Stoneheart: A Romance

"Or avenge him, if ill luck should have it that he should be killed," said Carlocho, interrupting him.

"I should like," continued Don Torribio, "to be constantly apprised of whatever may happen to him."

"Oh, holy friendship!" exclaimed Tonillo, raising his eyes to heaven with a sanctified air; "Thou art not a mere idle word!"

"Caballeros, you could not be in a better position for giving me information; and as all trouble should have its reward, you shall receive at least one hundred ounces to share amongst you, or two hundred, according to the news you may bring me. You understand?"

"Perfectly, señor," replied Carlocho, with imperturbable composure, in the name of his deeply touched companions; "the office you confide to us is most honourable. You may rely on our carrying out your views to your utmost satisfaction."

"Well, that is settled, señores; I rely upon the accuracy of your information, for you must perceive the ridiculous position in which a false report would place me in the eyes of Don Fernando's numerous friends, whom I should be loth to disturb without good cause."

"Trust entirely to us, señor; we will confirm our information by irrefragable proof."

"Good! I see we understand each other; it is useless to pursue the matter further."

"Perfectly useless, señor; we are men of quick comprehension."

"Yes," said Don Torribio, smiling; "but, as your memories may be short, do me the honour of dividing these ten ounces amongst you, – not as the earnest – money of a bargain, for there is no bargain between us, but as a return for the service you have just done me, and as a means of imprinting our conversation on your brains."

The vaqueros, without waiting to be pressed, extended their hands, and, with smiling faces, pocketed the ounces so liberally bestowed.

"Now, one word more, caballeros: where are we?"

"In the Selva Negra, señor," answered Pablito; "not more than four leagues from the Hacienda del Cormillo, where Don Pedro de Luna and his family are at present residing."

Don Torribio started in astonishment.

"What! Has Don Pedro left Las Norias de San Antonio?"

"Yes, señor; since yesterday."

"What a singular thing! El Cormillo is on the extreme verge of the wilderness, in the midst of the Apaches: it is impossible to understand it."

"They say it was Doña Hermosa who wished for this change, of which scarcely anybody has yet heard."

"What an extraordinary whim! After the dangers to which she was exposed only a few days ago, to come and brave the redskins on their own territory!"

"The hacienda is strong, and perfectly safe from sudden assault."

"True: yet the change of residence seems very incomprehensible. At sunrise, I should be happy if you would do me the honour of serving me as guides till I get within sight of the hacienda. It is important that I should see Don Pedro without delay."

"We shall be at your orders, señor, as soon as you please to depart," answered Carlocho.

The night was fleeting; and Don Torribio had need of repose to restore his strength, exhausted by his late struggle for life. He rolled himself in his zarapé, stretched out his feet towards the fire, and was soon asleep, in spite of the trouble that racked his mind.

The vaqueros followed his example, after drawing lots amongst themselves as to who should watch over the common safety.

The post fell to Carlocho: the others closed their eyes; and the silence of the wilderness, which had just been so terribly disturbed, resumed its empire.

Night passed, without anything occurring to disturb the rest of these guests of the forest.

At sunrise the vaqueros were up. After feeding and watering their horses, they saddled them, and roused Don Torribio, announcing that the hour of departure had arrived.

The latter rose at once; and, after a short prayer uttered by them all, the five men mounted, and left the clearing which had nearly proved so fatal to one of them.

The Hacienda del Cormillo may be looked upon as the advanced sentinel of the presidio of San Lucar; it is, without contradiction, the richest and strongest position on the whole Indian frontier. It rises on a kind of peninsula, three leagues in circumference, on which an incalculable number of cattle pasture at liberty. We will not expatiate much on the description of a dwelling in which only a few scenes of our story are laid; we will confine ourselves to saying, that in the middle of the hacienda properly speaking, and perfectly secured behind the massive fortifications, loopholed and bastioned, of the fortress (for El Cormillo was certainly such), there stood a white house, small indeed, but admirably arranged, pleasant and cheerful looking. At a distance, the roof was half concealed by the branches of the trees which covered it with their verdant foliage; from its windows, the eye roamed on one side over the wilderness, on the other over the Rio del Norte, which unrolled itself in the plain like a silver band, and was lost to view in the blue distance of the horizon.

The vaqueros, in company with Don Torribio, had struck into the forest. For three hours their route led them along the banks of the Rio Bravo del Norte, till they were opposite the Hacienda del Cormillo, which dimly showed itself in the centre of one of those charming oases created by the deposit of the river, and covered with groups of willows, nopals, mesquites, orange and citron trees, and jasmines in full flower, amongst the branches of which a whole host of birds of varied plumage warbled unceasingly.

Don Torribio halted, and turning towards his companions, who had likewise stopped, addressed them:

"I must leave you here; I thank you for the escort you have done me the honour to give me. Your help is no longer needed. Return to your avocations, señores; you know our agreement, and I reckon on your punctuality."

"Farewell, caballero," they replied, bowing ceremoniously to him; "cast aside all anxiety as to the measures we are about to take."

They turned the heads of their horses, made them enter the river as if they intended to cross it, and soon vanished behind a rise in the ground. Don Torribio remained alone.

The families of Don Torribio and Don Pedro de Luna, both originally Spanish, and connected by various ties in old times, had always lived on a footing of great intimacy. The young man and the girl had almost been brought up together. So, when her handsome cousin had come to bid her adieu, and announce his departure for Europe, where he was to stay a few years, in order to complete his education and acquire the manners of the fashionable world, Doña Hermosa, then about twelve years old, had felt sorry to lose him. They had loved each other from infancy, unwittingly obeying the secret impulses of childhood, which is always seeking for happiness.

Don Torribio had left her, carrying his own love with him, and never doubting that Doña Hermosa was preserving hers for him.

On his return to Veracruz, after visiting the most celebrated places of the civilized world, he had hastened to put his affairs in order, and set out for San Lucar, burning with desire to meet her whom he loved so dearly, and whom he had not seen for three years – his Hermosa, that pretty child, who by this time, must have grown into a beautiful and accomplished woman.

The surprise and joy of Don Pedro and his daughter were extreme. Hermosa was particularly happy, for, we must confess, she had thought all day long of Don Torribio, and looked at him through the medium of her recollections of childhood; yet at the same time she felt her heart disturbed by mingled sensations of pain and pleasure.

Don Torribio perceived it: he understood, or thought he understood, that she still loved him; and his happiness was complete.

"Come, children," the smiling father had said, "embrace each other; you have my permission."

Doña Hermosa, with many blushes, bent forward her forehead to Don Torribio, who respectfully touched it with his lips.

"Is that what you call kissing?" cried Don Pedro. "Come, come, no hypocrisy; embrace each other frankly. Do not play the coquette, Hermosa, because you are a pretty girl and he is a handsome fellow; and you, Torribio, who have come upon us like a thunderbolt, without giving warning, do you think to make me believe you have ridden many hundred leagues, as fast as your horse could carry you, to see me? I know for whom you come all the way from Veracruz to San Lucar! You love each other. Give each other an honest kiss, like betrothed lovers as you are; and if you are wise, you will be married offhand."

The young people, melted by his kind words and pleasant humour, threw themselves into the arms of the venerable man, to hide the depth of their emotion.

In consequence of this reception, Don Torribio had been formally acknowledged as having a claim to the hand of Doña Hermosa, and in that capacity was received by her.

We must do the girl the justice to say, that she sincerely believed she loved her cousin. The ties of relationship, their childish friendship, and the long separation, which had increased the warmth of their feelings, disposed her to think favourably of the marriage proposed by her father. She awaited the day fixed for her espousals without any degree of impatience, and looked forward with a kind of pleasurable hope to the time when she would be indissolubly united to him.

Although such an assertion will most likely make many of our readers cry "Fie!" upon us, we will nevertheless maintain that a young girl's first passion is rarely genuine love. Her second love originates in the heart; the first only in the brain A young girl who begins to experience the first emotions of her heart naturally allows herself to be attracted by the man who, from circumstances and his relations towards her, has long ago obtained her confidence and excited her interest. This kind of love, then, is only friendship, fortified by habit and magnified by the secret influence exercised by the as yet vague and undecided thoughts which crop up in the brains of sixteen; and lastly, and more than all, by the want of opportunities for comparing her lover with others, and the fact that the marriage is already settled, and she thinks it impossible to recede.

This was the position in which Doña Hermosa, without at all suspecting it, stood towards her cousin. The marriage had been retarded, up to the day about which we are now writing, for divers reasons of age and convenience, although Don Pedro attached immense importance to it, either on account of his intended son-in-law's enormous wealth, or because he was persuaded the union would make his daughter happy.

Matters had proceeded thus between the young people, without any remarkable incident occurring to trouble the calm of their relations to each other, up to the time when the events we have narrated in another place happened to Doña Hermosa in the prairie. But at the first visit Don Torribio paid his betrothed after her return to the Hacienda de las Norias, he perceived, with the clear-sightedness of love, that Doña Hermosa did not receive him with the freedom or the frankness of speech and manner to which he had been accustomed.

The girl seemed sad and dreamy; she scarcely answered the questions he addressed to her, and did not appear to understand the hints he threw out about their approaching marriage.

Don Torribio at first attributed the change to one of those nervous influences to which young girls are subject, without suspecting it. He fancied she was unwell, and left her, without dreaming that another filled the place in the heart of his betrothed which he believed himself alone to occupy.

Moreover, upon whom could his suspicions fall, if he entertained any? Don Pedro lived in great retirement, only receiving at long intervals his old friends, most of them married, or long past the age for marrying.

It was impossible to suppose that, in the two days Doña Hermosa spent in the prairie among the redskins, she could have met with a man whose appearance and manners could have touched her affections.

However, Don Torribio was soon compelled to acknowledge in spite of himself, that what he had at first taken for a girlish whim was a confirmed resolve; or, in one word, that if Doña Hermosa still preserved for him the friendship to which he had a right, as the companion of her childhood, her love, if she had ever felt it for him, had vanished for ever.

When once convinced of this certainty, he became seriously uneasy. The love he felt for his cousin was profound and sincere; he had let it grow into his heart too deeply to be easily eradicated. He saw all his plans of happiness in the future crumble together, and, his hopes once shipwrecked, resolved to have the indispensable explanation from the girl which should tell him how much he had to hope or fear.

It was with the intention of demanding this explanation from Doña Hermosa that, instead of returning to San Lucar, where he lived, he had desired the vaqueros to show him the way to the Hacienda del Cormillo. But as soon as his guides left him, and he found himself alone in front of the hacienda, his courage nearly evaporated. Foreseeing the result of the step he was about to take, he hesitated to enter the dwelling; for, like all lovers, in spite of the pain caused by the girl's indifference, he would have preferred to go on cheating himself with futile expectations, rather than learn a truth which would break his heart, by robbing him of all hope.

The struggle lasted a long time; more than once he made as if he would ride back; but at last reason conquered passion. He comprehended how difficult the position would be, both for Doña Hermosa and himself. Happen what might, he resolved to end it; and digging his spurs into the flanks of his horse, he galloped towards the hacienda, rightly fearing that, if he lingered longer, he would find no strength to accomplish the project he had formed.

When he arrived at El Cormillo, he was informed that Don Pedro and his daughter had gone hunting at sunrise, and would not return before the oración (time for mass).

"So much the better," muttered Don Torribio between his teeth, and with a sigh of satisfaction at the respite chance had so opportunely afforded him.

Without stopping for the refreshments offered him, he turned his horse's head in the direction of San Lucar, and galloped off, congratulating himself that the explanation he both dreaded and desired had been thus providentially delayed.