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Read Ebook: San Isidro by Crowninshield Schuyler Mrs
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Ebook has 1696 lines and 61065 words, and 34 pages
certainly Agueda from San Isidro."
"Ah! you happy girl," said Raquel, in a cautious tone, "to be riding about alone." Agueda's head was almost on a level with Raquel's.
"I am a prisoner, Agueda," said Raquel. "My uncle has shut me up here. He means to take me away in a short time. It's a dreadful thing which is to happen. Can you carry a note for me, Agueda?"
"I will carry a note for you," said Agueda. "Is it ready, Se?orita?"
"I will write it in a moment. Agueda, good girl, you know the plantation of the Silencios, do you not? Palmacristi?"
"I can find it," said Agueda. "It is down by the sea. It is not much out of my way."
"If it were miles and miles out of your way, Agueda, dear, you must take my letter."
"Give it to me, then," said Agueda.
There was a noise inside the room, at the door of the chamber.
"Ride on to the clump of coffee bushes where the roads meet," whispered Raquel. "The fog will help hide you, too. I will drop the note."
As she tried to guide the chestnut softly over the turf, Agueda heard a loud call from within. It was a man's coarse voice. She heard Raquel answer drowsily, "In a moment, uncle; I was just asleep. Wait until I--"
Agueda halted for some minutes behind the concealment of the coffee bushes. She grudged this delay, for she had still some distance to travel, and must make a detour because of Raquel's request. "But," she argued, "had I walked, I should have been much longer on the way." She watched the window at the back of Escobeda's house, then, presently, from the front, saw a man mount and ride away in the opposite direction. Then, as she still awaited the fluttering of the note, the shutter was flung wide, and an arm encased in a yellow sleeve beckoned desperately. Agueda struck her spur into the chestnut, and was soon under the window again.
"He has gone," said Raquel, "and I am locked in the house alone. All the servants have gone to the fair."
"You can climb down," said Agueda. "It is not high."
"Where should I go then, Agueda?" asked Raquel. "No, he would only bring me back. Now I will write my note, and I will ask you to take it to Don Gil." As Raquel said this name her voice trembled. She coloured all over her face.
"You are lovely that way," said Agueda. "What does he do to you, Se?orita?--the Se?or Escobeda. Does he starve you? Does he ill treat--I could tell the Se?or Don Beltran--"
"You do not blush when you speak of him," said Raquel, who had heard some rumours.
"I have no cause to blush," said Agueda, with dignity. "But come, Se?orita, the note!"
Raquel withdrew into the room. She scribbled a few words on a piece of blue paper, folded it, and encased it in a long thin envelope. This she sealed with a little pink wafer, on which were two turtle doves with their bills quite close together. She leaned out and handed the missive down to Agueda.
"Thank you, dear," she said. "I should like to kiss you."
"I should like much to have you," said Agueda. "Perhaps I can stand up." Agueda spurred her horse closer under the window. She raised herself as high as she could. The chestnut started.
"He will throw you," said Raquel. "I will lean out."
Raquel stretched her young form as far out of the window as possible. She could just reach Agueda's forehead. She kissed her gently.
"I thank you, Se?orita," said Agueda. She felt the kiss upon her forehead all the way to the plantation; it seemed like a benediction. She did not reason out the cause of her feeling, but it was true that no one of Raquel's class had ever kissed her before.
Agueda rode along her way with quick gait. The plantation of Palmacristi was some miles farther on, and she wished still to see Aneta. On her way toward Palmacristi, and as she mounted the slope leading to the casa, she met no one. Arrived at that splendid estate by the sea, she spurred her horse over the hill and round to the counting-house. This was the place, she had heard, where the Se?or was usually to be found. She had seen the Se?or at a distance. She thought that she would know him.
At that same hour the Se?or Don Gil Silencio-y-Estrada sat within his counting-house. The counting-house was constructed of the boards of the palm, the inner side plain, the outer side curved, as the tree had curved. The bark had not been removed. The roof of the building was also made of palm boards; it was thickly thatched with yagua.
Since the days of the old Don Gil the finca had enlarged and improved. The counting-house stood within its small enclosure, its back against the side of the casa, and though it communicated with the interior of the imposing mahogany mansion, it remained the same palm-board counting-house--that is, to the outside world--that the estate of Palmacristi had ever known.
Two tall palms stood like sentinels upon either side of the low step before the doorway. The palm trees were dead. They had been topped by no green plume of leaves since before the death of the old Don Gil. Now, as then, the carpenter birds made their homes in the decaying shaft. The round beak-made holes, from root to treetop, disclosed numberless heads, if so much as a tap were given the resounding stem of the palm.
No one wondered why Don Gil still used the ancient structure as a counting-house. No one ever wondered at anything at Palmacristi; everything was accepted with quiescence. "The good God wills it," a shrug of the shoulders accompanying the remark, made alike, if a tornado unroofed a house or a peon died of the wounds received at the last garito.
The changes which had taken place at Palmacristi had nothing to say to the condition of the counting-house, or it to them, except that it acceded, somewhat slowly in some cases, to the payment of bills. Since his father's day Don Gil had added much to the estate. Upon the right he had bought more than twenty caballerias from Don Luis Salas--land which marched with his own to the seashore. This included a tall headland, with a sand spit at its base, which pushed itself a half mile out into the sea. This sand spit curved in a hook to the left, and formed a pleasant and safe harbour for boating.
To the north of his inheritance Don Gil had taken in the old estates of La Flor and Provedencia, and at the back of the casa, which already stood high up on the slope, he had extended his possessions over the crest of the hill. Had the original owner of Palmacristi returned on a visit to earth, he would have found his old plantation the center of a magnificent estate, with, however, the same shiftless, careless ways of master and servant that had obtained in his time. This would probably grow worse as his descendants succeeded each other in ownership.
The casa was built upon a level, where the hill ceased to be a hill just long enough to allow of a broad foundation for Don Gil's improvements. At the edge of the veranda the hill sloped gently again for the distance of a hundred yards, and then dropped in a short but steep declivity to the sand beach.
Agueda guided her horse up the path between the two dead palm trees, and rapped with the stock of her whip upon the counting-house door, which stood partly open.
"Entra," was the reply. She rapped again.
"It is I who cannot enter, Se?or," she called in her clear, young voice. "I have not the time to dismount."
Agueda held out the note. It was crumpled and dusty from being held in her hand.
"I am sorry," she said; "the day is hot, and my Casta?o is not quiet."
Don Gil gazed with interest at the boyish-looking figure riding astride the little chestnut. "What a handsome lad she would make!" he thought. "And you are from--"
"It makes no difference for me. I bring a message."
Silencio took the note which she reached out to him.
"You will dismount and let me send for some fruit, some coffee?"
"I thank you, Se?or, I must hasten; I am going to El Cuco."
"That is not so far," said Don Gil, smiling.
"No, but I then have to ride a long way back to--"
"To--?"
"To San Isidro."
"The Se?orita takes roundabout ways. Is she then carrying messages all about the country?"
"Oh, no, Se?or," said Agueda, smiling frankly. "When I go back to San Isidro I go to my home. I live there."
"Ah!" What was there imperceptible in Don Gil's tone? "You live there? Is the Se?orita perhaps the niece of the manager, Se?or Adan?"
"Si, Se?or," answered Agueda, flushing hotly, she knew not why.
She wheeled Casta?o and paced down between the palm trees.
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