“Go away!” cried Chinita, imperatively. “Thou hast been told not to come here. Thy mother will have thee whipped, and I shall be glad, and I will laugh! yes, I will laugh and laugh!” and she proceeded to do so sardonically on the instant, gazing down with a glance of contemptuous fury, which for the moment was tragically genuine, upon the little brown countenance lifted to her own somewhat apprehensively, yet with a mischievous daring in the dark eyes that lighted it.
Chinita, with a child’s freedom and in the forgetfulness of anger, had used the “thou” of equality in addressing her visitor; yet so natural and irresistible are class distinctions in Mexico, that she held open the door with some deference for the daughter of the administrador to enter, and caught up her scarf to throw over her head and bare shoulders, as was but seemly in the presence of a superior however young. That done, however, they were but two children together, two wilful playmates for the moment at variance.
“Now, then! Be not angry, Chinita!” laughed Chata, looking around her with great satisfaction. “What good fortune that thou art here alone! I slipped by the gate when Pedro was busy talking, and Rosario was making my mother and mamagrande to fear dying of laughter by mimicking thee, Chinita; and so they never missed me when I darted away to seek thee, Sanchica.”
“And thou hadst better go back,” cried Chinita, grimly, more piqued at being the cause of laughter than pleased at Chata’s penetration; for in choosing her green gown she had had in her mind the habit of green cloth sent by the Duchess to Sancho Panza’s rustic daughter, and had teased and wheedled Pedro into buying her holiday dress of that color,—because when they were reading the story together Chata had called her Sanchica and herself the Duchess, and for many a day they had acted together such a little comedy as even Cervantes never dreamed of, in which they had seemed to live in quite another world than that actually around them. The tale of the “Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance” was a strange text-book for children; yet in it they had contrived to put together the letters learned in the breviary, and with their two heads close bent over the page, these two, as years passed on, had spelled out first the story, then later an inkling of the wit, the fancy, the philosophy which lay deep between the two leathern covers that inclosed the entire secular literature that the house of Don Rafael afforded.
There were, indeed, shelves of quaint volumes in the darkened rooms into which Chata sometimes peeped when Doña Feliz left a door ajar; but so great was her awe that she would not have disturbed an atom of dust, and scarce dared to breathe lest the deep stillness of those dusky rooms should be broken by ghostly voices. But Chinita, less scrupulous, had more than once, quite unsuspected, passed what were to her delightful though grewsome hours in those echoing shades, and with the bare data of a few names had repeopled them in imagination with those long dead and gone, as well as with the figure of that stately Doña Isabel, who still lived in some far-off city,—mourning rebelliously, it was whispered, over the beautiful daughter shut from her sight by the walls of a convent, yet who with seemingly pitiless indifference had consigned the equally beautiful younger Carmen to a loveless marriage; for the latter had married an elderly widower, and who could believe it might be from choice? Chinita heard perhaps more of these things than any one, for she was free to run in and out of every hut, as well as the house of the administrador; and with her quick intelligence, her lively imagination, and that faculty which with one drop of Indian blood seems to pervade the entire being,—the faculty of astute and silent assimilation of every glance and hint,—she was in her apparent ignorance and childishness storing thoughts and preparing deductions, which lay as deep from any human eye as the volcanic fires that in the depths of some vine-clad mountain may at any moment burst forth, to amaze and terrify and overwhelm.
But Chinita was brooding over no secret thoughts as she began to smile, though unwillingly and half wrathfully, as Chata eagerly declared how well the green dress had transformed her into a veritable Sanchica, and how stupid she herself had been not to guess from the first what her clever playmate had meant; then she laughed again as she thought of the billowy green in which Chinita had knelt, and the half-appeased masquerader was vexed anew, and sat sullenly on the edge of the adobe shelf that served as a bedstead, and tugged viciously at the knots of ribbon in the rebellious hair which she had vainly striven to confine in seemly tresses. She shook back the wild locks, which once free sprang into a thousand rings and tendrils, and looking at Chata irefully from between them, exclaimed,—
“You laugh at me always! You are a baby; you read in the book, and yet you know nothing. If I were rich like you, I would not be silent and puny and weak as you are. I would be strong and beautiful, and a woman as Rosario is; and I would know everything,—yes, as much as the Padre Comacho, and more; and I would be great and proud, as they say the Señora Doña Isabel is!”
“But,” cried Chata, flushing with astonishment and some anger, “how can I be beautiful and strong and like a grown woman at will? My grandmother says it is well I am still a child, while Rosario is almost a woman; and I do not mind being little, no, nor even that my nose turns back to run away, as you say, from my mouth every time I open it; but it is growing more courageous, I know,”—and she gave the doubtful member an encouraging pull. “I do not mind all this in the least, while my father and my grandmother love me; but my mother and you and every one else look only at Rosario, and talk only of her—” and her lip trembled.
“But do I talk to Rosario?” asked Chinita, much mollified. “Do I ever tell her my dreams, and all the fine things I see and hear, when I wander off in the fields and by the river, and up into the dark cañons of the hills? And,” she added in an eager whisper, “shall I ever tell her about the American’s ghost when I see him?”
“Bah! you will never see him,” ejaculated Chata, contemptuously, though she glanced over her shoulder with a sudden start. “There is no such thing. I asked my grandmother about it yesterday, and she says it is all wicked nonsense. There could have been no American to be murdered, for she remembers nothing about it.”