Essential Novelists - Bret Harte. Bret Harte
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looked up sharply and met the eyes of the Padre looking down on him with a tenderness that both touched and exasperated him.
"Pardon!" said Padre Felipe, gently. "I have broken in upon your thoughts, child!"
A little more brusquely than was his habit with the Padre, Arthur explained that he had been studying up a difficult case.
"So!" said the Padre, softly, in response. "With tears in your eyes, Don Arturo? Not so!" he added to himself, as he drew the young man's arm in his own and the two passed slowly out once more into the sunlight.
CHAPTER V. IN WHICH THE DONNA MARIA MAKES AN IMPRESSION.
The Rancho of the Blessed Fisherman looked seaward as became its title. If the founder of the rancho had shown a religious taste in the selection of the site of the dwelling, his charming widow had certainly shown equal practical taste, and indeed a profitable availing of some advantages that the founder did not contemplate, in the adornment of the house. The low-walled square adobe dwelling had been relieved of much of its hard practical outline by several feminine additions and suggestions. The tiled roof had been carried over a very broad verandah, supported by vine-clad columns, and the lounging corridor had been, in defiance of all Spanish custom, transferred from the inside of the house to the outside. The interior courtyard no longer existed. The sombreness of the heavy Mexican architecture was relieved by bright French chintzes, delicate lace curtains, and fresh-coloured hangings. The broad verandah was filled with the latest novelties of Chinese bamboo chairs and settees, and a striped Venetian awning shaded the glare of the seaward front. Nevertheless, Donna Maria, out of respect to the local opinion, which regarded these changes as ominous of, if not a symbolical putting off the weeds of widowhood, still clung to a few of the local traditions. It is true that a piano occupied one side of her drawing-room, but a harp stood in the corner. If a freshly-cut novel lay open on the piano, a breviary was conspicuous on the marble centre-table. If, on the mantel, an elaborate French clock with bronze shepherdesses trifled with Time, on the wall above it an iron crucifix spoke of Eternity.
Mrs. Sepulvida was at home that morning expecting a guest. She was lying in a Manilla hammock, swung between two posts of the verandah, with her face partially hidden by the netting, and the toe of a little shoe just peeping beyond. Not that Donna Maria expected to receive her guest thus; on the contrary, she had given orders to her servants that the moment a stranger caballero appeared on the road she was to be apprised of the fact. For I grieve to say that, far from taking Arthur's advice, the details of the adventure at the Point of Pines had been imparted by her own lips to most of her female friends, and even to the domestics of her household. In the earlier stages of a woman's interest in a man she is apt to be exceedingly communicative; it is only when she becomes fully aware of the gravity of the stake involved that she begins to hedge before the public. The morning after her adventure Donna Maria was innocently full of its hero and unreservedly voluble.
I have forgotten whether I have described her. Certainly I could not have a better opportunity than the present. In the hammock she looked a little smaller, as women are apt to when their length is rigidly defined. She had the average quantity of brown hair, a little badly treated by her habit of wearing it flat over her temples—a tradition of her boarding-school days, fifteen years ago. She had soft brown eyes, with a slight redness of the eyelid not inconsistent nor entirely unbecoming to widowhood; a small mouth depressed at the corners with a charming, childlike discontent; white regular teeth, and the eloquence of a complexion that followed unvaryingly the spirits of her physical condition. She appeared to be about thirty, and had that unmistakable "married" look which even the most amiable and considerate of us, my dear sir, are apt to impress upon the one woman whom we choose to elect to years of exclusive intimacy and attention. The late Don José Sepulvida's private mark—as well defined as the brand upon his cattle—was a certain rigid line, like a grave accent, from the angle of this little woman's nostril to the corners of her mouth, and possibly to an increased peevishness of depression at those corners. It bore witness to the fondness of the deceased for bear-baiting and bull-fighting, and a possible weakness for a certain Señora X. of San Francisco, whose reputation was none of the best, and was not increased by her distance from San Antonio and the surveillance of Donna Maria.
When an hour later "Pepe" appeared to his mistress, bearing a salver with Arthur Poinsett's business card and a formal request for an interview, I am afraid Donna Maria was a little disappointed. If he had suddenly scaled the verandah, evaded her servants, and appeared before her in an impulsive, forgivable way, it would have seemed consistent with his character as a hero, and perhaps more in keeping with the general tenor of her reveries when the servitor entered. Howbeit, after heaving an impatient little sigh, and bidding "Pepe" show the gentleman into the drawing-room, she slipped quietly down from the hammock in a deft womanish way, and whisked herself into her dressing-room.
"He couldn't have been more formal if Don José had been alive," she said to herself as she walked to her glass and dressing-table.
Arthur Poinsett entered the vacant drawing-room not in the best of his many humours. He had read in the eyes of the lounging vaqueros, in the covert glances of the women servants, that the story of his adventure was known to the household. Habitually petted and spoiled as he had been by the women of his acquaintance, he was half inclined to attribute this reference and assignment of his client's business to the hands of Mrs. Sepulvida, as the result of a plan of Father Felipe's, or absolute collusion between the parties. A little sore yet, and irritated by his recollection of the Padre's counsel, and more impatient of the imputation of a weakness than anything else, Arthur had resolved to limit the interview to the practical business on hand, and in so doing had, for a moment, I fear, forgotten his native courtesy. It did not tend to lessen his irritation and self-consciousness when Mrs. Sepulvida entered the room without the slightest evidence of her recent disappointment visible in her perfectly easy, frank self-possession, and after a conventional, half Spanish solicitousness regarding his health since their last interview, without any further allusions to their adventure, begged him to be seated. She herself took an easy chair on the opposite of the table, and assumed at once an air of respectful but somewhat indifferent attention.
"I believe," said Arthur, plunging at once into his subject to get rid of his embarrassment and the slight instinct of antagonism he was beginning to feel toward the woman before him, "I believe—that is, I am told—that besides your own business, you are intrusted with some documents and facts regarding a claim of the Donna Dolores Salvatierra. Which shall we have first? I am entirely at your service for the next two hours, but we shall proceed faster and with less confusion by taking up one thing at a time."
"Then let us begin with Donna Dolores, by all means," said Donna Maria; "my own affairs can wait. Indeed," she added, languidly, "I daresay one of your clerks could attend to it as well as yourself. If your time is valuable—as indeed it must be—I can put the papers in his hands and make him listen to all my foolish, irrelevant talk. He can sift it for you, Don Arturo. I really am a child about business, really."
Arthur smiled, and made a slight gesture of deprecation. In spite of his previous resolution, Donna Maria's tone of slight pique pleased him. Yet he gravely opened his note-book, and took up his pencil without a word. Donna Maria observed the movements, and said more seriously—
"Ah yes! how foolish! Here I am talking about my own affairs, when I should be speaking of Donna Dolores! Well, to begin. Let me first explain why she has put this matter in my hands. My husband and her father were friends, and had many business interests in common. As you have doubtless heard, she has always been very quiet, very reserved, very religious—almost a nun. I daresay she was driven into this isolation by reason of the delicacy of her position here, for you know—do you not?—that her mother was an Indian. It is only a few years ago that the old Governor, becoming a widower and childless, bethought himself of this Indian child, Dolores. He found the mother dead, and the girl living somewhere at a distant Mission as an acolyte. He brought her to San Antonio, had her christened, and made legally his daughter and heiress. She was a mere slip of a thing, about fourteen or fifteen. She might have had a pretty complexion, for some of these half-breeds are nearly white, but she had been stained when an infant with some barbarous and indelible dye, after the savage custom of her race. She