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CHAPTER XXIX

When Don Joaquin returned, he was in an unusually bad temper, and it was well that Mariquita had gone to bed. Gore was sitting up, and, though it was long past Sarella's usual hour, she had insisted on sitting up also. This was good-natured of her, for there was no pleasure to be anticipated from the interview with Don Joaquin, and she disliked any derangement of her habits. Gore had begged her to retire at her ordinary hour, but she had flatly refused.

"I can do more with him than you can," she declared, quite truly, "though no one will be able to stop his being as savage as a bear. I'm sorry for Mariquita; she'll have a bad time to-morrow, and it won't end with to-morrow."

Meanwhile she took the trouble to have ready a good supper for Don Joaquin, and made rather a special toilette in which to help him to it. Sarella was not in the least afraid of him, and had no great dread of a row which concerned someone else. Don Joaquin was not, however, particularly mollified by the becoming dress, nor by finding his betrothed sitting up for him, as she was sitting up with Gore.

"Where's Mariquita?" he asked, as he sat down to eat.

"In bed long ago. I hope you'll like that chicken; it's done in a special way we have, and the recipe's my patent. I haven't taught it to Mariquita."

"Why aren't you in bed?"

"Because I preferred waiting to see you safe at home," Sarella replied with an entrancing smile.

"Was Mr. Gore anxious too?" Don Joaquin demanded sarcastically.

"It is not a quarter of an hour later than my usual time for going to bed," Gore answered. "And I thought it better to see you; you would, I believe, have expected to see me."

"Very well. You have done as you said?"

"Yes." Gore glanced at Sarella, and Don Joaquin told her that she had now better sit up no longer.

"I think I had," she told him; "I know all about it."

"Is it all settled?" Don Joaquin asked, looking at Gore. "Have you fixed it up?"

Gore found this abruptness and haste made his task very difficult.

He had to consider how to form his reply.

"He proposed to Mariquita," Sarella cut in, "but she refused him."

"Refused him!" Don Joaquin almost shouted.

"Unfortunately, it is so," Gore was beginning, but his host interrupted him.

"I do not choose she should refuse," he said angrily. "I will tell her so before you see her in the morning."

Gore was angry himself, and rose from his seat.

"No," he said; "I will not agree to that. She knows her own mind, and it will not change. You must not persecute her on my account."

"It is not on your account. I choose to have duty and obedience from my own daughter."

"Joaquin," said Sarella (Gore had never before heard her call him by his Christian name), "it is no use taking it that way. Mariquita is not undutiful, and you must know it. But she will not marry Mr. Gore – or anybody."

"Of course she will marry," cried the poor girl's father fiercely. "That is the duty of every girl."

Sarella slightly smiled.

"Then many girls do not do their duty," she said, in her even, unimpassioned tones.

Her elderly fiancé was about to burst into another explosion, but she would not let him.

"Many Catholic girls," she reminded him, "remain unmarried."

"To be nuns – that is different."

"It is my belief," she observed in a detached manner, as if indulging in a mere surmise, "that Mariquita will be a nun."

"Mariquita! Has she said so?" he demanded sharply.

"Not to me," Sarella replied, quite unconcernedly.

"Nor to me," Gore explained; "nevertheless, I believe it will be so."

"That depends on me," the girl's father asserted with an unpleasant mixture of annoyance and obstinacy. "I intend her to marry."

"Only a Protestant," said Sarella, with a shrewd understanding of Don Joaquin that surprised Gore, "would marry her if she believes she has a vocation to be a nun. I should think a Catholic man would be ashamed to do it. He would expect a judgment on himself and his children."

Don Joaquin was as angry as ever, as savage as ever, but he was startled. Both his companions could see this. Gore was astonished at Sarella's speech, and at her acumen. He had wished to have this interview with Mariquita's father to himself, but already saw that Sarella knew how to conduct it better than he did. She had clearly been quite willing that "the old man" (as he disrespectfully called him in his own mind) should fly out and give way to his fiery temper at once; the more of it went off now, the less would remain for poor Mariquita to endure.

"If I were a Catholic man," Sarella continued cooly, "I should think it profane to make a girl marry me who had given herself to be a nun. I expect the Lord would punish it." She paused meditatively, and then added, "and all who joined in pushing her to it. I know I wouldn't join. I think folks have enough of their own to answer for, without bringing judgments down on their heads for things like that. It won't get me to heaven to help in interfering between Mariquita and her way of getting there."

All the while she spoke, Sarella seemed to be admiring, with her head turned on one side, the prettiness of her left wrist on which was a gold bangle, with a crystal heart dangling from it. Don Joaquin had given her the bangle, and himself admired the heart chiefly because it was crystal and not of diamonds.

"Isn't it pretty?" she said, looking suddenly up and catching his eye watching her.

"I thought you hadn't cared much for it," he answered, greatly pleased. He had always known she would have preferred a smaller heart if crusted with diamonds.

Gore longed to laugh. She astonished and puzzled him. Her cleverness was a revelation to him, and her good-nature, her subtlety, and her earnestness – for he knew she had been in earnest in what she said about not daring to interfere with other people's ways of getting to heaven.

"That old man who instructs her," he thought, "must have taught her a lot."

Of course, on his own account, he was no more afraid of Don Joaquin than she was. But he had been terribly afraid of the hard old man on Mariquita's, and he was deeply grateful to Sarella.

"Sir," he said, "what she has said to you I do feel myself. I am a Catholic – and the dearest of my sisters is a nun. I should have hated and despised any man who had tried to spoil her life by snatching it to himself against her will. He would have to be a wicked fellow, and brutal, and impious. God's curse would lie on him. So it would on me if I did that hideous thing, though God knows to-day has brought me the great disappointment of my life. Life can never be for me what I have been hoping it might be. Never."

Sarella, listening, and knowing that the two men were looking at each other, smiled at her bangle, and softly shook the dangling heart to make the crystal give as diamond-like a glitter as possible. Gore's life, she thought, would come all right. She had done her best valorously for Mariquita; women, in her theory, behooved to do their best for each other against masculine tyrrany ("bossishness," she called it), but all the time she was half-savage, herself, with the girl for not being willing to be happy in so obviously comfortable a way as offered. It seemed to her "wasteful" that so pretty a girl should go and be a nun; if she had been "homely" like Sister Aquinas it would have been different. But Sarella had learned from Sister Aquinas that these matters were above her, and was quite content to accept them without understanding them.

"Ever since I came here," Gore was saying, "I have lived in a dream of what life would be – if I could join hers with mine. It was only a dream, and I had to awake."

Don Joaquin did not understand his mind, but he was able now to see that the young man suffered, and had received a blow that, somehow, would change his life, and turn its course aside.

"Anything," Gore said, in a very low, almost thankful tone, "is better than it would have been if I had changed my dream for a nightmare; it would have been that, if I had to think of myself as trying to pull her down, from her level to mine, of her as having been brought down. I meant to do her all possible good, all my life long. How can I wish to have done her the greatest harm? As it would have been if, out of fear or over-persuasion, she had been brought to call herself my wife who could be no man's wife."

("How he loves her!" thought Sarella.)

("I doubt it has wrecked him a bit," thought Don Joaquin.)

CHAPTER XXX

Mariquita awoke early to see Sarella entering her room, and it surprised her, for her cousin was not fond of leaving her bed betimes.

"Oh, I'm going back to bed again," Sarella explained. "We were up to all hours. Of course, your father made a rumpus."

Mariquita heard this with less surprise than concern. It really grieved her to displease him.

"He has very queer old-fashioned notions," Sarella remarked, settling herself comfortably on Mariquita's bed, "and thinks it's his business to arrange all your affairs for you. Besides, you know by this time that any plan he has been hatching he expects to hatch out, and not to help him seems to him most undutiful and shocking."

"But I can't help him in this plan of his," Mariquita pleaded unhappily.

"I suppose not. Well, he flared out, and I was glad you were in bed. Gore behaved very well. It's a thousand pities you can't like him."

"But I do like him. I like him better than any man I ever knew."

"Oh, yes! Better than the cowboys or the old chaplain at Loretto. That's no good."

All this Sarella intended as medicinal; Mariquita, she thought, ought to have some of the chill of the late storm. She was not entitled to immediate and complete relief from suspense. But Sarella was beginning to feel a little chill about the legs herself, and did not care to risk a cold, so she abbreviated her disciplinary remarks a little.

"I'm a good stepmother," she remarked complacently, "not at all like one in a novel. I took your part."

"Did you!" Mariquita cried gratefully; "it was very, very kind of you."

"I don't approve of men having things all their own way – whether fathers or husbands. He has been knocked under to too much. Yes, I took your part, and made him understand that if he kept the row up he'd have three of us against him."

"What did you say?"

"All sorts of things. Never mind. Perhaps Mr. Gore will tell you – only he won't. He said a lot of things too. We made your father think he would be wicked if he went on bullying you."

Of course, Mariquita did not understand how this had been effected.

"He would not do anything wicked," she said; "he is a very good man."

"He'd be a very good mule," Sarella observed coolly, considerably scandalizing Mariquita.

"You'd have found him a pretty unpleasant one, if Gore and I had left you to manage him yourself." Sarella added, entirely unmoved by her cousin's shocked look. "We managed him. He won't beat you now. But you'd better keep out of his way as much as you can for a bit. If I were you, I'd have a bad headache and stop in bed."

"But I haven't a headache. I never do have headaches."

Sarella made a queer face, and sighed, then laughed.

"Anyway, you're not to be made to marry Mr. Gore," she said.

Mariquita looked enormously relieved, and began to express her grateful sense of Sarella's good offices.

"For that matter," Sarella cut in, "neither will Mr. Gore be made to marry you– so if you change your mind it will be no good. He thinks it would be wicked to marry you."

Mariquita perfectly understood that Sarella was trying to make her sorry, and only gave a cheerful little laugh.

"Then," she said, "I shall certainly not ask him. It would be quite useless to ask him to do anything wicked."

"The fact is," Sarella told her, "that you and he ought to be put in a glass case – two glass cases, you'd both of you be quite shocked at the idea of being in one– and labelled. It's a good thing you're unique. If other lovers were like you two, there'd be no marriages."

She got up, and prepared to return to her own room.

"Hulloa!" she said, "there's the auto. Your father's going off somewhere, and you can get up. Probably he is taking Gore away."

"Is Mr. Gore going away?"

"He'll have to. There's no one here for him to marry except Ginger; but no doubt you want him to become a monk."

"A monk! He hasn't the least idea of such a thing."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sarella, instantly changing the sigh into a laugh. "How funny you people are who never condescend to see a joke."

"I didn't know," Mariquita confessed meekly, "that you had made one."

CHAPTER XXXI

Don Joaquin was not yet recovered from his annoyance. As Sarella had perceived, he could not easily condone the defective conduct of those who, owing him obedience, refused to carry out a plan that he had long been meditating. But he had been frightened by the picture she had suggested of Divine judgment, and wondered if the hitches that had occurred in the issue of the dispensation for his marriage had been a hint of them – a threatening of what would happen if he opposed the Heavenly Will concerning his daughter's vocation. It was chiefly because the plan of her marriage had been deliberately adopted by himself, that he was reluctant to abandon it. Her own plan of becoming a nun would, he gradually came to see, suit him quite as well. And presently he became aware that, financially, it would suit him even better. If she "entered Religion," he would have to give her a dowry; but not, he imagined, a large one, five thousand dollars or so, he guessed. Whereas, if she married Gore, he would be expected to give her much more. Besides, her marriage would very likely involve subsequent gifts and expenditure. It would all come out of what he wished to save for the beloved son of whom he was always thinking. As a nun, too, Mariquita would be largely engaged in praying for the soul of her mother, and for his own soul and Sarella's and her brother's.

By the time he and Mariquita met he had grasped all these advantages, and, though aloof and disapproving in his manner, he did not attack her.

As it pleased him to admire in Sarella a delightful shrewdness in affairs, he gave her credit for favoring Mariquita's plan because it would leave more money for her own children. In this he paid her an undeserved compliment, for Sarella did not know in the least that Mariquita would receive less of her father's money if she became a nun than if she married Mr. Gore. She had not thought of it, being much of opinion that Gore would ask for nothing in the way of dowry and that Don Joaquin would give nothing without much asking.

Don Joaquin was considerably taken aback to learn that Mariquita had formed no definite plans yet as to her "entering Religion." He had promptly decided that, of course, she would go back to Loretto as a nun, and he was proportionally surprised to find that she had no such idea. This surprise he expressed, almost in dudgeon, to Sarella. He appeared to consider himself quite ill-used by such vagueness; if young women wanted to be nuns it behooved them to know exactly where they meant to go, and what religious work they felt called to undertake.

"If I were you," Sarella told him, after some hasty consideration, "I would let her go to Loretto – on a visit. You will find she makes up her mind quicker there – with nothing to distract her. Sister Aquinas talks of Retreats – Mariquita could make one."

"Who's to do the work here while she's away?" grumbled Don Joaquin.

"It will have to be done when she's gone for good. We may just as well think it out."

Sarella was quite resolved that she would never be the slave Mariquita had been, and did not mind having the struggle, if there was to be one, now.

"Whether Mariquita married or became a nun," she went on, "she would be gone from here. Her place would have to be supplied – more than supplied, for a young wife like me could not do nearly so much work. I should have things to do an unmarried girl has not, and be unfit for much work. I am sure you understand that. Sister Aquinas knows two sisters, very respectable and trustworthy, steady, and not too young. I meant to speak to you about them. They would suit us as well. They will not separate, and for that matter, we can't do with less than two."

Sarella's great object was to open the matter; she intended to succeed but did not count on instant success, or success without a struggle. Don Joaquin had to be familiarized with a scheme some time before he would adopt it. He rebelled at first and for that rebellion she punished him.

"Mariquita's position was wrong," she told him boldly. "It tended to make her unlike other girls and give her unusual ideas. She was tied by the leg here, by too much work, and her only rest or recreation was solitary thinking. If she had been taken about and met her equals she would have been like other girls, I expect. She was a slave and sought her freedom in the skies."

Don Joaquin enjoyed this philippic very little; perhaps he only partly understood it, but he did understand that Sarella thought Mariquita had been put upon and did not intend being put upon herself. He would have been much less influenced if he had thought of Sarella as specially devoted to his daughter or blindly fond of her, but he had always believed that there was but a cool sympathy between the two girls, and that Sarella would have found fault with Mariquita quite willingly if there had been fault to find.

"You have taken up the cudgels," he said sourly, "very strongly for Mariquita of late."

"As time goes on I naturally feel able to speak more plainly than I could when I first came here. I was only your guest. It is different 'of late.' And I am 'taking up the cudgels' for myself more than for Mariquita."

"Oh, I quite see that," he retorted with a savage grin.

Sarella determined to hit back, and she was by no means restrained by scruples as to "hitting below the belt."

"Fortunately for her," she said, "Mariquita has splendid health, and work did not kill her. She has the strength of a horse. Her mother did not leave it to her. I have always heard in the family that Aunt Margaret was delicate, physically unfit for hard work. Men do not notice those things. She died too young, and might have lived much longer if she had not overtaxed her strength. She ought to have been prevented from doing so much work. You were not too poor to have allowed her plenty of help – and you are much better off now."

Don Joaquin almost jumped with horror; he had really adored his wife, and now he was being flatly and relentlessly accused of having perhaps shortened her life by lack of consideration for her. And was it true? He could not help remembering much to support the accusation. She had been a woman of feeble health and feeble temper; her singular beauty of feature and coloring had been in every eye but Joaquin's own, marred by an expression of discontent and complaining, though she had been too much in awe of her masterful husband to set out her grievances to him; he guessed now that she must have written grumbling letters to her relations far away in the East. The man was no monster of cruelty; he was merely stingy and money-loving, hard-natured, and without imagination. Possessed of iron health himself, he had never conceived that the sort of work his Indian mother had submissively performed could be beyond the strength of his wife. It was true that he was much richer now than he had been when he married, and Sarella had herself accustomed him to the idea of greater expenditure, however dexterously he might have done his best to neutralize those spendings. He was more obstinately set upon marrying her than ever, because he had for a long time now decided upon the marriage; he was nervously afraid of her drawing back if he didn't yield to her wishes, the utterance of which he took to be a sort of ultimatum.

"Are these two women Catholics?" he demanded, feeling sure that Sister Aquinas would only recommend such; "I will not have Protestant servants in the house."

"They are excellent Catholics," Sarella assured him, "educated in the convent."

"Then I will consider the plan. You can ask Sister Aquinas about the conditions – wages, and so forth."

"What a pity," thought Sarella, when the interview had ended, "that Mariquita never knew how to manage him."