Chata and Chinita: A Novel

by Laura Preston

From the first, Chata had entreated to be allowed to take her part in nursing the stricken lady, but had been gently refused. Thereafter, the husband of Doña Carmen used often to see their young guest gliding restlessly about the house vainly seeking some distraction for her anxious thoughts. He did not know the secret pain that tormented her. He would gladly have facilitated her return if he could to that Don Rafael from whom in a mad freak the mountain chieftain had stolen her; yet there were circumstances,—there were reasons for not offending one so powerful. Who knew? Guanapila was of course under Liberal rule to-day, but what would it be to-morrow? The cautious man shrugged his shoulders and said something of this to Chata, who smiled and thought him good to care, yet wondered with all his goodness and his years,—the years that had not brought in their train any additional attractiveness to his person,—that Doña Carmen loved him. Was it as she had heard, that his riches had beguiled one already passing rich?

Since she had left El Toro, Chata had become a woman. Change of scene had given impetus to the somewhat retarded development of her physique, and mental anxiety had stimulated her mind and given to it an intuitive appreciation of causes and events that is generally gained by innocent and unsuspicious natures, such as hers, only after long experience.

Thus she comprehended fully, as she would not have done a few months before, the gravity of the step Chinita had taken in separating herself from Doña Isabel. Ruiz had not spared the woman he loved in the few brief sentences he had passionately uttered: love was with him but a devouring flame, ready to destroy its object either in the struggle of attainment or in the fury of baffled desire. Chata blushed even in secret when she remembered the aspersions he had cast upon the friend of her childhood. She knew the innate purity of the girl’s mind, though it had been developed amid surroundings which might well have tainted it. She knew her pride: even when she was but the barefoot foster-child of Pedro the gatekeeper, Chinita had held Pepé and his mates as far apart from her as the dogs that followed them or the mules they tended. Dogs and mules she liked well and made serve her needs, as also she did the lads. Chata did not doubt that Pepé now as ever had proved himself the slave of Chinita’s will. Perhaps it was to Tres Hermanos she had gone. Although knowing as she did the fascination that Ramirez had always exerted over the girl’s mind, she could not but fear that led not by reckless passion but by a spirit of devotion at which Ruiz had sneered, yet in which Chata herself recognized the peculiar strength and determination of Chinita’s character, the impulsive creature might actually have sought an entrance to the camp to urge the plan that she conceived was to further the glory of the Church and the interest of him whom she had made the hero of her imagination. That Ashley Ward was in any way concerned in the disappearance of Chinita, either as a principal or an accessory, Chata indignantly refused to believe. Her heart beat suffocatingly as she thought of him. No, no! he was not a man to entice a girl to her ruin.

And as days went by news reached Chata that strengthened this conviction. The American was engaged in deeds of a far different character. In his way he was beginning to fill the minds and occupy the conversation of people as much as Ramirez had ever done. They gave him a new name, as those at the hacienda had done; but Conservatives and Liberals alike wondered at and exaggerated his exploits, until Ashley had won a reputation for reckless bravado quite foreign to his true character,—which was exhibiting itself in the most careful and nice calculations of chances, the whole tending toward the fulfilment of the task to which he had dedicated himself; namely, the downfall of the unpunished and unrepentant murderer of John Ashley.

Chata recognized this, and was filled with emotions perhaps more conflicting, more strange, than had ever before met in the breast of so young a girl. They held her thoughts by day and night. Oh that she had never left Ramirez! Oh that she could speak but for a few moments with Ashley! But she was powerless; and meanwhile what was the fate of Chinita? What that impending over the man she was in duty bound to warn,—to love if it were possible?

But before these reflections had reached this point, an employment that prevented them from becoming utterly overwhelming was afforded her. Chata no longer wandered aimlessly about the house, but kept the strict seclusion of Doña Isabel’s apartment, to which she had been hastily summoned one night by Doña Carmen herself.

“My mother talks so strangely,” she had said in a low voice, pressing her hands to her white and frightened face. “No, I cannot comprehend what she says; but I cannot have the servants about her. They might imagine unspeakable things. Oh, what tales and rumors they might set afloat! No, no! I will not have them here, with their suspicions and evil thoughts. But you,—you are innocent and frank; you will not torture into strange meanings the mutterings of a diseased imagination.”

“No, no!” answered Chata, reassuringly. “It was the same with Doña Feliz. Sometimes she talked so strangely, so sadly, one was forced to weep, and then again to laugh; yes, in all my trouble I laughed. But I will not now, Doña Carmen; only let me be useful. Doña Isabel did not seem to like me when she was at the hacienda, so I kept as much as possible out of her sight. She said my face was not such as Don Rafael’s daughter should have; and after all,” she added sadly, “she was right.”

What passed in that sick chamber through those long days and nights Doña Carmen and Chata never repeated, even to each other. Perhaps they could not, all was so disconnected, so improbable, and through all her delirium the patient held so great a restraint over her utterances. Sometimes one escaped her that startled and commanded attention; but the next invariably contradicted it, and it was impossible to form a connected theory even had Chata tried. But that great sorrows, events to cause constant and secret care and remorse, had taken place in the life of Doña Isabel, and that they concerned Chinita closely, was abundantly clear. What pathetic appeals, what wild ravings, in which the names of those who had lived in the past,—of her husband, her mother, her brother, and of Herlinda,—were constantly mingled with those of the American and Chinita. And friends or servants followed each other in endless yet confusing succession; yet of them all the name of Chinita was the most frequent. The present grief combined all others; in Chinita seemed centred the agonies and loves of her lifetime.

Chata listened with a sort of envy. Ah, if it had been given to her to raise such a passion of feeling! She found herself from day to day leaning with infinite tenderness over this woman, who had seemed so cold, but whose heart was now revealed as a very volcano of repressed and seething emotions. She was grateful and deeply touched that Doña Isabel in her delirium clung to her fondly, calling her “Mother,” or “Quina,” which Doña Carmen told her was the name of a cousin she had dearly loved. Even after she had recognized her when the delirium was past as the daughter of Don Rafael, she seemed pleased to have her there; though she said querulously, “It is strange you are only a little country girl. But Feliz has good blood in her; it has been transmitted to you,—there is nothing of Rita, nothing of Rafael himself.”