Читать книгу Chata and Chinita - Laura Preston - Страница 17

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Years passed. The nine days’ feast of the Blessed Virgin, one of the most charming of all the year, was being celebrated with unusual pomp in the church at Tres Hermanos. Since the death of Padre Francisco, no priest had been regularly stationed there; but at the expense of Doña Isabel, one had been sent there to remain through the nine days sacred to Mary, and the people gave their whole time to devotional exercises, much to the neglect of the usual hacienda work. The crops in the fields were untended, while the men crowded to Mass in the morning, and spent their afternoons at the tavern-shop playing monté and drinking pulque; while the women and children streamed in and out of the church,—the women to witness the offering of flowers upon the altar, the children to lay them there, happy once in the year to be chief in the service of the beautiful Queen of Heaven. For though the image above the altar was blackened by time and defaced by many a scar, the robes were brilliant, and glittered with variously colored jewels of glass; the crown was untarnished, and the little yellow babe in the mother’s arms appealed to the strong maternal sentiment which lies deep in the heart of every Mexican woman.

Upon the first day of the feast not one female child of the many who lived within the hacienda limits was absent from the church; and they were so many that the proud mothers, who had spent no little of their time and substance in arraying them, were fain to crowd the aisles and doorways, or stand craning their necks without, hoping to catch a glimpse of the high altar, as the crowd surged to and fro, making way for the tiny representatives of womanhood, who claimed right of entrance from their very powerlessness and innocence. Quaint and ludicrous looked these little creatures, mincing daintily into the church, their wide-spread crinolines expanding skirts stiffly starched, and rustling audibly under brilliant tunics of flowered muslin or purple and green stuffs. These dresses were an exact imitation in material and style of the gala attire of the mothers. The full skirts swept the ground, and over the curiously embroidered linen chemise which formed the bodice was thrown the ever-present reboso, or scarf of shimmering tints. The well-oiled black locks of these miniature rancheras were drawn back tightly from the low foreheads,—the long, smooth braids fastened and adorned by knots of bright ribbon, and crowned with flowers of domestic manufacture, their glaring hues and fantastic shapes contrasting strangely with the masses of beauty and fragrance that each child clasped to her bosom. In spite of its incongruities, a fantastic and pleasant sight was offered; and Doña Rita, looking around her with the eye of a devotee, doubted whether any more pleasing could be devised for God or man.

Within the sacred walls of her temple at least, the Church of Rome is consistent in declaring that in her eyes her children are all equal; and upon that springtime afternoon at Tres Hermanos, among a throng of plebeian children from the village, knelt the daughters of the administrador; and side by side were Doña Rita and a woman from whose contact, as she met her on the court the day before, she had drawn back her skirt, lest it should be polluted by the mere touch of so foul a creature.

Rosario and Chata (as Florentina was so constantly called that her baptismal name was almost unknown) had already laid their wreaths of pink Castillian roses upon the altar, and were demurely telling their beads, when a startling vision passed them.

It was Chinita, literally begarlanded with flowers,—wild-roses, pale and delicate, long tendrils of jessamine, and masses of faint yellow cups of the cactus, and scarlet verbenas, dusty and coarse, yet offering a dazzling contrast of color to the snowy pyramid of lily-shaped blossoms, hacked from the summit of a palm, which she bore proudly upon one shoulder; while from the other hung her blue reboso in the guise of a bag filled with ferns and grasses brought from coverts few others knew of. The flowers made a glorious display as they were laid about the altar, for there was not room for half upon it. The breath of the fields and woodlands rushed over the church, almost overpowering the smell of the incense, and there were smiles on many faces and wide-eyed glances of admiration and surprise as Chinita descended to take her place among the congregation.

Five Mays had come and gone since she had stood under the fateful tree, and given the jet amulet to the cavalier who had so roused and fascinated her imagination; but whatever may have been its effect upon its new possessor, its loss had certainly wrought no ill upon Chinita. Though not yet fourteen years of age, she was fast attaining the development of womanhood, and her mind as well as person showed a rare precocity even in that land where the change from childhood to womanhood seems almost instantaneous. But there was no coyness, as there was no assumption of womanly ways in this tall, straight young creature, whose only toil was to carry the water-jar from the fountain to Florencia’s hut, perhaps twice in the day,—and who did it sometimes laughingly, sometimes grudgingly as the humor seized her, but always spilling half the burden with which she left the fountain before she lifted it from her shoulder and set it in the hollow worn in the mud floor of the hut, escaping with a laugh from Florencia’s scolding, and hurrying out to her old pursuits, now grown more various, more daring, more perplexing, more vexatious to all with whom she came in contact.

A thousand times had it been upon the lips of Doña Rita to forbid the entrance in her house of the foundling to distract the minds of Rosario and Chata by her wild pranks; but aside from the fact that Doña Rita was of a constitutionally indolent nature, averse even to the use of many words and still more to energetic action, the child was a constant source of interest. She carried into the quiet rooms a sense of freedom and expansion, as though she brought with her the breezes and sunlight in which she delighted to wander. She had too a powerful ally in Doña Feliz, who kept a watchful eye upon her; and though she never, like her daughter-in-law or the children, made a pet and plaything of the waif, yet she was always the first to notice if she looked less well than usual, or to set Pedro on his guard if her wanderings were too far afield, or her absences too long.

Upon this day as Chinita turned from the altar, while others smiled, a frown contracted the brow of Doña Feliz, as for the first time perhaps she realized that this gypsy-like child was in physique a woman. She had chosen to wear a dress of bright green woollen stuff,—far from becoming to the olive tint of her skin, but by some accident cut to fit the lithe figure which already outlined, though imperfectly, the graces of early womanhood. The short armless jacket was fashioned after the child’s own fancy, and opened over a chemise which was a mass of drawn work and embroidery; her skirts outspread all others, yet the flowing drapery could not wholly conceal the small brown feet which, as the custom was, were stockingless and cased in heelless slippers of some fine black stuff,—more an ornament than a protection. But Chinita’s crowning glory were the rows of many-colored worthless glass beads, mingled with strings of corals and dark and irregular pearls, that hung around her neck and festooned the front of her jacket. This dazzling vision, with the inevitable soiled reboso thrown lightly over one shoulder, came down from the altar and through the aisle of the church, smiling in supreme content, not because of the glorious tribute of flowers she had plucked and offered, nor with pride at her own appearance, gorgeous as she believed it to be, but because of the delightful effect she supposed both would leave on her aristocratic playmates; and much amazed was she as she neared them to see Chata’s expressive nose assume an elevation of unapproachable dignity, while Rosario’s indignation took the form of an aggressive pinch, so deftly given that Chinita’s shrill interjection seemed as unaccountable as the glory of her apparel.

Chinita in some consternation sank on her knees, her green skirt rising in folds around her, reminding Chata irresistibly of a huge butterfly which she had that very morning seen settle upon a verdant pomegranate bush. How she longed to extinguish Chinita’s glories as she had done those of the insect, by a cast of her reboso. There was no malice in her thought, though perhaps a trifle of envy, for she too loved brilliant colors. She could not restrain a titter as she thought what Chinita’s vexation would be; and with a face glowing with anger and eyes filled with reproach, Pedro’s foster-child sailed haughtily past the sisters while the untrained choir were singing hymns of rejoicing, with that inimitable undertone of pathos natural in the voices of the Aztecs, and the censers of incense were still swinging, and left the church,—longing to rush back and to trample under foot the flowers she had so joyously gathered, longing to tear off the fine clothes and adornments she had so proudly donned. She pushed angrily past a peasant boy in tattered cotton garments and coarse sombrero of woven grass, who was the slave of her caprices, who had toiled in her service all day and upon whom she had smiled when she entered the church, yet whom she now thrust aside in rage as she left it, with a “Out of my way, stupid! What art thou staring at? Thou art like blind Tomas, with his eyes open all day long, yet seeing nothing.”

“A pretty one thou,” cried the boy, angrily. “Dost suppose I am a rabbit, to care for nothing but green? Bah! thou art uglier in thy gay skirts than in thy old ones of red-and-white flannel!”

But the girl had not lingered to listen to his taunts. She flew rather than ran to her hut, which on account of the service in the church was deserted. A crowd of ragged urchins who had taken up the cry of her flouted swain, followed her, jeering and hooting, to the door which she slammed in their faces. Not that they bore her any ill will; but the sight of Chinita in her fine clothes, ruffling and fluttering like an enraged peacock, was irresistibly exciting to the youths whom her lofty disdain usually held in the cowed and submissive state of awe-stricken admiration.

Chinita, scarcely understanding her own miserable disappointment and anger, began to disembarrass herself of her finery, flinging each article from her with contempt, until she stood in the coarse red white-spotted skirt, with a broad band of light green above the hips,—which formed her ordinary apparel. As she stood panting, two great tears rolling down her cheeks and two others as large hanging upon her long, black lashes, she saw the door gently pushed open and before, with an angry exclamation, she could reach it, a little brown head was thrust in.

“Go away!” cried Chinita, imperatively. “Thou hast been told not to come here. Thy mother will have thee whipped, and I shall be glad, and I will laugh! yes, I will laugh and laugh!” and she proceeded to do so sardonically on the instant, gazing down with a glance of contemptuous fury, which for the moment was tragically genuine, upon the little brown countenance lifted to her own somewhat apprehensively, yet with a mischievous daring in the dark eyes that lighted it.

Chinita, with a child’s freedom and in the forgetfulness of anger, had used the “thou” of equality in addressing her visitor; yet so natural and irresistible are class distinctions in Mexico, that she held open the door with some deference for the daughter of the administrador to enter, and caught up her scarf to throw over her head and bare shoulders, as was but seemly in the presence of a superior however young. That done, however, they were but two children together, two wilful playmates for the moment at variance.

“Now, then! Be not angry, Chinita!” laughed Chata, looking around her with great satisfaction. “What good fortune that thou art here alone! I slipped by the gate when Pedro was busy talking, and Rosario was making my mother and mamagrande to fear dying of laughter by mimicking thee, Chinita; and so they never missed me when I darted away to seek thee, Sanchica.”

“And thou hadst better go back,” cried Chinita, grimly, more piqued at being the cause of laughter than pleased at Chata’s penetration; for in choosing her green gown she had had in her mind the habit of green cloth sent by the Duchess to Sancho Panza’s rustic daughter, and had teased and wheedled Pedro into buying her holiday dress of that color,—because when they were reading the story together Chata had called her Sanchica and herself the Duchess, and for many a day they had acted together such a little comedy as even Cervantes never dreamed of, in which they had seemed to live in quite another world than that actually around them. The tale of the “Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance” was a strange text-book for children; yet in it they had contrived to put together the letters learned in the breviary, and with their two heads close bent over the page, these two, as years passed on, had spelled out first the story, then later an inkling of the wit, the fancy, the philosophy which lay deep between the two leathern covers that inclosed the entire secular literature that the house of Don Rafael afforded.

There were, indeed, shelves of quaint volumes in the darkened rooms into which Chata sometimes peeped when Doña Feliz left a door ajar; but so great was her awe that she would not have disturbed an atom of dust, and scarce dared to breathe lest the deep stillness of those dusky rooms should be broken by ghostly voices. But Chinita, less scrupulous, had more than once, quite unsuspected, passed what were to her delightful though grewsome hours in those echoing shades, and with the bare data of a few names had repeopled them in imagination with those long dead and gone, as well as with the figure of that stately Doña Isabel, who still lived in some far-off city,—mourning rebelliously, it was whispered, over the beautiful daughter shut from her sight by the walls of a convent, yet who with seemingly pitiless indifference had consigned the equally beautiful younger Carmen to a loveless marriage; for the latter had married an elderly widower, and who could believe it might be from choice? Chinita heard perhaps more of these things than any one, for she was free to run in and out of every hut, as well as the house of the administrador; and with her quick intelligence, her lively imagination, and that faculty which with one drop of Indian blood seems to pervade the entire being,—the faculty of astute and silent assimilation of every glance and hint,—she was in her apparent ignorance and childishness storing thoughts and preparing deductions, which lay as deep from any human eye as the volcanic fires that in the depths of some vine-clad mountain may at any moment burst forth, to amaze and terrify and overwhelm.

But Chinita was brooding over no secret thoughts as she began to smile, though unwillingly and half wrathfully, as Chata eagerly declared how well the green dress had transformed her into a veritable Sanchica, and how stupid she herself had been not to guess from the first what her clever playmate had meant; then she laughed again as she thought of the billowy green in which Chinita had knelt, and the half-appeased masquerader was vexed anew, and sat sullenly on the edge of the adobe shelf that served as a bedstead, and tugged viciously at the knots of ribbon in the rebellious hair which she had vainly striven to confine in seemly tresses. She shook back the wild locks, which once free sprang into a thousand rings and tendrils, and looking at Chata irefully from between them, exclaimed,—

“You laugh at me always! You are a baby; you read in the book, and yet you know nothing. If I were rich like you, I would not be silent and puny and weak as you are. I would be strong and beautiful, and a woman as Rosario is; and I would know everything,—yes, as much as the Padre Comacho, and more; and I would be great and proud, as they say the Señora Doña Isabel is!”

“But,” cried Chata, flushing with astonishment and some anger, “how can I be beautiful and strong and like a grown woman at will? My grandmother says it is well I am still a child, while Rosario is almost a woman; and I do not mind being little, no, nor even that my nose turns back to run away, as you say, from my mouth every time I open it; but it is growing more courageous, I know,”—and she gave the doubtful member an encouraging pull. “I do not mind all this in the least, while my father and my grandmother love me; but my mother and you and every one else look only at Rosario, and talk only of her—” and her lip trembled.

“But do I talk to Rosario?” asked Chinita, much mollified. “Do I ever tell her my dreams, and all the fine things I see and hear, when I wander off in the fields and by the river, and up into the dark cañons of the hills? And,” she added in an eager whisper, “shall I ever tell her about the American’s ghost when I see him?”

“Bah! you will never see him,” ejaculated Chata, contemptuously, though she glanced over her shoulder with a sudden start. “There is no such thing. I asked my grandmother about it yesterday, and she says it is all wicked nonsense. There could have been no American to be murdered, for she remembers nothing about it.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Chinita, significantly, and she laughed. “Then it is no use for me to tell you where he is buried. If there was no American, he could not have a grave.”

“Yet you have found it!” cried Chata, in intense excitement, for the story, more or less veracious, that had often been told her of the murder of the American years before, and the return of his ghost from time to time to haunt the spot accursed by his unavenged blood, had taken a strong hold upon her imagination. “Oh, Chinita! did you go, as you said you would, among the graves on the hillside? Did you go?”

“Why, yes, I did go,” answered Chinita, slowly, winding her arms around her knees, as she leaned from her high perch, her brown face almost touching that of the smaller child, who still stood before her. “But I sha’n’t tell you anything more, so you may as well go home. Ah, I think I hear them calling you,” and she straightened herself up as if to listen.

“No! no! no!” cried Chata in an agony of impatience, “I will not go till you tell me. I will know! Oh, Chinita, if I were but like you, and could run about at will, over the fields and up the hills!” The tears rose to her eyes as she spoke,—poor little captive, in her stolen moment of liberty feeling in her soul the iron of bondage to custom or necessity.

“Well, then,” said Chinita, deliberately, prolonging the impatience of her supplicant, while the tears in the dark gray eyes lifted to her own moved her, “I went through the cornfield. I drove Pepé back when he wanted to go with me. Oh, how afraid that big boy is of me! Yes, I went through the corn,—oh, it is so high, so high, I thought it was the very wood where Don Quixote and Sancho Panza met the robbers; but I was not afraid. And then I came to the beanfield, and oh, niña! I meant to go again this very day, and bring an armful of the sweet blossoms to Our Lady, and I forgot it!” clasping her hands penitently.

“And well for thee that thou didst,” exclaimed Chata, “or a pretty rating my father would have given thee! He says it is enough to make the Blessed Virgin vexed for a year to see the good food-blossoms wasted, when there are millions of flowers God only meant for her and the bees. But, Chinita, I would I were a bee, to make thee cry as I wish! Thou art slower than ever to-day. Tell me, tell me, what didst thou next?”

“Well, did I not tell you I came to the beanfield,—what should I do but go through it?” remonstrated Chinita; “and then I walked under the willows. Ah, if you could only once walk under the willows, niña! it is like heaven in the green shade by the clear water, and there are great brakes of rushes, with the birds skimming over them. I saw among them a stork standing on one leg, and he had in his mouth a little striped snake, yellow and scarlet and black, which so wriggled and twisted! Ah, and I saw, besides, little fish in the shallow water, and—”

Chata sighed. She had unconsciously sunk upon the mud floor; her eyes opened wide, as if in imagination she saw all those things of which, though she was set in the very heart of Nature, her bodily eyes had caught no glimpse. How in her heart of hearts the sheltered, cloistered daughter of the administrador envied the wild foster-child of the gate-keeper, who was so free, and from whom the woods and fields could keep no secrets! “Go on!” she whispered, and Chinita said, in a sort of recitative,—

“Yes, I went on and on, not very long by the water’s edge, though I loved it, but up the little path through the stones and the thorny cacti. Oh, but they were full of yellow blossoms, and they smelled so sweet; but they were full of prickles too, and as I went up the steep hillside they caught my reboso every minute, and when I stood among the graves my hands were tingling and smarting, and I was half blind and stumbling. I was so tired, oh, so tired! and I sat down and rubbed my hands in the sand. It was very still there; it seemed to me that a little wind was always singing, but perhaps it was the dry grass rustling; but as I bent down to listen, I fell asleep, and when I woke up the sun was no higher in the sky than the width of my hand, and I had no time to look for anything.”

“Ah, stupid creature!” cried Chata, after a moment’s silent disappointment. “Why did you not tell me so before? I must be missed. I shall be scolded,” and in a sudden panic she rose to her feet and turned to the door.

“Stay! stay!” cried Chinita, eager to give her news, as she saw Chata about to fly. “Though I did not look, I found something. Oh, yes, in black letters, so big and clear!”

Chata returned precipitately. “Letters—what letters?” she cried.

“Big black letters, J and U and A and N; and the letters for the American name—how do they say it? Ash— Yes, Ashley—it is not hard—and that he was born in the United States, and murdered here in May,—yes, I forget the figures, but I counted up; it was just fourteen years ago, upon the 13th of this very month. It was all written out upon a little wooden cross, which had fallen face down upon the grave I fell asleep upon. I might have looked for it a hundred years and not have found it, but I had scraped away the sand from it to rub my hands. It is thick and heavy; I could scarcely turn it over to read the words,—but they are there. You may tell Doña Feliz there was an American.”

“No, I shall say nothing,” said Chata, dreamily. “She likes not to hear of murder or of ghosts. Ah, the poor American! why does his spirit stay here? This is not purgatory. Ah, can it be he cannot rest because he died upon the 13th?—the unlucky number, my mother says.”

“Let us make it lucky,” said Chinita, daringly. “Let us say thirteen Aves and thirteen Pater Nosters for his soul.”

But Chata shook her head doubtfully, and started violently as a servant maid, grimy and ragged like all her clan, and panting with haste, thrust open the door, exclaiming,—

“Niña of my soul, your lady mother declares you are dead. Doña Feliz has searched all the house, and is wringing her hands with grief. Don Rafael has seized Pedro by the collar, and is mad with rage because he swears you have not passed the gate; and here I find you, with your white frock all stained with dirt, and that beggar brat filling your ears with her mad tales. The Saints defend us! Sometime the witch will fly off—as she came—no one knows where. But you, niña, come, come away!” and the excited woman dragged the truant reluctantly away; while Chinita, thrusting her tongue into her cheek, received the epithets of “beggar brat” and “witch” with a contempt which the gesture only, rather than any words, fluent as she was in plebeian repartee, could at that moment adequately express.