Chapter XXVII

At the end of the week Dona Trinidad died suddenly. She was sitting on the green bench, dispensing charities, when her head fell back gently, and the light went out. No death ever had been more peaceful, no soul ever had been better prepared; but wailing grief went after her. Poor Don Guillermo sank in a heap as if some one had felled him, Reinaldo wept loudly, and Prudencia was not to be consoled. Chonita was away on her horse when it happened, galloping over the hills. Servants were sent for her immediately, and met her when she was within an hour or two of home. As she entered the sala, Don Guillermo, Reinaldo, and Prudencia literally flung themselves upon her; and she stood like a rock, and supported them. She had loved her mother, but it had always been her lot to prop other people; she never had had a chance to lean.

All that night and next day she was closely engaged with the members of the agonized household, even visiting the grief-stricken Indians at times. On the second night she went to the room where her mother lay with all the pomp of candles and crosses, and bade the Indian watchers, crouching like buzzards about the corpse, to go for a time. She sank into a chair beside the dead, and wondered at the calmness of her heart. She was not conscious of any feeling stronger than regret. She tried to realize the irrevocableness of death,--that the mother who had been so kindly an influence in her life had gone out of it. But the knowledge brought no grief. She felt only the necessity for alleviating the grief of the others; that was her part.

The door opened. She drew her breath suddenly. She knew that it was Estenega. He sat down beside her and took her hand and held it, without a word, for hours. Gradually she leaned toward him, although without touching him. And after a time tears came.

He went his way the next morning, but he wrote to her before he left, and again from Monterey, and then from the North. She only answered once, and then with only a line.

But the line was this:

"Write to me until you have forgotten me."

One day she brought me a package and asked me to take it to Valencia. "It is an ointment," she said,--"one of old Brigida's" (a witch who lived on the cliffs and concocted wondrous specifics from herbs). "Tell her to use it and her hair will grow again."

And that was the only sign of penitence I was permitted to see.

Then for a long interval there came no word from Estenega.