"No! no! I do not want you to go. I should feel--I will admit to you--like a house without its foundation. And yet sometimes, I pray that you will go. Ay! I do not like life. I used to have pride in my intelligence. Where is my pride now? What good has the wisdom in my books done me, when I confess my dependence upon a man, and that man my enemy--and the acquaintance of a few weeks?" She was speaking incoherently, and Estenega chafed at the restraint of the servants so close behind them. "Tell me," she exclaimed, "what is it in you that I want?--that I need? It is something that belongs to me. Give it to me, and go away."

"Chonita, I give it to you gladly, G.o.d knows. But you must take me, too. You want in me what is akin to you and what you will find nowhere else. But I cannot tear my soul out of my body. You must take both or neither."

"Ay! I cannot! You know that I cannot!

"I ignore your reasons."

"But I do not."

"You shall, my beloved. Or if you do not ignore you shall forget them."

"When I am dead--would that I were!" She was excited and trembling.

The confession had been an ordeal, and Estenega was never tranquillizing. She wished to cling to him, but was still mistress of herself. He divined her impulse, and drew her arm through his and across his breast. He opened her hand and pressed his lips to the palm. Then he bent his face above hers. She was trembling violently; her face was wild and white. His own was ashen, and the heart beneath her arm beat rapidly.

"I love you devotedly," he said. "You believe that, Chonita?"

"Ah! Mother of G.o.d! do not! I cannot listen."

"But you shall listen. Throw off your superst.i.tions and come to me.

Keep the part of your religion that is not superst.i.tion; I would be the last to take it from you; but I will not permit its petty dogmas to stand between us. As for your traditions, you have not even the excuse of filial duty; your father would not forbid you to become my wife. And I love you very earnestly and pa.s.sionately. Just how much, I might convey to you if we were alone."

He was obliged to exercise great self-restraint, but there was no mistaking his seriousness. When such scientific triflers do find a woman worth loving, they are too deeply sensible of the fact not to be stirred to their depths; and their depths are apt to be in large disproportion to the lightness of their ordinary mood. "Come to me,"

he continued. "I need you; and I will be as tender and thoughtful a husband as I will be ardent as a lover. You love me: don't blind yourself any longer. Do you picture, in a life of solitude and cold devotion to phantoms, any happiness equal to what you would find here in my arms?"

"Oh, hush! hush! You could make me do what you wished, I have no will.

I feel no longer myself. What is this terrible power?"

"It is the magnetism of love; that is all. I am not exercising any diabolical power over you. Listen: I will not trouble you any more now. I am obliged to go to Los Angeles the day after to-morrow, and on my way back to Monterey--in about two weeks--I shall come here again.

Then we will talk together; but I warn you, I will accept only one answer. You are mine, and I shall have you."

They reached Casa Grande a moment later, and she escaped from him and ran to her room. But she dared not remain alone. Hastily changing her black gown for the first her hand touched,--it happened to be vivid red and made her look as white as wax,--she returned to the sala; not to dance even the square contradanza, but to stand surrounded by worshiping caballeros with curling hair tied with gay ribbons, and jewels in their laces. Valencia regarded her with a bitter jealousy that was rising from red heat to white. How dared a woman with hair of gold wear the color of the brunette? It was a theft. It was the last indignity. And once more she chained Reinaldo, in default of Estenega, to her side. And deep in Prudencia's heart wove a scheme of vengeance; the loom and warp had been presented unwittingly by her chivalrous father-in-law.

Estenega remained in the sala a few moments after Chonita's reappearance, then left the house and wandered through the booth in the court, where the people were dancing and singing and eating and gambling as if with the morrow an eternal Lent would come, and thence through the silent town to the pleasure-grounds of Casa Grande, which lay about half a mile from the house. He had been there but a short while when he heard a rustle, a light footfall; and, turning, he saw Chonita, unattended, her bare neck and gold hair gleaming against the dark, her train dragging. She was advancing swiftly toward him. His pulses bounded, and he sprang toward her, his arms outstretched; but she waved him back.

"Have mercy," she said. "I am alone. I brought no one, because I have that to tell you which no one else must hear."

He stepped back and looked at the ground.

"Listen," she said. "I could not wait until to-morrow, because a moment lost might mean--might mean the ruin of your career, and you say your envoy has not gone yet. Just now--I will tell you the other first. Mother of G.o.d! that I should betray my brother to my enemy! But it seems to me right, because you placed your confidence in me, and I should feel that I betrayed you if I did not warn you. I do not know--oh, Mary!--I do not know--but this seems to me right. The other night my brother came to me and asked me--ay! do not look at me--to marry you, that you would balk his ambition no further. He wishes to go as diputado to Mexico, and he knows that you will not let him. I thought my brain would crack,--an Iturbi y Moncada!--I made him no answer,--there was no answer to a demand like that,--and he went from me in a fury, vowing vengeance upon you. To-night, a few moments ago, he whispered to me that he knew of your plans, your intentions regarding the Americans: he had overheard a conversation between you and Alvarado. He says that he will send letters to Mexico to-morrow, warning the government against you. Then their suspicions will be roused, and they will inquire--Ay, Mary!"

Estenega brought his teeth together. "G.o.d!" he exclaimed.

She saw that he had forgotten her. She turned and went back more swiftly than she had come.

Estenega was a man whose resources never failed him. He returned to the house and asked Reinaldo to smoke a cigarito and drink a bottle of wine in his room. Then, without a promise or a compromising word, he so flattered that shallow youth, so allured his ambition and pampered his vanity and watered his hopes, that fear and hatred wondered at their existence, closed their eyes, and went to sleep. Reinaldo poured forth his aspirations, which under the influence of the truth-provoking vine proved to be an honest yearning for the pleasures of Mexico. As he rose to go he threw his arm about Estenega's neck.

"Ay! my friend! my friend!" he cried, "thou art all-powerful. Thou alone canst give me what I want."

"Why did you never ask me for what you wanted?" asked Estenega. And he thought, "If it were not for Her, you would be on your way to Los Angeles to-night under charge of high treason. I would not have taken this much trouble with you."

XXIV.

A rodeo was held the next day,--the last of the festivities;--Don Guillermo taking advantage of the gathering of the rancheros. It was to take place on the Cerros Rancho, which adjoined the Rancho de las Rocas. We went early, most of us dismounting and taking to the platform on one side of the circular rodeo-ground. The vaqueros were already galloping over the hills, shouting and screaming to the cattle, who ran to them like dogs; soon a herd came rushing down into the circle, where they were thrown down and branded, the stray cattle belonging to neighbors separated and corralled. This happened again and again, the interest and excitement growing with each round-up.

Once a bull, seeing his chance, darted from his herd and down the valley. A vaquero started after him; but Reinaldo, anxious to display his skill in horsemanship, and being still mounted, called to the vaquero to stop, dashed after the animal, caught it by its tail, spurred his horse ahead, let go the tail at the right moment, and, amidst shouts of "Coliar!" "Coliar!" the bull was ignominiously rolled in the dust, then meekly preceded Reinaldo back to the rodeo-ground.

After the dinner under the trees most of the party returned to the platform, but Estenega, Adan, Chonita, Valencia, and myself strolled about the rancho. Adan walked at Chonita's side, more faithful than her shadow. Valencia's black eyes flashed their language so plainly to Estenega's that he could not have deserted her without rudeness; and Estenega never was rude.

"Adan," said Chonita, abruptly, "I am tired of thee. Sit down under that tree until I come back. I wish to walk alone with Eustaquia for awhile."

Adan sighed and did as he was bidden, consoling himself with a cigarito. Taking a different path from the one the others followed, we walked some distance, talking of ordinary matters, both avoiding the subject of Diego Estenega by common consent. And yet I was convinced that she carried on a substratum of thought of which he was the subject, even while she talked coherently to me. On our way back the conversation died for want of bone and muscle, and, as it happened, we were both silent as we approached a small adobe hut. As we turned the corner we came upon Estenega and Valencia. He had just bent his head and kissed her.

Valencia fled like a hare. Estenega turned the hue of chalk, and I knew that blue lightning was flashing in his disconcerted brain. I felt the chill of Chonita as she lifted herself to the rigidity of a statue and swept slowly down the path.

"Diego, you are a fool!" I exclaimed, when she was out of hearing.

"You need not tell me that," he said, savagely. "But what in heaven's name--Well, never mind. For G.o.d's sake straighten it out with her.

Tell her--explain to her--what men are. Tell her that the present woman is omnipotently present--no, don't tell her that. Tell her that history is full of instances of men who have given one woman the devoted love of a lifetime and been unfaithful to her every week in the year. Explain to her that a man to love one woman must love all women. And she has sufficient proof that I love her and no other woman: I want to marry her, not Valencia Menendez. Heaven knows I will be true to her when I have her. I could not be otherwise. But I need not explain to you. Set it right with her. She has brain, and can be made to understand."

I shook my head. "You cannot reason with inexperience; and when it is allied to jealousy--G.o.d of my soul! Her ideal, of course, is perfection, and does not take human weakness into account. You have fallen short of it to-day. I fear your cause is lost."

"It is not! Do you think I will give her up for a trifle like that?"

"But why not accept this break? You cannot marry her--"

"Oh, do not refer to that nonsense!" he exclaimed, harshly. "I shall peel off her traditions when the time comes, as I would strip off the outer hulls of a nut. Go! Go, Eustaquia!"

Of course I went. Chonita was not at the rodeo-ground, but, escorted by her father, had gone home. I followed immediately, and when I reached Casa Grande I found her sitting in her library. I never saw a statue look more like marble. Her face was locked: only the eyes betrayed the soul in torment. But she looked as immutable as a fate.

"Chonita," I exclaimed, hardly knowing where to begin, "be reasonable.

Men of Estenega's brain and pa.s.sionate affectionate nature are always weak with women, but it means nothing. He cares nothing for Valencia Menendez. He is madly in love with you. And his weakness, my dear, springs from the same source as his charm. He would not be the man he is without it. His heart would be less kindly, his impulses less generous, his brain less virile, his sympathies less instinctive and true. The strong impregnable man, the man whom no vice tempts, no weakness a.s.sails, who is loyal without effort,--such a man lacks breadth and magnetism and the power to read the human heart and sympathize with both its n.o.ble impulses and its terrible weaknesses.

Such men--I never have known it to fail--are full of petty vanities and egoisms and contemptible weaknesses, the like of which Estenega could not be capable of. No man can be perfect, and it is the man of great strength and great weakness who alone understands and sympathizes with human nature, who is lovable and magnetic, and who has the power to rouse the highest as well as the most pa.s.sionate love of a woman. Such men cause infinite suffering, but they can give a happiness that makes the suffering worth while. You never will meet another man like Diego Estenega. Do not cast him lightly aside."

"Do I understand," said Chonita, in a perfectly unmoved voice, "that you are counseling me to marry an Estenega and the man who would send me to h.e.l.l hereafter? Do you forget my vow?"

I came to myself with a shock. In the enthusiasm of my defense I had forgotten the situation.

"At least forgive him," I said, lamely.

"I have nothing to forgive," she said. "He is nothing to me."

I knew that it was useless to argue with her.

"I have a favor to ask of you," she said. "Most of our guests leave this afternoon: will you let me sleep alone to-night?"