Chapter XL

Vain would be the attempt to describe the consternation of Doña Isabel when she awoke at early dawn, and felt about her that peculiar stillness—a stillness that seems absolutely tangible—which indicates the abstraction of the element of humanity from the associations about us, and is especially impressive when that loss is utterly unexpected.

It was not yet daylight, and it was by this peculiar stillness, and not by sight, that Doña Isabel learned with a deadly feeling of dismay at her heart, that she was alone. For a moment she lay silent, then raising herself on her elbow sought to peer through the gloom, while with faltering voice she uttered the name “Chinita.”

There was no answer. She would have been inexpressibly surprised had there been; and yet refusing to be convinced, she arose from her bed and made her way to that of Chinita. Had the girl been there, in the infinite relief and excitement of the moment the lady must have clasped her in her arms with kisses and tears; as it was, after passing her hands wildly over the empty couch, she sank upon it with a deep and bitter moan, feeling anew, and with the intensified agony of remembrance, the shock with which she had heard the cry of Herlinda,—“My husband! My husband!” What but a like betrayal could in that place and time have drawn a young girl from her chamber? Alas! alas!

The thoughts of Doña Isabel flew to Ruiz; a thousand trifles, unheeded before, crowded her remembrance as confirmation of some secret understanding between him and Chinita. If she had noticed them at all it was to think with a smile that they had reference to Rosario. How had she been so blind! She sprang to her feet and hastily dressed herself with some undefined intention of seeking him in his quarters, and demanding an explanation of him if he were to be found, or of confirming her worst fears if he had fled. All her old distrust of him, which he had so skilfully lulled, returned with overwhelming force, and in her unfounded suspicion she included the more just one of treason to her purposes to the cause of liberty and to Gonzales, and with irresistible certainty became convinced that the delays and detours which Ruiz had made had been expedients of traitorous policy. In the few moments needed for the completion of her toilet, a terrible fear took possession of her. For the first time that night she had been separated from the main body of the troops,—what if she were abandoned! Nothing seemed more likely. Only the great self-possession that she habitually practised prevented her from rushing out—yes, even into the streets of the village—to satisfy herself that the rude encampment remained unbroken.

Yet with all this raging excitement of grief and doubt within her, she presently stepped out upon the corridor with that stately calmness which she ever wore before the world, were it represented by but the meanest peasant. Day had scarcely broken, yet there was a sound of movement unusual in so small a place. To the excited mind of Doña Isabel it appeared that like herself the people all must be searching wildly for the girl who had so strangely escaped her. She went to the inn door and looked out. The camp-women were wandering through the streets already, chaffering and bargaining with the vendors of milk and bread and vegetables. In the distance she saw the soldiers preparing for the march. Three or four officers were lounging down the narrow street. To her infinite surprise and relief she saw among them Ruiz. He hastened his steps and joined her with an air of consternation, which even in her excitement she noticed had in it a subdued suggestion of apprehension as of one detected in some doubtful act.

In a few words Doña Isabel apprised him of the disappearance of Chinita. It was impossible that it could be concealed; it was absolutely necessary that search should be made. Ruiz listened with an emotion greater even than hers. “Good heavens, Señora!” he cried, “we are undone. Ramirez must be at hand. In some way she has learned his whereabouts; she has fled to him!”

Doña Isabel thought Ruiz had suddenly gone mad. “Fled to Ramirez!” she cried. “Impossible! What can she know of the man? What object can she have in seeking him?”

Instinctively the lady had led the way back to the room she had left. Ruiz followed her, in the utter demoralization of his mind at the unexpected tidings, pouring out incoherent explanations of the designs that Chinita had cherished, and unconsciously revealing much of the duplicity of the part he had himself acted. With an acuteness of mind perhaps intensified by the keen emotion with which she listened to the unexpected accusations against the young girl, Doña Isabel conjectured at once that the speaker had played a double part; and it was a not improbable solution of the mystery of Chinita’s disappearance, that in discovering this the young girl had resolved to precipitate a crisis in the fate of the man who exercised so unaccountable a fascination over her.

Yet with whom had she fled? Had Ramirez himself stolen into the inn and borne her away? The face of Ruiz blanched at this suggestion. Had the girl learned what was indeed a fact, that upon that very day the troops of Doña Isabel Garcia were by their officers to protest against a further attempt to reach Gonzales, and declaring Ruiz their chosen and permanent leader were at once to take up the march to join the forces of General Ortega, a newly arisen and popular Liberal chieftain who was a personal and implacable enemy of Ramirez,—thus leaving El Toro to its fate? Had Chinita indeed gone with such news to Ramirez? Ruiz felt that his doom was sealed, for he rightly conjectured that the excitement of Chinita’s disappearance had already dampened the ardor in his behalf which he had found it a slow and almost impossible task to awaken among the troops. Indeed, that it had been roused at all was owing to the discontent which had arisen through the cleverly concealed tactics he had used in contriving so long and monotonous a march to the aid of a man but little known or admired, and from the general belief in the love of the beautiful _protégée_ of Doña Isabel for the young aspirant for fame. In her hand the favor of Doña Isabel was supposed to lie. Eager for action, eager for booty, brought to a point where they were almost within sound of the bugles of General Ortega, who was making his hurried and triumphant march to the capital, it had been decided that upon that very morning a _pronunciamento_ should be made, which, while involving no change of politics, should compel the consent of Doña Isabel to the apparently spontaneous outburst of patriotism upon the part of her troops, and confirm Ruiz in the command that she had temporarily confided to him.

Ruiz had so cunningly planned every detail that he doubted not that not only Doña Isabel, but Chinita as well, would be convinced of his entire ignorance of the _coup_, and that the girl’s ambition, and perhaps a somewhat malicious satisfaction in the reversal of the plans of Doña Isabel, would lead her to an acceptance of the apparently unavoidable forfeiture of her own desires.

To this end the ambitious young officer had been patiently working since the day he had found himself at the head of the troops of Tres Hermanos. He had been amazed at his own success. Everything had seemed to contribute to it. Not even the triumph of seeing himself actually attracting the good-will, if not the love, of Chinita had been denied him; and now at the moment least expected, at the most critical juncture, she had failed him. It was impossible for him to assume his usual self-sufficient air as he re-issued from the apartment of Doña Isabel,—an air that imposed on the majority of observers as that of a man conscious of power, rather than as a disguise of incompetency. His crest-fallen bearing as he gave the necessary orders for scouts to be sent out in search of those who in the night must have left the ill-guarded town was evident to the most careless eye, and did much to increase the feeling of distrust and coldness that was already beginning to supplant the ill-considered ardor of a few hours before.

The scouts had been despatched; and the main body of the troops waited for marching orders, which were long delayed. Ruiz, closeted with the men who had been most amenable to his reasoning, urged openly the arguments that he had but covertly suggested before. That exhausted apathy which following an exploded project is far more hopeless than that which, merely unignited, precedes its agitation, resisted all his efforts at revival. The officers, like the soldiers, listlessly waited to hear what would happen next, absolutely indifferent to Ruiz, and concerned for the moment in a mere matter of gossip,—the escapade of a young girl.

Toward noon some of the messengers returned. Most of them had nothing to report, but the vaquero Gabriel, the husband of Juana, as soon as he could escape the questioning of Ruiz, disappeared. An hour later he entered the apartment of Doña Isabel.

“What news, Gabriel, what news?” the lady cried excitedly. “Did you come upon any trace of—of the child; of those who have stolen her away?”

The vaquero shook his head, and Doña Isabel groaned. Those few hours had wrought a terrible change in her appearance. She was not young and able to meet shocks of disaster as she had been when they had shaken her in by-gone years.

“I found no trace of them, my Señora,” said the man, slowly. “Perhaps my eyes are not as keen as they were, and they say when one thinks much one sees little. Since I am married I find one must think. A woman gives one abundance for thought. She grinds care for a man more surely than corn for his bread.”

Doña Isabel looked up at him quickly. She knew that this oracular sentence had some bearing on the subject that absorbed her thoughts. “Speak,” she said. “What has your wife to do with this?”

“She was the playmate of the young Señorita,” he suggested.

“True, but what of that?”

“She would be likely to be in her confidence,—at least where there was no other to trust.”

Doña Isabel started, looking at him with fixed attention.

“The thought came to me as I rode out of the town,—it came back to me again and again. After hours of vain search I suffered myself to be convinced. I came back and taxed Juana with knowing with whom, and when and where, her friend had gone.”

“Well?” ejaculated Doña Isabel, in extreme agitation.

“She denied it. By all the saints she denied it; but I had a saint she had forgotten to commend herself to.” He smiled significantly.

Doña Isabel understood the arguments used by rancheros to refractory wives too well to doubt what his grim jest meant. At another time she would have indignantly dismissed from her presence the man who admitted laying a hand in castigation upon his wife; now she merely by an imperative gesture urged him to finish what he had to communicate.

“It was as I thought,” he said coolly. “Two men talked with her last night. The one was Juana’s brother, Pepé; the other was the Señor Americano your grace knows of.”

Doña Isabel sank back in her chair as if struck by a sharp weapon. “The American! the American!” she repeated again and again. She felt as though a hand had been thrust from the grave to torture her. The superstitious dread which had been planted in her breast by the first glimpse of the face of Ashley Ward, and which had perhaps led her irresistibly to a course that the resolution of years would under ordinary circumstances have rendered impossible to a nature as tenacious as was her own, became a horrible certainty. Evil fate in the guise of the American appeared to pursue her. Whatever the purpose with which he had lured Chinita from her side, it could but be productive of woe for her. Would the tale of her daughter’s shame and her own apparent heartlessness be told throughout the land? Had this pale and seemingly spiritless young man resolved on such a vengeance of his cousin’s fancied wrongs? Or—worse still—was this but a repetition of the old, old tale of passion and folly? Doña Isabel covered her face with her hand and groaned again.

Gabriel had called his wife to the room, and she came with eyes red with weeping, and told the tale that seemed to her best. Fearful of bringing the vengeance of the Señora upon Pepé, should she avow that he had left the inn alone with Chinita, she declared he had but accompanied the American, whom she boldly affirmed had set out for the coast, with the young girl, intending to set sail for the wild country whence he had come.

Doña Isabel and Gabriel both knew too well the inventive genius of their countrywomen literally to believe all she said; yet as hour after hour passed by and no news of the fugitives was heard, and no trace of them in spite of the most untiring search was found, they were at length led to conclude—the one with despair—that Juana’s words were true, and that the brief connection of the beautiful foster-child of Pedro Gomez with the lady of Tres Hermanos was ended forever.