Chapter II: The Serpent Strikes

As in its last outburst a dying volcano is said to vomit forth its hottest flow of lava, so did the perfervid words pour from the lips of Vargas. But the malevolence and implacable hate revealed in the man's look and tone, in the bitter denunciation of his utterance, were so intense that the scene amounted at times to an almost unendurable ordeal.

The tale he unfolded was one of wrong and betrayal, of a heartlessness unbelievable, and it was plain that years of brooding had made of revenge an obsession, a fixed idea that gave him the cunning to work out his ends, patience to abide his opportunity, ingenuity in concealing his identity and purpose, truly marvellous.

"Years ago," his story began, after an outburst that left him nearly exhausted, "my father, my mother, my sister, and I lived in Seville. There it was that I was born; so you see, señores, I am not of Mexico, but of Spain. There it was that I was happy, though cruelly poor. I was young and strong, and from a small lad up to manhood I was ever working to perfect myself in all the tricks of a juggler's calling. Ah, señores, I made an art of it. At one time I, Fernando del Castillo, was the greatest, the most adept juggler in the whole of Europe. There is none who knew me then that will deny it. But it came natural to me, señores; even before I was twenty I excelled them all, just as my sister, the little Paquita, the sunshine and gladness of my father's house, was more beautiful, more graceful, and lighter of foot--ah, such a tiny foot it was!--than any woman within the length and breadth of Spain.

"Señores, it is her brother who is telling the tale; he loved her with a tenderness beyond the power of words to express. But you should have beheld her in those days: beautiful--beautiful she was, her voice like a bird's for very sweetness; and there was none who could make such a living, breathing poem of a _tango_ or a _joto_; none who could glance at you with such sparkling eyes, firing the blood and the brain like old wine; none that could flash such pearly teeth between such coaxing lips--lips like the soft petals of a crimson rose. It was her fame that spread beyond Seville to Madrid, and even to Paris.

"In Paris the fame of Paquita and Fernando--for so were we known--was on every tongue. God knows she was innocent enough then, and content with the love and companionship of her brother. God knows that in those days we were sufficient each unto the other, and happy, señores--happy....

"But it ended."

De Sanchez, at that time attending college in Paris, on the strength of his knowledge of Castillo's uncle, Don Juan Sebastian del Castillo, attained an intimacy with Paquita and Fernando that led to disaster for the girl. Don Juan had long been a resident of Mexico, and was a man of wealth and affairs.

"There was a certain dance of my sister's," said Vargas,--or Castillo, to give him his proper name,--"that always held the audience spellbound. It was of her own devising; born of her warm Southern blood and her romantic heart. Ah, señores, it was a thing of beauty--a perfect treasure of art. With the lithe movements of her dainty body, the dropping of her lashes, the flashing of her starlike eyes, the curving of her ripe, crimson lips--either in a smile of witchery or of scorn and disdain,--she told a tale of love and disappointment, of betrayal and revenge. Truly was it inspired of the evil that later was to befall herself.

"When, at the end, she would flash a dagger from her garter with the swiftness of a serpent darting from its coil, the audience would rise to her and cry 'Brava!' until the walls reverberated. Ah, it was marvellous! Is it strange that I adored her?

"Upon the very night, señores, that she innocently revealed her love for De Sanchez, he brought to her a dagger. Many days passed before I knew of this, because, for the first time, I was not remembered with a gift also.

"'_Paquita mia!_' I cried, holding the pretty toy in my hand, '_Paquita mia_, how could you do me, your brother, this cruel wrong?'"

"'He loves me,' she whispered, for the first time in her life not daring to look me in the eyes.

"'Loves you!' I cried. 'Have I not loved you since the day you were born?' And right there, señores, the first great lesson of this life came to me. For the first time there was no response in her bosom to the emotion in my own--to the yearning of my heart--and I became faint, my spirit sick.

"'I love him,' she gasped, faintly, her hand on her heart, and bending her head still lower.

"'O Paquita! Paquita!' was all that I could say in my sorrow. 'Love him? This is madness. Behold, you are unhappy even now, and never before this hour has a shadow of sorrow fallen between you and me.'

"'This is different,' she murmured, her head still bowed, her hand still striving to restrain the wild beating of her heart. 'We are to be wed.'

"As I was turning to leave her, she suddenly burst into tears and threw herself upon my breast. 'Oh, you are wrong! You are wrong!' she cried, looking for the first time into my eyes, but through tears, devouring my doubts in the fire of her passion. Señores, think of a joy drowned in tears! 'O my brother,' she cried, 'you are wrong, for I was never so happy in my life! I love him! I love him! Say that you are not angry; say that you love me, too; tell me that you will never leave me; for I am afraid.' And she clung to me with a wild strength that you will not believe.

"It was not long after that night that I learned the whole story.

"'When next you dance,' said De Sanchez, as he handed her the dagger, 'wear this token of my love for you.'

"'And do you love me?' she replied, seeking to read through his black eyes the blacker soul behind.

"'Here is a symbol of the True Cross,' he said, placing his hand upon the cross of the dagger's hilt, and upon her hand; 'let it be the emblem of our faith, each in the other's love.'

"'And here is the sharpness of a serpent's tooth,' she said, placing a little finger-tip upon the dagger's point; for you see--God help her!--deep in her heart she mistrusted him at that moment, and did not know it.

"'May it sting me to death if I am not forever true to you,' he uttered solemnly, before she could finish.

"Again she strove to search his soul.

"'My ears never weary of it,' she said; 'once more, do you love me?'

"'Once more, my Paquita, life of my life, soul of my soul. Once more, if my heart is ever false to you may this token of our troth still it forever.'"

So a mockery of a ceremony led to five short months of almost delirious happiness, and then--

"Then, hear!" gasped the dying man. "In five short months he tired of her, my beautiful one; he laughed at her and the babe unborn when she called him husband; and there was another woman--a woman of Paris....

"Is it not enough that he had won her heart, then thrown it torn and bleeding into the dirt? Is it not enough that his every word had been false; that he had betrayed her; that he left her without a name for her child? Is it not enough that he had won God's own gift, the love of a pure woman, and that it was to him of such little value that he trampled it beneath his feet; that he made what was priceless a thing of no value--of mockery and derision? Yet all this he did; and can you believe me,--a man pleading with death to wait till he shall finish,--that this was not the worst? As I hope for mercy from the God I am about to face; as I hope for the intercession of the Virgin Mother, it is not!"

After a daughter was born to the luckless dancer, the brother and sister began a wandering that carried them through many lands. Always before them, like an evil star, gleamed the compelling idea, revenge; and after more than a decade it guided them to Mexico, where De Sanchez and General Westbrook were conducting a banking business. They learned that their uncle there had died more than a year previous to their arrival, and that his property had been entirely dissipated in a series of disastrous investments covering a period of several years before his death. The banking concern of De Sanchez & Westbrook were the administrators of the Castillo estate.

"Then, señores, almost without warning came the blackest time of all.

"Of a sudden, a scourge of smallpox fell upon the city, and in a day those who lived in the poorer quarter were dying like flies in a frost. My beloved sister was among the very first upon whom that horrible blight fastened, and she was sorely stricken.

"There is a period during those days that is lost from my recollection; my senses were dulled as by an opiate, and I can remember only a bit here and there, as one remembers parts of a nightmare. The sickness came so suddenly that I had no time to send the little Paquita away; but by the mercy of the Holy Mother did she escape the terrible evil that had laid its hand so sorely upon her mother.

"But my sister, señores! Steadily she grew worse; steadily she sank lower and lower; and one day--the day she was at her lowest--I gave to the doctor the last gold-piece.

"He would come no more.

"So I sat by my sister. In her madness she talked, now of the times when we were happy together; now of the times when Alberto de Sanchez, _el mas perfido_, came into her life. More often it was of him.

"_Asi_, as I sat, I was myself stricken; my head suddenly became heavy, and a pain as from a knife thrust seized upon my loins. I was giddy and weak; but at that moment I rose up and passed out of our house.

"Señores, you will not believe it of me--a dying man; but, I swear by the Virgin of Guadalupe, that what I now tell you is true. I forgot everything--everything but my present distress; and I went to seek aid for my sister of _los Señores_ de Sanchez and Westbrook, where they sat at ease in their banking-house. God, but I was desperate!

"I might have known how it would fall out. Had De Sanchez then shown a little tenderness, señores, a little compassion, a little remorse for the past, I might have forgiven him; but he merely stood silent, eyeing me sideways with an odd look.

"Of a sudden it came to an end. He grasped the Señor Westbrook's arm and drew him to the farthest corner of the room.

"'Back!' cried he, '_al instante_--immediately; this fellow is in the delirium of smallpox.'

"How I was thrust forth into the street, how a great night of forgetfulness closed down upon me, how I awoke many days later in the pest-camp, is not to be told by me.

"Now, señores, _oiga_--listen.

"While I lay in my sleep of forgetfulness, Paquita crept to where the gold and silver dagger was kept, and thrust it into her heart.

"So did it end for her.

"Certain poor women of the neighborhood tended my sister and cared for the little Paquita. These had once survived the smallpox, and they feared it not. Heaven give them many days to enjoy the life that I was afterwards able to make easier for them!

"By the hands of one of these the dagger came to me--all that I possessed in the world except the humble clothes upon my back, poor and much worn.

"I looked into a mirror, and I laughed, señores. I laughed the laugh of a man whose heart is dead. Then I threw my _serape_ over my shoulder and strode from the pest-camp.

"In the old days, señores, I was accounted a handsome man; I was vain and much of a dandy. My complexion was lighter than you see it now; there was a curl to my hair that I was proud of; my features were regular, and there was an erectness to my figure, a nimbleness in all my movements, and a suppleness that had followed naturally on the practice of my calling.

"Now, what I beheld in the mirror was a man altogether different, and I had no fear that any one might recognize me. I drew the dagger from my sash; I pressed my lips to the dark stains upon its silver blade.

"At that moment, señores, Fernando del Castillo died to the world; and Juan Sebastian de Vargas was born--bound irrevocably to a vow of vengeance."

After his return to the city Castillo sought out his niece. Let him speak again:

"'_Mi Paquita poco_,' said I, taking her sweet face between my hands--so--when she had come to know me for her uncle and the tears of her greeting were dry, '_Paquita mia_, henceforth, and in memory of the great sorrow that was thy mother's and mine, thou shalt be Dolores. May God and the Blessed Virgin ever fend you from the like!' And, repeating my vow inwardly as a prayer, I kissed her solemnly and departed, leaving her in the care of the women, who had come to love her as their own."

After pawning the dagger to an American dealer in curios, he departed for the mines. Thence onward his progress was marked by success from a worldly point of view, and he was soon able to establish intimate business relations with the object of his hatred. Two incidents marked his return to the city, both of which were destined to exercise a powerful influence over the future. One was the fact that the dealer with whom he had left the dagger as a pledge had departed, no one knew whither, and the dagger was not to be found; the other was the astonishing intelligence, acquired by an infinity of toil and patient waiting, that De Sanchez and General Westbrook were responsible for his uncle's bankruptcy. The General was straightway included in his hatred and scheme of vengeance.

But a controlling strain of fatalism and superstition in the man stayed his hand; he was convinced that his sister's dagger would come to him again; that its return would be the signal to strike; and he bided the time, watching De Sanchez as a cat might watch the mouse marked for its prey. With instinctive caution, though, Castillo had avoided General Westbrook, so the latter never became familiar with his presence and appearance. He continued:

"I gradually won the confidence of Alberto de Sanchez; soon we had immense interests in common--here--there--everywhere; and these, I always took care, should be profitable for him, even though I might lose thereby myself.

"But never, for some reason, could I gain his unreserved friendship, though I strove to that end daily. There was something intangible, unnamable, unseen by either of us, that ever stood between him and me, and this I could not overcome. Nothing could have surprised my mask of a face or my near-sighted eyes into betraying, by so much as would cover a needle's point, the seething fire of hate for this man that burned within; but as I watched him, unceasingly, I caught now and then a puzzled look in his eyes as they regarded Juan de Vargas--an expression in which there was something of fear; and I knew that he was reminded, in a dim way, of the evil he had done. There was something in my presence that made him ponder without understanding, and would not allow him to forget.

"In many ways Alberto de Sanchez, without knowing it, allowed to escape him that upon which his mind was turning when his brooding glance rested upon me. Once, at the organization of a mining company in which I then had some small interest, the question of a name arose. The Señor de Sanchez was regarding me with the wondering look that had become so familiar.

"'Paquita,' he said, half aloud, as one musing, 'The Paquita Gold Mining and Milling Company.' And I, señores--I perforce led the laugh that followed, the while my fingers twitched for his throat.

"What emotions stirred uneasily in that dark bosom, señores? _Quien sabe?_"

During this time General Westbrook was usually in the United States. On one occasion Joyce accompanied him to Mexico, and De Sanchez fell madly in love with her.

"As you know," said Castillo, "the Señor Westbrook's one virtue was his regard for and pride in his family; for their sake had he resorted to infamy. He knew the Señor de Sanchez to be a rascal; he might do very well as a business associate; but deliver his cherished daughter into that rascal's possession? No. On the other hand, De Sanchez had that which could defeat the very object of the other's villany--knowledge of it. He had but to come forward with the proofs, and the proud General would be humbled to the dust; his name would become an execration on the lips of his friends; his fortune would be taken from him--all that for which he had stolen would be lost. However great as a soldier the Señor Westbrook might have been, he was a coward here; and De Sanchez was too cunning and shrewd a scoundrel to overlook this weak spot in striving for his ends. Fate had started this game of conflicting interests, and I had but to watch and encourage it. Of course, you would say, the Señor de Sanchez would have likewise ruined himself by such an exposure; but to such a madness was he driven, when the señorita was not immediately given to him, that I feared for a time he would destroy all.

"At last it fell out as you might expect; they quarrelled and severed their partnership. De Sanchez, still holding the threat over the other, accepted a compromise because he was made to see he had to. The Señor Westbrook pointed out that his daughter was too young; that while such a marriage might be popular enough in Mexico, it would precipitate nothing short of social disaster in the States. Such matters were regarded and arranged quite differently here: the señorita's wishes had to be considered; were the matter laid before her, she would develop a will of her own; and so, and so, until that son of a devil agreed to wait four years. At the end of that time he was to present himself to claim his bride, and she was to be prepared for the great event during the time of waiting. I believe the Señor Westbrook's life was embittered; I believe he said nothing of all this to his charming daughter; it is my idea that he attempted to put off the evil until the day thereof, hoping that time would deliver him from his trouble; and so he returned with the señorita to his own country, there to face as best he could the day when it should confront him.

"When the time had nearly passed, I cunningly laid my plans so that I could follow naturally the Señor de Sanchez when he went to your country. Dolores I brought with me privately, as you know, and lodged her and the woman who has tended her since her mother's death, here where I knew she would be well cared for. For her I had a particular task. Because of the blood that was in her veins--because she was the pledge of that wretched union--I intended that she should share in the revenge, though, for the sake of her future, innocently.

"I went with Alberto de Sanchez to the office of the Señor Doctor on a certain night, pondering, as I walked along, the progress of my companion's love affair, and knowing from his silence and his scowling brow--for we were alone together--that it was not to his liking.

"We went slowly down the hall leading to the Señor Doctor's apartment, and my heart leaped; something whispered in my brain, 'This is the place!' I must observe the doors, the windows, all the possibilities. This I did. We entered the apartment of the Señor Doctor.

"But where was the dagger?

"I should not have been astonished had it come floating down from the ceiling into my hand. My brain was like a theatre in which was being enacted all that happened seventeen years before, and still I was calm. In the other room, where the Doctor and the Señor de Sanchez were, I heard that which confirmed my suspicions concerning his love affair. Surely Alberto de Sanchez would never have the opportunity of wronging his sister as he had wronged mine. Then, señores, those two--deep in their own concerns--did not hear the cry that burst from my throat.

"There, before me on a table, half covered by a paper, lay something bright and shining; my eyes caught a glint of silver and gold.

"I tore the paper away and beheld--my sister's dagger!

"At last! At last! The blood sang in my veins for very joy. At last, Alberto de Sanchez--now that your time has come, laugh as you laughed in my sister's face! Spurn the blade from your throat as you spurned her helpless pleading! Flee from me, the avenger of many horrid wrongs, as you fled from the stricken girl! Ah, you cannot do it. Alberto de Sanchez, a hundred-fold accursed--son of hell--liar--betrayer of women--look! Your time has come--at last!

"Together, my Paquita and I had a trick with the knives that--even if it be I that say it--was wonderful to behold. It was our grand climax, and oh, the sensation it would create!--the astonishment of our audiences! You have seen it, but it was new in those days. _Pouf!_ 't was easy.

"Well, señores, the next evening after I had awaited Alberto de Sanchez's coming a sufficient time at the 'otel, I took up my stand at the entrance of the Field Building. I rolled a cigarette and lighted it, and as I tossed the match away, I saw him coming confidently as of old. God, how I hated him then!

"I walked leisurely up the Field Building stairway, knowing that I need not hurry, and down the hall to the window overlooking the--what you call the little space?--light-well? _Gracias_, señor. Not too close, for there might be some one to observe me at the other windows. Looking across the light-well, I could see the whole length of the other hall--that along which he was to approach me. Ah, how beautifully it was all arranged, for I was in darkness, while he would be in the light.

"So I stood there smoking my cigarette, one arm folded across my breast--so--the hand thereof resting on the dagger in my pocket--for I had taken it from the Señor Doctor's desk; and presently I saw a woman flit swiftly across the hall from the Señor Doctor's office and vanish. I had no time to wonder at this, for at the same instant I beheld Alberto de Sanchez appear at the head of the stairs and turn toward the Señor Doctor's office--toward me!

"Was there then a thought of Paquita--of Fernando del Castillo in his mind?

"Listen, and you shall judge.

"As he approached nearer and nearer, the light before the Señor Doctor's office shone with a growing brightness upon his handsome face; and presently I noted there the look of doubt, as though the soul were asking a question of his memory which it could not answer; the look with which he had ever regarded Juan Vargas.

"'When he stands beneath the light,' I whispered--'then!'

"Ah, and then!

"When he arrived beneath the light, I threw my cigarette out of the window, seized the dagger by its silver blade--as in the old days--and raised it above my head. Whether it was one or the other of these movements that caught his eye, I do not know. He was facing me then, and suddenly he looked at me. Ah, señores, it did my heart good to behold his expression change, even as I had often pictured it. His memory, at last, had given the soul its answer, and terror shone from his eyes--he recognized Fernando del Castillo in the avenging figure that confronted him.

"'Taking a step backward, so that my hand might not strike the sash of the window, I prayed, 'Soul of Paquita, strengthen my arm to avenge thee!'

"Then I threw the dagger....

"The hand of Alberto de Sanchez was raised as though to ward off the death now upon him; but the silver blade sped across the light-well like a lightning from the clouds; and even as I aimed it, so did it strike. I saw it sticking there; I saw the horror and the brilliance die suddenly from his eyes, like the turning down of a lamp; I saw his knees give way; he began to fall--and I knew that Alberto de Sanchez was a dead man.

"Truly had the serpent's tooth stung the lying betrayer; the false heart had been stilled forever by the symbol of its faithless love."