A Prairie Infanta

Jane had not combated his views. Many Mexican children younger than Lola earned a little tending the herds and helping about the fields. They were usually boys; but Jane did not dwell on this point. She had never clearly realized, on her own part, those distinctions in labor which appertain to the sexes; she had herself always done everything that had to be done, whether it were cooking or plowing. If she had any choice, it was for pursuits of the field. Therefore, without comment, she had accepted Mr. Keene's theories as just, and began to pay him what he said would be "about right."

"Because," said Lola, "I want you to ask him something when you write. I am over fourteen now. There isn't much more for me to learn in this school. Señor Juarez and Miss Belton both tell me I ought to go to Pueblo. Edith May Jonas is going. I should like to study many things – drawing, for instance. They say I ought to study that. My mother always said she hoped I would have a chance to learn. And my father used to say, 'Oh, yes!' that he would soon have money for everything. And now he has! Will you ask him?"

Jane was dusting the mantel on which Tesuque still sat open-mouthed, with his bowl. The room had lost its former barren aspect. There was now a carpet, while muslin shades softened the glare of the Colorado sun and the view of the sterile hills. Geraniums bloomed on the window-sills, and some young cottonwoods grew greenly at the door. The scarlet Navajo blanket, which had been Lola's inheritance from the prairie-schooner, was spread across a couch, and gave a final note of warmth and comfort to the low room, now plastered in adobe from ceiling to floor. Everything that had been done was for Lola's sake, who loved warmth and color, as do all Southrons.

Tesuque alone, divinely invariable amid so much change, now seemed to wink the eye at Jane's uncertainty. For Jane knew that there was not enough money in the bank to pay for a year's schooling at Pueblo. So far she knew, yet she said simply, "I can ask him."

If Lola wanted to go to Pueblo, she must go. It would be a pity if Edith May Jonas should have better schooling than Lola, thought Jane. And as she pondered, it came forcibly to her that money need not be lacking; she could mortgage her house. She shut her eyes to all future difficulties which this must involve, and, upon a certain June day, set resolutely out to see if the doctor were willing to make the loan.

The doctor, sitting in the little office which he had built in the corner of his shady yard, scowled over his glasses as he listened.

"You're making a mistake," he said, having heard all, "to let Lola believe that her father is providing for her. I know you began it all with a view to charitable ends; but he who does evil that good may come sets his foot in a crooked path, of which none can see the close."

"I didn't want to see her breaking her heart."

"I know, but I do not believe it's ever well to compound and treat with wrong. If you'll be advised, you'll tell her the whole truth at once."

Jane sat bolt upright before him. Her arms were folded across her butternut waist, and under the man's hat a grim resolution seemed to be embodying itself.

"She wouldn't go to school at Pueblo if I told her – nor feel like she had any home – or anything in the world. And I aint going to tell her!"

"Miss Jane, Miss Jane, don't you see you're doing the girl a real injury in letting her regard you, her true benefactor, merely as the agent of her father's generosity? You have simply sustained and encouraged her worst traits. She wouldn't have been so exacting, so resentful, so easily provoked if she had known all along that she was only a poor little pensioner on your bounty. The lesson of humility would have gone far with her. No, Miss Jane, it wouldn't have hurt her to be humbled. It won't now!"

"I don't believe it ever does any one any good to be humbled!" maintained Jane, stoutly and with reason. "Especially if it's a poor, frail little soul that aint got no mother! I did what I thought best, though I can't afford it no way in the world! To prune and dress a lie aint going to make it grow into a truth!" She rose. "I guess I'll see if Henry Jonas'll be willing to take that mortgage!"

"I'm going to do it myself!" roared the doctor. "I don't want Jonas to own all the property in Aguilar!" Generosity and anger swayed him confusedly; but as he watched Jane trudging down under the Dauntless's tipple he became clear enough to register with himself a vow. "Lola has got to know the truth!" he declared. "Maybe it's none of my business, but all the same she's going to know it, and know it now!" And he got up, grimly resolute.

CHAPTER FOUR

WISE IMPULSES

The next day was the last of the school term, and it afforded the doctor an opportunity for carrying out his resolve. There was a base of sound reason in his purposed action. It might give the girl pain, indeed, to hear what he felt impelled to tell her; it is not pleasant to have a broken bone set, yet the end is a good one. The doctor felt that Lola's mind held a smoldering distrust of Jane, which not even the consciousness of Jane's love could dispel.The girl, without directly formulating so strong a case against Jane, obscurely held her accountable for that division from her father which she deplored. Doubtless it was affection which had caused Jane to ask Mr. Keene to leave his child behind. Affection also might have jealously deterred Jane from giving Lola her father's infrequent letters. But affection cannot excuse what is unworthy; and Lola's thoughts ran vaguely with a distrust which did something to embitter the wholesome tides of life.

The next day was the last of the school term, and it afforded the doctor an opportunity for carrying out his resolve. There was a base of sound reason in his purposed action. It might give the girl pain, indeed, to hear what he felt impelled to tell her; it is not pleasant to have a broken bone set, yet the end is a good one. The doctor felt that Lola's mind held a smoldering distrust of Jane, which not even the consciousness of Jane's love could dispel.

The girl, without directly formulating so strong a case against Jane, obscurely held her accountable for that division from her father which she deplored. Doubtless it was affection which had caused Jane to ask Mr. Keene to leave his child behind. Affection also might have jealously deterred Jane from giving Lola her father's infrequent letters. But affection cannot excuse what is unworthy; and Lola's thoughts ran vaguely with a distrust which did something to embitter the wholesome tides of life.

"I am right to put an end to Miss Combs's unwise benevolence," thought the doctor, as he tied his horse outside the schoolhouse.

Throngs of white-frocked girls were chattering about the yard. Rows of Mexican children squatted silent and stolid against the red walls, unmoved by those excitements of closing day which stirred their American mates to riotous glee. The wives of the miners and town merchants were arriving in twos and threes. Gaunt Mexican women, holding quiet babies in their looped rebozos, stood about, hardly ever speaking.

Señora Vigil, more lavishly built than the rest of her countrywomen and gayer of port than they, moved from group to group, talking cheerfully. Jane also awaited the opening of the schoolhouse door, watching the scene with interest and having no conception of herself as an object of note, in her elderly black bonnet and short jean skirt.

Presently Señor Juarez, the Mexican master, appeared. The bell in the slate dome rang loudly, and the throng filed indoors. There was the usual array of ceremonies appropriate to occasions like this. Small boys spoke "pieces," which they forgot, being audibly prompted, while the audience experienced untold pangs of sympathy and foreboding. Little beribboned girls exhibited their skill in dialogue, and read essays and filed through some patriotic drill, to which a forest of tiny flags gave splendid emphasis at impressive junctures.

Then Edith May Jonas, solemn with anxiety and importance, rose to sing. She was a plain, flaxen-haired girl, with a Teutonic cast of feature and a thin voice; but every one, benumbed with speechless admiration of her blue silk dress, derived from her performance an impression of surpassing beauty and unbounded talent.

"Caramba! but she is like a vision!" sighed Señora Vigil in Jane's ear. "Look at Señora Jonas, the mother! Well may she weep tears of pride! She is a great lady – Señora Jonas. Just now she have condescended to say to me, ''Ow-de-do?' and me, I bow low. 'A los pics de V. señora!' I say. Ay Dios! if I but had a child with yellow hair, like the Señorita Edith May! Que chula!"

"Sh!" breathed Jane. "There's my Lola on the platform!"

Lola had grown tall in the past year. She was fairer than the Mexicans, although not fair in the fashion of Edith May, but with a faint citron hue which, better than pink and white, befitted the extreme darkness of her hair and eyes. She wore a dress of thin white, and around her slender neck was a curious old strand of turquoise beads which had been found carefully hidden away in the Mexican trunk. There was an air of simple reserve about her which touched the doctor. She was only a child for all her stately looks, and he began to hate his task.

Lola read a little address which had been assigned to her as a representative of the highest class. She read the farewell lines almost monotonously, without effect, without inflection, almost coldly. Yet as he listened, the doctor had an impression of vital warmth underlying the restraint of the girl's tone – an impression of feeling that lay far below the surface, latent and half-suspected.

"There is something there to be reckoned with," he decided. "But what? Is it a noble impulse which will spring to life in rich gratitude when I tell her my story? Or will a mere hurt, passionate vanity rise to overwhelm us all in its acrid swell? I shall soon know."

In the buzz of gaiety and gossip which succeeded the final reading, he approached Lola and beckoned her away from the crowd. She came running to him smiling, saying, "Señor!"

"I want to say something to you, my dear. Come here where it's quiet." The doctor was finding the simplicity and trustfulness of her gaze very trying. "Lola," he continued, desperately, "I – you must listen to me." Just at this point something struck against his arm, and turning irritably, he saw Jane.

"What's all this?" said she, placidly. "What are you saying to make my little girl so wide-eyed? Remember, she has a fierce old guardian – one that expects every one to 'tend to his own affairs!" Jane spoke jestingly, but the doctor knew he was worsted. Jane had been watching him.

"But, tia!" interposed Lola, "the doctor was just going to tell me something very important!"

"He was maybe going to tell you that you are going to Pueblo next fall! Yes, honey, it's all fixed!" She turned a joyous, defiant face on the doctor, who cast his hands abroad as if he washed them of the whole affair; while Lola, beaming with pleasure, rushed off to tell the news to Señor Juarez.

"You'll regret this!" said the doctor, somehow feeling glad of his own failure.

"Well, she won't!" cried Jane, watching Lola's flight with tender eyes.

"Sometime she is going to find out all this deceit!" he added.

"I know," said Jane. "I know. And then she'll quit trusting me forever. But if I'm willing to stand it, nobody else need to worry." With this tacit rebuke she left him, and thereafter the doctor respected her wishes.

A month or so after Lola's departure northward, Jane's solicitude was enlivened by an event of startling importance. She was notified by the Dauntless Company that two entries, the fourth and fifth east, had entered her property, in which she had never suspected the presence of coal, and that the owners were prepared to negotiate with her suitable terms for the right of working the vein in question.

When the matter of royalties was settled and several hundred dollars paid to Jane's account for coal already taken out, she had a sudden rush of almost tearful joy. Every month would come to her, while the coal lasted, a determinate sum of money. She regarded the fact in a sort of ecstasy, and resolved upon many things.

First she banished from her house the shadow of the mortgage. Then, glowing with enterprise, she proceeded to extend and embellish her property in a way which speedily set the town by the ears, and aroused every one to dark prophecies as to what must happen when her money should all be gone, and nothing left her but to face poverty in the palatial five-room dwelling now growing up around the pine homestead of the past.

Lola liked adobe houses; and fortunately Enrique Diaz, the blacksmith, had a fine lot of adobes which he had made before frost, and put under cover against a possible extension of his shop, "to-morrow or some time after a while." These Jane bought, and deftly the chocolate walls arose in her vega, crowned finally with a crimson roof, which could be seen two miles off at Lynn. There was a porch, too, with snow-white pillars, and an open fireplace, all tiled with adobe, in which might blaze fires of piñon wood, full of resin and burning as nothing else can burn save driftwood, sodden with salt and oil and the mystery of old ocean.

Then, after a little, there arrived in town a vaulted box, in which the dullest fancy might conjecture a piano. Greatly indeed were heads shaken. If doom were easily invoked, Jane would hardly have lived to unpack the treasure and help to lift it up the porch steps.

"Por Dios!" gasped Ana Vigil. "It must have cost fifty dollars! And for what good, señora?"

"Lola's taking music-lessons," said Jane. "Her and Edith May Jonas is learning a duet. I want she should be able to go right on practising."

"Ah!" said Ana, innocently. "She will not say your house now is 'ugly,' will she? And you, señora, shall you get a longer dress and do your hair up, so she will not say of you like she did, 'How queer'?"

Jane looked at Ana. Surely she could not mean to be ill-tempered – Ana, with a face as broad and placid as a standing pool? No, no, Ana was too simple to wish to pain any one! Yet as Jane dwelt upon Ana's queries, it came slowly to Jane that certain changes in herself might be well.

She obeyed this wise, if late, impulse, and when Lola came home in June she had her reward. The girl cried out with surprise as she beheld on the platform at Lynn that tall figure in a soft gray gown, fashioned with some pretensions to the mode, but simple and dignified as befitted Jane's stature and look. There was a bonnet to match, too elderly for Jane's years, and of a Quakerish form. But this was less the cause for the general difference in Jane's aspect than the fact that her brown hair, parted smoothly on the broad, benignant brow, now had its ends tucked up in a neat knot.

"Tia! tia!" exclaimed Lola, herself glowing like a prairie-rose, as she dashed out of the train. "What have you done? You are good to look at! Your hair – oh, asombro!"

But when the white burros of the mail wagon, wildly skimming the plains, brought them in sight of the new house, Lola's joy turned white on her cheeks, and she clutched Jane's arm.

"Tia– our house! It is gone – gone!"

Then was Jane's time to laugh with sheer happiness, to throw open gate and door and usher her guest into the old room where Tesuque sat and the Navajo blanket still covered the couch as of yore, and nothing was altered except that now other rooms opened brightly on all sides, and in one a piano displayed its white teeth in beaming welcome.

Lola's blank face, whereon every moment printed a new delight, was to Jane a sight hardly to be matched. The satisfaction grew also with time, as the piano awoke to such strains as Lola had mastered, and people strolled up from the village ways to listen, and, to Jane's deep gratification, to praise the musician. The Mexicans came in throngs, filling the air with a chorus of "Caspitas!" and "Carambas!" None of them called Lola "Infanta" nowadays unless it were in a spirit of friendly pleasantry; and she herself had lost much of the air which had brought this contemptuous honor upon her childish head.

"She is Mexican – yes!" they nodded to one another, deriving much simple satisfaction from the circumstance. For was it not provocative of racial pride that one of their compatriots should be able to make tunes – actual tunes! – issue from those keys which responded to their own tentative touches merely with thin shrieks or a dull, rumbling note?

"Lolita is like she was," remarked Alejandro Vigil to his sister on the morning of the Fourth of July, as they wandered around the common beyond the arroyo.

This space of desert had an air of festive import, for unwonted celebrations of the day were forward. A pavilion roofed with green boughs had been built for the occasion, on the skirts of an oval course which was to be the ground of sundry feats of cowboy horsemanship, and of a foot-race between Piedro Cordova and the celebrated Valentino Cortés. There would be music, also, before long. Already the sound of a violin in process of tuning rang cheerfully through the open. The Declaration of Independence was to be read by the lawyer, who might be seen in the pavilion wiping his brow in anticipation of this exciting duty. A tribe of little girls, who were to sing national airs, were even now climbing into the muslin-draped seats of the lumber-wagon allotted them.

It was to be a great day for Aguilar! People from Santa Clara and Hastings and Gulnare were arriving in all manner of equipages. Mexican vehicles made a solid stockade along the west of the track. In the upper benches of the pavilion were ranged the flower and chivalry of the town – the families of the mine boss, the liveryman, the lawyer, the schoolmaster and several visiting personages. Jane, in her gray gown, was among them; beside her sat Lola, with Edith May Jonas.

"And did you think going away to school would make her different?" inquired Ana of her brother. "What should it do to her, 'Andro? Make her white like Miss Jonas? Vaya! Lola is only a Mexican!"

"She is not ashamed to be one, either!" cried Alejandro, accepting Ana's tacit imputation of some inferiority in their race. "And she is white enough," he added, regarding Lola as she sat smiling and talking, with the boughy eaves making little shadows across the rim of her broad straw hat.

"Who said she was ashamed?" asked Ana, with suspicious suavity. "You hear words that have not been spoken. I tell you of your faults, hermano mio, because I love you!"

Alejandro turned off in a sulk, and, leaving Ana to her own resources, went toward the place where the ponies and burros were tethered. It was comparatively lonely here, and Alejandro began to make friends with a disconsolate burro who was bewailing his fate in a series of lamentable sounds.

"Ha, bribon!" he said, pinching the burro's ears. "What is the use of wasting breath? Sus, sus, amigo!" The burro began to buck and Alejandro stepped back. As he did so he saw approaching him from behind the wagons a man in tattered garments, with a hat dragged over his eyes, and a great mass of furzy yellow beard.

"Here, you!" said this person. "Oh, you're Mexican! Ya lo veo– "

"Me, I spik English all ri'!" retorted Alejandro, with dignity. "Spik English if you want. I it onnerstan'."

"I see. Well, look here!" He withdrew a folded paper from his pocket. "I want you to take this note over to that lady in the gray dress in the pavilion. Sabe 'pavilion'? All right! Don't let any one else see it. Just hand it to her quietly and tell her the gentleman's waiting."

Alejandro took the note reluctantly. Why should he put himself at the behest of this vagabundo who impeached his English? The man, however, had an eye on him. It was an eye which Alejandro felt to be impelling. He decided to take the note to the lady in gray.

Jane, as Alejandro smuggled the paper into her hand, caught a glimpse of the writing and felt her heart sink. Lola and Edith May Jonas were whispering together. They had not noticed Alejandro.

"The man is waiting," said the boy, in her ear.

Jane touched Lola. "Keep my seat, dear," she said. "Some one wants to speak to me." And she followed Alejandro across the field.

Alejandro's vagabundo came forward to meet her with an air of light cordiality. His voice was the voice which had greeted her first from the steps of the prairie-schooner in which Lola's mother lay dead.

"It's me!" conceded Mr. Keene, pleasantly. "In rather poor shape, as you see. It's always darkest before dawn! You're considerable changed, ma'am – and to the better. I would hardly have known you. Is that girl in the big white hat Lola? Well, well! Now, ma'am I'll tell you why I'm here."

He proceeded to speak of an opportunity of immediate fortune which was open to him, after prolonged disaster, if only the sum of five hundred dollars might be forthcoming. A friend of his in Pony Gulch had sent him glowing reports of the region. "All I want is a grub-stake," said Mr. Keene, "and I'm sure to win!"

"I haven't that much money in the world!" said Jane.

Keene sighed. "Well, I hoped you'd be able to lend me a hand, but if you can't, you can't! There seems to be nothing for me but to go back North, and try to earn something to start on. I guess it'd be well for me to take Lola along. She's nearly grown now, and they need help the worst kind in the miners' boarding-house where I stay up in Cripple. I told the folks that keep it – I owe 'em considerable – that I'd bring back my daughter with me to assist 'em in the dining-room, and they said all right, that'd suit 'em. Wages up there are about the highest thing in sight. Equal to the altitude. And it'll give me a chance to look round."

Jane was staring at him. "You would do that?" she breathed. "You'd take that delicate girl up there to wait on a lot of rough miners? I've worked for her and loved her and sheltered her from everything! She's not fit for any such life! She sha'n't go!"

Keene had been touched at first. At Jane's last assertion, however, he began to look sulky.

"Well, I guess it's for me to say what she shall do!" he signified. "I guess it's not against the law or the prophets for a daughter to assist her father when he's in difficulties. And Lola'll recognize her duty. I'll just go over yonder to the pavilion, ma'am, and see what she says."

CHAPTER FIVE

DESTINY PRESSES

Jane stood confounded. Her aghast mind, following Mr. Keene's project, seemed to see him rakishly ascending the pavilion steps, among a wondering throng, and making way to Lola as she sat, happy and honored, with her friends. Jane had a sharp prevision of Lola's face when her father should appear before her, so different from the tender ideal of him which she had cherished, so intent upon himself, so bent upon shattering with his first word to his child all those visions of unselfish kindness and generosity which had made her thoughts of him beautiful.

Jane stood confounded. Her aghast mind, following Mr. Keene's project, seemed to see him rakishly ascending the pavilion steps, among a wondering throng, and making way to Lola as she sat, happy and honored, with her friends. Jane had a sharp prevision of Lola's face when her father should appear before her, so different from the tender ideal of him which she had cherished, so intent upon himself, so bent upon shattering with his first word to his child all those visions of unselfish kindness and generosity which had made her thoughts of him beautiful.

Lola would go with him. She would rise and leave her home, friends and happy prospects to follow him to whatever life he might judge best, however rough, however wild. In ordinary circumstances Jane could not deny to herself that this course would be the right course for a daughter; that such an one would do well to succor a father's failings, to add hope to his despondency and love to the mitigation of his trials. But Mr. Keene was not despondent, nor were his trials of a sort which might not easily be tempered by something like industry on his own part. He was frankly idle. He loved better than simple work the precarious excitement of prospecting – an occupation which, except in isolated and accidental instances, cannot be pursued to any good save with the aid of science and capital.