So toward evening a message brought by Doña Feliz herself startled the sullen Pepé. Ashley Ward watched the youth with some curiosity as he sauntered across the court and ascended the stone stairs. Pepé’s dress that day was in a Saturday’s state of grime, and at best consisted of a shabby suit of yellow buckskin, from which the metal buttons had mostly dropped, and which gaped at the armholes as widely as at the waistband; and his leathern sandals and sombrero of woven grass showed signs of age, corresponding to that of the ragged blanket he wore with such an air that he might have been taken for the very king of idle loungers.
Doña Isabel glanced up at him as he muttered the customary salutation, uncovering his shock of black hair and inclining his head to her, while his black eyes furtively sought Chinita. There was nothing in his appearance for the most careful duenna to fear, and although Doña Isabel remembered that a few weeks ago those two had been equals, they now seemed as widely sundered as the poles; and knowing the prolixity with which the ordinary ranchero usually approached and gave his views upon any subject, she withdrew to the lower end of the gallery, where she might count her beads or con her thoughts undisturbed. The murmur of voices reached her with sufficient distinctness for her to know that the usual process of minute questioning and tantalizing indefiniteness of answer was in progress; and at length, soothed by the warm still air, the low song of a bird in the orange-tree which exhaled a sweet and heavy odor, and the habitual absorption of her own reflections, she failed to notice that the murmur of the voices grew less and less distinct, and indeed blended faintly with the low medley of sounds peculiar to the coming eveningtide.
“Pepé,” Chinita was saying then, in a tone a little above a whisper, “tell me, is it true that this Don Fernando Ruiz, who for love of Rosario, and to please Don Rafael and Doña Isabel, is to lead these recruits to join Don Gonzales,—tell me, is it true that he was the associate of that Ramirez who was here so many years ago?”
“It is likely,” answered Pepé, sullenly. “I have heard that he is Ramirez’s godson; and what more likely,” he added in an undertone, “than that the Devil should stand sponsor for an imp of his own blackness?”
“In that case,” said Chinita, sharply, “it is impossible Ruiz has pronounced against him. Who ever heard of a godchild drawing sword against his sponsor? It should be against his father or brother rather. Go to, Pepé, you and I know nothing of Puro or Mocho. Bah! they know not the difference one from the other themselves; but we do know Ramirez and Gonzales, and it is the first that I love. What are you frowning at, Pepé? Oh! oh! oh! you are jealous, as you used to be of Pancho and Juan and Gabriel! What an idea! Ha! ha! ha!”
“Why do you laugh so loudly?” asked Doña Isabel across the corridor, not displeased to see her merry.
“Because he was telling me how the Tia Gomesinda broke the jar over the shoulders of the brave recruit who drained it of her last boiling of corn gruel,” answered Chinita, readily. “But excuse me, Señora, I will not disturb you again;” and she turned with a conciliatory smile toward Pepé, who was regarding her with an expression of malignant idolatry,—if such an extravagant phrase may be coined, to indicate a love which was capable of destroying, but never of renouncing, its object.
“Thou art more unmannerly and more easily vexed than when thou usedst to follow me through the corn and bean fields, bending under the loads of wild fruit and flowers I piled upon thee, and then throwing them down some stony ravine because of one sharp word I would give thee. How canst thou expect ever to be aught but a poor ranchero, with a temper so unreasonable?”
“And what if I were as patient as Saint Stephen himself, what would it matter? Thou wouldst not love me,” answered the young man. “And what care I whether I am poor or rich, ranchero or soldier? It is all one now that thou art with Doña Isabel. Why, if thou wert her child she could not be more choice of thee. Those who ate from the same plate and drank from the same bowl with thee are less than the dogs who followed thee;” and he would have kicked, had it been near enough, the cur which had been Pedro’s, and which like many others had the undisputed right to the corridor, and with patient obstinacy chose to lie at Chinita’s door.
The young girl looked up with a tantalizing smile. She had been used to these speeches of covert jealousy, which she feigned to take as the envy of an ill-mannered ranchero. “Pshaw!” she said gazing at him through her half-closed lids, and yet from beneath the long lashes that veiled them casting a languorous though wholly unstudied glance, which dazzled and thrilled him, “‘friends, bacon, and wine should be old!’ What friend like an old friend? He is better than a new-found relation. It is he who will do a bidding and ask no reason for it; it is he—”