Chita: A Memory of Last Island Page 11

  The Shadow of the Tide.

  I.

  Carmen found that her little pet had been taught how to pray; for eachnight and morning when the devout woman began to make her orisons, thechild would kneel beside her, with little hands joined, and in a voicesweet and clear murmur something she had learned by heart. Much asthis pleased Carmen, it seemed to her that the child's prayers couldnot be wholly valid unless uttered in Spanish;--for Spanish washeaven's own tongue,--la lengua de Dios, el idioma de Dios; and sheresolved to teach her to say the Salve Maria and the Padre Nuestro inCastilian--also, her own favorite prayer to the Virgin, beginning withthe words, "Madre santisima, toda dulce y hermosa." . . .

  So Conchita--for a new name had been given to her with that terriblesea christening--received her first lessons in Spanish; and she proveda most intelligent pupil. Before long she could prattle to Feliu;--shewould watch for his return of evenings, and announce his coming with"Aqui viene mi papacito?"--she learned, too, from Carmen, many littlecaresses of speech to greet him with. Feliu's was not a joyous nature;he had his dark hours, his sombre days; yet it was rarely that he felttoo sullen to yield to the little one's petting, when she would leap upto reach his neck and to coax his kiss, with--"Dame un beso,papa!--asi;--y otro! otro! otro!" He grew to love her like hisown;--was she not indeed his own, since he had won her from death? Andnone had yet come to dispute his claim. More and more, with thepassing of weeks, months, seasons, she became a portion of his life--apart of all that he wrought for. At the first, he had had ahalf-formed hope that the little one might be reclaimed by relativesgenerous and rich enough to insist upon his acceptance of a handsomecompensation; and that Carmen could find some solace in a pleasantvisit to Barceloneta. But now he felt that no possible generositycould requite him for her loss; and with the unconscious selfishness ofaffection, he commenced to dread her identification as a great calamity.

  It was evident that she had been brought up nicely. She had prettyprim ways of drinking and eating, queer little fashions of sitting incompany, and of addressing people. She had peculiar notions aboutcolors in dress, about wearing her hair; and she seemed to have alreadyimbibed a small stock of social prejudices not altogether in harmonywith the republicanism of Viosca's Point. Occasional swarthyvisitors,--men of the Manilla settlements,--she spoke of contemptuouslyas negues-marrons; and once she shocked Carmen inexpressibly bystopping in the middle of her evening prayer, declaring that she wantedto say her prayers to a white Virgin; Carmen's Senora de Guadalupe wasonly a negra! Then, for the first time, Carmen spoke so crossly to thechild as to frighten her. But the pious woman's heart smote her thenext moment for that first harsh word;--and she caressed the motherlessone, consoled her, cheered her, and at last explained to her--I knownot how--something very wonderful about the little figurine, somethingthat made Chita's eyes big with awe. Thereafter she always regardedthe Virgin of Wax as an object mysterious and holy.

  And, one by one, most of Chita's little eccentricities were graduallyeliminated from her developing life and thought. More rapidly thanordinary children, because singularly intelligent, she learned to adaptherself to all the changes of her new environment,--retaining only thatindescribable something which to an experienced eye tells of hereditaryrefinement of habit and of mind:--a natural grace, a thorough-bred easeand elegance of movement, a quickness and delicacy of perception.

  She became strong again and active--active enough to play a great dealon the beach, when the sun was not too fierce; and Carmen made a canvasbonnet to shield her head and face. Never had she been allowed to playso much in the sun before; and it seemed to do her good, though herlittle bare feet and hands became brown as copper. At first, it mustbe confessed, she worried her foster-mother a great deal by variousqueer misfortunes and extraordinary freaks;--getting bitten by crabs,falling into the bayou while in pursuit of "fiddlers," or losingherself at the conclusion of desperate efforts to run races at nightwith the moon, or to walk to the "end of the world." If she could onlyonce get to the edge of the sky, she said, she "could climb up." Shewanted to see the stars, which were the souls of good little children;and she knew that God would let her climb up. "Just what I am afraidof!"--thought Carmen to herself;--"He might let her climb up,--a littleghost!" But one day naughty Chita received a terrible lesson,--alasting lesson,--which taught her the value of obedience.

  She had been particularly cautioned not to venture into a certain partof the swamp in the rear of the grove, where the weeds were very tall;for Carmen was afraid some snake might bite the child.

  But Chita's bird-bright eye had discerned a gleam of white in thatdirection; and she wanted to know what it was. The white could only beseen from one point, behind the furthest house, where the ground washigh. "Never go there," said Carmen; "there is a Dead Man there,--willbite you!" And yet, one day, while Carmen was unusually busy, Chitawent there.

  In the early days of the settlement, a Spanish fisherman had died; andhis comrades had built him a little tomb with the surplus of the samebricks and other material brought down the bayou for the constructionof Viosca's cottages. But no one, except perhaps some wandering duckhunter, had approached the sepulchre for years. High weeds and grasseswrestled together all about it, and rendered it totally invisible fromthe surrounding level of the marsh.

  Fiddlers swarmed away as Chita advanced over the moist soil, eachuplifting its single huge claw as it sidled off;--then frogs began toleap before her as she reached the thicker grass;--and long-leggedbrown insects sprang showering to right and left as she parted thetufts of the thickening verdure. As she went on, the bitter-weedsdisappeared;--jointed grasses and sinewy dark plants of a taller growthrose above her head: she was almost deafened by the storm of insectshrilling, and the mosquitoes became very wicked. All at oncesomething long and black and heavy wriggled almost from under her nakedfeet,--squirming so horribly that for a minute or two she could notmove for fright. But it slunk away somewhere, and hid itself; the weedsit had shaken ceased to tremble in its wake; and her courage returned.She felt such an exquisite and fearful pleasure in the gratification ofthat naughty curiosity! Then, quite unexpectedly--oh! what a start itgave her!--the solitary white object burst upon her view, leprous andghastly as the yawn of a cotton-mouth. Tombs ruin soon inLouisiana;--the one Chita looked upon seemed ready to topple down.There was a great ragged hole at one end, where wind and rain, andperhaps also the burrowing of crawfish and of worms, had loosened thebricks, and caused them to slide out of place. It seemed very blackinside; but Chita wanted to know what was there. She pushed her waythrough a gap in the thin and rotten line of pickets, and through sometall weeds with big coarse pink flowers;--then she crouched down onhands and knees before the black hole, and peered in. It was not soblack inside as she had thought; for a sunbeam slanted down through achink in the roof; and she could see!

  A brown head--without hair, without eyes, but with teeth, ever so manyteeth!--seemed to laugh at her; and close to it sat a Toad, the hugestshe had ever seen; and the white skin of his throat kept puffing outand going in. And Chita screamed and screamed, and fled in wildterror,--screaming all the way, till Carmen ran out to meet her andcarry her home. Even when safe in her adopted mother's arms, shesobbed with fright. To the vivid fancy of the child there seemed to besome hideous relation between the staring reptile and the browndeath's-head, with its empty eyes, and its nightmare-smile.

  The shock brought on a fever,--a fever that lasted several days, andleft her very weak. But the experience taught her to obey, taught herthat Carmen knew best what was for her good. It also caused her tothink a great deal. Carmen had told her that the dead people neverfrightened good little girls who stayed at home.

  --"Madrecita Carmen," she asked, "is my mamma dead?"

  --"Pobrecita! .... Yes, my angel. God called her to Him,--your darlingmother."

  --"Madrecita," she asked again,--her young eyes growing vast withhorror,--"is my own mamma now like That?" ... She pointed toward the
place of the white gleam, behind the great trees.

  --"No, no, no! my darling!" cried Carmen, appalled herself by theghastly question,--"your mamma is with the dear, good, loving God, wholives in the beautiful sky, above the clouds, my darling, beyond thesun!"

  But Carmen's kind eyes were full of tears; and the child read theirmeaning. He who teareth off the Mask of the Flesh had looked into herface one unutterable moment:--she had seen the brutal Truth, naked tothe bone!

  Yet there came to her a little thrill of consolation, caused by thewords of the tender falsehood; for that which she had discerned by daycould not explain to her that which she saw almost nightly in herslumber. The face, the voice, the form of her loving mother stilllived somewhere,--could not have utterly passed away; since the sweetpresence came to