Edward burst out laughing. The little creature stopped abruptly and scanned his face.
“Do not tease her,” I said.
Quick as a flash she veered around upon me. “He does not tease me,” she said angrily in Spanish; “and, besides, what if he does? I like it.” She looked at me with gleaming eyes and stamped her foot.
“What a little tempest!” said Christine.
Then Edward, man-like, began to explain. “You could not look much like this lady, Felipa,” he said, “because you are so dark, you know.”
“Am I dark?”
“Very dark; but many people are dark, of course; and for my part I always liked dark eyes,” said this mendacious person.
“Do you like my eyes?” asked Felipa anxiously.
“Indeed I do: they are like the eyes of a dear little calf I once owned when I was a boy.”
The child was satisfied, and went back to her place beside Christine. “Yes, I shall wear robes like this,” she said dreamily, drawing the flowing drapery over her knees clad in the little linen trousers, and scanning the effect; “they would trail behind me—so.” Her bare feet peeped out below the hem, and again we all laughed, the little brown toes looked so comical coming out from the silk and the snowy embroideries. She came down to reality again, looked at us, looked at herself, and for the first time seemed to comprehend the difference. Then suddenly she threw herself down on the ground like a little animal, and buried her head in her arms. She would not speak, she would not look up: she only relaxed one arm a little to take in Drollo, and then lay motionless. Drollo looked at us out of one eye solemnly from his uncomfortable position, as much as to say: “No use; leave her to me.” So after a while we went away and left them there.
That evening I heard a low knock at my door. “Come in,” I said, and Felipa entered. I hardly knew her. She was dressed in a flowered muslin gown which had probably belonged to her mother, and she wore her grandmother’s stockings and large baggy slippers; on her mat of curly hair was perched a high-crowned, stiff white cap adorned with a ribbon streamer; and her lank little neck, coming out of the big gown, was decked with a chain of large sea-beans, like exaggerated lockets. She carried a Cuban fan in her hand which was as large as a parasol, and Drollo, walking behind, fairly clanked with the chain of sea-shells which she had wound around him from head to tail. The droll tableau and the supreme pride on Felipa’s countenance overcame me, and I laughed aloud. A sudden cloud of rage and disappointment came over the poor child’s face: she threw her cap on the floor and stamped on it; she tore off her necklace and writhed herself out of her big flowered gown, and, running to Drollo, nearly strangled him in her fierce efforts to drag off his shell chains. Then, a half-dressed, wild little phantom, she seized me by the skirts and dragged me toward the looking-glass. “You are not pretty either,” she cried. “Look at yourself! look at yourself!”
“I did not mean to laugh at you, Felipa,” I said gently; “I would not laugh at any one; and it is true I am not pretty, as you say. I can never be pretty, child; but, if you will try to be more gentle, I could teach you how to dress yourself so that no one would laugh at you again. I could make you a little bright-barred skirt and a scarlet bodice: you could help, and that would teach you to sew. But a little girl who wants all this done for her must be quiet and good.”
“I am good,” said Felipa; “as good as everything.”
The tears still stood in her eyes, but her anger was forgotten: she improvised a sort of dance around my room, followed by Drollo dragging his twisted chain, stepping on it with his big feet, and finally winding himself up into a knot around the chair-legs.
“Couldn’t we make Drollo something too? dear old Drollo!” said Felipa, going to him and squeezing him in an enthusiastic embrace. I used to wonder how his poor ribs stood it: Felipa used him as a safety-valve for her impetuous feelings.
She kissed me good night, and then asked for “the other lady.”
“Go to bed, child,” I said; “I will give her your good night.”
“But I want to kiss her too,” said Felipa.
She lingered at the door and would not go; she played with the latch, and made me nervous with its clicking; at last I ordered her out. But on opening my door half an hour afterward there she was sitting on the floor outside in the darkness, she and Drollo, patiently waiting. Annoyed, but unable to reprove her, I wrapped the child in my shawl and carried her out into the moonlight, where Christine and Edward were strolling to and fro under the pines. “She will not go to bed, Christine, without kissing you,” I explained.
“Funny little monkey!” said my friend, passively allowing the embrace.
“Me too,” said Edward, bending down. Then I carried my bundle back satisfied.
The next day Felipa and I in secret began our labors; hers consisted in worrying me out of my life and spoiling material—mine in keeping my temper and trying to sew. The result, however, was satisfactory, never mind how we got there. I led Christine out one afternoon: Edward followed. “Do you like tableaux?” I said. “There is one I have arranged for you.”
Felipa sat on the edge of the low, square-curbed Spanish well, and Drollo stood behind her, his great yellow body and solemn head serving as a background. She wore a brown petticoat barred with bright colors, and a little scarlet bodice fitting her slender waist closely; a chemisette of soft cream-color with loose sleeves covered her neck and arms, and set off the dark hues of her cheeks and eyes; and around her curly hair a red scarf was twisted, its fringed edges forming a drapery at the back of the head, which, more than anything else, seemed to bring out the latent character of her face. Brown moccasins, red stockings, and a quantity of bright beads completed her costume.
“By Jove!” cried Edward, “the little thing is almost pretty.”
Felipa understood this, and a great light came into her face: forgetting her pose, she bounded forward to Christine’s side. “I am pretty, then?” she said with exultation; “I am pretty, then, after all? For now you yourself have said it—have said it.”
“No, Felipa,” I interposed, “the gentleman said it.” For the child had a curious habit of confounding the two identities which puzzled me then as now. But this afternoon, this happy afternoon, she was content, for she was allowed to sit at Christine’s feet and look up into her fair face unmolested. I was forgotten, as usual.
“It is always so,” I said to myself. But cynicism, as Mr. Aldrich says, is a small brass field-piece that eventually bursts and kills the artilleryman. I knew this, having been blown up myself more than once; so I went back to my painting and forgot the world. Our world down there on the edge of the salt-marsh, however, was a small one: when two persons went out of it there was a vacuum.
One morning Felipa came sadly to my side. “They have gone away,” she said.
“Yes, child.”
“Down to the beach to spend all the day.”
“Yes, I know it.”
“And without me!”
This was the climax. I looked up. Her eyes were dry, but there was a hollow look of disappointment in her face that made her seem old; it was as though for an instant you caught what her old-woman face would be half a century on.
“Why did they not take me?” she said. “I am pretty now: she herself said it.”
“They can not always take you, Felipa,” I replied, giving up the point as to who had said it.
“Why not? I am pretty now: she herself said it,” persisted the child. “In these clothes, you know: she herself said it. The clothes of the son of Pedro you will never see more: they are burned.”
“Burned?”
“Yes, burned,” replied Felipa composedly. “I carried them out on the barren and burned them. Drollo singed his paw. They burned quite nicely. But they are gone, and I am pretty now, and yet they did not take me! What shall I do?”
“Take thes
e colors and make me a picture,” I suggested. Generally, this was a prized privilege, but to-day it did not attract; she turned away, and a few moments after I saw her going down to the end of the plank-walk, where she stood gazing wistfully toward the ocean. There she staid all day, going into camp with Drollo, and refusing to come to dinner in spite of old Dominga’s calls and beckonings. At last the patient old grandmother went down herself to the end of the long walk where they were, with some bread and venison on a plate. Felipa ate but little, but Drollo, after waiting politely until she had finished, devoured everything that was left in his calmly hungry way, and then sat back on his haunches with one paw on the plate, as though for the sake of memory. Drollo’s hunger was of the chronic kind; it seemed impossible either to assuage it or to fill him. There was a gaunt leanness about him which I am satisfied no amount of food could ever fatten. I think he knew it too, and that accounted for his resignation. At length, just before sunset, the boat returned, floating up the marsh with the tide, old Bartolo steering and managing the brown sails. Felipa sprang up joyfully; I thought she would spring into the boat in her eagerness. What did she receive for her long vigil? A short word or two; that was all. Christine and Edward had quarreled.
How do lovers quarrel ordinarily? But I should not ask that, for these were no ordinary lovers: they were extraordinary.
“You should not submit to her caprices so readily,” I said the next day while strolling on the barren with Edward. (He was not so much cast down, however, as he might have been.)
“I adore the very ground her foot touches, Kitty.”
“I know it. But how will it end?”
“I will tell you: some of these days I shall win her, and then—she will adore me.”
Here Felipa came running after us, and Edward immediately challenged her to a race: a game of romps began. If Christine had been looking from her window she might have thought he was not especially disconsolate over her absence; but she was not looking. She was never looking out of anything or for anybody. She was always serenely content where she was. Edward and Felipa strayed off among the pine-trees, and gradually I lost sight of them. But as I sat sketching an hour afterward Edward came into view, carrying the child in his arms. I hurried to meet them.
“I shall never forgive myself,” he said; “the little thing has fallen and injured her foot badly, I fear.”
“I do not care at all,” said Felipa; “I like to have it hurt. It is my foot, isn’t it?”
These remarks she threw at me defiantly, as though I had laid claim to the member in question. I could not help laughing.
“The other lady will not laugh,” said the child proudly. And in truth Christine, most unexpectedly, took up the rôle of nurse. She carried Felipa to her own room—for we each had a little cell opening out of the main apartment—and as white-robed Charity she shone with new radiance. “Shone” is the proper word; for through the open door of the dim cell, with the dark little face of Felipa on her shoulder, her white robe and skin seemed fairly to shine, as white lilies shine on a dark night. The old grandmother left the child in our care and watched our proceedings wistfully, very much as a dog watches the human hands that extract the thorn from the swollen foot of her puppy. She was grateful and asked no questions; in fact, thought was not one of her mental processes. She did not think much; she felt. As for Felipa, the child lived in rapture during those days in spite of her suffering. She scarcely slept at all—she was too happy: I heard her voice rippling on through the night, and Christine’s low replies. She adored her beautiful nurse.
The fourth day came: Edward Bowne walked into the cell. “Go out and breathe the fresh air for an hour or two,” he said in the tone more of a command than a request.
“The child will never consent,” replied Christine sweetly.
“Oh, yes, she will; I will stay with her,” said the young man, lifting the feverish little head on his arm and passing his hand softly over the bright eyes.
“Felipa, do you not want me?” said Christine, bending down.
“He stays; it is all the same,” murmured the child.
“So it is.—Go, Christine,” said Edward with a little smile of triumph.
Without a word Christine left the cell. But she did not go to walk; she came to my room, and, throwing herself on my bed, fell in a moment into a deep sleep, the reaction after her three nights of wakefulness. When she awoke it was long after dark, and I had relieved Edward in his watch.
“You will have to give it up,” he said as our lily came forth at last with sleep-flushed cheeks and starry eyes shielded from the light. “The spell is broken; we have all been taking care of Felipa, and she likes one as well as the other.”
Which was not true, in my case at least, since Felipa had openly derided my small strength when I lifted her, and beat off the sponge with which I attempted to bathe her hot face. “They” used no sponges, she said, only their nice cool hands; and she wished “they” would come and take care of her again. But Christine had resigned in toto. If Felipa did not prefer her to all others, then Felipa should not have her; she was not a common nurse. And indeed she was not. Her fair face, ideal grace, cooing voice, and the strength of her long arms and flexible hands, were like magic to the sick, and—distraction to the well; the well in this case being Edward Bowne looking in at the door.
“You love them very much, do you not, Felipa?” I said one day when the child was sitting up for the first time in a cushioned chair.
“Ah, yes; it is so strong when they carry me,” she replied. But it was Edward who carried her.
“He is very strong,” I said.
“Yes; and their long soft hair, with the smell of roses in it too,” said Felipa dreamily. But the hair was Christine’s.
“I shall love them for ever, and they will love me for ever,” continued the child. “Drollo too.” She patted the dog’s head as she spoke, and then concluded to kiss him on his little inch of forehead; next she offered him all her medicines and lotions in turn, and he smelled at them grimly. “He likes to know what I am taking,” she explained.
I went on: “You love them, Felipa, and they are fond of you. They will always remember you, no doubt.”
“Remember!” cried Felipa, starting up from her cushions like a Jack-in-the-box. “They are not going away? Never! never!”
“But of course they must go some time, for—”
But Felipa was gone. Before I could divine her intent she had flung herself out of her chair down on the floor, and was crawling on her hands and knees toward the outer room. I ran after her, but she reached the door before me, and, dragging her bandaged foot behind her, drew herself toward Christine. “You are not going away! You are not! you are not!” she sobbed, clinging to her skirts.
Christine was reading tranquilly; Edward stood at the outer door mending his fishing-tackle. The coolness between them remained, unwarmed by so much as a breath. “Run away, child; you disturb me,” said Christine, turning over a leaf. She did not even look at the pathetic little bundle at her feet. Pathetic little bundles must be taught some time what ingratitude deserves.
“How can she run, lame as she is?” said Edward from the doorway.
“You are not going away, are you? Tell me you are not,” sobbed Felipa in a passion of tears, beating on the floor with one hand, and with the other clinging to Christine.
“I am not going,” said Edward. “Do not sob so, you poor little thing!”
She crawled to him, and he took her up in his arms and soothed her into stillness again; then he carried her out on the barren for a breath of fresh air.
“It is a most extraordinary thing how that child confounds you two,” I said. “It is a case of color-blindness, as it were—supposing you two were colors.”
“Which we are not,” replied Christine carelessly. “Do not stray off into mysticism, Catherine.”
“I
t is not mysticism; it is a study of character—”
“Where there is no character,” replied my friend.
I gave it up, but I said to myself: “Fate, in the next world make me one of those long, lithe, light-haired women, will you? I want to see how it feels.”
Felipa’s foot was well again, and spring had come. Soon we must leave our lodge on the edge of the pine-barren, our outlook over the salt-marsh, with the river sweeping up twice a day, bringing in the briny odors of the ocean; soon we should see no more the eagles far above us or hear the night-cry of the great owls, and we must go without the little fairy flowers of the barren, so small that a hundred of them scarcely made a tangible bouquet, yet what beauty! what sweetness! In my portfolio were sketches and studies of the salt-marsh, and in my heart were hopes. Somebody says somewhere: “Hope is more than a blessing; it is a duty and a virtue.” But I fail to appreciate preserved hope—hope put up in cans and served out in seasons of depression. I like it fresh from the tree. And so when I hope it is hope, and not that well-dried, monotonous cheerfulness which makes one long to throw the persistent smilers out of the window. Felipa danced no more on the barrens; her illness had toned her down; she seemed content to sit at our feet while we talked, looking up dreamily into our faces, but no longer eagerly endeavoring to comprehend. We were there; that was enough.
“She is growing like a reed,” I said; “her illness has left her weak.”
“-Minded,” suggested Christine.
At this moment Felipa stroked the lady’s white hand tenderly and laid her brown cheek against it.
“Do you not feel reproached?” I said.
“Why? Must we give our love to whoever loves us? A fine parcel of paupers we should all be, wasting our inheritance in pitiful small change! Shall I give a thousand beggars a half hour’s happiness, or shall I make one soul rich his whole life long?”
Constance Fenimore Woolson Page 38