Remember the Alamo - Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (good books to read for young adults .txt) 📗

agreeable to her to be where she could entirely forget that she had ever been hungry and friendless, and lying at death's door.

Antonia knew also that Rachela was at heart unfaithful, and soon the conviction was forced on her that servants are never faithful beyond the line of their own interest--that it is, indeed, against certain primary laws of nature to expect it. Certainly, it was impossible to doubt that there was in all their dependents a kind of satisfaction in their misfortunes.

The doctor had done them favors--how unpleasant was their memory! The Senora had offended them by the splendor of her dress, and her complacent air of happiness. Antonia's American ways and her habit of sitting for hours with a book in her hand were a great irritation.

"She wishes to be thought wiser than other women--as wise as even a holy priest--SHE! that never goes to mass, and is nearly a heretic," said the house steward; "and as for the Senorita Isabel, a little trouble will be good for her! Holy Mary! the way she has been pampered and petted! It is an absurdity. 'Little dear,' and 'angel,' are the hardest words she hears. Si! if God did not mercifully abate a little the rich they would grow to be 'almightys.'"

This was the tone of the conversation of the servants of the household. It was not an unnatural tone, but it was a very unhappy one. People cannot escape from the mood of mind they habitually indulge, and from the animus of the words they habitually use; and Antonia felt and understood the antagonistic atmosphere. For the things which we know best of all are precisely the things which no one has ever told us.

The Senora, in a plain black serge gown, and black rebozo over her head, spent her time in prayers and penances. The care of her household had always been delegated to her steward, and to Rachela; while the duties that more especially belonged to her, had been fulfilled by her husband and by Antonia. In many respects she was but a grown-up baby. And so, in this great extremity, the only duty which pressed upon her was the idea of supplicating the saints to take charge of her unhappy affairs.

And Fray Ignatius was daily more hard with her. Antonia even suspected from his growing intolerance and bitterness, that the Americans were gaining unexpected advantages. But she knew nothing of what was happening. She could hear from afar off the marching and movements of soldiers; the blare of military music; the faint echoes of hurrahing multitudes; but there was no one to give her any certain information. Still, she guessed something from the anger of the priest and the reticence of the Mexican servants. If good fortune had been with Santa Anna, she was sure she would have heard of "The glorious! The invincible! The magnificent Presidente de la Republica Mexicana! The Napoleon of the West!"

It was not permitted her to go into the city. A proposal to do so had been met with a storm of angry amazement. And steam and electricity had not then annihilated distance and abolished suspense. She could but wonder and hope, and try to read the truth from a covert inspection of the face and words of Fray Ignatius.

Between this monk and herself the breach was hourly widening. With angry pain she saw her mother tortured between the fact that she loved her husband, and the horrible doubt that to love him was a mortal sin. She understood the underlying motive which prompted the priest to urge upon the Senora the removal of herself and her daughters to the convent. His offer to take charge of the Worth residencia and estate was in her conviction a proposal to rob them of all rights in it. She felt certain that whatever the Church once grasped in its iron hand, it would ever retain. And both to Isabel and herself the thought of a convent was now horrible. "They will force me to be a nun," said Isabel; "and then, what will Luis do? And they will never tell me anything about my father and my brothers. I should never hear of them. I should never see them any more; unless the good God was so kind as to let me meet them in his heaven."

And Antonia had still darker and more fearful thoughts. She had not forgotten the stories whispered to her childhood, of dreadful fates reserved for contumacious and disobedient women. Whenever Fray Ignatius looked at her she felt as if she were within the shadow of the Inquisition.

Never had days passed so wearily and anxiously. Never had nights been so terrible. The sisters did not dare to talk much together; they doubted Rachela; they were sure their words were listened to and repeated. They were not permitted to be alone with the Senora. Fray Ignatius had particularly warned Rachela to prevent this. He was gradually bringing the unhappy woman into what he called "a heavenly mind"--the influence of her daughters, he was sure, would be that of worldly affections and sinful liberty. And Rachela obeyed the confessor so faithfully, that the Senora was almost in a state of solitary confinement. Every day her will was growing weaker, her pathetic obedience more childlike and absolute.

But at midnight, when every one was asleep, Antonia stepped softly into her sister's room and talked to her. They sat in Isabel's bed clasping each other's hand in the dark, and speaking in whispers. Then Antonia warned and strengthened Isabel. She told her all her fears. She persuaded her to control her wilfulness, to be obedient, and to assume the childlike thoughtlessness which best satisfied Fray Ignatius. "He told you to-day to be happy, that he would think for you. My darling, let him believe that is the thing you want," said Antonia. "I assure you we shall be the safer for it."

"He said to me yesterday, when I asked him about the war, 'Do not inquire, child, into things you do not understand. That is to be irreligious,' and then he made the cross on his breast, as if I had put a bad thought into his heart. We are afraid all day, and we sit whispering all night about our fears; that is the state we are in. The Lord sends us nothing but misfortunes, Antonia."

"My darling, tell the Lord your sorrow, then, but do not repine to Rachela or Fray Ignatius. That is to complain to the merciless of the All-Merciful."

"Do you think I am wicked, Antonia? What excuse could I offer to His Divine Majesty, if I spoke evil to him of Rachela and Fray Ignatius?"

"Neither of them are our friends; do you think so?"

"Fray Ignatius looks like a goblin; he gives me a shiver when he looks at me; and as for Rachela--I already hate her!"

"Do not trust her. You need not hate her, Isabel."

"Antonia, I know that I shall eternally hate her; for I am sure that our angels are at variance."

In conversations like these the anxious girls passed the long, and often very cold, nights. The days were still worse, for as November went slowly away the circumstances which surrounded their lives appeared to constantly gather a more decided and a bitterer tone. December, that had always been such a month of happiness, bright with Christmas expectations and Christmas joys, came in with a terribly severe, wet norther. The great log fires only warmed the atmosphere immediately surrounding them, and Isabel and Antonia sat gloomily within it all day. It seemed to Antonia as if her heart had come to the very end of hope; and that something must happen.

The rain lashed the earth; the wind roared around the house, and filled it with unusual noises. The cold was a torture that few found themselves able to endure. But it brought a compensation. Fray Ignatius did not leave the Mission comforts; and Rachela could not bear to go prowling about the corridors and passages. She established herself in the Senora's room, and remained there. And very early in the evening she said "she had an outrageous headache," and went to her room.

Then Antonia and Isabel sat awhile by their mother's bed. They talked in whispers of their father and brothers, and when the Senora cried, they kissed her sobs into silence and wiped her tears away. In that hour, if Fray Ignatius had known it, they undid, in a great measure, the work to which he had given more than a month of patient and deeply-reflective labor. For with the girls, there was the wondrous charm of love and nature; but with the priest, only a splendid ideal of a Church universal that was to swallow up all the claims of love and all the ties of nature.

It was nearly nine o'clock when Antonia and Isabel returned to the parlor fire. Their hearts were full of sorrow for their mother, and of fears for their own future. For this confidence had shown them how firmly the refuge of the convent had been planted in the anxious ideas of the Senora. Fortunately, the cold had driven the servants either to the kitchen fire or to their beds, and they could talk over the subject without fear of interference.

"Are you sleepy, queridita?"--(little dear).

"I think I shall never go to sleep again, Antonia. If I shut my eyes I shall find myself in the convent; and I do not want to go there even in a dream. Do you know Mother Teresa? Well then, I could tell you things. And she does not like me, I am sure of that; quite sure."

"My darling, I am going to make us a cup of tea. It will do us good."

"If indeed it were chocolate!"

"I cannot make chocolate now; but you shall have a great deal of sugar in your cup, and something good to eat also. There, my darling, put your chair close to the fire, and we will sit here until we are quite sleepy."

With the words she went into the kitchen. Molly was nodding over her beads, in the comfortable radius made by the blazing logs; no one else was present but a young peon. He brought a small kettle to the parlor fire, and lifted a table to the hearth, and then replenished the pile of logs for burning during the night. Isabel, cuddling in a large chair, watched Antonia, as she went softly about putting on the table such delicacies as she could find at that hour. Tamales and cold duck, sweet cake and the guava jelly that was Isabel's favorite dainty. There was a little comfort in the sight of these things; and also, in the bright silver teapot standing so cheerfully on the hearth, and diffusing through the room a warm perfume, at once soothing and exhilarating.

"I really think I shall like that American tea to-night, Antonia, but you must half fill my cup with those little blocks of sugar--quite half fill it, Antonia; and have you found cream, my dear one? Then a great deal of cream."

Antonia stood still a moment and looked at the drowsy little beauty. Her eyes were closed, and her head nestled comfortably in a corner of the padded chair. Then a hand upon the door-handle arrested her attention, and Antonia turned her eyes from Isabel and watched it. Ortiz, the peon, put his head within the room, and then disappeared; but oh, wonder and joy! Don Luis entered swiftly after him; and before any one could say a word, he was kneeling by Isabel kissing her hand and mingling his exclamations