When dreams come true

by Ritter Brown

She could not sleep. From where she lay she could see the moonlight in the patio and hear the murmur of the fountain in its center. The night seemed to beckon and whisper to her to come outside. So she arose and silently dressed herself in the dimly moonlit room without disturbing Blanch, who murmured incoherently in her sleep of the things she was thinking of. She slipped noiselessly through the low window to the patio without and stealthily made her way in the shadow of the overhanging arcades to the garden beyond.

The hour was late—close on to dawn. The silvery half-moon hung low in the west accompanied by great cohorts of stars that shone with a brilliancy she had never before seen, and which seemed to be waiting with the moon to usher in the new dawn. All was silence and mystery—all earthly ties seemed severed. Under the cover of the night all things seemed equal. There were no high, no low, no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no towns, no cities, no conventions. All things that hold and bind us had slipped away into the shadows and she seemed to breathe again the primeval freshness of life.

She knew that she must decide between Dick and her family. Her father had given her plainly to understand as much, and this she knew meant the loss of her fortune—the giving up of all for him. Her father threatened, raged and fumed with the petulance of a spoiled child, his paternal displeasure taking that uncompromising form of obstinacy with which the world has long been familiar. She was amazed at herself for being able to take his displeasure with so little concern; a thing which, had it occurred at home, would have caused her to pause and reflect and probably would have been the deciding factor in her life. Her removal from the old life and the glimpses of the new had unconsciously wrought a change within her. She began to see things as they really are when shorn of their glamour. The life she hitherto had known, she realized, was purely a superficial condition, not only foreign to the realities of things, but superfluous to man himself. Never had Captain Forest appeared so sane and her father so superficial as the hour in which she grasped that truth. It is not what the world makes of you, but what you make of yourself that counts, the beauteous, seductive night kept whispering to her. Why, then, if this be true, should the world about her appear so remote? It was not the actual world—the world as it really is that she would be called upon to give up, but merely the world of that particular set of men and women in which she hitherto had moved.

The same earth rolled beneath her feet—the same stars that looked down upon her in the past still glittered in the heavens overhead—the same winds that crept through the garden and sighed among the trees, wafting the spicy, fragrant odors of the flowers into her face, were the same that had fanned her cheek in the past. All things remained practically the same, only the people were different. But could the old interests and friendships and associations compensate her for the loss of the man that had come into her life to remain for the rest of her days whether she chose to keep him or not? These new and perplexing questions she was forced to ask herself for the first time, and she knew that there could be but one answer forthcoming.

Love was knocking at the portals of her heart as it had never knocked before. It had come to her warm and living, deep and subtle and indefinable, leaving nothing to be said or desired. She saw clearly that principle, as the world conceives it, was not involved. Affection recognizes no such principle—only virtuous longing and desire which is a principle in itself—the fulfillment of creation's grandest purpose; and it rested with her to accept this truth or pass it by.

The chill of the early morning caused her to draw her wrap more closely about her shoulders. A deep sigh of relief escaped her as she glanced upwards once more for a last look at the paling stars. How satisfactory it was to know even though the knowledge pained her!

She had entered the garden a girl, she returned to the house a woman, hugging her secret close to her heart.

XXV

Success had crowned Juan Ramon's efforts. The pretty little hacienda of which he had dreamed so long was no longer a vision of the future, but a reality. It was actually in his possession, purchased with a part of the money he had received from Don Felipe for his work. It now only remained for the pretty Rosita to consent to become the mistress of the place and he, Juan Ramon, would bid farewell to the old Posada and the gaming-tables forever. This Juan naïvely promised himself as his thoughts dwelt upon the bright picture of domestic felicity which his imagination conjured up before him.

The attractive presence of Rosita was undoubtedly the source of this inspiration which actually led him to believe in the possibility of the sudden and complete reformation of an inveterate gambler whose desire for play was like the toper's insatiable thirst for liquor. And then, there was Captain Forest's horse. Juan had an idea regarding that animal. When everybody's attention was occupied with the festivities during the night of the fandango, and he had succeeded in filling José with the proper amount of aguardiente, he would slip quietly away with the horse and conceal him at his hacienda. Caramba! what a horse—the like of which there was not in all Mexico! And Juan Ramon, the champion vaquero of Chihuahua, was the man to ride him! And he rolled and smoked innumerable cigarillos as he sauntered about the garden and corrals, or lounged in the patio, musing on these and many other things.