Part 13 (1/2)
The moon had been long set, and the garden, chapel-front, trees, vines, were all wrapped in impenetrable darkness, when Ramona awoke, sat up in her bed, and listened. All was so still that the sound of Felipe's low, regular breathing came in through her open window. After hearkening to it for a few moments, she rose noiselessly from her bed, and creeping to the window parted the curtains and looked out; noiselessly, she thought; but it was not noiselessly enough to escape Alessandro's quick ear; without a sound, he sprang to his feet, and stood looking at Ramona's window.
”I am here, Senorita,” he whispered. ”Do you want anything?”
”Has he slept all night like this?” she whispered back.
”Yes, Senorita. He has not once moved.”
”How good!” said Ramona. ”How good!”
Then she stood still; she wanted to speak again to Alessandro, to hear him speak again, but she could think of no more to say. Because she could not, she gave a little sigh.
Alessandro took one swift step towards the window. ”May the saints bless you, Senorita,” he whispered fervently.
”Thank you, Alessandro,” murmured Ramona, and glided back to her bed, but not to sleep. It lacked not much of dawn; as the first faint light filtered through the darkness, Ramona heard the Senora's window open.
”Surely she will not strike up the hymn and wake Felipe,” thought Ramona; and she sprang again to the window to listen. A few low words between the Senora and Alessandro, and then the Senora's window closed again, and all was still.
”I thought she would not have the heart to wake him,” said Ramona to herself. ”The Virgin would have had no pleasure in our song, I am sure; but I will say a prayer to her instead;” and she sank on her knees at the head of her bed, and began saying a whispered prayer. The footfall of a spider in Ramona's room had not been light enough to escape the ear of that watching lover outside. Again Alessandro's tall figure arose from the floor, turning towards Ramona's window; and now the darkness was so far softened to dusk, that the outline of his form could be seen.
Ramona felt it rather than saw it, and stopped praying. Alessandro was sure he had heard her voice.
”Did the Senorita speak?” he whispered, his face close at the curtain.
Ramona, startled, dropped her rosary, which rattled as it fell on the wooden floor.
”No, no, Alessandro,” she said, ”I did not speak.” And she trembled, she knew not why. The sound of the beads on the floor explained to Alessandro what had been the whispered words he heard.
”She was at her prayers,” he thought, ashamed and sorry. ”Forgive me,”
he whispered, ”I thought you called;” and he stepped back to the outer edge of the veranda, and seated himself on the railing. He would lie down no more. Ramona remained on her knees, gazing at the window.
Through the transparent muslin curtain the dawning light came slowly, steadily, till at last she could see Alessandro distinctly. Forgetful of all else, she knelt gazing at him. The rosary lay on the floor, forgotten. Ramona would not finish that prayer, that day. But her heart was full of thanksgiving and grat.i.tude, and the Madonna had a better prayer than any in the book.
The sun was up, and the canaries, finches, and linnets had made the veranda ring with joyous racket, before Felipe opened his eyes. The Senora had come and gone and come again, looking at him anxiously, but he stirred not. Ramona had stolen timidly out, glancing at Alessandro only long enough to give him one quick smile, and bent over Felipe's bed, holding her breath, he lay so still.
”Ought he to sleep so long?” she whispered.
”Till the noon, it may be,” answered Alessandro; ”and when he wakes, you will see by his eye that he is another man.”
It was indeed so. When Felipe first looked about him, he laughed outright with pure pleasure. Then catching sight of Alessandro at the steps, he called, in a stronger voice than had yet been heard from him, ”Alessandro, you are a famous physician. Why couldn't that fool from Ventura have known as much? With all his learning, he had had me in the next world before many days, except for you. Now, Alessandro, breakfast!
I'm hungry. I had forgotten what the thought of food was like to a hungry stomach. And plenty! plenty!” he called, as Alessandro ran toward the kitchen. ”Bring all they have.”
When the Senora saw Felipe bolstered up in the bed, his eye bright, his color good, his voice clear, eating heartily like his old self, she stood like a statue in the middle of the veranda for a moment; then turning to Alessandro, she said chokingly, ”May Heaven reward you!” and disappeared abruptly in her own room. When she came out, her eyes were red. All day she moved and spoke with a softness unwonted, indeed inconceivable. She even spoke kindly and without constraint to Ramona.
She felt like one brought back from the dead.
After this, a new sort of life began for them all. Felipe's bed on the veranda was the rallying point for everything and everybody.. The servants came to look up at him, and wish him well, from the garden-walk below. Juan Can, when he first hobbled out on the stout crutches Alessandro had made him of manzanita wood, dragged himself all the way round the house, to have a look at Senor Felipe and a word with him. The Senora sat there, in the big carved chair, looking like a sibyl with her black silk banded head-dress severely straight across her brow, and her large dark eyes gazing out, past Felipe, into the far south sky. Ramona lived there too, with her embroidery or her book, sitting on cus.h.i.+ons on the floor in a corner, or at the foot of Felipe's bed, always so placed, however,--if anybody had noticed, but n.o.body did,--so placed that she could look at Felipe without looking full at the Senora's chair, even if the Senora were not in it.
Here also came Alessandro many times a day,--sometimes sent for, sometimes of his own accord. He was freely welcome. When he played or sang he sat on the upper step of the stairs leading down to the garden.
He also had a secret, which he thought all his own, in regard to the positions he chose. He sat always, when Ramona was there, in the spot which best commanded a view of her face. The secret was not all his own.
Felipe knew it. Nothing was escaping Felipe in these days. A bomb-sh.e.l.l exploding at their feet would not have more astonished the different members of this circle, the Senora, Ramona, Alessandro, than it would to have been made suddenly aware of the thoughts which were going on in Felipe's mind now, from day to day, as he lay there placidly looking at them all.
It is probable that if Felipe had been in full health and strength when the revelation suddenly came to him that Alessandro loved Ramona, and that Ramona might love Alessandro, he would have been instantly filled with jealous antagonism. But at the time when this revelation came, he was prostrate, feeble, thinking many times a day that he must soon die; it did not seem to Felipe that a man could be so weak as he was, and ever again be strong and well. Side by side with these forebodings of his own death, always came the thought of Ramona. What would become of her, if he were gone? Only too well he knew that the girl's heart would be broken; that she could not live on alone with his mother. Felipe adored his mother; but he understood her feeling about Ramona.
With his feebleness had also come to Felipe, as is often the case in long illnesses, a greater clearness of perception. Ramona had ceased to puzzle him. He no longer asked himself what her long, steady look into his eyes meant. He knew. He saw it mean that as a sister she loved him, had always loved him, and could love him in no other way. He wondered a little at himself that this gave him no more pain; only a sort of sweet, mournful tenderness towards her. It must be because he was so soon going out of the world, he thought. Presently he began to be aware that a new quality was coming into his love for her. He himself was returning to the brother love which he had had for her when they were children together, and in which he had felt no change until he became a man and Ramona a woman. It was strange what a peace fell upon Felipe when this was finally clear and settled in his mind. No doubt he had had more misgiving and fear about his mother in the matter than he had ever admitted to himself; perhaps also the consciousness of Ramona's unfortunate birth had rankled at times; but all this was past now.