The Pretty Sister Of Jose Part 6

When at last the bull lay an inert ma.s.s in the dust, and the people shouted and almost flung themselves from their places into the arena in their excitement, and the gay and superb actor bowed to them--bowed to them again and again--Pepita sat like a little image of stone. She was quite colorless, and her eyes were fixed. She seemed to hear and see nothing until some one spoke to her. Then she rose and looked at Manuel.

"It is too hot," she said, in a low voice not like her own. "I must go.

The sun. I have a pain in my head. Come."

He had not lifted his eyes once to her. It was as if she had not lived--as if she had been Isabella or Carmenita--and he did not give her a thought. No, he had not once looked up.

The next day he was gone. She heard Jose say so to Jovita, who grumbled loudly. She had forgotten her old distaste for these "fine ones."

"And but for her humors he would have stayed," she said. "What more does she want than a fine well-built man like that--a man who is well-to-do, and whom every other girl would dance for joy to get? But no; nothing but a prince for her. Well, we shall see. She will work for her bread herself at last, and serve the other women who have homes and husbands."

In the middle of the night she was wakened from her slumbers by something--she knew not what. Soon she perceived it was Pepita, trembling.

"What is it now?" demanded the old woman.

"I stayed out in the dew too long," said Pepita, "and I am cold."

"That is well," said Jovita. "Get chilled through and have a fever, that we may ruin ourselves with doctors' bills; and all because you choose to remain in the night air when you should be asleep."

Pepita lay on her pillow, her eyes wide open in the darkness, her small hot hand clutching against her breast something she had hung round her neck by a bit of ribbon. It was the _devisa_ she had stolen from Jovita, and which had not been thrown away at all. In the daytime it was hidden in the bosom of her dress; at night it hung by a cord and her hand held it. By this time a sort of terror had mingled itself with her pa.s.sion of anger and pain, and she lay trembling because she was saying to herself again and again:

"I am like Sarita! I am like Sarita!"

She said it to herself a thousand times in the weeks and months which followed, and which seemed to her helplessness like years. She said it in as many moods as there were hours of the day. Sometimes with wild unreasoning childish rage; sometimes with a shock of fear; sometimes in a frenzy of shame; sometimes, as she stood and looked up the road, her cheeks pale, her eyes dilated with self-pity and tears.

"I am like Sarita! Yes--Sarita!" She remembered with superst.i.tious tremor all the things that had been said to her of the punishment that would fall upon her because of her hard-heartedness. She remembered Jovita's prophecies, and how she had mocked them; how cruel she had been to those who suffered for her; how she had laughed in their faces and turned away from their sighs.

She remembered Felipe, whom she had not spared one pang--Felipe, at whom she had only stared in scorn when he wept and wrung his hands before her. Had he felt like this when she sent him back to Seville to despair?

A cruel fever of restlessness burned her. She could find pleasure no more in the novelties of the city, in the gayeties of the gardens, in her own beauty.

Sometimes she was sure it was magic--the evil-eye. And she slipped away, poor child! and knelt in the still, cool church, and prayed to be delivered.

But once as she was doing this a sudden thought struck her.

"Not to think of him any more," she said, knitting her brows with yet another new pang. "Not to remember his face--not to remember his voice and the words he said! No, no!" And her rosary slipped from her fingers and fell upon the stone floor, and she picked it up and rose from her knees and went away.

All that day and night she thought and thought, and the next day went to pray again--but not that she might be delivered. She brought to the shrine at which she knelt substantial promises as offerings. Hers were not the prayers of a saint, but of a pa.s.sionate, importunate child, self-willed and tempestuous. She would not have prayed if she could have hoped for help from any earthly means. She had never prayed for anything before. She had always taken what she wanted and gone her way; but she had had few needs. Now in this strange anguish she could do nothing for herself, and surely it was the place of the Virgin and the saints to help her. She stormed the painted wax figure in its niche with appeals which were innocently like demands.

Make him come back--make him come back to her. Mother of G.o.d, he must return! Make him come to the wall some night--yes, to-night. He must not know that she was like Sarita, but he must come; and whatsoever she did or said he must not go away again. She would sell her new necklace; the silver comb her mother had left, her--the comb her father had given her mother in the days of their courtship; she would do some work, and give to the Holy Mother some candles and flowers; but he must come back, and he must not go away again whatsoever she did.

She knelt upon the stone floor, her hands wrung together, pouring forth the same words breathlessly over and over, each reiteration more intense than the last, all her young strength going out into the appeal.

And still she had not yet reached the point of knowing what she should do and say when he came.

When she tried to rise to her feet she was obliged to make two efforts before she succeeded. She had given such a pa.s.sion of strength to her siege that she was almost exhausted, and she went out into the dazzling sunlight trembling. She did this day after day, day after day, and at night she waited by the wall, but the road was always the same.

And she could hear nothing--not a word. She could not ask, even though sometimes as she sat and gazed at Jose with hungry eyes it seemed as if she must drop dead if he did not speak. But he did not speak because he could have told her but little, and was quite secure in his belief that the mere mention of Sebastiano's name angered her.

So the time went by--weeks and months--and at last one evening she went to the church and prayed a new prayer.

"Sacred Mother," she said, "I have sold the comb and the necklace, and I have worked and can keep my word. I have bought a little golden heart.

And if he comes"--in a fainter whisper--"if he comes I will say nothing ill to him."

That night, for the first time, she heard of Sebastiano.

Little Carlos came in and was full of news.

"They say that Sebastiano has had great success, and that perhaps he will go to America."

"Where is America?" asked Jovita.

"It is at the other end of the world, and never yet have the people seen a bull-fight."

"Never?" said Jose, staring. "That is impossible!"

"It is true," answered Carlos. "And they are rich, and like new things; and the king has spoken of sending for Sebastiano. He will be rich enough to build a palace for his old age."

A few days later, in the dusk of the evening, there crept into the church a little figure familiar to the painted saints and the waxen Virgin. But to-day it wore a changed aspect. It moved slowly at first, reluctantly; the brilliant little face was pale; the eyes wild with torture. A moment it stood before the altar, and then flung up its arms with a fierce gesture.

"Mother of G.o.d," it cried, brokenly, "then if it must be so--tell him--tell him that I am like Sarita!" and fell upon the altar steps shuddering and sobbing like a beaten child.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Shuddering and sobbing like a beaten child 135]

CHAPTER IV.

And yet it was again weeks and weeks before she heard another word. In those weeks there were times when she hated Jose because he never once spoke of what she wished to hear. She could not speak herself--she could not ask questions; she could only wait--hungry and desolate. They would not even say--these people--whether he had gone to the King of America or not; whether he was at the other end of the world, or whether he was only in some other city. The truth was that Jose had innocently cautioned the others against speaking of one whom Pepita disliked to hear of.

"She does not like him," he said, sorrowfully. "Girls are like that sometimes. It makes her angry when one talks of him."

But slow as he was, he could not help seeing in time that something was wrong with Pepita. Sometimes she scarcely talked at all, and she did not flame up when Jovita grumbled; it seemed as if she scarcely heard. Her eyes had grown bigger, too, and there was a burning light in them. They always appeared to be asking something; often he found himself obliged to look up, and saw them fixed upon him, as if they meant to wrest something from him. The careless bird-like look had gone, the careless bird-like laughter and mocking. He began gradually to fancy she was always thinking of something that hurt and excited her. But then there was nothing. She had all she wanted. She had as many trinkets as the other girls; she had even more. She had so little work to do that she had sought some outside her home to fill her spare moments, and she loved no one. There was not a man she knew who would not have come if she had smiled. What, then, could it be? And how pretty she was!

Prettier than ever; prettier because of the burning look in her eyes, and--and something else he could not explain; a kind of restless grace of movement, as if she was always on the alert.

"Are you not pleased with Madrid any longer?" he asked her once.

"Yes," she answered.

"Do you want anything?"

"No."

"It seems to me," he said, slowly, and with much caution, "that you do not amuse yourself as you did at first."

"It is not so new," she said; "but there is still pleasure enough." And for a moment she kept her great eager eyes fixed upon him, and then she moved slowly toward him and touched him with a soft touch on his big clumsy shoulder and said: "You are a good brother! You are a good brother!"

"I have always loved you," he said, with simple pride. "When we were children, you know I always promised that you should see better days."