THE STORY-TELLER. The Vigueries' Step-mother

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 157, 31 December 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE STORY-TELLER. The Vigueries ' Step-mother

Luisita's feelings in the matter might not be important; indeed, Jesus Alaria Yiguerie had already assured himself that in a situation more or less complicated Luisita's attitude was the single feature which need not be considered. Yet thy wailing "Ay de mi ! " with which, after a moment of aghast silence, she received his tidings struck upon her father's nerves almost as convincingly as if the girl had uttered an authoritative denunciation of his plans. Jesus Maria had of course foreseen that Luisita would probably not like him to marry again. He had also realised that the naturally irrational quality peculiar to her sex might be depended on to furnish the girl with unanswerable arguments in favour of her own slipshod housekeeping, and her father's pure obliquity in not perrAanemly resigning himself to.it. Since she v did her best to make him cmfoortable, what more could he ask? So she would very likely contend, forgetting that her best was very bad indeed when compared with the ordinary quality to which her mother, now a year dead, had accustomed Jesus Maria. Indeed, the virtues of the departed" Se- ■ nora Viguerie were largely responsible for the betrothal which Jesus Maria had just announced to hi» daughter. The senora had been a woman of parts, who had seen to it that corn should never fail in the mill, nor dried meat in the barrel, and who with her own hands had cut thrice a year the alfalfa crop in the little vega, and tended the ditches and the goats, and washed and sewed and woven and braided and cooked, and done whatever to do. Truly she had been a good woman, though' Jesus Mjaria could not deny that she had grown very; old with k the burden of. her activities, so that her *^)ones had come curiously into sight under the lean parched flesh, and her eyes had gone too far back inherh^ad for anything like prettiness. Prettine&s, of course, is nothing, and when she djed Jesus Maria had thought himself inconsolable. That he was still inconsolable lie was prepared to declare to Luisita as 1 soon as she should regain sufficient composure to Msten to him ; for he could! not explain to her while she stoou staring and moaning that her proposed marriage was simply a proof of his undying ' constancy to her mother. " , '■jviy mother!" sobbed 'Luisita, thrusting the black hair pff her anguished brows in a sort of strickep. bewilderment which touched her father uncomfortably. She would get over all this 1 presently ; but for the moment there was in the dumb pain of her broad childish face something which made Jesus Maria nearly- forget that her final attitude really did not matter. The thing that mattered was the final ! attitude of Cruz, his son, a youth of 19, who during his father's recital had stood at the window cleaning the little lamp on his miner's cap. Cruz was one of the night shift at the Dauntless colliery, the tall tipple of which could, .be seen striding across the mouth of the canyon with the importance of a piece ot Roman aqueduct. All its coal-grimed beams and standards ~>od boldly forth in the level rays of a &u.i which was sinking below the purple "- summits of the Spanish peaks. It was for the night shifts ico be on duty, and numbers of men, Italians and Mcxi - cans mostly, were going up the broad turbless road in a din of talk and laughter j and clattering lunch-buckets. Cruz Viguerie set his cap on his head. The flame on the lighted Uvmp shot up in a spectral panache above the thick pockmarked features. Stolidity was indeed the usual characteristic of Cruz's big plain face, for all the hint of intelligence and docility in it ; but as he stood straightening his cap and looking out at the lessening light which touched the small gold ' cross above the adobe walls of the church of San Antonio of the plaza there was ' something ?ike stubborn and hostile re- ' solve in the stern quietude of his expression. Jesus Maria had often wondered how it was that so handsome a man as he himself — for there was no doubt of his being, even at 40, the best-looking man in Aguilar — should have so unprepossessing ».a son. He had solaced himself "with the reflection that Cruz w^ at least goodtempered and obedient ; but as he regarded t'ae young man now he became aware that there was at j>resent nothing in his air to suggest either mildness or acquiescence. Instantly Jesus Maria was sensible of two emotions — one, of anger that his decision sbjuld be thus opposed ; the other, ,a furtive uncertainty as to the manner in ■which meat, meal, and tobacco were to *be provided in case Cruz continued obdurate. Without Cruz's wages, without "-hat monthly roll of the company's scrip which financially passed current in town, now should the house be maintained? It was a- iiice question, truly, when one considers that Jesus Maria himself was en- • iely averse to labour of any kind. 1 "My Cruz," said Jesus Maria, moved ■to gentleness by a contemplation of the lacts of the case, "you are silent, eh?" His voice was full and rich, and the heavy Spanish of the foot-hills rolled from his dps with perstiasive sweetness. " But yon are glad with me, is it not so, that „oy comes again to our house? " . If he paused too suddenly for a fine effect, it was because Cruz had taken a sharp stride toward the door, with an exceedingly ugly light under his brows. "Joy I" cried the young man, holding up on the threshold. He laughed harshly, and then turned and rasped out M English : " Joy? No ! My mother is moA. You hear? — dead. I work for U<> new one. Me, I git out. So.be? I git out quick. Dios, yes !— l quit." There was no mistaking the lucidity of this statement, and in taking it in Jaus Maria's wrath flamed high. ' Ho ! — you git out, eh?'.' he cried. &bee Cruz had chosen to repudiate their • xsxive tongue, he, Jesus Maria Vigu- , .era, would cope with the renegade in biy way he might elect. " You quit, ♦hj Malhaya — I mean damn ! Oh, Ino fool, me ! — I spik how you like. And do what I want if you like or if you like. See? I marry me a •wife, good, young, beautiful " At this effective point there shrilled out a thin, exasperating laugh. Luisita, finding herself backed up by her brother, had mastered her grief. Rage had conquered pain, and defiance now lurked in the very tilt of her plump cinnamon-coloured chin. "Beautiful!" gurgled Luisita, with her hands on her nips. " Dios I — a poor thing like' that ! • — and old. She will have more as 27 Eear! She is of the wideness of my and. Her 'air is raid. She hoi' herself so !" A*nd Luisita, plucking up a vtriva. mouth, drew her shoulders into ft n&tow space. " Yes, so she hoi' herielf. Don' I know? Haven' I work for her fither? Haven's she learn me Eng-

lish? Ho!— I should belief it! All right, you marry her, then. Me, I go where my brother goes I Cruz, what you do, I do." Cruz was still scowling, and his muttered " Bien," was not a particularly cordial avowal of delight in his sister's announcement. ■ He allowed her, however, to grasp his arm firmly, and in another moment they were stamping out through the dry 'dobe yard to the paveless street. It was now something after sunset, and the peaks massed their peach-col-oured shoulders against a dim vidftt sky, while from their heights a cool wind stole crisply down, rustling in the datk scrub oaks and pinons of the canyon which debouched on the village, and rioting over the silvery grama-gras3 •of plains beyond the Colorado camp. Loungers were gathered about the doors of the half-dozen saloons and stores. At the post-office, a pine shed with a single step before it, a crowd had collected in consequence of the arrival of the evening mail. Most of these were men, and as Cruz and his sister approached they had just separated a little in order to clear the way, that a woman emerging from the door might reach the -street. She nodded here and there in a shy fashion as she made ber way through the press. She was tall and very slight, with a pale, gentle face, and a curiously deprecating glance. Her shoulders drooped a little, and she rested inertly on her hips in walking, as if the abstraction which held her face in a look of smiling reverie had left her too little strength for motion. As she came in sight of C?uz and Luisita, she started and drew a quick breath. It was they! — her two children to be — the* son and daughter of Jesus Maria Viguerie. Angeline White already knew them very well, those two. Five years since, her father had "taken up ' a homestead on the verge of Aguilar, and in Angeline's housekeeping duties Luisita Viguerie had for a moderate wage assisted. Luisita, even in her childhood, had not been a romantic figure, being of squat figure, with suggestion of Indian bbod in her blunt young face ; but there had never been a time in these years when Angeline had not seen something eminently picturesque in Luisita's father. When he tore up to the gate of the White homestead, a superb litne figure on a gaily caparisoned mustang, with the magnificent sweep of a silver-banded sombrero shading his bronzed face and adding a richer darkness to his black hair and eyes, Angeline White had thought vague and misty thoughts of the Alhanibra and Grenada, of the bounteous life of Valencia as depicted in alluring colours on the lids of raisinboxes \ and of Andalusian troubadours, who, in wide betassled trousers, lifted in these tableaux their impassioned eyes to ladies in mantillas, leaning coy upon the lattice of balconies above. Once she had ventured to ask Jesus Maria, " Are you of Spanish parentage, Senor Viguerie?" And Jesus Maria, much gratified, had said that the purest strain of Castille ran blue in his veins. He forgot for the instant that his father had been a peon, and that his mother, an aged Navajo lady, even then resided in a mud hut five miles up the creek. Jesus Maria had a buoyant fancy, which required merely, as it were, a whiff to send it, to the empyrean. Angeline had thereafter not only regarded him with added respect, but had also felt it her duty to spend some time in inducting Luisita into the mysteries of the English tongue. She had never thought of Jesus Maria in any but an impersonal light. One does not, of course, regard a married man otherwise than impersonally, and, as one might say, in the abstract. But after the passing of Senora Viguerie things had changed. Jesus Maria had speedily rendered himself very personal and entirely concrete soon after he found himself obliged, for his own convenience, to take Luisita away to minister to his wants. In removing her from the White homestead, which, since .Angeline's father had also died, was fast lapsing into a state of natural death, Jesus Maria had also abstracted his excuse for presenting himself at the house. His every visit thereafter was a declaration. Yet, when he began making love, Angeline was dazed with the wonder of it. She had never had a lover ; and he, this being with little silver fringes up the sides of his legs, , was --'enough like the Andalusian troubadour to move in a mist of romantic precedent. Jesus Maria had little English, except the popular oaths and phrases which Avere current on the saloon porches; but oaths, discriminatingly applied, are no mean weapons in the hands of Cupid. And, after all, the spoken word is little. Angeline blushed and paled and sighed and smiled. Jesus Maria, understanding this rhe'toric,swore many things, and was considered eloquent. One day, when the postmistress, a shrewd, hard-headed, kind-hearted Western woman, who had a friendly interest in the lonely visionary creature, asked Angeline if she was " encouraging that there ' Soos Maria Viguerie," Miss White lifted rapt eyes and said, "I am j gqing to be his wife." Whereat Mrs. Holding uttered an amazed cry. "You're crazy, Angeline!" she gasped. "Why, he's about as no- ' count and triflin' a man as ever wore shoe leather ! He ain't energy enough to pound putty. He don't care for a thing in the world but to prance round on a bronco, or set in the sun smoking cigarettes, cr play games in some of these barrooms — which if ever I get a chance to legislate agin' 'em, won't 1? Oh, no ! What you and he goin' to live on?" "I don't know," said Angoline, absently, smiling out on the bleached "plains. " Well, if you don't beat the bugs!" trumpeted Mrs. Holding. " I've been votin' for ten years, and I always 1 brag women up whenever I ge^ the chance, But I d'know how I can say the first word for your good sense. It's women like you, Angeline, that put spok.es in the wheels of progress. 'Tis so." ? " I know I'm nob smart," said Angeline humbly, " but Jesus Maria says it's best that men should know most." " Know most ! . Why, he don't know beans when/ the bag's open ! Well, just remember that I told .you that a" vine can't make an oak tree out of a reed just by clinging to it, Angeline." " No," murmured Angeline deprecatingly, " but if the vine thinks its reed is an oak, both of 'em are just as well, maybe." At this juncture the evening mail had arrived, and Angeline had gone out through the crowd at the door, quivering with a pleased little sense of having replied effectively to Mrs. Holding. It was in this moment of unwonted intellectual gratification that she beheld Cruz Viguerie and his sister coming up the street in the mellow graynes3 of the early evening, and at the sight of them had felt a great tenderness welling in her sentimental heart. Doubtless they had been told of the happiness in store for them, and il was conceivable to Angeline that emotions .similar to her own, struggling in- those two apparently apathetic breasts, had" deprived them of all power of expression. For Cruz and

Luisita, seeing Angeline, had certainly assumed a dogged blankness of visage which could nob otherwise be accounted kindly. Angeline faltered. Then, suddenly holding out her hand, she said, " Luisita." Upon which Luisita, instead of bubbling forth some sweet incoherence of felicitation, merely set a hard mouth and looked away ; while Cruz, barely pausing as Angeline intercepted the way, began to plod on. Angeline's hand dropped and she shrank back. " Santo Cielo !" burst out Cruz to his sister, as they passed. " Why did you stop, eh? Holy Saint Dominic 1 " " Ho ! mo ?"' shrilled Luisita, overflowing with tears. "Me stop? I did not. Oh, that I were dead and laid yonder on the hill!" In truth, her distant gaze had not kept Luisita from observing the pain in her teacher's little dim face. Some elementary impulse of loyalty had stiired in the girl w^en Angeline stood stretching forth that gentle hand, but tho craft of the half-developed rose to stifle- this instinct, as Luisita reflected that in the present state of things it would be disastrous to offend Cruz by any show of courtesy to Angeline. As days went on village gossip concerning the Vigueries subsided. Jesus Maria's marriage had taken place early in the fall. The White homestead had been sold for a trifle to some courageous person undeterred in visions of abounding crops by the sterile actuality of his purchase. Angeline lived with her husband in the 'dobe house which his children had deserted, under the shade of the cottonwoods planted round the church, and the pink print curtains, newly hung in the deep-set front window of her new abode, 'were not without gentle intimations that the life behind them was as rosy as Angeline had expected it to be. Jesus Maria, with glittering spurs on his morocco boots, and an additional thread of silver gilt wherever his attire permitted it, stood often on the generous porch of French Guiseppe's place, and held forth by the hour to convivial friends upon the beatitudes of the conjugal life. The proceeds of the sale of the White homestead expanded the heart against which it reposed in an overdiminishing roll, and the frequent libations which Jesus Maria poured into his being behind the saloon's green baize doors also contributed to his spiritual exaltation. Those who were privileged to observe Senor Viguerie in this expansive period of his life were bound to own that happiness had touched him only to adorn. He looked surprisingly young and surprisingly handsome in his new clothes and high-heeled boots, and even Mrs. Holding, seeing him flash by her door on a bronco whose scarlet rosettes left ared streak on the visual memory, could nob deny his graceful charm. "He's as well-favoured as these big red cactus flowers," she grimly owned to herself, "but woe be untar the person that tackles him dr them— needles ain't in it for the way they'll stick you. Poor Angie White! It won't be long till she realises her cake's dough!" As the days shortened and the season of Colorado wind-storms set in, certain signs seemed to verify the postmistress's prophecy. Evidently that roll of money which so sweetly accelerated ihe currents of Jesus Maria's being, had faded away after the manner of all material sources of joy. Mrs. Holding noticed that there was less tinsel about him, and though he still lingered around his old haunts, he was no longer attended by a throng of admiring compatriots, nor did the doors of French Guiseppe's swing so often in his generous hand. "He's got to the bottom of his pile," surmised Mrs. Holding; and when she saw Angeline one day coining oub of the company's store, with an empty basket on her arm and a look in her face as it she had been struck across the cheek, there was needed no tongue io tell Mrs. Holding that Senora Viguerie had asked credit and had been refused. That night when Cruz Viguerie came to get liis weekly paper from the office, Mrs. Holding beckoned him aside. •"You and your pa still bad friends?" she enquired. Cruz's countenance, already as immobile as a slab of sandstone, seemed to discharge itself of every lingering vestige of expression. " I know of him noth» ing," he said. "Huhl" ejaculated Mrs. Holding, observing him. She liked Cruz as much as she disliked his father, but she did not propose to sacrifice Angeline to this preference. "Now look here, Cruz," she insisted, " you no business settin' yourself up agin' his marry in' like you do. He's got a wife enough sight too good for him. Though most women's to» good for the average run of men. I hain't a great deal of use for men, Cruz Viguerie. They're either putty or ramrods, mostly. And I don't know as tho ramrod kind like you is one bit better'n the putty kind like your pa." Cruz expanded in an appreciative smile. "Me?" he said sweetly. "Oh, lam not so, Senora 'Olduig ! It is only that I mm' my own business." *M dessay a mule thinks 'it's mindin' its own- business when it balks" !" sniffed Mrs. Holding. Anyhow, what I got to say is this, I've reasons for thinking your ma and pa needs help, and I tell you right here that it's your duty to help them." Cruz maintained his calm smile. "Me, I mm' my own business," he repeated gently. " Buenas tardes, Senora." Despite his appearance of quietude, however, the young man was sensible, as he left the place, that his smouldering anger al his father had been fanned to lively warmth "Hi! they are in need, eh? Bueno ! What is it to me? For what I care, they may sleep in yonder test-pit and feed on mountain clay. They may warm them- ; selves in the cold starlight that falls on my mother's grave." In the gloom and fervour of his bitterness, he strode on past the house of his aunt, where ho and Luisita now lived, and still on uutil the low foolhills, the black canyon, the tipple, tho gathering of miners' shacks, and the outlying mud dwellings of the iuexicans receded behind him into tho night. Only the level prairies, illimitable and dark,were around him, and in them there was room for his mood. Perhaps some heritage of that aged Kavajo woman, living five miles up the creek, was asserting itself in her descendant's slormy breast •, for a savage need of space rioted in Cmz, and he found himself oddly tranquillized with merely facing the wild wind in the open, while away somewhere the lonely barking of a coyote struck upon him a kindred note of ferocity and loneliness. " 1 will think of these things no more," he resolved, turning. "Itis no good for a man to murder himself with anger. Dios ! I am tired as with running three shifts. I will go home -vnd sleep." Ifc had grown still and cold, and tho thin, icy air struck sharp in Cruz's faco as he re-entered the town and crossed the little bridge over the Apishapn. Cold it was, and slill — so still that, as he came in range of the church and caught a little unusual sound somewhere at band, he paused and gave ear. Surely it was a sound of weeping that reached him — a portentous intermittent accent of wailing, of distress ! • Cruz had a sensation of sudden horror. For who does not know that since Yigiel shot

the young ranchman hereabout persons of unquestioned veracity have seen a headless spectre wandering along the creek? — a spectre in a dismal winding-sheet, bearing a taper in its ghostly hand, and bewailing the fate that sent it unshriven into bale? Cruz Viguerie could now hear with his own ears the sobbing of the wraith, and as he heard it his blood stood still. As to Lhe taper, there was yet — blessed Saint Anthony be praised ! — no sight of uny light. No light? Jesus! Mary! Joseph! No light? What, then, was that sudden ray which just now shot, arrowlike, si cross the hard 'dobe at his feet? " Nuestra Senora ! I vow thee all my life and four candles of wax " But the prayer died on Cruz's lips, and the rigour of his frame relaxed somewhat in his sudden perception that the light was nothing more unusual than a beam from a window hard by, flashing between sharply withdrawn Oh, decidedly he, Cruz Vigue'rie, waS becoming a fool ! Ghosts? Yah! That window was tne window of his father's, house, and the rumour of weeping stole from within these well-known mud walls. Without formulating any design, Cruz moved toward the small casement. The curtains were still apart, and she who had thrust them aside, that she might send a piteously questioning glance into the night, stood where Cruz could plainly see her, before the fireless hearth, covering her face with her thin hands and breathing forth a sort of inarticulate misery. The limp cottons of Angeline's attire hung close about her drooping figure. On her wasted temples the reddish hair shone silvery, and her wrists were white as bones that have bleached long on the plains. There, in the small adobe-plastered room she stood, cold and wretched and forsaken, a picture so forlorn in her solitude and despair that Cruz started away, ashamed to have seen her in that hour of desolation. " Hola !" cried the young man. " I see how it is. They have sold all the rugs off the floor. They are poor indeed. And he — he stays away where he can be warm and gay. He leaves her alone !" Certainty his mother was avenged. Yet as he realised this the feeling in the young Mexican's heart was, strangely Enough, not in the least glad or triumpnant. " Villainous one !" he exclaimed passionately. " Galgo ! dog ! scalavag ! chump !" And having relieved himself of all the opprobious epithets just then occurring to him, he turned and ran down the street. In the gloom and quiet of the town, French Guiseppe's was still a centre of light, though the scene can hardly be described as one of unhallowed revelry. Several men were playing cards at the tables in the cheerless rooms, brushing their elbows through the wet rings which their beer-glasses hnd outlined on the wood. A man leaning against the bar was tellmg with reiterated detail about a mule of his which had died during the day, and French Guiseppe himself was unaffectedly yawning as he listened. When the door opened the sound was an event, and everyone looked to see who had come in. Even Jesus Marie Viguerie, withdrawn behind the stove in an isolation that meant financial or spiritual depression, or both, lifted an enquiring eye. He was^ smoking, and his hat was tilted ominously over his face ; nor did the sullen aspect "leave him when he perceived that the new comer was his son. " I have to speak to you." said Cruz, approaching. " Son of a burro !" rejoined Jesus Maria, calmly. " What 6S> you want?" "I want you to go home." " Ha ! you want me to go home ! What leads you to think I care what you want, offshoot of the devil?" " I have seen your wife. Sho, was crying. There wa3 no fire. " She — — " Jesus Maria dropped his cigarette. " Crying," he said. " She is always crying." He roso and followed Cruz outside. " She suffers — yes. Me, if suffer too. But what can I do? She is good, my Angeline, but she does not understand to make me comfortable. She tried, it is true, to get a class to teach at the school ; but — rogues ! fiends ! pigs of Americans !—! — they would not take her because they had teachers enough ; so she grieves. A woman should not grieve, eh, Cruz? It makes a man sad. Me, I think I will not go home to-night ; I am very tender at hcarl. ,If she is still weeping 1 should feel bad." "And where will you go?" asked Cruz, with placidity, almost with mockery. "Eh, my Cruz. I will stay with you and Luisita," said Jesus Maria with engaging promptitude. "Where my' children are there it is best for me to be." Cruz, under his hat brim, regarded his father with a kind of half-wondering halfchastising gaze. Jesus Maria's superficiality was as hard to plum as a bottomless pit. Its fathomless quality gave Cruz a sense of mental dizziness. Presently he pushed his cap back, and laughed a little grimly. " Olio ! So you go where your children are? You choose to live henceforth with them?" He laid almost too vigorous a hand on his father's arm, and added in a deep voice — " Come, I hen. Luisita and I, we live in the 'dobe house where we were born. I took my sister there to-night before 1 came to find you. She dries your wife's tears. The f^enora will cry no more, for I shall see that things go well with her." Jesus Maria, taken aback, nevertheless preserved that fine, if untutored, sense of dramatic fitness which had ever enabled him to transcend circumstances by comporting himself in harmony with them. " Son of my heart !" ho breathed chokingly, as he let his weight go somewhat lax in Cruz's hand, anu indulged in a beatific vision of scrip in such renewed affluence as the young man's words presnged; " and I thought thee cold and wicked — thou, my one nope, who art all love for thy broken-hearted old father !" " I am not all love for you — 'y God, no '." growled Cruz, faining to respond to this tender outbreak. "It is all one," sighed Jesus Maria, sweetly, " since your bosum melts towards my Angelina — ah, amadora ! blessed wife ! " "My bosum does not melt, 1 ' retorted Cruz, giving his father.'s form a rather rude impulse towards the maintenance of its own balance. "Hola, no. J?Vhat I do, Ido for myself. Sabo? I will not be made to suffer by seeing you make others suffer. Sube? I would- like to feel good, and sec you feeling bad. Hi, yes. But if you, and others, have got to eat before I can swallow my own bread then there is nothing for me but to feed you first. I am evil of hearb, you see. I act only for my happiness " — Eva Wilder Brodhend, in Harper's Bazaar.

The ever-enterlaining Mr. Bornard Shaw, the well-known Socialist writer, who is a vegetarian, in a letter says: — My will contains directions for my funeral which will be followed, not by mourning coaches, but by herds of oxen, sheep, swine, flocks of poultry, and a small travelling aquarium of live fish, all wear ing white scarves in honour to the man who perished rather than eat his fellowcreatures. It will be, with the single exception of Noah's Ark, the most remarkable tiling of the kind yet seen.