For the Soul of Rafael Part 18

Padre Andros was frightened when he saw the effect of his recital. Dona Maria was not so stout as most of the women of the mixed races; but as he saw the dark color mount luridly to her face, and her eyes look almost bloodshot with sudden fury, he set down the gla.s.s of whiskey to cross himself, and dropped an ace in his perturbation.

"For the love of G.o.d! senora," he exclaimed; and then it was Angela entered the room and found her cousin's wife ill with a fury she durst express only in prayers and maledictions against this girl brought to San Juan by Dona Luisa to ruin them all!

Only fragments of the cause of her fury reached Angela, despite all her sudden sympathetic interest in the wife of her cousin, to whom she had heretofore been rather indifferent. But she pieced the fragments together, and as she told them to Bryton he could, with his own knowledge of the early racial mixtures in the land, get a very fair idea of the situation. The girl from Mexico had dared open the closet of a forgotten skeleton.

"Of course she rules Rafael just now, to a certain extent," conceded Angela, carelessly. "He sees the Church and half the town at her feet here; she is a novelty, and he sees everyone turn to look at her. But at San Juan she will find no one at her feet, and her churchmen will be far enough away. The padre there detests her; she stopped him from selling bricks from the cloister pillars."

"The padre and Dona Maria should make a strong team," observed Bryton.

"The woman need be strong to win against them--is she?"

"How do I know? I've never spoken to her. She has nasty eyes. That's all I can remember of her."

"Nasty?"

"Oh, it is the expression. I saw them once, and she made me nervous.

Perhaps it was because she divined that I was one of the 'accursed heretics.' I understand that is the way the lower order speak of Protestants!"

"But she cannot be quite of the lower order, can she? Her father was of the best Spanish and American blood ever joined on this coast, far above the Arteagas."

"Oh! So you also look up pedigrees here; I wonder why."

"It is a country where you hear of them without question," he returned, indifferently. "The people are always sparring among themselves and referring to their ancestors--if they dare. Dona Luisa was a pure-blood Spanish woman, but the Arteagas had a bad Indian and Mexican streak. She saw it develop in her own children, and it gave her a bad fright. She counted on this marriage bringing the last of them back to the old conservative manner of life."

"Ah!" She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously; "but you forget that Raquel, the present Senora Arteaga, has also a Mexican streak."

"No, I don't forget; but there are high cla.s.s and low of every race.

n.o.ble Indians and high-cla.s.s Mexicans have gone into history. The American makes a great mistake when he judges the high cla.s.ses by the ma.s.ses. In this land one has to dig out the facts of each individual line, if he wants to know the truth of a pedigree. But the lady from Mexico seems to have drawn her distinctions very closely, and realizing her own superiority, she dares dictate."

"Even to her--husband?" There was just the slightest possible hesitation at the t.i.tle.

"Why not, if she is the superior?"

"But--oh, can't you see how all these marriages are a barter-and-sale family affair,--money that is married, instead of people? If she was in love with him as a--a real woman would be, she never would know she was superior, never! Not that I believe she is," she added with a shrug; "to me she looks as wooden as the saints on her own altar."

He arose and walked to the window, staring out over the heads of the people.

"She may not be wooden to those she cares for," he said at last.

"Perhaps not; but I'm certain of one thing: if she ever cared for any one, it is not the man she married. If she cared, she would forget that rigid fanatic sense of duty sometimes."

"I came to talk of your affairs," he said, abruptly. "Teddy left some mining shares; they may pan out later on. I have talked with a lawyer about them; this is his address," and he handed her a slip of paper.

"Whatever funds are procurable he will turn over to you quarterly. Is there anything else I can do for you at present?"

"Yes," she returned; "you might be a bit human and sympathetic. You seem to forget," and her red lip quivered in self-pity, "how utterly alone I am among these Mexicans, and all their women jealous as fiends."

He regarded her with a long, steady stare, and then smiled as he rose.

"I don't blame them," he observed, quietly. "You have given more attention to several of their men than you ever gave to poor Ted.

Where's your baby?"

"Heavens! Do you suppose I could drag her on this trip, and a Mexican or Indian nurse?" she demanded, impatiently. "That's so like a man! They think a woman with a child should be merely a domestic animal, like those dunces of Spanish women. I feel as if I were in jail, hedged around with all their conventions. I don't dare walk on the street alone, or with a man; I don't dare ride in a carriage with a man, and it's no pleasure to go with those empty-headed women. Dona Maria is as bad as the rest since I'm in mourning; it is a sort of prison, forbidding the wearer a free breath!"

"Take it off," he suggested, so quietly that he quite deceived her, and she uttered a little cry of shocked appeal.

"Keith! And poor Teddy--"

"Angela!" and his hand fell heavy on her shoulder, "listen to me just once. When Ted was alive I could bear to hear you mention his name, but now that he is dead I--can't. He belongs to me now, and I forbid it."

"Keith!" She gasped again, but this time in sheer fright. "And the money--the shares you--"

He laughed mirthlessly, and took his hand from her shoulder. His moment of feeling gave place to amused appreciation of the real woman poor Ted had never known.

"Who says women are inconsistent?" he queried. "You are a living ill.u.s.tration of the contrary. I have never seen you vary a hair's-breadth from my first instinctive feeling concerning you, you pretty baby kitten! You needn't look so frightened; you will get whatever money is in reach. Now, don't go to whimpering! Get on your bonnet, if Dona Maria may think it allowable for me to take you both for a carriage drive. I promised Ted to do things for you, and I must make a beginning."

"Is that the only reason?" she began, with righteous indignation.

"That is the only reason, my lady," he returned. "Are you coming?"

A little later they were rolling along Spring Street, past the plaza, and many heads turned to look at the golden-haired girlish little figure in mourning, drooping beside Dona Maria, whose rigid, unsmiling, dark features were the best possible foil. Keith Bryton, sitting opposite, noticed the admiration she aroused. The caballeros who had swept sombreros to the ground at the pa.s.sage of the carriage in which Raquel and the bishop were riding did so as a matter of reverence to a devotee; but the rule of the woman whom Keith had called a baby kitten would always be one of childish appeal, personal to a degree.

Looking at her cynically, he tried to fancy her twenty years ahead,--the mother of a grown daughter,--but failed. The daughter would have to be guardian; the mother would always need one. She was watching him furtively to see the effect this open admiration might have upon him. He was the one man of them all who had ever dared treat her so carelessly.

His att.i.tude had piqued her to the point where she had a brief tigerish desire to rend his heart--his affections--if he had any! And Teddy was the weapon.

Of course she had regretted it all--there were other men with so much more money. Still, as it had turned out, it was not so bad. She was installed as a member of his family, and that was better than to depend entirely on the cousinship to the Mexican Dona Maria. She was really a little afraid of the swarthy black-browed women of the country.

To be sure, they sat around in fat content, with their bits of embroidery or drawn work, and seemed to see nothing else; but she had seen Dona Maria whip an Indian servant with her own hands one day, and the blind rage in the dark face had ever after made Angela a trifle more respectful. It was not nice to be entirely at the mercy of ignorant power. Don Eduardo was always ready with gold pieces for a pretty woman, but even the distant cousinhood might not be all the protection required for a lady of Angela's beauty, if any animosity should ever take root in Dona Maria's mind.

So it was all well as things stood. Keith Bryton would, she knew, keep to both letter and spirit of any promise he had made poor Teddy, and she felt sure the fond boy had exacted much of the brother who he thought could accomplish all things.

Thus she decided, as she watched and weighed his apparent amused indifference to the admiration she excited. Fair women were at a premium in the City of the Angels. He had just arrived from the dusky tribes of Mexico; before that he had ranged the desert land; but she realized with resentment that no beauty of hers would ever make an oasis for him.

The men who did admire her he regarded as fools.

He saw her glance from him, and she set her white teeth together with a little click of absolute frustration. She had accepted his ungracious invitation in order to show him the admiration her mere appearance on the drive would excite, and it all weighed not an iota. Would he ever really care for any one? Had he ever cared?

Then he moved his hand, and the sun gleamed on the ring he wore, the Mexican onyx with the Aztec eagle. It recalled the adventure over which she had laughed at the Mission. She had never believed Teddy when he declared that Keith's attraction for that queer Mexican nun was a serious fact. Teddy knew so little, so very little, of the real feelings of either men or women. He had gone to his death buoyed for any sort of adventure by the absolute conviction that his wife adored him. Poor Teddy! Never would any woman be able to fool Keith Bryton like that,--not even the woman he would care for, if she ever did appear.

While she thought so, and watched him, his face grew suddenly rigid and colorless. The carriage of the bishop came down the street, the palomentos with their golden coats and silver manes and tails shining like satin in the sunlight. Rafael sat with his back to the horses, looking very much bored indeed, but beside the bishop sat the woman who had faced her on the hill of San Juan, and who had held her horse in the middle of the road.

She was prepared for the sudden light of appreciation in Rafael's beautiful eyes, as he lifted his hat and let his glance linger and meet hers for one swift instant of comprehension, but she was not prepared for the sudden leaning forward of his dark-browed bride, and the quick look with which she took in the two women in the carriage, and then the colorless face of their escort.

He looked at her levelly as he lifted his hat in acknowledgment of her husband's salutation. If his glance held ever so slight a suggestion of warning, it was unheeded by her. Her dark eyes glowed, her red lips parted and lost their color as she rested one slender jewelled hand on the carriage frame, and stared at him with incredulous eyes; one could see that she did not even breathe as the carriages whirled past each other; at least Angela noted it.

By turning her head she saw Rafael put out his hand suddenly to his wife, who had sunk back on the cushions beside the bishop. His manner suggested that he thought her ill. Keith could see the same without turning his head. But even after he observed the lace-draped shoulders straighten themselves, and the head held again proudly erect under the mantilla, he continued to gaze after them, unconscious that the blue eyes opposite him were alive with curiosity.

"One would think you were a long-lost brother, from the way that woman stared," she remarked. "One would think she would show more restraint when riding in state beside the bishop, and with her husband opposite."

Keith recovered himself and turned his attention to her.

"Was that Rafael Arteaga's wife?" he asked, carelessly. "I supposed it was, but have not had the honor of being presented."