The red light from the kitchen was augmented by the flame of a smoking torch, as a servant came forward to take the horse of the foremost rider. When he leaped lightly from his saddle, pushing back his broad hat, Chinita recognized the American, while a woman ran across the court and clasped the arm of the other as he alighted: it was Juana, the wife of Gabriel.
“Hist! hist!” said the man in a low voice, “no crying nor screaming. The Señor and I are here on business that would please your captain but little. By good fortune he is camped to-night at the outskirts of the village, and dare not leave his post. Tell me, Juana,—and not a word to Gabriel when thou seest him,—where is Chinita?”
Before Juana could gather her wits to reply, a hand was thrust through the bars almost at the speaker’s shoulder; but it was Ashley who first saw it. He took it for an instant in his own, and bent over it. “I must speak with you, Chinita,” he said; “join me in the corridor as soon as the house is quiet. I have much to say.”
It was not the voice of a lover that spoke, but it thrilled her as that of a prophet. “Speak low,” she answered, breathlessly, “Doña Isabel sleeps close by; but I will escape,—yes, I will come to you. Is not Juana with you? She must take my place here. The door is locked; the key is in the hand of Doña Isabel. But I will have it, trust me; the Senora sleeps heavily.”
The girl’s face glowed with excitement; she was ready for any adventure, the more daring the more welcome. Ashley Ward looked at her with a strange pride and admiration: this was a nature that no shame could crush, no outward fate dismay!
Chinita, standing at the grating, feeling an almost unrestrainable desire to burst into wild laughter and tears, was for some time utterly silent, waiting the hour when, the revelry over, sleep would fall upon the house. Ashley drew into the shade of the corridor. The inn was but a caravansary; there was none to notice who came or went. In the laughing, chattering crowd he was virtually alone. The thoughts that came to him as the fires faded, as the noisy revellers strolled one by one to their sleeping-places, and the pale light of the stars shining down upon that strange scene showed Pepé wrapped in his blanket, standing sentinel at his side, were indescribable. A phantasmagoria seemed to glide before him, in which Mary, his cousin, the ordinary places, scenes, and associates of his youth, Ramirez, Chata, all the strange actors in this drama, in new and ill-comprehended scenes, passed by; and in the midst the door of a chamber cautiously opened, and the girl of the siren face, which the very voice of fate had seemed to bid him seek in this far land, stepped eagerly and lightly forth to meet him.
XXXV.
In an angle of the corridor, where from sunrise to sunset a woman usually sat, selling cigarettes and small glasses of chia to the passers-by, stood a low banquito, which was in fact only a superfluous adobe jutting out from the massive wall. Ashley withdrew his foot from this rude stool and greeted Chinita ceremoniously, and yet with an air of protecting authority, inviting her by a gesture to be seated, saying, “So you will be less likely to be seen by any chance comer. But from necessity, I would not have asked you to speak to me here.”
The girl looked at him with a little quiver of laughter rippling her mouth, though her eyes were anxious. Evidently she was troubled with no sense of impropriety, and the thought of having eluded Doña Isabel diverted her. Instead of obeying Ashley’s invitation, she darted to Pepé’s side, caught a fold of his blanket in her hand, and drew it from his half-covered face.
“Ah, Pepito, and is it thou?” she cried breathlessly. “What news dost thou bring me? Hast thou then seen my godfather, and what does he say of the Señor General? Does he not think the plan a good one?”