Ramona. Helen Hunt Jackson

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СКАЧАТЬ You put the irons on the fire, to have them hot, to iron it as soon as it is partly dried. You will see it will not show that anything has happened to it.”

      “Will the Senora know?” asked poor Margarita, calmed and reassured, but still in mortal terror.

      Ramona turned her steady glance full on Margarita's face. “You would not be any happier if she were deceived, do you think?” she said gravely.

      “O Senorita, after it is mended? If it really does not show?” pleaded the girl.

      “I will tell her myself, and not till after it is mended,” said Ramona; but she did not smile.

      “Ah, Senorita,” said Margarita, deprecatingly, “you do not know what it is to have the Senora displeased with one.”

      “Nothing can be so bad as to be displeased with one's self,” retorted Ramona, as she walked swiftly away to her room with the linen rolled up under her arm. Luckily for Margarita's cause, she met no one on the way. The Senora had welcomed Father Salvierderra at the foot of the veranda steps, and had immediately closeted herself with him. She had much to say to him—much about which she wished his help and counsel, and much which she wished to learn from him as to affairs in the Church and in the country generally.

      Felipe had gone off at once to find Juan Canito, to see if everything were ready for the sheep-shearing to begin on the next day, if the shearers arrived in time; and there was very good chance of their coming in by sundown this day, Felipe thought, for he had privately instructed his messenger to make all possible haste, and to impress on the Indians the urgent need of their losing no time on the road.

      It had been a great concession on the Senora's part to allow the messenger to be sent off before she had positive intelligence as to the Father's movements. But as day after day passed and no news came, even she perceived that it would not do to put off the sheep-shearing much longer, or, as Juan Canito said, “forever.” The Father might have fallen ill; and if that were so, it might very easily be weeks before they heard of it, so scanty were the means of communication between the remote places on his route of visitation. The messenger had therefore been sent to summon the Temecula shearers, and Senora had resigned herself to the inevitable; piously praying, however, morning and night, and at odd moments in the day, that the Father might arrive before the Indians did. When she saw him coming up the garden-walk, leaning on the arm of her Felipe, on the afternoon of the very day which was the earliest possible day for the Indians to arrive, it was not strange that she felt, mingled with the joy of her greeting to her long-loved friend and confessor, a triumphant exultation that the saints had heard her prayers.

      In the kitchen all was bustle and stir. The coming of any guest into the house was a signal for unwonted activities there—even the coming of Father Salvierderra, who never knew whether the soup had force-meat balls in it or not, old Marda said; and that was to her the last extreme of indifference to good things of the flesh. “But if he will not eat, he can see,” she said; and her pride for herself and for the house was enlisted in setting forth as goodly an array of viands as her larder afforded, She grew suddenly fastidious over the size and color of the cabbages to go into the beef-pot, and threw away one whole saucepan full of rice, because Margarita had put only one onion in instead of two.

      “Have I not told you again and again that for the Father it is always two onions?” she exclaimed. “It is the dish he most favors of all; and it is a pity too, old as he is. It makes him no blood. It is good beef he should take now.”

      The dining-room was on the opposite side of the courtyard from the kitchen, and there was a perpetual procession of small messengers going back and forth between the rooms. It was the highest ambition of each child to be allowed to fetch and carry dishes in the preparation of the meals at all times; but when by so doing they could perchance get a glimpse through the dining-room door, open on the veranda, of strangers and guests, their restless rivalry became unmanageable. Poor Margarita, between her own private anxieties and her multiplied duties of helping in the kitchen, and setting the table, restraining and overseeing her army of infant volunteers, was nearly distraught; not so distraught, however, but that she remembered and found time to seize a lighted candle in the kitchen, run and set it before the statue of Saint Francis of Paula in her bedroom, hurriedly whispering a prayer that the lace might be made whole like new. Several times before the afternoon had waned she snatched a moment to fling herself down at the statue's feet and pray her foolish little prayer over again. We think we are quite sure that it is a foolish little prayer, when people pray to have torn lace made whole. But it would be hard to show the odds between asking that, and asking that it may rain, or that the sick may get well. As the grand old Russian says, what men usually ask for, when they pray to God, is, that two and two may not make four. All the same he is to be pitied who prays not. It was only the thought of that candle at Saint Francis's feet, which enabled Margarita to struggle through this anxious and unhappy afternoon and evening.

      At last supper was ready—a great dish of spiced beef and cabbage in the centre of the table; a tureen of thick soup, with force-meat balls and red peppers in it; two red earthen platters heaped, one with the boiled rice and onions, the other with the delicious frijoles (beans) so dear to all Mexican hearts; cut-glass dishes filled with hot stewed pears, or preserved quinces, or grape jelly; plates of frosted cakes of various sorts; and a steaming silver teakettle, from which went up an aroma of tea such as had never been bought or sold in all California, the Senora's one extravagance and passion.

      “Where is Ramona?” asked the Senora, surprised and displeased, as she entered the dining-room, “Margarita, go tell the Senorita that we are waiting for her.”

      Margarita started tremblingly, with flushed face, towards the door. What would happen now! “O Saint Francis,” she inwardly prayed, “help us this once!”

      “Stay,” said Felipe. “Do not call Senorita Ramona.” Then, turning to his mother, “Ramona cannot come. She is not in the house. She has a duty to perform for to-morrow,” he said; and he looked meaningly at his mother, adding, “we will not wait for her.”

      Much bewildered, the Senora took her seat at the head of the table in a mechanical way, and began, “But—” Felipe, seeing that questions were to follow, interrupted her: “I have just spoken with her. It is impossible for her to come;” and turning to Father Salvierderra, he at once engaged him in conversation, and left the baffled Senora to bear her unsatisfied curiosity as best she could.

      Margarita looked at Felipe with an expression of profound gratitude, which he did not observe, and would not in the least have understood; for Ramona had not confided to him any details of the disaster. Seeing him under her window, she had called cautiously to him, and said: “Dear Felipe, do you think you can save me from having to come to supper? A dreadful accident has happened to the altar-cloth, and I must mend it and wash it, and there is barely time before dark. Don't let them call me; I shall be down at the brook, and they will not find me, and your mother will be displeased.”

      This wise precaution of Ramona's was the salvation of everything, so far as the altar-cloth was concerned. The rents had proved far less serious than she had feared; the daylight held out till the last of them was skilfully mended; and just as the red beams of the sinking sun came streaming through the willow-trees at the foot of the garden, Ramona, darting down the garden, had reached the brook, and kneeling on the grass, had dipped the linen into the water.

      Her hurried working over the lace, and her anxiety, had made her cheeks scarlet. As she ran down the garden, her comb had loosened and her hair fallen to her waist. Stopping only to pick up the comb and thrust it in her pocket, she had sped on, as it would soon be too dark for her to see the stains on the linen, and it was going to be no small trouble to get them out without fraying the lace.

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