Produced by MFR, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed
Internet Archive)

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SAN ISIDRO

BY

Mrs. Schuyler Crowninshield

[Illustration: Logo]

HERBERT S. STONE & COMPANY
CHICAGO & NEW YORK
MDCCCC

COPYRIGHT 1899 BY
HERBERT S. STONE & CO.

TO
C. S. C.
A MEMORY OF "LA MADRUGADA"

SAN ISIDRO[1]

People wondered why Don Beltran remained in the casa down by the river.
He had been warned by his prudent neighbors, who lived anywhere from two
to six miles away, that some time a flood, greater than any that the
valley had yet known, would arise and sweep house and inmates away to
the sea.

Don Beltran laughed at this. He was happy as he was, and content. There
had always been floods, and they had sometimes caused the river to
overflow so as to wash across his potreros, but the cacao and bananas
were planted on gentle elevations where the water as yet had never
reached. Then, too, there was always the Hill Rancho, though neither so
large nor so comfortable as the casa. Why borrow trouble? At the first
sign of danger the cattle and horses had always betaken themselves to
the grove on the hill, there to browse and feed, until the shallow lake
which stretched across the plains below them had subsided. Once Don
Beltran, Adan, his faithful serving-man, and Adan's niece, Agueda, had
been belated. Adan had quickly untied the bridle of the little brown
horse from the tethering staple at the corner of the casa, and mounting
it, had swum away for safety.

"That is right," said Don Beltran; "he will swim Mexico"--Don Beltran
said Mayheco--"to the rising ground, and save the young rascal. As for
us, Agueda, the horse had stampeded before I noticed the cloud-burst. It
seems that you and I must stay."

Agueda made no answer, but she thought it no hardship to remain.

"There is no danger for us, child; we can go up to the thatch and wait."

"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.

"Agueda," she said, "repeat these words after me."

"Yes, mother."

"Say, 'All happiness be upon this house.'"

"No, no! mother, I will not. This casa has made you cry. I will not say
it."

"Agueda!" Nada's tone was almost stern. "Do as I tell you, child, repeat
my words--'All happiness come to this house.'"

But Agueda had pressed her lips tightly together and shaken her head.
She had closed the grey eyes so that the curled lashes swept her round
brown cheek. Nada had lifted the child in her arms and carried her
through the corridors and out to the side veranda. She had set her in
the cart and got in beside her.

"Where to, Señora?" Juan Filipe had asked gently.

"To San Isidro," Nada had answered from stiff lips.

"_Aaaaaiiieee!_" Juan Filipe had shouted, at the same time flourishing
the long lash of his whip round the animals' heads. They, knowing that
they must soon move, had tossed their noses stubbornly. Another warning,
the wheels had creaked, turned round, and they had passed down the hill.
Agueda never forgot that ride to San Isidro. Had it not been for her
mother's tears, she would have been more than happy. She had always
wished to ride in the new bull-cart; Juan Filipe had promised her many
a time. Now he was at last keeping his promise. This argued well. If she
could take one ride, how many more might she not have? All the time
during that little trip to San Isidro, Agueda was asking herself mental
questions. There was no use in speaking to her mother. She only looked
far away toward Los Alamos, and answered "Yes" and "No" at random.
Agueda remembered with what delight she had seen the patient bulls turn
the creaking cart into the camino which led to San Isidro.

"Oh," she said, clapping her hands, "we are going to Uncle Adan's!"

For was not this Uncle Adan's casa, and did not Don Beltran live with
Uncle Adan? She was not sure. But when she had been there with her
mother, she had seen that splendid tall Don Beltran about the house with
the dogs, or with his bulls in the field, or in his shooting coat with
his gun slung across his shoulder, or going with his fishing-tackle to
the river. Yes, she was sure that Don Beltran lived at Uncle Adan's
house.

Agueda's thoughts sped with the rapidity that reminiscence brings, and
as she placed some rounds of cassava bread in the basket she saw her
mother doing the same, as if it were but yesterday, and saying between
halting breaths:

"Never trust a gentleman--Agueda--marry some--plain, honest--man--a man
of--our people, Agueda--but do not--trust--"

"Who are our people, mother?" the girl had interrupted.

Aye, who were their people?

Nada had not answered. She had lain her thin arms round Agueda's
unformed shoulders, turned the girl's head backward with the other hand
laid upon her brow, and gazed steadily into the good grey eyes.

"My little Agueda," she had said--stopped short, and sighed. It was
hopeless. There was no escape from the burden of inheritance. Agueda had
not understood the cause of her mother's sigh and her halting words. She
had been ill to death--that she knew. Then came long years of patience,
as Agueda grew to girlhood. Could it be only six months ago that she had
lost her?

"My sweet Nada," she whispered, as she laid a napkin over the contents
of the basket, "I do not know what you meant, but I do not forget you,
Nada."

"Hasten, Agueda! There is no danger, but there is no need of getting a
wetting."

Agueda turned to see Don Beltran standing in the doorway of the comidor.
He was smiling. His face looked brown and healthful against the worn
blue of the old painted door. His white trousers were tucked within the
tops of his high boots, and he wore a belt of tanned leather, with the
usual accompaniment of a pistol-holder, which was empty, the belt
forming a strap for a machete, and holding safely that useful weapon of
domesticity or menace. His fine striped shirt hung in loose folds partly
over the belt; the collar, broad, and turned down from the brown throat,
being held carelessly in place by a flowing coloured tie. He had an old
Panama hat in his brown hand. His wavy hair swept back from his
forehead, crisp and changeable in its dark gold lights. His brown eyes
looked kindly at the girl, but more particularly at the basket which she
filled.

"Have you some glasses?" he asked, "and some--"

"Water, Señor? Yes, I have not forgotten that."

Don Beltran laughed merrily.

"I fancy that we shall have water enough, 'Gueda, child. Get my flask
and fill it with rum. The pink rum of the vega. Here, let me get the
demijohn. Run for the flask, child. Perhaps I should have listened to
the warning of old Emperatriz."

There were other warnings which Beltran had not taken into account. The
sultry day that had passed, the total absence of breeze, the low-flying
birds, the stridulous cry of the early home-flying parrots, the
dun-colored sky to the south and east, the whinneying and neighing of
the horses. The old grey, who knew the signs of the times, had torn his
bridle loose and raced across the pasture-land to the hill where stood
the rancho. He was the pioneer; the others had followed him, and the
little roan had galloped away last of all, with Adan to guide and
reassure him. The bulls, leaping and plunging with heads to earth and
hind hoofs raised in air, with shaking fringe of tail and bellowed
pleading, had asked, as plainly as could creatures to whom God gave a
soul, to be allowed to flee to the mountain. Adan, in passing, had
unclasped and thrown wide the gate, and they had raced with him for
certain life from the death which might be imminent. Emperatriz had
whined and had pounded her tail restlessly against the planks of the
floor. Then she had arisen, and stood with her great forepaws resting
upon Beltran's shoulder, gazing with anxiety that was almost human into
his face.

"Caramba Hombre!" Beltran had said, as he threw the great beast away
from him. Then he had laughed. "I am like the peons, who address even
the women so. It does mean a storm, Emperatriz, old girl, but I do not
care to go."

He had opened the outer door. The great hound had darted through,
leaped from the veranda to the ground, and fled toward the south,
barking as she ran at the encroaching enemy. She had circled round the
casa, nose in air, her whimpering cries ascending to the sky, which
shone, as yet, blue overhead. Then back she had torn to the steps, and
bounding up and in at the door, had crouched at her master's feet, her
nose upon the leather of his shoe, her flanks curved high. Then she had
leaped upon him again. She had taken his sleeve gently between her teeth
as if to compel him to safety, then crouched again, flapping her great
tail upon the floor, her eyes raised to his, her whine pleading like the
tones of a human voice. Beltran had shaken the dog away.

"I am not going, Emperatriz," he had said, impatiently. "Be off with
you!"

A few more circlings round the casa, a few more appealing cries, a
backward glance and a backward bark, and Emperatriz had started for the
rancho, and none too soon. The potrero had become a shallow lake,
through which she splashed before she had placed her forefeet upon the
rise.

"Hasten, Agueda! Come! Come!" called Beltran.

Agueda ran to the ladder, which was ever ready for just such surprises.
It was the expected which usually did not happen at San Isidro, but the
ladder was always there, fastened secure and firm, rivetted to the
floor and roof alike. It could move but with the house. Agueda stepped
lightly upon the rungs, one after the other. She raised the basket up to
Don Beltran's down-reaching grasp. He took it, placed it upon the gently
sloping roof, and held out a kindly hand to the girl, but Agueda did not
take it at once. She descended the ladder a round or two, and from a
nail in a near-by beam seized a coat which Don Beltran wore sometimes
when the nights were cool, and the trade winds blew up too freshly from
the sea. When she climbed again to the opening in the thatch, Don
Beltran was leaning against the old stone chimney, which raised its
moss-grown head between the casa and cocina. He had forgotten the girl.
His horizontal palm shaded his eyes from the ray of the level sun. There
was no sign of fear visible upon his face; he appeared rather like an
interested observer, which indeed he was, for he felt secure and safe,
for himself, his people, and his cattle.

"See the commotion among the forests up there, near Palmacristi, Agueda!
It may be only a slight storm and quickly over, but if we do have a
flood like the last one, I have no wish that Garcia and Manuel Medina
shall float in at my front door in their dugouts and carry off all
things movable. It is so easy to lay everything to the flood!"

"The men have been moving the furniture for an hour past, Señor. I
think there is little that can be carried away."

Don Beltran gave a sudden start.

"Where is the cross, Agueda? Did you remember that?"

"I have it here, Señor." Agueda laid her hand upon the bosom of her
gown. "And the Señor's little cart, that is locked within the inner
cupboard. It cannot go unless the casa goes also."

"And in that case I should want it no more in this world, Agueda. You
are thoughtful, child. The two souvenirs of my mother! Ah, see!" As he
spoke there was a stir among the treetops far over to the westward.
There, where yellow-brown clouds hung massed and solid as a wall over
the rift below, a strange agitation was visible.

"It is a dance, 'Gueda. Do you see them, those fairies? Watch that one
advancing there, to the southward. She approaches the lady from the
east. See them skip and whirl and pass as if in a quadrille. It is a
pretty sight. You will see that once in a lifetime--not oftener. They
call it the _trompa marina_ at sea."

Agueda raised her eyes and looked smiling towards the spot to which he
nodded. There white and twisting spirals danced and swayed against that
lurid background, and above the deep bay, which was hidden by the
hills. They advanced, they retreated, they dipped like sprites from palm
tuft to palm tuft. Sometimes they skipped gaily in couples, again one
was left to follow three or four that had their heads close together,
like schoolchildren telling secrets. It was all so human and
everyday-like, that Agueda laughed gaily and gazed fascinated at the
antics of these children of the storm. The long, ragged-edged split in
the angry clouds disclosed a blood-red glow behind, which sent its glare
down through the valley and across the woods, where it flecked the tree
trunks. From Beltran's vantage point the palm shafts stood black as
night against the glare. When he turned and looked behind him, unwilling
to lose a single bit of this latest painting from the brush of nature,
he found that she had dashed every tree trunk with one gorgeous splash
of ruddy gold.

Agueda lifted her basket and carried it to the chimenea unaided. Beltran
was so absorbed in the grand sight that he had forgotten to be kind.
There was usually no thought of gallantry in what he did for the girl,
but even the natural kindliness of his manner was in abeyance. Agueda
set the basket behind the great stone wall. She remembered what he had
said the last time they had sought shelter from the water. "It is
ridiculous, that great chimney," he had said: "but even the absurd
things of life have their uses." She remembered how she had crouched in
her mother's arms the whole long day, but beyond a few drops there had
been no cloud-burst, no flood that came higher than the top step of the
veranda. They had descended at night dry and unharmed.

"It may be like the last one," she ventured to say. But her sentence was
drowned. There came a rustling and swaying sound from afar, growing
louder as it approached. Beltran noted the ruthless path which it
indicated, and then, "there came a rushing, mighty wind from Heaven." It
fell upon the tall lilies as if they were grass, bent them to the earth,
and laid them prostrate. Some of them, denizens of the soil more
tenacious of their hold than others, clung to Mother Earth with the grip
of the inheritor of primogeniture. But the struggle was brief.

"I was certain that those I planted upside down would stand," said
Beltran to Agueda. "I allowed twelve-inch holes, too." But there comes a
time when precaution is proven of no avail. The massive stalks were torn
from their holdings like so much straw, and laid low with their weaker
brothers. As they began to fall in the near field, "It is upon us!"
shouted Beltran. He seized Agueda's wrist and drew her behind the
chimney. And there they cowered as the wind raved past them on either
side, carrying heavy missiles on its strong wings. At this Beltran's
face showed for the first time some uneasiness.

He was peering out from behind his stone bulwark.

"There goes Aranguez's casa," he said, regretfully. "I had no thought of
that. I wish I had sent you to the rancho, child."

They crouched low behind the chimney. He clung to one of the staples
mortared in the interstices of the stone-work, against just such a day
as this, and braced his foot beneath the eaves. Again he peered
cautiously out. A whistling, rustling sound had made him curious as to
its source.

The river, which had been flowing tranquilly but a few minutes before,
now threw upward white and pointed arms of foam, They reached to the
branches, which threshed through open space, and swayed over to meet
their supplication, then straightened a moment to bend again to north,
to east, to west. The floods had fallen fiercely upon the defenceless
bosom of the gentle Rio Frio, had beaten and lashed it and overcome it,
so that it mingled perforce with its conqueror, while raising appealing
arms for mercy. It grieved, it tossed, it wept, it wailed, but its
invader shrieked gleefully as he hurried his helpless prize down through
the savannas to that welcoming tyrant, the sea.

The water crept rapidly up toward the foundation of the casa. It washed
underneath the high flooring. It lapped against the pilotijos. It
carried underneath the house branches and twigs which it had brought
down in its mad rush toward the lowlands. As it rose higher and higher,
it wove the banana stalks and wisps of straw which it bore upon its
bosom in and out between the trunks and stems of trees. With the skill
of an old-time weaver, it interlaced them through the upright growth
which edged the bank. One saw the vegetable fabric there for years
after, unless the sun and rain had rotted it away, and another flood had
replaced within the warp a fresher woof.

Beltran arose and took a few cautious steps upon the roof, but the wind,
if warm, was fierce, and thrust him back with violence. He barely
escaped being dashed to the new-made lake below. He caught at the
chimenea, and edging slowly round, seated himself again by Agueda. She
had been calling to him, and had stretched out her hand. Her eyes showed
her fear, and also the relief which his presence gave her. When she felt
that he was safe beside her she made no further sign.

Beltran had laid his hand on Agueda's shoulder as he would have done
upon the chimney itself. By it he steadied himself in taking his seat.
She raised her eyes and shyly offered him his coat. He shook his head
with a smile. His lips moved, but she could hear no word for the noise
of the wind and water. Don Beltran put his hand to his mouth and placed
his lips to Agueda's ear.

"Do not be afraid," he shouted. "There is really no danger."

She shook her head and glanced up at him again, dropping almost at once
the childish eyes to the hands in her lap. She moved a little nearer to
their dividing line, and called in answer:

"I am not afraid."

He saw her lips move, and guessed at the words, though her look of
confidence would have answered him. Why had he never noticed those eyes
before? Was it because she had always kept them cast down? What slim
hands the girl had! What shapely shoulders! He looked at them as they
rested against the weather-beaten stones of the chimney.

Agueda turned her head backward and clutched quickly at the light
handkerchief which confined the waves of her short hair. She laughed and
looked upward at Don Beltran from under her sweeping lashes. Her soul
went forth to meet his gaze, unconscious as a little child that she had
a secret to tell; unconscious that the next moment she had told it. How
can one tell anything except by word of mouth?

Beltran drew sharply back, as far as the contracted space would allow.
He leaned over the edge of the roof, and saw that the water was now
sweeping through the casa, flowing more slowly as it spread over a
greater space. It glided in at the doors and out at the windows, which
he had left open purposely, not dreaming, it is true, that this flood
would be greater than others of its kind, but that in case it should be,
the resistance might be less. Glancing down stream, he saw a chair and
some tin pans bobbing and courtesying to each other as they drifted
across the potrero where the cattle usually browsed.

The sun declined, the dusk came creeping down, and with the approach of
night the wind subsided. Fortunately there was no rain. The clouds had
been carried in from the sea at right angles with the stream, and had
broken in the mountains and poured out their torrents there.

Still the rushing of the river drowned all other sounds. It grew quite
dark. Beltran leaned back against the chimenea. The slight creature at
his side rested, also, in silence. The darkness became intense. The
chimenea was needed no longer as a protection from the wind, but the
utter absence of all light made the slightest motion dangerous. A chill
mist crept up from the sea. The night began to grow cold, as do the
tropic nights of midwinter. Beltran shivered. Something was pushed
against his hand. He reached down and felt another hand, a hand slim
and cold. He took it within his own, but it was at once withdrawn, and a
rough and heavy article thrown across his knees. He felt some buttons, a
pocket which held papers, a collar. Ah! It must be his woollen coat,
which she had had the forethought to bring. Feeling for the sleeve, he
threw the coat round his shoulders, and with a resolve born in a moment,
reached out toward Agueda. His groping fingers fell upon her sweet
throat and the tendrils of her boyish hair, the great dark rings, which,
now that he could not see them, he suddenly remembered. Throwing his arm
around her, he drew the damp and shivering figure close. Then he grasped
the sleeve of his coat, and drew it towards him, forcing her head down
upon his breast. He sought the other hand, and later found the tremulous
lips. He held his willing prisoner close, and so they sat the whole
night through.

Many and strange thoughts rushed through Agueda's brain during those
blissful hours. Life began for her then, and she found it well worth
living. She awoke. Her child's heart sprang into full being, to lie
dormant never again. Nada's words came back to her. She did not wish to
recall them, but they forced themselves upon her: "Never trust a
gentleman, Agueda; he will only betray you."

"I should think much of your warning, Nada," thought Agueda, "if I saw
other gentlemen. I never do see them. If I do, he will protect me." The
danger had not arrived. It could never come now. She had found her
bulwark and her defence.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Pronounced E-see-dro.

II

"When the flood has subsided," Agueda had said to herself, "all will be
as before. But stay! Would anything ever be as before? Well, what
matter? Who would go back? Shall we not trust those whom we love? Life
is the better for it. This was life. Life was all happiness, all joy.
The future? There was to be no future but this. This life of hers and
his should be the same until death claimed the one or the other. God
grant that they might go together, rather than that one should be left
behind. Let them go in a greater flood, perhaps, than the one which they
had outspent upon the thatched roof in the shelter of the old chimenea."

Agueda knew not the meaning of those words of calculation--"the world."
She had never known the world, she had never seen the world. She found
herself living as many did about her. Only that they had heart-burnings,
jealousies, disappointments, and sorrows. She was secure, and she pitied
them that their lots had not been cast within so safe a fold as hers.
Her nature, if ignorant, was undefiled and undepraved; and noble, in
that she found no sacrifice too great for this splendid young god who
claimed her. What else was her mission in life but to make his life as
near Heaven as earthly existence could become? She stretched out her
young arms to the sky with a glow of happiness that asked nothing
further of God. There were the mountains, the fields, the forests, the
plantations, the river, and the rambling, thatched casa. These made for
her the world.

Sometimes she thought of and pitied Aneta at El Cuco. Poor Aneta, who
had thought that a life-long happiness was hers, when suddenly one day
Don Mateo had returned from the city with a bride.

"Poor Aneta!" Agueda used often to say, with a pitying smile through
which her own contentment broke in ripples of joy. How could she trust a
man like Don Mateo? As Agueda sat and thought, she mended with anxious
but unskilled fingers the pile of linen which old Juana had brought in
from the ironing room. Juana had clumped along the back veranda and set
the basket down with a heavy thump. There were table linen and bed
linen, there were the Señor's striped shirts of fine material from the
North, and his dainty underwear, and Agueda's neat waists and collars
keeping company with them in truly domestic manner. Agueda had never
done menial work; Uncle Adan's position as manager of the plantation
had secured something better for his niece.

If Uncle Adan knew the truth, he made no sign. The lax state of morals
in the country had always been the same. In reality he saw no harm in
it. Besides which, had he wished to, what change could he make--he, a
simple manager and farming man, against the owner of the hacienda, a
rich and powerful Señor from Adan's point of view.

Suddenly Agueda remembered that she had not seen Aneta for a long time.
She would go now, this very minute, and pay the visit so long overdue.
She arose at once. With characteristic carelessness she dropped the
sheet upon which she had been engaged on the floor, took from its peg
the old straw hat, and clapped it over her boyish curls. The hat was
yellow, it had a peaked crown, and twisted round the crown was a
handkerchief of pale blue. Agueda made no toilet; she hardly looked at
her smiling image in the glass. From the corner of the room she took a
time-worn umbrella, which had once been white, and started towards the
door. A backward glance showed her the confusion of the room. For
herself she did not care, but the Señor might come in perhaps before her
return. He had gone to the mail-station across the bay; the post-office
and the bank were both there. He was bringing home some bags of pesos
with which to pay his men. Possibly he would bring a letter or two from
the fruit agents, or the merchant to whom he sold the little coffee that
he raised; but the pesos were more of a certainty than the letters. If
he returned home before her, the sitting-room would have a disorderly
appearance, and he disliked disorder. His mother, the Doña Maria, had
been a very neat old lady.

There are some persons to whom order and neatness are inborn. With a
touch of a deft finger here or there, an apartment becomes at once a
place where the most critical may enter. To others it is a labor to make
a room appear well cared for. It may be immaculate in all that pertains
to dust or the thorough cleanliness of linen or woodwork, but the power
to so impress the beholder is lacking. Agueda was one of these. She
sighed as she gazed at the unkempt appearance of the room. There was not
much the matter, and yet she did not know how to remedy it. She
re-entered the room and picked up the sheet from the floor, together
with a pillow-slip whose starched glossiness had caused it to slide down
to keep the sheet company. Folding these, not any too precisely, she
laid them upon the chair where she had lately sat. Then she glanced
around the room again. Its careless air still offended her, but time was
flying, and she had a long walk before her. Suddenly she put her hand
to her ear and took from behind it the rose that had been there since
early morning. It was the first that she had struggled to raise, and it
had repaid her efforts, in that hot section of the country, by dwining
and dwindling like a puny child. Still, it was a rose. She laid it on
the badly folded sheet; it gave an air of habitation to the room. She
smiled down at this, her messenger. She gave the linen a final pat and
went out, closing the door softly. It was as if a young mother had left
her sleeping child to be awakened by its father, should he be the first
to return.

"It is something of me," thought Agueda. "It will be the first to greet
him."

Agueda stepped out on the broad veranda. The loose old boards creaked
even under her slight weight.

"Juana!" she called, "I'm going to see Aneta at El Cuco." She made no
other explanation. He would ask as soon as he returned, and they would
tell him.

"Youah neva fin youah roaad in dis yer fawg," squeaked Juana.

"The fog may lift," laughed Agueda.

The river, forgetful of its past turbulence, smiled and glanced and
beckoned as it slipped tranquilly onward, but Agueda did not answer the
summons. She turned abruptly to the right and crossed the well-known
potrero path. This led her for a quarter of a mile through the mellow
pasture-land, where horses were browsing. The grey was not there--sure
sign of his master's absence, but the little chestnut was in evidence,
and farther along, beyond the wire fence, were the great bulls, which
had not been driven afield with the suckers. There stood Cæsar, the big
brown bull with the great, irregular white spots. Agueda went close to
the fence, and picked a handful of sweet herbs, such as Cæsar loved.

"Cæsar," she called, "Cæsar, it is I that have the sweet things for
you."

Cæsar threw up his head quickly, tossing long strings of saliva into the
air. He stood for a moment with hesitant look, then perceiving that it
was Agueda, trotted, tail held stiff, to where she waited, her hand held
out to him. He extended his thick neck, holding his wet, pink nostrils
just over the barrier, wound his dripping tongue round the dainty, and
then withdrew his head that he might eat with ease.

"Too bad, poor Cæsar, that the horses get all the sweets, and you none."
With awkward arm held high, that she might not catch her sleeve upon the
topmost wire, she patted the animal's nose; then thrust one more bunch
of grass into the ready cavity, and turning, ran along toward the rise.

When Agueda had closed the rickety potrero gate, she started up the
elevation which confronted her. Here the young bananas were just showing
above the ground. She had deplored the fact that this pretty hill-forest
had been sacrificed to banana culture, and had hated to see the great
giants which she had known from childhood cut and slashed. At the fall
of each one of them she had felt as if she had lost a friend. "I shall
never sit under the gri-gri again," she had thought, "and eat my guavas
as I look down on the river"; or, "I shall never again play house
beneath the old mahogany that stood up there at the edge of the meadow."
The face of nature was changed for her in this particular. It was the
only thing that she had to make her unhappy. Who among us would think
the world a sadder place because of the felling of a tree! The stumps
stood even with Agueda's shoulder, for Natalio, that African giant, was
the axe-man of the hacienda. His ringing strokes struck hip high. It was
less work to cut through the trunk some distance above its spreading
roots. There was no clearing up nor carrying away of branches or limbs.
With all their massive foliage, the branches were hacked from the parent
stem, and left to dry in the tropic sun. They were then placed in great
piles about the mother tree, lighted, and left to burn. Sometimes these
fallen denizens of the wood, whose life had seen generations of puny
men fade and wither, and other generations spring up and die while they
stood splendid and vigourous, refused to be annihilated. The fallen
trunk remained for years, proof of the vandalism of man. More often, a
long line of ashes marked the spot where the giant had blazed, then
smouldered sullenly, to become wind-blown, intangible. This great
woodland crematory having been made ready by death for the life that was
to spring up through its vanquishment, the peons came with their
machetes and dug the graves in which the bulbs, teeming with quiescent
life, were to be planted, each sucker twelve feet from any one of its
neighbors, there to be warmed and nurtured in the bosom of Mother Earth.
Because exposed upon a windy hillside, the bulbs had been placed in
their graves head and sprouting end downward, and at the depth of ten
inches. This was a provision against hurricanes, which, with all their
power, find it difficult to uproot so securely planted a stalk.

And now the field which she had helped to "avita"--for one gives in when
the tide of circumstances flows too strong--the waste whose seed-graves
she had seen dug, whose bulbs she had seen buried from sight, had
suddenly become a field of life once more. Pale green spears were
springing up in every direction--a light, wonderful green with a tinge
of yellow. The spatulated leaves were handsomest, Agueda thought, when
spotted or marked with brown, or a rich chocolate shade. In their tender
infancy they were the loveliest things on earth, she thought, as she ran
about the damp, hot hillside, comparing one with another; and as she
again returned to the path, she nearly stumbled against the ebony giant,
who, standing just at the edge of the field, was watching her.

"It is wonderful, Natalio," she said, "how quickly they have sprouted."
She smiled upward.

"Si, Señorit'," said Natalio, smiling down. "It is the early rains that
bring the life. Perhaps the good God may be thanked a little, too, but
it is the good soil, and the rains most of all."

He stooped his great height, and took some of the earth in his fingers.
"It is the caliche so the Señor says." He rubbed the disintegrated
gravelly mass between his fingers. Some of it powdered away. The fine
bits of stone that it contained dropped in a faint patter upon his feet.

"I never heard the Señor say that," said Agueda, with the air of one who
would know what were the Señor's favourite convictions, "but of course
he knows, the Señor."

"Bieng," said Natalio. "It is certain that the Señor knows."

Agueda moved on up the hill. She felt, crunching beneath her feet, the
shells of the circular grub which had lost life and home in this
terrific holocaust.

"It seems hard," mused Agueda, "that some things must die that other
things may be created." She smiled as she said this. She need not die
that other things might live. It had no personal application for her. At
least it would not have for sixty or eighty years, and that was a whole
lifetime. She might not be glad to die even then! Agueda had reached the
summit of the hill. She turned to look back at Natalio. He was standing
gazing after her. When he saw her turn he expanded his handsome lips
into a smile, showing his white teeth. Then he uncovered his head, and
swept the ground with his ragged Panama hat. He called; Agueda could not
hear at first what he said.

"Que es eso?" she called back in answer.

Natalio approached a few feet with his great strides.

"I asked if the Señorit' would not ride the bull?"

"Pablo is away," said Agueda. "I cannot go alone. The Señor will not
have me to ride the bull alone."

"El Caballo Castaño, Señorit'," said Natalio, suggestively, approaching
nearer.

"Would you saddle him, Natalio?" asked Agueda, thinking this an
excellent change of programme.

"It would give me pleasure, Señorit'," said Natalio.

Agueda turned and began to walk rapidly down the hill.

"The small man's saddle, Natalio," she called. "I will be ready in a
moment." Agueda ran down the hill, keeping ahead of the giant, and sped
across the potrero. She flew to her room. There lay the rose as she had
left it upon the chair, but she had no time for sentiment. The horse
would be at the door in a moment, and indeed, before she had changed her
skirt for the cotton riding garment that she usually wore, and which our
ladies have imported of late under the name of a divided skirt, Natalio
was at the steps. Agueda buckled on her spur, and was out on the veranda
in the twinkling of an eye. Uncle Adan was coming up from the river. He
saw her stand upon the second step and throw her leg boy-fashion over
the saddle, seize the whip from Natalio, and canter away again toward
the hill. To his shout of "Where are you going?" she flung back the
words, "To Aneta's," and was off.

Her easy seat astride the animal gave her a sense of freedom and
independence. The top of the hill reached, she struck off toward Troja,
on the other side of which lived Aneta, at El Cuco. Agueda galloped
along the damp roads, and then clattered through the streets of the
quiet little West Indian town. Arrived upon its further outskirts, she
allowed the chestnut to walk, for he was warm and tired. She was passing
at the back of Escobeda's casa, through a narrow lane shaded with coffee
trees. The wall of the casa descended abruptly to this lane, the garden
being in front, facing the broad camino. Agueda heard her name softly
called. She halted and looked towards the casa. A shutter just at the
side of the balcony moved almost imperceptibly, then was pushed open a
trifle, and she saw a face, the face of Raquel, the niece of Escobeda.
Raquel had her finger upon her lips. Agueda guided her horse near, in as
cautious a manner as could be. When she was well under the opening,
Raquel spoke again.

"It is Agueda, is it not? Agueda from San Isidro?"

Raquel whispered her words. Agueda, seeing that there was need for
secrecy, also let her voice fall lower than was usual.

"Yes," she smiled, "I am certainly Agueda from San Isidro."

"Ah! you happy girl," said Raquel, in a cautious tone, "to be riding
about alone." Agueda's head was almost on a level with Raquel's.

"I am a prisoner, Agueda," said Raquel. "My uncle has shut me up here.
He means to take me away in a short time. It's a dreadful thing which is
to happen. Can you carry a note for me, Agueda?"

"I will carry a note for you," said Agueda. "Is it ready, Señorita?"

"I will write it in a moment. Agueda, good girl, you know the plantation
of the Silencios, do you not? Palmacristi?"

"I can find it," said Agueda. "It is down by the sea. It is not much out
of my way."

"If it were miles and miles out of your way, Agueda, dear, you must take
my letter."

"Give it to me, then," said Agueda.

There was a noise inside the room, at the door of the chamber.

"Ride on to the clump of coffee bushes where the roads meet," whispered
Raquel. "The fog will help hide you, too. I will drop the note."

As she tried to guide the chestnut softly over the turf, Agueda heard a
loud call from within. It was a man's coarse voice. She heard Raquel
answer drowsily, "In a moment, uncle; I was just asleep. Wait until I--"

Agueda halted for some minutes behind the concealment of the coffee
bushes. She grudged this delay, for she had still some distance to
travel, and must make a detour because of Raquel's request. "But," she
argued, "had I walked, I should have been much longer on the way." She
watched the window at the back of Escobeda's house, then, presently,
from the front, saw a man mount and ride away in the opposite direction.
Then, as she still awaited the fluttering of the note, the shutter was
flung wide, and an arm encased in a yellow sleeve beckoned desperately.
Agueda struck her spur into the chestnut, and was soon under the window
again.

"He has gone," said Raquel, "and I am locked in the house alone. All the
servants have gone to the fair."

"You can climb down," said Agueda. "It is not high."

"Where should I go then, Agueda?" asked Raquel. "No, he would only bring
me back. Now I will write my note, and I will ask you to take it to Don
Gil." As Raquel said this name her voice trembled. She coloured all over
her face.

"You are lovely that way," said Agueda. "What does he do to you,
Señorita?--the Señor Escobeda. Does he starve you? Does he ill treat--I
could tell the Señor Don Beltran--"

"You do not blush when you speak of him," said Raquel, who had heard
some rumours.

"I have no cause to blush," said Agueda, with dignity. "But come,
Señorita, the note!"

Raquel withdrew into the room. She scribbled a few words on a piece of
blue paper, folded it, and encased it in a long thin envelope. This she
sealed with a little pink wafer, on which were two turtle doves with
their bills quite close together. She leaned out and handed the missive
down to Agueda.

"Thank you, dear," she said. "I should like to kiss you."

"I should like much to have you," said Agueda. "Perhaps I can stand up."
Agueda spurred her horse closer under the window. She raised herself as
high as she could. The chestnut started.

"He will throw you," said Raquel. "I will lean out."

Raquel stretched her young form as far out of the window as possible.
She could just reach Agueda's forehead. She kissed her gently.

"I thank you, Señorita," said Agueda. She felt the kiss upon her
forehead all the way to the plantation; it seemed like a benediction.
She did not reason out the cause of her feeling, but it was true that no
one of Raquel's class had ever kissed her before.

Agueda rode along her way with quick gait. The plantation of Palmacristi
was some miles farther on, and she wished still to see Aneta. On her
way toward Palmacristi, and as she mounted the slope leading to the
casa, she met no one. Arrived at that splendid estate by the sea, she
spurred her horse over the hill and round to the counting-house. This
was the place, she had heard, where the Señor was usually to be found.
She had seen the Señor at a distance. She thought that she would know
him.

At that same hour the Señor Don Gil Silencio-y-Estrada sat within his
counting-house. The counting-house was constructed of the boards of the
palm, the inner side plain, the outer side curved, as the tree had
curved. The bark had not been removed. The roof of the building was also
made of palm boards; it was thickly thatched with yagua.

Since the days of the old Don Gil the finca had enlarged and improved.
The counting-house stood within its small enclosure, its back against
the side of the casa, and though it communicated with the interior of
the imposing mahogany mansion, it remained the same palm-board
counting-house--that is, to the outside world--that the estate of
Palmacristi had ever known.

Two tall palms stood like sentinels upon either side of the low step
before the doorway. The palm trees were dead. They had been topped by no
green plume of leaves since before the death of the old Don Gil. Now,
as then, the carpenter birds made their homes in the decaying shaft. The
round beak-made holes, from root to treetop, disclosed numberless heads,
if so much as a tap were given the resounding stem of the palm.

No one wondered why Don Gil still used the ancient structure as a
counting-house. No one ever wondered at anything at Palmacristi;
everything was accepted with quiescence. "The good God wills it," a
shrug of the shoulders accompanying the remark, made alike, if a tornado
unroofed a house or a peon died of the wounds received at the last
garito.[2]

The changes which had taken place at Palmacristi had nothing to say to
the condition of the counting-house, or it to them, except that it
acceded, somewhat slowly in some cases, to the payment of bills. Since
his father's day Don Gil had added much to the estate. Upon the right he
had bought more than twenty caballerias from Don Luis Salas--land which
marched with his own to the seashore. This included a tall headland,
with a sand spit at its base, which pushed itself a half mile out into
the sea. This sand spit curved in a hook to the left, and formed a
pleasant and safe harbour for boating.

To the north of his inheritance Don Gil had taken in the old estates of
La Flor and Provedencia, and at the back of the casa, which already
stood high up on the slope, he had extended his possessions over the
crest of the hill. Had the original owner of Palmacristi returned on a
visit to earth, he would have found his old plantation the center of a
magnificent estate, with, however, the same shiftless, careless ways of
master and servant that had obtained in his time. This would probably
grow worse as his descendants succeeded each other in ownership.

The casa was built upon a level, where the hill ceased to be a hill just
long enough to allow of a broad foundation for Don Gil's improvements.
At the edge of the veranda the hill sloped gently again for the distance
of a hundred yards, and then dropped in a short but steep declivity to
the sand beach.

The old habitation had been built entirely of palm boards, but in its
place, at the bidding of Don Gil, had arisen a new and more modern
erection, whose only material was mahogany. Pilotijos, escaleras,
ligazones, verandas, techos, all were hewn and formed of the fine red
mahogany. The boards were unpolished, it is true, but dark and rich in
tone. They made a cool interior, where, coming from the white glare
outside, body and eye alike were at once at rest. The covering of the
techos was the glazed tile of Italy. Perhaps one should speak of the
roofs as _tejados_, as they were covered with tiles. This tiling proved
a beacon by day, as it glittered in the blazing light of the sun of the
tropics.

Agueda guided her horse up the path between the two dead palm trees, and
rapped with the stock of her whip upon the counting-house door, which
stood partly open.

"Entra," was the reply. She rapped again.

"It is I who cannot enter, Señor," she called in her clear, young voice.
"I have not the time to dismount."

An inner door was opened and closed. A fine-looking young fellow stepped
across the intervening space and appeared upon the threshold of the
outer door. He raised his brows; he did not know Agueda. Don Beltran
made various pretexts for her absence when he had visitors.

Agueda held out the note. It was crumpled and dusty from being held in
her hand.

"I am sorry," she said; "the day is hot, and my Castaño is not quiet."

Don Gil gazed with interest at the boyish-looking figure riding astride
the little chestnut. "What a handsome lad she would make!" he thought.
"And you are from--"

"It makes no difference for me. I bring a message."

Silencio took the note which she reached out to him.

"You will dismount and let me send for some fruit, some coffee?"

"I thank you, Señor, I must hasten; I am going to El Cuco."

"That is not so far," said Don Gil, smiling.

"No, but I then have to ride a long way back to--"

"To--?"

"To San Isidro."

"The Señorita takes roundabout ways. Is she then carrying messages all
about the country?"

"Oh, no, Señor," said Agueda, smiling frankly. "When I go back to San
Isidro I go to my home. I live there."

"Ah!" What was there imperceptible in Don Gil's tone? "You live there?
Is the Señorita perhaps the niece of the manager, Señor Adan?"

"Si, Señor," answered Agueda, flushing hotly, she knew not why.

She wheeled Castaño and paced down between the palm trees.

"And you will not take pity on my loneliness?"

Don Gil was still smiling, but there was something new, something of
familiarity, it seemed to Agueda, in his tone.

"I cannot stop, Señor. A Dios!" she said, gravely.

As Agueda rode out of the enclosure the day seemed changed. Why was it?
She had been so happy before she had delivered the note! Now she felt
sad, depressed. The sun was still shining, though there were occasional
showers of rain, and the birds were still singing. Nothing in nature had
changed. Ah, stay! There was a cloud over there, hanging low down above
the sea. It was coming to the westward, she thought. She hoped that it
would come, and quickly. She hoped that it would burst in rain upon her,
and make her ride for it, and struggle with it. Anything to drive away
that unhappy impression.

Had Silencio been asked what he had said or done to cause this young
girl to change suddenly from a thoughtless, happy creature to one who
felt that she had reason for uneasiness, he could not have told. He had
heard vague rumours of the girl, Adan's niece, who lived over at San
Isidro. But that he had allowed any such impression to escape him in
intonation or gesture he was quite unaware. At all events, he was
entirely oblivious of Agueda the moment that she had ridden away, for he
opened the little blue note that she had brought, and was lost in its
contents.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Cock-fight.

When Agueda left the Casa de Caboa she turned down the trocha towards
the sea. Although the sea was not far from San Isidro as the crow flies,
the dwellers at the hacienda rarely went there. In the first place,
there was the river to cross, and then the wood beyond the river was
filled with a thick, short growth of prickly pear. This sort of
underbrush was unpleasant to pull through. Don Beltran had tried to buy
it from Escobeda up at Troja, but Escobeda seemed to have been born to
annoy the human race in general, and Don Beltran and Silencio in
particular. He would not sell, and he would not cultivate, so that the
sea meadow, as they called it at San Isidro, was an eyesore and a cause
of heart-burning to Don Beltran.

Agueda chirruped to her horse, and was soon skirting the plantation of
Palmacristi. The chestnut was a pacer, and Agueda liked his single foot,
and kept him down to it at all hazards.

She felt as if she were in Nada's American chair, the motion was so easy
and pleasant. The beach was rather a new experience to the chestnut,
but after a little moment of hesitancy he started on with a nod of the
head.

"Ah!" said Agueda, with a laugh, "it is you, Castaño, who know that I
never lead you wrong."

She shook the bridle, and the horse put forth his best powers. They took
the wet sand just where the water had retreated but a little while
before. It was as hard and firm as the country road, but moist and cool.

"How I should like to plunge into that sea," said Agueda to Castaño.
Castaño again nodded an acquiescent head. A salt-water bath was a
novelty to these comrades.

After a few moments of pacing, Agueda came to the sand spit which ran
out from the plantation into the sea. Here was the boat-house which Don
Gil had built, and Agueda noticed that it was placed upon a high point,
with ways leading down on either side into the water. She looked
wistfully at the boat-house. "How I should love to sail upon that sea,"
thought Agueda. "No water, however high, could frighten me." Then she
recalled with a flash the flood which had brought her happiness. She
smiled faintly, for with the thought the unpleasant feeling which Don
Gil's words had called up returned, she knew not why. Agueda was pacing
towards the south. Upon her right stood up tall and high the asta of
Palmacristi, the staff from which hung the lantern that, she had heard,
sent forth its white ray each night to warn the seafarers on that lonely
coast.

"What harm for a ship to run on the sand," thought Agueda. "I have heard
that rocks are cruel. But the sand is soft. It need hurt no one."

She struck spurs to Castaño, and covered several miles before she again
drew rein. And now the bank grew high, and Agueda awoke to the fact that
she was alone upon the beach, screened from the eyes of every one. Again
the thought came to her of a bath in the sea, and she was about to rein
the chestnut in when she heard a shout from the plateau above her head.
She stopped, and tipping back her straw hat, she looked upward. All that
she could discover was a mass of flowers in motion. "They are the
air-plants, certainly," said Agueda to herself, "but I never saw them to
grow like that." She looked to right and to left, but there was no human
being in sight along the yellow bank outlined by sand and overhanging
weeds.

"Who calls me?" she cried aloud, holding her hair from her ears, where
the wind persisted in blowing it.

"Caramba, muchacho! Can you not see who it is? It is I, Gremo."

There was a violent agitation of the mass of blooms, and Agueda now
perceived that a head was shaking out its words from the centre of this
woodland extravaganza.

"I can hardly see you, Gremo," said Agueda. "What do you want with me,
Gremo?"

"And must I make brains for every muchacho[3] between here and the Port
of Entry? Do you not know there are the quicksands just beyond?"

"Quicksands, Gremo! Yes, I had heard of quicksands, but I did not think
them here. Can I get up the bank, Gremo?"

"No," answered Gremo, from his flower screen. "You must ride back a long
way." He wheeled suddenly toward the south--at least, the mass of
flowers wheeled, and a hand was stretched forth from the centre. A
finger pointed along the sand. Agueda turned in the saddle and shaded
her eyes again.

"What is it, Gremo?" she asked. "I see nothing."

"Then you do not see that small thing over which the vultures hover?"

"I see the vultures, certainly," said Agueda. "Some bit of fish,
perhaps."

"No bit of fish or fowl, but foul flesh, if you will, hombre. It is the
hand of a Señor, muchacho."

"The hand of a Señor? And what is the hand of a Señor doing, lying
along there on the shore?"

"It lies there because it cannot get loose. Caramba, muchacho! Do I not
know?"

"Cannot get loose from what?" asked Agueda, still puzzled.

"From the Señor himself, muchachito. He lies below there, and his good
horse with him. Do you not see a hoof just over beyond where the big
bird lights?"

Agueda turned pale. She had never been near such death before. Nada had
passed peacefully away with the sacred wafer upon her lips, and in her
ears the good padre's words of forgiveness for all her sins, of which
Agueda was sure she had committed none. Hers was a sweet, calm, sad
death. One thought of it with relief and hope, but this was tragedy.
There, along the beach, beneath the smiling sand, whose grains glistened
in a million, million sparkles, lay the bodies of horse and rider,
overtaken by this placid sea.

"I suppose he was a stranger," said Agueda. "There was no one to warn
him." Suddenly she felt faint. A strong whiff of air reached her from
the direction of the birds. She turned the chestnut rapidly, and struck
the spur to his side.

"Wait, Gremo, wait!" she cried, "I am coming! Do not leave me here
alone." The chestnut paced as never horse paced before, and after a few
minutes Agueda found a little cleft in the bank where a stream trickled
down. Into this opening she guided Castaño, and with spur and whip aided
him in his scramble up the bank. She galloped southward again, and
neared the place where Gremo stood. She was guided by the mass of bloom.
As she advanced she saw the blossoms shaking, but as yet perceived
nothing human. Tales of the forest suddenly came back to her. Could it
be that this was a woodland spirit, who had lured her here to this high
headland, to throw her over the cliff again to keep company with the
dead man yonder and the birds of prey? She had half turned her horse,
when Gremo, seeing her plan, thrust himself further from his gorgeous
environment.

"Ah! It is the little Agueda! Do not be afraid, Agueda, little Señorita.
It is I, Gremo."

Agueda's cheek had not as yet regained its colour.

"It is Gremo, muchachito."

"What terrible thing is that down there, Gremo? And to see you looking
like this frightened me!"

It was a curious sight which met Agueda's eyes. Gremo, the little yellow
keeper of Los Santos light, was standing not far from his signal pole.
He held a staff in each hand. The staves were crooked and uneven. They
were covered with bark, and scraggy bits of moss hung from them here
and there. The strange thing about them was that each blossomed like
the prophet's rod. At the top of the right-hand staff there shot out a
splendid orange-coloured flower, with velvety oval-shaped leaves. Near
the top of the left-hand staff was a pale pink blossom, large also, not
wilted, as plucked flowers are apt to be, but firm and fresh. But these
were not all the prophet's rods which Gremo carried. Across his back was
slung an old canvas stool, opened to its fullest extent, and laid
lengthwise across this were many more ragged staves, and on each and all
of them a flower of some shade or colour bloomed. Then there were
branches held under his arms, whose protruding ends blossomed in
Agueda's very face, and quite enclosed the yellow countenance of Gremo.
The glossy green of the leaves surrounding each bloom so concealed Gremo
that he was lost in his vari-coloured burden of loveliness.

"So it is really you, Gremo! Do they smell sweet, those air-plants?"

Gremo shifted from one leg to the other. One of Gremo's legs was shorter
than the other. He generally settled down on the short one to argue.
When he was indignant he raised himself upon his long leg and hurled
defiance from the elevation.

The mass of bloom seemed to exhale a delicate aroma. So evanescent was
it that Gremo often said to himself, "Have they any scent after all?"
And then, in a moment, a breeze blew from left to right, across the open
calix of each delicate flower, and Gremo said, "How sweet they are!"

"I sometimes think they are the sweetest things on God's earth," said
Gremo. "That is, when the Señorita is not by," he added, remembering
that his grandfather had brought some veneer from old Spain; "and then
again I ask myself, is there any perfume at all?"

"Oh, now I smell it, Gremo!" said Agueda, sniffing up her straight
little nose. "Now I smell it! It is delicious!"

"It is better than the perfume down below there," said Gremo, with a
grimace. Agueda turned pale again.

"And what do you do with them, Gremo?" asked she.

"I take them to the Port of Entry, Señorita. I get good payment there.
Sometimes a half-dollar, Mex. They stick them in the earth. They last a
long, long time."

"Were you going there when you called me from--from--down there?"

"Si, Señorita. I was walking along the bank. I had just come from my
casa"--Gremo gestured backward with a dignified wave of the hand--"when
I heard El Castaño's hoofs on the hard sand there below." He turned and
looked along the beach to where the noisome birds hovered. "I was too
late to warn the Señor. Had I been here, I should even have laid down my
plants and have run to the edge of the cliff"--Gremo jerked his head
towards the humped-up pit of sand--"and called, 'Olá! Porque hace Usted
eso? It is Gremo who has the kind heart, muchacho.'"

"I am not a boy, Gremo," said Agueda, glancing down at her riding
costume.

"It is the same to me, Señorita," said Gremo, who in common with his
fellows had but one gender of speech.

Agueda was looking at the hand which thrust itself out from the sand of
the shore. It seemed as if the fingers beckoned. She shuddered.

"They should put up a sign," she said, quickly. "I shall tell the Señor
Don Beltran. He will put up a notice--a warning."

"Caramba, hombre! And why must you interfere? No people in this part
will go that way. They all know the danger as well as the birds. I live
here in this part. Why not leave it to me?"

"But will you, Gremo?"

"What? Put up the sign? I most certainly shall, Señorita. Some day when
I have not the air-plants to gather, or the lanterna to clean, or when I
am not down with the calentura, or there is no fair at Haldez, or no
cock-fight at Saltona. The Señorita does not know how long I have
thought of this--I, Gremo! Why, as long ago as when the Señor Don Gil
bought the sand spit I had the board prepared. That is now going on four
years, if I count aright. I told the Señor Don Gil that I would get a
board, and I have."

"He thinks it there now, I am sure," said Agueda.

"Well, well! He may, he may, our Don Gil! I am not disputing it,
Señorita. I am only waiting for the padre to come and put the letters on
it."

"Have you told him, Gremo?" said Agueda, bending forward anxiously.

"Caramba, Señorita!" said Gremo, raising up on his long leg, "where do
you suppose I am to find the time to tell the padre? If I should take a
half-day from my work when I am at San Isidro, and walk over to the
bodega, the padre might be away at the cock-fight at Saltona, or the
christening at Haldez. The Don Beltran is a gentle hombre, but he would
not pay me for half a day when I did not earn it. If I could know when
the padre was at home, I would go, most certainly."

"You must have seen him many times in the last three years," said
Agueda.

"I will not deny that I have seen the padre," answered Gremo, rising
angrily on the tips of his knotted brown toes. "But would you have me
disturb a man like our padre when he was watching the shoemaker's black
cock from Troja, to see if his spurs were as long as the spurs of the
cock of Corndeau?--that vagamundo!"

Agueda reined Castaño round, so that his head pointed in the general
direction of the bodega, as well as homeward.

"I can tell the padre, Gremo," she said, and then added with
determination, "It must not be left another day."

Gremo settled down upon his short leg.

"Now, Señorita," he said argumentatively, "do not interfere. It is I
that have this matter well within my grasp. There is no one coming this
way to-day--along the beach, I mean."

"How do you know, Gremo?" questioned Agueda.

Gremo shrugged his shoulders.

"It is not likely, muchacho. Our own people never come that way, and
there are so few strangers--not three in as many years. We cannot now
help the Señor who lies there, can we, Señorita?"

"No," said Agueda, sadly; "but we can prevent--"

"Leave it to me, Señorita. I promise that I will attend to it to-morrow.
I--"

"And why not to-day?"

"Because, you see, muchacho, I must take the air-plants to the Port of
Entry. I am on my way there now. I but stopped to warn the Señorita, and
I pay well for my kindness. Now I shall not be able to return to-night.
As the Señorita has detained me all this long while, will she be so good
as to stop at my casa and tell Marianna Romando to come over and light
the lantern on the signal-staff at an early hour? This, you know, is
_my_ lighthouse, little 'Gueda. This is Los Santos."

"Have I come as far as Los Santos head?" asked the girl.

Agueda looked upwards at the place where the red lantern hung against
the staff.

"How can a woman climb up there?" she said.

"She will bring the ladder, the Marianna Romando," said Gremo, moving a
step onwards.

"I do not think I know Marianna Romando. Is she your wife, Gremo?"

"Well, so, so," answered Gremo. "But she will do very well to light the
lantern all the same."

Agueda sat her horse, lost in thought. When she raised her eyes nothing
was to be seen of Gremo. An ambulating mass of bloom, some distance
along on the top of the sea bank, told her that he was well on his way
toward the Port of Entry. This was the best way, Gremo considered, to
put an end to discussion.

Agueda did not know just where the casa of the light-keeper lay. Seeing
that a well-worn path entered the bushes just there, she turned her
horse's head and pushed into the tall undergrowth. After a few moments
she came out upon a well-defined footway. Her path led her through acres
of mompoja trees, whose great spreading spatules shaded her from the
scorching sun. She had descended a little below the hill, and once out
of the fresh trade breeze, began to feel the heat. She took off her hat
as she rode, and fanned herself. Five or six minutes of Castaño's
walking brought her to a hut; this hut was placed at a point where three
paths met. It stood in a sort of hollow, where the moisture from the
late rains had settled upon the clay soil. The hut was thatched with
yagua. It was so small that, Agueda argued, there could be but one room.
There was a stone before the doorway sunk deep in the mud. Before the
opening, where the door should be, hung a curtain of bull's hide. A long
ladder stood against the house. Its topmost rung was at least an entire
story in height above the roof, and Agueda wondered why it was needed
there. The only signs of life about the place were three or four
withered hens, which ran screaming, with wobbling bodies and thin necks
stretched forward, at the approach of the stranger. Their screams
brought a yellow woman to the door. If Gremo looked like a withered
apple, this was his feminine counterpart. Her one garment appeared to be
quite out of place. It seemed as if there could be nothing improper in
such a creature going about as she was created. The slits in the faded
cotton gown were more suggestive than utter nakedness would have been.
This person nodded at the chickens where they were disappearing in the
bush.

"They are as good as any watch-dog," said she. "There is no use of
thieves coming here."

Agueda rode close.

"I am not a thief," said Agueda. "Can you tell me where is the casa of
Gremo, the light-keeper?"

"And where but here in this very spot?" said the piece of parchment,
smiling a toothless smile and showing a fine array of gums. "But had you
said the casa of Marianna Romando, you would have come nearer the
truth."

Agueda had not expected the casa of which Gremo spoke with such pride to
look like this, or to belong to some one else.

"Well, then, I have come with a message from your hus--from Gremo."

"The Señorita will get off her horse and come in? What will the Señorita
have? Some bread, an egg--a little _ching-ching_?"

The woman smiled pleasantly all the time that she was speaking. Agueda
had difficulty in understanding her, for the entire absence of teeth
caused her lips to cling together, so that she articulated with
difficulty. Still she smiled. Agueda shook her head at the hospitable
words.

"I have no time, gracias, Señora. You will see that I have been wet with
the showers," she said; "and I have been delayed twice already. Gremo
asked me to tell you that he would come to the Port of Entry too late to
return and light the lantern. He asks that you will do it for him."

For answer the woman hurriedly pulled aside the bull's-hide curtain and
entered the hut. She reappeared in a moment with an old straw hat on her
head. She was lifting up her skirt as she came, and tying round her
waist a petticoat of some faded grey stuff. Her face had changed. She
smiled no longer.

"It is that fat wife of the inn-keeper at the sign of the 'Navío
Mercante.'[4] She it is who takes my Gremo from me." She entered the hut
again, and this time reappeared with a coarse pair of native shoes. She
seated herself in the doorway, her feet on the damp stone, and busily
began to put on the shoes, her tongue keeping her fingers in
countenance.

"As if I did not know why my Gremo goes to the Port of Entry! He will
sit in the doorway all the day! She will give him of the pink rum! He
will spend all the pesos he has made! His plants will wither! Oh, yes,
it is that fat Posadera who has got hold of my Gremo."

Agueda turned her horse's head.

"How do I go on from here?" she asked.

"Where is the Señorita going?"

"To San Isidro, but first to El--"

"_Aaaaiiiieee!_" said the woman, standing in the now laced shoes, arms
akimbo. "So this is Don Beltran's little lady?"

Agueda flushed.

"I live with my uncle, the Señor Adan, at San Isidro." She pushed into
the undergrowth.

"The Señora is going wrong," said the woman. "Señorita," said Agueda,
sharply, correcting the word. "Which way, then?"

Getting no answer, she turned again. She now saw that the woman had gone
to the side of the house and was taking the long ladder from its
position against the wall. She bent her back and settled it upon her
shoulders. Agueda looked on in astonishment while this frail creature
fitted her back to so awkward a burden. Marianna Romando looked up
sidewise from under the rungs.

"I go to light the señale now," she said. "It may burn all day, for me.
What cares Marianna Romando? Government must pay. Then, when it is
lighted I shall hide the ladder among the mompoja trees. He did not dare
to tell me that he would remain away. He knows that I do not like that
fat wife of the inn-keeper. I shall lead him home by the ear at about
four o'clock of the morning. There are ghosts in the mompoja patch, but
they will not appear to two."

All through this discourse Marianna Romando had not raised her voice.
She smiled as if she considered the weaknesses of Gremo amiable ones.
She started after him as a mother would go in search of a straying
child; like a guardian who would protect a weak brother from himself.

"I have only this to say to you, Señorita," she called after Agueda,
turning so that the ladder swished through the low bushes, cutting off
some of the tops of the tall weeds, both before and behind her. "Keep
the Señor well in hand. When they go away like that, no one knows whom
they may be going after."

Agueda closed her ears. She did not wish to hear that which her senses
had perforce caught. She pushed along the path that Marianna Romando had
indicated, and in twenty minutes saw the white palings of Don Mateo's
little plantation, El Cuco.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Lad.

[4] Merchant ship.

IV

When Raquel had given Agueda the note and the kiss, and had seen her
ride rapidly away, she closed the shutter. She made the room as dark as
possible. She could not bear to have the sun shine on a girl who had
written to a man to come to her succour. It could mean nothing less than
marriage, and it was as if she had offered it. But what else remained
for her but to appeal to Don Gil? If the few words that he had spoken
meant anything, they meant love. If the beating of her heart, when she
caught ever so distant a glimpse of him, meant anything, it meant love.
She had received a note from him only a week back. She would read it
again. Her uncle had searched her room only yesterday for letters, and
she was thankful that she had had the forethought to conceal Silencio's
missive where he would not discover it. He had ordered old Ana to search
the girl's dresses, and Ana, with moist eyes and tender words, had
carried out Escobeda's instructions. She had found nothing, and so had
told the Señor Escobeda.

"And when does the child get a chance to receive notes from the
Señores?" asked Ana, indignant that her charge should be suspected. It
was the reflection upon herself, also, that galled her. "I guarded her
mother; I can guard her, Señor," said the old woman, with dignity.

"Do you not know that the young of our nation are fire and tow?" snarled
Escobeda. "I shall put it out of her power to deceive me longer."

With that he had flung out of the casa and ridden away. It was then that
Raquel had beckoned to Agueda, where she loitered under the shelter of
the coffee bushes. After Agueda had gone, Raquel seated herself upon a
little stool which had been hers from childhood. She raised one foot to
her knee, took the heel in her hand, and drew off the slipper. Some
small pegs had pressed through and had made little indentations in the
tender foot. But between the pegs and the stocking was a thick piece of
paper, whose folds protected the skin. She had just removed it when the
door opened, and Ana entered. Raquel started and seemed confused for a
moment.

"You frightened me, Ana," said Raquel. "I thought that you had gone to
the fair. So I told--"

"You told? And whom did you have to tell, Señorita?"

"I told my uncle. He was here but now. Oh! dear Ana, I am so tired of
this hot house. I long for the woods. When do you think that he will
let me go to the forest again?"

Ana drew the girl toward her. Her lips trembled.

"I am as sorry as you can be, muchachita; but what can I do? What is
that paper that you hold in your hand, Raquel?"

Raquel blushed crimson. Fortunately Ana's eyes were fixed upon the
paper.

"I had it folded in my shoe," said Raquel. She threw the paper in the
scrap basket as she spoke. "See, Ana." She held up the slipper. "Look at
those pegs! They have pushed through, and my heel is really lame. I can
hardly walk." Raquel limped round the room to show Ana what suffering
was hers, keeping her back always to the scrap-basket. "If he would
allow me to go to the town and buy some shoes!" said Raquel--Ana's
espionage having created the deceit whose prophylactic she would be.

"You had better put on your slipper," said the prudent Ana. "You will
wear out your stockings else."

"But how can I put on my slipper with those pegs in the heel?" asked
Raquel.

"You had the paper."

"It was punched full of holes."

"Let me see it," said Ana.

"I threw it away," said Raquel. "Get me another piece of paper, for the
love of God, dear Ana. My uncle does not allow me even a journal. I am
indeed in prison."

Ana arose.

"I will take the scrap-basket with me," she said.

"Not until you have brought the paper, Ana. I shall tear up some other
pieces."

When Ana had closed the door Raquel pounced upon the waste-basket. She
took the folded paper from the top of the few scraps lying there. This
she opened, pulling it apart with difficulty, for the pegs had punched
the layers together, as if they had been sewn with a needle. She spread
the paper upon her knee, but first ran to the door and called, "Ana,
bring a piece of the cotton wool, also, I beg of you."

"That will keep her longer," said Raquel, smiling. She spoke aloud as
lonely creatures often do. "She must hunt for that, I know." She heard
Ana pulling out bureau drawers, and sat down again to read her letter.

     "Dearest Señorita," it ran. "I hear that you are unhappy. What can
     I do? I hear that you are going away. Do not go, for the love of
     God, without letting me know.

     Your faithful servant, G."

"I have let you know, Gil," she said. "I am not going away, but I am
unhappy. I am a prisoner. I wonder if you will save me?" Ana's heavy
tread was heard along the corridor. Raquel hastily thrust the note
within the bosom of her dress. When the cotton had been adjusted and the
slipper replaced, Ana took up the scrap-basket.

"Dear Ana, stay a little while. I am so lonely. Don't you think he would
let me sit on the veranda?"

"He would let you go anywhere if you would promise not to speak to the
Señor Silencio," said Ana.

"I will never promise that, Ana," said Raquel, with a compression of the
lips.

She laid her head down on Ana's shoulder.

"I am so lonely," she said. The tears welled over from the childish
eyes. The lips quivered. "I wonder how it feels, Ana, to have a mother."
Ana's eyes were moist, too, but she repressed any show of feeling. Had
not the Señor Escobeda ordered her to do so, and was not his will her
daily rule?

Suddenly Raquel started--her hearing made sensitive by fear.

"I hear him coming, Ana," she said.

"You could not hear him, sweet; he has gone over to see the Señor
Anecito Rojas."

"That dreadful man!" Raquel shuddered. "Why does he wish to see the
Señor Anecito Rojas?"

"I do not know, Señorita." Ana shook her head pitifully. It seemed as
if she might tell something if she would.

Suddenly she strained her arms round the girl.

"Raquel! Raquel!" she said, "promise me that you will sometimes think of
me. That you will love me if we are separated. That if you can, if you
have the power, you will send for me--"

"Ana! Ana!" Raquel had risen to her feet and was crying. Her face was
white, her lips bloodless. "Tell me what you mean. How can I send for
you? Where am I going that I can send for you? Am I going away, Ana?
Ana, what do you know? Tell me, Ana, dear--dear Ana, tell me!"

But Ana had no time or reason to answer. There was a sound of horse's
hoofs before the door, a man's heavy foot alighting upon the veranda,
the throwing wide of the outer door, and Escobeda's voice within the
passage.

"Ana!" it shouted, "Ana!"

Ana arose trembling. "I am here, Señor," she said.

"Where is that girl, Raquel?"

"The Señorita is also here, Señor," answered Ana.

The door was flung open.

"Pack her duds," said Escobeda. "She leaves this by evening."

"_I--leave--here?_" Raquel had arisen, and was standing supporting
herself by Ana's shoulder.

"I suppose you understand your mother tongue. It is as I said; you leave
here this evening."

"Oh, uncle! Where--where am I to go?"

"That you will find out later. Pack her duds, Ana."

Ana trembled in every limb. She arose to obey. Raquel threw herself on
the bare floor at Escobeda's feet.

"Oh, uncle!" she said. "What have I done to be sent away? Will you not
tell me where I am going?"

The girl cried in terror. She wept as a little child weeps, without
restraint. "I am so young, uncle. I have no home but this. Do not send
me away!"

Escobeda looked down at the childish figure on the ground before him,
but not a ray of pity entered his soul, for between Raquel's face and
his he saw that of Silencio, whose father had been his father's enemy as
well as his own. He felt sure that soon or late Silencio would have the
girl. He spoke his thoughts aloud.

"I suppose he would even marry you to spite me," he said.

"Who, uncle? Of whom do you speak?"

"You know well enough; but I shall spoil his game. Get her ready, Ana;
we start this afternoon."

"There is a knocking at the outer door," said Ana. "I will go--"

"You will pack her duds," said Escobeda, who was not quite sure of Ana.
"I will answer the summons myself."

As he was passing through the doorway, Raquel said, despairingly:

"Uncle, wait a moment. You went to the Señor Anecito Rojas. How did you
get back so soon--"

"And who told you that I was going to him? Yes, I did start for the
house of Rojas, but I met him on the way, so I was saved the trouble."

"Are you going to send me to him, uncle?" asked Raquel. The girl's face
had again become white, her eyes were staring. There was some unknown
horror in store. What could it be?

"Send you to him? Oh, no! Why should I send you to him? I have a better
market for you than that of Rojas. He is only coming to aid me with
those trusty men of his, in case your friend Silencio should attempt to
take you from me. He had better not attempt it. A stray shot will
dispose of him very quickly."

"Am I to remain on the island, uncle?"

"Yes and no," answered Escobeda. "We take the boat to-night for the
government town. When we arrive, it will be as the governor says--he
must see you first."

Raquel understood nothing of his allusions. Ana cried silently as she
took Raquel's clothes from the drawers and folded them.

"I cannot see what the governor has to do with me?" said Raquel.

"You will know soon enough," said Escobeda. His laugh was cruel and
sneering.

Raquel turned from Escobeda with an increased feeling of that revulsion
which she had never been able entirely to control. She had felt as if it
were wrong not to care for her uncle, but even had he been uniformly
kind, his appearance was decidedly not in his favour. She glanced at his
low, squat figure, bowed legs, and thick hands. She had time to wonder
why he always wore earrings--something which now struck her as more
grotesque than formerly. Then she thrust her hand within the bosom of
her gown, raised it quickly, and slipped something within her mouth.

Escobeda caught the motion of Raquel's arm as he raised his eyes. She
backed toward the wall. He advanced toward her threateningly. He seized
her small shoulder with one hand, and with a quick, rough motion he
thrust the thick forefinger of the other between her lips, and ran it
round inside her mouth, as a mother does in seeking a button or some
foreign substance by which a child might be endangered. Raquel
endeavoured to swallow the paper. At first she held her teeth close
together, but the strength of Escobeda's finger was equal to the whole
force of her little body, and after a moment's struggle Silencio's note
was brought to light. He tried to open it.

"It is pulp! Nothing but pulp!" he said, shaking the empty hand at her.
Raquel stood outraged and pale. What was the matter with this man? He
had suddenly shown himself in a new light.

"How dare you treat me so?" she gasped.

"You have hurt her, Señor," said Ana, reproachfully. "Does it pain you,
sweet?" Ana had run to the girl, and was wiping her lips with a soft
handkerchief. A tiny speck of blood showed how less than tender had been
this rough man's touch.

"If it pains me? Yes, all over my whole body. How dare he! Anita, how
dare he!"

Escobeda laughed. He seated his thick form in the wicker chair, which
was Raquel's own. It trembled with his weight. He laid the paper
carefully upon his knee, and tried to smooth it.

"I thought you said she received no notes from gentlemen," he roared.
Ana stood red-eyed and pale.

"She never does, Señor," she answered, stifling her sobs.

"And what is that?" asked Escobeda, in a grating voice. He slapped the
paper with the back of his hand into the very face of Ana. "Do you think
that I cannot read my enemy's hand--aye, and his meaning? Even were it
written in invisible ink. '_Gil!_' Do you see it? '_Gil!_'" He slapped
the paper again, still thrusting it under Ana's nose.

"There may be more than one Gil in the world, Señor," sniffed the
shaking Ana.

"Do not try to prevaricate, Ana. You know there is not more than one Gil
in the world," said Raquel, scornfully.

Ana, in danger from the second horn of her dilemma, stood convicted of
both, and gasped.

"There is only one Gil in the world for me. That is Don Gil
Silencio-y-Estrada. That is his note which you hold, uncle. It is a love
letter. I have answered it this very day."

Raquel, now that the flood of her speech had started to flow, said all
that she could imagine or devise. She said that which had no foundation
in fact. She made statements which, had Silencio heard them, would have
lifted him to the seventh heaven of bliss.

"He wants me to go away with him. He knows that I am imprisoned. He
implores me to come to him. Be sure," said Raquel, her eyes flashing,
"that the opportunity is all that I need."

Ana stood aghast. She had never seen Escobeda defied before. All the
countryside feared to anger him. What would become of the two helpless
women who had been so unfortunate?

Escobeda was livid. His eyes rolled with rage; they seemed to turn red.
He arose from the chair, leaving it creaking in every straw. He clenched
his fist, and shook it at the woman and girl alternately. His ear-rings
danced and trembled. He seemed to be seized with a stuttering fit. The
words would not pass the barrier of his brown teeth. He jerked and
stammered.

"We--we--shall see. We shall s--s--see. This--this--eve--evening."

Raquel, her short spurt of courage fled, now stood with drooped head.
Escobeda's anger seemed to have left him as suddenly as it had appeared.
He threw Silencio's note on the floor.

"Ah! bah!" he said, contemptuously. "It sounds very fine. It is like
hare soup: first catch your hare. Silencio shall not catch you, my
little hare. His horses are not fleet enough, nor his arm long enough."

"All the same, I think that he will catch me," said Raquel, again
defiant, with a fresh burst of courage.

Escobeda turned on his heel.

"Go to the door, Ana," he said, "and see who keeps up that thumping."

When Ana had shuffled along the passage, Raquel turned to Escobeda. "It
may be a messenger from the Señor Silencio," she said. "I sent him a
letter some hours ago."

"And by whom, pray?"

"That I will not tell you. I do not betray those who are kind to me. You
told me early this morning that I was to be taken away. You will see now
that I, too, have a friend."

Ana's steps interrupted this conversation.

"Well?" asked Escobeda. "The messenger is--will you speak?"

"It is the man Rotiro from Palmacristi," said Ana, in a low voice.

Raquel gave a quick little draw of her breath inward. The sound made a
joyous note in that cruel atmosphere.

"It will do you no good," said Escobeda. "Go and tell him that I will
see him presently. I will lock you up, my pretty Señorita, that you send
no more notes to that truhan.[5] You have now but a few hours to make
ready. Put in all your finery; though, after all, your new master can
give you what he will, if you please him."

FOOTNOTE:

[5] Mountebank.

V

It was an unthrifty-looking place, El Cuco--very small, as its name
implied. How Don Mateo had asked any woman to marry him with no more to
give her than the small plantation of El Cuco, one could not imagine.
The place was little more than a conuco, and Don Mateo, through careless
ways and losses at gambling, selling a little strip of field here and
some forest land there, was gradually reducing the property to the size
of a native holding.

The lady who had inveigled Don Mateo into marrying her sat upon the
veranda, fat and hearty. Her eyes were beginning to open to the fact
that Don Mateo had not been quite candid with her. He had said, "My
house is not very fine, Señorita, but I have land; and if you will come
there as my wife, we will begin to build a new casa as soon as the crops
are in and paid for." The crops had never come in, as far as the Señora
had discovered; and how could crops be paid for before they were
gathered? There had grown up within the household a very fine crop of
complaints, but these Don Mateo smoothed over with his ready excuses
and kindliness of manner.

Agueda leaned down to the small footpath gate to unfasten the latch. She
found that the gate was standing a little way open and sunk in the mud,
but that there was no room to pass through.

"Go round to the other side," called a voice from the veranda.

A half-dozen little children, of all shades, came trooping down the
path. Then, as she turned to ride round the dilapidated palings, they
scampered across the yard, a space covered by some sort of wild growth.
They met her in a troop at the large gate, which was also sunk in the
ground through the sagging of its hinges. Fortunately, it had stood so
widely open now for some years that entrance was quite feasible.

Agueda struck spur to Castaño's side, and he trotted round to the
veranda. They stopped at the front steps, and throwing her foot over the
saddle, Agueda prepared to dismount.

"What do you want here?" asked a fat voice from the end of the veranda.

"I should like to see Aneta, Señora," said Agueda. "May one of the peons
take my horse?"

"You can go round to the back, where Aneta is, then," answered the
Señora, without rising. "She is washing her dishes, and it is not you
who shall disturb her."

Agueda looked up with astonishment. The last time that she had come to
El Cuco, Aneta had sat on the veranda in the very place where the
stranger was sitting now. That chair, Don Mateo had brought over from
Saltona once as a present for Aneta. It was an American chair, and Aneta
used to sit and rock in it by the hour and sing some happy song. Agueda
remembered how Aneta had twisted some red and yellow ribbons through the
wicker work. Those ribbons were replaced now by blue and pink ones.

Without a word Agueda rode round the house. Arrived at the tumble-down
veranda which jutted out from the servants' quarters, she heard sounds
which, taken in conjunction with the Señora's words, suggested Aneta's
presence. When Aneta heard the sound of horse's hoofs she came to the
open shutter. Agueda saw that her eyes were red and swollen. A faint
smile of welcome overspread Aneta's features, which was succeeded at
once by a shamefaced look that Agueda should see her in this menial
position.

"Dear Agueda!" said she; "how glad I am to see you! But this is no place
for you."

"I wish that you could come down to the river," said Agueda. "I have so
much to ask you. Who is the Señora on the veranda, Aneta?"

"Do you not know then that he is married?" asked Aneta, the tears
beginning to flow again.

"Married!" exclaimed Agueda, aghast. "To the Señora on the veranda?"

Aneta nodded her head, while the salt tears dropped down on the towel
with which she was slowly wiping a large platter. Agueda was guilty of a
slight bit of deceit in this. She had heard that Don Mateo was married,
but it had never occurred to her that things would be so sadly changed
for Aneta. Somehow she had expected to find her as she had always found
her, seated on the veranda in the wicker chair, the red and yellow
ribbons fluttering in the breeze, and in her lap the embroidery with
which she had ever struggled.

"Can you come down by the river?" asked Agueda.

"I suppose that I must finish these dishes," said Aneta, through her
tears. "Oh, Agueda, you have had nothing to eat, I am sure. You have
come so far. Let me get you something."

"Yes, I have come far, Aneta. I should like a little something." It did
not occur to Agueda to decline because of the Señora's rudeness. She had
never heard of any one's being refused food at any hut, rancho, or casa
in the island. The stranger was always welcome to what the host
possessed, poor though it might be.

"I will not dismount," said Agueda. "Perhaps you can hand me a cup of
coffee through the window." Agueda rode close to the opening. Aneta laid
her dish down on the table, and went to the stove, from which she took
the pot of the still hot coffee. She poured out a cupful, and handed it
to Agueda.

"Some sugar, please," said Agueda, holding the cup back again. Aneta
dipped a spoon in the sugar bowl which was standing on the table in its
pan of water. It was a large pan, for "there are even some ants who can
swim very well," so Aneta declared. Agueda took the cup gratefully, and
drained it as only a girl can who has ridden many miles with no midday
meal.

"I hoped that I should be asked to breakfast, Aneta," said Agueda,
wistfully. She remembered the time when she had sat at the table with
Aneta, and partaken of a pleasant meal.

"I can hand you some cassava bread through the window, Agueda," said
Aneta, with no further explanation.

She took from the cupboard a large round of the cassava and handed it to
Agueda. Agueda broke it eagerly and ate hungrily.

"That is good, Aneta. Some more coffee, please."

Aneta took up the pot to pour out a second cup.

"And who told you that you might give my food away?"

The voice was the fat voice of the Señora. She had exerted herself
sufficiently to come to the kitchen door.

"Pardon, Señora!" said Agueda. Her face expressed the astonishment that
she felt. She unconsciously continued to eat the round of cassava bread.

"You are still eating?"

Agueda looked at the woman in astonishment.

"Does the Señora mean that I shall not eat the bread?" asked she.

"We do not keep a house of refreshment," said the Señora.

Agueda handed the remainder of the cassava bread to Aneta.

"I see you do not, Señora. Come, Aneta, come down to the river."

Aneta looked hesitatingly at the Señora.

"You need not mind the Señora, Aneta. She does not own you."

At this Aneta looked frightened, and the Señora as angry as her double
chin would allow.

"If the girl leaves, she need not return," said the Señora.

"My work is nearly done," said Aneta, with a fresh flood of tears.

"Crying, Aneta! I am ashamed of you. Come, I will help you finish your
dishes."

Agueda rode around to the veranda pilotijo and dismounted. She tied
Castaño there, as is the custom, taking care that she chose the pilotijo
furthest removed from the main post, where several machetes were buried
with a deep blade stroke.

The Señora was too heavy and lazy to object to Agueda's generosity. She
seated herself in the doorway and watched the process of dish-washing.
When the girls had finished, the worn towels wrung dry and hung on the
line, Aneta took from the veranda nail her old straw hat.

"On further thought, you cannot go," said the Señora. "I need some work
done in my room."

Agueda put her arm round Aneta.

"I bought her off," she said. "Come, Aneta, I have so little time."

At these words the Señora had the spirit to rise and flap the cushion of
a shuffling sole on the floor in imitation of a stamp of the foot.

"You cannot go," she said.

For answer the two girls strolled down toward the river, Castaño's
bridle over Agueda's arm, Aneta trembling at her new-found courage.

Aneta was a very pretty, pale girl, with bronze-coloured hair, although
her complexion was thick and muddy, showing the faint strain of blood
which made her, and would always hold her, inferior to the pure Spanish
or American type. Her eyes were of a greenish cast, and though small,
were sweet and modest. She was perhaps twenty-three at this time. It is
sad to have lived one's life at the age of twenty-three.

"I have so many years before me, Agueda," said Aneta.

"Why do you stay here?" asked Agueda.

"Where have I to go?" asked Aneta.

"That is true," assented Agueda.

"My father will not have me back. He says that I should have been smart
and married Don Mateo; but I never thought of being smart, 'Gueda; I
never thought of anything but how I loved him."

A pang of pity pierced the heart of Agueda, all the stronger because she
herself was so secure.

The two girls walked down toward the shining river. Castaño followed
along behind, nibbling and browsing until a jerk of the bridle caused
him to raise his head and continue his march.

The river was glancing along below the bank. Low and shallow, it had
settled here and there into great pools, or spread out thinly over the
banks of gravel which rose between.

"Can we bathe, Aneta?" asked Agueda.

"I suppose so," said Aneta, mournfully.

"Smile, Aneta, do smile. It makes me wretched to see you so sad."

Aneta shook her head.

"What have I left, Agueda?"

Agueda hung Castaño's bridle on a limb, and seeking a sheltered spot,
the two girls undressed and plunged into the water, a pool near the
shore providing a basin. One may bathe there with perfect seclusion. The
ford is far below, and no one has reason to come to this lonely spot.
The water was cool and delicious to Agueda's tired frame.

"Agueda," said Aneta, as they were drying themselves in the sun, "will
Castaño carry double?"

"Why, Aneta, I suppose he will. I never tried him."

"I promised El Rey to come to see him one day soon. That was weeks ago.
You know that Roseta has gone. The little creature is alone. If I should
go there by myself the Señora would say bad things about me. She would
say that I had gone for some wrong purpose. God knows I have no wrong
purpose in my heart."

"Yes, I will go with you," said Agueda. "But, we must hasten. I have
been away so long already. What time should you think it is, Aneta?"

Aneta turned to the west and looked up to the sky with that critical
eye which rural dwellers who possess no timepiece acquire.

"Perhaps three o'clock, Agueda, perhaps four. Not so very late."

"So that I am home by six it will do," said Agueda.

She reproached herself that she should think of the happiness that
awaited her at home while Aneta was so sad.

When they were again dressed, Agueda mounted Castaño, and riding close
to an old mahogany stump, gave her hand to Aneta, aiding her to spring
up to the horse's flank. Castaño was not over-pleased at this addition
to his burden, but he made no serious demonstration, and started off
toward the ford. The ford crossed, Agueda guided Castaño along the bank
of the stream.

"Is this the Brandon place?" asked Agueda.

"No," said Aneta. "It is part of the Silencio estate."

Again Agueda felt the flush arise which had made her uncomfortable in
the morning.

"I have never been this way," said Agueda, who was following Aneta's
directions. "I was there this morning, but I rode down the gran'
camino."

"You went there?"

"Yes; to carry a note."

"To the Señor?"

"Am I going right, Aneta?"

"Yes," said the easily diverted Aneta. "Follow the little path. They
live on the river bank below the hill." In a few moments a thatched roof
began to show through the trees.

"There it is," said Aneta; "there is Andres' rancho."

When they arrived at the rancho they found that the door was closed.
Agueda rapped with her whip. "They are all away, I think," said she.

"Oh! then, they are not all away," piped a little voice from the inside.
"Take the key from the window, and I will let you open my door."

Agueda laughed. Aneta slid off the horse, and Agueda rode to the high
window, from whose ledge she took a key.

"My Roseta, is that you?" called the child's voice.

Aneta looked up at Agueda and shook her head with a pitying motion. The
child's sorrow had effaced her own for the time.

"No, El Rey," she called; "it is Aneta, and I bring Agueda, from San
Isidro."

"You are welcome, Señoritas," piped the little voice again.

By this time Aneta had inserted the key in the lock and opened the door.
A small, thin child was sitting on the edge of a low bed. He arose to
greet them with a show of politeness which struggled against weariness.

"Andres and Roseta are away," he said. "Andres said that he would bring
her if he could find her."

Agueda had heard of El Rey, but she had never seen the child before.

"I should think he would surely bring her," said she in a comforting
tone. She was seeing much misery to-day. She felt reproached for being
so happy herself, but she looked forward to her home-coming as
recompense for it all.

"Would you like to come to San Isidro some time, El Rey?" she asked.

"Does Roseta ever come there?" asked the child.

"She has never been yet, but she may come some day," answered Agueda,
with that merciful deceit which keeps hope ever springing in the breast.

Aneta stooped down towards the floor.

"Have you anything to play with, El Rey?" she asked.

"El Rey has buttons. El Rey has a book that the Señor at Palmacristi
gave him, but he is tired of those. When will Roseta come?"

Agueda turned away.

"I cannot bear it," she said.

El Rey looked at her curiously.

"Would you like to ride the pretty little horse, El Rey?"

The child walked slowly to the door and peered wistfully out.

"El Rey would like to ride; but Roseta might come."

"We will not go far," said Agueda. "Come, let me lift you up." El Rey
suffered himself to be lifted to the horse's back, but his eyes were
ever searching the dim vista of the woodland for the form that did not
appear.

"I cannot enjoy it, Señora," said he, politely. "El Rey would enjoy the
Señora's kindness if Roseta could see him ride."

"I must go, Aneta," said Agueda, her eyes moist.

She lifted the child down from Castaño's back. He at once entered the
casa. He turned in the doorway, his thin little figure occupying small
space against the dark background.

"Adios, Señoritas," said the child. "Oh! will the Señoritas please put
the key on the window ledge?"

"We cannot lock you in, El Rey," said Agueda.

"Do you mean that we are to lock you in, El Rey?" asked Aneta at the
same time.

"Will the Señoritas please not talk," said the child. "I cannot hear. I
sit and listen all day. If the Señoritas talk I cannot hear if any one
comes."

"But must we lock the door?" asked Agueda.

"Is that what Andres wishes?" asked Aneta.

"If you please, Señorita; put the key on the window ledge."

"I shall not lock him in," said Aneta. "I cannot do it. I will stay a
while, El Rey," she said.

Aneta sat down in the doorway, her head upon her hand. She belongs not
to the detail of this story. She is only one of that majority of
suffering ignorant beings with whom the world is filled, who make the
dark background against which happier souls shine out. Agueda rode back
to the ford. She galloped Castaño now. At the entrance of the forest she
turned and threw a kiss to Aneta. The girl was still in the doorway, but
El Rey was not to be seen. Agueda fancied him sitting on the low bed,
his ear strained to catch the fall of a faraway footstep.

VI

The shadows were growing long when Agueda cantered down the path that
ran alongside of the banana walk. She crossed the potrero at a slow
pace, for Castaño was tired and warm. As she slowly rounded the corner
of the veranda, a figure caught her eye. It was Don Beltran, cool and
immaculate in his white linen suit. He was smoking, and seemed to be
enjoying the sunset hour.

"Ah! are you here at last, child! I was just about to send your uncle to
look for you. Have you had dinner?"

"Not a mouthful," laughed Agueda, at the remembrance of the Señora at El
Cuco. It was cruel to laugh while Aneta wept, but it was so hard not to
be happy.

"Tell Juana to bring you some dinner. There was a san coche, very good,
and a pilauf of chicken. Did you see Don Mateo?"

"No, Señor," said Agueda, looking down.

"Why will you persist in calling me Señor, Agueda? I am Beltran. Say it
at once--Beltran!"

"Beltran," said Agueda, with a happy smile. Poor Aneta! Poor everybody
in the world who did not have a Beltran to love her!

As Agueda told Beltran the history of her long day, he listened with
interest. When she spoke of Aneta's changed life, "The brute!" said
Beltran, "the damned brute!"

While Agueda was changing her dress for the dark blue skirt and white
waist, Beltran sat and thought upon the veranda. When she came out
again, he spoke.

"Agueda," said he, "it is time that you and I were married."

Agueda blushed.

"I see no cause for haste," said Agueda.

"It is right," said Beltran, "and why should we wait? What is there to
wait for? I want you for my wife. I have never seen any one who could
take me from you, and there is no such person in all the world. All the
same, you must be my wife."

"I think the padre is away," said Agueda, looking down.

"He will be back before long, and then, if the river is still low, we
will go to Haldez some fine morning and be married. Your uncle can give
you away. He will be very glad, doubtless!" Don Beltran laughed as he
spoke. He was not unconscious of Uncle Adan's plans, but as they
happened to fall in with his own, he took them good-naturedly.

"Do you know, Agueda," he said presently, looking steadily at her, "that
you are better born than I?"

"What does the Señor mean?" laughed Agueda.

"The Señor?"

"Well, then, Señor--Beltran. What do you mean by that?"

"I mean what I say, Agueda. Your grandfather, Don Estevan, is a count in
his own country--in old Spain. That is where you get your pretty slim
figure, child, your height, and your arched instep. You are descended
from a long line of noble ladies, Agueda. I have seen many a Spanish
gran' Señora darker than you, my Agueda. When shall our wedding-day be,
child?"

Agueda shook her head and looked down at the little garment which she
was stitching. She had no wish to bind him. That was not the way to
treat a noble nature like his. Agueda had no calculation in her
composition. Beltran could never love her better were they fifty times
married. She was happy as the day. What could make her more so?

"Did the Señor enjoy his sail across the bay?" asked Agueda.

"It was well enough, child. I got the draft cashed, and, strange to
say, I found a letter at the post-office at Saltona."

"From the coffee merchant, I suppose, Señor?"

"No, not from the coffee merchant, Señora," Beltran laughed, teasingly.
"Guess from whom, Agueda; but how should you be able to guess? It is
from my uncle, Agueda. My mother's brother. You know that he married in
the States."

"I have heard the Señor say that the Señor his uncle married in the
es-States," said Agueda, threading her fine needle with care, and making
a tiny knot. Beltran drew his chair close. He twitched the small garment
from her hands. She uttered a slight exclamation. The needle had pricked
her finger. Beltran bent towards her with remorseful words, took the
slender finger between his own, and put it to his lips. His other hand
lay upon her shoulder. She smiled up at him with a glance of inquiry
mixed with shyness. Agueda had never got over her shy little manner. The
pressure of his fingers upon her shoulder thrilled her. She felt as ever
that dear sense of intimacy which usage had not dulled.

Beltran again consulted the letter which he held.

"Uncle Nóe will arrive in a week's time," he said. "He is a very
particular gentleman, is my Uncle Nóe. Quite young to be my uncle. Look
at my two grey hairs, Agueda."

She released her hand from his, and tried to twist her short hair into
a knot. It looked much more womanly so. She must try to make it grow if
a new grand Señor was coming to San Isidro. Don Beltran was still
consulting the letter.

"He brings his child--his little daughter. Now, Agueda, how can we amuse
the little thing?"

Agueda, with work dropped, finger still pressed between her small white
teeth, answered, wonderingly:

"A little child? Let me think, Señor."

"Ah!"

"Well, then, again I say Beltran, if you will. We have not much." How
dear and natural the plural of the personal pronoun! "We have not much,
I fear. There is the little cart that the Señora gave the Señor when he
was muchachito. That is a good little plaything. I have cleaned it well
since the last flood. The water washed even into the cupboard. Then
there is--there is--ah, yes, the diamond cross. She will laugh, the
little thing, when it flashes in the sunshine. Children love brilliant
things. I remember well that the little Cristina, from the conuco, up
there, used to love to see the sparkle of the jewels. But the little one
will like the toy best."

"That is not much, dear heart."

"And then--and then--there may be rides on the bulls, and punting on
the river in the flatboat, and the little chestnut--she can ride
Castaño, the little thing!"

"Not the chestnut; I trained him for you, Agueda, child."

"And why should not the little one ride him, also? We can take her into
the deep woods to gather the mamey apples, and to the bushes down in the
river pasture to gather the aguacate. Only the little thing must be
taught to keep away from the prickly branches, and--sometimes,
Don--Beltran, we might take the child as far as Haldez, if some acrobats
or circus men should arrive. We have not been there since Dondy-Jeem
walked the rope that bright Sunday. Oh, yes! we shall find something to
amuse her, certainly. A little child! We are to have a child in the
house!" It was always a happy "we" with Agueda. "How old is the little
thing?"

"I have not heard from my uncle for many years. I do not know when he
married; but he is a young man still, Uncle Nóe. Full of affectation,
speaking French in preference to Spanish and English, which are equally
his mother tongues--I might say his mother and father tongue--but with
all his affectations, delightful."

"A little child in the house! A little child in the house," murmured
Agueda over and over to herself.

Now it was all bustle at the casa. San Isidro took on a holiday air.
There was no more talk of marriage. Not because Don Beltran did not
think of it and wish it, but because there was no time. A room down the
veranda must be beautified for the little child. She was to be placed
next her father, that if she should want anything at night, he could
attend her.

"Where shall we put the nurse?" said Don Beltran.

"I am afraid the nurse will have to sleep in the rancho, Beltran. These
two rooms take all that we have." Agueda looked up wistfully. "I wonder
how soon she will come," she said. "The little thing! the little thing!"

VII

So soon as Agueda had disappeared down the trocha which leads to the
sea, Silencio called for Andres. Old Guillermina came with a halt and a
shuffle. This was caused by her losing ever and anon that bit of shoe in
which she thought it respectful to seek her master, or to obey his
summons. She agreed with some modern authorities, although she had never
heard of them or their theories, that contact with Mother Earth is more
agreeable and more convenient (she did not know of the claim that it is
more healthful) than encasing the foot in a piece of bull's hide or
calf's skin.

"Where is Andres?" asked Don Gil, impatiently.

"Has the Señor forgotten that the Andres has gone to the Port of Entry?"

"He has not gone there," said Silencio; "that I know, for I sent Troncha
in his place. See where he is, and let me know. I need a messenger at
once."

As Guillermina turned her back, Don Gil bit his lip. "Then I am
helpless," he said aloud, "if Andres is not here." He arose and started
after Guillermina, calling impatiently: "Do not wait for Andres; get
some one, any one. I must send a message at once."

While Guillermina shuffled away, Silencio sat himself down at his desk
and wrote. He wrote hurriedly, the pen tearing across the sheet as if
for a wager. As its spluttering ceased, there was a knock at the
counting-house door.

"Entra!" called Silencio, rising.

It was a moist day in May. The June rains were heralded by occasional
showers, an earnest of the future. The dampness was all-pervading, the
stillness death-like. No sound was heard but the occasional calling of
the peons to the oxen far afield. The leaves of the ceiba tree hung limp
and motionless; the rompe hache[6] had not stirred a leaf for two days
past. No tender airs played caressingly against the nether side of the
palm tufts and swayed them in fan-like motion. The gri-gri stood tall
and grand, full of foliage at the top. Its numberless little leaves were
precisely outlined, each one, against the sky. One might almost fear
that he were looking at a painting done by one of the artists of the
early Hudson River school, so distinctly was the edge of each leaf and
twig drawn against its background of blue.

Rotiro stood and waited. Then he knocked again. A step was heard
approaching from an inner room.

"Entra!" called a voice from within, but louder than before.

Rotiro obeyed the permission. He entered the outer room to find Don Gil
just issuing from the inner one--that holy of holies, where no profane
foot of peon, shod or unshod, had ever penetrated. Rotiro touched his
forelock by way of salutation, drew his machete from its yellow leathern
belt, swung it over his shoulder, and brought it round and down with a
horizontal cut, slashing fiercely into the post of the doorway. It sank
deep, and he left it there, quivering.

Silencio was moistening the flap of an envelope with his lip as Rotiro
entered. After a look at Rotiro, Don Gil thought it best to light a
taper, take a bit of wax from the tray and seal the note. He pressed it
with the intaglio of his ring. The seal bore the crest of the Silencios.
When he had finished he held the note for a moment in his hand, to dry
thoroughly. As he stood, he surveyed the machete of Rotiro, which still
trembled in the doorpost. The post was full of such gashes, indicating
it as a common receptacle for bladed weapons. It served the purpose of
an umbrella-stand at the north. Don Billy Blake had said: "We don't
carry umbrellas into parlours at the No'th, and I bedam if any man,
black or shaded, shall bring his machett into my shanty."

Don Billy was looked upon as an arbiter of fashion. This fashion,
however, antedated Don Billy's advent in the island.

Rotiro unslung his shotgun from his shoulder and stepped inside the
doorway. He leaned the gun against the inner wall.

"Buen' dia', Seño'," he nodded.

"Set that gun outside, Rotiro."

"My e'copeta very good e'copeta, Seño' Don Gil. It a excellent e'copeta.
It is, however, as you know, not much to be trusted; it go off sometimes
with little persuasion on my part, often again without much reason."

"Following the example of your tongue. Listen! Rotiro. I wish to do the
talking. Attend to what I say. Here is a note. I wish you to take it up
back of Troja, to the Señor Escobeda."

"But, Seño', I thought--"

"You thought! So peons think! On this subject you have no need to think.
Take this note up to Troja, and be quick about it. I want an answer
within an hour. Waste no time on thoughts or words, and above all, waste
no time in going or returning. See the Señor Escobeda. Hand him the
note, see what he has to say, and bring me word as soon as possible.
Notice how he looks, how he speaks, what--"

"But the Seño' may not--"

"Still talking? Go at once! Do you remember old Amadeo, who was struck
by lightning? I always believed that it was to quiet his tongue. It
certainly had that effect. But for the one servant I have had who has
been struck by lightning, I have had twenty who ought to have been.
There was a prince in a foreign land who was driven crazy by his
servants. He said, 'Words! words! words!' I wonder very much what he
would have said could he have passed a week on the plantation of
Palmacristi."

As the Devil twists Scripture to suit his purpose, so Silencio was not
behind him in his interpretation of Shakespeare, and Rotiro prepared for
his journey, with a full determination to utter no unnecessary word
during the rest of his life. In dead silence he withdrew his machete
from its gash in the doorpost, tied the letter round his neck by its
cord of red silk, swung his apology for a hat upon his head, and was
off. Meanwhile Don Gil sat and waited.

The hour ended as all hours, good or bad, must end. Don Gil kept his
eyes fixed upon the clock. Ah! it was five minutes past the hour now.

"If I find that he has delayed one minute beyond the
necessary--possibly Escobeda has held him there, taken him
prisoner--prisoner! In the nineteenth century! But an Escobeda is ready
for anything; perhaps he has--" There was a step at the doorway.

"Entra!" shouted Don Gil, before one had the time to knock, and Rotiro
entered. He had no time to say a word. He had not swung his arm round
his head, nor settled the machete safely in the post of the door, before
Don Gil said, impatiently:

"Well! well! What is it? Will the man never speak? Did you see the Señor
Escobeda? Open that stupid head of yours, man! Say something--"

Rotiro was breathless. He set his gun in the corner with great
deliberation. At first his words would not come; then he drew a quick
breath and said:

"I saw the Seño' E'cobeda, Don Gil. He is a fine man, the Seño'
E'cobeda. Oh! yes, he is a very fine man, the Seño'!"

"Ah!" said Don Gil, dryly, "did he send me a message, this very fine
man?"

Rotiro thrust his hand into the perpendicular slit that did duty for a
legitimate opening in his shirt. He was dripping with moisture. Great
beads stood out upon his dark skin. He pulled the faded pink cotton from
his wet body and brought to light a folded paper. This he handed to Don
Gil. The paper was far from dry. Don Gil took the parcel. He broke the
thread which secured it--the thread seemed much shorter than when he had
knotted it earlier in the day--and discovered the letter which he
sought. The letter was addressed to himself.

Don Gil opened this missive with little difficulty. The sticky property
of the flap had been impaired by its contact with the damp surroundings.
Don Gil read the note with a frown.

"Caramba hombre! Did you go up back of Troja for this?"

Rotiro raised his shoulders and turned his palms outward.

"As the Seño' see."

If Rotiro had gone "up back of Troja" for nothing, it was obviously the
initial occasion in the history of the island. The natives, as well as
the foreigners, seemed to go "up back of Troja" for every article that
they needed. They bought their palm boards back of Troja. They bought
their horses back of Troja. They bought their cattle back of Troja. Back
of Troja was made the best rum that was to be had in all the island.
Back of Troja, for some undiscovered reason, were found the best guns,
the best pistols, the sharpest "colinos," smuggled ashore at the cave,
doubtless, and taken in the night through dark florestas, impenetrable
to officers of the law. Many a wife, light of skin and slim of ankle,
had come from back of Troja to wed with the people nearer the sea. The
region back of Troja was a veritable mine, but for once the mine had
refused to yield up what the would-be prospector desired.

"He'll get no wife from back of Troja," thought Rotiro, whose own life
partner, out of the bonds of wedlock, had enjoyed that distinction.

"Whom did you see back of Troja?"

"The Seño' E'cobeda, Seño'. The Seño' E'cobeda is a ver--"

"Yes, yes, I know! How you natives will always persist in slipping your
's,' except when it is superfluous! How did Escobeda look?"

"Much as usual, Seño'. He is a very fi--"

"Was he pleasant, or did he frown?"

"In truth, Seño' Don Gil, I cannot say for one, how he look. I saw but
the back of the Seño' E'cobeda. He look--"

"As much of a cut-throat as ever, I suppose?"

"Si, Seño'. The Seño' was seated in his oficina. He had his back to me.
I saw nothing but his ear-rings and the very fine white shirt that he
wore."

"Well, well! He read the note, and--"

"He read the note, Seño', and--and--he read the note, and--he read the
n--"

"Well, well, well!"

"And shall I tell the Seño' all, then?"

"Will you continue? or shall I--" Don Gil's tone was threatening.

"If the Seño' will. He laugh, Seño' Don Gil. He laugh very long and very
loud, and then I hear a es-snarl. It es-sound like a dog. Once he reach
toward the wall for his 'colino.' I at once put myself outside of the
casa, and behind the pilotijo. When he did not advance, I put an eye to
the crack, all the es-same."

"And it was then that he wrote the note?"

"Si, Seño'; it was then that he wrote the answer and present it to me."

"And said--?"

"He said, oh! I assure the Seño' it was nothing worthy to hear; the
Seño' would not--"

"He said--?" There was a dangerous light in Don Gil's eye.

"And I must tell the Seño'? He said, 'Here! give this to that--that--'"

"That--?"

"'That _truhan!_' I pray the Don Gil forgive me; the Don Gil make me--"

Silencio's face had flushed darkly.

"Continue."

Rotiro, embarrassed beyond measure, forgot what he had learned by fair
means and what by foul, and blundered on.

"He did not say whether the Señorit' had go to the Port of Entry; he--"

"And who told you to enquire whether the Señorita had gone to the Port
of Entry or not?"

Rotiro perceived at once that he had made a gigantic slip. When Don Gil
next spoke, Rotiro was busy watching the parjara bobo which loped along
within the enclosure. The bird, stupid by name and nature alike, came so
close that Rotiro could almost have touched it with his hand.

"Do you hear my question?"

Rotiro started at the tones of thunder.

"No one inform me, Seño'. I had heard talk of it."

"Two fools in one enclosure! The bird is as clever as you. Do not try to
think, Rotiro. Have you never heard that peons should never try to
think? Leave the vacuum which nature abhors in its natural state."
Rotiro looked blankly at Don Gil, who often amused himself at the
expense of the stupid. Just now he was angry, and ready to say something
harsh which even a wiser peon than Rotiro could not understand. Rotiro's
vacuum was working, however, as even vacuums will. "Decidedly, I have
made a very grand mistake of some kind; but when a letter will not
stick, it is so easy--the thing, however, is not to let him--"

"Rotiro!"

The peon started. Don Gil stood facing him. His eyes were blazing.
Rotiro's arm twitched with the desire to reach for his machete.

"If I ever find you--" Don Gil spoke slowly and impressively, his
forefinger moving up and down in time with his words--"if ever I find
you opening a letter of mine, either a letter that I send or one that I
receive, I will send you to Saltona, and I shall ask the alcalde to put
you in the army."

Rotiro's knees developed a sudden weakness. He would much rather be led
to the wall outside the town, turned with his face towards its cold grey
stone, and have his back riddled with bullets. At least, so he thought
at the moment.

"The Seño' will never find me opening a letter, either now or at any
other time." (_Nor will he. Does he think that I should be so stupid as
to open them before his face? Or within two and a half miles of the Casa
de Caoba?_)

"Very well, then. Be off with you. Take your gun out of my
counting-house and your colino out of my doorpost, and yourself out of
my sight."

"The Seño' Don Gil allow that I accommodate myself with a little
ching-ching?"

"Always ching-ching, Rotiro. Bieng, bieng! Tell Alfredo to give you a
half-glass, not of the pink rum--that is not for such as you. You
remember, perhaps, what happened the last time that I gave you a
ching-ching. I should have said No."

"I assure the Seño' that Garcito Romando was a worthless man. O, yes,
Seño', an utterly worthless man--an entirely useless man. He could not
plant the suckers, he could not plant the cacao, he could not drive four
bulls at a time; there was no place for Garcito Romando either in heaven
or in hell. Marianna Romando was weary of him. Purgatory was closed to
him, and the blessed island was too good for him. He stole three dollars
Mex. of me once. My e'copeta did, perhaps, go off a little early, but
the Seño' should thank me. He has on his finca one bobo the less, and
the good God knows--"

Rotiro was not only fluent, he was confluent. He ran his words together
in the most rapid manner.

Don Gil raised his hand as if to ward off the storm of words. "He was
certainly a fool to tamper with a man whose gun shoots round the corner.
Come! Be off with you! Three fingers, and no more."

FOOTNOTE:

[6] Literally, _hatchet breaker_.

VIII

There are days which are crowded with events; days so bursting with
happenings that a single twenty-four hours will not suffice to tell the
tale. There are other days so blank and uneventful that one sighs for
very weariness when one thinks of them. It is not well to wish time
away, but such days are worse than useless. It is, however, of one of
the former that this chapter relates. To a little community like that
surrounding San Isidro and Palmacristi, to say nothing of Troja, the day
on which Agueda carried the note for Raquel was full of events.

When Escobeda went from Raquel's room, slamming the door after him, the
terrified girl dropped on her knees before Ana. All her courage seemed
to have flown. She bent her head and laid it in Ana's lap, and then
tears rained down and drenched Ana's new silk apron.

"Ana," she whispered, "Ana, who is there to help me?"

Ana sighed and sniffed, and one or two great drops rolled off her brown
nose and splashed down on the back of Raquel's dark head.

"There is no one but you and God, Ana."

"Holy Mother! child, do not be so irreverent."

"Can you steal out into the corridor and down the two little steps, and
into the rum room, Ana, and hear what is being said?"

"I am too heavy; that you know, Señorita. The boards creak at the very
sound of my name. I am tall, my bones are large. Such persons cannot
trip lightly; they tip the scales at a goodly number of pounds. Holy
Mother! If he should catch me at it!" and Ana shivered, her tears drying
at once from fright.

"You could very well do it if you chose. Listen, Ana. If he takes me
away, I shall die. Now I tell you truly, Ana, I will never go to that
government house alive; that you may as well know. Get me my mother's
dagger, Ana."

Ana arose and went to a bureau drawer. The drawer squeaked as she pulled
at the knobs.

A far door was heard opening. "What is that?" roared Escobeda.

"I am packing the child's trunks, Señor. How can I pack them unless I
may open the drawer?" There was a sound of retreating footsteps and the
closing of the door. Raquel looked at Ana, who was kneeling upon the
floor, searching in the drawer.

"Ah! here it is," said Ana. "But you will not use it, sweet?"

"Not unless I must," said Raquel. She sighed. "Not unless I must. I do
not want to die, Ana. I love my life, but there is a great horror over
there." She nodded her head in the direction of the Port of Entry. "When
that horror comes very near me, then I--" Raquel made as if she would
thrust the dagger within her breast. Ana shuddered.

"I shall not see it," she said. "But I advise it, all the same, if you
must."

She drew the girl up to her, and cried helplessly upon her neck.

"Can't you think a little for me, Ana? It is hard always to think for
one's self."

"No," said Ana, shaking her head, "I never have any fresh thoughts. I
always follow."

"Then, dear Ana, just tiptoe down and listen. It is the last thing that
I shall ever ask of you, Ana."

Ana, her eyes streaming with tears, took her slippers--those tell-tale
flappers--from her feet, and went to the door. She turned the knob
gently and pushed the door outward without noise. As she opened it she
heard Escobeda's voice, raised in angry tones.

"Go now! now! while he is scolding," whispered Raquel. "He will not hear
you. I must know what he is saying to that man. Do you think it is the
Señor Silencio's messenger?"

Ana nodded and put her finger to her lip. She crept noiselessly along
the passage. Raquel, listen as she would, heard nothing of Ana's
footsteps, for Escobeda was still swearing so loudly as to drown every
other sound.

Raquel went to the bureau, and took from the drawer a piece of kid. She