"The peons have gone," said Agueda, shyly.
"They were within their rights," answered Don Beltran. "All must go who are afraid. I have always told them that. For me, I have known many floods. They were always interesting, never dangerous. Had I my choice, I should have stayed."
"And I," said Agueda. She did not look at Don Beltran as she spoke. The lids were drooped over her grey eyes.
Agueda turned away and entered the comidor, leaving Don Beltran looking up the valley: not anxiously—merely as one surveys a spectacle of interest. Once in the comidor, Agueda busied herself opening cupboards and closets. She took therefrom certain articles of food which she placed within a basket. She did not move nervously, but quickly, as if to say, "It may come at any moment; we have not much time, perhaps." She recalled, as she lightly hurried about, the last time that the flood had overtaken them at the casa. Nada, her mother, had prepared the basket then. Nada, Adan's sister, who had kept Don Beltran's house, after she had been left alone on the hillside—Nada, sweet Nada, who had died six months ago of no malady that the little Spanish doctor could discover.
Don Beltran prized his Capitas, Adan, above all the serving-men whom he had ever employed, and nothing was too good for Adan's sister Nada—so young, so fair-looking, so patient, her mouth set ever in that heartrending smile, which is more bitter to look upon than a fierce compression of the lips, whose gentle tones wring the heart more cruelly than do the wild denunciations of the revengeful and vindictive. The little Spanish doctor, who, like the Chinese, had never forgotten anything, as he had never learned anything, had ordered a young calf slain and its heart brought to where Nada lay wasting away. Warm and almost beating, it had been opened and laid upon the spot where she felt the gnawing pain; but as there is no prophylactic against the breaking of a heart, so for that crushed and quivering organ there is no remedy. And Nada, tortured in every feeling, physical and mental, had suffered all that devotion and ignorance could suggest, and died.
Agueda knew little of her mother's history, and remembered only her invariable patience and gentleness. She remembered their leaving Los Alamos to come to the hacienda down by the river. She remembered that one day she had suddenly awakened to the fact that Don Jorge was at the casa no longer, that her mother smiled no more, that she paid slight attention to her little daughter's questionings, that Nada was always robed in black now, that there had been no funeral, no corpse, no grave! Don Jorge was not dead, that she knew, because the old Capitas, Rafael, was always ordering the peons about, saying, "The Señor wills it," or "The Señor will have it so." Then there had come a day when the bull-cart was brought to the door—the side door which opened from their apartment. In it were placed her little trunk, which Nada had brought her from Haldez, when she went to the midwinter fair, and her mother's American chair, which Don Jorge had brought once when he returned from the States; she remembered how kindly he had smiled at her pleasure. In fact, all that in any way seemed to be part and parcel of the two was placed in the cart, not unkindly, by Juan Filipe, and then the vehicle awaited Nada's pleasure. She remembered how Nada had taken her by the hand and led her through the rooms of the large, spreading, uneven casa. They had passed through halls and corridors, and had finally come to a pretty interior, which Agueda remembered well, but in which she had not been now for a long time. The walls were pink, and on the floor was a pink and white rug, faded it is true, but dainty still. Here Nada had looked about with streaming eyes. She had gone round behind the bed, and Agueda had looked up to see her standing, her lips pressed to the wall, and whispering through her kisses, "Good by, good by!" Then she had taken Agueda by the hand.
"Look at this room well, 'Gueda," she had said.
"Why, mother?"
But Nada did not speak. Her lips trembled. She could not form her words. She stood for a moment, her eyes devouring that room which she should never see again. Her tears had stopped; her eyes were burning.
She stooped down by her daughter.