Selected Stories of Bret Harte, Bret Harte [read aloud books .TXT] 📗

was turning away sadly, but as he faced his home again he heard a light laugh beside him. He stopped. A black shadow stepped out from beneath his own almond tree. He started when, with a gesture that seemed familiar to him, the upper part of the shadow seemed to fall away with a long black mantilla and the face of the young girl was revealed.

He could see now that she was clad in black lace from head to foot. She looked taller, older, and he fancied even prettier than before. A sudden doubt of his ability to impress her, a swift realization of all the difficulties of the attempt, and, for the first time perhaps, a dim perception of the incongruity of the situation came over him.

“I was looking for you on the wall,” he stammered.

“MADRE DE DIOS!” she retorted, with a laugh and her old audacity, “you would that I shall ALWAYS hang there, and drop upon you like a pear when you shake the tree? No!”

“You haven't brought your guitar,” he continued, still more awkwardly, as he noticed that she held only a long black fan in her hand.

“For why? You would that I PLAY it, and when my uncle say 'Where go Pepita? She is loss,' someone shall say, 'Oh! I have hear her tink-a-tink in the garden of the Americano, who lif alone.' And then—it ess finish!”

Masterton began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. There was something in this situation that he had not dreamed of. But with the persistency of an awkward man he went on.

“But you played on the wall the other night, and tried to accompany me.”

“But that was lass night and on the wall. I had not speak to you, you had not speak to me. You had not sent me the leetle note by your peon.” She stopped, and suddenly opening her fan before her face, so that only her mischievous eyes were visible, added: “You had not asked me then to come to hear you make lof to me, Don Esteban. That is the difference.”

The circuit preacher felt the blood rush to his face. Anger, shame, mortification, remorse, and fear alternately strove with him, but above all and through all he was conscious of a sharp, exquisite pleasure—that frightened him still more. Yet he managed to exclaim:

“No! no! You cannot think me capable of such a cowardly trick?”

The girl started, more at the unmistakable sincerity of his utterance than at the words, whose full meaning she may have only imperfectly caught.

“A treek? A treek?” she slowly and wonderingly repeated. Then suddenly, as if comprehending him, she turned her round black eyes full upon him and dropped her fan from her face.

“And WHAT for you ask me to come here then?”

“I wanted to talk with you,” he began, “on far more serious matters. I wished to—” but he stopped. He could not address this quaint child-woman staring at him in black-eyed wonder, in either the measured or the impetuous terms with which he would have exhorted a maturer responsible being. He made a step toward her; she drew back, striking at his extended hand half impatiently, half mischievously with her fan.

He flushed—and then burst out bluntly, “I want to talk with you about your soul.”

“My what?”

“Your immortal soul, unhappy girl.”

“What have you to make with that? Are you a devil?” Her eyes grew rounder, though she faced him boldly.

“I am a Minister of the Gospel,” he said, in hurried entreaty. “You must hear me for a moment. I would save your soul.”

“My immortal soul lif with the Padre at the Mission—you moost seek her there! My mortal BODY,” she added, with a mischievous smile, “say to you, 'good a' night, Don Esteban.'” She dropped him a little curtsy and—ran away.

“One moment, Miss Ramirez,” said Masterton, eagerly; but she had already slipped beyond his reach. He saw her little black figure passing swiftly beside the moonlit wall, saw it suddenly slide into a shadowy fissure, and vanish.

In his blank disappointment he could not bear to re-enter the house he had left so sanguinely a few moments before, but walked moodily in the garden. His discomfiture was the more complete since he felt that his defeat was owing to some mistake in his methods, and not the incorrigibility of his subject.

Was it not a spiritual weakness in him to have resented so sharply the girl's imputation that he wished to make love to her? He should have borne it as Christians had even before now borne slander and false testimony for their faith! He might even have ACCEPTED it, and let the triumph of her conversion in the end prove his innocence. Or was his purpose incompatible with that sisterly affection he had so often preached to the women of his flock? He might have taken her hand, and called her “Sister Pepita,” even as he had called Deborah “Sister.” He recalled the fact that he had for an instant held her struggling in his arms: he remembered the thrill that the recollection had caused him, and somehow it now sent a burning blush across his face. He hurried back into the house.

The next day a thousand wild ideas took the place of his former settled resolution. He would seek the Padre, this custodian of the young girl's soul; he would convince HIM of his error, or beseech him to give him an equal access to her spirit! He would seek the uncle of the girl, and work upon his feelings.

Then for three or four days he resolved to put the young girl from his mind, trusting after the fashion of his kind for some special revelation from a supreme source as an indication for his conduct. This revelation presently occurred, as it is apt to occur when wanted.

One evening his heart leaped at the familiar sound of Pepita's guitar in the distance. Whatever his ultimate intention now, he hurriedly ran into the garden. The sound came from the former direction, but as he unhesitatingly approached the Mission wall, he could see that she was not upon it, and as the notes of her guitar were struck again, he knew that they came from the other side. But the chords were a prelude to one of his own hymns, and he stood entranced as her sweet, childlike voice rose with the very words that he had sung. The few defects were those of purely oral imitation, the accents, even the slight reiteration of the “s,” were Pepita's own:

Cheeldren oof the Heavenly King, As ye journey essweetly ssing; Essing your great Redeemer's praise, Glorioos in Hees works and ways.

He was astounded. Her recollection of the air and words was the more wonderful, for he remembered now that he had only sung that particular hymn once. But to his still greater delight and surprise, her voice rose again in the second verse, with a touch of plaintiveness that swelled his throat:

We are traveling home to God, In the way our farzers trod, They are happy now, and we Soon their happiness shall see.

The simple, almost childish words—so childish that they might have been