Читать книгу Chata and Chinita. A Novel онлайн

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Don Rafael wore a gloomy face. A squad of soldiers had already been despatched for the horses; his own herders were lassooing them in the pastures, and they were presently driven past the hacienda gates, plunging and snorting. He felt that had he not in Doña Isabel’s name yielded them, they would have been forcibly seized; yet his conscience troubled him. The night before he had drunk too much; the wine had strangely affected him,—he had been maudlin and garrulous. These were times when no prudent man should talk unnecessarily, and especially to such a listener as the adventurer General José Ramirez.

The neighing and whinnying of the horses, the hollow ringing of their unshod hoofs upon the road-way, the shouts of the men, the shrill voices of the women, all combined to fill the air with unwonted sounds, and brought the family of the administrador early from their beds. As Vicente Gonzales, after shaking hands coldly with Don Rafael, rode away at the head of his band, he half turned in his saddle to glance at Doña Isabel’s balcony. At the rear of the house, a faint glow was beginning to steal up the sky and touch the tops of the trees which rose above the garden wall, and tinge with opal the square towers of the church; he remembered the good Padre Francisco, and piously breathed a prayer for his soul. The drooping rose on the balcony of what he knew to be Doña Isabel’s chamber seemed the very emblem of death and desolation. With a sigh he pulled his hat over his eyes and rode on; but the General, José Ramirez, who had been longer in his adieus, caught sight of Doña Rita in the corner balcony, leaning over her two half-dressed children. Their two heads were close together, their laughing faces side by side, their four eyes making points of dancing light behind the black bars of the balcony railing.