I used it for want of a better word. What attraction should a man so refined, so engrossed in his affairs as this busy foreigner, find in the humble and rustic beauties of the village? For my part, I find it impossible to imagine such coarseness in a man so little likely to be governed by a base passion as Ashley appeared. You know your own people better than I can; what say you?”
“I say the same!” answered Ward, eagerly, with a keen glance at the sensitive dark face of the administrador. “Yet I know that my cousin loved; that he claimed to be married; that the lady—”
He paused,—some of the men were within hearing, listening like Don Rafael himself with rapt faces. That of Don Rafael lighted for a moment with an incredulous smile. “Ah, then there was a woman?” he said. “That might be; but a marriage? Ah, Señor, if there had been that, all the world would have known it. You know but little of our laws if you suppose such a contract could be here secretly and legally made. If he claimed such to be the case, he was vilely deceived, or himself was—”
He stopped at the word, as if fearing to offend.
To urge the matter further seemed to Ashley worse than useless. He had learned enough of marriage laws in Mexico to feel that to mention the name of Herlinda Garcia in connection with that of Ashley was to cast upon it a slur such as could but bring upon him the resentment, and perhaps the revenge, of the family to which he was probably indebted for his very life, and certainly for a hospitality that merited respect for its liberality if not gratitude for its warmth.
“I shall never learn the truth,” he thought; “and why indeed should I seek it? My aunt was wise in her generation. Though ignorant of the possibilities or impossibilities of Mexican society and character, she wisely refrained from problems which its keenness and honor ignored or left unsolved. I will go back again in content to my houses and lands, to my silver and gold. I am despoiling no legitimate heir; and to imagine the existence of any other is an offence either to my cousin’s intelligence or honor, as well as to the chastity of a woman whom even in thought I must be a villain to asperse. Let but a momentary quiet come that I may be able to obtain the requisite funds, and I will abandon this senseless quest, and leave my murdered cousin to rest in peace in his forgotten grave, in this land of violence and mysteries.”
This was the resolve of one hour,—to be broken in the next, as the sight of a girl’s face or the sound of her voice, like a disturbing conscience, assured him that in absence the doubt, or rather the tantalizing certainty, would each day torment him more and more, and so make enjoyment of his wealth even more impossible than it had been when Mary’s sensitive imaginings had urged him upon his Quixotic errand.
Trivial and even ridiculous things often divert minds most harassed and burdened, and exert an influence when great and weighty matters would benumb or torture. It would have been impossible for Ashley Ward, in the embarrassment of his situation (for his funds in the City of Mexico were entirely cut off by its investment by the Liberals) and in the perplexity of his thoughts, to have entered with enjoyment upon any festivity or pleasure requiring exertion either of body or mind; but he was, quite unconsciously to himself, in the mood idly to view the little comedy which was enacted more and more freely before his eyes,—just as in seasons of deepest grief and anxiety one may seek mechanical employment for the eye and relief for the brain in the perusal of a tale so light that neither the strain of a nerve or a thought, nor the excitement of pleasure or pain, shall awaken emotion or burden memory.
Fernando Ruiz was too wily a youth, too courteous, too kind, to throw off at once the semblance of devotion to a goddess who had lured him to a shrine that held a divinity whose charms, in his inconstant sight, so far surpassed her own that he could not choose but transfer his worship, even were it but to be disdained and rejected. In the decorous visits he made to Doña Rita and when they met at table, he would still sigh and cast despairing glances at the bridling Rosario, who but that she intercepted others more fervent still, directed toward the upper end of the board where Doña Isabel and Chinita sat in lonely state, would have believed quite true the tale with which her mother strove to console her,—using such feeble prevarication as is usual in Mexican families when ill news is to be ultimately communicated, in the fond hope of softening a blow which doubt and procrastination can but cause to be the more nervously dreaded. But well was Rosario convinced that though Ruiz held daily conferences with her father, and even once or more was honored by a few moments’ speech with Doña Isabel, it was not of her or of love that they spoke; and with a philosophic determination to replace with a more faithful lover the fickle admirer whom she could cease to love but would never forgive, the piqued, but lightly wounded damsel began to turn a shoulder upon the recreant soldier and her smiles upon the stranger.
Ward was perhaps singularly free from vanity, or too much absorbed to notice the honor paid him; but with a sense of angry surprise he became aware that Chinita no longer ignored the existence of the persistent languisher, who at early morning paced the court in trim riding-suit of leather, a gay serape thrown negligently over his left shoulder, his wide-brimmed hat poised at the angle whence he could see the door of her room open, and Chinita rival the sun in dazzling his enchanted eyes. At noon he stood in the self-same spot in gay uniform, from which by some miraculous process all stain and grime had disappeared; and not infrequently at evening he reappeared in the holiday dress of some clerk, who for the time had lent his jacket of black velvet trimmed with silver buttons, or his riding-suit of stamped leather and waist-scarf of scarlet silk, well pleased to fancy he was represented by the lithe young officer, who filled them with a grace that made them thenceforth of treble value in the owner’s eyes.