“Niña! Niña, of my life!” he said imploringly, using the form of address one might employ to a child, or some dearly loved elder, still dependent. “Go back to your chamber, I beg and implore! How can I do anything for you? How can Pedro, so worthless, so vile, do anything?”
The adjectives he applied to himself were sincere enough, for Pedro had never ceased to reproach himself for his share in the tragedy which, in spite of Doña Isabel’s words, he had never really ceased to believe concerned Herlinda, though he had striven for his own peace of mind, as well as in loyalty to the Garcias, to affect a contrary opinion, until this moment, when his young mistress’s appearance and appeal rendered self-deception no longer possible. Again and again he reiterated, “What can the miserable Pedro do for you?”
Apparently with an instinct of concealment, Herlinda had crouched upon the stones, and as the man stood before her she raised her face and gazed at him with her dark eyes. How large they looked in the uncertain light! how the young face quivered and was convulsed, as her lips parted! Pedro, with an inward shrinking, expected her to demand of him the name of Ashley’s murderer; but the thought of vengeance, if it ever crossed her mind, was far from it at that moment. “Yes, yes, there is perhaps something you can do for me,” she said. “Men are able to do so much, while we poor women can only fold our hands, and wait and suffer. I thought differently once, though. John used to laugh at what he called our idle ways; he said women were made to act as well as men. But what can I do? What could any woman do in my place? Nothing! nothing! nothing!”
Pedro was silent. He knew well how powerless, what a mere chattel or toy, was a young woman of his people. It seemed, too, quite natural and right to him. In this particular case the mother was acting with incomparable severity, but she was within her right. Even while he pitied the child, it did not enter his mind to counsel her to combat her mother’s will. He only repeated mechanically, “What can I do? What would you have your servant do?”
“Not so hard a thing,” she said with a sob in her voice; “even a woman, had I one for my friend, could do this thing for me; and yet it is all I have to ask in the world. Just a little pity for my child, Pedro!” She rose to her feet suddenly, and spoke rapidly. “Pedro, they say that I was not truly married; they say my beautiful, golden-haired husband, my angel of light, deceived me. It is false, Pedro! all false! But they say the world will not believe me, and so I must go away; and my child, like an offspring of shame, must be born in secret, and I must submit. It will be taken from me, and I must submit. There is no help! no help!”
She spoke in a kind of frenzy, and her excitement communicated itself to Pedro. He understood, far better than she could, the motives of Doña Isabel; he did not condemn her, neither did he attempt to justify her to her daughter. He only muttered again in his stoical way, “What can I do?”
Herlinda accepted the words as they were meant, as an offer of devotion, of service. “Pedro, you can do much,” she said rapidly. “You can watch over my child. Years hence, when I come to ask it, you can give me news of it. Ah, they think when they take my child from me, it will be as dead to me; but Pedro,” she added in an eager whisper, “I have found what they will do. Never mind how I learned it. They will bring my child here,—here, where only the peasants will ask a few useless questions, where there will be no person of influence to interfere. Yes, it will be brought here, and—forgotten! But Pedro, promise me you will watch for it, you will protect it. Promise! promise! promise!”
Pedro was startled, but not incredulous. This would not be the first child that had been found at the hacienda doors, left to the charity of the señoras; more than one half-grown boy, of whose parents no one knew anything, loitered in the courts, and even the maid who served Doña Isabel was a foundling of this class.
“But how shall I know,” he stammered, after he had satisfied her with the promise she desired. “True enough, it may be brought here, but how shall I know?”
Herlinda scarcely heeded his words. She was busy in taking a small reliquary from her neck. It was square, made of pale blue silk, and in no way remarkable. “See, I will put this around its neck,” she said. “No one will dare remove a reliquary. There is a bit of the true cross in it. It will keep evil away; it will bring good fortune. The first day I wore it I met John; and” she added, nervously fingering the jewel at her ear, “take this, Pedro. The other I will put in the reliquary, with a prayer to San Federigo. When you see the strange child that will come here, look for these signs, and as you hope for mercy hereafter, guard the child that bears them.”