Mariquita: A Novel

"Of course not."

Don Joaquin was not addicted to telling fibs – except business ones; in selling a horse he regarded them as merely the floral ornaments of a bargain, which would have an almost indecent nakedness without them. But on this occasion he stooped to a moderate prevarication.

"Sarella," he confidentially informed that lady, "I shall be up before sunrise and away the whole of to-morrow. Sometime the day after I shall have a good chance of telling Mariquita. Don't you hint anything to her meanwhile."

"Not I," Sarella promised.

("A hitch somewhere," she thought, feeling pretty sure that he had spoken to Mariquita already.)

When Don Joaquin, after his return from Maxwell, spoke to Mariquita again, he once more condescended to some half-truthfulness – necessary, as he considered, to that great principle of diplomacy – the balance of power. A full and plain explanation of the exact position would, he thought, unduly exalt his daughter's wisdom and foresight at the expense of his own.

"The priest," he informed her, "will, of course, be very pleased to marry Sarella and myself when we are ready. That will not be until she has been instructed and baptized. It will not be for a month or two."

Mariquita offered her respectful congratulations both on Sarella's willingness to become a Catholic, and on the marriage itself. She was little given to asking questions, and was quite aware that her father had no wish to answer any in the present instance.

Neither did he tell Sarella that a dispensation would be necessary; still less, that the priest believed the dispensation would have to be sought, through the Bishop, of course, from the Papal Delegate, and professed himself even uncertain whether the Papal Delegate himself might not refer to Rome before granting it, though he (the priest) thought it more probable that His Excellency would grant the dispensation without such reference.

Don Joaquin merely gave Sarella to understand that their marriage would follow her reception into the Church, and that the necessary instruction previous to that reception would take some time.

CHAPTER XXI

As the marriage could not take place without delay, Don Joaquin did not wish it to be unreservedly announced; the general inhabitants of the range might guess what they chose, but they were not at present to be informed.

"Mariquita may tell Gore," he explained to Sarella, "that is a family matter."

"And I am sure she will not tell him unless you order her to," said Sarella; "she does not think of him in that light."

"What light?" demanded Don Joaquin irritably.

"As one of the family," Sarella replied, without any irritation at all. Her placidity of temper was likely to be one of her most convenient endowments.

"I shall give her to understand," said Don Joaquin, "that there is no restriction on her informing Mr. Gore."

Sarella shrugged her pretty shoulders and made no comment.

Mariquita took her father's intimation as an order and obeyed, though surprised that he should not, if he desired Mr. Gore to know of his approaching marriage, tell him himself. Possibly, she thought, her father was a little shy about such a subject.

Mr. Gore received her announcement quite coolly, without any manifestation of surprise. It had not, as Don Joaquin had hoped it might, the least effect of hurrying his own steps.

"Am I," he inquired, "supposed to show that I have been told?"

"Oh, I think so."

So that night when they were alone, after the others had gone to their rooms, Gore congratulated his host.

"Thank you! You see," said Don Joaquin, assuming a tone of pathos that sat most queerly on him, "as time goes on, I should be very lonely."

He shook his head sadly, and Gore endeavored to look duly sympathetic.

"Sarella," the older man proceeded, "could not stop here – if she were not my wife – after Mariquita had left us."

Gore, who perfectly understood Mariquita's father and his diplomacy, would not indulge him by asking if his daughter were, then, likely to leave him.

So Don Joaquin sighed and had to go on.

"Yes! It would be very lonely for me, dependent as I am for society on Mariquita."

Here Gore, with some inward amusement, could not refrain from accusing his possible father-in-law of some hypocrisy; for he was sure the elderly gentleman would miss his daughter as little as any father could miss his child.

"Certainly," he said aloud, "it is hard to think how the range would get on without her."

No doubt, her absence would be hard to fill in the matter of usefulness, and Gore was inclined to doubt whether Sarella would even wish to fill it. He was pretty sure that that young woman would refuse to work as her cousin had worked.

"It must get on without her," Don Joaquin agreed, not without doubt, "when her time comes for moving to a home of her own."

Still Gore refused to "rise."

"We must be prepared for that," Mariquita's father went on, refilling his pipe. "She is grown up. It is natural she should be thinking of her own future – "

Gore suddenly felt angry with him, instead of being merely amused. To him it appeared a profanation of the very idea of Mariquita, to speak of her as indulging in surmises and calculations concerning her own matrimonial chances.

"It would not," he said, "be unnatural – but I am sure her mind is given to no such thoughts."

Don Joaquin slightly elevated his eyebrows.

"I do not know," he said coldly, "how you can answer for what her mind is given to. I, at any rate, must have such thoughts on her account. I am not English. English parents may, perhaps, leave all such things to chance. We, of my people, are not so. To us it seems the most important of his duties for a father to trust to no chances, but arrange and provide for his daughter's settlement in life."

Here the old fellow paused, and having shot his bolt, pretended it had been a mere parenthesis in answer to an implied criticism.

"But," he continued, "I have wandered from what I was really explaining. I was telling that soon I should, in the natural course of things, be left here alone, as regards home companionship, unless I myself tried to find a mate, so I tried and I have succeeded."

Here he bowed with great majesty and some complacence, as if he might have added, "Though you, in your raw youthfulness and conceit, may have thought me too old a suitor to win a lovely bride."

Gore responded by the heartiest felicitations. "Sir," he added after a brief pause, "since it seems to me that you wish it, I will explain my own position. I can well afford to marry. And I would wish very much to marry. But there is only one lady whom I have ever met, whom I have now, or ever, felt that I would greatly desire to win for my wife."

So far Don Joaquin had listened with an absolutely expressionless countenance of polite attention, though he had never been more interested.

"The lady," Gore continued, "is your daughter."

(Here that lady's father relaxed the aloofness of his manner, and permitted himself a look of benign, though not eager, approval.)

"It may be," the young man went on, "that you have perceived my wishes…"

(Don Joaquin would express neither negation nor assent.)

"Anyway, you know them now. But your daughter does not know them. To thrust the knowledge of them prematurely upon her would, I am sure, make the chance of her responding to them very much less hopeful. Therefore I have been slow and cautious in endeavoring to gain even a special footing of friendship with her; I have, lately, gained a little. I cannot flatter myself that it is more than a little; between us there is on her side only the mere dawn of friendship. That being so, I should have been unwilling to speak to yourself – lest it should seem like assuming that she had any sort of interest in me beyond what I have explained. I speak now because you clearly expect that I should. Well, I have spoken. But I am so greatly in eager earnest about this that I ask you plainly to allow me to endeavor to proceed with what, I think, you almost resent as a timidity of caution. It is my only chance."

Don Joaquin did not see that at all. If he were to inform Mariquita that Mr. Gore wished to become her husband and he, her father, wished her to become Mr. Gore's wife, he could not bring himself to picture such disobedience as any refusal on her part would amount to.

"Our way," he said, "is more direct than your fanciful English way; it regards not a young girl's fanciful delays, and timid uncertainty, but her solid welfare, and therefore her solid happiness. In reality it gets over her maiden modesty in the best way – by wise authority. She does not have to tell herself baldly, 'I have become in love with this young man,' but 'My parents have found this young man worthy to undertake the charge of my life and my happiness, and I submit to their experience and wisdom.' Then duty will teach her love; a safer teacher than fancy."

"I hope, sir," said Gore, "that you do not yourself propose that method."

"And if I did?"

"I would, though more earnestly desirous to win your daughter than I am desirous of anything in this life, tell you that I refuse to win her in that way. It never would win her."

"'Win her'! She is all duty – "

"Excuse me! No duty would command her to become my wife if she could only do so with repugnance. If you told her it was her duty I should tell her it was no such thing."

Don Joaquin was amazed at such crass stupidity. He flung his open hands upwards with angry protest. He was even suspicious. Did the young man really want to marry his daughter? It was much more evident that he was in earnest now, than it had been to Don Joaquin that he was in earnest before.

The elderly half-breed had not the least idea of blaming his own crude diplomacy; on the contrary, he had been pluming himself on its success. For some time he had desired to obtain from Gore a definite expression of his wish to marry Mariquita, and he had obtained it. That it had been speedily followed by this further pronouncement, incomprehensible to the girl's father, was not his fault, but was due entirely to the Englishman's peculiarities, peculiarities that to Don Joaquin seemed perverse and almost suspicious.

"If you were a Spaniard," he said stiffly, "you would be grateful to me for being willing to influence my daughter in your favor."

Gore knew that he must be disturbed, as it was his rule to speak of himself not as a Spaniard, but as an American.

"I am grateful to you, sir, for being willing to let me hope to win your daughter for my wife – most grateful."

"You do not appear grateful to me for my willingness to simplify matters."

"They cannot be simplified – nor hurried. If your daughter can be brought to think favorably of me as one who earnestly desires to have the great, great honor and privilege of being the guardian of her life and its happiness, it must be gradually and by very gentle approaches. I hope that she already likes me, but I am sure she does not yet love me."

"Before she has been asked to be your wife! Love you! Certainly not. She will love her husband, for that will be her duty."

Gore did not feel at all like laughing; his future father-in-law's peculiarities seemed as perverse to him as his own did to Don Joaquin. He dreaded their operation; it seemed only too possible that Don Joaquin would be led to interference by them, and such interference he feared extremely; nor could he endure the idea of Mariquita's being dragooned by her father.

"If," he declared stoutly, "you thrust prematurely upon your daughter the idea of me as her husband, you will make her detest the thought of me, and I never shall be her husband."

Don Joaquin was offended.

"I am not used to do anything prematurely," he said grimly. "And it may be that I understand my daughter, who is of my own race, better than you who are not of her race."

"It may be. But I am not certain that it is so. Sir, since you have twice alluded to that question of race, you must not be surprised or displeased if I remind you that she is as much of my race as of your own. Half Spanish she is, but half of English blood."

Don Joaquin was displeased, but all the same, he did feel that there might be something in Gore's argument. He had always thought of Mariquita as Spanish like himself; but he had never been unconscious that she was unlike himself – it might possibly be by reason of her half-English descent.

"The lady," Gore went on, "whom you yourself are marrying, would perhaps understand me better than you appear to do."

This reference to Sarella did not greatly conciliate her betrothed. He did not wish her to be occupied in understanding any young man. All the same, he was slightly flattered at Gore's having, apparently, a confidence in her judgment. Moreover, he knew that it was so late that this discussion could not be protracted much longer, and he was not willing to say anything like an admission that he had receded (which he had not) from his own opinion.

"Her judgment," he said, "is good. And she has a maternal interest in Mariquita. I will tell her what you have said."

Gore went to bed smiling to himself at the idea of Sarella's maternal interest. She did not strike him as a motherly young lady.

CHAPTER XXII

Sarella found considerable enjoyment in the visits to Maxwell necessitated by her period of instruction. Each instruction was of reasonable length and left plenty of time for other affairs, and that time landed Don Joaquin in expenses he had been far from foreseeing. Sarella had a fund of mild obstinacy which her placidity of temper partly veiled. She intended that considerable additions to the furniture of the homestead should be made, and she did not intend to get married without some considerable additions to her wardrobe as well. Her dresses, she assured Don Joaquin, were all too youthful. "Girl's clothes" she called them. She insisted on the necessity of now dressing as a matron. "Perhaps," she admitted with sweet ingenuousness, "I have dressed too young. One gets into a sort of groove. There was nothing to remind me that I had passed beyond the stage of school-girl frocks. But a married woman, unless she is a silly, must pull herself up, and adopt a matron's style; I would rather now dress a bit too old than too young. You don't want people to be saying you have married a flapper!"

She got her own way, and Don Joaquin, had he known anything about it, might have discovered that matronly garments were more expensive than a girl's. "A girl," Sarella informed Mariquita, "need only be smart. A matron's dress must be handsome."

To do her justice, Sarella tried to convince her lover that Mariquita also should be provided with new clothes; but he would agree only to one new "suit," as he called it, for his daughter to wear at his wedding. He had no idea of spending his own money on an extensive outfit "for another man's wife." That expense would be Gore's. Even in Sarella's case he would never have agreed to buy all she wanted had it been announced at once, but she was far too astute for any such mistake as that. It appeared that there must be some delay before their marriage, and she utilized it by spreading her gradual demands over as long a time as she could.

Some of the expense, too, Don Joaquin managed to reduce by discovering a market he had hardly thought of till now, for the furs of animals he had himself shot; some of these animals were rather uncommon, some even rare, and he became aware of their commercial value only when bargaining for their making up into coats or cloaks for Sarella. His subsequent visits to this "store" in order to dispose of similar furs against a reduction in its charges for Sarella's clothing, he studiously concealed from her, but Sarella knew all about it.

"Why," she said to herself, really admiring his sharpness, "the old boy is making a profit on the bargain. He's getting more for his furs than he's spending."

She was careful not to let him guess that she knew this; but she promised herself to "take it out in furniture." And she kept her promise. It was Sarella's principle that a person who did not keep promises made to herself would never keep those made to other people.

"You really must," she told him, "have some of those furs made into a handsome winter jacket for Mariquita. They cost you nothing, and she must have a winter jacket. The one she has was got at the Convent – and a present, too, I believe. It was handsome once – and that shows how economical good clothes are; they last so – "

(Don Joaquin thought, "especially economical when they are presents.")

" – But Mariquita has grown out of it. She is so tall. A new one made of cloth from the store would cost more than one for me, because she is so tall. But those furs cost you nothing."

She knew he would not say, "No, but I can sell them."

"Besides," she added, "if you offered them some more furs at the store they might take something off the charge of making and lining. It is often done. I'll ask them about it if you like."

Don Joaquin did not at all desire her to do that.

"No necessity," he said hastily; "Mariquita shall have the jacket. I will take the furs and give the order myself."

"Only be sure to insist that the lining is silk. They have some silvery gray silk that would just go with those furs. And Mariquita would pay good dressing. Her style wants it. She's solid, you know."

Mariquita did get the jacket. But it was not of the fur Sarella had meant – her father knew by that time the value of that sort of fur. And Sarella knew that she had made it quite clear which sort she had asked him to supply. She was amused by his craftiness, and though a little ashamed of him, she was readier to forgive his stinginess than if it had been illustrated in a garment for herself. After all, it was perhaps as well that Mariquita's should not be so valuable as her own.

"And married women," she reminded herself, "do have to dress handsomer than girls. And Mariquita will never know the difference."

"I suggested," she told her cousin, "the same gray fur as mine. But I daresay a brown fur will suit your coloring better, and it's younger. Anything gray (in the fur line) can be worn with mourning, and nothing's so elderly as mourning."

It was the first present her father had ever given Mariquita, and she thanked him with a warmth of gratefulness that ought to have made him ashamed. But Don Joaquin was not subject to the unpleasant consciousness of shame. On the contrary, he thought with less complacence of Mariquita's thanks than of the fact that he had given her a necessary winter garment at a profit – for he had taken the other furs to the store and received for them a substantial cash payment over and above the clearing of the charges for making up and lining the commoner skins of which the winter jacket was made.

"I wonder," thought Sarella, "what that lining is? It looks silky, but I'm sure it isn't silk. I daresay it's warmer. And after all, Gore can get it changed for silk when it's worn out; the fur will outlast two linings at least. It's not so delicate as mine. I'm afraid mine'll flatten. I must look to that."

CHAPTER XXIII

Meanwhile the instructions did proceed, and Sarella did not mind them much. Perhaps she was not always attending very laboriously – she had a good deal to think of; but she listened with all due docility, and with quite reasonable, if not absorbed, interest; and by carefully abstaining from asking questions, did not often betray any misunderstanding of the nun's explanations, for it was by one of the nuns that all but the preliminary instructions were given. Sarella rather liked her, deciding that she was "a good sort," and, though neither young nor extremely attractive, she was "as kind as kind," and so intensely full of her subject that Sarella could not help gathering a higher appreciation of its importance. In Sarella the earnest expounder of Catholic doctrine and practice had no bigotry and not much prejudice to work against; only a thick crust of ignorance, and perhaps a thicker layer of natural indifference. The little she had heard about the Catholic Church was from Puritan neighbors in a very small town of a remote corner of New England, and if it had made any particular impression, must have been found unfavorable; but Sarella had been too little interested in religion to adopt its rancors, her whole disposition, easy, self-indulgent and material, being opposed to rancor as to all rough, sharp, and uncomfortable things.

Perhaps the nun was hardly likely to overcome the indifference, and perhaps she knew it. But she prayed for Sarella much oftener than she talked to her, and had much more confidence in what Our Lord Himself might do for her than in anything that she could.

"After all," she would urge, "it is more Your own business than mine. I did not make her, nor die for her. Master, do Your own work that I cannot."

Besides, she, who had no belief in chance, would cheer herself by remembering that He had so ordered His patient providence as to bring the girl to the gate of the Church, by such ways as she was so far capable of. He had begun the work; He would not half do it. He would make it, the nun trusted, a double work. For in, half-obstinately, insisting that Sarella must become a Catholic before he married her, the old Spaniard, half-heathen by lifelong habit, had begun to awake to some sort at least of Catholic feeling, some beginning of Catholic practice, for now he was occasionally hearing Mass, and that first lethargic movement of a better spirit in him might, with God's blessing, would, lead to something more genuinely spiritual.

The nun attributed those beginnings to the prayers of the old half-breed's daughter. As yet she knew her but little, but already, by the discretio spiritum, which is, after all, perhaps only another name for the clear instinct in things of grace earned by those who live by grace, the elderly nun, plain and simple, recognized in Mariquita one of a rare, unfettered spirituality.

Sarella had not, at all events consciously, to herself, told her instructress much about her young cousin.

"Oh, Mariquita!" she had said, not ill-naturedly, "she lives up in the moon."

("Higher up than that, I expect," thought Sister Aquinas, gathering the impression that Mariquita was not held of much account in the family.)

"But she is not an idler?" said the nun.

"Oh, not a bit," Sarella agreed with perfectly ungrudging honesty. "An idler! No; she works a lot harder than she ought; harder than she would if I had the arranging of things. Not quite so hard as she used, though, for I have made her father get some help, and he will have to get more if Mariquita leaves us."

Perceiving that the nun did not smile, but retreated into what Sarella called her "inside expression," that acute young woman guessed that she might have conveyed the idea that her future stepdaughter was to be sent away on her father's marriage.

"There's always," she explained carelessly, "the chance of her marrying. She is handsome in her own way, and I don't think she need remain long unmarried if she chose to marry. Not that she ever thinks of it."

("I expect not," thought Sister Aquinas.)

This was about as near to gossip as they ever got. Sarella, indeed, would have liked the nun better if she had been "more chatty." I don't know that Sister Aquinas really disliked chat so long as it wasn't gossip, but the truth was, she did not find the time allowed for each instruction at all superfluously long, and did not wish to let it slip away in mere talk.

CHAPTER XXIV

It was only occasionally that Mariquita accompanied Sarella when the latter went to the convent for instruction. On one of those occasions the Loretto Convent near Denver was mentioned, and Sister Aquinas said:

"I had a niece there a few years ago – Eleanor Hurst. I wonder if you know her?"

"Oh, yes! Quite well." Mariquita answered, with the sort of shining interest that always made her look suddenly younger. "A friend of ours brought me news, lately, that she has become a Carmelite."

"What is a Carmelite?" Sarella asked.