Читать книгу Chata and Chinita. A Novel онлайн

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In truth they were not quite alone. Chinita had half-sulkily, half-defiantly, crept after Doña Feliz, and had sunk down in her usual crouching attitude within the shadow of the wall. She would have preferred to follow Don Rafael and the General in their rounds, but she knew that was impracticable; Pedro would have stopped her at the gate, and sent her to Florencia, or kept her close beside him,—and so even the inferior pleasure of seeing and listening to the less attractive stranger would have been denied her. Chinita was an imaginative child; she used sometimes to stand upon the balcony with Chata, and gaze and gaze far away into the blue which seemed to lie beyond the farthest hills, and wonder vaguely what strange creatures lived there. Sometimes her wild imagination pictured such uncouth monsters, such terrifying shapes, that she herself was seized with nervous tremblings, and Chata and Rosario would clasp each other and cry out in fright; but oftener she peopled that world with cavaliers such as she had occasionally seen, and stately dames such as she imagined Doña Isabel and the niña Herlinda must be,—for the accidental mention of those names was as potent as would have been the smoke of opium to fill her brain with dreams. By the sight of Don José Ramirez in his picturesque apparel, part of these vague dreams seemed realized; and even the quiet figure of Don Vicente and the sound of his stranger voice had the charm of novelty. She placed herself where she could best see his face, with infantile philosophy contenting herself with the next best where the actual pleasure desired was unattainable. She was very quiet, for she had naturally the Indian stealthiness of movement, and she had besides a vague instinct that her presence upon the corridor might be forbidden. Still she did not feel herself in any sense an intruder; she felt as a petted animal may be supposed to do, that she had a perfect right in any spot from which she was not driven.