The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 28 July 1910, Page 1163

The Storyteller

A WOMAN’S HEART (Concluded from last week.) Once again Teresa stepped from the little station of Mafamude on to the high-road, as she had stepped seven years before. Not quite seven, she remembered, for it had been summer when she walked through the soft rain with Joaquim, and now it was early spring one of those indescribably beautiful mornings of early spring, in the south, when the air is as soft as in summer, ana yet fresh and invigorating like wine, and one can almost feel the pulse of nature stirring to new life. There was no Joaquim to meet her. She had written to no one, and indeed only meant to stay a few hours. It was early yet, the long shadows of the trees still barred the road, and thA east was glorious with tiny rosy clouds. She passed a few barefooted women on the road, but none knew her. Few would have recognised herthe thin brown face under the net mantilla was different from the Teresa of olden days in her peasant skirts. Just as her heart was different, the heart from which she had resolutely shut out all the old loves and hopes in order to kill with them the new hate. Seven years a lifetime. And after the first she had not been unhappy. Donna Felismena had wanted her, and it is very sweet to be wanted. Then they had travelled, north to the States, and back to the old world, London, Paris, and Brazil again, with only a few days in Lisbon in all the time. And now that Donna Felismena was dead, leaving her a little nest-egg to add to her plentiful savings, a fine horizon still was opening, a life she could have never dreamed of. Teresa stopped a minute in the road to wonder at herself. Why had she yielded to the impulse to look again on the old haunts before saying good-bye to them for ever? Surely it was merely a vain desire to flaunt her new prosperity in the face of those* who had despised her poverty. No, no, she could tell herself honestly that it was not that. They had been kind Hong ago, poor Tia Rosa, who was so afraid of hunger, and Jptquim--Joaquim had loved her. Surely he was married/By now, and so would be glad to hear of her own good prospects. Oh, he was surely married long ago, she 5 assured herself. And yet the sight of a child sitting on the steps of the mill somehow brought a pang to her heart. Such a tumbledown old place as it looked in spite of its whitewash and the vine, dry now, but carefully tied and trained as had been Joaquim’s way of old. And the child a thin, wizened-looking little thing in a torn grey frock, with a face almost the same shade. How different from the rosy brown children of other days! She looked up as Teresa drew near, her sad black eyes fixed on her face. Teresa shivered. Those eyes brought back some bitter memory, though for the moment she could not give it a name. Then a querulous wail sounded from the inside, and a man’s figure appeared in the open doorway. Joaquim? No, it was Antonio. But how changed, how thin, how death-like 1 Then in a moment she understood. It was the old story. One more emigrant, who had gone in the full vigor of health and youth, only to creep back later to his village to die. Tia Rosa was not ill, though she looked hardly less death-like than her son. There was a long tale of misfortune to listen to, when the first greetings were over, and Teresa had settled down by the hearth. Antonio sat at the table, his head leaning on his hand, his little daughter crouching at his feet. The other child, a boy not yet two years old, lay wailing in his grandmother’s arms. ‘They have no strength in them,’ she complained; ‘a peaking, pining couple. I never knew their mother, God speak to her soul. She died when this one was born, but from all I can judge she was no great treasure.’ • ‘ She had money,’ said Teresa. She could not resist the thrust. _ ‘Yes, but little enough at best, and all tied up in the business. When that went wrongwell, Antonio got back here, though nothing much to boast of. However, when the summer comes ’ Teresa met Antonio’s eyes and knew that for him no summer would ever bloom again. ‘ If it were not for Joaquim,’ went on Tia Rosa, * but he will surely marry— one of these days.’ She looked up as if a sudden notion had struck her. ‘ And you, how are you getting on?’ Teresa told her of her little nest-egg. ‘ Of course, it is not much to live on, doing nothing, but Donna Felismena’s nephew is not a young man, but then neither am I very young. He has a fine property, and a beautiful house ’_

‘ And you are going to marry him ?’ There was true feminine interest in the old woman’s tone, even though the news destroyed her newly budding hopes. Teresa 'colored. ‘I have been thinking of it,’ she said. Later, when she left them a while and went across the fields to the church, she wondered why she had implied uncertainty. It had all been fixed and settled in her mind, though indeed her word had not yet been given. She had reserved her decision until after her visit to her old homewhy, she hardly knew. She liked her suitor well enough, an honest man, who would, she knew, do his best

to make her happy in her new country. For he was Brazilian to the core, and her marriage would mean a new country as well as a new home. She had not thought she would mind so much. What was the charm of this poor strip of sun-baked, sea-washed land, that it would be so bitter to leave it for ever? She stood in the shadow of the church porch, and memory conjured up the handsome villa which would be hers, the brilliant garden, the juicy, luxuriant greenery, the gay butterflies, and noisy, chattering birds. And yet her heart clung to this misty country, with its bare vines, the brown fields, the soft blue sky against which trembling columns of white smoke wavered upward here and there from the scattered cottages where they were preparing the morning / caldo, just as she had left them doing at the mill, the ‘ caldo ’ poor old Tia Rosa prepared so badly for her three invalids. Oh, why did I come back?’. said Teresa, half aloud, and then turned as once before in long-ago days she had turned at the sound of a voice beside her. * You came to stay,’ said Joaquim. ‘ This time I will not let you go.’ She looked at him as he stood there, tall and brown, with the traces of his work fresh upon him, a son of her own land, her own race, a man who had loved her since he knew what love was. The gay Brazilian villa, with its portly, prosperous owner, faded for ever from her vision of the future. She turned to Joaquim with a smile which for a moment made her the Teresa of his youth. ‘ And. this time,’ she said, as she put her hand into his, ‘ I think that I do not wish to.’— Benziger’s Magazine.