“Capitan! I know you will pardon our dry hospitality? A cup of cold water—ha! ha! ha! Remember what I told you yesterday: we fear our friends more than our foes, and we have a guest in the house my father dreads more than you and your terrible filibusteros. I am not angry with you for my pet, but you have carried off my lazo as well. Ah, capitan! would you rob me of everything?—Adios!
“Isolina.”
Thrusting the paper back into my bosom, I sat for some time pondering upon its contents. Part was clear enough—the remaining part full of mystery.
“We fear our friends more than our foes.” I was behind the scenes sufficiently to comprehend what was intended by that cunningly worded phrase. It simply meant that Don Ramon de Vargas was Ayankieado—in other words, a friend to the American cause, or, as some loud demagogues would have pronounced him, a “traitor to his country.” It did not follow, however, that he was anything of the kind. He might have wished success to the American arms, and still remained a true friend to his country—not one of those blind bigots whose standard displays the brigand motto, “Our country right or wrong;” but an enlightened patriot, who desired more to see Mexico enjoy peace and happiness under foreign domination, than that it should continue in anarchy under the iron rule of native despots. What is there in the empty title of independence, without peace, without liberty? After all, patriotism in its ordinary sense is but a doubtful virtue—perhaps nearer to a crime! It will one day appear so; one day in the far future it will be supplanted by a virtue of higher order—the patriotism that knows no boundaries of nations, but whose country is the whole earth. That, however, would not be “patriotism!”
Was Don Ramon de Vargas a patriot in this sense—a man of progress, who cared not that the name of “Mexico” should be blotted from the map, so long as peace and prosperity should be given to his country under another name? Was Don Ramon one of these? It might be. There were many such in Mexico at that time, and these principally of the class to which Señor de Vargas belonged—the ricos, or proprietors. It is easy enough to explain why the Ayankieados were of the class of ricos.
Perhaps the affection of Don Ramon for the American cause had less lofty motives; perhaps the five thousand beeves may have had something to do with it? Whether or no, I could not tell; nor did I stay to consider. I only reflected upon the matter at all as offering an explanation to the ambiguous phrase now twice used by his fair daughter—“We fear our friends more than our foes.” On either supposition, the meaning was clear.
What followed was far from being equally perspicuous. A guest in the house dreaded by her father? Here was mystery indeed. Who could that guest be?—who but Ijurra?
But Ijurra was her cousin—she had said so. If a cousin, why should he be dreaded? Was there still another guest in the house? That might be: I had not been inside to see. The mansion was large enough to accommodate another—half a score of others. For all that, my thoughts constantly turned upon Ijurra, why I know not, but I could not resist the belief that he was the person pointed at—the guest that was “dreaded!”
The behaviour which I had noticed on the day before—the first and only time I had ever seen the man—his angry speech and looks addressed to Isolina—her apparent fear of him: these it was, no doubt, that guided my instincts; and I at length came to the conviction that he was the fiend dreaded by Don Ramon. And she too feared him! “God grant she do not also love him!”
Such was my mental ejaculation, as I passed on to consider the closing sentences of the hastily written note. In these I also encountered ambiguity of expression; whether I construed it aright, time would tell. Perhaps my wish was too much parent to my thoughts: but it was with an exulting heart I read the closing sentence and rode forth from the gateway.