Chata was perhaps a stupid little creature,—Rosario it is quite certain would never have done such a silly thing; but one day when Don Fernando had pressed a note into the hand which was nearest to him, and which in the confusion of dispersal happened to be that of the smaller sister, she gave it in some indignation to her mother. It was full of violent protestations of affection, and entreated the life of his life to give her lover hope; it was signed her “agonized yet adoring Fernando.”
Doña Rita showed herself capable of great self-control; she said sadly that she would not ask which had been guilty of attracting such impassioned admiration, but she assured the girls she was heart-broken. When she reached the house, after first carefully closing the door that her father might not hear, she rated them both soundly. Chata did not think it strange they should both be thought guilty; she assumed that Rosario was as innocent as herself. Doña Rita, giving Rosario the note to read, that she might learn for herself the daring and presumption of which man is capable, forgot in her indignation to reclaim it. An hour afterward Chata saw Rosario read it over in secret, and was scandalized to see her kiss it; and late that day, as they stood as usual on the balcony (the little mother, as Chata remarked, was so forgiving!), she caught Rosario’s hand spasmodically as Fernando passed by, but the girl released it with some impatience and slyly kissed the tips of her fingers,—and Chata, with a pang of awakening, realized that her sister had not been and was not so innocent of coquetry as she had assumed, and thenceforth suffered indescribable tortures between her sense of loyalty to her sister and duty to her mother.
Rosario’s ideal of truth was in accordance with that which surrounded her; to be silent when speech was undesirable, to equivocate pleasantly where plain speaking would be harsh, to tell a lie gracefully where truth would offend,—this was her natural creed, which she had never questioned. But Chata, unknown to herself, had never accepted it; her soul was like certain material objects which resist the dyes that other substances at once absorb. It was not enough for her to give the truth when it was asked,—it was a torture, an unnatural crime, to her to withhold it. She would not indeed have done so in this case, had not Rosario in a manner put her upon her honor the very next day.
The washerwoman had been there, and Rosario, who was an embryo housewife, had been deputed to attend her, and Chata, who had gladly escaped the duty, ran to the bedroom when she saw the servant depart to congratulate her sister on the dispatch she had made; when Rosario closing the door mysteriously, cried: “Look! look what he has sent me! Is it not beautiful, charming, divine?” and she held up to the light her hand, on the first finger of which glittered a ring.
Truth to tell, Chata was dazzled; at that moment her own insignificance and the womanliness and beauty of Rosario were more than ever apparent. She gazed at Rosario with greater admiration than on the ring, beautiful though it was. Here was a sister just her own age, yet a woman with an actual lover! Oh!
“What will our mother say?” she began in an awed voice, when Rosario, her womanly dignity gone, began to spring up and down, screaming yet laughing, “Ay, Dios mio!” throwing her hand over her shoulder and slipping it into the loose neck of her dress. “Oh, my life! the creature is down my back! it is crawling now on my shoulder! No, no, grandfather,” for Don José Maria had entered, “it is Chata who will help me. No, my mother! Ay, it is gone now! I would not have you frightened, it was but one of those bright little beetles that live on the roses;” and she contemptuously tossed something out of the window, and Chata saw with speechless wonder that the ring which had been on her finger was gone. The bauble at least had slipped into a secure hiding-place, and Chata really could not determine whether the beetle had ever existed or no.
An air of delightful mystery began to pervade not only the house but the quiet street all the way from the plaza, which Don Fernando Ruiz crossed at intervals in the long, dull, sultry days. It became quite a diversion to the initiated to watch what clever turns and doublings he would make, and with what assumed indifference he would linger by the fruit-stand at the corner, where old Antonina sold tuñas or a few poor figs and lumps of roasted cassava root. She made quite a fortune from the young captain, who seemed bent on dazzling her bleared eyes; for every day, and sometimes three or four times in a day, he appeared resplendent in uniform of blue and red, or a riding suit of buckskin embroidered in silver, or perhaps, when his mood was sombre, in black hung with silver buttons, and more than once in a suit of velvet and embossed leather, with buttons of gold set with brilliants, and riding a horse with accoutrements so splendid that Doña Rita declared he must be as rich as the Marquis of Carabas himself, and without any apparent consistency embraced Rosario with tears.
Truth to tell, Doña Rita was a match-maker born, and though her talents had lain dormant during the years she had spent at the hacienda, they had not declined; and it was natural that she should find a quiet exultation in exerting them in favor of her daughter, for young though Rosario was, her precocity and the custom of the country and period rendered it perfectly natural that marriage should present itself in her immediate future.
A vision of it rose before the impassioned girl like a star, though there was a period of clouds and mourning when her grandmother died, and Chata, sobbing in the garden or moving sadly about the darkened rooms, wondered that Rosario could smile over those pink notes she was always stealing into corners to pore over. During the nine days that her mother remained within doors receiving visits of condolence, the notes indeed were the aliment upon which Rosario’s fancy fed; for Doña Rita, though the little drama of courtship had undoubtedly made less absorbing to her the tragedy of illness and death, was too strict an observer of the proprieties to allow her maternal affection to betray her at such a time into permitting even a shutter to be left ajar, or to suffer her daughter to approach a window to satisfy herself by a momentary peep as to whether the love-lorn captain was on his accustomed beat or no. It was a time however when without offence the veriest stranger might leave a card and word of sympathy, and this he never failed to do from day to day. Doña Rita would glance at the bit of cardboard with an affectation of indifference, but it would always shortly disappear from the table, and with the cruel sarcasm of childish intolerance Chata would suggest to Rosario its suitability for baking the little puffs of sugar and almonds upon, which she was so deft at compounding.
At last the novena of grief was ended, and taking her aged father’s arm Doña Rita dutifully led him into the street to breathe the air. Rosario knew that at that hour the captain was on duty at the barracks, but nevertheless could not resist the opportunity of stepping into the balcony and gazing upon the scene from which she had been so long debarred. A neighbor across the way greeted her with a significant smile; and somewhat piqued, Rosario drew back, half closed the shutters with a hesitating hand, and then dropping on the floor in the long ray of sunlight that streamed through the aperture, set herself to the ever entrancing task of re-reading her lover’s letters.