“Look at us, poor insurgents!” he would say, “often reduced—especially when absent from this hospitable mansion—to use our fingers for forks, and our tortillas for spoons!”
And the wind-up of his argument always was, that they “ought to treat as a Royalist a master who dined every day upon silver plates—that Don Mariano should be reduced to the same condition as other patriotic insurgents, and use his fingers for forks, while his plates should be converted into piastres.”
Up to a certain period Arroyo rejected these proposals of his comrade. Not that he had any more respect for the property of Don Mariano than his associate had; but rather that he was not yet sufficiently hardened to reckless outrage, as to perpetrate such an audacious robbery on one who was publicly known to be a friend to the insurgent cause. We say, up to a certain time Arroyo preserved these egotistical scruples; but that time terminated on the day and hour when, in the presence of his old master, and the whole household of Las Palmas, he was forced to endure the terrible insults inflicted upon him by the dragoon captain. From that moment he transferred a portion of his vengeful hatred for Don Rafael to the haciendado and his daughters; and it is possible that on his leaving Las Palmas the night after—which the dangerous proximity of Del Valle influenced him to do—he would have left bloody traces behind him, but for the interference of his associate Bocardo.
The latter, in his turn, had counselled moderation. More covetous of gold, and less thirsty of blood than Arroyo, the astute brigand had represented, that “there could be no great blame attached to them for using the silver of Don Mariano to serve the good cause of the insurrection; that the more needy of the insurgents might justly demand aid from their richer brethren, but not their lives or their blood.”
Arroyo no longer combated the proposals of his confrère. To him they now appeared moderate; and the result was, that the two forbans collected all of Don Mariano’s silver they could lay their hands upon, with such other valuables as were portable—and, having made a distribution among their followers, decamped that night from Las Palmas, taking good care in their Haegira to give the hacienda of Del Valle a wide berth.
With regard to Don Mariano and his daughters, they were only too happy that nothing worse than robbery had been attempted by the brigands. They had dreaded outrage as well as spoliation; and they were rejoiced at being left with their lives and honour uninjured.
Made aware, by this episode, of the danger of living any longer in a house isolated as Las Palmas—which might be at the mercy any moment of either royalists or insurgents—Don Mariano bethought him of retiring to Oajaca. He would be safer there—even though the town was thoroughly devoted to the cause of the king; for, as yet, his political opinions had not been declared sufficiently to compromise him. For some days, however, circumstances of one kind or another arose to hinder him from putting this project into execution.
The hacienda of San Carlos, inhabited by the man who was about to become his son-in-law—Don Fernando de Lacarra—was only a few leagues distant from that of Las Palmas; and Marianita did not like the idea of leaving the neighbourhood. Without stating the true one, she urged a thousand objections to this departure. Gertrudis was also against it. The souvenirs which Las Palmas called up were at once sweet and sad; and the influence which sorrow has over love is well-known—especially within the heart of woman.
In the hacienda Las Palmas sad memories were not wanting to Gertrudis. How often, at sunset, did she sit in the window of her chamber, with her eyes bent in dreamy melancholy over the distant plain—deserted as on that evening when Don Rafael hastened to arrive, risking life that he might see her but an hour sooner!
When Don Rafael, in the first burst of his grief and vengeance, indulged in that wild pleasure which is often felt in breaking the heart of another, while one’s own is equally crushed—when he galloped off along the road to Oajaca, after burying the gage d’amour in the tomb of his father—thus renouncing his love without telling of it—then, and for some time after, the young girl waited only with vivid impatience. The pique she had at first felt was soon effaced by anxiety for his safety; but this at length gave place to agony more painful than that of suspense—the agony of suspicion.