For the Soul of Rafael Part 41

"Certainly."

"Or--or of anything I might offend you in?"

"Nothing you choose to do will affect my promise to my brother," he said, impatient at her persistence.

"I may remind you of that some day," she said, gathering up her brocades. "If you do go, I hope that ghoul of a man, your padre, goes too. His silence makes him more like a spook than a man. The people have a holy horror of his piety."

After she had disappeared, Padre Libertad entered from an inner room and smiled grimly at Bryton.

"You are the sort of lover to be unhappy," he observed. "You can't console yourself with the other women. Half the men in the valley are mad over that woman, who would coquette with you if you did not turn ice when she comes near."

Keith stared out of the window toward the hills of the sea, tinged with the warm rose of the sunset. And the man in a priest's robe tried to laugh, and ended with a sigh.

"I admire your strength, though I doubt if I could emulate it," he confessed. "One pretty woman in sight is worth a dozen G.o.ddesses over the hill."

"Talk sense if you can!"

"I can. I shall leave to-night instead of to-morrow. I find I can go to Mexico, or South America if I choose, without touching land. I shall be running away with the property of a relative, and you might not care to mix up with it."

"An hour ago you had no such plan."

"An hour ago I had not confessed Victorio Lopez! I know an old record of his, and he thinks it is witchcraft. There is a lot of coin going along,--a matter of several rawhide sacks of it,--but it will be donated by a man who can afford gifts. Let me have your address two months ahead, and I can tell you how it all turns out."

"You should be glad to get away alive, without weighting yourself with coin. There is a woman here who would care if things went entirely wrong."

"Ana? It is for her I take the chance. I know a corner down the coast where fifty thousand will last forever. She is free, and she is of California--no snow of the hills in her blood! She will come to me after the chase is over."

"She knows?"

"Not yet. Women's fears upset things sometimes. If I do not tell her, it will be better. I need only tell that I am going; she is waiting eagerly for that."

"And Victorio Lopez?"

"He is paralyzed by the fear that I may give some old proofs of things to the alcalde. Oh, Victorio is all right. He knows two Indian sailors who will say nothing. They need to get away, and want a chance. We will bind and gag the others and put them ash.o.r.e. It is all settled. The saints be thanked that I know boats and the coast!"

Bryton scarcely knew whether to think the plan a wild fancy or an actual fact. The whole scheme of life those days was so filled with the strange and tragic, that all the echoes of laughter and the tinkle of guitars in the corridors could not even temper it.

At sunset Rafael Arteaga rode a dripping horse into the plaza, and shouted cordial responses to the chorus of greetings awaiting him. All the day he had been in the saddle. "On business," was the only explanation to Don Eduardo and Dona Maria. To his wife he had offered none, nor spoken since the scene in the chapel. But he was in high good spirits, gay and eager.

He came direct to Bryton's room with a fine air of delight that he was on his feet again. Even to Padre Libertad, whom he had so fervently cursed the day before, he was at last gracious. When told by Ana that the padre was on his journey south either at once or early in the morning, he gave her some gold pieces to bestow upon him for his church or his order: priests always had all sorts of ways to use money. Padre Libertad accepted the alms gratefully, and exchanged for them a blessing.

The sun was gone, and men, and women too, were riding in from outlying ranches. The Indians and Mexicans were trooping to the plaza to watch the gay caballeros and dark-eyed ladies in the dresses of their grandparents. Raquel Arteaga, dressed in simple black, with white undersleeves and white chemisette of silk, stood in the corridor for a while and greeted her earlier guests, while her husband dressed. All the people were on the west side of the plaza, where the dancing was to be.

Bryton could see her there surrounded by the gay people, almost nunlike with the strings of black pearls around her throat as sole ornament, and in the braids of her hair the white stars of the odorous jasmine, thrust there by Ana, to break the severity of her garb. Her eyes burned like purple stars, and the pink color crept, in spite of herself, to her cheeks, and stayed there. Somewhere, she knew, one man was watching her, and each moment the terror grew that some of their many friends would bring him to her and make it impossible for him to refuse to come.

Several times she caught the eyes of Ana regarding her curiously. It was the first time she had ever seen Raquel surrounded by men and bandying compliments, and looking, for all her nunlike white and black, like a royal creature at a puppet show. And Ana had a sort of triumph in noting that the eyes of Dona Angela also wandered to her hostess in a sort of petulant amaze at the supremacy of her, when she chose to unbend and radiate graciousness in that manner. For Raquel jested and laughed at the pretty phrases of caballeros murmured in her ear. She refused a brooch of emerald for the Virgin in the chapel, in exchange for the jasmine in her hair. She promised two men to say a rosary for their aching hearts, and she allowed the older men to kiss her hands. One looking at her said:

"You are Mexico come to life to-night, senora. Always I have thought it.

But to-night I see it with my own eyes. Mexico has always that glory of the opal fires at the heart."

Angela Bryton saw and heard, and her own childish appeal appeared all at once cheap and of tinsel. The pearls and brocades of the woman she hated seemed to scorch her flesh, and she felt the truth of the petulant words she had said to Rafael: that the pearls had been tossed to her with the indifference of a queen. The owner of the casket could afford to stand serene and gemless, with only the jasmine flower in her hair, and yet dominate.

A cold rage filled her as she realized what Raquel could mean to men if she cared. It would be as it was when they met first on the hill, always she would hold the middle of the road, if she was aroused to care. Up to that moment there had been a wild fancy of perhaps sailing away alone with the hastily gathered coin, and of stopping at no port for Rafael.

She was half afraid of him and after all what could he do if she did elude him like that? But the sight of Raquel and her little court of admirers changed all that. The proud eyes should know all the humiliation one woman could cause another--all!

She looked for Rafael; at once she would tell him,--now, while the glory of the Mexican opal eclipsed the woman of the royal pearls! She was blind with anger to every other thing. But he had not yet appeared. He was dressing, and a gentleman came to claim her for a dance. The guitars were already sending harmonies through the open doors, and the people were gathering thick along the western corridors. The rest of the plaza and the inner court were deserted. Not even a pair of lovers strayed from the crowd as yet. Later, when the moon came up, they would gather courage, but the shadows of the corridors seemed eerie retreats at night to any but souls oblivious to the world.

It was not night yet. The first star glimmered in the western sky, and to the east a soft radiance over San Juan Mountain marked the path where the moon would come. In the warm dusk the woman with the opal fires of Mexico in her heart slipped away from the gay groups and through the stillness of the padres' garden, under the sculptured face and serpent, and then to the place of the altar, where the shadows were always softest. She came swiftly, silently; she had an odd feeling of being followed by his thoughts. The altar was the one place of refuge surely--the altar!

But it was not. He stood there leaning against the pillar. She carried a tiny candle and a rosary. He watched her light other candles in the niche, thus outlining the carved saint with the long hair over her shoulders, and the draperies of crimson. Flowers were there, blood-red roses, and he saw it all in the soft glimmer of the candles; then, as she was about to kneel before them, he strode forward and caught her arm.

The golden rosary fell on the tiled floor between them, and she placed her other hand over his, in mute appeal.

"You shall not kneel at that altar," he commanded, his voice scarcely raised above a whisper; "that much of you belongs to me. I will not go away from you with that memory of you in my mind; I will not!"

She was trembling, and dared not lift her eyes.

"You should not have touched me," she said, brokenly. "All those hours on the hill I did not touch you even once. Must the two of us be weaker than one?"

"Weak? Oh yes, I am weak to-night, or I should not be here--the weakness of a sick man who cannot help himself. It is the last time, Espiritu mia, so long as we live--so long as we live!"

She slipped the Aztec ring from her finger and gave it to him.

"I thought perhaps it was the ring that gave you power over my thoughts," she said, simply; "but it was not. Your heart beats here in my breast, and will till I die, or till you do. Take it back, keep it.

After all, it was not the ring!"

Her voice was so low, so even, that he, hearing his own heart-beats at the mere sight of her, felt the sudden resentment of a sick man at what appeared to be her cold control of herself.

"Is it so easy for you, then?" he asked. "Like slipping a ring from your finger or a bracelet from your wrist, and putting it aside to wear no more? Oh, G.o.d! If but for one minute you could know aught but the sweet cool love of the girl, or the nun, or the devotee!"

She caught her breath in a little shudder at the heart-call in his words, then put out her hand and looked at him as he had never seen her look.

"Don't touch me," she said, her tones tense with a final decision. "You think that I do not know--that I do not understand; yet you see me kneel _there_!" and she flung one eloquent hand to the Madalena of the roses.

"It is the thought--the thought! That we live on different sides of the world will not change the fact that you live in me, and I in you. And it will be always--always! I do not understand? Yet I have locked my door at night and flung the key through the bars of the window, that I could not follow my heart and go to you wherever you were! I do not understand? Yet there have been days when I feared to mount my horse to ride alone, for fear the wild wish for you would grow stronger than I could bear, and I should ride to you, to you only, and--oh, Mother of G.o.d!--ask you to keep me there!"

Her voice broke in shuddering sobs, and she covered her face with her hands, sinking on her knees before the Madalena of the altar, the last crowned saint left in the ruin. Her one hand was still extended to ward him off, but he caught it, held it, and drew her to him.

"You are mine by all that!" he muttered, scarce knowing what he said.

"Do you think I shall leave you here after knowing the truth? Espiritu!

The Indians named you rightly. Spirit of mine, there are no bonds of earth strong enough to keep me from you now. Come! Our world is together; the nights of the evil dreams have been lived through.

Somewhere we shall find the sunshine."

The hand clasping hers she caught to her lips, but when he would have clasped her, she broke from him with a low moan of protest.

"I tell you this that you go away knowing that the real life of me is with you always," she said, and stood leaning against the altar of the saint. "Go now, and go quickly; for I tell you truly, if the day ever come again when I find myself like to follow you, I will come where I am now, and this will end it all."

From the bodice of her gown she drew the little dagger she had taken from the jewel-casket the day before.

"My life is not my own to live in my own way; it is bound by an oath to the dead, and there is no release, none--none! Go now. You know my heart and the madness of it. Forget me if you can,--but oh, beloved, not too quickly!"