Chata and Chinita: A Novel

by Laura Preston

With some curiosity she moved to the opposite side of the bed, and bending over lightly removed the fringe of the reboso which shaded the face of the sleeper. Doña Isabel started, and a slight exclamation escaped her lips as she turned hurriedly away,—as hurriedly returning, and shading the candle with her hand, that its light might not fall upon the eyes of the sleeper, she gazed upon the young girl long and earnestly. Unmindful of herself, she suffered the full glare of the candle to illuminate her own countenance; and as he looked upon it, the young American thought it might serve as the very model for the mask of tragedy. Nothing more pitiless, more remorseless, more sombre than its expression could be imagined; yet as she gazed, a flush of shame rose from neck to brow. Her eyes clouded, her breath came with a quick gasp. She stood for a moment clasping the rod at the foot of the bed with her white nervous hand; she looked at the American fixedly, yet she seemed to have no consciousness that she herself was seen; and presently, with the slow movement of a somnambulist, so absorbing was her thought, she turned to the door.

Ashley was watching her intently; suddenly her light was extinguished, and she vanished as if dissolved in air. He was calm enough to remember that she had spoken to him, to know that she could be no phantom of his imagination, and to suppose that upon stepping into the corridor she had extinguished her light, and sped noiselessly along the wall to some other apartment; yet for a long time a feeling of mystery oppressed him, and he could not sleep. A vague consciousness of some strange influence near him kept him feverish, with all his senses on the alert; yet he heard no movement of the woman who crouched within the doorway, leaning against the cold wall, and who during the long silent night passed in review the strange events that had brought her—the Señora Isabel Garcia de Garcia—to guard the slumbers of a foundling, the foster-child of a man so low in station as the gate-keeper of her house.

XX.

Doña Isabel Garcia had been born within the walls of Tres Hermanos, her father having been part owner of the estate, and her mother the daughter of an impoverished gentleman of the neighboring city of Guanapila. Doña Clarita had been a most beautiful woman, whose attractions had been utilized to prop the falling fortunes of her house by her marriage with the elderly but kindly proprietor Don Ignacio Garcia.

At the time of her marriage, Clarita Rodriguez was very young, and with the habits of submission universal among her countrywomen would probably have taken kindly to her fate, never doubting its justice, but that from her balcony she had one day seen a young officer of the city troop ride by in all the magnificence of the military uniform of the period. A dazzling vision of gold lace and braid, clanking spurs and sabre, and of eyes and teeth and smile more dazzling still, haunted her for weeks. Yet that might have passed, but that the vision glided from the eye to the heart, when on one luckless night, at the governor’s ball, Pancho Vallé was introduced to her, and they twice were partners in that lover’s delirium the slow and voluptuous danza. As they moved together in the dreamy measure, a few low words were exchanged,—commonplace perhaps but not harmless, and by one at least never to be forgotten. Afterward an occasional missive penned in most regular characters upon daintily tinted paper came to her hands through some complaisant servant. But Don Ranulfo Rodriguez was too jealous a guardian to suffer many such to escape him, and had been far too wise in his generation to place it in his daughter’s power to engage in such dangerous pastime as the production of replies to unwelcome suitors. Like most other girls of her age and position, Clarita had been strenuously prevented from learning to write, and it is doubtful if she ever knew the exact import of Vallé’s perfumed missives, although her heart doubtless guessed what her eyes could not decipher.

Whether Vallé’s impassioned glances meant all they indicated or not, certain it was that he had not ventured to declare himself to the father as a suitor for the fair Clarita’s hand, when Don Ignacio Garcia stepped in and literally carried away the prize. The courtship had been short, the position of the groom unassailable. Clarita shed some tears, but the delighted father declared they were for joy at her good fortune; and they were indeed of so mixed a character—baffled love, wounded pride, and an irrepressible sense of triumph at her unexpected promotion—that she herself scarce cared to analyze them. She danced with Vallé once again on the occasion of her marriage; again a few words were spoken, and the passionate heart of Clarita was pierced with a secret dart, which never ceased to rankle.

Don Ignacio Garcia conducted her immediately to the hacienda, where his jealous nature found no cause for suspicion; and there the little Isabel was born; and on beholding the wealth of maternal affection which the young wife lavished upon her child, the husband forgot the indifference that had sometimes chafed him, and for a few brief months imagined himself beloved. This egotistic delusion was never dispelled, for at its height, upon the second anniversary of their wedding day, when taking part in a bull-chase, Don Ignacio’s horse swerved as he urged him to the side of the infuriated animal; a moment’s hesitancy was fatal; the horse was ripped open by the powerful horn of the bull, and plunging wildly, fell back upon his luckless rider, whose neck was instantly broken. It was an accident which it seemed incredible could have happened to a man so skilled in horsemanship as was Don Ignacio. The spectators were for a moment dumb with horror and surprise, then with groans and shrieks rushed to the rescue, but only to lift a corpse. Doña Clarita with a wild shriek had fainted as the horse plunged back, and upon regaining her senses, threw herself in an agony of not unremorseful grief upon the body of her husband. It was, however, of that violent character which soon expends itself; and before the funeral obsequies were well over, she began to look around the narrow horizon of Tres Hermanos, and remember, if not rejoice, that she was free to go beyond it.

Don Gregorio, the cousin of Clarita’s husband’s, though a mere boy, had been brought up on the estate, and was competent to take charge, and the administrador and clerks were trusty men; so there was no absolute reason why the young widow should remain to guard her interests and those of her child, and it seemed but natural she should return to her father’s house, at least during the first months of her sorrow. Thither indeed she went. She had dwelt there before, a dependent child, to be disposed of at her father’s will; she returned to it a rich widow, profuse of her favors but tenacious of her rights, one of which all too soon proclaimed itself to be that of choosing for herself a second husband. A month or two after her arrival in the city, Don Pancho Vallé returned from some expedition in which patriotism and personal gain were deftly combined, with the halo of success added to his personal attractions, and was quick to declare an unswerving devotion to the divinity at whose shrine he had worshipped but doubtfully while it remained ungilded by the sun of prosperity. Whether Clarita had learned to read or not, certain it is that Don Pancho’s impassioned missives met with a response more satisfactory than pen and ink alone could give, for immediately after the expiration of the year due to the memory of Don Ignacio, she became the wife of the gay soldier.

Don Pancho and his wife were both young, both equally delighted in excitement and luxury; and within an incredibly short time the ample resources which had seemed to them boundless were perceptibly narrowed. To the taste for extravagant living, for gorgeous apparel, for numerous and magnificent horses, shared by them in common, were added a passionate love of gambling, and a scarcely less expensive one for military enterprises of an independent and half guerilla order, on the part of Don Pancho; and thus a few years saw the wife’s fortune reduced to an encumbered interest in the lands of Tres Hermanos.

Don Pancho in spite of numerous infidelities still retained his influence over the heart and mind of Clarita; and one night in play against Don Gregorio Garcia—who, like other caballeros, occasionally engaged in a game or two for pastime—he staked the last acre of her estate, knowing she would refuse him nothing, and lost. For a moment he looked blank,—a most unwonted manifestation of dismay in so practised a gambler,—then laughed and shook hands with his fortunate opponent. There was a laughing group around him, condoling with him banteringly, for Pancho Vallé had never seemed to make any misfortune a serious matter, when a pistol-shot was heard. For a moment no one realized what had happened; the young officer stood in his gay uniform, smiling still, his gold-mounted pistol in his hand, then fell heavily forward. The ball had passed through his heart. His widow had the satisfaction of seeing by the smile that remained on his handsome countenance that he had died as joyously as he had lived; not a trace of care showed that aught deeper than mere pique and caprice had moved him. “Angel of my life!” she cried, when her first burst of grief was over, “thou wert beginning to make my heart ache, for I had nothing more to give thee!”