A long, shrill shriek from the Senora was the first answer to the fearful question in her heart. In a few moments she was at her mother's door. Rachela knelt outside it, telling her rosary. She stolidly kept her place, and a certain instinct for a moment prevented Antonia interrupting her. But the pa.s.sionate words of her mother, blending with the low, measured tones of the priest, were something far more positive.

"Let me pa.s.s you, Rachela. What is the matter with my mother?"

The woman was absorbed in her supplications, and Antonia opened the door. Isabel followed her. They found themselves in the the{sic} presence of an angry sorrow that appalled them. The Senora had torn her lace mantilla into shreds, and they were scattered over the room as she had flung them from her hands in her frantic walk about it. The large sh.e.l.l comb that confined her hair was trodden to pieces, and its long coils had fallen about her face and shoulders. Her bracelets, her chain of gold, her brooch and rings were scattered on the floor, and she was standing in the centre of it, like an enraged creature; tearing her handkerchief into strips, as an emphasis to her pa.s.sionate denunciations.

"It serves him right! JESUS! MARIA! JOSEPH! It serves him right! He must carry arms! HE, TOO! when it was forbidden! I am glad he is arrested!

Oh, Roberto! Roberto!"

"Patience, my daughter! This is the hand of G.o.d. What can you do but submit?"

"What is it, mi madre?" and Isabel put her arms around her mother with the words mi madre. "Tell Isabel your sorrow."

"Your father is arrested--taken to the Alamo--he will be sent to the mines. I told him so! I told him so! He would not listen to me! How wicked he has been!"

"What has my father done, Fray Ignatius? Why have they arrested him?"

The priest turned to Antonia with a cold face. He did not like her. He felt that she did not believe in him.

"Senorita, he has committed a treason. A good citizen obeys the law; Senor Worth has defied it."

"Pardon, father, I cannot believe it."

"A great forbearance has been shown him, but the end of mercy comes.

As he persisted in wearing arms, he has been taken to the Alamo and disarmed."

"It is a great shame! An infamous shame and wrong!" cried Antonia. "What right has any one to take my father's arms? No more than they have to take his purse or his coat."

"General Santa Anna--"

"General Santa Anna is a tyrant and a thief. I care not who says different."

"Antonia! Shameless one!"

"Mother, do not strike me." Then she took her mother's hands in her own, and led her to a couch, caressing her as she spoke--

"Don't believe any one--ANY ONE, mother, who says wrong of my father.

You know that he is the best of men. Rachela! Come here instantly. The rosary is not the thing, now. You ought to be attending to the Senora.

Get her some valerian and some coffee, and come and remove her clothing.

Fray Ignatius, we will beg you to leave us to-night to ourselves."

"Your mother's sin, in marrying a heretic, has now found her out. It is my duty to make her see her fault."

"My mother had a dispensation from one greater than you."

"Oh, father, pray for me! I accuse myself! I accuse myself! Oh, wretched woman! Oh, cruel husband!"

"Mother, you have been a very happy woman. You have had the best husband in the world. Do not reproach my father for the sins of others. Do not desert him when he is in the power of a human tiger. My G.o.d, mother! let us think of something to be done for his help! I will see the Navarros, the Garcias, Judge Valdez; I will go to the Plaza and call on the thousands he has cured and helped to set him free."

"You will make of yourself something not to be spoken of. This is the judgment of G.o.d, my daughter."

"It is the judgment of a wicked man, Fray Ignatius. My mother is not now able to listen to you. Isabel, come here and comfort her." Isabel put her cheek to her mother's; she murmured caressing words; she kissed her face, and coiled up her straggling hair, and with childlike trust amid all, solicited Holy Mary to console them.

Fray Ignatius watched her with a cold scrutiny. He was saying to himself, "It is the fruit of sin. I warned the Senora, when she married this heretic, that trouble would come of it. Very well, it has come."

Then like a flash a new thought invaded his mind--If the Senor Doctor disappeared forever, why not induce the Senora and her daughters to go into a religious house? There was a great deal of money. The church could use it well.

Antonia did not understand the thought, but she understood its animus, and again she requested his withdrawal. This time she went close to him, and bravely looked straight into his eyes. Their scornful gleam sent a chill to her heart like that of cold steel. At that moment she understood that she had turned a pa.s.sive enemy into an active one.

He went, however, without further parley, stopping only to warn the Senora against the sin "of standing with the enemies of G.o.d and the Holy Church," and to order Isabel to recite for her mother's pardon and comfort a certain number of aves and paternosters. Antonia went with him to the door, and ere he left he blessed her, and said: "The Senorita will examine her soul and see her sin. Then the ever merciful Church will hear her confession, and give her the satisfying penance."

Antonia bowed in response. When people are in great domestic sorrow, self-examination is a superfluous advice. She listened a moment to his departing footsteps, shivering as she stood in the darkness, for a norther had sprung up, and the cold was severe. She only glanced into the pleasant parlor where the table was laid for dinner, and a great fire of cedar logs was throwing red, dancing lights over the white linen and the shining silver and gla.s.s. The chairs were placed around the table; her father's at the head. It had a forsaken air that was unendurable.

The dinner hour was now long past. It would be folly to attempt the meal. How could she and Isabel sit down alone and eat, and her father in prison, and her mother frantic with a loss which she was warned it was sinful to mourn over. Antonia had a soul made for extremities and not afraid to face them, but invisible hands controlled her. What could a woman do, whom society had forbidden to do anything, but endure the pangs of patience?

The Senora could offer no suggestions. She was not indeed in a mood to think of her resources. A spiritual dread was upon her. And with this mingled an intense sense of personal wrong from her husband. "Had she not begged him to be pa.s.sive? And he had put an old rifle before her and her daughters! It was all that Senor Houston's doing. She had an a.s.surance of that." She invoked a thousand maledictions on him. She recalled, with pa.s.sionate reproaches, Jack's infidelity to her and his G.o.d and his country. Her anger pa.s.sed from one subject to another constantly, finding in all, even in the lukewarmness of Antonia and Isabel, and in their affection for lovers, who were also rebels, an acc.u.mulating reason for a stupendous reproach against herself, her husband, her children, and her unhappy fate. Her whole nature was in revolt--in that complete mental and moral anarchy from which springs tragedy and murder.

Isabel wept so violently that she angered still further the tearless suffering of her mother. "G.o.d and the saints!" she cried. "What are you weeping for? Will tears do any good? Do I weep? G.o.d has forbidden me to weep for the wicked. Yet how I suffer! Mary, mother of sorrows, pity me!"

She sent Isabel away. Her sobs were not to be borne. And very soon she felt Antonia's white face and silent companionship to be just as unendurable. She would be alone. Not even Rachela would she have near her. She put out all the lights but the taper above a large crucifix, and at its foot she sat down in tearless abandon, alone with her reproaches and her remorse.

Antonia watched with her mother, though shut out from her presence.

She feared for a state of mind so barren of affection, so unsoftened by tears. Besides, it was the climax of a condition which had continued ever since she had sent her boy away without a word of love. In the dim corridor outside she sat still, listening for any noise or movement which might demand help or sympathy. It was not nine o'clock; but the time lengthened itself out beyond endurance. Even yet she had hope of some word from her father. Surely, they would let him send some word to them!

She heard the murmur of voices downstairs, and she thought angrily of Rachela, and Molly, and Manuel, "making a little confidence together"

over their trouble, and spicing their evening gossip with the strange thing that had happened to the Senor Doctor. She knew that Rachela and Manuel would call him heretic and Americano, and, by authority of these two words, accuse him of every crime.

Thinking with a swelling heart of these things, she heard the door open, and a step slowly and heavily ascend the stairs. Ere she had time to wonder at it, her father came in sight. There was a shocking change in his air and appearance, but as he was evidently going to her mother's room, she shrank back and sat motionless so as not to attract his attention.

Then she went to the parlor, and had the fire renewed and food put upon the table. She was sure that he would need it, and she believed he would be glad to talk over with her the events of the afternoon.

The Senora was still sitting at the foot of the crucifix when her husband opened the door. She had not been able to pray; ave and paternoster alike had failed her. Her rebellious grief filled every corner of her heart. She understood that some one had entered the room, and she thought of Rachela; but she found a kind of comfort in the dull stupor of grief she was indulging, and she would not break its spell by lifting her head.

"Maria."

She rose up quickly and stood gazing at him.

She did not shriek or exclaim; her surprise controlled her. And also her terror; for his face was white as death, and had an expression of angry despair that terrified her.

"Roberto! Roberto! Mi Roberto! How you have tortured me! I have nearly died! Fray Ignatius said you had been sent to prison."

She spoke as calmly as a frightened child; sad and hesitating. If he had taken her in his arms she would have sobbed her grief away there.

But Robert Worth was at that hour possessed by two master pa.s.sions, tyrannical and insatiable--they would take notice of nothing that did not minister to them.

"Maria, they have taken my arms from me. Cowards! Cowards! Miserable cowards! I refused to give them up! They held my hands and robbed me--robbed me of my manhood and honor! I begged them to shoot me ere they did it, and they spoke courteously and regretted this, and hoped that, till I felt that it would be a joy to strangle them."

"Roberto! Mi Roberto! You have me!"

"I want my rifle and all it represents. I want myself back again. Maria, Maria, until then, I am not worthy to be any good woman's husband!"