Rainbow's End Part 6

"But sooner or later you'll be discovered--then what?" persisted O'Reilly.

Esteban shrugged. "Who knows? There'll be time enough when--"

"What of Rosa?"

At this question the brother stirred uneasily and dropped his eyes.

O'Reilly laid a hand upon his arm. "You have no right to jeopardize her safety. Without you, to whom could she turn?" The girl flashed her admirer a grateful glance.

"Senor, you for one would see that she--"

"But--I'm going away." O'Reilly felt rather than saw Rosa start, for his face was averted. Purposely he kept his gaze upon Esteban, for he didn't wish to see the slow pallor that rose in the girl's cheeks, the look of pain that crept into her eyes. "I came here to tell you both good-by. I may be gone for some time. I--I don't know when I can get back."

"I'm sorry," Esteban told him, with genuine regret. "We have grown very fond of you. You will leave many friends here in Matanzas, I'm sure.

But you will come back before long, eh?"

"Yes, as soon as I can. That is, if--" He did not finish the sentence.

"Good. You're one of us. In the mean time I'll remember what you say, and at least I'll be careful." By no means wanting in tact, Esteban rose briskly and, after shaking hands with O'Reilly, left the two lovers to say farewell as best suited them.

But for once O'Reilly's ready tongue was silent. The laughter was gone from his blue eyes when he turned to the girl at his side.

"You say you are going away?" Rosa inquired, breathlessly. "But why?"

"I'm going partly because of this war, and partly because of--something else. I tried to tell you yesterday, but I couldn't. When the revolution started everybody thought it was merely a local uprising, and I wrote my company to that effect; but, bless you, it has spread like fire, and now the whole eastern end of the island is ablaze."

"Esteban says it will be more terrible than the Ten Years' War."

"G.o.d forbid! And yet all the old fighters are back again. n.o.body believed that Maximo Gomez had returned, but it's true. And the Maceos are here, too, from Costa Rica. Antonio has already gained control of most of Santiago Province, and he's sweeping westward. Of course the Spaniards minimize the reports of his success, and we, here, don't understand what's really going on. Anyhow, business has stopped, and my employers have ordered me home to find out what's happened to their profits. They seem to hold me personally responsible for this insurrection."

"I see. And when you have told them the truth you will come back. Is that it?"

"I--Perhaps."

"You said there was something else--"

O'Reilly's hesitation became an embarra.s.sed silence. He tried to laugh it off.

"There is, otherwise I'd stay right here and tell my penurious friends to whistle for their profits. It seems I'm cursed with a fatal beauty.

You may have noticed it? No? Well, perhaps it's a magnificent business ability that I have. Anyhow, the president of my company has a notion that I'd make him a good son-in-law."

"I--Oh!" cried Rosa.

And at her tone O'Reilly hurried on:

"These rich men have the most absurd ideas. I suppose I'll have to--"

"Then you are in love, senor?"

The young man nodded vigorously. "Indeed I am--with the sweetest girl in Cuba. That's the whole trouble. That's why I'm hurrying home to resign before I'm fired." Not daring to look too long or too deeply into Rosa Varona's eyes until she had taken in the whole truth, he waited, staring at his feet. "I'm sort of glad it has come to a show-down and I can speak out. I'm hoping she'll miss me." After a moment he ventured, "Will she--er--will you, Rosa?"

"I? Miss you?" Rosa lifted her brows in pretended amazement. Then she tipped her head daintily to one side, as if weighing his question earnestly. "You are amusing, of course, but--I won't have much time to think about you, for I am so soon to be married."

"Married? WHAT?" O'Reilly started violently, and the girl exclaimed, with well-feigned concern:

"Oh, senor! You have wounded yourself again on that thorn-bush. This place is growing up to brambles."

"It wasn't my finger! Something pierced me through the heart. MARRIED?

Nonsense!"

"Indeed! Do you think I'm so ugly n.o.body would have me?"

"Good Lord! You--" O'Reilly swallowed hard. "I won't tell you the truth when you know it so well."

"The richest man in Matanzas asked for my hand this very afternoon."

"Who? Mario de Castano?"

"Yes."

O'Reilly laughed with relief, and though Rosa tried to look offended, she was forced to smile. "He's fat, I know," she admitted, "and he makes funny noises when he breathes; but he is richer than Croesus, and I adore rich men."

"I hate 'em!" announced O'Reilly. Then for a second time he took Rosa's dimpled hand, saying, earnestly: "I'm sure you know now why I make love so badly, dear. It's my Irish conscience. And you'll wait until I come back, won't you?"

"Will you be gone--very long?" she asked.

O'Reilly looked deeply now into the dark eyes turned to his, and found that at last there was no coquetry in them anywhere--nothing but a lonesome, hungry yearning--and with a glad, incoherent exclamation he held out his arms. Rosa Varona crept into them; then with a sigh she upturned her lips to his.

"I'll wait forever," she said.

IV

RETRIBUTION

Although for a long time Dona Isabel had been sure in her own mind that Pancho Cueto, her administrador, was robbing her, she had never mustered courage to call him to a reckoning. And there was a reason for her cowardice. Nevertheless, De Castano's blunt accusation, coupled with her own urgent needs, served to fix her resolution, and on the day after the merchant's visit she sent for the overseer, who at the time was living on one of the plantations.

Once the message was on its way, Isabel fell into a condition bordering upon panic, and was half minded to countermand her order. She spent an evening of suspense, and a miserable night. This last, however, was nothing unusual with her; she was accustomed to unpleasant dreams, and she was not surprised when old familiar shapes came to hara.s.s her. Nor, in view of her somnambulistic vagaries, was she greatly concerned to find, when she woke in the morning, that her slippers were stained and that her skirt was bedraggled with dew and filled with burs.

Scarcely a month pa.s.sed that she did not walk in her sleep.

Cueto was plainly curious to learn why he had been sent for, but since he asked no questions, his employer was forced to open the subject herself. Several times he led up to it unsuccessfully; then she took the plunge. Through dry, white lips she began:

"My dear Pancho, times are hard. The plantations are failing, and so--"

Pancho Cueto's eyes were set close to his nose, his face was long and thin and harsh; he regarded the speaker with such a sinister, unblinking stare that she could scarcely finish: "--and so I--can no longer afford to retain you as administrador."