“Patience, and shuffle your cards,”—those cards simply the knowledge that she was a Garcia, with presumably the wrongs of parents to avenge. The thoughts were not very clear in her mind, but the instincts of resentment of insult and of filial devotion were those which amid so much that is ungenerous, evil, and fierce, ever pervade the breast of the Mexican. She turned again to ask almost imploringly, “My father—my mother—who were they?” when she found she was alone. The stranger had extorted no promise of secrecy, offered no bribe; it was as if he had put a weapon in her hand, knowing that its very preciousness and subtlety would prevent her from revealing whence she had received it, and would indicate the use to which it was to be turned.
Chinita leaned against the buttress and pondered. Strangely enough, she did not for a moment think to seek the man and demand further explanation. As she felt he had divined her character, so she divined his. He had said all he would say. After all, it was enough. At the end of an hour she left that spot, which she never saw after without a thrill of the heart, and walked straight to the doorway where Pedro sat. He was eating his supper mechanically, with a disturbed countenance, which cleared when he saw her.
“They are tamales de chile, daughter,” he said, pushing toward her the platter, upon which lay some morsels of corn-pastry and pepper-sauce, wrapped in corn-leaves. “Eat, thou must be hungry.”
Pedro sighed, for perplexity and vexation had destroyed his own appetite, and thought enviously, as Chinita’s white teeth closed on the soft pastry, which was yellow in comparison, “It is a good thing nothing but unrequited love keeps the young from supping,—and that only for a time.”
The gate-keeper watched Chinita narrowly as she was eating and drinking atole from the rough earthen jar. There was some change in her he could not understand, quite different from the passion in which he had last seen her, or the languor which would naturally succeed it. She did not talk, and something kept him from referring to the scene in the courtyard; he felt that she would resent it. Two or three times she bent over him and touched his hand caressingly; yet he was not encouraged to smooth her tangled hair, or offer any of those awkward proofs of affection which she was wont to receive and laugh at or return as the humor seized her; neither did he remind her that it was getting late, but at last rose and took from his girdle the key of the postern.
“Put it back, Pedro!” she said in her softest voice. “I shall never sleep in the hut with Florencia and the children again; yet be not afraid, I will not go to the corridor either. There is room and to spare in yon great house.” She nodded toward the inner court, muttered a good-night, and before Pedro could recover from his surprise sufficiently to speak, swiftly crossed the patio and disappeared.
Pedro looked after her stupefied. He realized that a great gulf had opened between them; that figuratively speaking, his foster-child had left him forever. He looked like one who, holding a pet bird loosely in his hand, had beheld it suddenly escape him, and soar across a wide and bridgeless chasm. Would it dash itself into atoms against the opposite cliffs, or perchance reach a safe haven? Such was the essence of the thoughts for which Pedro framed no words. “God is great,” he muttered at length, “and knows what He does;” adding with a sort of heathen and dogged obstinacy, “but Pedro still is here; Pedro does not forget niña!” He looked up as if to some invisible auditor, crossed himself, then wearily threw himself upon his pallet; but weary as he was, the strong young subject of his cares was sunk in deep and dreamless sleep long before he closed his eyes.
XIX.
Once within the court, Chinita paused and looked around her cautiously. The doors of the lower rooms stood open, and she might have entered any one of them unnoticed and found a shelter for the night. But she was in no mood for solitude. Indeed it was hard for her to check a certain wild impulse that seized her, as she saw a faint glimmer of light which streamed through a slight opening of a door on the upper corridor, and that urged her to rush at once into the presence of Doña Isabel and claim recognition. To what relationship, and to what rights, she did not ask herself; a positive though undefined certainty that Doña Isabel herself would know, and would be forced to yield her justice, possessed her.
Chinita was now a child neither in stature nor mind, but though so young in years, had reached the first development of her powers with the mingled precocity of the Indian and Spaniard, fostered by a clime that seems the very elixir of passion. She had been maturing rapidly in the last few months, and as she stood that night in the faint starlight, the last trace of childhood seemed to drop visibly from her. She folded her arms on her breast, and sighed deeply,—not for sorrow, but as if she breathed a life that was new to her, and her lungs were oppressed by the weight of a strange and too heavily perfumed atmosphere.