Mariquita

"The fact is," Sarella told her, "that you and he ought to be put in a gla.s.s case--two gla.s.s cases, you"d both of you be quite shocked at the idea of being in _one_--and labelled. It"s a good thing you"re unique.

If other lovers were like you two, there"d be no marriages."

She got up, and prepared to return to her own room.

"Hulloa!" she said, "there"s the auto. Your father"s going off somewhere, and you can get up. Probably he is taking Gore away."

"Is Mr. Gore going away?"

"He"ll have to. There"s no one here for him to marry except Ginger; but no doubt you want him to become a monk."

"A monk! He hasn"t the least idea of such a thing."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sarella, instantly changing the sigh into a laugh.

"How funny you people are who never condescend to see a joke."

"I didn"t know," Mariquita confessed meekly, "that you had made one."

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

Don Joaquin was not yet recovered from his annoyance. As Sarella had perceived, he could not easily condone the defective conduct of those who, owing him obedience, refused to carry out a plan that he had long been meditating. But he had been frightened by the picture she had suggested of Divine judgment, and wondered if the hitches that had occurred in the issue of the dispensation for his marriage had been a hint of them--a threatening of what would happen if he opposed the Heavenly Will concerning his daughter"s vocation. It was chiefly because the plan of her marriage had been deliberately adopted by himself, that he was reluctant to abandon it. Her own plan of becoming a nun would, he gradually came to see, suit him quite as well. And presently he became aware that, financially, it would suit him even better. If she "entered Religion," he would have to give her a dowry; but not, he imagined, a large one, five thousand dollars or so, he guessed. Whereas, if she married Gore, he would be expected to give her much more. Besides, her marriage would very likely involve subsequent gifts and expenditure. It would all come out of what he wished to save for the beloved son of whom he was always thinking. As a nun, too, Mariquita would be largely engaged in praying for the soul of her mother, and for his own soul and Sarella"s and her brother"s.

By the time he and Mariquita met he had grasped all these advantages, and, though aloof and disapproving in his manner, he did not attack her.

As it pleased him to admire in Sarella a delightful shrewdness in affairs, he gave her credit for favoring Mariquita"s plan because it would leave more money for her own children. In this he paid her an undeserved compliment, for Sarella did not know in the least that Mariquita would receive less of her father"s money if she became a nun than if she married Mr. Gore. She had not thought of it, being much of opinion that Gore would ask for nothing in the way of dowry and that Don Joaquin would give nothing without much asking.

Don Joaquin was considerably taken aback to learn that Mariquita had formed no definite plans yet as to her "entering Religion." He had promptly decided that, of course, she would go back to Loretto as a nun, and he was proportionally surprised to find that she had no such idea.

This surprise he expressed, almost in dudgeon, to Sarella. He appeared to consider himself quite ill-used by such vagueness; if young women wanted to be nuns it behooved them to know exactly where they meant to go, and what religious work they felt called to undertake.

"If I were you," Sarella told him, after some hasty consideration, "I would let her go to Loretto--on a visit. You will find she makes up her mind quicker there--with nothing to distract her. Sister Aquinas talks of Retreats--Mariquita could make one."

"Who"s to do the work here while she"s away?" grumbled Don Joaquin.

"It will have to be done when she"s gone for good. We may just as well think it out."

Sarella was quite resolved that she would never be the slave Mariquita had been, and did not mind having the struggle, if there was to be one, now.

"Whether Mariquita married or became a nun," she went on, "she would be gone from here. Her place would have to be supplied--more than supplied, for a young wife like me could not do nearly so much work. I should have things to do an unmarried girl has not, and be unfit for much work. I am sure you understand that. Sister Aquinas knows two sisters, very respectable and trustworthy, steady, and not too young. I meant to speak to you about them. They would suit us as well. They will not separate, and for that matter, we can"t do with less than two."

Sarella"s great object was to open the matter; she intended to succeed but did not count on instant success, or success without a struggle. Don Joaquin had to be familiarized with a scheme some time before he would adopt it. He rebelled at first and for that rebellion she punished him.

"Mariquita"s position was wrong," she told him boldly. "It tended to make her unlike other girls and give her unusual ideas. She was tied by the leg here, by too much work, and her only rest or recreation was solitary thinking. If she had been taken about and met her equals she would have been like other girls, I expect. She was a slave and sought her freedom in the skies."

Don Joaquin enjoyed this philippic very little; perhaps he only partly understood it, but he did understand that Sarella thought Mariquita had been put upon and did not intend being put upon herself. He would have been much less influenced if he had thought of Sarella as specially devoted to his daughter or blindly fond of her, but he had always believed that there was but a cool sympathy between the two girls, and that Sarella would have found fault with Mariquita quite willingly if there had been fault to find.

"You have taken up the cudgels," he said sourly, "very strongly for Mariquita of late."

"As time goes on I naturally feel able to speak more plainly than I could when I first came here. I was only your guest. It is different "of late." And I am "taking up the cudgels" for myself more than for Mariquita."

"Oh, I quite see that," he retorted with a savage grin.

Sarella determined to hit back, and she was by no means restrained by scruples as to "hitting below the belt."

"Fortunately for her," she said, "Mariquita has splendid health, and work did not kill her. She has the strength of a horse. Her mother did not leave it to her. I have always heard in the family that Aunt Margaret was delicate, physically unfit for hard work. Men do not notice those things. She died too young, and might have lived much longer if she had not overtaxed her strength. She ought to have been prevented from doing so much work. You were not too poor to have allowed her plenty of help--and you are much better off now."

Don Joaquin almost jumped with horror; he had really adored his wife, and now he was being flatly and relentlessly accused of having perhaps shortened her life by lack of consideration for her. And was it true? He could not help remembering much to support the accusation. She had been a woman of feeble health and feeble temper; her singular beauty of feature and coloring had been in every eye but Joaquin"s own, marred by an expression of discontent and complaining, though she had been too much in awe of her masterful husband to set out her grievances to him; he guessed now that she must have written grumbling letters to her relations far away in the East. The man was no monster of cruelty; he was merely stingy and money-loving, hard-natured, and without imagination. Possessed of iron health himself, he had never conceived that the sort of work his Indian mother had submissively performed could be beyond the strength of his wife. It was true that he was much richer now than he had been when he married, and Sarella had herself accustomed him to the idea of greater expenditure, however dexterously he might have done his best to neutralize those spendings. He was more obstinately set upon marrying her than ever, because he had for a long time now decided upon the marriage; he was nervously afraid of her drawing back if he didn"t yield to her wishes, the utterance of which he took to be a sort of ultimatum.

"Are these two women Catholics?" he demanded, feeling sure that Sister Aquinas would only recommend such; "I will not have Protestant servants in the house."

"They are excellent Catholics," Sarella a.s.sured him, "educated in the convent."

"Then I will consider the plan. You can ask Sister Aquinas about the conditions--wages, and so forth."

"What a pity," thought Sarella, when the interview had ended, "that Mariquita never knew how to manage him."

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

There was no pomp of leave-taking about Mariquita"s departure for Loretto. She was only going on a visit, and would return.

"Whatever you decide upon," Sarella insisted, "you must come back for your father"s wedding."

Mariquita promised, and went away, her father driving her all the way to Loretto in the auto. Her departure did not move him much, though he would have been better pleased, after all, if she were going away to a husband"s house. Sarella, watching them disappear in the distance, felt it more than the stoical old half-breed.

"I shall miss her," she said to herself; "I like her better than I thought I should. She"s as straight as an arrow, and as true as gold. I suppose this watch _is_ gold; he"d never dare to give me _rolled_ gold.... Only nine o"clock. It will be a long day, and I shall miss her all the time. Quiet as she is, it will make a lot of difference. No one has such a nice way of laughing, when she does laugh. I wonder if she guesses how little her father cares? _He_ won"t miss her much. Some men care never a pin for a woman unless they want to marry her. _He_ has no use for the others. I expect it makes them good husbands, though. Poor Mariquita! I think I should have hated him if I had been her. It never occurred to her; at first I thought she must be an A-Number-One hypocrite, she seemed to think him so exactly all that he ought to be to her. Then I thought she must be stupid--I soon saw she was as sincere as a baby. But she"s not stupid either. She"s just Mariquita; she really does see only the things she ought to see, and it"s queer. I never saw anyone else that way. I thought at first she _must_ be jealous of me, the old man put her so completely on one side, and made such a lot of me. Any other girl would have been. I soon saw she wasn"t; it never entered her head that he might leave me money that ought to be hers--it would have entered mine, I know. But "she never thought of that," as she used to say about everything." Oddly enough, it was at this particular recollection that a certain dewy brightness (that became them well) glistened in Sarella"s pretty eyes.

"Well," she thought, "I"m glad I can call to mind that I did the best I could for her. It made me feel just sick to think of the old man brow-beating and bullying her. I saw a big hulking fellow beat his little girl once, and I felt just the same, only I could _do_ nothing then but scream. I was a child myself, and I did scream, and I bit him.

I"m glad I did bite him, though I was spanked for it. I suppose I"ll have to confess biting him, though I don"t call it a sin. What on earth can Mariquita confess? At first her goodness put my back up. But I wish she was back. It never occurs to her that she"s good. I soon found that out. And she thinks everyone else as good as gold. She thinks all these cowboys good, and she does almost make them want to be. It was funny that she didn"t dislike me. (_I_ should have if I"d been in her place.) When she kissed me good-bye and said "Sarella, we"ll never forget each other," it meant more than pounds of candy-talk from another girl.

Forget her! Not I. Will Gore? He will never think any other girl her equal. Mrs. Gore may make up her mind to that. Perhaps he"ll marry someone not half so good as himself and rather like it. Pfush! It feels lonesome now. I often used to get into my own room to get out of Mariquita"s way, and stretch the legs of my mind over a novel. I wish she was here now...."

And Sarella did not speedily give over missing Mariquita. She was a girl who on principle preferred men"s society to that of other women, but in practice had considerable need of female companionship. She liked to make men admire her, but she did not much care to be admired by the cowboys, and took it for granted that they already admired her as much as befitted their inferior position. She had always been too shrewd to try and make other women admire her, but she liked talking to them about clothes, which no man understands; and, though Mariquita had been careless about her own sumptuous affairs, she had been a wonderfully appreciative (or long-suffering) listener when Sarella talked about hers.

"And after all," Sarella confessed, "she had taste. My style would not have suited her. That plain style of her own was best for her."

When Don Joaquin returned from Denver he seemed unlike himself, almost subdued. He had been much impressed by the great convent and its large community; the nuns had made much of him, and of Mariquita. They spoke in a way that at last put it into his head that he had under-valued her; there is nothing for awaking our appreciation of our own near relations like the sudden perception that other people think greatly of them.

Gore"s respect and admiration for his daughter had not done much, for he had only looked upon it as the blind predilection of a young man in love with a beautiful girl. Several of the nuns, including their Reverend Mother, had spoken to him apart, in Mariquita"s absence, not immediately on his and her arrival, but on the evening of the following day; on the morrow he was to depart on his return to the range, and in these conversations the Sisters let him plainly see that they regarded the girl as peculiarly graced by G.o.d, and of rarely high and n.o.ble character.

He asked the Superior if she thought Mariquita would wish to stay with them and become one of themselves.

"No," was the answer. "She is a born Contemplative. Every nun must be a contemplative in some degree, but I use the word in its common sense. I mean that I believe she will find herself called to an Order of pure Contemplatives. She will make a Retreat here, and very likely will be shown during it what is G.o.d"s will for her."

It surprised the kind and warm-hearted Religious that he did not inquire whether that life were not very hard. But she took charitable refuge in the supposition that he knew so little about one Order or another as to be free from the dread that his child might have a life of great austerity before her.