"What has my father done, Fray Ignatius? Why have they arrested him?"
The priest turned to Antonia with a cold face. He did not like her. He felt that she did not believe in him.
"Senorita, he has committed a treason. A good citizen obeys the law; Senor Worth has defied it."
"Pardon, father, I cannot believe it."
"A great forbearance has been shown him, but the end of mercy comes. As he persisted in wearing arms, he has been taken to the Alamo and disarmed."
"It is a great shame! An infamous shame and wrong!" cried Antonia. "What right has any one to take my father's arms?
No more than they have to take his purse or his coat."
"General Santa Anna--"
"General Santa Anna is a tyrant and a thief. I care not who says different."
"Antonia! Shameless one!"
"Mother, do not strike me." Then she took her mother's hands in her own, and led her to a couch, caressing her as she spoke--"Don't believe any one--ANY ONE, mother, who says wrong of my father. You know that he is the best of men. Rachela!
Come here instantly. The rosary is not the thing, now. You ought to be attending to the Senora. Get her some valerian and some coffee, and come and remove her clothing. Fray Ignatius, we will beg you to leave us to-night to ourselves."
"Your mother's sin, in marrying a heretic, has now found her out. It is my duty to make her see her fault."
"My mother had a dispensation from one greater than you."
"Oh, father, pray for me! I accuse myself! I accuse myself!
Oh, wretched woman! Oh, cruel husband!"
"Mother, you have been a very happy woman. You have had the best husband in the world. Do not reproach my father for the sins of others. Do not desert him when he is in the power of a human tiger. My God, mother! let us think of something to be done for his help! I will see the Navarros, the Garcias, Judge Valdez; I will go to the Plaza and call on the thousands he has cured and helped to set him free."
"You will make of yourself something not to be spoken of.
This is the judgment of God, my daughter."
"It is the judgment of a wicked man, Fray Ignatius. My mother is not now able to listen to you. Isabel, come here and comfort her." Isabel put her cheek to her mother's; she murmured caressing words; she kissed her face, and coiled up her straggling hair, and with childlike trust amid all, solicited Holy Mary to console them.
Fray Ignatius watched her with a cold scrutiny. He was saying to himself, "It is the fruit of sin. I warned the Senora, when she married this heretic, that trouble would come of it.
Very well, it has come." Then like a flash a new thought invaded his mind--If the Senor Doctor disappeared forever, why not induce the Senora and her daughters to go into a religious house? There was a great deal of money. The church could use it well.
Antonia did not understand the thought, but she understood its animus, and again she requested his withdrawal. This time she went close to him, and bravely looked straight into his eyes. Their scornful gleam sent a chill to her heart like that of cold steel. At that moment she understood that she had turned a passive enemy into an active one.
He went, however, without further parley, stopping only to warn the Senora against the sin "of standing with the enemies of God and the Holy Church," and to order Isabel to recite for her mother's pardon and comfort a certain number of aves and paternosters. Antonia went with him to the door, and ere he left he blessed her, and said: "The Senorita will examine her soul and see her sin. Then the ever merciful Church will hear her confession, and give her the satisfying penance."
Antonia bowed in response. When people are in great domestic sorrow, self-examination is a superfluous advice. She listened a moment to his departing footsteps, shivering as she stood in the darkness, for a norther had sprung up, and the cold was severe. She only glanced into the pleasant parlor where the table was laid for dinner, and a great fire of cedar logs was throwing red, dancing lights over the white linen and the shining silver and glass. The chairs were placed around the table; her father's at the head. It had a forsaken air that was unendurable.
The dinner hour was now long past. It would be folly to attempt the meal. How could she and Isabel sit down alone and eat, and her father in prison, and her mother frantic with a loss which she was warned it was sinful to mourn over.
Antonia had a soul made for extremities and not afraid to face them, but invisible hands controlled her. What could a woman do, whom society had forbidden to do anything, but endure the pangs of patience?
The Senora could offer no suggestions. She was not indeed in a mood to think of her resources. A spiritual dread was upon her. And with this mingled an intense sense of personal wrong from her husband. "Had she not begged him to be passive? And he had put an old rifle before her and her daughters! It was all that Senor Houston's doing. She had an assurance of that." She invoked a thousand maledictions on him. She recalled, with passionate reproaches, Jack's infidelity to her and his God and his country. Her anger passed from one subject to another constantly, finding in all, even in the lukewarmness of Antonia and Isabel, and in their affection for lovers, who were also rebels, an accumulating reason for a stupendous reproach against herself, her husband, her children, and her unhappy fate. Her whole nature was in revolt--in that complete mental and moral anarchy from which springs tragedy and murder.
Isabel wept so violently that she angered still further the tearless suffering of her mother. "God and the saints!" she cried. "What are you weeping for? Will tears do any good?
Do I weep? God has forbidden me to weep for the wicked. Yet how I suffer! Mary, mother of sorrows, pity me!"
She sent Isabel away. Her sobs were not to be borne. And very soon she felt Antonia's white face and silent companionship to be just as unendurable. She would be alone.
