“Stay! stay!” cried Chinita, eager to give her news, as she saw Chata about to fly. “Though I did not look, I found something. Oh, yes, in black letters, so big and clear!”
Chata returned precipitately. “Letters—what letters?” she cried.
“Big black letters, J and U and A and N; and the letters for the American name—how do they say it? Ash— Yes, Ashley—it is not hard—and that he was born in the United States, and murdered here in May,—yes, I forget the figures, but I counted up; it was just fourteen years ago, upon the 13th of this very month. It was all written out upon a little wooden cross, which had fallen face down upon the grave I fell asleep upon. I might have looked for it a hundred years and not have found it, but I had scraped away the sand from it to rub my hands. It is thick and heavy; I could scarcely turn it over to read the words,—but they are there. You may tell Doña Feliz there was an American.”
“No, I shall say nothing,” said Chata, dreamily. “She likes not to hear of murder or of ghosts. Ah, the poor American! why does his spirit stay here? This is not purgatory. Ah, can it be he cannot rest because he died upon the 13th?—the unlucky number, my mother says.”
“Let us make it lucky,” said Chinita, daringly. “Let us say thirteen Aves and thirteen Pater Nosters for his soul.”
But Chata shook her head doubtfully, and started violently as a servant maid, grimy and ragged like all her clan, and panting with haste, thrust open the door, exclaiming,—
“Niña of my soul, your lady mother declares you are dead. Doña Feliz has searched all the house, and is wringing her hands with grief. Don Rafael has seized Pedro by the collar, and is mad with rage because he swears you have not passed the gate; and here I find you, with your white frock all stained with dirt, and that beggar brat filling your ears with her mad tales. The Saints defend us! Sometime the witch will fly off—as she came—no one knows where. But you, niña, come, come away!” and the excited woman dragged the truant reluctantly away; while Chinita, thrusting her tongue into her cheek, received the epithets of “beggar brat” and “witch” with a contempt which the gesture only, rather than any words, fluent as she was in plebeian repartee, could at that moment adequately express.
XVI.
Though Chinita as was usual was made the scapegoat for Chata’s fault,—Doña Rita averring that the girl possessed an irresistible power for evil over her own innocent children,—Chata on this occasion felt herself most heavily punished, for Don Rafael strengthened his wife’s fiat against the dangerous temptress, the gate-keeper’s child, by absolutely prohibiting her entrance to his house. Chata wept for her playmate, and for many days Rosario moped and sulked; while Chinita hung disconsolate—as the Peri at the gate of Paradise—about the entrance to the court, finding small solace in the young fawn Pepé had given her, though she twined her arms around it and held its head against her bosom, that its large pensive eyes might seem to join in the appeal of her own. And perhaps the two aided by time and Chata’s grief might have conquered; but there was a sudden interruption of the quiet course of life at Tres Hermanos.
One day Chinita found the whole house open to her; there was no one there either to welcome or repulse her save Doña Feliz. Don Rafael, with his wife and children, had obeyed a sudden call, and had hastened to the dying bed of Doña Rita’s mother. For the first time in her life Chata had left the hacienda. Rosario had twice before gone with her mother to visit relatives, but for various reasons Chata had remained at home. Doña Rita seemed half inclined to leave her at this time also; but Don Rafael cut the matter short by ordering her few necessaries to be packed, and in a flutter of excitement, perhaps heightened by the frown upon her mother’s face, Chata took her seat in the carriage that was to bear her far beyond the circle of hills which had heretofore bounded her vision.