Part 25 (1/2)
She pressed her little brown fist, still tightly clutching her fan, against her low bodice, as if already transfixed with a secret and absorbing pa.s.sion.
”Well, you shall have d.i.c.k then,” said Miss Keene, laughing; ”but was it for THAT you were seeking me?”
”Mother of G.o.d! you know not then what has happened? You are a blind--a deaf--to but one thing all the time? Ah!” she said quickly, unfolding her fan and modestly diving her little head behind it, ”I have ashamed for you, Miss Keene.”
”But WHAT has happened?” said Hurlstone, interposing to relieve his companion. ”We fancied something”--
”Something! he says something!--ah, that something was a temblor! An earthquake! The earth has shaken himself. Look!”
She pointed with her fan to the sh.o.r.e, where the sea had suddenly returned in a turbulence of foam and billows that was breaking over the base of the cross they had just quitted.
Miss Keene drew a quick sigh. Dona Isabel had ducked again modestly behind her fan, but this time dragging with her other arm Miss Keene's head down to share its discreet shadow as she whispered,--
”And--infatuated one!--you two never noticed it!”
CHAPTER V.
CLOUDS AND CHANGE.
The earthquake shock, although the first experienced by the Americans, had been a yearly phenomenon to the people of Todos Santos, and was so slight as to leave little impression upon either the low adobe walls of the pueblo or the indolent population. ”If it's a provision of Nature for shaking up these Rip Van Winkle Latin races now and then, it's a dead failure, as far as Todos Santos is concerned,” Crosby had said, with a yawn. ”Brace, who's got geology on the brain ever since he struck cinnabar ore, says he isn't sure the Injins ain't right when they believe that the Pacific Ocean used to roll straight up to the Presidio, and there wasn't any channel--and that reef of rocks was upheaved in their time. But what's the use of it? it never really waked them up.”
”Perhaps they're waiting for another kind of earthquake,” Winslow had responded sententiously.
In six weeks it had been forgotten, except by three people--Miss Keene, James Hurlstone, and Padre Esteban. Since Hurlstone had parted with Miss Keene on that memorable afternoon he had apparently lapsed into his former reserve. Without seeming to avoid her timid advances, he met her seldom, and then only in the presence of the Padre or Mrs. Markham.
Although uneasy at the deprivation of his society, his present shyness did not affect her as it had done at first: she knew it was no longer indifference; she even fancied she understood it from what had been her own feelings. If he no longer raised his eyes to hers as frankly as he had that day, she felt a more delicate pleasure in the consciousness of his lowered eyelids when they met, and the instinct that told her when his melancholy glance followed her un.o.bserved. The s.e.x of these lovers--if we may call them so who had never exchanged a word of love--seemed to be changed. It was Miss Keene who now sought him with a respectful and frank admiration; it was Hurlstone who now tried to avoid it with a feminine dread of reciprocal display. Once she had even adverted to the episode of the cross. They were standing under the arch of the refectory door, waiting for Padre Esteban, and looking towards the sea.
”Do you think we were ever in any real danger, down there, on the sh.o.r.e--that day?” she said timidly.
”No; not from the sea,” he replied, looking at her with a half defiant resolution.
”From what then?” she asked, with a naivete that was yet a little conscious.
”Do you remember the children giving you their offerings that day?” he asked abruptly.
”I do,” she replied, with smiling eyes.
”Well, it appears that it is the custom for the betrothed couples to come to the cross to exchange their vows. They mistook us for lovers.”
All the instinctive delicacy of Miss Keene's womanhood resented the rude infelicity of this speech and the flippant manner of its utterance. She did not blush, but lifted her clear eyes calmly to his.
”It was an unfortunate mistake,” she said coldly, ”the more so as they were your pupils. Ah! here is Father Esteban,” she added, with a marked tone of relief, as she crossed over to the priest's side.
When Father Esteban returned to the refectory that evening, Hurlstone was absent. When it grew later, becoming uneasy, the good Father sought him in the garden. At the end of the avenue of pear-trees there was a break in the sea-wall, and here, with his face to the sea, Hurlstone was leaning gloomily. Father Esteban's tread was noiseless, and he had laid his soft hand on the young man's shoulder before Hurlstone was aware of his presence. He started slightly, his gloomy eyes fell before the priest's.
”My son,” said the old man gravely, ”this must go on no longer.”
”I don't understand you,” Hurlstone replied coldly.
”Do not try to deceive yourself, nor me. Above all, do not try to deceive HER. Either you are or are not in love with this countrywoman of yours. If you are not, my respect for her and my friends.h.i.+p for you prompts me to save you both from a foolish intimacy that may ripen into a misplaced affection; if you are already in love with her”--