第56章

Brimmer, the few words let fall by Mr.Brace show me what might be the feelings of my countrymen on the subject.However charming and considerate your hospitality has been--and I do not deny that it has been MOST grateful to ME--I feel I cannot continue to accept it in those equivocal circumstances.I am speaking to a gentleman who, with the instincts and chivalrous obligations of his order, must sympathize with my own delicacy in coming to this conclusion, and who will not take advantage of my confession that I do it with pain."She spoke with a dry alacrity and precision so unlike her usual languor and the suggestions of the costume, and even the fan she still kept shading her faintly glowing eyes, that the man before her was more troubled by her manner than her words, which he had but imperfectly understood.

"You will leave here--this house?" he stammered.

"It is necessary," she returned.

"But you shall listen to me first!" he said hurriedly."Hear me, Dona Barbara--I have a secret--I will to you confess"--"You must confess nothing," said Mrs.Brimmer, dropping her feet from the hammock, and sitting up primly, "I mean--nothing I may not hear."The Alcalde cast a look upon her at once blank and imploring.

"Ah, but you will hear," he said, after a pause."There is a ship coming here.In two weeks she will arrive.None know it but myself, the Comandante, and the Padre.It is a secret of the Government.She will come at night; she will depart in the morning, and no one else shall know.It has ever been that she brings no one to Todos Santos, that she takes no one from Todos Santos.That is the law.But I swear to you that she shall take you, your children, and your friend to Acapulco in secret, where you will be free.You will join your husband; you will be happy.

I will remain, and I will die."

It would have been impossible for any woman but Mrs.Brimmer to have regarded the childlike earnestness and melancholy simplicity of this grown-up man without a pang.Even this superior woman experienced a sensible awkwardness as she slipped from the hammock and regained an upright position.

"Of course," she, began, "your offer is exceedingly generous; and although I should not, perhaps, take a step of this kind without the sanction of Mr.Brimmer, and am not sure that he would not regard it as rash and premature, I will talk it over with Miss Chubb, for whom I am partially responsible.Nothing," she continued, with a sudden access of feeling, "would induce me, for any selfish consideration, to take any step that would imperil the future of that child, towards whom I feel as a sister." A slight suffusion glistened under her pretty brown lashes."If anything should happen to her, I would never forgive myself; if I should be the unfortunate means of severing any ties that SHE may have formed, I could never look her in the face again.Of course, I can well understand that our presence here must be onerous to you, and that you naturally look forward to any sacrifice--even that of the interests of your country, and the defiance of its laws--to relieve you from a position so embarrassing as yours has become.I only trust, however, that the ill effects you allude to as likely to occur to yourself after our departure may be exaggerated by your sensitive nature.It would be an obligation added to the many that we owe you, which Mr.Brimmer would naturally find he could not return--and that, I can safely say, he would not hear of for a single moment."While speaking, she had unconsciously laid aside her fan, lifted her mantilla from her head with both hands, and, drawing it around her shoulders and under her lifted chin, had crossed it over her bosom with a certain prim, automatic gesture, as if it had been the starched kerchief of some remote Puritan ancestress.With her arms still unconsciously crossed, she stooped rigidly, picked up her fan with three fingers, as if it had been a prayer-book, and, with a slight inclination of her bared head, with its accurately parted brown hair, passed slowly out of the corridor.

Astounded, bewildered, yet conscious of some vague wound, Don Ramon remained motionless, staring after her straight, retreating figure.