The toasts drunk were loud and frequent, and the name of Ramirez was the most deeply execrated. Many of the young men indulged in extravagant boasts and declarations as to the deeds they would accomplish in the near future, scorning the prowess of the man at whose very name they were accustomed to tremble. Some one spoke with a laugh of a beautiful girl who had been seen in his company but a few days before. It was not until afterward that Ruiz reflected that the spy had probably caught a glimpse of Chata on her way from Tres Hermanos. At the moment his mind was full of Chinita, and rising impetuously, in a torrent of fiery words he broke into denunciation and invective, telling the tale of Pedro’s martyrdom as he had heard it, and vowing that as Ramirez had slain the poor peasant, so he himself would accomplish the defeat and death of the “mountain wolf.” “I promise you, Señores,” he concluded, “that when you next hear of Fernando Ruiz you shall have cause to remember the vow I have here made. Ramirez is doomed!”
The stoical man at the head of the table smiled faintly at the storm of applause that followed this speech, and as Ruiz a few minutes later took his departure Juarez muttered to his neighbor, “That young fellow will bear watching. He has either a tremendous personal wrong to avenge, or he is striving to mislead us. I know him to be the godson of this very Ramirez, whom he thunders against. A Mexican may turn against, may even murder, his own father; but his godfather,—he must be a renegade indeed to attempt his destruction!” His neighbor assented.
When the words of Ruiz were reported to Ramirez,—as reported they were a few days later,—he smiled as grimly as Benito Juarez himself had done. “The cockerel crows loud,” he said. “He was always a blusterer. Well, we shall see; a week at latest will decide all that. Bah! if the fellow but had in him the blood of his father!—but with the name of his mother he must have taken a braggart’s tongue. It will be well for him if he does not weary my patience in the end. But for my promise to Reyes—”
He frowned darkly. Had Ruiz seen the face of his godfather then he might have repented his boast. As it was, his own mad words served as a spur urging him to the inevitable future. He returned to the camp of Gonzales unmolested, and was received with intense relief, with thanks and praises, yet wore thereafter a dark and vengeful face.
XLII.
The arrival of Doña Isabel at the house of her daughter brought a change into the life of Chata that might have been considered even more dreary and oppressive than the semi-imprisonment to which she had thus far been subjected, though she was spoken of as an honored guest. In fact this change was most welcome to the young girl; for while it afforded her even less freedom of movement, it gave a sufficient reason for her seclusion, as also occupation both to body and mind.
What had been the nature of the communication that Ramirez had made to Doña Carmen, Chata knew not, but it had evidently impressed that lady with a deep sense of responsibility. In those days there were even in the quietest times no regular mails into the country districts, and this gave a ready pretext to Doña Carmen for resisting all attempts to communicate with the household at Tres Hermanos. The highways, infested as they were by roving bands of soldiers and banditti, were indeed scarcely safe for the transmission of even peaceful intelligence; and thus none reached Guanapila from the hacienda, and Chata, and in a lesser degree Doña Carmen herself, endured a painful uncertainty as to the condition of Don Rafael and of Doña Feliz and others whom Chata had left stricken with the dreaded fever. Day by day she had awaited news; day by day she had hoped for the appearance of Doña Isabel and Chinita,—while Doña Carmen, after listening with astonishment and some manifestations of displeasure to the account Chata gave of the departure of her mother from Tres Hermanos under the escort of troops destined to the relief of Gonzales, gave the opinion that the destination she would seek would be El Toro rather than Guanapila.
“My sister the religious is at present there,” she said; and Chata with glowing face, and lips that trembled at the memory, told her of the chance glimpse she had once caught of the beautiful and saintly nun.
Doña Carmen’s eyes filled with tears, and she silently embraced the girl; the little incident drew Chata nearer to her heart. “Ah, child,” she would say, “I never have known, I never could conjecture, why our beautiful Herlinda chose so sad a life,—it must be sad to be shut away from this fair world, from sweet companionship, from love. Yes, Herlinda might have chosen from among a score of the handsomest and noblest of cavaliers. And then our mother,—how she loved her! one might see it through all her sternness. I never knew the truth, yet I am sure a great and terrible sorrow caused Herlinda to enter a convent. She had no inherent fitness, no liking natural or acquired, for such a life.”
Doña Carmen was not accustomed to speak thus freely of family affairs. She had much of the characteristic reticence of the Garcias. Chata met many of the younger members from time to time. They were too well bred to show any curiosity concerning her; but among the servants of the household and of others, there was much gossip as to how and why she had come, and what relationship she bore to the husband of Doña Carmen, who, kind and amiable man that he was, seemed to take peculiar pleasure in her companionship. But the arrival of Doña Isabel in an apparently dying condition turned all thoughts into a new channel.