The name as spoken by Don Rafael was mispronounced, would have been hardly recognizable in the ears of him who owned it; yet to Doña Feliz it was like a trumpet blast. “Strange! strange! strange!” she repeated again and again. “Can it be mere chance?”
“That we shall soon know,” said Don Rafael. “These Americans blurt out their affairs to the first comer, expecting help from every quarter. There is no rain that falls but that they fancy it is to water their own field. Nay, mother,” as Doña Feliz made a movement toward the stairway, “go not near the man to-night; he has fever, and is in need of quiet. Old Selsa is with him, and he can need no better care. He is safe to remain here many days; let him rest in peace now. And do you, mother, try to sleep; you are weary and worn.”
With the filial solicitude of a true Mexican, the man, already middle-aged, took his mother’s hand fondly and led her to the door of her own apartment. There she detained him long in low and earnest conversation, and when on leaving her he looked down into the court it was entirely deserted.
In glancing around her, Chinita’s eyes had caught no glimpse of the figures above, perhaps because they had been diverted by a faint glimmer of light at one angle of the courtyard; and remembering that this came from the room to which the wounded man had been carried, she darted swiftly and noiselessly toward it, and in a moment had pushed the door sufficiently ajar to admit of her entrance, and had passed in. She arrested her footsteps at the foot of the narrow bed, which extended like a bier from the wall to the centre of the room. There was not another article of furniture in the apartment, except a chair upon which the sick man’s coat was thrown; but Chinita’s eyes, accustomed to the vault-like and vacant suites of square cells that made up the greater part of the vast building, were struck with no sense of desolation. A slender jar of water, and a number of earthen utensils of different forms and shapes, containing medicaments and food, were gathered upon the floor near the bed’s head; and on a deep window-ledge was placed a sputtering tallow-candle, which had already half filled with grease the clay sconce in which it was sunk.
As Chinita leaned over the foot of the bed and peered through her unkempt locks at its occupant, he looked up with a start, and presently said something in an appealing tone, which certainly touched her more than the words, could she have understood them, would have done. He had in fact exclaimed in English, with an unmistakable American intonation, “Heavens, what a gypsy! and what can she want here in this miserable jail they have left me in?”
She thought he had perhaps asked for water, so she gave him some, which was not unacceptable,—though it irritated him that after giving him the cup, she took up the candle and held it close to his face while he drank. She was in the mood for new impressions however rather than for kindness, and the sight of a strange face pleased her. Burning with fever though he was, and tossing with all the impatience natural to his condition, he could not but notice the totally unaffected ease with which she made her inspection. He might have been a curly-headed infant instead of a man, so utterly unconcernedly did she look into his dark-blue eyes, and note the broad white brow upon which his damp yellow hair clustered, even touching lightly with her finger the firm white throat bared by the opened collar sufficiently to expose the clumsily arranged dressings on the wounded shoulder.[shoulder.] Instantly, with a few deft movements, she made them more comfortable, for which the young man thanked her in a few of the very scanty words of Spanish at his command,—at which she laughed, not ironically, but with a sort of nervous irrelevance, thinking to herself the while, “He is beautiful—bless me, yes! as beautiful as they say the murdered American was! Who knows? this one may come from the same district! It must be but a little place, his country,—there cannot be such a very great world outside the mountains yonder; they touch heaven everywhere. Look now, how white his arms are, and his brow, where the sun has not touched it! and how red his cheeks! But that must be with the fever.” And so half audibly she made her comments upon the wounded stranger, seemingly entirely unconscious or regardless that there was any mind or soul within this body she so frankly admired,—lifting his unwounded arm sometimes, or turning his face into better view, as she might have done parts of a mechanism that pleased her.
“Evidently she thinks me wooden,” he said with a gleam of humor in his eyes. “As I am dumb to her, she believes me also senseless and sightless. Thanks, for taking away that ill-smelling candle,” as with the offending taper in her hand she passed to the other side of the bed. Then she stopped and laughed, and he remembered that he had seen the old woman who had been left in charge of him arrange her sheepskins there and throw herself upon them. Until the young girl had come, old Selsa’s snores had vexed him; since that he had forgotten them, though now they became audible again. As Chinita laughed, she placed the candle-stick upon the window-ledge and looked around her, stretching herself and yawning. The hour was late for her, the diversion caused by sight of the blond stranger and the little service she had rendered him had relaxed the tension of her mind, and she felt herself aweary; the shadows fell dark in every corner of the room,—there was something grewsome in its aspect even to Chinita’s accustomed eyes. It subdued her wild and reckless mood, and she scanned the place narrowly for something upon which she might lie. Presently the young man saw her glide toward the sleeping nurse, and deftly, with a half mischievous, half triumphant expression upon her face, draw out one of the sheepskin mats upon which the old woman was lying, and taking it to the opposite side of the bed arrange it to her liking upon the brick floor, and sinking upon it softly and daintily as a cat might have done, compose herself to sleep.
The candle on the window-sill sputtered and flickered; old Selsa snored in her corner, seemingly undisturbed by the abstraction of a part of her bed; the shadows in the apartment grew longer and longer; the eyelids of the young girl closed, her regular breathing parted her full lips. The young man had painfully raised himself upon one arm, and assured himself of this. He himself was dropping off into snatches of slumber which promised to become profound, when suddenly with a start he found himself wide awake, and staring at a draped figure which had noiselessly glided into his chamber. Save for the candle it bore he would have thought it a visitant from another world; but his first surprise over, he recognized it as that of a woman. He was conscious that his heart beat wildly; his fever had returned. Where had he seen this pale proud face, these classic features, these dark penetrating eyes? For a moment again he felt as if swinging between heaven and earth, between life and death. Ah! yes, he comprehended,—he had been brought thither in some swaying vehicle, and this woman had been beside him; she perhaps had saved his life.
He murmured a word of thanks, but she did not notice it. “Señor,” she said in a voice soft in courtesy, “I pray you forgive me that I had for a little time forgotten my guest. I trust you lack for nothing? Ah! what—alone?” and with a frown, she made a motion as if to awaken the servant Selsa. He understood the gesture though not the words, and stopped her by one as expressive.
“No, no!” he exclaimed. “I too shall sleep; and she is old. I would not awaken her. See, if I need anything a touch of my hand will rouse this girl,”—and the young man indicated by a turn of his head and arm the recumbent figure which his visitor had not observed.