CHAPTER XI.
“It is only mirage.”
A long, low, adobe building, roofed with tiles of pottery clay, situated near the banks of the river Santa Cruz. Long rows of cottonwood-trees spread their branches nearly over the little stream, and the graceful masses of pepper, combed to a fringe, drop their courtesied obeisance to every passing breeze, and throw their uneasy shadows well over the walls, neatly stuccoed with cobblestones.
The air curdles with the heat rising from the arid plain, and hangs, a shimmering sheet of translucent vapor, between the eye and the ever-lengthening distance, which softly melts into the Santa Rita Mountains.
Is that a lake out of which rises the well-outlined range of nearer hills? or a sea, throwing up billows of foam and shadow, with islands of green glimpsing their shapes in the placid waters that encircle their feet? And ships, with well-fashioned hulls and wide-spreading sails, and pictured rocks, and beating breakers, and lifeboats with men tugging at the oars. No! it is only mirage, a pretty picture written with the electric pen of nature upon the parchment hot from the press of her untongued fancies. In her luring tale strong men have trusted themselves to fatal deception, and beasts, with lapping tongues, and knotted with water greed, have gnashed their teeth at her beautiful garments of fateful film, and lain down to die. Art has been outvied in pictorial effects, for she filters her shadows from daintiest clouds, and borrows her bath of oscurial glints from the unfathomed deeps of heaven. Even austere science hides his forged shackles shamedly away, and turns with unsatisfied scorn from the flitting gleam of her mocking brow.
“It is only mirage, one of nature’s cleverest tricks; and what more is life?” comes once and again from parched lips and longing eyes. For, although water, sweet and cool, drips from an olla near at hand, yet, stretched upon a bed carefully prepared of finely-stripped rawhide, placed upon the well-beaten and smooth earth, under the sheltering roof of a ramada connecting two sections of the Gonzales casa, lies David Morning, hot with fever, and still unable to leave his couch.
A little apart, and softly swaying in her hammock of scarlet and gold, one foot lightly touching the ground, half reclines the small, undulating figure of Murella Gonzales.
The ancient blood of Castile had never been suffered by the Gonzales family to mingle, with the sanction of the church, with ignobler currents. The late Señor Don Pedro, although only possessed of the estate of a prosperous Mexican cattle rancher, was yet a Hidalgo of Hidalgoes, who could have covered the walls of his casa with his quarterings. As for his wife, was she not an Alvarado? and—Santa Maria!—what more would you have in the way of blood? Certainly, from her arched instep to her wealth of blue-black hair, the Señorita Murella was a wondrously beautiful maiden.
“Murella,” spoke the sick man, turning his emaciated face toward the girl, “during the early days of my illness, I gave you a letter to mail, do you remember?”
“Si, señor.”
“Do you remember how many days ago, Murella?”
“Si, señor, seventeen day,” and the small ears deepened red behind the creamy oval face.
“Did you give Jose the letter to post?”
“Si, señor.”
“You are very kind, señorita, and I thank you.”
The girl glanced swiftly across the court at an open door wherein stood the madroña, the customary shawl of black Spanish lace drawn tightly across her mouth, leaving two shining black eyes fixed steadily upon her.
“A few days more, and I shall be leaving your hospitable roof,” continued Morning.
“Why will you not take a me with you?” said Murella, with imperturbable gravity, and with no change of expression.
The man illy concealed his look of surprise, as he tucked the richly embroidered pillow more firmly beneath his head, and replied kindly:—
“Such a thing could not possibly be, little girl, for more reasons than your pretty head could contain.”
“Then you do not a lof me, and you told a me a lie,” and the dark eyes lit with a flame of Vesuvian fires like the red light in those of a tiger.
“What do you mean, señorita?” and a faint flush overspread his own pale face.
“I mean you call me your beloved Ella, such name as Americans give a me, and you hold me close in your arms, and say you will never part from me, not for one hour—only ten day ago—and now you leave a me!”
This was an awkward situation, and Mr. Morning recognized its full significance upon the moment. In his delirium he had used the too familiar name, and had coupled with its use endearments which had been compromisingly misappropriated. He reflected a moment. There was nothing left but to tell the truth and accept the consequences. Another girl would laugh. What would Murella do?
“Señorita,” he began slowly, “I have, as you know, been very ill, and on several occasions have lost my way in delirium, and have been wandering over scenes belonging to other days. Can you not forgive me if I have called you by a name which you mistook for your own prettier one? Can you not pardon me if in my fevered imagination I gave you for the moment a place long ago sanctified and dedicated to forgetfulness?”
“Then why cannot you lof a me? Am I not as lofely as she?”
“You are very beautiful, Murella.”
“Machacha!” shrieked the duenna from the entrance to the ramada, “what are you saying?” and then followed invective in every key, and words of scorn in every cadence, until, pale with anger and chagrin, the girl sprang from her hammock and ran swiftly away.
For a long time our hero lay lost in speculation. After all, it was only a misunderstanding, and not liable to be remembered overnight. In any event, he had not compromised the maiden, and finally he concluded—as was indeed the truth—that the cunning señorita was all the while cognizant of the situation, and not at all deceived, and so he dismissed the subject from his mind.
And what was the first move of the panic-stricken maiden? Speeding swiftly over the ground, she sank in the shadow of the ocotilla hedge inclosure, which formed the corral, and drew cautiously from her pocket the letter committed to her care by Morning. Reopening it, for the envelope, sealed only with mucilage, had been carefully broken, she drew forth a picture of the Baroness Von Eulaw, older by many years than the name she now bore, and much thumbed and worn beside.
This unconscious incendiary Murella first regarded disdainfully for an instant, and then deliberately spat upon it. She then proceeded to possess herself of the contents of the letter, which was brief, and, regarded as a wholesome irritant for a recent wound, rather ineffectual. She spelled it out laboriously, and it read as follows:—
To the Baroness Von Eulaw, Berlin.
You may have forgotten that several years ago, and through wholly legitimate means, let me say in self-defense, a specimen of art, of inestimable value to me, came into my possession. I have hitherto deemed it no breach of honor to retain it. Finding myself very ill, however, and warned by my physicians of the probable fatal termination of my malady, I esteem it prudent and not less just to return to you the last token of a mutual recognition which I have the faith to believe is among the things that are undying.
It is, perhaps, unwillingness to pass the veil which enshrouds the great mystery, without first vindicating myself in your esteem, that impels me to tell you that which I have heretofore thought to keep secret—that your letter, written in February, 1883, was accidentally mislaid in an old desk, and was never opened or perused by me until the day after you became the Baroness Von Eulaw.
Always yours sincerely,
DAVID MORNING.
Murella spread the letter upon the ground and pondered. Plainly it was not a love letter, as she had expected—almost hoped! for she missed the ecstasy and exhilaration of that desire for vengeance which is the stimulus to passion in the breast of any true scion of the Spanish race, and devoid of which life has little zest.
It might have been written to his grandmother for all she could gather from its contents, and the thought suggested the duenna, with her cruel eyes and hard, wrinkled mouth, whose duty it was to watch her from all points of the compass. So she folded the letter, and, taking up the picture, again scrutinized it. “Devil! devil! devil!” she broke out, as she smote the pasteboard with her tiny soft fist. Then, folding it away with the letter, she slipped them into her pocket, and, gliding around the ocotilla palings, she entered her apartment through an outer door, where she resealed the missive, and, summoning the messenger Jose, bade him forthwith journey to Tucson, and deposit it in the post office there.
The sun was sinking behind Tehachape Mountains, and its parting rays, full of the color of leaf and bough, fell brightly upon the prostrate form of the invalid, and as Murella dropped softly to the ground before a low window, which opened upon the ramada, she parted her muslin curtains and gazed devouringly upon the well-knit, shapely form, and the broad-browed, tinted face, while the light faded, and soft voices grew higher as the family supper hour approached, and tinkling sounds from mandolin and guitar filled the night with music. Then, taking a last look, she arose, and, stamping her foot upon the ground, impatiently she ejaculated:—
“Oh, bah! He too good for anyting.”
She joined the family group at supper with a look of high disdain on her beautiful face, but otherwise undismayed, and ate her frijoles and tortillas, and scrambled for the whitest tomales among her younger brothers, very much as if David Morning had overruled his physicians, and departed for Tucson in an ambulance the day after he was wounded, as he had once determined to do, instead of having lain there for a month, drawing first upon her pity, and then upon her fancy, and stirring things in her imagination generally.
Late in the moon-lit night, the soft summer winds still busy among the boughs, a sweet girlish voice, melodiously attuned to the notes of the mandolin, ran through the dreams of David Morning, carrying the passionful refrain, “Oh, illustrissimo mia,” and he awoke, and still the sweet refrain, “Oh, illustrissimo mia.”
Several days went by, summer days full of work and growth and promise outside, and still Morning was unable to leave the Gonzales ranch. His pulse, which the doctors declared had never regained its normal beat, was low and intermittent, and the hectic flush never left his cheek. At length typhoid fever was developed, and for weeks he lay at the verge of death, and for as many weeks Murella Gonzales sat at his head by day, and made her bed at the foot of his couch by night. The señora, the madroña, even the cocoanut brown machacha of all work, each brought fruit and drink and delicacies to dissuade him from his delirium and tempt him back to health, but Murella sat always with her graceful head resting lightly against his pillow, silent, languid, and lovely.
Sometimes the doctors remonstrated and begged her to leave him, but she only said, “Mañana, mañana,” and to-morrow never came. But it proved to be only a question of time, and before the gray linings of the poplar had slid into umber, or the pomegranate had gained its full meed of sweet juices, David Morning was brought a picturesque basket of Indian workmanship, quite filled with letters which had found him out, calling him back with the imperative voices of business demands, to take his place again with the rank and file of affairs.
So the last day came, and Murella, abandoning her customary hammock, sat all the morning upon a thick rug spread upon the ground, exhibiting her irritable feeling by nervously tossing the clinging folds of her lace mantilla back over her shoulder, or tracing the figures of the rug absently. Morning seemed lost in reverie for a long time; finally he spoke, evidently a little doubtful where to begin.
“I do not need to tell you, señorita,” said he, “that I feel the greatest gratitude toward the inmates of this household, and I ask you to tell me, not what you would wish me to do for you, but what is the wish most dear to you if I were not in the world?”
“Oh, if Señor Morning die, I shall die too.”
“Oh, no! if some fairy should wave its wand, or some Fortunatus should drop uncounted gold at your feet, what would you do first?”
The soft eyes of Señorita Gonzales flamed as never eyes of Saxon maiden burned, and she quickly replied, rising and drawing nearer:—
“I would have a casa grande.”
“And where would you have a grand casa, here?”
“No, no!” giving her hand a truly Delsarte sweep of motion. “Long time ago my mother take a me to Yuma, and there I hear much talk about Castle Dome; it is twenty, thirty miles up the great river Colorado. One time we sail up there in steam a boat, and such a rancheria—beautiful! Great trees, and rocks, and the Indians have been show how by the padres long time ago, and they have beautiful trees of figs, and oranges, and lemon, and great vines. And I have tink about it always. When I am rich a I shall drive the Indians away, and give money for make a them not hungry, and make a casa all like a same in picture.”
“We all have our castles in Spain. Why not you, Murella?” and he drew forth a pencil, and, spreading paper upon the table, asked her to sit down.
“Now,” said he, “we will build this fine house upon paper. What shall we do first?”
“We shall have a dance-house.”
Morning smiled grimly; the mining camps enjoy a monopoly of literary phrasing, and the compound word was familiar, so he only said, “All right, a salon for dancing.”
“Si, señor, saloon,” repeated Murella gravely, “and a grande saloon for beautiful flowers.”
“A conservatory, of course, though that will be superfluous,” he added, “in a country itself a hotbed for tropic bloom. Why not hanging gardens like those of Babylon?”
“Oh, beautiful!” clasping her little fingers in ecstasy.
“Very well,” looking into her face, pencil suspended.
“And a beautiful room for a you,” and she paused for a moment, “with, with what you call, wall like the sky before the sun a come, and morning glory flower go all around the top,” pointing to the frieze, “a like a your name, Señor Mia.”
Morning suddenly discovered something upon the toe of his boot, and the girl struggled on in very bad English, but with charming enthusiasm. She planned and he interpreted. They first laid out the grounds, availing themselves of the groves already planted by the Indians. They covered acres of ground with rare exotics, studding them with statuary in creamiest marble, chiseled from designs of their own, with a Psyche and Cupid to guard the main entrance to the park.
“What is that ting she a hold in her hand?”
“That is a torch,” explained Morning. “Psyche is the soul, and Cupid is love, and she is going in search of him.”
“And did she find a him?” archly questioned the girl.
“I think not,” said Morning, gloomily drawing forth a fresh sheet of paper.
“And about the casa grande,” continued Morning, “of what shall it be built?”
The señorita rested her pretty chin between her two palms and meditated. Finally she decided it should be like the cupids, of shining marble, with agate or onyx for columns, and garnets—found in quantities in Arizona—for smaller decorations. This most elaborate plan having been at length crudely completed, Mr. Morning folded it, quietly saying he would submit it to an architect.
“Not truly?” said the girl, springing to her feet with shining eyes and hands crossed upon her breast.
“Yes, really and truly, for your own sweet self, and for your hospitable family; and with my kindest regards and deepest gratitude.”
Murella turned very pale. Dreams were not dreamed to be so realized. Was he teasing her?
Hitherto her self-love had made her the central figure in her own mind. All things about her had been dwarfed and become inconsequent in her egotistic life, because she was wholly ignorant of any possibilities outside of the power she wielded through her beauty and her grace.
But a new element had been added to her limited experience, and it had developed into a magician, or had it done so really? The doubt took momentary possession of her, and she arose in an attitude of defiance, her flashing eyes resting upon the amused but open countenance of David Morning.
Then she knew that she looked into the face of her god, and she fled to her room, and, sinking upon the floor, she covered her face with her mantilla, and sobbed convulsively.