But these acquirements, added to her natural penetration, had been powerful factors in the life of Doña Feliz. Her husband had been weak and inefficient, yet had through her tact retained throughout his life the management of the Garcia estates: in which he had been succeeded by his son, a man of more character, which perhaps the preponderating influence of his mother as much overshadowed as it had sustained and lent a deceptive brilliancy to that of his father, who, like many a man who goes to his grave respected and admired, had shone from a reflected light as unsuspected and unappreciated as it was unobtrusive and unfaltering.
Doña Feliz had all her life, in her quiet, self-assured way, ruled in her household,—in her husband’s time because he had accepted her opinions and acted upon them, unconscious that they were not his own; while now by her son she was deferred to from the habitual respect a Mexican yields to his mother, and from the steadfast admiration with which from infancy he had recognized her talents. Thus, it is not an exaggeration to say that Don Rafael, whatever might have been his temptations to do otherwise, invariably identified himself in thought as well as act with the mother to whom he felt he owed all that was strong or fortunate or to be desired, not only in his station, but in mind or person. Therefore it was not to be expected that he would interfere when Doña Rita complained to him that his mother made Rosario cry by keeping her poring over the mysteries of the alphabet, and that Chata inked her fingers and frocks over vain endeavors to form the bow-letters at a required angle, and that both would be better employed with the needle. And indeed Don Rafael thought it a pretty sight, when he came upon his mother seated in her low chair, with the two sisters before her, Rosario’s mouth forming a fluted circle as she ejaculated “Oh!” in a desperate attempt at “O,” and Chata following the lines painfully with one fat forefinger, her eyes almost touching the book,—no dainty primer with prettily colored pictures, but a certain red-bound volume of “Letters of a Mother,” containing advice and admonition as alarming as the long and abstruse words in which they were conveyed.
With all her inattention and impatience, Rosario learned her tasks with a rapidity which roused the pride of her mother’s heart; but Chata, in those early years, stumbled wofully on the road to learning. At lesson-time Chinita, not a whit less grimy than of old, used to hasten to crouch down behind her victimized little patroness, and sometimes whisper impatiently in her ear, sometimes give her a sly tweak of the hair, when her impatience grew beyond bounds, and at others vociferate the word with startling force and suddenness; until one day it occurred to Doña Feliz, who had made no effort to teach her anything, and had often been oblivious of her very presence, that this little elf-locked rancherita was her aptest pupil. That day, when the others unwillingly seated themselves to their copy-books, she watched the gate-keeper’s child, and saw her write the words she had set for her little pupils upon the brick floor with a piece of charcoal taken from the kitchen, then covertly wipe them off with the hem of her skirt.
Doña Feliz was touched. Here was a child of five doing what she herself at fifteen had painfully acquired. She did not pause to think that what with her had been the result of deep thought, was here but parrot-like though effective imitation. She took away the charcoal from the child’s blackened fingers, bade her stand at the table, and gave her pen and ink.
After the lesson Chinita flew rather than ran across the court, leaving Rosario and Chata astounded and offended that she would not play, and thrust into Pedro’s hand a piece of dirty paper covered with cabalistic characters. She had already confided to him that she could read, and had even once spelled out to him a scrap of printed paper which had come in his way, amazing him by her knowledge; but now that she could write, a veritable superstitious awe of this elfish child befell him.
That evening Pedro stole into the church, and lighted two long candles before the image of the Virgin. Were they an offering of thanks for a miracle performed, or a bribe against evil? The man went back to his post thoughtful, his breast swelling with pride, his head bowed in apprehension. He never had heard that those the gods love die young, yet something of such a fear oppressed him,—though as he found Chinita in flagrant disgrace with Florencia because she had drunk the last drop of thin corn-gruel which the woman had saved for her uncle’s supper, he had reasonable ground for believing that the healthful perversity of her animal spirits and moral nature might counteract the malefic effect of mental precocity; and as he was thirsty that night, so might have been interpreted the muttered “A dry joke this!” with which he looked into the empty jar, and swallowed his tough tortillas and goatmilk cheese.
“Ay! but Florencia is cross to poor Chinita,” whispered this astute little damsel, seizing the opportunity to creep up behind him when he was not looking, of stealing a brown arm around his neck, and interposing her shock of curls between his mouth and the morsel he destined for it. “Who has poor Chinita to love her but Pedro, good Pedro?” And so Pedro’s anger was charmed away, even as he thought evil might be turned from his wilful charge by the faint glow of the two feeble candles he had lighted. Were her coaxing ways as evanescent, as little to be relied on, as their flicker? Ay, Chinita!
XIII.
These few years of which the flight has been thus briefly noted, had wrought a subtle change in the appearance of Tres Hermanos as well as in the life of its inhabitants. Gradually there came over it that almost indescribable suggestion of absenteeism which falls upon a dwelling when there is death within, and which is wholly different from the careless untidiness of a house temporarily closed. True, there was movement still at Tres Hermanos,—people came and went, the fields were tilled, the herds of horses roamed upon the hillside, the cattle lowed in the pastures, the village wore its accustomed appearance of squalid plenty, the children played at every doorway, the same numbers of heavily-laden mules passed in at the house-gates, the granaries were as richly stored,—and yet, even to the casual observer, there was a lack. At first, one would attribute it wholly to the pile of deserted buildings to the west. No smoke ever issued from the tall stack of the reduction-works; the lizards ran unmolested upon the walls, which already had crumbled in a place or two, affording entrance to a few adventurous goats, which browsed upon the herbage that sprang up in the court, and even around the great stones in the reduction-sheds. But turning the eyes from these, there was something desolate in the appearance of the great house itself. The upper windows opening upon the country were always closed, dust gathered in the balcony where Doña Isabel had been wont to stand, and a rose, which had long striven against neglect, waved its slender tendrils disconsolately in the evening breeze. Some one pathetically calls a closed window the dropped eyelid of a house; and so seemed those barred shutters of cedar, upon which beat the last rays of the setting sun.
The great event of the American War had despoiled Tres Hermanos of many of its young men. Others had from time to time been drawn into the broils that followed, and which had been augmented by the dictatorship of Santa Anna; yet the estate itself had escaped invasion. Its great storehouses of grain remained intact, its fields were untrodden by the horses of soldiery either hostile or friendly; but a change menaced it,—a hoarse murmur as of the sea seemed to gather and break against the bulwark of mountains that environed it. News of the great events of the day penetrated the remote valley, and with them vague apprehensions and disquiet. Even the laborers in the fields felt the oppression of the storm which was raging without, and which threatened to break upon them. Their hearts quaked; they knew not what an hour might bring forth. For the first time they realized that the great events which had been transpiring, and were still in progress beyond their cordon of hills, meant more to them than food for gossip, or an attraction to some idle boy to whom army life meant a frolic and freedom from work.