Rita Part 3

Pepe vanished, and soon returned, dragging by the collar a lean scarecrow even more dilapidated than himself. Apparently the poor fellow had been asleep, and had been roughly clutched and hauled across the camp, for his hair was full of leaves and gra.s.s, and he was rubbing his eyes and swearing softly under his breath, vowing vengeance on his captor.

"Silence, animal!" said Pepe, admonishing him by a kick of the presence of ladies; "Behold the ill.u.s.trious senorita, who does you the honour to look at you. Attention, Swine of the Antilles!"

Thus adjured, poor Pedro straightened himself, made the best bow he could, and stood sheepishly before Rita, trying furtively to brush a few of the sticks and straws off his ragged clothing.

"You are Pedro Valdez?" asked Rita.

At the service of the ill.u.s.trious senorita. Yes, he was Pedro Valdez; in no condition to appear in such company, but nevertheless her slave and her beast of burden.

"Oh, listen!" cried Rita, her eyes softening with compa.s.sion and anxiety. "You have a wife, Pedro Valdez,--a wife and a dear little child, is it not so? and your mother--she is old and weak. When have you seen them all, Valdez? Where did you leave them?"

The man looked bewildered. "Leave them, senorita? I left them at home, in our village. They were well, all was well, when I came away. Has anything befallen them?"

"They are safe! All is well with them now, or will be well, when you go to them. They are near here, Valdez. The Spaniards broke up the village, do you see? Dolores and your mother fled with the little one. The village was burned, and many souls perished; but Dolores was so strong, so brave, that she got the old mother away alive and safe, and the child as well. They have suffered terribly, my poor man; you must look to find them pale and thin, but they are alive, and all will be well when once they have found you."

Seeing Valdez overcome for the moment, Rita hastened to the General's tent and told her story, begging that the husband and father might be allowed to go at once to the relief of his suffering family.

"And he shall bring them here, shall he not?" she cried, eagerly. "They cannot be separated again, can they, dear Senor General? you will make room for Dolores--that is the wife; oh, such a brave woman! and the old mother, and the dear little child!"

The General looked puzzled; a look half quizzical, half sad, stole over his fine face; while he hesitated, Carlos broke out hastily: "Rita! you are too unreasonable! Do you think we are in a city here? do you think the General has everything at his command, to maintain an establishment of women and children? It is not to be thought of. We have no room, no supplies, no conveniences of any kind; they must go elsewhere."

"They can have my house!" cried Rita, "Your house, brother Carlos, which you have given to me. I will sleep in a hammock, under a tree. What matter? I will live on bread and water; I will--"

"My dear young lady!" said the General, interrupting her eager speech with a lifted hand. "My dear child, if an old man may call you so, if only we had bread for all, there would be no further question. We would gladly take these poor people, and hundreds of other suffering ones who fill the hills and valleys of our unhappy country. But--Carlos is right, alas! that I must say it. Here in the mountain camp, it is impossible for us to harbour refugees, unless for a night or so, while other provision is making. Let Valdez bring his family here for the night--we can make shift to feed and shelter them so long. After that--"

He shook his head sadly. Rita clasped her hands in distress. To be brought face to face with the impossible was a new experience to the spoiled child. There was a moment's silence. Then:

"Senor General," she cried, "I know! I see! all may yet be managed. They shall go to our house."

"To--"

"To our house, Carlos's and mine, in Havana. There are servants, troops of them; there is food, drink, everything, in abundance, in wicked, shameful abundance. Julio shall take care of them; Julio shall treat them as his mother and his sister. I will write commands to him; this instant I will write."

s.n.a.t.c.hing a sheet of paper from the table, she wrote furiously for a moment, then handed the paper to the General with a look of satisfaction. The General--oh, how slow he was!--adjusted his gla.s.ses, and read the paper carefully; looked at Rita; looked at Carlos, and read the paper again. Rita clenched her little hands, but was calm as marble, as she a.s.sured herself. "Have I the senorita's permission to read this aloud?" asked the old man at last. "It may be that Don Carlos's advice--a thousand thanks, senorita." He read:

"JULIO:--The bearer of this is the wife of Pedro Valdez. You are to take her and her family in, and give them the best the house contains; the best, do you hear? put them in the marble guest-chamber, and place the house at their disposal. Send for Doctor Blanco to attend them; let Teresa wait upon them, and let her furnish them with clothes from my wardrobe.

If you do not do all this, Julio, I will have you killed; so fail not as you value your life.

"MARGARITA DE SAN REAL MONTFORT.

"P.S. The Senor Don Carlos is here with me, and echoes what I say. We are with the brave General Sevillo, and if you dare to disobey, terrible revenge will be taken."

"The ardent patriotism of the senorita," said the General, cautiously, "is beautiful and inspiring; nevertheless, is it not possible that a more conciliatory tone might--I would not presume to dictate, but--"

"Oh, Rita!" cried Carlos. "Child, when will you learn that we are no longer acting plays at home? This is absurd!"

With an impatient movement that might have been Rita's own, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper and tore it in two. "The General cannot be troubled with such folly!" he said, shortly. "Go to your room, my sister, and repose yourself after your fatigues."

"By no means!" cried the kindly General, seeing Rita's eyes fill with tears of anger and mortification. "The senorita has promised to make my tea for me this evening. Give orders, I pray you, Don Carlos, that Valdez bring his family to us for the night; the rest can well wait for to-morrow's light. The senorita is exhausted, I fear, with her manifold fatigues, and she must have no more anxieties to-day. Behold the tea at this moment! Senorita Rita, this will be the pleasantest meal I have had since I left my home, two years ago."

No anger could stand against the General's smile. In a moment Rita was smiling herself, though the tears still stood in her dark eyes, and one great drop even rolled down her cheek, to the General's great distress.

Carlos, seeing with contrition his sister's effort at self-control, bent to kiss her cheek and murmur a few affectionate words. Soon they were all seated around the little table, Rita and the General on camp-stools, Carlos on a box. The tea was smoking hot; what did it matter that the nose of the teapot was broken? Rita had never tasted anything so delicious as that cup of hot tea, without milk, and with a morsel of sugar-cane for sweetening. The camp fare, biscuits soaked in water and fried in bacon fat, was better, she declared, than any food she had ever tasted in her life. To her delight, a small box of chocolate still remained in her long-suffering bag; this she presented to the General with her prettiest courtesy, and he vowed he was not worthy to taste such delicacies from such a hand. So, with interchange of compliments, and with a real friendliness that was far better, the little feast went on gaily; and when, late in the evening, Rita withdrew to her tent, she told Manuela that she had never enjoyed anything so much in her life; never!

CHAPTER V.

TO MARGARET.

CAMP OF THE SONS OF CUBA, May the --, Midnight.

MY MARGUERITE:--What will you say when your eyes, those calm gray eyes, rest upon the above heading? Will they open wider, I ask myself? Will the breath come quicker between those cool rose-leaves of your lips? "It is true!" you will murmur to yourself. "She has done as she said, as she swore she would. My Rita, my wild pomegranate flower, has kept her vow; she is in the mountains with Carlos; she has taken her place beside the defenders of her country."

Ah! you thought it was play, Marguerite, confess it! You thought the wild Cuban girl was uttering empty breath of nothingness; you have had no real anxiety, you never dreamed that I should really find myself--where now I am. Where is it? Listen, Marguerite! My house--once Carlos's house, now mine by his brotherly gift--stands in a little glen of the hills. An open s.p.a.ce, once dry gra.s.s, now bare earth, baked by the sun, trodden by many feet; a cl.u.s.ter of palms, a mountain spring gushing from a rock hard by; on every side hills, the brown, rugged hills of Cuba, fairer to me than cloudy Alps of Italy, or those other great mountains of which never can I remember the barbarous names. To teach me geography, Marguerite, you never could succeed, you will remember; more than our poor Peggy history. Poor little Peggy! I could wish she were here with me; it would be the greatest pleasure of her life. For you, Marguerite, the scene is too wild, too stern; but Peggy has a martial spirit under her somewhat clumsy exterior. But I wander, and Peggy is without doubt sleeping at this moment under the stern eye of her schoolmistress. I began to tell you about my house, Marguerite.

So small a house you saw never. Standing, I reach up my hand and touch the roof, of brown canvas, less fresh than once it was. Sitting, I stretch out my arms--here is one wall; there--almost, but a few feet between--is the other. In a corner my bed--ah, Marguerite! on your white couch there, with snowy draperies falling softly about you, consider my bed! a pile of dried gra.s.ses and leaves, shaken and tossed anew every morning, covered with a camp blanket. I tell you, the G.o.ds might sleep on it, and ask no better. In another corner sleeps Manuela, my faithful maid, my humble friend, the companion of my wanderings. Some day you shall see Manuela; she is an excellent creature. Cultivated, no; intellinctual--what is that for a word, Marguerite? Ah! when will you learn Spanish, that I may pour my soul with freedom?--no; but a heart of gold, a spirit of fire and crystal. She keeps my hut neat, she arranges my toilet,--singular toilets, my dear, yet not wholly unbecoming, I almost fancy,--she helps me in a thousand ways. She has a little love-affair, that is a keen interest to me; Pepe, formerly the servant of Carlos, adores her, and she casts tender eyes upon the young soldier. For me, as you know, Marguerite, these things are for ever past, buried in the grave of my hero, in the stately tomb that hides the ashes of the Santillos. I take a sorrowful pleasure in watching the budding happiness of these young creatures. More of this another time.

I sit, Marguerite, in the doorway of my little house. It is the middle hour of the night, when tomb-yards gape, as your Shakespeare says. Am I sleepy? No! The camp slumbers, but I--I am awake, and I watch. I had a very long siesta, too. The moon is full, and the little glade is bathed in silver light. Here in Cuba, Marguerite, the moon is other than with you in the north. You call her pale moon, gentle moon, I know not what.

Here she shines fiercely, with pa.s.sion, with palpitations of fiery silver. The palms, the aloes, the tangled woods about the camp, are black as night; all else is a flood of airy silver. I float, I swim in this flood, entranced, enraptured. I ask myself, have I lived till now?

is not this the first real thrill of life I have ever experienced? I alone wake, as I said; the others slumber profoundly. The General in his tent; ah, that you could know him, Marguerite! that you and my uncle could embrace this n.o.ble, this G.o.dlike figure! He is no longer young, the snows of seventy winters have blanched his cl.u.s.tering locks; it is the only sign of age. For the rest, erect, vigorous, a knight, a paladin, a--in effect, a son of Cuba. The younger officers regard him as a divinity; they live or die at his command. They are three, these officers; Carlos is one; the others, Don Alonzo Ximenes, Don Uberto Cortez. Don Alonzo is not interesting; he is fat, and rather stupid, but most good-natured. Don Uberto is Carlos's friend, a n.o.ble young captain, much admired formerly in Havana. I have danced with him, my cousin, in halls of rose-wreathed marble; we meet here in the wilderness, I with my shattered affections, he with his country's name written on his soul. It is affecting; it is heart-stirring, Marguerite; yet think nothing of it; romance is dead for Margarita Montfort. Carlos is my kind brother, as ever. He was vexed at first at my coming here. Heavens! what was I to do? My stepmother was dragging me to a convent; my days would have been spent there, and in a short time my life would have gone out like a flame. "Out, short candle!" You see I remember your Shakespeare readings, my dearest. Can I forget anything that recalls you to me, half of my heart? If there had been time, indeed, I might have written to my uncle; I might even have come to you; but the hour descended like a thunderbolt; I fled, Manuela with me. The manner of my flight? you will ask. Marguerite, it was managed--I do not boast, I am the soul of humility, you know it!--the manner of it was perfect. Listen, and you shall hear all. You remember that in my last letter--written, alas! in my beloved garden, which I may never see more--I spoke with a certain restraint, even an approach to mystery. It was thus. At first, when that woman proposed to take me to the convent, I was a creature distracted.

The fire of madness burned in my veins, and I could think of nothing save death or revenge. But with time came reflection; came wisdom, Marguerite, and inflexible resolve. To those she loves, Margarita Montfort is wax, silk, down, anything the most soft and yielding that can be figured. To her enemies, steel and adamant are her composition.

I had two friends in that house of Spaniards; one was Pasquale, good, faithful Pasquale, an under gardener and helper; the other, Manuela, my maid. I have described her to you--enough! I realised that action must be of swiftness, the lightning flash, the volcano fire that I predicted.

Do not say that I did not warn you, Marguerite; knowing me, you must have expected from my last letter what must come. I called Manuela to my room, I made pretence that she should arrange my hair. My hair has grown three inches, Marguerite, since I left you; it now veritably touches the floor as I sit. Our holy religion tells us that it is a woman's crown, yet how heavy a one at times! I closed the door, I locked it; I caused to draw down the heavy Persians. Then, tiger-like, I sprang upon my attendant, and laid my hand on her mouth. "Hush!" I tell her. "Not a word, not a sound! dare but breathe, and you may be my death. My life, I tell you, hangs by a thread. Hush! be silent, and tell me all. Tell me who a.s.sists Geronimo in the stables since Pablo is ill." Manuela struggles, she releases herself to reply--

"Pasquale!"

It is the answer from heaven. Pasquale, I have said, is my one friend beside Manuela. I say to her, "Do thus, and thus! give these orders to Pasquale; tell him that it imports of your life and mine, saying nothing of his own; that if I am not obeyed, the evil eye will be the least of his punishments, and death without the sacraments the end for him."

Manuela hears; she trembles; she flies to execute my commands. Then, Marguerite--then, what does the daughter of Cuba do? She goes to the wall, to the trophy I have described to you so often. She selects her weapons. Ah, if you could see them! First, a long slender dagger, the steel exquisitely inlaid with gold, in a sheath of green enamel; a dagger for a prince, Marguerite, for your Lancelot or Tristram!

Another, short and keen, the blade plain but deadly, cased in wrought leather of Cordova. Last, my machete, my pearl of destructiveness. It was his, my Santayana's; he procured it from Toledo, from the master sword-maker of the universe. The blade is so fine, the eye refuses to tell where it melts into the air; a touch, and the hardest substance is divided exactly in two pieces. The handle, gold, set with an ancestral emerald, which for centuries has brought victory in the field to the arm of the hero who wore it; the sheath--I forget myself; this weapon has no sheath. When a Santillo de Santayana rides into battle, he has no thought to sheathe his sword. These, Marguerite, are my armament; these, and a tiny gold-mounted revolver, a gem, a toy, but a toy of deadly purpose. Enough! I lay them apart, ready for the night. I go to my stepmother, I smile, I make submission. I will do all she wishes; I am a child; her age impresses me with the truth that I should not set my will against hers. Concepcion is thirty on her next birthday; she tells the world that she is twenty, but I know! it grinds her bones when I remind her of her years, as they were revealed to me by a member of her family. So! She is pleased, we embrace, the volantes are commanded, all goes smoothly. I demand permission to take my parrot to the convent; it is, to my surprise, accorded; I know she thought those savage sisters would kill him the first time he uttered his n.o.ble and inspiring words.

The night comes, the hour of the departure. To accompany us goes my good Don Miguel, the dear old man of whom I have told you, whom I revere as my grandfather. My heart yearns to tell him all, to cast myself on his venerable bosom and cry, "Come with me; take me yourself to my brother; share with us the perils and glories of the tented field!" But no! he is old, this dear friend; his hair is the snow, his step is feeble.

Hardships such as Rita must now endure would end his feeble life. I speak no word; a marble smile is all I wear, though my heart is rent with anguish. The carriages are at the door. Concepcion would have me ride in the first, that she may have her eyes on me at each instant. She suspects nothing, no; it is merely the base and suspicious nature which reveals itself at every occasion. I refuse, I prodigate expressions of my humility, of my determination to take the second place, leaving the first to her; briefly, I take the second volante, Manuela springing to my side. After some discontent, appeased by dear Don Miguel, who is veritably an angel, and wants but death to transport him among the saints, Concepcion mounts in the first volante. I have seen that Pasquale is on the box of mine; I possess my soul, I lean back and count the beats of my fevered pulse, as we ascend the steep road, winding among hills and forests. The convent is at the top of a long, long hill, very steep and rugged; the horses pant and strain; humanity demands that they slacken their pace, that the carriages are slowly, slowly, drawn up the rugged track. The night descends, I have told you, swiftly in our southern climate; already it is dark. On either side of the road are tall shrouded forms, which Manuela takes for sentinels, for Spanish soldiers drawn up to watch, perhaps to arrest us. I laugh; I see they are the aloes only, planted here in rows along the road. Presently, at a turn of the road, a light! a fire burning by the roadside, and soldiers running, real ones this time, to the horses' heads. "_Alerta! quien va?_" It is the Spanish challenge, Marguerite; it is a piquette of the Gringos, of the hated Spaniards. They peer into the carriages, faces of savages, of brutes, devils; I feel their glances like poisoned arrows.

They demand, Don Miguel makes answer, shows his papers. Of the instant these slaves are cringing, are bowing to the earth. "Pa.s.s, most honourable and ill.u.s.trious Senor Don Miguel Pietoso, with the heavenly ladies under your charge!" It is over. The volantes roll on. I clasp Manuela in my arms and whisper, "We are free!" We mingle our tears of rapture, but for a moment only. We approach the steepest pitch of the long hill (it is veritably a mountain), a place beyond conception rugged and difficult. The horses strain and tug; they are at point of exhaustion. I look at Pasquale; Pasquale has served me since my cradle.

Does his head move, a very little, the least imaginable motion? It is too dark to see; the moon is not yet risen. But I feel the horses checked, I feel the carriage pause, an instant, a breath only. I step noiselessly to the ground; the volante is low, permitting this without danger. Manuela follows. There is not a sound, not a creak, not the rustle of a fold. Again it is over. The volante rolls on. Manuela and I are alone, are free in the mountains of Cuba Libre.

I have but one thought: my country, my brother! Behold me here, in the society of one, prepared to shed my blood for the other. You would never guess who else is with us; Chiquito, our poor old friend the parrot, the sacred legacy of that white saint, our departed aunt. Could I leave him behind, to unfriendly, perhaps murderous, hands? Old Julio is a Spaniard at heart; Chiquito is a Cuban bird; his very soul--do you doubt that a bird has a soul, when I tell you that I have seen it in his eyes, Marguerite?--his very soul speaks for his country. If you could hear him cry, "_Viva Cuba Libre!_" The camp is on fire when they hear him. Ah, they are such brave fellows, our soldiers! poor, in rags, half-fed--it matters not! each one is a hero, and all are my brothers. Marguerite, sleep hangs at last upon me. Good-night, beloved; good-night, cool white soul of ivory and silver. I love thee always devotedly. Have no fear for me. It is true that the Spaniards are all about us in these mountains, that at any moment we may be attacked. What of that? If the daughter of Cuba dies by her brother's side, in her country's cause, my Marguerite will know that it is well with her. You will shed a tear over the lonely grave among the Cuban hills; but you will plant a wreath for Rita, a wreath of mingled laurel and immortelle, and it will bloom eternally.

Ever, and with a thousand greetings to my honoured and admired uncle, your

MARGARITA DE SAN REAL MONTFORT.

CHAPTER VI.

IN THE NIGHT.