A Prairie Infanta Part 3

The very thought of being paid for what she had so freely given hurt Jane. Without realizing its coldness and emptiness, her life had been truly void of human warmth before the little, lonely girl stole in to fill it with her piteous, proud presence. A happier child, with more childish ways, might not so fully have compa.s.sed Jane's awakening; for this had been in proportion to the needs of the one who so forlornly made plea for entrance. Having once thrown wide the door of her heart, Jane had begun to understand the blessedness that lies in generosity.

Lola might never care for her, indeed; but to Lola she owed the impulse of loving self-bestowal, which is as shining sunlight in the bosom.

Mr. Keene wrote that the claim he had been working had proved valueless. He expected better luck next time; but just now he could not do as he had intended for Lola; and in view of his unsettled circ.u.mstances he thought it might be well if Miss Combs could place the girl in some family where her services would be acceptable.

"Life," he wrote, was at best "a rough proposition," and it would doubtless be good for Lola, who had sundry faults of temper, to learn this fact early. For the present she would have to give up all idea of going to school. Mr. Keene would be sorry if the prospect displeased his daughter, but people couldn't have everything their own way in this world.

Such words as these Jane instinctively knew would fall crushingly upon Lola, and leave her in a sorry plight of abject, hardening thought.

Therefore, steeling herself to bear the girl's misinterpretation, she said, "Lola, your father wouldn't want you to see this letter. It's on business."

"Does he say I'm not to see it?" asked Lola.

Jane's brows twisted painfully. "No," she said, "but--"

Lola turned away. Every line of her figure was eloquent of grievance.

She walked off without a glance to apprise her of the anguish in Jane's face. Slowly Jane went toward the house; whereupon Alejandro Vigil, who had continued an interested spectator, followed Lola to the ditch.

"If thou hadst wept, she would have given thee the letter," he suggested. "My mother, she always gives up to us when we weep loudly. A still baby gets no milk," said Alejandro, wisely, as he hugged his bare knees.

"I am no baby!" retorted Lola. Nevertheless her voice was husky, and Alejandro watched her anxiously.

"It's no good to cry now," he advised her. "She's gone into the house."

"_Tonto!_ Do you think I want her to see me?" wept Lola. "She is hard and cruel. O my father!"

"Come over and tell my mother about it!" urged the boy, troubled. "You are Mexican like us, no? Your mother was Mexican? Come! My mother will say what is best to do."

Lola listened. She let herself be dragged up. An adviser might speak some word of wisdom. "Come, then," she agreed.

But Senora Vigil, on hearing the story, only groaned and sighed.

"These Americans have the heart of ice!" she said. "Doubtless there was money in the letter and she did not want you to know. Serafita, leave thy sister alone, or I will beat thee! It will be best, Lolita, to say little. A close mouth catches no flies."

"I may not stay here with you?" asked Lola.

"Alas, no, little pigeon!" mourned the senora. "In the cage where thy father has put thee thou must stay! But come and tell me everything.

This shall be thy house when thou art in trouble!" and thus defining the limits of her hospitality, she made a gesture toward the mud walls on which strings of goat meat were drying in a sanguinary fringe.

Autumn fell bright on the foot-hills. The plains blazed with yellow flowers which seemed to run in streams of molten gold from every canon, and linger in great pools on the flats and line all the ditches. Ricks of green and silver rose all along the Apishapa. Alfalfa was purple to the last crop, and an air of affluence pervaded everything.

The town was thronged with ranchers, coming in to trade; the mine had started up for the winter. Men who had prospected for precious metals all summer in the mountains now bundled their pots and pans and blankets back to shelter for the winter; the long-eared burros, lost in great rolls of bedding, stood about the tipple awaiting the result of their masters' interviews with the mine boss, concerning work and the occupancy of any "shack" that might still be empty.

Now, too, the bell of the red-brick school clamored loudly of mornings; and dark, taciturn Mexican children, and paler, noisier children from the mining end of town, bubbled out of every door. Seven Vigils obeyed the daily summons, clad, boy and girl, in cotton stuff of precisely the hue of their skin. Bobbing through the gate, one after another, they were like a family of little dun-colored prairie-dogs, of a hue with their adobe dwelling, shy and brown and bright-eyed.

Among them Lola had an effect of tropical brilliancy, by reason of the red frock with which Jane had provided her. There were red ribbons also in Lola's braided hair; and the girl, although still aware of bitter wrongs, was sensible of being pleased with her raiment. More than once on her way to school that first day she looked at the breadths of her scarlet cashmere with a gratified eye; and catching her at this, Ana Vigil had sighed disapprovingly, saying, "It is too good for every day--that dress."

"It isn't too good for me!" flashed back Lola. "My father can do what he likes!"

"True," said Ana, "since he has a gold-mine. But even if I were rich, I should fear that the saints might punish me for wearing to school my best clothes. I would wish to win their good-will by wearing no finery," said Ana, piously. She was a plump girl, with eyes like splinters of coal in her suave brown face; despite the extreme softness of her voice, these glittering splinters rested with no gentle ray on Lola.

Indeed, Jane's pride in having her charge well-dressed operated largely against the girl's popularity with others of her mates than Ana.

Primarily Lola's air of hauteur provoked resentment; but hauteur in poor attire would have been only amusing, while in red cashmere it was felt to be a serious matter, entailing upon every one the sense of a personal affront. Lola's quickness of retort was also against her. The swift flash of her eye, the sudden quiver of her lip, afforded continual gratification to such as had it in mind to effect her discomposure.

"They do not love you too well, Lolita," said Ana Vigil, sadly. "They say you have a sharp tongue. They say you are too well pleased with yourself. Me, I tell you what I hear because I am your friend."

"So long a tongue as yours, Ana, weaves a short web!" growled Alejandro, with a masculine distrust of his sister's friendly a.s.sumptions.

"Lola knows if I speak truth," returned Ana, tranquilly.

Lola maintained an impa.s.sive front, but she was hurt. The little tricks and taunts of her schoolfellows tormented her deeply. She had lately relapsed into the stolid indifference native to her blood, and this was her best shield, had she only known it, although it, too, for a time left her open to attack. For when she encased herself in cold silence, and stalked home with lifted head and unseeing eyes, often a little throng of Mexican children would walk behind her, imitating her stately gait and calling mockingly, "_Ea! ea!_ See the _madamisela_! See the princess! She is sister to the king--that one! _Vah! vah! vah!_"

And mingling their voices they would sing, "_Infanta! Infanta Lolita!_"

until Lola, stung to rage, turned upon them wildly; whereat their delighted cries served to send her flying homeward.

"I guess not even Squire Baca's girls nor Edith May Jonas had better things than you," said Jane, unaware of all this. Her own garments remained things of the baldest utility, but the village seamstress was kept busy feather-st.i.tching and beribboning articles for Lola's wear.

In these things Jane developed a most prodigal pride, freely expending upon them the little patrimony which had been put in the Trinidad bank against her old age. Her usual good judgment quite failed her; and she who, patternless and guideless, slashed brown denim fearlessly into uncouth vestures for herself, now had a pulse of trepidation at laying the tissue-paper model of some childish garment for Lola upon a length of dainty wool.

"Maybe," said Lola, "the others would like me better if my father didn't get me so many things."

Jane's eyes shone with a fierce light.

"Don't they like you?" she demanded, harshly.

"Didn't you hear them calling 'infanta' after me just now?"

"Infanta--is it anything _bad_?" Jane's voice was so wroth that Lola laughed.

"It means princess."

"Oh!" said Jane, mollified. "If it'd been anything _else_, I'd have gone straight down to see the marshal!" Lola flushed a little. She thought, "How kind she is! If I could only forget--about that letter!"

The dislike of the Mexican children abated with time. They even came to admire Lola's quickness. She went above them in cla.s.s--yes! but also she went above the Americans! The little Mexicans, aware of a certain mental apathy, had not enviously regarded the exploits of the "smart"

Americans. If these others "went up," what did it matter? All one could do if one were Mexican was to accept defeat with dignity, and reflect upon the fact that things would be different if Spanish and not English were the language of the school.

When Lola, however, one of themselves by reason of her color and her fluency in their idiom, displayed an ability to master those remorseless obscurities of spelling and arithmetic which had seemed sufficient to dethrone reason in any but a Saxon mind, then the peon children began to find some personal satisfaction in her achievements.

Whenever Lola went above Jimmy Adkins, the mine boss's boy, and Edith May Jonas, the liveryman's only daughter, every Mexican face recorded a slow smile of triumph. "_'Sta 'ueno!_" they would whisper, watching Edith May, who upon such occasions was wont to enliven things by bursting into tears, and who commonly brought upon the following day a note from her mother, stating that Edith May must be excused for missing in spelling because she had not been at all well and had misunderstood the word.

The next two years also mitigated much of the constraint which had marked Miss Combs's relations with Lola. After the episode of the letter, Lola never asked news of her father. Insensibly she came to understand that if he wrote at all he wrote seldom, and solely upon the matter of her expenses. And naturally she ceased clinging warmly to the thought of his love for her. His silence and absence were not spurs to affection, although she dwelt gratefully upon the fact that he should lavish so much upon her.

Jane's money was lessening, but none of Lola's wishes had as yet been baffled. The girl had a sort of barbaric love of brightness and softness; and one day, as she looked over some fabrics for which Jane, spurred by the approach of the vacation and the fact that Lola was to have a part in the closing exercises of school, had sent to Denver, the girl said suddenly, "How good my father is to me, _tia_!"

Long before, she had asked Jane what she should call her, and Jane had said, "Maybe you better call me aunt."

"I will do it in Mexican, then," said Lola. "It sounds more ripe." She meant mellow, no doubt. Now, as she fingered the pretty muslin, she seemed to gather resolution to speak of something which had its difficulties. "_Tia_," she pursued, "he is well off--my father?"

Jane's voice had rather a feigned lightness as she replied, "You have everything you want, don't you?" No one but herself knew that for some time she had been paying Mr. Keene a monthly stipend. He had written that Lola ought not any longer to be giving her services just for board. So great a girl must be very handy about a house; and as luck still evaded him, he confessed that Lola's earnings would considerably "help him out."

Jane had not combated his views. Many Mexican children younger than Lola earned a little tending the herds and helping about the fields.