Did these words indicate a tardy repentance, a conviction that Herlinda had been indiscreet but innocent? Don Rafael had no time to discuss the question with himself; but he had such new insight into the mind of Ramirez that he was warned from giving any fresh cause of offence. Had he had no previous reasons, it would have been a sufficient one for him to keep inviolate the secret which he had sworn to preserve to his life’s end. In his present humor, the man with whom he had to deal would in his baffled and vengeful rage have spared neither the name nor fame of even his own mother, had occasion offered to tempt him to blacken it. Don Rafael believed the women of his household as well as the money safe in the hiding places he had constructed for them,—the first known to Doña Feliz and Doña Rita, the second to himself alone. To any fate that might befall himself he looked with stoical courage if not indifference. Leaning against the wall, he crossed his arms defiantly and awaited events.
XXXIX.
At high noon a terrible and heartrending wail of anguish sounded through the house, penetrating with dismal insistence through the clamor of the soldiery and the thousand indescribable noises of the animals, which had been hastily collected; and which added the element of mere brute bewilderment to the scarcely more reasonably restrained terror of the people.
Ramirez had recognized the obstinate defiance of the administrador. More than once before he had dealt with others as tenacious of the interests of those they served. He had no time to lose in vain persuasions, and had himself conducted the search throughout the vast building, of which he believed he knew every nook and corner. But he had to his amazement and chagrin found neither treasure nor any member of the family of the administrador save the apparently dying Doña Feliz. After a fruitless endeavor to recall her to consciousness, he left her with a curse, and returning to her son, assaulted him with menaces, alternated with fair promises,—the one as little regarded as the other.
Upon one subject only would Don Rafael permit himself to speak; and to that Ramirez, in his rage, refused to listen. The suggestion that his daughter, if indeed he had a reason to seek one there, might prove to be Chinita, the foster-daughter of Pedro Gomez, he received with utter contempt. He remembered her well, he said; an imp as black as Pedro himself,—black as he must be now, scorching in Hades. That little demon was none of his, while Chata had the very face of his mother,—the face of an angel. Ah! ah! that was indeed a daring jest, that Isabel should strive to palm off upon him the brat of her doorkeeper! Once long before, like the witch she was, the girl had stopped him and thrust into his hand an amulet,—he drew it from his pocket, and cast it from him. By the way, now Pedro was dead, if Rafael still believed her worth a thought, he had better see in such a day as this that she had some other protector. She must be nearly a woman now!
Ramirez fell into greater rage when he learned that Doña Isabel had taken charge of this despised waif. He swore that it was in mockery of himself; and Don Rafael soon perceiving that every word he uttered was construed as an attempt to deceive, and fearing that at some time it might bring evil upon the girl to whom, whether she were the daughter of Ramirez or no, he certainly desired no harm, the administrador became utterly silent, in his heart commending the prudence of Rita in following this time with exactness his instructions, and condoning the treason of which by the assurances of Ramirez he had been forced to believe her guilty.
In truth, although at first the alarmed and not too scrupulous woman had urged Chata to secure the safety of herself and her child by claiming the protection of Ramirez, as time passed and he made no movement toward such recognition she began to distrust the effect it might produce upon the renowned guerilla. He and his soldiers were there for plunder and rapine, not paternal sentiment. As the cries of the women-servants and villagers reached her, the resolution to seek safety in concealment seized her. Though still far from wishing to conceal Chata from Ramirez, to whom the accidental sight of her might recall some sense of mercy or tenderness, she feared both him and her husband too greatly to dare leave her to the chance of insult from the licentious soldiery. But Chata absolutely refused to leave Doña Feliz, from whose side even the servants had fled; and it was her scream that had penetrated to the rooms below, when, by the friendly force of Don Alonzo, she was immured with Doña Rita and Rosario in the secret recess, which Don Rafael had constructed with a vague apprehension of such an emergency.
It chanced that this recess, which was in the immensely thick outer wall of the great house, was dimly lighted and ventilated by a loop-hole so small as to be barely visible from without, but which opened funnel-like toward the inside of the apartment. Through this loop-hole these three women, whose voices were quite inaudible to those either within or without the building, heard confusedly the village cries, and caught uncertain glimpses of the space outside the hacienda gates. After what seemed hours of incarceration, during which Rosario had fretted and slept, and Doña Rita had alternately chided and lamented, while Chata entreated to be released that she might return to the side of Doña Feliz, they saw with anxious surprise a crowd gathering upon the sandy slope; not of the soldiery alone, but the people of the hacienda,—clerks, workmen, women who were wringing their hands and uttering sharp cries of terror and entreaty, which ended in that deep wail, which seemed to signify some agonizing catastrophe.
Doña Rita was the first to divine what was happening. “Maria Purissima!” she cried. “Is it possible Rafael is as mad as the administrador of Los Chalcos,—that he has refused some demand? Does he not remember how Ramirez caused that poor foolish one to be hanged without mercy! O my husband, my husband! Oh! has he no thought for me, for his child, that he will sacrifice his life for Doña Isabel? How will she thank him? Whoever thinks twice of the foolhardy obstinacy of an administrador?”
Chata sprang to her feet. “Give me the key!” she cried. “Let me go! Now if Ramirez is my father, he shall prove it! Would he deny his daughter the life of her foster-father? Give me the key!”