“I dared not disobey him,” she murmured at last. “I dared not disobey.”
Ashley dropped her hand,—almost flung it from him.
The girl’s face crimsoned; she opened her lips, hesitated, then clasping her hands together, cried, “It is not as you think. Oh, rather than the truth, would to God it were! I am not the child of Don Rafael and Doña Rita! Jose Ramirez is my father!”
XXXII.
“José Ramirez is my father!”
Had her words been a thunderbolt hurled at Ashley’s feet, they could not have astounded him more. The daughter of Ramirez!
“I do not believe it! I cannot believe it!” he exclaimed, with no thought for courteous words. “Oh, that is a tale for a jealous lover! but I am not one. Anything, anything rather than that, Señorita, would serve to explain the reason of your presence here!”
“Why have I spoken?” cried the young girl with tears. “Why have I broken my promise, and only to be disbelieved and scorned? O, Señor, I know not what it was in you that wrung the words from me! Did he not command me to be silent till he gave me leave to speak? He is my father, yet I have disobeyed his first command. In the letter the woman brought me, two days after he left El Toro, and in which he commanded me to meet him here upon this day, he enjoined secrecy again and again; and yet I forgot. Miserable girl that I am!”
Ashley had lived among Mexicans long enough to learn something of their ideas of filial duty. No matter how vile, how cruel, how debased the parent may be, the duty of the child is perfect obedience and respect; the petted infant in its most wilful moments ceases its passionate cries to kiss the father’s hand; the young man deprives himself, his wife and children, to minister to his aged parents; he who cannot or will not work, esteems it a pious act to become a bandit upon the highway rather than that his father or mother shall look to him for food or even for luxuries in vain,—and thus he comprehended the remorse of this conscience-stricken child, as the conviction rushed over him that her belief might indeed be true. There was that in the contour of her face which resembled that of Ramirez more markedly than the mere general type that in her babyhood had given her that resemblance to Rosario, which daily grew less, and indeed had never been apparent to Ashley; though in her face he had traced resemblances which had puzzled and bewildered him, and which as he gazed upon her now became still more confusing.
As they had been conversing, Ashley and Chata had gradually drawn near to the door, where the light fell full upon the agitated girl. Yes, in the square brows, the heavily fringed lids resting upon the olive cheeks,—too broad beneath the eyes for beauty, but singularly delicate about the mouth and chin,—so far she resembled Ramirez; or was it but a common Aztec type? The mouth itself, sensitive, refined,—which should have parted but for laughter,—quivered with emotion, and the large gray eyes she lifted to Ashley’s were singularly grave and earnest. Where had he seen such a mouth, such eyes? The contrasts and combinations in the face confused him. Never had he seen its counterpart, yet fancy might under other circumstances have led him upon wild theories. That face familiar, yet strange, had haunted him since he had first seen it. Vainly he had sought in his memory for some picture, some dream, with which to connect it. Now, though he had seen Ramirez, though Chata declared herself his child, the same feeling of uncertainty, of tantalizing familiarity yet strangeness, remained; the association of one with the other did not even momentarily satisfy him. He was not conscious that the face appealed to his imagination rather than to his memory, or that it had always awakened an interest different from that with which he had looked upon others. Certainly its beauty had not delighted him; even as he looked at her now, the witching, glowing, ever-changing countenance of Chinita rose before him. “Strange! strange!” he murmured. “What can be the mystery that from the first has seemed to hover around you, to separate you from the rest?”