Read Ebook: San Isidro by Crowninshield Schuyler Mrs

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1696 lines and 61065 words, and 34 pages

She wheeled Casta?o and paced down between the palm trees.

"And you will not take pity on my loneliness?"

Don Gil was still smiling, but there was something new, something of familiarity, it seemed to Agueda, in his tone.

"I cannot stop, Se?or. A Dios!" she said, gravely.

As Agueda rode out of the enclosure the day seemed changed. Why was it? She had been so happy before she had delivered the note! Now she felt sad, depressed. The sun was still shining, though there were occasional showers of rain, and the birds were still singing. Nothing in nature had changed. Ah, stay! There was a cloud over there, hanging low down above the sea. It was coming to the westward, she thought. She hoped that it would come, and quickly. She hoped that it would burst in rain upon her, and make her ride for it, and struggle with it. Anything to drive away that unhappy impression.

Had Silencio been asked what he had said or done to cause this young girl to change suddenly from a thoughtless, happy creature to one who felt that she had reason for uneasiness, he could not have told. He had heard vague rumours of the girl, Adan's niece, who lived over at San Isidro. But that he had allowed any such impression to escape him in intonation or gesture he was quite unaware. At all events, he was entirely oblivious of Agueda the moment that she had ridden away, for he opened the little blue note that she had brought, and was lost in its contents.

FOOTNOTE:

Cock-fight.

When Agueda left the Casa de Caboa she turned down the trocha towards the sea. Although the sea was not far from San Isidro as the crow flies, the dwellers at the hacienda rarely went there. In the first place, there was the river to cross, and then the wood beyond the river was filled with a thick, short growth of prickly pear. This sort of underbrush was unpleasant to pull through. Don Beltran had tried to buy it from Escobeda up at Troja, but Escobeda seemed to have been born to annoy the human race in general, and Don Beltran and Silencio in particular. He would not sell, and he would not cultivate, so that the sea meadow, as they called it at San Isidro, was an eyesore and a cause of heart-burning to Don Beltran.

Agueda chirruped to her horse, and was soon skirting the plantation of Palmacristi. The chestnut was a pacer, and Agueda liked his single foot, and kept him down to it at all hazards.

She felt as if she were in Nada's American chair, the motion was so easy and pleasant. The beach was rather a new experience to the chestnut, but after a little moment of hesitancy he started on with a nod of the head.

"Ah!" said Agueda, with a laugh, "it is you, Casta?o, who know that I never lead you wrong."

She shook the bridle, and the horse put forth his best powers. They took the wet sand just where the water had retreated but a little while before. It was as hard and firm as the country road, but moist and cool.

"How I should like to plunge into that sea," said Agueda to Casta?o. Casta?o again nodded an acquiescent head. A salt-water bath was a novelty to these comrades.

After a few moments of pacing, Agueda came to the sand spit which ran out from the plantation into the sea. Here was the boat-house which Don Gil had built, and Agueda noticed that it was placed upon a high point, with ways leading down on either side into the water. She looked wistfully at the boat-house. "How I should love to sail upon that sea," thought Agueda. "No water, however high, could frighten me." Then she recalled with a flash the flood which had brought her happiness. She smiled faintly, for with the thought the unpleasant feeling which Don Gil's words had called up returned, she knew not why. Agueda was pacing towards the south. Upon her right stood up tall and high the asta of Palmacristi, the staff from which hung the lantern that, she had heard, sent forth its white ray each night to warn the seafarers on that lonely coast.

"What harm for a ship to run on the sand," thought Agueda. "I have heard that rocks are cruel. But the sand is soft. It need hurt no one."

She struck spurs to Casta?o, and covered several miles before she again drew rein. And now the bank grew high, and Agueda awoke to the fact that she was alone upon the beach, screened from the eyes of every one. Again the thought came to her of a bath in the sea, and she was about to rein the chestnut in when she heard a shout from the plateau above her head. She stopped, and tipping back her straw hat, she looked upward. All that she could discover was a mass of flowers in motion. "They are the air-plants, certainly," said Agueda to herself, "but I never saw them to grow like that." She looked to right and to left, but there was no human being in sight along the yellow bank outlined by sand and overhanging weeds.

"Who calls me?" she cried aloud, holding her hair from her ears, where the wind persisted in blowing it.

"Caramba, muchacho! Can you not see who it is? It is I, Gremo."

There was a violent agitation of the mass of blooms, and Agueda now perceived that a head was shaking out its words from the centre of this woodland extravaganza.

"I can hardly see you, Gremo," said Agueda. "What do you want with me, Gremo?"

"And must I make brains for every muchacho between here and the Port of Entry? Do you not know there are the quicksands just beyond?"

"Quicksands, Gremo! Yes, I had heard of quicksands, but I did not think them here. Can I get up the bank, Gremo?"

"No," answered Gremo, from his flower screen. "You must ride back a long way." He wheeled suddenly toward the south--at least, the mass of flowers wheeled, and a hand was stretched forth from the centre. A finger pointed along the sand. Agueda turned in the saddle and shaded her eyes again.

"What is it, Gremo?" she asked. "I see nothing."

"Then you do not see that small thing over which the vultures hover?"

"I see the vultures, certainly," said Agueda. "Some bit of fish, perhaps."

"No bit of fish or fowl, but foul flesh, if you will, hombre. It is the hand of a Se?or, muchacho."

"The hand of a Se?or? And what is the hand of a Se?or doing, lying along there on the shore?"

"It lies there because it cannot get loose. Caramba, muchacho! Do I not know?"

"Cannot get loose from what?" asked Agueda, still puzzled.

"From the Se?or himself, muchachito. He lies below there, and his good horse with him. Do you not see a hoof just over beyond where the big bird lights?"

Agueda turned pale. She had never been near such death before. Nada had passed peacefully away with the sacred wafer upon her lips, and in her ears the good padre's words of forgiveness for all her sins, of which Agueda was sure she had committed none. Hers was a sweet, calm, sad death. One thought of it with relief and hope, but this was tragedy. There, along the beach, beneath the smiling sand, whose grains glistened in a million, million sparkles, lay the bodies of horse and rider, overtaken by this placid sea.

"I suppose he was a stranger," said Agueda. "There was no one to warn him." Suddenly she felt faint. A strong whiff of air reached her from the direction of the birds. She turned the chestnut rapidly, and struck the spur to his side.

"Wait, Gremo, wait!" she cried, "I am coming! Do not leave me here alone." The chestnut paced as never horse paced before, and after a few minutes Agueda found a little cleft in the bank where a stream trickled down. Into this opening she guided Casta?o, and with spur and whip aided him in his scramble up the bank. She galloped southward again, and neared the place where Gremo stood. She was guided by the mass of bloom. As she advanced she saw the blossoms shaking, but as yet perceived nothing human. Tales of the forest suddenly came back to her. Could it be that this was a woodland spirit, who had lured her here to this high headland, to throw her over the cliff again to keep company with the dead man yonder and the birds of prey? She had half turned her horse, when Gremo, seeing her plan, thrust himself further from his gorgeous environment.

"Ah! It is the little Agueda! Do not be afraid, Agueda, little Se?orita. It is I, Gremo."

Agueda's cheek had not as yet regained its colour.

"It is Gremo, muchachito."

"What terrible thing is that down there, Gremo? And to see you looking like this frightened me!"

It was a curious sight which met Agueda's eyes. Gremo, the little yellow keeper of Los Santos light, was standing not far from his signal pole. He held a staff in each hand. The staves were crooked and uneven. They were covered with bark, and scraggy bits of moss hung from them here and there. The strange thing about them was that each blossomed like the prophet's rod. At the top of the right-hand staff there shot out a splendid orange-coloured flower, with velvety oval-shaped leaves. Near the top of the left-hand staff was a pale pink blossom, large also, not wilted, as plucked flowers are apt to be, but firm and fresh. But these were not all the prophet's rods which Gremo carried. Across his back was slung an old canvas stool, opened to its fullest extent, and laid lengthwise across this were many more ragged staves, and on each and all of them a flower of some shade or colour bloomed. Then there were branches held under his arms, whose protruding ends blossomed in Agueda's very face, and quite enclosed the yellow countenance of Gremo. The glossy green of the leaves surrounding each bloom so concealed Gremo that he was lost in his vari-coloured burden of loveliness.

"So it is really you, Gremo! Do they smell sweet, those air-plants?"

Gremo shifted from one leg to the other. One of Gremo's legs was shorter than the other. He generally settled down on the short one to argue. When he was indignant he raised himself upon his long leg and hurled defiance from the elevation.

The mass of bloom seemed to exhale a delicate aroma. So evanescent was it that Gremo often said to himself, "Have they any scent after all?" And then, in a moment, a breeze blew from left to right, across the open calix of each delicate flower, and Gremo said, "How sweet they are!"

"I sometimes think they are the sweetest things on God's earth," said Gremo. "That is, when the Se?orita is not by," he added, remembering that his grandfather had brought some veneer from old Spain; "and then again I ask myself, is there any perfume at all?"

"Oh, now I smell it, Gremo!" said Agueda, sniffing up her straight little nose. "Now I smell it! It is delicious!"

"It is better than the perfume down below there," said Gremo, with a grimace. Agueda turned pale again.

"And what do you do with them, Gremo?" asked she.

"I take them to the Port of Entry, Se?orita. I get good payment there. Sometimes a half-dollar, Mex. They stick them in the earth. They last a long, long time."

"Were you going there when you called me from--from--down there?"

"Si, Se?orita. I was walking along the bank. I had just come from my casa"--Gremo gestured backward with a dignified wave of the hand--"when I heard El Casta?o's hoofs on the hard sand there below." He turned and looked along the beach to where the noisome birds hovered. "I was too late to warn the Se?or. Had I been here, I should even have laid down my plants and have run to the edge of the cliff"--Gremo jerked his head towards the humped-up pit of sand--"and called, 'Ol?! Porque hace Usted eso? It is Gremo who has the kind heart, muchacho.'"

"I am not a boy, Gremo," said Agueda, glancing down at her riding costume.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet