Читать книгу Sun in Their Eyes - Monte Barrett - Страница 8

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Teresa de Lerdo sat before the long gilt mirror and smiled at the contours of her figure in the glass as Maria patiently brushed her hair. The late afternoon sun flooding through the windows was captured in the burnished tresses. The fat servant smiled as she watched the light shimmer there. “Oro,” she murmured, and then added softly, “La del Pelo de Oro.” It was a blending of honest admiration and flattery. She was devoted to her mistress and took an almost sensual satisfaction from her beauty, and this found voice frequently in the phrase she knew pleased the girl most. “The Golden One,” she repeated.

Teresa stretched her slender arms, extending one into the beam of light, admiring its tawny color in the glow. “Por Dios!” she thought. “It is entrancing,” for she loved beauty, her own most of all.

This was one of the hours she enjoyed best. The scented bath was over, the room heavy with its fragrance, and Maria was busy about the pleasant chores of preparing her for the coming evening. Her wide topaz eyes now smiled at the seductive figure mirrored before her. She stretched a silk-covered leg also into the sunlight admiringly, and smiled as she saw in the mirror that Maria was watching.

“There is no other like it, Teté,” the serving woman said.

“My dress must be gorgeous, Maria, to make up for the enchantment it hides.” Her eyes reflected approval as they still surveyed the trim ankle. “The wench who invented skirts must have had pipestems for legs.”

The old woman made clucking noises in her throat. “You want to drive the men mad, little sweetheart? So much loveliness causes even an old woman to blush.” Teresa rewarded her servant with a smile. She never tired of such compliments. She drew the silken robe more tightly about her, admiring the way it outlined her figure. Truly, she was delectable, and where was the man who could resist her?

Jonathan Kirk! The pleasure faded from her face. What had happened to him? He had been completely at her feet. It had been fun to tantalize him. And more serious possibilities had occurred to her. He had position and wealth.

She glanced again into the mirror and frowned. Had he forgotten? Impossible! She hoped he would be at the ball. On the Trace he had amused her. There had been a little madness in her heart, too, but for her it was not a new experience. It might easily have passed. But not now. Indifference was a taunt she could not take.

“What is it, Teté?” Maria was quick to sense her mood.

“Nothing.”

“But you were frowning in the mirror. There is only beauty there, little sweetheart. It would bring delight to any lover’s face.” Maria’s eyes puckered slyly. “Is it the young Americano?”

“I haven’t seen him since we arrived here.”

The servant sighed. “He doesn’t deserve his luck but I can arrange it, Teté. It will be very discreet. José can carry a message....”

Teresa shook her head. “I’m no common trollop, to be won so cheaply.”

“Then what is it you want, Teté? Luxury you have. Jewels—silks—you take them for granted.”

Teresa’s words tinkled with mockery. “You know me better than that, Maria. We don’t have many secrets from each other. You know I’ve seen poverty such as you have never suffered.” A boasting note entered her voice. “Silks? I remember their first touch. I’ve come a long way up and I’ll go higher.”

She shrugged off the robe and stared appraisingly at her body. “I was as naked as this and a man wrapped his cloak about me. When I felt the caress of its lining against my skin, I knew I’d never go back to rags again. I never will, Maria. I never will.”

A long way up.... She stared with eyes grown moody into a past she wished it were possible to forget. Gone was the luxury of the room, vanished the silken robe, half-forgotten the servant who brushed her hair with patient care and nodded as Teresa’s words evoked picture after picture. She looked back into the single street of a squalid village in central Mexico named Motin, so called because of a mutiny that had occurred there many years before. The year was 1796, only sixteen years ago, but it seemed a lifetime. Dust swirled lazily between twin rows of adobe huts as a horde of half-clad children ran shouting down the street. The barking of half a hundred curs added to the din. They were a swarthy, sun-baked lot, their faces gleaming in the midday heat.

“La Guera!” shouted the leader and the pack at his heels took up the derisive cry. “La Guera! La Guera!” Ahead of the tumult raced a child of nine, her weedy body weaving to dodge the missiles, a sob choked back in her throat. A red welt on one white shoulder marked where a stone had struck. Tears had streaked their course on her pinched face, all eyes now in her panic. Pale, sun-bleached hair streamed raggedly behind her.

“La Guera! La Guera!” The hated cry dinned closer behind her. “The Pale one! The pale one!”

Not far away, hidden from the town’s dirty face behind a screen of kindly trees, a brook danced. Here the village women knelt, their laundry swimming whitely in the water. They were a sturdy lot, square-built for toil, with only here and there a pair of shoulders still slender with youth. All had been cast in the same mold, eyes as black as their hair, skin dark and cheekbones high.

The pale fugitive, still pursued by the uproar, darted down the bank seeking refuge among these women. A chorus of protest arose from the stream and its angry sound checked the riot. The ragtag mob of urchins retreated in search of other sport.

Chica Dominguez patted the tousled yellow head with a tender hand and the sounds in her throat were gentle. She was sorry about the child. The wan skin and colorless hair had set her apart always. Chica had felt a pleasant sort of pride in the curiosity the pale niña had aroused at first. The unconscious cruelty of children toward one set apart from them had not begun until later. Ana was as different from the others as daylight from dark, her lack of color as much a deformity in their eyes as if she had been a hunchback.

Ana was Chica’s first child. There were plenty of others now. Often she watched the pale one, a baffled look in her dark eyes, kindness in her heart but a slight resentment, too. Why had she been so different?

Once, when Chica was young and before toil had thickened her figure, the wind had whispered softly down the mountain, its breath scented with the fragrance of native flowers that sprinkled the high places still. Chica had been like an untamed nymph and graceful as one then, watching as the young Spaniard came riding up the valley. They both were as young as the season, with the April breeze quick in their veins. That was long ago and she had not seen him since. Even his memory was only a vagrant thing now which sometimes whispered across the years on an April night. Ana was the child of a lush spring breeze....

“Pobre niña!” Maria was staring into the past, too, the hairbrush idle in her hand, her chore forgotten.

But Teresa did not notice. She went on.

Ana was four years older now and taller. The pale hair, which she so resented, matched the cream of her skin gleaming where it peeked through the ragged frock. She sat on a rock warm in the sun and watched goats browsing on the hillside below. A bell echoed from the distant village and she started uneasily. It wasn’t a friendly sound to her. The solitude of the mountain was her refuge. Here there were no taunts. The goats were friendly, color-blind perhaps, for they appeared not to notice her yellow hair. She liked being a goatherd.

Pancho saw the goats first. He swayed with the burro’s gait, his eyes wandering idly over the flock until they came to rest upon the figure of the girl, motionless on her rock. He knew la Guera well. She was only three years younger than he. He had thrown rocks at the strange one but that had ended now. There had come a time when the girl, grown strong, had turned on her tormentors. No match for the pack in full cry at her heels, she had grown cunning like a beast, stalking her enemies singly. Sometimes she had lain motionless for hours until one wandered unwarily into her ambush. Her revenge was merciless. She fought with tooth and claw and the victims of her wrath bore the marks of her fury for days. This set her more apart than ever but it ended some of the torment. There came a time when she no longer fled from the pack. Fear of her revenge forced a truce but won her no friends.

The sun burnishing the still figure on the hillside attracted Pancho’s interest. He did not think her pretty. She had too long been an object of derision for him to question a verdict so well established. He only noticed the way her skin gleamed in the light. Winter was gone. Once more the blood coursed warm in his veins. And she was a girl.

His smile was amiable as he slid from the burro and ambled toward her. She did not run. She had no fear of him but she was alert, her muscles poised, like some shy creature startled in its haunt. Pancho’s smile surprised her but did not soften her guard. Perhaps the new cloak of friendliness he wore did not fit well and his thoughts peeped through. “It is only la Guera,” he was thinking. “What does it matter?”

“The sun is pretty on your legs,” he said, for want of a better start. He was not even sure he really thought so. “And the sun is bright in your hair. It shines like the gold Madonna on the church altar.”

The tensed girl relaxed. She had never heard anyone talk like this. “Like the gold of the Madonna!” That pleased her. Except for the sunset behind the mountains the Madonna was the prettiest thing she knew.

Then Pancho touched her. His voice was still tender but his hands were rough and she fought fiercely, angered by her momentary softness. She thought she understood. His tender words had been only a trap to lure her within reach, just as she had so often waited patiently in a covert until an unwary victim passed. She kicked and scratched.

It was only after she realized the difference in her antagonist’s attack that his intention dawned upon her. He did not hit back. His thick arms wrapped about her, he shielded his face from her blows and tried to bear her down with his weight. Her fury increased. Her fingers twined in his thick black hair and tugged at it in a frenzy as she felt his weight grow heavy. She fought silently. It did not occur to her to scream. There was no one to hear.

She raked his face furiously, her fingernails tracing red trails in his flesh. Momentarily he relaxed his grip, and as she writhed away her hand fell upon a rock. When he reached for her again she brought it down against his head with all her strength. The blow echoed sharply in the thin air and Pancho grunted. Again his hold loosened and this time she wriggled free, leaving her torn garment clutched in his outstretched hand. Without a backward glance she sped down the mountain. Only the goats watched her go, raising their heads in curious solemnity as her bare limbs flashed past, golden in the sun.

Teresa stretched with feline grace. Her eyes kindled from their somberness in appreciation of her reflection.

“You’d better put your robe back on,” Maria scolded. “Tsk-tsk-tsk—a child running naked in the mountains.”

“I was no longer a child.”

Maria chuckled throatily. “All the more reason you needed something to cover you. What happened to Pancho? Was he dead?”

“I never knew. I wondered, sometimes, but I had no regret.” Teresa continued with her story.

Ana was not bothered by the loss of her dress until evening. She lay under the trees while the sun was warm. From time to time her wary eyes watched the hill above, but Pancho did not move. She thought of returning for her dress but feared a trap. Perhaps that was his plan, to grab her when she came slipping back for her garment. Ana thought of that because it was the sort of trick she might have planned herself. She was very cunning and patient in those days. The wind lost its friendliness after sunset. She decided to slip back to the village. She was seldom seen on these nocturnal visits; she had the quiet of a wild thing from her years alone on the mountain.

She saw the campfire from afar and set her course by it. Travel wasn’t heavy along the road which wound through the little valley. The occasional travelers who choked in its white dust had long been objects of interest for her. Motin offered no accommodations for itinerants and they camped along the road wherever night found them. They were a strange breed to her, these men who rode horses, with silver spurs bright at their heels. Occasionally there were grandees among them. One had worn a velvet cloak with scarlet lining. Ana had never spoken to any of them but, unseen, had lingered in the shadows, her eyes drinking in each detail. It had never occurred to her to make her presence known, for she had remained too long an outcast. But she came to look forward to these visits and often had haunted a party through the waning hours of its day’s journey. Then, when night masked her movements, she would creep close and feed her curiosity.

Unmindful of the evening chill now, she slipped cautiously toward the fire. There were four men in the party and one of them wore a velvet cloak. But this was not the reason her eyes grew round and her lips were parted in astonishment. It wasn’t the man’s cloak that fascinated her, but his hair, which was pale like her own. It amazed her that this should be so. She had come to accept her strange coloring as a deformity peculiar to herself. And, strangest of all, his swarthy companions seemed to find nothing queer in his appearance. He was evidently the master and they the servants.

She was entranced. Her eyes searched out each detail of his features. It was as if she saw herself in a mirror for the first time. He wore a short beard, trimmed closely, and it, too, was blond. She studied the animation of his face in the firelight. One of his servants was preparing the meal over a heap of coals raked from the fire. Its odor was tantalizing. Another vanished into the night to search for wood, while the third was busy about the horses. These other men were nothing but shadows to the watching girl. She had eyes only for the leader with the pale hair.

In the excitement of discovering that here was another being like herself Ana crept closer to the blaze, her caution dulled by interest. The servant who had been gathering fuel was returning to the camp, his arms loaded, when he saw her crouched just outside the circle of its light, silhouetted clearly against the flames.

He abandoned his burden and, matching her own wariness, approached silently from the darkness. Her first warning was when his arms closed on her and his bellow, almost at her ear, brought his companions running. She struggled briefly but they were too many for her. And, surprisingly, she was no longer afraid as she stood in the firelight before the man whose hair was the color of her own. Here he was master and he was no enemy. They were two alike; it was the rest of the world that differed.

Don Fernando stared in astonishment at the figure before him. The flames gilded her bare limbs; her hair was almost white. She had the wide eyes of a child but a hint of the beauty to come already was budding in her slight body.

He glanced quickly at his men. Her fair coloring marked her as from his own class. Loosing the chain at his throat, he draped his velvet cloak about her.

She smiled at him, liking the caress of the lining against her skin. She was familiar only with the feel of cotton and wool. Softly she rubbed its smoothness against her, savoring the touch of it.

“Who are you, child? What are you doing here?” Don Fernando demanded.

“I am Ana,” she replied simply, “and I have run away.”

And that was all she would tell him in spite of his many questions. What else was there to say? Her father? She had never heard his name. Or should she say that she was la Guera from Motin where her pale body had known little but bruises. Or that she had left Pancho unconscious on a mountainside, her torn dress still clutched in his rough hands? No, just that she was Ana.

She met a man without fear for the first time. Her smile was ready and her amber eyes lost their haunted look. What did it matter if she was the Pale One? She was no longer alone.

Gradually Don Fernando grew less paternal. His manner still was gentle, his laughter frequent. His eyes gleamed in the firelight.

“I will take you home,” he had offered.

“I have no home,” was her reply. “But I will go with you in search of it, if you like.”

Such answers planted thoughts in his head, thoughts which crowded out his first generous impulses. He was never quite sure, either then or later, whether her answers were given in ignorance or invitation. When quiet came to the camp, she was snuggled in his couch, his blanket wrapped warmly about her. She didn’t sleep. Her wide eyes stared at the stars sprinkling the sky. Her lips were parted in a smile.

“Hold still, Teté,” Maria interrupted the tale. “The curling irons are ready.”

Teresa straightened up but she didn’t stop talking. Maria knew this part of the story for herself but she listened just as eagerly.

In Mexico City Ana became a complication. Don Fernando had grown fond of her. But the maintenance of two establishments was a burden. He had, he felt, set himself too rich a standard when selecting the girl’s quarters. Then he had been in the first flush of his ardor and nothing had been too costly. Also the necessity of deceiving his wife palled on him and he found as time went by that he made fewer and fewer excuses for leaving his own fireside. He was not bothered by moral scruples. He knew that such establishments as the secluded little house where Ana awaited him were the rule rather than the exception among men of his class. He simply grudged the necessary expenditure of vigor and money.

Ana was no longer the savage la Guera who had wandered half-clad over the mountains. Her body was growing soft with luxury, familiar with the silks and satins it craved. Her hair, no longer sun-bleached, had ripened to rich gold, and Maria, her maid, who brushed it endlessly, had taught her that it was beautiful.

“La del Pelo de Oro” was Maria’s invention too. Ana loved the name and prompted Don Fernando to use it.

Twice a week she rode out in a coach. She had no place to go, no acquaintances at all except Don Fernando and Maria, but she liked to watch the life of the city around her. And she liked, too, to watch the other women who passed in their coaches. The conviction of her own beauty was growing in her and she basked in it, warming harsh memories in its radiance. At first it had seemed almost beyond belief. She had been too long the poor la Guera to realize how voluptuous she might become. It needed the smiles she increasingly encountered to give her assurance. And as her confidence mounted she knew unhappiness again. Don Fernando’s visits were too infrequent and Maria’s open admiration did not suffice. She liked the small glimpses of the world caught fleetingly through her carriage window and longed to be a part of it.

There was one man she passed frequently, his coach drawn by two splendid black horses. He seemed to know everyone. He was forever bowing, flashing his debonair smile at passing acquaintances. He was aware of her, too, she knew, because she saw him turn his head to stare after her. She began to watch for those black horses, and there came a day when she answered his bow with a smile. Don Fernando had been absent for two weeks. She was even more lonely when driving in the carriage, a spectator of the gay scene, not a part of it. And so she had smiled and, riding on, felt warmer for it as though, somehow, she had participated in the life about her.

The next day Maria had bustled into the garden, her black eyes snapping with excitement, a card in her fat paw.

“A gentleman!” There was awe in her whisper. “A gentleman in a carriage. He told me to bring you this.”

Ana gazed blankly at the bit of pasteboard. She had never seen a visiting card before and she could not read then. “Who can it be?” she asked. “What does he want of me?”

She had received him there in the garden, still ignorant of his identity and unaware that the door to her future was swinging wide. It was the man who rode behind the black horses.

“Don Miguel Salazar,” he introduced himself, bowing.

Don Miguel thoroughly understood the nature of this establishment. There were few, if any, illusions in his life. But the beauty of the girl, still only a child, intoxicated him. He had inquired about her as soon as he had marked her solitary drives. At first baffled by his inability to find anyone who knew her, later he was encouraged by this fact. Her patron evidently was a man of such discretion that he preferred to remain unknown. To Don Miguel this meant opportunity. It meant a clear field and no unexpected complications.

This was the first of several calls. Starting with admiring circumspection, Don Miguel traveled the road to temptation swiftly, without restraint. His time was well chosen. Don Fernando’s absence continued and Ana was almost as alone as in the days when she had watched the goats browsing on the mountain behind Motin. Miguel’s visits satisfied her growing vanity, but it was the pictures he painted of the gay outside world, of which she might so easily become a part, that influenced her in the end.

Don Fernando returned one day after his prolonged absence to find the door locked and the house empty. Even Maria had flown. He was a philosopher about it. After the first surge of chagrin he felt mainly relief. His days of subterfuge and debt were ended.

Maria was lighting the candles. There was no further time for speculation on the years spent with Don Miguel which had changed Ana Dominguez, a wide-eyed child, into exotic Teresa de Lerdo. Measured in time the distance wasn’t so great, but to the Golden One the path seemed long and the wild little la Guera of Motin very remote.

“You will wear the pale lemon dress, Teté, with the topaz stones that match your eyes?” Maria’s voice recalled her to the present. Teresa remembered her hostess was called the Yellow Duchess, but she had no such dress as this one, of that Teresa was sure. Nor would she be able to wear it so well. She was not deterred by any compunction. Her consideration was purely a personal one. No woman should preen herself with the thought that she had copied her color.

“Not tonight,” she ordered. “I’ll wear the turquoise blue. It has more life.”

Maria hesitated. “It is considered a bold color in this country, Teté. And no sleeves. It would startle these people, eh?”

“They ll be startled whatever I wear,” her mistress replied shrewdly. “If it’s a success, every woman present will want to take it away from me.”

“But the men, Teté?” the servant protested. “How about them?”

Teresa laughed. “They will wish the women had their way.”

It was a sheer thing of gossamer silk and fashioned with a short train. The bodice was clasped together with pearl brooches. Maria had dressed her hair with short full curls over the forehead and light ringlets at the neck. The servant stood on a chair to adjust the bandeau of pearls about her head, holding a bird-of-paradise plume in place.

Teresa’s eyes were approving and confident as she surveyed the effect. “My pearl earrings,” she commanded. She thought pearls had a chaste look. They were her stone for tonight.

Miguel was waiting when she was ready at last, and appraised her costume with obvious approval. No flawless detail escaped him. “Always beautiful,” he murmured as he bent to kiss her hand. “You are perfection, my dear.”

As she descended the stairs on his arm Teresa was thinking not of Miguel, but of a young man from Virginia with red hair. Her restless eyes were searching the arriving guests and her mind was busy with plans for the evening.