At the dark, cold midnight they found an hour or two of sweetest consolation. It was indeed hard to weary these three heart-starved women; they asked question after question, and when any brought out the comical side of camp life they forget their pleasure was almost a clandestine one, and laughed outright.
In the very midst of such a laugh, Rachela entered the room.
She stood in speechless amazement, gazing with a dark, malicious face upon the happy group. "Senorita Isabel!" she screamed; "but this is abominable! At the midnight also! Who could have believed in such wickedness? Grace of Mary, it is inconceivable!"
She laid her hand roughly on Isabel's shoulder, and Luis removed it with as little courtesy. "You were not called," he said, with the haughty insolence of a Mexican noble to a servant--"Depart."
"My Senora! Listen! You yourself also--you will die. You that are really weak--so broken-hearted--"
Then a miracle occurred. The Senora threw off the nightmare of selfish sorrow and spiritual sentimentality which had held her in bondage. She took the cigarito from her lips with a scornful air, and repeated the words of Luis:
"You were not called. Depart."
"The Senorita Isabel?"
"Is in my care. Her mother's care! do you understand?"
"My Senora, Fray Ignatius--"
"Saints in heaven! But this is intolerable! Go."
Then Rachela closed the door with a clang which echoed through the house. And say as we will, the malice of the wicked is never quite futile. It was impossible after this interruption to recall the happy spirit dismissed by it; and Rachela had the consolation, as she muttered beside the fire in the Senora's room. this conviction. So that when she heard the party breaking up half an hour afterwards, she complimented herself upon her influence.
"Will Jack come and see me soon, and the Senor Doctor?" questioned the Senora, anxiously, as she held the hand of Luis in parting.
"Jack is on a secret message to General Houston. His return advices will find us, I trust, in San Antonio. But until we have taken the city, no American can safely enter it. For this reason, when it was necessary to give Lopez Navarro certain instructions, I volunteered to bring them. By the Virgin of Guadalupe! I have had my reward," he said, lifting the Senora's hand and kissing it.
"But, then, even you are in danger."
"Si! If I am discovered; but, blessed be the hand of God!
Luis Alveda knows where he is going, and how to get there."
"I have heard," said the Senora in a hushed voice, "that there are to be no prisoners. That is Santa Anna's order."
"I heard it twenty days ago, and am still suffocating over it."
"Ah, Luis, you do not know the man yet! I heard Fray Ignatius say that."
"We know him well; and also what he is capable of"; and Luis plucked his mustache fiercely, as he bowed a silent farewell to the ladies.
"Holy Maria! How brave he is!" said Isabel, with a flash of pride that conquered her desire to weep. "How brave he is!
Certainly, if he meets Santa Anna, he will kill him."
They went very quietly up-stairs. The Senora was anticipating the interview she expected with Rachela, and, perhaps wisely, she isolated herself in an atmosphere of sullen and haughty silence. She would accept nothing from her, not even sympathy or flattery; and, in a curt dismission, managed to make her feel the immeasurable distance between a high-born lady of the house of Flores, and a poor manola that she had taken from the streets of Madrid. Rachela knew the Senora was thinking of this circumstance; the thought was in her voice, and it cowed and snubbed the woman, her nature being essentially as low as her birth.
As for the Senora, the experience did her a world of good.
She waited upon herself as a princess might condescend to minister to her own wants--loftily, with a smile at her own complaisance. The very knowledge that her husband was near at hand inspired her with courage. She went to sleep assuring herself "that not even Fray Ignatius should again speak evil of her beloved, who never thought of her except with a loyal affection." For in married life, the wife can sin against love as well as fidelity; and she thought with a sob of the cowardice which had permitted Fray Ignatius to call her dear one "rebel and heretic."
"Santa Dios!" she said in a passionate whisper; "it is not a mortal sin to think differently from Santa Anna"--and then more tenderly--"those who love each other are of the same faith."
And if Fray Ignatius had seen at that moment the savage whiteness of her small teeth behind the petulant pout of her parted lips, he might have understood that this woman of small intelligence had also the unreasoning partisanship and the implacable sense of anger which generally accompanies small intelligence, and which indicates a nature governed by feeling, and utterly irresponsive to reasoning which feeling does not endorse.
