“Have no fears, Don Ruis. Besides, our house is but a little bird’s flight from here. I could have walked, if need were.”
Ruis remounted. “May I not accompany you?” he asked.
“Tomorrow,” she answered; and for the first time she smiled. For tomorrow in a Cuban mouth means anything except what it expresses. And as she said it, Ruis smiled too.
“How do you know my name?” he inquired.
“We—my mother and I—we are your neighbors.”
“Ah, Doña Fausta, in that case, I pray you make my duty to the lady your mother, and beg of her a permission that I may do so myself.”
Again she smiled. “Tomorrow,” she lisped, and whipped her horse.
Ruis raised his hat as before, and bowed.
“God be with you, Doña Fausta.”
“And with you, Don Ruis.”
The next morning he was on the red road again, but no maiden in distress was discoverable that day. The sun chased him home, and as he lounged through high noon in the cool of the veranda, he marvelled at his earlier boredom. Later on he sent for one of the overseers and questioned him minutely. Whatever information he may have gleaned, it was presumably satisfactory. He watched the sun expire in throes of crimson and gamboge, and night unloose her leash of stars. Then he took horse again, and, aided by information received, in ten minutes he was at Doña Fausta’s door. It was a shabby door, he noticed, the portal of a still shabbier abode, and even in the starlight he divined that if ever wealth had passed that way, it had long since taken flight. The noise of hoofs brought the girl to the porch.
“At your feet, Doña Fausta,” he said, and raised his hat. “I am come to offer my homage to the lady your mother, and to you, if I may.”
“Who is it?” called a voice from within; and then, for ampler satisfaction of the inquiry, a lean old woman, gray of hair, unkempt, wrinkled, and bent, appeared in the doorway and fastened on Ruis two glittering, inquisitorial eyes.
“The son of Don Jayme,” the girl answered; “he wishes you well.” With a perfectly perceptible shrug the woman turned and disappeared.
“She has suffered much,” the girl explained. “Don Ruis, you are welcome.”
Ruis dismounted and gave the horse a lash with his whip. “It will be pleasant to walk back,” he said, as the horse started. “Mariquita can find her way home unguided.” He smiled; he was pleased with himself: and the girl smiled too. “Tell me,” he added, “do you live here always?”
“Always, Don Ruis.”
“Ah, you should come to Spain. You would love Madrid, and more than Madrid would you love Grenada and Seville. Santiago is a little, a very little, like Seville. You go there often, do you not?”
“But seldom, Don Ruis.”
“To the fiestas, surely.”
“To go to the fiestas one needs a brave gown, and I have none.”
“I,” said Ruis, “I am tired of fiestas, and truly at Santiago they cannot be very grand. After all, you miss little. Ah, Doña Fausta, you should see them in Spain. And,” he continued, in a tone that was almost a whisper, “you should let Spain see you.”
In this wise the two young people talked together. And when the fractions of an hour had passed them by unmarked, the old woman appeared again on the porch, and Ruis withdrew. On reaching the hacienda he went to the room which he occupied, and tore into bits the scrappy letters of his Madridlene. “To the deuce,” he muttered, as he stretched himself out beneath the mosquito netting, “to the deuce with thin women and the communion of souls.”
The day following Ruis did not venture to make a second visit, but he loitered on the red road both in the clear forenoon and in the slumbering dusk; but he loitered in vain. On the morrow his success was not greater: yet on the succeeding day his heart gave an exultant throb; she was there. It was not necessary for him to be verbose. His manner was caressing as the air, and her eyes were eloquent, almost as eloquent as his own. Before they parted they had agreed upon a tryst, a spot wholly sheltered by cedars and tamarinds, through which a brook ran, and where tendrils with a thousand coils embraced the willing trees as would they smother them with flowers. And there each day they met. Love with them was like the sumptuous vegetation in which they moved—swift of growth. To Ruis, Fausta was the most perfect of playmates, a comrade that each day brought him some fresh surprise. She was at once naive and imperious, docile and self-willed. He noticed that she was friends with the mimosa, for once, when she touched the sensitive leaves, they did not shrink, the timidity was gone. And once, when she spoke of her father, who had been shot as a conspirator, her anger was like a storm on the coast, glorious and terrible to behold. She was sweet indeed, yet heat sugar and abruptly it boils. To Fausta, Ruis was present and future besides. As for the past she had none save in so far as it had been a preparation for him. He had told her that she should be countess, though for that she cared nothing, except that in being countess she would be his wife as well. And so over constant meetings two months went by. In their Eden, Ruis at first was usually the earliest to arrive, and when he heard her footfall he would hasten to meet her and hold her in his arms.
“Speak to me, Fausta,” he would say; “I love your voice: look at me; I love your eyes. How fair love is when we are together and alone! Is it not exquisite to speak of love when all else
