The Bell-Ringer of Angel's, and Other Stories

Both faces were turned eagerly towards her; both said almost in the same breath, “But, Aunt Viney! you don’t know them! However did you—What does it all mean?”

“My dears,” said Aunt Viney placidly, “Mrs. Amador and I have always nodded to each other, and I knew they were only waiting for the slightest encouragement. I gave it, and they’re coming.”

It was difficult to say whether Cecily’s or Dick’s face betrayed the greater delight and animation. Aunt Viney looked from the one to the other. It seemed as if her attempt at diversion had been successful.

“Tell us all about it, you dear, clever, artful Aunty!” said Cecily gayly.

“There’s nothing whatever to tell, my love! It seems, however, that the young one, Dona Felipa, has seen Dick, and remembers him.” She shot a keen glance at Dick, but was obliged to admit that the rascal’s face remained unchanged. “And I wanted to bring a cavalier for YOU, dear, but Don Jose’s nephew isn’t at home now.” Yet here, to her surprise, Cecily was faintly blushing.

Early in the afternoon the piebald horses and dark brown chariot of the Amadors drew up before the gateway. The young people were delighted with Dona Felipa, and thought her blue eyes and tawny hair gave an added piquancy to her colorless satin skin and otherwise distinctively Spanish face and figure. Aunt Viney, who entertained Donna Maria, was nevertheless watchful of the others; but failed to detect in Dick’s effusive greeting, or the Dona’s coquettish smile of recognition, any suggestion of previous confidences. It was rather to Cecily that Dona Felipa seemed to be characteristically exuberant and childishly feminine. Both mother and stepdaughter spoke a musical infantine English, which the daughter supplemented with her eyes, her eyebrows, her little brown fingers, her plump shoulders, a dozen charming intonations of voice, and a complete vocabulary in her active and emphatic fan.

The young lady went over the house with Cecily curiously, as if recalling some old memories. “Ah, yes, I remember it—but it was long ago and I was very leetle—you comprehend, and I have not arrive mooch when the old Don was alone. It was too—too—what you call melank-oaly. And the old man have not make mooch to himself of company.”

“Then there were no young people in the house, I suppose?” said Cecily, smiling.

“No—not since the old man’s father lif. Then there were TWO. It is a good number, this two, eh?” She gave a single gesture, which took in, with Cecily, the distant Dick, and with a whole volume of suggestion in her shoulders, and twirling fan, continued: “Ah! two sometime make one—is it not? But not THEN in the old time—ah, no! It is a sad story. I shall tell it to you some time, but not to HIM.”

But Cecily’s face betrayed no undue bashful consciousness, and she only asked, with a quiet smile, “Why not to—to my cousin?”

“Imbecile!” responded that lively young lady.

After dinner the young people proposed to take Dona Felipa into the rose garden, while Aunt Viney entertained Donna Maria on the veranda. The young girl threw up her hands with an affectation of horror. “Santa Maria!—in the rose garden? After the Angelus, you and him? Have you not heard?”

But here Donna Maria interposed. Ah! Santa Maria! What was all that! Was it not enough to talk old woman’s gossip and tell vaqueros tales at home, without making uneasy the strangers? She would have none of it. “Vamos!”

Nevertheless Dona Felipa overcame her horror of the rose garden at infelicitous hours, so far as to permit herself to be conducted by the cousins into it, and to be installed like a rose queen on the stone bench, while Dick and Cecily threw themselves in submissive and imploring attitudes at her little feet. The young girl looked mischievously from one to the other.

“It ees very pret-ty, but all the same I am not a rose: I am what you call a big goose-berry! Eh—is it not?”

The cousins laughed, but without any embarrassed consciousness. “Dona Felipa knows a sad story of this house,” said Cecily; “but she will not tell it before you, Dick.”

Dick, looking up at the coquettish little figure, with Heaven knows what OTHER memories in his mind, implored and protested.

“Ah! but this little story—she ees not so mooch sad of herself as she ees str-r-r-ange!” She gave an exaggerated little shiver under her lace shawl, and closed her eyes meditatively.

“Go on,” said Dick, smiling in spite of his interested expectation.

Dona Felipa took her fan in both hands, spanning her knees, leaned forward, and after a preliminary compressing of her lips and knitting of her brows, said:—

“It was a long time ago. Don Gregorio he have his daughter Rosita here, and for her he will fill all thees rose garden and gif to her; for she like mooch to lif with the rose. She ees very pret-ty. You shall have seen her picture here in the casa. No? It have hang under the crucifix in the corner room, turn around to the wall—WHY, you shall comprehend when I have made finish thees story. Comes to them here one day Don Vincente, Don Gregorio’s nephew, to lif when his father die. He was yong, a pollio—same as Rosita. They were mooch together; they have make lofe. What will you?—it ees always the same. The Don Gregorio have comprehend; the friends have all comprehend; in a year they will make marry. Dona Rosita she go to Monterey to see his family. There ees an English warship come there; and Rosita she ees very gay with the officers, and make the flirtation very mooch. Then Don Vincente he is onhappy, and he revenge himself to make lofe with another. When Rosita come back it is very miserable for them both, but they say nossing. The warship he have gone away; the other girl Vincente he go not to no more. All the same, Rosita and Vincente are very triste, and the family will not know what to make. Then Rosita she is sick and eat nossing, and walk to herself all day in the rose garden, until she is as white and fade away as the rose. And Vincente he eat nossing, but drink mooch aguardiente. Then he have fever and go dead. And Rosita she have fainting and fits; and one day they have look for her in the rose garden, and she is not! And they poosh and poosh in the ground for her, and they find her with so mooch rose-leaves—so deep—on top of her. SHE has go dead. It is a very sad story, and when you hear it you are very, very mooch dissatisfied.”

It is to be feared that the two Americans were not as thrilled by this sad recital as the fair narrator had expected, and even Dick ventured to point out that those sort of things happened also to his countrymen, and were not peculiar to the casa.

“But you said that there was a terrible sequel,” suggested Cecily smilingly: “tell us THAT. Perhaps Mr. Bracy may receive it a little more politely.”

An expression of superstitious gravity, half real, half simulated, came over Dona Felipa’s face, although her vivacity of gesticulation and emphasis did not relax. She cast a hurried glance around her, and leaned a little forward towards the cousins.

“When there are no more young people in the casa because they are dead,” she continued, in a lower voice, “Don Gregorio he is very melank-oaly, and he have no more company for many years. Then there was a rodeo near the hacienda, and there came five or six caballeros to stay with him for the feast. Notabilimente comes then Don Jorge Martinez. He is a bad man—so weeked—a Don Juan for making lofe to the ladies. He lounge in the garden, he smoke his cigarette, he twist the moustache—so! One day he came in, and he laugh and wink so and say, ‘Oh, the weeked, sly Don Gregorio! He have hid away in the casa a beautiful, pret-ty girl, and he will nossing say.’ And the other caballeros say, ‘Mira! what is this? there is not so mooch as one young lady in the casa.’ And Don Jorge he wink, and he say, ‘Imbeciles! pigs!’ And he walk in the garden and twist his moustache more than ever. And one day, behold! he walk into the casa, very white and angry, and he swear mooch to himself; and he orders his horse, and he ride away, and never come back no more, never-r-r! And one day another caballero, Don Esteban Briones, he came in, and say, ‘Hola! Don Jorge has forgotten his pret-ty girl: he have left her over on the garden bench. Truly I have seen.’ And they say, ‘We will too.’ And they go, and there is nossing. And they say, ‘Imbecile and pig!’ But he is not imbecile and pig; for he has seen, and Don Jorge has seen; and why? For it is not a girl, but what you call her—a ghost! And they will that Don Esteban should make a picture of her—a design; and he make one. And old Don Gregorio he say, ‘madre de Dios! it is Rosita’—the same that hung under the crucifix in the big room.”

“And is that all?” asked Dick, with a somewhat pronounced laugh, but a face that looked quite white in the moonlight.

“No, it ees NOT all. For when Don Gregorio got himself more company another time—it ees all yonge ladies, and my aunt she is invite too; for she was yonge then, and she herself have tell to me this:—

“One night she is in the garden with the other girls, and when they want to go in the casa one have say, ‘Where is Francisca Pacheco? Look, she came here with us, and now she is not.’ Another one say, ‘She have conceal herself to make us affright.’ And my aunt she say, ‘I will go seek that I shall find her.’ And she go. And when she came to the pear-tree, she heard Francisca’s voice, and it say to some one she see not, ‘Fly! vamos! some one have come.’ And then she come at the moment upon Francisca, very white and trembling, and—alone. And Francisca she have run away and say nossing, and shut herself in her room. And one of the other girls say: ‘It is the handsome caballero with the little black moustache and sad white face that I have seen in the garden that make this. It is truly that he is some poor relation of Don Gregorio, or some mad kinsman that he will not we should know.’ And my aunt ask Don Gregorio; for she is yonge. And he have say: ‘What silly fool ees thees? There is not one caballero here, but myself.’ And when the other young girl have tell to him how the caballero look, he say: ‘The saints save us! I cannot more say. It ees Don Vincente, who haf gone dead.’ And he cross himself, and—But look! Madre de Dios! Mees Cecily, you are ill—you are affrighted. I am a gabbling fool! Help her, Don Ricardo; she is falling!”

But it was too late: Cecily had tried to rise to her feet, had staggered forward and fallen in a faint on the bench.

Dick did not remember how he helped to carry the insensible Cecily to the casa, nor what explanation he had given to the alarmed inmates of her sudden attack. He recalled vaguely that something had been said of the overpowering perfumes of the garden at that hour, that the lively Felipa had become half hysterical in her remorseful apologies, and that Aunt Viney had ended the scene by carrying Cecily into her own room, where she presently recovered a still trembling but reticent consciousness. But the fainting of his cousin and the presence of a real emergency had diverted his imagination from the vague terror that had taken possession of it, and for the moment enabled him to control himself. With a desperate effort he managed to keep up a show of hospitable civility to his Spanish friends until their early departure. Then he hurried to his own room. So bewildered and horrified he had become, and a prey to such superstitious terrors, that he could not at that moment bring himself to the test of looking for the picture of the alleged Rosita, which might still be hanging in his aunt’s room. If it were really the face of his mysterious visitant—in his present terror—he felt that his reason might not stand the shock. He would look at it to-morrow, when he was calmer! Until then he would believe that the story was some strange coincidence with what must have been his hallucination, or a vulgar trick to which he had fallen a credulous victim. Until then he would believe that Cecily’s fright had been only the effect of Dona Felipa’s story, acting upon a vivid imagination, and not a terrible confirmation of something she had herself seen. He threw himself, without undressing, upon his bed in a benumbing agony of doubt.

The gentle opening of his door and the slight rustle of a skirt started him to his feet with a feeling of new and overpowering repulsion. But it was a familiar figure that he saw in the long aisle of light which led from his recessed window, whose face was white enough to have been a spirit’s, and whose finger was laid upon its pale lips, as it softly closed the door behind it.

“Cecily!”

“Hush!” she said, in a distracted whisper: “I felt I must see you to-night. I could not wait until day—no, not another hour! I could not speak to you before them. I could not go into that dreadful garden again, or beyond the walls of this house. Dick, I want to—I MUST tell you something! I would have kept it from every one—from you most of all! I know you will hate me, and despise me; but, Dick, listen!”—she caught his hand despairingly, drawing it towards her—“that girl’s awful story was TRUE!” She threw his hand away.

“And you have seen HER!” said Dick, frantically. “Good God!”

The young girl’s manner changed. “HER!” she said, half scornfully, “you don’t suppose I believe THAT story? No. I—I—don’t blame me, Dick,—I have seen HIM.”

“Him?”

She pushed him nervously into a seat, and sat down beside him. In the half light of the moon, despite her pallor and distraction, she was still very human, womanly, and attractive in her disorder.

“Listen to me, Dick. Do you remember one afternoon, when we were riding together, I got ahead of you, and dashed off to the casa. I don’t know what possessed me, or WHY I did it. I only know I wanted to get home quickly, and get away from you. No, I was not angry, Dick, at YOU; it did not seem to be THAT; I—well, I confess I was FRIGHTENED—at something, I don’t know what. When I wheeled round into the lane, I saw—a man—a young gentleman standing by the garden-wall. He was very picturesque-looking, in his red sash, velvet jacket, and round silver buttons; handsome, but oh, so pale and sad! He looked at me very eagerly, and then suddenly drew back, and I heard you on Chu Chu coming at my heels. You must have seen him and passed him too, I thought: but when you said nothing of it, I—I don’t know why, Dick, I said nothing of it too. Don’t speak!” she added, with a hurried gesture: “I know NOW why you said nothing,—YOU had not seen him.”

She stopped, and put back a wisp of her disordered chestnut hair.

“The next time was the night YOU were so queer, Dick, sitting on that stone bench. When I left you—I thought you didn’t care to have me stay—I went to seek Aunt Viney at the bottom of the garden. I was very sad, but suddenly I found myself very gay, talking and laughing with her in a way I could not account for. All at once, looking up, I saw HIM standing by the little gate, looking at me very sadly. I think I would have spoken to Aunt Viney, but he put his finger to his lips—his hand was so slim and white, quite like a hand in one of those Spanish pictures—and moved slowly backwards into the lane, as if he wished to speak with ME only—out there. I know I ought to have spoken to Aunty; I knew it was wrong what I did, but he looked so earnest, so appealing, so awfully sad, Dick, that I slipped past Aunty and went out of the gate. Just then she missed me, and called. He made a kind of despairing gesture, raising his hand Spanish fashion to his lips, as if to say good-night. You’ll think me bold, Dick, but I was so anxious to know what it all meant, that I gave a glance behind to see if Aunty was following, before I should go right up to him and demand an explanation. But when I faced round again, he was gone! I walked up and down the lane and out on the plain nearly half an hour, seeking him. It was strange, I know; but I was not a bit FRIGHTENED, Dick—that was so queer—but I was only amazed and curious.”

The look of spiritual terror in Dick’s face here seemed to give way to a less exalted disturbance, as he fixed his eyes on Cecily’s.

“You remember I met YOU coming in: you seemed so queer then that I did not say anything to you, for I thought you would laugh at me, or reproach me for my boldness; and I thought, Dick, that—that—that—this person wished to speak only to ME.” She hesitated.

“Go on,” said Dick, in a voice that had also undergone a singular change.

The chestnut head was bent a little lower, as the young girl nervously twisted her fingers in her lap.

“Then I saw him again—and—again,” she went on hesitatingly. “Of course I spoke to him, to—to—find out what he wanted; but you know, Dick, I cannot speak Spanish, and of course he didn’t understand me, and didn’t reply.”

“But his manner, his appearance, gave you some idea of his meaning?” said Dick suddenly.

Cecily’s head drooped a little lower. “I thought—that is, I fancied I knew what he meant.”

“No doubt,” said Dick, in a voice which, but for the superstitious horror of the situation, might have impressed a casual listener as indicating a trace of human irony.

But Cecily did not seem to notice it. “Perhaps I was excited that night, perhaps I was bolder because I knew you were near me; but I went up to him and touched him! And then, Dick!—oh, Dick! think how awful—”

Again Dick felt the thrill of superstitious terror creep over him. “And he vanished!” he said hoarsely.

“No—not at once,” stammered Cecily, with her head almost buried in her lap; “for he—he—he took me in his arms and—”

“And kissed you?” said Dick, springing to his feet, with every trace of his superstitious agony gone from his indignant face. But Cecily, without raising her head, caught at his gesticulating hand.

“Oh, Dick, Dick! do you think he really did it? The horror of it, Dick! to be kissed by a—a—man who has been dead a hundred years!”

“A hundred fiddlesticks!” said Dick furiously. “We have been deceived! No,” he stammered, “I mean YOU have been deceived—insulted!”

“Hush! Aunty will hear you,” murmured the girl despairingly.

Dick, who had thrown away his cousin’s hand, caught it again, and dragged her along the aisle of light to the window. The moon shone upon his flushed and angry face.

“Listen!” he said; “you have been fooled, tricked—infamously tricked by these people, and some confederate, whom—whom I shall horsewhip if I catch. The whole story is a lie!”

“But you looked as if you believed it—about the girl,” said Cecily; “you acted so strangely. I even thought, Dick,—sometimes—you had seen HIM.”

Dick shuddered, trembled; but it is to be feared that the lower, more natural human element in him triumphed.

“Nonsense!” he stammered; “the girl was a foolish farrago of absurdities, improbable on the face of things, and impossible to prove. But that infernal, sneaking rascal was flesh and blood.”

It seemed to him to relieve the situation and establish his own sanity to combat one illusion with another. Cecily had already been deceived—another lie wouldn’t hurt her. But, strangely enough, he was satisfied that Cecily’s visitant was real, although he still had doubts about his own.

“Then you think, Dick, it was actually some real man?” she said piteously. “Oh, Dick, I have been so foolish!”

Foolish she no doubt had been; pretty she certainly was, sitting there in her loosened hair, and pathetic, appealing earnestness. Surely the ghostly Rosita’s glances were never so pleading as these actual honest eyes behind their curving lashes. Dick felt a strange, new-born sympathy of suffering, mingled tantalizingly with a new doubt and jealousy, that was human and stimulating.

“Oh, Dick, what are WE to do?”

The plural struck him as deliciously sweet and subtle. Had they really been singled out for this strange experience, or still stranger hallucination? His arm crept around her; she gently withdrew from it.

“I must go now,” she murmured; “but I couldn’t sleep until I told you all. You know, Dick, I have no one else to come to, and it seemed to me that YOU ought to know it first. I feel better for telling you. You will tell me to-morrow what you think we ought to do.”

They reached the door, opening it softly. She lingered for a moment on the threshold.

“Tell me, Dick” (she hesitated), “if that—that really were a spirit, and not a real man,—you don’t think that—that kiss” (she shuddered) “could do me harm!”

He shuddered too, with a strange and sympathetic consciousness that, happily, she did not even suspect. But he quickly recovered himself and said, with something of bitterness in his voice, “I should be more afraid if it really were a man.”

“Oh, thank you, Dick!”

Her lips parted in a smile of relief; the color came faintly back to her cheek.

A wild thought crossed his fancy that seemed an inspiration. They would share the risks alike. He leaned towards her: their lips met in their first kiss.

“Oh, Dick!”

“Dearest!”

“I think—we are saved.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t at all like that.”

He smiled as she flew swiftly down the corridor. Perhaps he thought so too.

No picture of the alleged Rosita was ever found. Dona Felipa, when the story was again referred to, smiled discreetly, but was apparently too preoccupied with the return of Don Jose’s absent nephew for further gossiping visits to the hacienda; and Dick and Cecily, as Mr. and Mrs. Bracy, would seem to have survived—if they never really solved—the mystery of the Hacienda de los Osos. Yet in the month of June, when the moon is high, one does not sit on the stone bench in the rose garden after the last stroke of the Angelus.

CHU CHU

I do not believe that the most enthusiastic lover of that “useful and noble animal,” the horse, will claim for him the charm of geniality, humor, or expansive confidence. Any creature who will not look you squarely in the eye—whose only oblique glances are inspired by fear, distrust, or a view to attack; who has no way of returning caresses, and whose favorite expression is one of head-lifting disdain, may be “noble” or “useful,” but can be hardly said to add to the gayety of nations. Indeed it may be broadly stated that, with the single exception of gold-fish, of all animals kept for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of exciting a passion that shall be absolutely hopeless. I deem these general remarks necessary to prove that my unreciprocated affection for “Chu Chu” was not purely individual or singular. And I may add that to these general characteristics she brought the waywardness of her capricious sex.

She came to me out of the rolling dust of an emigrant wagon, behind whose tailboard she was gravely trotting. She was a half-broken colt—in which character she had at different times unseated everybody in the train—and, although covered with dust, she had a beautiful coat, and the most lambent gazelle-like eyes I had ever seen. I think she kept these latter organs purely for ornament—apparently looking at things with her nose, her sensitive ears, and, sometimes, even a slight lifting of her slim near fore-leg. On our first interview I thought she favored me with a coy glance, but as it was accompanied by an irrelevant “Look out!” from her owner, the teamster, I was not certain. I only know that after some conversation, a good deal of mental reservation, and the disbursement of considerable coin, I found myself standing in the dust of the departing emigrant-wagon with one end of a forty-foot riata in my hand, and Chu Chu at the other.

I pulled invitingly at my own end, and even advanced a step or two towards her. She then broke into a long disdainful pace, and began to circle round me at the extreme limit of her tether. I stood admiring her free action for some moments—not always turning with her, which was tiring—until I found that she was gradually winding herself up ON ME! Her frantic astonishment when she suddenly found herself thus brought up against me was one of the most remarkable things I ever saw, and nearly took me off my legs. Then when she had pulled against the riata until her narrow head and prettily arched neck were on a perfectly straight line with it, she as suddenly slackened the tension and condescended to follow me, at an angle of her own choosing. Sometimes it was on one side of me, sometimes on the other. Even then the sense of my dreadful contiguity apparently would come upon her like a fresh discovery, and she would become hysterical. But I do not think that she really SAW me. She looked at the riata and sniffed it disparagingly, she pawed some pebbles that were near me tentatively with her small hoof; she started back with a Robinson Crusoe-like horror of my footprints in the wet gully, but my actual personal presence she ignored. She would sometimes pause, with her head thoughtfully between her fore-legs, and apparently say: “There is some extraordinary presence here: animal, vegetable, or mineral—I can’t make out which—but it’s not good to eat, and I loathe and detest it.”