For the Soul of Rafael Part 11

"A year?" Bryton stared at her with a puzzled frown, and a slight motion of his hand toward the door. That, with its little suggestion of authority, decided her.

"I shall tell it," she announced. "How many of you believe in love at first sight?"

"All of us, after meeting you!" declared Rafael, with an exaggerated bow.

"Sure!" agreed Don Ricardo.

"My husband, you know, is an engineer, and goes on long journeys into queer corners of the mining world."

"Bad habit for husbands with pretty wives," remarked Don Antonio.

"Last Winter," continued she, slowly sipping her coffee and watching Bryton; "last Winter he went to Mexico."

"Pardon! We do not ask for the love affairs of your lucky husband, but--"

"But last Winter Don Keith went along; yes--he went along to look up some mining property in the Indian hills, and when he came back--Have any of you noticed the peculiar ring Mr. Bryton wears?"

"Angela!" said Keith, sharply; but she looked at him with smiling insolence.

"Oh, I know your little romance of Dona Espiritu; Teddy told me."

"d.a.m.n Teddy!" he remarked, while the rest shouted with laughter at the color flaming in his face.

"Dona Espiritu!" repeated Don Ricardo. "The lady of the Spirit--let us hope it was a good spirit, Don Keith--and that she was kind!"

"To her health!" cried Rafael. "Pour brandy, Fernando; we drink our last toast of this meeting to the love of Don Keith--to the Dona Espiritu!"

"I would rather see the ring than drink the toast," said Dolores. "May I, senor?"

"There is nothing remarkable about it, except that it is very, very old," and he held out his hand for her inspection. "An onyx engraved with the Aztec eagle--now the Mexican eagle."

"But given him by--"

"By a lady who was of service to my brother, to an old priest, and to me."

"See how he drags in the others," laughed Mrs. Bryton. "Teddy and the priest got no ring; Ted had a knife-thrust, and the priest a black eye.

Keith had some hurt on the head, from which he had a long and interesting case of fever."

"Let us hope Dona Espiritu nursed him through it, and the priest did not watch them too closely," remarked Rafael, with a meaning glance at Bryton. The last drink of brandy had been the one too many, and his smile was not nice.

"Did she nurse him through the illness?" whispered Madalena in Angela's ear.

"Oh, I could tell," said the latter, demurely; "but Keith evidently resents his romances being made public."

"Senorita, there is no more to tell," remarked Keith, coldly; "not even so much as Angela would suggest. My brother and an old priest and I lost our way in the hills; and seeing a light, we chanced on some religious meeting of a strange hill tribe of Indians. They thought we were spies of the Church or the government, and there was trouble. A lady, whom the Indians and the priest called by the name you heard, saved us all that night. She was the one person of the Catholic Church they would allow to know them well, and she was a nun or a novice."

"Santa Maria! and she gave you rings?"

"The ring was some talisman respected by the tribe. She put it on my finger after I had been struck down and--well--used up. It stopped them when words were of no use. We made a litter for the old priest, and tied Teddy on a burro,--he had a leg wound,--and we walked beside them over the wilderness trail until dawn came, and we met help. I fainted from loss of blood about that time, and Teddy and I recuperated in the house of the old priest. We never saw the lady again."

"You never saw her again after an adventure like that!" cried Fernando in amaze. "That is cold blood for you!"

"It may be that she was ugly--or old," suggested Rafael.

"On the contrary, she was so charming that he shouted for her in the delirium of the fever; that is how Teddy learned that she was the one exception among girls! But all their scheming could not learn her name from the priest or the Mexicans. 'Dona Espiritu' was all they ever heard. Teddy fancied they had shipped her to Spain for the adventure with a heretic that one night."

"Is it all true, senor?" asked Dolores. "Dona Angela laughs at it, and you frown; and between the two, how are we to know how serious it may all be to you?"

"Serious enough to make him bare his head at every old battered shrine for her sake," said Angela, with a little shrug; "and an old ring of his mother's was lost from his finger on that wilderness trail, while the Mexican eagle took its place. Oh, nuns are only women after all, and much can happen in the length of a Mexican night!"

"Well, senor," said Dolores, with sudden courage, "I am a good Catholic, thank G.o.d! and I see no sacrilege in the sort of love for which a man bares his head at a shrine. Senor Bryton, the story will make us of California more than ever your friends!"

"Sure," agreed Don Antonio.

"I am at your feet, senorita," said Bryton, with kindly deference. "Now, Mrs. Bryton, if you have no other--romances--to elaborate and embellish, perhaps you will allow me to see you to your carriage, before I start for Los Angeles. Don Rafael is detained by us when he should be on his way south, and--"

"Oh--I beg--" began Rafael, but Madalena interrupted.

"Not another moment must we stay. Aunt Teresa will scold us well for this!"

"For taking pity on a lonely bachelor?" asked Rafael.

"Lonely?" repeated Dolores. "We will come again when the bride comes.

Until then we leave you to prepare your soul with this--and this!"

She motioned to the decanter, and picked up the scarlet fan of Mercedes.

"You cruel one! You would make Dona Angela think--but do not think it, madama! I a.s.sure you, it is my mother's--or my aunt's--or--"

"He never had an aunt," laughed Madalena. "Come, Uncle Ricardo, Dona Maxima wants you at home; she is at our house saying things to make your ears burn."

"Sure!" said Don Ricardo, getting on his feet and taking the cane offered him. "But it is in honor of Dona Luisa Arteaga I am here. When her son makes gay company, it is the time for the steady friends of the family to stay by. So I am here, Madalena mia; and I shall say to my wife I was here all the evening, right here at this table as a respectable friend, and won seventy pesos!"

"Sure, he did," a.s.sented Don Antonio. "But it is over! The sun is up, it is good time to go home."

Rafael managed in the farewells to kiss the hand of Mrs. Bryton twice, and to be observed by Bryton only once. That was enough of victory for the moment, and when the door was closed he flung himself into a chair and reached again for the decanter.

"Ai! she is delicious--the madama whose husband plans mines and goes on long voyages! How she makes our women look tame!"

"Tah! She is insolent, that is all. We would lock up our women if they had the American way. Drink coffee--not more brandy."

"To the devil with your coffee! And it is not an American way--she is English--the delicious lady!"

"Worse still!" grunted Fernando.

"How?" roared Rafael, straightening up in his chair. "You forget, senor!

She is my friend--my very ill.u.s.trious friend--she is--no matter what she is. Her husband goes on long voyages--and you must apologize to me--you hear? I have the admiration for her--I--"