Mariquita Part 23

The two women drove the battered old fellow off, Ginger laughed and said:

"Aren't men helpless?"

Sarella was full of admiration of her prowess.

"Well, _you're_ not," she said.

"Not me. But, Dad won't find Larry as much surprised as he thinks. It's been in the silly chap's head (or where folks keep their ideas that have no head) this three weeks. _I_ saw, though he never said a lot--"

Overpowered by curiosity, Sarella asked boldly what he did say.

"Oh, just rubbish," Ginger answered laughing; "you're as clean as a tablet of scented soap, anyway," says he, first. Then he said, "Ginger, I've known pretty girls with hair not near so nice as yours--not a quarter so much of it." Another time he asked if I kept a tooth-brush.

"I thought so," says he, quite loving; "your teeth's as white as nuts with the brown skin off, and as regular as a row of tombstones in an undertaker's window. I never _did_ mind freckles as true as I stand here ..." and stuff like that. But the strongest ever he said was, "Pastry! What's pastry when a woman don't know how to make it. I'd as soon eat second-hand toast. Yours, Ginger, is like what the angels make, _I_ should say, at Thanksgiving for the little angels.'"

"Did he, really!" said Sarella, feeling quite sure that Larry would not "scoot."

"I told him," Ginger explained calmly, that if he didn't quit such senseless talk _he'd_ never get any more of my pastry. He looked so down that I gave him a slice of pumpkin pie when he was leaving. "The pastry," says I, "will mind you of me, and the pumpkin of yourself." But he got his own back, for he just grinned and said, "Yes, I'll think o'

them together, Ginger, for the pie and the pumpkin belongs together, don't they?"

Sarella laughed and expressed her belief that after all Jack's emba.s.sy was rather superfluous.

"Maybe so. But I knew he'd hate it, and he deserved it for seeming so unbelieving. If my mother had been _lovely_ I'd have been born plain; it's not _him_ as should think me too ugly for any young fellow to fancy. I daresay I shouldn't have decided to take Larry if Miss Mariquita hadn't sent that message. I was afraid she'd think me a fool.

Here's Larry coming round the corner, looking as if he'd been stealing his mother's sugar."

"He's only thinking of your pastry," said Sarella. "I'll slip off. May I be told when it's all settled?"

"Yes, certainly, Miss Sarella, and I'm sure I wish all that's best to the Boss and yourself. It's not everyone could manage him, but _you_ will. Poor Miss Mariquita never could. She was too good."

With these mixed compliments Sarella had to content herself.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

When she answered Mariquita's letter she was to report not only the judicial end of the plumiverous and specked hens, but the betrothal of Larry Burke and Ginger. "Nothing," she wrote, "but his dread of your displeasure could have overcome his dread of what the other cowboys would say on hearing of his proposing. After all, he has more sense than some sharp fellows who follow at last the advice they know is worth least...."

In her next letter Sarella said:

"I am to be made a Catholic on Monday next; so when you're saying your prayers (and that's all day) you can be thinking of me. Perhaps I gave in to it first to satisfy your father; but even then I thought 'if it makes me a bit more like Mariquita he'll get a better bargain in me.' I shan't ever be at all like you, but I shall be of the same Religion as you, and I know by this time that it will do me good. It's all a bit too big for me to understand, but I like what I do understand, and Sister Aquinas says I shall grow into it. Clothes, she says, fit better when they're worn a bit, and sit easier. She says, 'It has changed you, my dear child, already; you are gentler, and kinder.' She said another thing, 'Your husband has been a Catholic all his life, but you will gradually make him a better one. He is a very sensible man, and he can't see you learning to be a Catholic and not want to learn what it really means himself. He is too honest.' She likes your father a lot, and never bothers him. 'I know,' she said, 'you will not bother him either. Some earnest Catholics do bother their men-folks terribly about religious things--and for all the good they seem to do, might be only half as earnest and have a better effect.' I make my First Communion the day after I'm received. And, Mariquita, my dear, we are to be married that day week. Your father will fetch you home, and mind, _mind_, you come. I should never forgive you if you didn't. Shall I have Ginger for a bridesmaid? I know some brides do choose ugly ones to make themselves look better. The cowboys (this is a dead secret told me by Ginger) have subscribed to give us a wedding-present. I hope it won't be one of those clocks like black-marble monuments with a round gilt eye in it. I expect the cowboys laugh at both these marriages. But they rather like them.

They make a lark, and they never do dislike anything they can laugh at.

They certainly all look twice as amiably at me when we meet about the place since they _knew_ I was going to be married. And Ginger finds them so friendly and pleasant I expect she thinks she might, if she had liked, have married the lot. But that's different. I daresay you notice that I write more cheerfully, now it is settled. Yes, I do. I like him a great deal more than at first. It began when he gave in about what you wanted. I really believe I shall make him happy--and I fancy I think of that more--I mean less of his making me happy. And, Mariquita, it _is_ good of me to have wanted you to be let alone to be a nun if you thought it right, because, oh dear, how I should like you to be living near or at the next range! Before I got to know you, it was just the opposite. I hoped you'd get a husband of your own and _quit_; I did. I thought you'd hate your father marrying again, and (if you stayed on here) would be looking disapproval all day long, and perhaps I thought you would not be best pleased at not getting all his money when he died. (I think when people go to Confession they ought to confess things like that. Do they?) Oh, Mariquita, you will be missed. But I'd rather miss you, and know you were being what you felt yourself called away to, than think I had helped to have you interfered with...."

Mariquita, reading Sarella's letter, felt something new in her life, something strangely moving, that filled her eyes and heart with something also new--happy tears. The free gift of tenderness came newly to her; and, it may be, she had least of all looked for it from Sarella.

"'Do people,' she quoted to herself from Sarella _herself_, 'confess these things?' I will, anyway."

It hurt her to think that she who so loved justice and charity, must have been both uncharitable and unjust.

But can we agree? Had not Sarella's unforeseen tenderness been her own gift to her? Had Sarella brought tenderness with her from the East?

At the stranger's first coming Mariquita had not judged but _felt_ her, and her feeling (of which she herself knew very little) had been instinctively correct while it lasted.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

Of course Mariquita kept her promise of being present at her father's marriage. It had never occurred to her that she could be absent; it was a duty of respect that she owed to him, and a duty of fellow-womanhood that she owed to Sarella.

It amused her a little to hear that a certain Mrs. Kane was to be present, in a sort of maternal quality, and that Mr. Kane was to give the bride away as a sort of official father. Mr. Kane might have seen Sarella a dozen times--in the parlor of the convent, which she was much given to frequent. Mrs. Kane had, so far as Mariquita was aware, never seen her at all--except at Ma.s.s.

They were Kentuckians who had moved west some twelve years earlier than Sarella herself, and, though they had not made a fortune, were sufficiently well off to be rather leading members of the congregation.

Mrs. Kane's most outstanding characteristic was a genius for organizing bazaars, on a scale of ever-increasing importance; the first had been for the purchase of a harmonium, the last had been to raise funds for a new wing to the Convent; all her friends had prophesied failure for the first; no one had dared predict anything but dazzling success for the last. Mr. Kane was not less remarkable for his phenomenal success in the matter of whist-drives--and raffles. He would raffle the nose off your face if you would let him, and hand over an astonis.h.i.+ng sum to the church when he had done it, with the most exquisite satisfaction that the proceeding was not strictly legal.

Both the Kanes were extremely amusing, and no one could decide which was the more good-natured of the two. Of week-day afternoons Mrs. Kane was quite sumptuously attired, Mr. Kane liked to be rather shabby even on Sundays at Ma.s.s, which caused him to be generally reported somewhat more affluent than he really was. He had always been supposed to be "about fifty," whereas Mrs. Kane had, ever since her arrival, spoken of herself as "on the sensible side of thirty."

At Sarella's wedding Mrs. Kane's magnificence deeply impressed the cowboys; and Mr. Kane's elaborate paternity towards the bride, whom he only knew by her dress, would have deceived if it had been possible the very elect; they were not precisely that and it did not deceive, though it hugely delighted them.

"I swear he's _crying_!" whispered Pete Rugger to Larry Burke. "He cried just like that in the play when Mrs. Hooger ran away with her own husband that represented the hero."

"Well," said Larry, "a man can't help his feelings."

He was secretly wondering if Mr. Kane would give away Ginger--he would do it so much better than Jack.

Mrs. Kane affected no tears. She had the air of serenely parting with a daughter, for her own good, to an excellent, wealthy husband whom she had found for her, and of being ready to do as much for the rest of her many daughters--Mr. and Mrs. Kane were childless.

Perhaps this att.i.tude on her part suited better with her resplendent costume than it would have suited her husband's black attire--which he kept for funerals.

Little was lost on the cowboys, and they did not fail to note that the gray which of recent years had been invading the "Boss's" hair had disappeared.

"In the distance he don't look a lot older than Gore," Pete Rugger declared to his neighbor.

Gore supported Don Joaquin as "best" or groomsman.

It was significant that on Mariquita's appearance no spoken comment was made by any of the cowboys, though to each of them she was the most absorbing figure. Her father had fetched her from Loretto three days before the wedding, and at the Convent had been introduced to a learned-looking but agreeable ecclesiastic who was a rector of a college for lay youths.

Don Joaquin, much interested, had plied the reverend pundit with inquiries concerning this seat of learning, not forgetting particular inquisition as to the terms.

On their conclusion he took notes in writing of all the replies and declared that it sounded exactly what he would choose for his own son.

"I would like," he said, with a simplicity that rather touched the rector, "that my lad should grow up with more education than I ever had."

"Your son," surmised the rector, "would be younger than his sister?"

"He would," Don Joaquin admitted, without condescending upon particulars.