Chapter IV (5)

But Dick did not sleep. The beautiful face beamed out again from the darkness of his room; the light that glimmered through his deep-set curtainless windows had an odd trick of bringing out certain hanging articles, or pieces of furniture, into a resemblance to a mantled figure. The deep, velvety eyes, fringed with long brown lashes, again looked into his with amused, childlike curiosity. He scouted the harsh criticisms of Aunt Viney, even while he shrank from proving to her her mistake in the quality of his mysterious visitant. Of course she was a lady--far superior to any of her race whom he had yet met. Yet how should he find WHO she was? His pride and a certain chivalry forbade his questioning the servants--before whom it was the rule of the household to avoid all reference to their neighbors. He would make the acquaintance of the old padre--perhaps HE might talk. He would ride early along the trail in the direction of the nearest rancho,--Don Jose Amador's,--a thing he had hitherto studiously refrained from doing. It was three miles away. She must have come that distance, but not ALONE. Doubtless she had kept her duenna in waiting in the road. Perhaps it was she who had frightened Cecily. Had Cecily told ALL she had seen? Her embarrassed manner certainly suggested more than she had told. He felt himself turning hot with an indefinite uneasiness. Then he tried to compose himself. After all, it was a thing of the past. The fair unknown had bribed the duenna for once, no doubt--had satisfied her girlish curiosity--she would not come again! But this thought brought with it such a sudden sense of utter desolation, a deprivation so new and startling, that it frightened him. Was his head turned by the witcheries of some black-eyed schoolgirl whom he had seen but once? Or--he felt his cheeks glowing in the darkness--was it really a case of love at first sight, and she herself had been impelled by the same yearning that now possessed him? A delicious satisfaction followed, that left a smile on his lips as if it had been a kiss. He knew now why he had so strangely hesitated with Cecily. He had never really loved her--he had never known what love was till now!

He was up early the next morning, skimming the plain on the back of “Chu Chu,” before the hacienda was stirring. He did not want any one to suspect his destination, and it was even with a sense of guilt that he dashed along the swale in the direction of the Amador rancho. A few vaqueros, an old Digger squaw carrying a basket, two little Indian acolytes on their way to mass passed him. He was surprised to find that there were no ruts of carriage wheels within three miles of the casa, and evidently no track for carriages through the swale. SHE must have come on HORSEBACK. A broader highway, however, intersected the trail at a point where the low walls of the Amador rancho came in view. Here he was startled by the apparition of an old-fashioned family carriage drawn by two large piebald mules. But it was unfortunately closed. Then, with a desperate audacity new to his reserved nature, he ranged close beside it, and even stared in the windows. A heavily mantled old woman, whose brown face was in high contrast to her snow-white hair, sat in the back seat. Beside her was a younger companion, with the odd blonde hair and blue eyes sometimes seen in the higher Castilian type. For an instant the blue eyes caught his, half-coquettishly. But the girl was NOT at all like his mysterious visitor, and he fell, discomfited, behind.

He had determined to explain his trespass on the grounds of his neighbor, if questioned, by the excuse that he was hunting a strayed mustang. But his presence, although watched with a cold reserve by the few peons who were lounging near the gateway, provoked no challenge from them; and he made a circuit of the low adobe walls, with their barred windows and cinnamon-tiled roofs, without molestation--but equally without satisfaction. He felt he was a fool for imagining that he would see her in that way. He turned his horse towards the little Mission half a mile away. There he had once met the old padre, who spoke a picturesque but limited English; now he was only a few yards ahead of him, just turning into the church. The padre was pleased to see Don Ricardo; it was an unusual thing for the Americanos, he observed, to be up so early: for himself, he had his functions, of course. No, the ladies that the caballero had seen had not been to mass! They were Donna Maria and her daughter, going to San Gregorio. They comprised ALL the family at the rancho,--there were none others, unless the caballero, of a possibility, meant Donna Inez, a maiden aunt of sixty--an admirable woman, a saint on earth! He trusted that he would find his estray; there was no doubt a mark upon it, otherwise the plain was illimitable; there were many horses--the world was wide!

Dick turned his face homewards a little less adventurously, and it must be confessed, with a growing sense of his folly. The keen, dry morning air brushed away his fancies of the preceding night; the beautiful eyes that had lured him thither seemed to flicker and be blown out by its practical breath. He began to think remorsefully of his cousin, of his aunt,--of his treachery to that reserve which the little alien household had maintained towards their Spanish neighbors. He found Aunt Viney and Cecily at breakfast--Cecily, he thought, looking a trifle pale. Yet (or was it only his fancy?) she seemed curious about his morning ride. And he became more reticent.

“You must see a good many of our neighbors when you are out so early?”

“Why?” he asked shortly, feeling his color rise.

“Oh, because--because we don't see them at any other time.”

“I saw a very nice chap--I think the best of the lot,” he began, with assumed jocularity; then, seeing Cecily's eyes suddenly fixed on him, he added, somewhat lamely, “the padre! There were also two women in a queer coach.”

“Donna Maria Amador, and Dona Felipa Peralta--her daughter by her first husband,” said Aunt Viney quietly. “When you see the horses you think it's a circus; when you look inside the carriage you KNOW it's a funeral.”

Aunt Viney did not condescend to explain how she had acquired her genealogical knowledge of her neighbor's family, but succeeded in breaking the restraint between the young people. Dick proposed a ride in the afternoon, which was cheerfully accepted by Cecily. Their intercourse apparently recovered its old frankness and freedom, marred only for a moment when they set out on the plain. Dick, really to forget his preoccupation of the morning, turned his horse's head AWAY from the trail, to ride in another direction; but Cecily oddly, and with an exhibition of caprice quite new to her, insisted upon taking the old trail. Nevertheless they met nothing, and soon became absorbed in the exercise. Dick felt something of his old tenderness return to this wholesome, pretty girl at his side; perhaps he betrayed it in his voice, or in an unconscious lingering by her bridle-rein, but she accepted it with a naive reserve which he naturally attributed to the effect of his own previous preoccupation. He bore it so gently, however, that it awakened her interest, and, possibly, her pique. Her reserve relaxed, and by the time they returned to the hacienda they had regained something of their former intimacy. The dry, incisive breath of the plains swept away the last lingering remnants of yesterday's illusions. Under this frankly open sky, in this clear perspective of the remote Sierras, which admitted no fanciful deception of form or distance--there remained nothing but a strange incident--to be later explained or forgotten. Only he could not bring himself to talk to HER about it.

After dinner, and a decent lingering for coffee on the veranda, Dick rose, and leaning half caressingly, half mischievously, over his aunt's rocking-chair, but with his eyes on Cecily, said:--

“I've been deeply considering, dear Aunty, what you said last evening of the necessity of our offering a good example to our neighbors. Now, although Cecily and I are cousins, yet, as I am HEAD of the house, lord of the manor, and padron, according to the Spanish ideas I am her recognised guardian and protector, and it seems to me it is my positive DUTY to accompany her if she wishes to walk out this evening.”

A momentary embarrassment--which, however, changed quickly into an answering smile to her cousin--came over Cecily's face. She turned to her aunt.

“Well, don't go too far,” said that lady quietly.

When they closed the grille behind them and stepped into the lane, Cecily shot a quick glance at her cousin.

“Perhaps you'd rather walk in the garden?”

“I? Oh, no,” he answered honestly. “But”--he hesitated--“would you?”

“Yes,” she said faintly.

He impulsively offered his arm; her slim hand slipped lightly through it and rested on his sleeve. They crossed the lane together, and entered the garden. A load appeared to be lifted from his heart; the moment seemed propitious,--here was a chance to recover his lost ground, to regain his self-respect and perhaps his cousin's affection. By a common instinct, however, they turned to the right, and AWAY from the stone bench, and walked slowly down the broad allee.

They talked naturally and confidingly of the days when they had met before, of old friends they had known and changes that had crept into their young lives; they spoke affectionately of the grim, lonely, but self-contained old woman they had just left, who had brought them thus again together. Cecily talked of Dick's studies, of the scientific work on which he was engaged, that was to bring him, she was sure, fame and fortune! They talked of the thoughtful charm of the old house, of its quaint old-world flavor. They spoke of the beauty of the night, the flowers and the stars, in whispers, as one is apt to do--as fearing to disturb a super-sensitiveness in nature.

They had come out later than on the previous night; and the moon, already risen above the high walls of the garden, seemed a vast silver shield caught in the interlacing tops of the old pear-trees, whose branches crossed its bright field like dark bends or bars. As it rose higher, it began to separate the lighter shrubbery, and open white lanes through the olive-trees. Damp currents of air, alternating with drier heats, on what appeared to be different levels, moved across the whole garden, or gave way at times to a breathless lull and hush of everything, in which the long rose alley seemed to be swooning in its own spices. They had reached the bottom of the garden, and had turned, facing the upper moonlit extremity and the bare stone bench. Cecily's voice faltered, her hand leaned more heavily on his arm, as if she were overcome by the strong perfume. His right hand began to steal towards hers. But she had stopped; she was trembling.

“Go on,” she said in a half whisper. “Leave me a moment; I'll join you afterwards.”

“You are ill, Cecily! It's those infernal flowers!” said Dick earnestly. “Let me help you to the bench.”

“No--it's nothing. Go on, please. Do! Will you go!”

She spoke with imperiousness, unlike herself. He walked on mechanically a dozen paces and turned. She had disappeared. He remembered there was a smaller gate opening upon the plain near where they had stopped. Perhaps she had passed through that. He continued on, slowly, towards the upper end of the garden, occasionally turning to await her return. In this way he gradually approached the stone bench. He was facing about to continue his walk, when his heart seemed to stop beating. The beautiful visitor of last night was sitting alone on the bench before him!

She had not been there a moment before; he could have sworn it. Yet there was no illusion now of shade or distance. She was scarcely six feet from him, in the bright moonlight. The whole of her exquisite little figure was visible, from her lustrous hair down to the tiny, black satin, low-quartered slipper, held as by two toes. Her face was fully revealed; he could see even the few minute freckles, like powdered allspice, that heightened the pale satin sheen of her beautifully rounded cheek; he could detect even the moist shining of her parted red lips, the white outlines of her little teeth, the length of her curved lashes, and the meshes of the black lace veil that fell from the yellow rose above her ear to the black silk camisa; he noted even the thick yellow satin saya, or skirt, heavily flounced with black lace and bugles, and that it was a different dress from that worn on the preceding night, a half-gala costume, carried with the indescribable air of a woman looking her best and pleased to do so: all this he had noted, drawing nearer and nearer, until near enough to forget it all and drown himself in the depths of her beautiful eyes. For they were no longer childlike and wondering: they were glowing with expectancy, anticipation--love!

He threw himself passionately on the bench beside her. Yet, even if he had known her language, he could not have spoken. She leaned towards him; their eyes seemed to meet caressingly, as in an embrace. Her little hand slipped from the yellow folds of her skirt to the bench. He eagerly seized it. A subtle thrill ran through his whole frame. There was no delusion here; it was flesh and blood, warm, quivering, and even tightening round his own. He was about to carry it to his lips, when she rose and stepped backwards. He pressed eagerly forward. Another backward step brought her to the pear-tree, where she seemed to plunge into its shadow. Dick Bracy followed--and the same shadow seemed to fold them in its embrace.

*****

He did not return to the veranda and chocolate that evening, but sent word from his room that he had retired, not feeling well.

Cecily, herself a little nervously exalted, corroborated the fact of his indisposition by telling Aunt Viney that the close odors of the rose garden had affected them both. Indeed, she had been obliged to leave before him. Perhaps in waiting for her return--and she really was not well enough to go back--he was exposed to the night air too long. She was very sorry.

Aunt Viney heard this with a slight contraction of her brows and a renewed scrutiny of her knitting; and, having satisfied herself by a personal visit to Dick's room that he was not alarmingly ill, set herself to find out what was really the matter with the young people; for there was no doubt that Cecily was in some vague way as disturbed and preoccupied as Dick. He rode out again early the next morning, returning to his studies in the library directly after breakfast; and Cecily was equally reticent, except when, to Aunt Viney's perplexity, she found excuses for Dick's manner on the ground of his absorption in his work, and that he was probably being bored by want of society. She proposed that she should ask an old schoolfellow to visit them.

“It would give Dick a change of ideas, and he would not be perpetually obliged to look so closely after me.” She blushed slightly under Aunt Viney's gaze, and added hastily, “I mean, of course, he would not feel it his DUTY.”

She even induced her aunt to drive with her to the old mission church, where she displayed a pretty vivacity and interest in the people they met, particularly a few youthful and picturesque caballeros. Aunt Viney smiled gravely. Was the poor child developing an unlooked-for coquetry, or preparing to make the absent-minded Dick jealous? Well, the idea was not a bad one. In the evening she astonished the two cousins by offering to accompany them into the garden--a suggestion accepted with eager and effusive politeness by each, but carried out with great awkwardness by the distrait young people later. Aunt Viney clearly saw that it was not her PRESENCE that was required. In this way two or three days elapsed without apparently bringing the relations of Dick and Cecily to any more satisfactory conclusion. The diplomatic Aunt Viney confessed herself puzzled.

One night it was very warm; the usual trade winds had died away before sunset, leaving an unwonted hush in sky and plain. There was something so portentous in this sudden withdrawal of that rude stimulus to the otherwise monotonous level, that a recurrence of such phenomena was always known as “earthquake weather.” The wild cattle moved uneasily in the distance without feeding; herds of unbroken mustangs approached the confines of the hacienda in vague timorous squads. The silence and stagnation of the old house was oppressive, as if the life had really gone out of it at last; and Aunt Viney, after waiting impatiently for the young people to come in to chocolate, rose grimly, set her lips together, and went out into the lane. The gate of the rose garden opposite was open. She walked determinedly forward and entered.

In that doubly stagnant air the odor of the roses was so suffocating and overpowering that she had to stop to take breath. The whole garden, except a near cluster of pear-trees, was brightly illuminated by the moonlight. No one was to be seen along the length of the broad allee, strewn an inch deep with scattered red and yellow petals--colorless in the moonbeams. She was turning away, when Dick's familiar voice, but with a strange accent of entreaty in it, broke the silence. It seemed to her vaguely to come from within the pear-tree shadow.

“But we must understand one another, my darling! Tell me all. This suspense, this mystery, this brief moment of happiness, and these hours of parting and torment, are killing me!”

A slight cough broke from Aunt Viney. She had heard enough--she did not wish to hear more. The mystery was explained. Dick loved Cecily; the coyness or hesitation was not on HIS part. Some idiotic girlish caprice, quite inconsistent with what she had noticed at the mission church, was keeping Cecily silent, reserved, and exasperating to her lover. She would have a talk with the young lady, without revealing the fact that she had overheard them. She was perhaps a little hurt that affairs should have reached this point without some show of confidence to her from the young people. Dick might naturally be reticent--but Cecily!

She did not even look towards the pear-tree, but turned and walked stiffly out of the gate. As she was crossing the lane she suddenly started back in utter dismay and consternation! For Cecily, her niece,--in her own proper person,--was actually just coming OUT OF THE HOUSE!

Aunt Viney caught her wrist. “Where have you been?” she asked quickly.

“In the house,” stammered Cecily, with a frightened face.

“You have not been in the garden with Dick?” continued Aunt Viney sharply--yet with a hopeless sense of the impossibility of the suggestion.

“No, I was not even going there. I thought of just strolling down the lane.”

The girl's accents were truthful; more than that, she absolutely looked relieved by her aunt's question. “Do you want me, Aunty?” she added quickly.

“Yes--no. Run away, then--but don't go far.”

At any other time Aunt Viney might have wondered at the eagerness with which Cecily tripped away; now she was only anxious to get rid of her. She entered the casa hurriedly.

“Send Josefa to me at once,” she said to Manuel.

Josefa, the housekeeper,--a fat Mexican woman,--appeared. “Send Concha and the other maids here.” They appeared, mutely wondering. Aunt Viney glanced hurriedly over them--they were all there--a few comely, but not too attractive, and all stupidly complacent. “Have you girls any friends here this evening--or are you expecting any?” she demanded. Of a surety, no!--as the padrona knew--it was not night for church. “Very well,” returned Aunt Viney; “I thought I heard your voices in the garden; understand, I want no gallivanting there. Go to bed.”

She was relieved! Dick certainly was not guilty of a low intrigue with one of the maids. But who and what was she?

Dick was absent again from chocolate; there was unfinished work to do. Cecily came in later, just as Aunt Viney was beginning to be anxious. Had she appeared distressed or piqued by her cousin's conduct, Aunt Viney might have spoken; but there was a pretty color on her cheek--the result, she said, of her rapid walking, and the fresh air; did Aunt Viney know that a cool breeze had just risen?--and her delicate lips were wreathed at times in a faint retrospective smile. Aunt Viney stared; certainly the girl was not pining! What young people were made of now-a-days she really couldn't conceive. She shrugged her shoulders and resumed her tatting.

Nevertheless, as Dick's unfinished studies seemed to have whitened his cheek and impaired his appetite the next morning, she announced her intention of driving out towards the mission alone. When she returned at luncheon she further astonished the young people by casually informing them they would have Spanish visitors to dinner--namely, their neighbors, Donna Maria Amador and the Dona Felipa Peralta.

Both faces were turned eagerly towards her; both said almost in the same breath, “But, Aunt Viney! you don't know them! However did you--What does it all mean?”

“My dears,” said Aunt Viney placidly, “Mrs. Amador and I have always nodded to each other, and I knew they were only waiting for the slightest encouragement. I gave it, and they're coming.”

It was difficult to say whether Cecily's or Dick's face betrayed the greater delight and animation. Aunt Viney looked from the one to the other. It seemed as if her attempt at diversion had been successful.

“Tell us all about it, you dear, clever, artful Aunty!” said Cecily gayly.

“There's nothing whatever to tell, my love! It seems, however, that the young one, Dona Felipa, has seen Dick, and remembers him.” She shot a keen glance at Dick, but was obliged to admit that the rascal's face remained unchanged. “And I wanted to bring a cavalier for YOU, dear, but Don Jose's nephew isn't at home now.” Yet here, to her surprise, Cecily was faintly blushing.

Early in the afternoon the piebald horses and dark brown chariot of the Amadors drew up before the gateway. The young people were delighted with Dona Felipa, and thought her blue eyes and tawny hair gave an added piquancy to her colorless satin skin and otherwise distinctively Spanish face and figure. Aunt Viney, who entertained Donna Maria, was nevertheless watchful of the others; but failed to detect in Dick's effusive greeting, or the Dona's coquettish smile of recognition, any suggestion of previous confidences. It was rather to Cecily that Dona Felipa seemed to be characteristically exuberant and childishly feminine. Both mother and stepdaughter spoke a musical infantine English, which the daughter supplemented with her eyes, her eyebrows, her little brown fingers, her plump shoulders, a dozen charming intonations of voice, and a complete vocabulary in her active and emphatic fan.

The young lady went over the house with Cecily curiously, as if recalling some old memories. “Ah, yes, I remember it--but it was long ago and I was very leetle--you comprehend, and I have not arrive mooch when the old Don was alone. It was too--too--what you call melank-oaly. And the old man have not make mooch to himself of company.”

“Then there were no young people in the house, I suppose?” said Cecily, smiling.

“No--not since the old man's father lif. Then there were TWO. It is a good number, this two, eh?” She gave a single gesture, which took in, with Cecily, the distant Dick, and with a whole volume of suggestion in her shoulders, and twirling fan, continued: “Ah! two sometime make one--is it not? But not THEN in the old time--ah, no! It is a sad story. I shall tell it to you some time, but not to HIM.”

But Cecily's face betrayed no undue bashful consciousness, and she only asked, with a quiet smile, “Why not to--to my cousin?”

“Imbecile!” responded that lively young lady.

After dinner the young people proposed to take Dona Felipa into the rose garden, while Aunt Viney entertained Donna Maria on the veranda. The young girl threw up her hands with an affectation of horror. “Santa Maria!--in the rose garden? After the Angelus, you and him? Have you not heard?”

But here Donna Maria interposed. Ah! Santa Maria! What was all that! Was it not enough to talk old woman's gossip and tell vaqueros tales at home, without making uneasy the strangers? She would have none of it. “Vamos!”

Nevertheless Dona Felipa overcame her horror of the rose garden at infelicitous hours, so far as to permit herself to be conducted by the cousins into it, and to be installed like a rose queen on the stone bench, while Dick and Cecily threw themselves in submissive and imploring attitudes at her little feet. The young girl looked mischievously from one to the other.

“It ees very pret-ty, but all the same I am not a rose: I am what you call a big goose-berry! Eh--is it not?”

The cousins laughed, but without any embarrassed consciousness. “Dona Felipa knows a sad story of this house,” said Cecily; “but she will not tell it before you, Dick.”

Dick, looking up at the coquettish little figure, with Heaven knows what OTHER memories in his mind, implored and protested.

“Ah! but this little story--she ees not so mooch sad of herself as she ees str-r-r-ange!” She gave an exaggerated little shiver under her lace shawl, and closed her eyes meditatively.

“Go on,” said Dick, smiling in spite of his interested expectation.

Dona Felipa took her fan in both hands, spanning her knees, leaned forward, and after a preliminary compressing of her lips and knitting of her brows, said:--

“It was a long time ago. Don Gregorio he have his daughter Rosita here, and for her he will fill all thees rose garden and gif to her; for she like mooch to lif with the rose. She ees very pret-ty. You shall have seen her picture here in the casa. No? It have hang under the crucifix in the corner room, turn around to the wall--WHY, you shall comprehend when I have made finish thees story. Comes to them here one day Don Vincente, Don Gregorio's nephew, to lif when his father die. He was yong, a pollio--same as Rosita. They were mooch together; they have make lofe. What will you?--it ees always the same. The Don Gregorio have comprehend; the friends have all comprehend; in a year they will make marry. Dona Rosita she go to Monterey to see his family. There ees an English warship come there; and Rosita she ees very gay with the officers, and make the flirtation very mooch. Then Don Vincente he is onhappy, and he revenge himself to make lofe with another. When Rosita come back it is very miserable for them both, but they say nossing. The warship he have gone away; the other girl Vincente he go not to no more. All the same, Rosita and Vincente are very triste, and the family will not know what to make. Then Rosita she is sick and eat nossing, and walk to herself all day in the rose garden, until she is as white and fade away as the rose. And Vincente he eat nossing, but drink mooch aguardiente. Then he have fever and go dead. And Rosita she have fainting and fits; and one day they have look for her in the rose garden, and she is not! And they poosh and poosh in the ground for her, and they find her with so mooch rose-leaves--so deep--on top of her. SHE has go dead. It is a very sad story, and when you hear it you are very, very mooch dissatisfied.”

It is to be feared that the two Americans were not as thrilled by this sad recital as the fair narrator had expected, and even Dick ventured to point out that those sort of things happened also to his countrymen, and were not peculiar to the casa.

“But you said that there was a terrible sequel,” suggested Cecily smilingly: “tell us THAT. Perhaps Mr. Bracy may receive it a little more politely.”

An expression of superstitious gravity, half real, half simulated, came over Dona Felipa's face, although her vivacity of gesticulation and emphasis did not relax. She cast a hurried glance around her, and leaned a little forward towards the cousins.

“When there are no more young people in the casa because they are dead,” she continued, in a lower voice, “Don Gregorio he is very melank-oaly, and he have no more company for many years. Then there was a rodeo near the hacienda, and there came five or six caballeros to stay with him for the feast. Notabilimente comes then Don Jorge Martinez. He is a bad man--so weeked--a Don Juan for making lofe to the ladies. He lounge in the garden, he smoke his cigarette, he twist the moustache--so! One day he came in, and he laugh and wink so and say, 'Oh, the weeked, sly Don Gregorio! He have hid away in the casa a beautiful, pret-ty girl, and he will nossing say.' And the other caballeros say, 'Mira! what is this? there is not so mooch as one young lady in the casa.' And Don Jorge he wink, and he say, 'Imbeciles! pigs!' And he walk in the garden and twist his moustache more than ever. And one day, behold! he walk into the casa, very white and angry, and he swear mooch to himself; and he orders his horse, and he ride away, and never come back no more, never-r-r! And one day another caballero, Don Esteban Briones, he came in, and say, 'Hola! Don Jorge has forgotten his pret-ty girl: he have left her over on the garden bench. Truly I have seen.' And they say, 'We will too.' And they go, and there is nossing. And they say, 'Imbecile and pig!' But he is not imbecile and pig; for he has seen, and Don Jorge has seen; and why? For it is not a girl, but what you call her--a ghost! And they will that Don Esteban should make a picture of her--a design; and he make one. And old Don Gregorio he say, 'madre de Dios! it is Rosita'--the same that hung under the crucifix in the big room.”

“And is that all?” asked Dick, with a somewhat pronounced laugh, but a face that looked quite white in the moonlight.

“No, it ees NOT all. For when Don Gregorio got himself more company another time--it ees all yonge ladies, and my aunt she is invite too; for she was yonge then, and she herself have tell to me this:--

“One night she is in the garden with the other girls, and when they want to go in the casa one have say, 'Where is Francisca Pacheco? Look, she came here with us, and now she is not.' Another one say, 'She have conceal herself to make us affright.' And my aunt she say, 'I will go seek that I shall find her.' And she go. And when she came to the pear-tree, she heard Francisca's voice, and it say to some one she see not, 'Fly! vamos! some one have come.' And then she come at the moment upon Francisca, very white and trembling, and--alone. And Francisca she have run away and say nossing, and shut herself in her room. And one of the other girls say: 'It is the handsome caballero with the little black moustache and sad white face that I have seen in the garden that make this. It is truly that he is some poor relation of Don Gregorio, or some mad kinsman that he will not we should know.' And my aunt ask Don Gregorio; for she is yonge. And he have say: 'What silly fool ees thees? There is not one caballero here, but myself.' And when the other young girl have tell to him how the caballero look, he say: 'The saints save us! I cannot more say. It ees Don Vincente, who haf gone dead.' And he cross himself, and--But look! Madre de Dios! Mees Cecily, you are ill--you are affrighted. I am a gabbling fool! Help her, Don Ricardo; she is falling!”

But it was too late: Cecily had tried to rise to her feet, had staggered forward and fallen in a faint on the bench.

*****

Dick did not remember how he helped to carry the insensible Cecily to the casa, nor what explanation he had given to the alarmed inmates of her sudden attack. He recalled vaguely that something had been said of the overpowering perfumes of the garden at that hour, that the lively Felipa had become half hysterical in her remorseful apologies, and that Aunt Viney had ended the scene by carrying Cecily into her own room, where she presently recovered a still trembling but reticent consciousness. But the fainting of his cousin and the presence of a real emergency had diverted his imagination from the vague terror that had taken possession of it, and for the moment enabled him to control himself. With a desperate effort he managed to keep up a show of hospitable civility to his Spanish friends until their early departure. Then he hurried to his own room. So bewildered and horrified he had become, and a prey to such superstitious terrors, that he could not at that moment bring himself to the test of looking for the picture of the alleged Rosita, which might still be hanging in his aunt's room. If it were really the face of his mysterious visitant--in his present terror--he felt that his reason might not stand the shock. He would look at it to-morrow, when he was calmer! Until then he would believe that the story was some strange coincidence with what must have been his hallucination, or a vulgar trick to which he had fallen a credulous victim. Until then he would believe that Cecily's fright had been only the effect of Dona Felipa's story, acting upon a vivid imagination, and not a terrible confirmation of something she had herself seen. He threw himself, without undressing, upon his bed in a benumbing agony of doubt.

The gentle opening of his door and the slight rustle of a skirt started him to his feet with a feeling of new and overpowering repulsion. But it was a familiar figure that he saw in the long aisle of light which led from his recessed window, whose face was white enough to have been a spirit's, and whose finger was laid upon its pale lips, as it softly closed the door behind it.

“Cecily!”

“Hush!” she said, in a distracted whisper: “I felt I must see you to-night. I could not wait until day--no, not another hour! I could not speak to you before them. I could not go into that dreadful garden again, or beyond the walls of this house. Dick, I want to--I MUST tell you something! I would have kept it from every one--from you most of all! I know you will hate me, and despise me; but, Dick, listen!”--she caught his hand despairingly, drawing it towards her--“that girl's awful story was TRUE!” She threw his hand away.

“And you have seen HER!” said Dick, frantically. “Good God!”

The young girl's manner changed. “HER!” she said, half scornfully, “you don't suppose I believe THAT story? No. I--I--don't blame me, Dick,--I have seen HIM.”

“Him?”

She pushed him nervously into a seat, and sat down beside him. In the half light of the moon, despite her pallor and distraction, she was still very human, womanly, and attractive in her disorder.

“Listen to me, Dick. Do you remember one afternoon, when we were riding together, I got ahead of you, and dashed off to the casa. I don't know what possessed me, or WHY I did it. I only know I wanted to get home quickly, and get away from you. No, I was not angry, Dick, at YOU; it did not seem to be THAT; I--well, I confess I was FRIGHTENED--at something, I don't know what. When I wheeled round into the lane, I saw--a man--a young gentleman standing by the garden-wall. He was very picturesque-looking, in his red sash, velvet jacket, and round silver buttons; handsome, but oh, so pale and sad! He looked at me very eagerly, and then suddenly drew back, and I heard you on Chu Chu coming at my heels. You must have seen him and passed him too, I thought: but when you said nothing of it, I--I don't know why, Dick, I said nothing of it too. Don't speak!” she added, with a hurried gesture: “I know NOW why you said nothing,--YOU had not seen him.”

She stopped, and put back a wisp of her disordered chestnut hair.

“The next time was the night YOU were so queer, Dick, sitting on that stone bench. When I left you--I thought you didn't care to have me stay--I went to seek Aunt Viney at the bottom of the garden. I was very sad, but suddenly I found myself very gay, talking and laughing with her in a way I could not account for. All at once, looking up, I saw HIM standing by the little gate, looking at me very sadly. I think I would have spoken to Aunt Viney, but he put his finger to his lips--his hand was so slim and white, quite like a hand in one of those Spanish pictures--and moved slowly backwards into the lane, as if he wished to speak with ME only--out there. I know I ought to have spoken to Aunty; I knew it was wrong what I did, but he looked so earnest, so appealing, so awfully sad, Dick, that I slipped past Aunty and went out of the gate. Just then she missed me, and called. He made a kind of despairing gesture, raising his hand Spanish fashion to his lips, as if to say good-night. You'll think me bold, Dick, but I was so anxious to know what it all meant, that I gave a glance behind to see if Aunty was following, before I should go right up to him and demand an explanation. But when I faced round again, he was gone! I walked up and down the lane and out on the plain nearly half an hour, seeking him. It was strange, I know; but I was not a bit FRIGHTENED, Dick--that was so queer--but I was only amazed and curious.”

The look of spiritual terror in Dick's face here seemed to give way to a less exalted disturbance, as he fixed his eyes on Cecily's.

“You remember I met YOU coming in: you seemed so queer then that I did not say anything to you, for I thought you would laugh at me, or reproach me for my boldness; and I thought, Dick, that--that--that--this person wished to speak only to ME.” She hesitated.

“Go on,” said Dick, in a voice that had also undergone a singular change.

The chestnut head was bent a little lower, as the young girl nervously twisted her fingers in her lap.

“Then I saw him again--and--again,” she went on hesitatingly. “Of course I spoke to him, to--to--find out what he wanted; but you know, Dick, I cannot speak Spanish, and of course he didn't understand me, and didn't reply.”

“But his manner, his appearance, gave you some idea of his meaning?” said Dick suddenly.

Cecily's head drooped a little lower. “I thought--that is, I fancied I knew what he meant.”

“No doubt,” said Dick, in a voice which, but for the superstitious horror of the situation, might have impressed a casual listener as indicating a trace of human irony.

But Cecily did not seem to notice it. “Perhaps I was excited that night, perhaps I was bolder because I knew you were near me; but I went up to him and touched him! And then, Dick!--oh, Dick! think how awful--”

Again Dick felt the thrill of superstitious terror creep over him. “And he vanished!” he said hoarsely.

“No--not at once,” stammered Cecily, with her head almost buried in her lap; “for he--he--he took me in his arms and--”

“And kissed you?” said Dick, springing to his feet, with every trace of his superstitious agony gone from his indignant face. But Cecily, without raising her head, caught at his gesticulating hand.

“Oh, Dick, Dick! do you think he really did it? The horror of it, Dick! to be kissed by a--a--man who has been dead a hundred years!”

“A hundred fiddlesticks!” said Dick furiously. “We have been deceived! No,” he stammered, “I mean YOU have been deceived--insulted!”

“Hush! Aunty will hear you,” murmured the girl despairingly.

Dick, who had thrown away his cousin's hand, caught it again, and dragged her along the aisle of light to the window. The moon shone upon his flushed and angry face.

“Listen!” he said; “you have been fooled, tricked--infamously tricked by these people, and some confederate, whom--whom I shall horsewhip if I catch. The whole story is a lie!”

“But you looked as if you believed it--about the girl,” said Cecily; “you acted so strangely. I even thought, Dick,--sometimes--you had seen HIM.”

Dick shuddered, trembled; but it is to be feared that the lower, more natural human element in him triumphed.

“Nonsense!” he stammered; “the girl was a foolish farrago of absurdities, improbable on the face of things, and impossible to prove. But that infernal, sneaking rascal was flesh and blood.”

It seemed to him to relieve the situation and establish his own sanity to combat one illusion with another. Cecily had already been deceived--another lie wouldn't hurt her. But, strangely enough, he was satisfied that Cecily's visitant was real, although he still had doubts about his own.

“Then you think, Dick, it was actually some real man?” she said piteously. “Oh, Dick, I have been so foolish!”

Foolish she no doubt had been; pretty she certainly was, sitting there in her loosened hair, and pathetic, appealing earnestness. Surely the ghostly Rosita's glances were never so pleading as these actual honest eyes behind their curving lashes. Dick felt a strange, new-born sympathy of suffering, mingled tantalizingly with a new doubt and jealousy, that was human and stimulating.

“Oh, Dick, what are WE to do?”

The plural struck him as deliciously sweet and subtle. Had they really been singled out for this strange experience, or still stranger hallucination? His arm crept around her; she gently withdrew from it.

“I must go now,” she murmured; “but I couldn't sleep until I told you all. You know, Dick, I have no one else to come to, and it seemed to me that YOU ought to know it first. I feel better for telling you. You will tell me to-morrow what you think we ought to do.”

They reached the door, opening it softly. She lingered for a moment on the threshold.

“Tell me, Dick” (she hesitated), “if that--that really were a spirit, and not a real man,--you don't think that--that kiss” (she shuddered) “could do me harm!”

He shuddered too, with a strange and sympathetic consciousness that, happily, she did not even suspect. But he quickly recovered himself and said, with something of bitterness in his voice, “I should be more afraid if it really were a man.”

“Oh, thank you, Dick!”

Her lips parted in a smile of relief; the color came faintly back to her cheek.

A wild thought crossed his fancy that seemed an inspiration. They would share the risks alike. He leaned towards her: their lips met in their first kiss.

“Oh, Dick!”

“Dearest!”

“I think--we are saved.”

“Why?”

“It wasn't at all like that.”

He smiled as she flew swiftly down the corridor. Perhaps he thought so too.

*****

No picture of the alleged Rosita was ever found. Dona Felipa, when the story was again referred to, smiled discreetly, but was apparently too preoccupied with the return of Don Jose's absent nephew for further gossiping visits to the hacienda; and Dick and Cecily, as Mr. and Mrs. Bracy, would seem to have survived--if they never really solved--the mystery of the Hacienda de los Osos. Yet in the month of June, when the moon is high, one does not sit on the stone bench in the rose garden after the last stroke of the Angelus.

CHU CHU.

I do not believe that the most enthusiastic lover of that “useful and noble animal,” the horse, will claim for him the charm of geniality, humor, or expansive confidence. Any creature who will not look you squarely in the eye--whose only oblique glances are inspired by fear, distrust, or a view to attack; who has no way of returning caresses, and whose favorite expression is one of head-lifting disdain, may be “noble” or “useful,” but can be hardly said to add to the gayety of nations. Indeed it may be broadly stated that, with the single exception of gold-fish, of all animals kept for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of exciting a passion that shall be absolutely hopeless. I deem these general remarks necessary to prove that my unreciprocated affection for “Chu Chu” was not purely individual or singular. And I may add that to these general characteristics she brought the waywardness of her capricious sex.

She came to me out of the rolling dust of an emigrant wagon, behind whose tailboard she was gravely trotting. She was a half-broken colt--in which character she had at different times unseated everybody in the train--and, although covered with dust, she had a beautiful coat, and the most lambent gazelle-like eyes I had ever seen. I think she kept these latter organs purely for ornament--apparently looking at things with her nose, her sensitive ears, and, sometimes, even a slight lifting of her slim near fore-leg. On our first interview I thought she favored me with a coy glance, but as it was accompanied by an irrelevant “Look out!” from her owner, the teamster, I was not certain. I only know that after some conversation, a good deal of mental reservation, and the disbursement of considerable coin, I found myself standing in the dust of the departing emigrant-wagon with one end of a forty-foot riata in my hand, and Chu Chu at the other.

I pulled invitingly at my own end, and even advanced a step or two towards her. She then broke into a long disdainful pace, and began to circle round me at the extreme limit of her tether. I stood admiring her free action for some moments--not always turning with her, which was tiring--until I found that she was gradually winding herself up ON ME! Her frantic astonishment when she suddenly found herself thus brought up against me was one of the most remarkable things I ever saw, and nearly took me off my legs. Then when she had pulled against the riata until her narrow head and prettily arched neck were on a perfectly straight line with it, she as suddenly slackened the tension and condescended to follow me, at an angle of her own choosing. Sometimes it was on one side of me, sometimes on the other. Even then the sense of my dreadful contiguity apparently would come upon her like a fresh discovery, and she would become hysterical. But I do not think that she really SAW me. She looked at the riata and sniffed it disparagingly, she pawed some pebbles that were near me tentatively with her small hoof; she started back with a Robinson Crusoe-like horror of my footprints in the wet gully, but my actual personal presence she ignored. She would sometimes pause, with her head thoughtfully between her fore-legs, and apparently say: “There is some extraordinary presence here: animal, vegetable, or mineral--I can't make out which--but it's not good to eat, and I loathe and detest it.”

When I reached my house in the suburbs, before entering the “fifty vara” lot inclosure, I deemed it prudent to leave her outside while I informed the household of my purchase; and with this object I tethered her by the long riata to a solitary sycamore which stood in the centre of the road, the crossing of two frequented thoroughfares. It was not long, however, before I was interrupted by shouts and screams from that vicinity, and on returning thither I found that Chu Chu, with the assistance of her riata, had securely wound up two of my neighbors to the tree, where they presented the appearance of early Christian martyrs. When I released them it appeared that they had been attracted by Chu Chu's graces, and had offered her overtures of affection, to which she had characteristically rotated with this miserable result. I led her, with some difficulty, warily keeping clear of the riata, to the inclosure, from whose fence I had previously removed several bars. Although the space was wide enough to have admitted a troop of cavalry she affected not to notice it, and managed to kick away part of another section on entering. She resisted the stable for some time, but after carefully examining it with her hoofs, and an affectedly meek outstretching of her nose, she consented to recognize some oats in the feed-box--without looking at them--and was formally installed. All this while she had resolutely ignored my presence. As I stood watching her she suddenly stopped eating; the same reflective look came over her. “Surely I am not mistaken, but that same obnoxious creature is somewhere about here!” she seemed to say, and shivered at the possibility.

It was probably this which made me confide my unreciprocated affection to one of my neighbors--a man supposed to be an authority on horses, and particularly of that wild species to which Chu Chu belonged. It was he who, leaning over the edge of the stall where she was complacently and, as usual, obliviously munching, absolutely dared to toy with a pet lock of hair which she wore over the pretty star on her forehead. “Ye see, captain,” he said with jaunty easiness, “hosses is like wimmen; ye don't want ter use any standoffishness or shyness with THEM; a stiddy but keerless sort o' familiarity, a kind o' free but firm handlin', jess like this, to let her see who's master”--

We never clearly knew HOW it happened; but when I picked up my neighbor from the doorway, amid the broken splinters of the stall rail, and a quantity of oats that mysteriously filled his hair and pockets, Chu Chu was found to have faced around the other way, and was contemplating her forelegs, with her hind ones in the other stall. My neighbor spoke of damages while he was in the stall, and of physical coercion when he was out of it again. But here Chu Chu, in some marvelous way, righted herself, and my neighbor departed hurriedly with a brimless hat and an unfinished sentence.

My next intermediary was Enriquez Saltello--a youth of my own age, and the brother of Consuelo Saltello, whom I adored. As a Spanish Californian he was presumed, on account of Chu Chu's half-Spanish origin, to have superior knowledge of her character, and I even vaguely believed that his language and accent would fall familiarly on her ear. There was the drawback, however, that he always preferred to talk in a marvelous English, combining Castilian precision with what he fondly believed to be Californian slang.

“To confer then as to thees horse, which is not--observe me--a Mexican plug! Ah, no! you can your boots bet on that. She is of Castilian stock--believe me and strike me dead! I will myself at different times overlook and affront her in the stable, examine her as to the assault, and why she should do thees thing. When she is of the exercise I will also accost and restrain her. Remain tranquil, my friend! When a few days shall pass much shall be changed, and she will be as another. Trust your oncle to do thees thing! Comprehend me? Everything shall be lovely, and the goose hang high!”

Conformably with this he “overlooked” her the next day, with a cigarette between his yellow-stained finger-tips, which made her sneeze in a silent pantomimic way, and certain Spanish blandishments of speech which she received with more complacency. But I don't think she ever even looked at him. In vain he protested that she was the “dearest” and “littlest” of his “little loves”--in vain he asserted that she was his patron saint, and that it was his soul's delight to pray to her; she accepted the compliment with her eyes fixed upon the manger. When he had exhausted his whole stock of endearing diminutives, adding a few playful and more audacious sallies, she remained with her head down, as if inclined to meditate upon them. This he declared was at least an improvement on her former performances. It may have been my own jealousy, but I fancied she was only saying to herself, “Gracious! can there be TWO of them?”