All these plans were not perfected in a day, and the defection of Ashley Ward and his servant seriously interfered in the ambitious captain’s calculations; but he allowed no trace of uneasiness to appear in those rare intervals when he found an opportunity to exchange a few words with the impatient Chinita.
Unconsciously also, Doña Isabel herself aided to establish a bond of confidence between them. When the long irregular column, with banners flying, driving before it the lowing cattle, whose numbers grew less after each night’s slaughter, and followed by the motley line of women and children with the rude equipage of the camp, would be fairly in motion after the confusion of the early start, Ruiz would rein his prancing steed at the side of the carriage and deferentially place himself at the orders of the ladies. On these occasions his manner was one of perfect respect to both, of entire concurrence in the dictates and desires of Doña Isabel, and of half-indifferent, half-amused rejection of the immature and inconsequent conjectures and opinions of the girl, for whose beauty he exhibited a timid but irresistible recognition, which flattered while it disarmed the suspicious mind of Doña Isabel. She believed him still the ardent admirer of Rosario,—a thing which, she reflected, was under the circumstances most fortunate.
In the freshness and animation of those morning hours conversation became natural and easy, and the events and names which were upon every tongue furnished food for abundant reminiscence and comment. Doña Isabel was eloquent in praise of Gonzales, who to his success at El Toro had added others in the neighborhood, which together with the occupation of Guanapila had made the entire district the undisputed territory of Liberalism. Ruiz assented to her enthusiasm with an ardor which seemed but natural in a youth who having separated himself from one powerful patron, should desire to place himself beneath the protection of another; and a comparison of the two, which should explain his defection from the first, followed in natural course; and with carefully chosen words, whose meaning held a subtile relation to the thoughts and predilections of his two auditors, he spoke of the intrepid and unscrupulous Ramirez.
More than once Doña Isabel, in the midst of his talk, sank back in the carriage lost in deep and painful thought, as the wild and terrible deeds in which that lawless man had figured recalled to her mind the horrors of her youth. Deeds such as these might have been planned and executed by the boy who had once been the pride, as he was afterward the bane, of her life, had he lived; but he was dead. Yes, thank God! though her heart had bled inwardly for long years; he had made no sign since the tale of his end came—he was dead!
While she was thus lost in thought, Chinita listened with glowing cheek and eyes. Ruiz knew of the meeting with Ramirez to which she looked back with such peculiar and unwearying fascination; and discerning in her admiration of his former leader an unfailing means of rousing in her a personal attraction which in her passionate nature might become an absorbing love, he carefully refrained from giving her any hint of his real sentiments toward her hero, and spared no covert word, no mute eloquence of his dark and expressive eyes, to increase an enthusiasm which had already led her into such strange defiance of the plans of Doña Isabel. To reinstate her hero in the power from which he had fallen became Chinita’s dream, the aspiration of her soul.
On the fifth night of their journey it chanced that they entered a village, where Doña Isabel and her servants were enabled to find a shelter, which after the restricted and insufficient accommodation of tents seemed absolutely luxurious, primitive and rude though it was. Doña Isabel wearied with travel, and depressed with anxiety at the unaccountable delay of Gonzales, who she had supposed would have hastened to take command of the troops that her energy and bounty had provided, had early retired to the room assigned her. Chinita had reluctantly accompanied her, for a fandango was in progress in the great kitchen, the charcoal brasiers flaming red against the dark walls of yellow-washed adobe, and shining upon the bronzed faces of a group of swarthy men, who strummed upon stringed instruments of various shapes and sizes; while another group of mingled men and women went through the rhythmic motions of the dance, with which the young girl, gazing from her cell-like retreat across the court, had long been so familiar.
Chinita had never danced since the night that she had fled from the wedding fiesta into the waiting arms of Doña Isabel. She had thought of the scene and its pleasures only with anger and disgust; and yet as she looked into the red glare and watched the swaying figures, she longed to rush in and throw herself among them. To her, as to Doña Isabel, the time of suspense was growing unbearably long; she was mad for action. Unreasonably, she felt that there among their caste she might find Pedro, Pepé,—some one who would do her bidding, who would not dare put her off as Ruiz was doing with tantalizing promises.
Chinita knew that instead of following the most direct paths as Doña Isabel had commanded, the route on various pretexts had been changed,—she supposed to make communication with Ramirez possible. She had no reason to doubt the good faith of Ruiz, yet she was impatient and miserable. A straggler upon the road had given them the news that Ramirez had been seen upon the hills with a forlorn and ill-armed troop, which bore evidence of the ill fortune which the defeat at El Toro had inaugurated. She had conceived a violent and unreasonable antagonism to Gonzales, who from his whilom associate had become the successful opponent and rival of the man whom by the childish gift of an amulet she had fancied herself endowing with invincible good fortune. Even as she grew older, her faith in the magic powers of a charm which had been the creation of a wizard, and had been blessed by Holy Church, scarcely grew less; and the remembrance of it undoubtedly strengthened the fealty so strangely sworn. Besides, a purpose had arisen in her mind of appealing to Ramirez to establish her position in the house of Garcia, by wresting from Doña Isabel an acknowledgment which would give her rights and a certain status (though clouded it might be) where now she was but the recipient of favors,—the peasant born raised to a dignity which was a mere scoff and jest to the ready wit of the sarcastic and epigrammatic rancheros. Chinita knew them well. Were not their gifts and prejudices her own?
Musing thus, the girl glanced from the barred window where she stood back through the gloom of the apartment to the bed where Doña Isabel was lying,—already asleep. The yellow light of a candle just touched the lady’s pale face; it was contracted with that habitual expression of pain which the darkness of night permitted to the proud and suffering woman, but which in the day, or under the eye of even the most unobservant, she banished resolutely, though its shadow rested ever uncomprehended, unpitied.
There was something in the lassitude of Doña Isabel’s figure, the hopeless grief upon the countenance, which for the first time suggested to Chinita the possibility that emotions deeper than that pride of birth which was as great in degree in herself, though neither as pure in principle nor bounded by the conventionalities of caste, had actuated the deeds and embittered the life of her who to the eye had been so absolute, so unassailable. With a feeling of awe Chinita took a step toward the sleeper, when a sound drew her glance to the court. Into the motley throng of lounging soldiers and arrieros, with their mules feeding and stamping around them, two belated travellers forced their way. It was the voice of one of them that had startled the watcher, and claimed instantly all her thoughts, setting her heart beating stiflingly as she sprang to the lattice and pressed her face eagerly against the iron bars.