Part 9 (2/2)

It seemed to her already a very long time. It was not in reality very long,--a half hour or so, perhaps; but it was long enough for Margarita to have made great headway, as she thought, in her talk with Alessandro, and for things to have reached just the worst possible crisis at which they could have been surprised, when Ramona suddenly appeared at the orchard gate, saying in a stern tone, ”Margarita, you are wanted in the house!” At a bad crisis, indeed, for everybody concerned. The picture which Ramona had seen, as she reached the gate, was this: Alessandro, standing with his back against the fence, his right hand hanging listlessly down, with the pruning-knife in it, his left hand in the hand of Margarita, who stood close to him, looking up in his face, with a half-saucy, half-loving expression. What made bad matters worse, was, that at the first sight of Ramona, Alessandro s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand from Margarita's, and tried to draw farther off from her, looking at her with an expression which, even in her anger, Ramona could not help seeing was one of disgust and repulsion. And if Ramona saw it, how much more did Margarita! Saw it, as only a woman repulsed in presence of another woman can see and feel. The whole thing was over in the twinkling of an eye; the telling it takes double, treble the time of the happening. Before Alessandro was fairly aware what had befallen, Ramona and Margarita were disappearing from view under the garden trellis,--Ramona walking in advance, stately, silent, and Margarita following, sulky, abject in her gait, but with a raging whirlwind in her heart.

It had taken only the twinkling of an eye, but it had told Margarita the truth. Alessandro too.

”My G.o.d.” he said, ”the Senorita thought me making love to that girl.

May the fiends get her! The Senorita looked at me as if I were a dog. How could she think a man would look at a woman after he had once seen her!

And I can never, never speak to her to tell her! Oh, this cannot be borne!” And in his rage Alessandro threw his pruning-knife whirling through the air so fiercely, it sank to the hilt in one of the old olive-trees. He wished he were dead. He was minded to flee the place.

How could he ever look the Senorita in the face again!

”Perdition take that girl!” he said over and over in his helpless despair. An ill outlook for Margarita after this; and the girl had not deserved it.

In Margarita's heart the pain was more clearly defined. She had seen Ramona a half-second before Alessandro had; and dreaming no special harm, except a little confusion at being seen thus standing with him,--for she would tell the Senorita all about it when matters had gone a little farther,--had not let go of Alessandro's hand. But the next second she had seen in his face a look; oh, she would never forget it, never! That she should live to have had any man look at her like that!

At the first glimpse of the Senorita, all the blood in his body seemed rus.h.i.+ng into his face, and he had s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand away,--for it was Margarita herself that had taken his hand, not he hers,--had s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand away, and pushed her from him, till she had nearly fallen. All this might have been borne, if it had been only a fear of the Senorita's seeing them, which had made him do it. But Margarita knew a great deal better than that. That one swift, anguished, shame-smitten, appealing, wors.h.i.+pping look on Alessandro's face, as his eyes rested on Ramona, was like a flash of light into Margarita's consciousness. Far better than Alessandro himself, she now knew his secret. In her first rage she did not realize either the gulf between herself and Ramona, or that between Ramona and Alessandro. Her jealous rage was as entire as if they had all been equals together. She lost her head altogether, and there was embodied insolence in the tone in which she said presently, ”Did the Senorita want me?”

Turning swiftly on her, and looking her full in the eye, Ramona said: ”I saw you go to the orchard, Margarita, and I knew what you went for. I knew that you were at the brook last night with Alessandro. All I wanted of you was, to tell you that if I see anything more of this sort, I shall speak to the Senora.”

”There is no harm,” muttered Margarita, sullenly. ”I don't know what the Senorita means.”

”You know very well, Margarita,” retorted Ramona. ”You know that the Senora permits nothing of the kind. Be careful, now, what you do.” And with that the two separated, Ramona returning to the veranda and her embroidery, and Margarita to her neglected duty of making the good Father's bed. But each girl's heart was hot and unhappy; and Margarita's would have been still hotter and unhappier, had she heard the words which were being spoken on the veranda a little later.

After a few minutes of his blind rage at Margarita, himself, and fate generally, Alessandro, recovering his senses, had ingeniously persuaded himself that, as the Senora's; and also the Senorita's servant, for the time being, he owed it to them to explain the situation in which he had just been found. Just what he was to say he did not know; but no sooner had the thought struck him, than he set off at full speed for the house, hoping to find Ramona on the veranda, where he knew she spent all her time when not with Senor Felipe.

When Ramona saw him coming, she lowered her eyes, and was absorbed in her embroidery. She did not wish to look at him.

The footsteps stopped. She knew he was standing at the steps. She would not look up. She thought if she did not, he would go away. She did not know either the Indian or the lover nature. After a time, finding the consciousness of the soundless presence intolerable, she looked up, and surprised on Alessandro's face a gaze which had, in its long interval of freedom from observation, been slowly gathering up into it all the pa.s.sion of the man's soul, as a burning-gla.s.s draws the fire of the sun's rays. Involuntarily a low cry burst from Ramona's lips, and she sprang to her feet.

”Ah! did I frighten the Senorita? Forgive. I have been waiting here a long time to speak to her. I wished to say--”

Suddenly Alessandro discovered that he did not know what he wished to say.

As suddenly, Ramona discovered that she knew all he wished to say. But she spoke not, only looked at him searchingly.

”Senorita,” he began again, ”I would never be unfaithful to my duty to the Senora, and to you.”

”I believe you, Alessandro,” said Ramona. ”It is not necessary to say more.”

At these words a radiant joy spread over Alessandro's face. He had not hoped for this. He felt, rather than heard, that Ramona understood him.

He felt, for the first time, a personal relation between himself and her.

”It is well,” he said, in the brief phrase so frequent with his people.

”It is well.” And with a reverent inclination of his head, he walked away. Margarita, still dawdling surlily over her work in Father Salvierderra's room, heard Alessandro's voice, and running to discover to whom he was speaking, caught these last, words. Peering from behind a curtain, she saw the look with which he said them; saw also the expression on Ramona's face as she listened.

Margarita clenched her hands. The seed had blossomed. Ramona had an enemy.

”Oh, but I am glad Father Salvierderra has gone!” said the girl, bitterly. ”He'd have had this out of me, spite of everything. I haven't got to confess for a year, maybe; and much can happen in that time.”

Much, indeed!

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