The glad lady

Remembering the next morning her laughing promise to Perdita that she would make use of St. Anthony’s powers in trying to find the lost earrings, Patty went to the dim little chapel in order to abstract the figure of the saint. She was still child enough to enjoy the prospect of dangling the image down the well, with no feeling of irreverence in doing so. “If these people think it all right, why shouldn’t I?” she asked herself. As she opened the door leading into the chapel she observed two faintly gleaming candles at the side of the altar and going forward she perceived that they were burning before the figure of St. Anthony himself.

“Now, who has put those up there?” she exclaimed. “I suppose whoever it is, he or she will be distressed if I take the old fellow away. Besides, he looks so comfortable and complacent standing there I’d better not disturb him. The candles have done at least this much good; they have saved him from a dousing.”

She went out the smaller door, up the long flight of steps and into the upper room where her sister was sitting knitting her brows over her weekly accounts.

“There is something wrong here,” said Doña Martina, looking up. “Patty, just run over these figures and see if you can find any mistake in it. I am sure with no one at home but Juan and ourselves there should be less spent than when the family was larger, yet it is just the same amount.”

Patty took the book and added up the column. “I make it exactly the same as you do,” she announced the result.

“Then I am sure I have made no mistake. I wish you would go down and ask Manuela to come here to me.”

Patty did as she was requested and stayed below to watch her favorite pair of pigeons, Alphonso and Victoria, and to stick red geraniums over the ears of Ba-Ba the pet lamb which had been Perdita’s gift on the day of San Juan. Ba-Ba, tethered out of reach of the choicest flowers, was nibbling at such delectable morsels as he could find, but upon seeing Patty set up a plaintive bleat, knowing he might be set free if Patty were at hand. His hopes were not without foundation, for the girl unfastened the rope which held him and he capered off with a fling up of his heels that showed his joy.

“Now behave yourself, or I will tie you up again,” Patty warned him. “Doña Martina doesn’t allow any liberties taken with her flowers, remember. I suppose I shall have to watch you.” She sat down on an old stone bench from which she could watch the lamb’s movements. Presently Anita came out with something hidden under her apron. She started at sight of Patty, and went back.

“Now what did she do that for,” said Patty to herself. “She looked scared at sight of me. I must go in and find out. Come here, Ba-Ba.” But there was no “come here” comprehended by Ba-Ba. He had his freedom and meant to make the most of it. So he led Patty a chase around the garden, dodging under bushes, squeezing through shrubbery, kicking up his heels and prancing off with tail straight out, and a shake of his head which said, “Catch me if you can.” But at last Patty managed to outwit him and dragged him back to his corner, where he was again made fast and allowed but a small area for pasture.

As Patty entered the kitchen, flushed from her exercise, Anita did not stir from her work of preparing vegetables, but kept her eyes cast down. Manuela was still upstairs. “What is the matter, Anita?” Patty asked, after watching the girl for a moment or two.

“Nothing, señorita.”

“Oh, but there is. What did you have under your apron when you came into the garden just now, and why did you run back in such haste?”

The color came into Anita’s face. “Why, señorita, I—I was just going to the chapel for a moment.”

“Is the outer door unlocked then? I thought one could get in only by the upper door.”

“It is unlocked, yes, señorita.”

“Then, perhaps—” she stopped to think, “perhaps it was you who set the candles before St. Anthony.”

Anita dropped into the pan of vegetables the knife she was holding and began to cry. “Oh, señorita,” she complained.

“Have you lost something?”

“Oh, señorita, you know.”

“I am sure I don’t know, and if you wanted to set the candles there I don’t see why you should not.”

“Yes, señorita, I know, but the earrings—those which you lost.”

“I see. And you thought we might believe you took them, so you are burning candles to St. Anthony that they may be restored?”

“Yes, señorita.”

At this juncture Manuela came in. “Anita, the señora wants you. What are you crying for?”

Anita did not reply, but set down the pan and prepared to go upstairs.

“She may well weep,” said Manuela, severely. “One cannot buy candles without money.”

“What do you mean, Manuela?” inquired Patty. “I know Anita has been burning candles to St. Anthony because she thinks we suspect her of taking the earrings. Of course I know they have not been found, and we cannot see how they could be spirited away, but we have not charged anyone.”

“The huestas, señorita, or the gipsies. An evil eye have the gipsies and who knows? Who knows? If they bewitch a thing, no hay remedia, yet I do not say they may not be found, those earrings. Once I lost a brooch which my mother had given me. I searched for a month in great trouble, and one day when I was going to church, as I took up my mantilla, behold the brooch had caught in the lace and had been there all the time. I told the padre and he said it was a righteous punishment. If I had gone at once to church to pray to St. Anthony I would have probably taken out my mantilla and so have discovered the brooch. I deserved to worry,” he said.

This gave Patty an idea and she hurried to her room, took her mantilla from the drawer where she had placed it the day her sister gave it to her, and shook it out. Sure enough from it dropped one of the earrings. The other was found clinging to the lace threads by reason of the open filigree. Gathering all up Patty ran into the living-room where Anita, bowed before Doña Martina, was sobbing out a confession.

“And so, when you went to market each time you took a little of my money to buy candles to burn to St. Anthony,” Doña Martina was saying.

“Yes, señora. I had to give all my wages to my family, and I had no money. The candles had to be bought. What could I do?”

“But, girl, don’t you see that it was stealing, and that it was worse to take a thing than to be suspected when you were innocent?”

“I had to get the candles and there was no other way,” repeated Anita, through her tears.

“The earrings are found,” announced Patty, holding them up. “They had caught in the lace of my mantilla, and when I put that away the earrings went, too. They were lying on the same table, you remember.”

“Oh, señora! Señorita!” Anita sprang to her feet and smiled through her tears. “So you see St. Anthony did find them, and it must have been because of the candles. Oh, I am so glad.”

“But Anita, that doesn’t lessen the fact that you took my money,” expostulated Doña Martina.

“But it was only for the candles, señora, and you see for yourself that St. Anthony—”

Doña Martina stopped her with a wave of the hand and turned to her sister. “It is impossible to make her understand,” she said. “You may go down, Anita, but if ever again you are guilty of taking even so much as a penny of what is not yours, I shall dismiss you at once, St. Anthony or Saint anybody else.”

“But he did find them,” murmured Anita, as she cheerfully went back to her work.

“There is no use trying to teach them a proper standard in matters of this kind,” said Doña Martina, “and I suppose the girl is honest enough in other directions. She was greatly distressed over the possibility of being suspected and Manuela told me of the candles and of herself wondering where Anita got the money for them. So long as the earrings are found I suppose even Manuela will see no wrong in what Anita did. I am glad they are not lost, Patty, and that you discovered them in this special way; it makes us all more comfortable.”

“I shall not allow them to be neighbors to any more lacey things,” declared Patty. “I will put them in a box and give them to Perdita as soon as I can. Still working over the accounts, Tina?”

Her sister sighed. “Yes, I must keep down expenses, for small as they really are, I must try to save all I can for emergencies.”

“Poor darling.” Patty laid her cheek against her sister’s hair. “And if I should accept the renovated palacio you would be free of me at least.”

“Don’t talk so,” returned her sister, sharply. “As if I could be happy for a moment knowing you had sacrificed yourself. It isn’t as bad as that, Patty. There is quite enough for us all, and we should keep up this house just the same whether you were here or not. Surely when you make no demands upon anyone in other directions you should not feel under any obligation.”

“I suppose I should not, only I hate to see you worried. If we sell the old home, Tina, will there be more?”

“Very likely not, unless we could invest it so that the interest would bring in more than the rent does now. You need not think of that, dear. We are really living on much less than we could anywhere else, only I am ambitious to do better that we may put by for a rainy day. In Juan’s state of health that seems important, and moreover, I take a sort of pride in seeing how well I can do on the least amount.”

“Can I help you?”

“No, I must do it myself. Run along and don’t worry.”

Patty went slowly downstairs. What a dear Tina it was and how abominably she was treating her by allowing her to believe things which were not so. “I’ll have to ’fess some day, I suppose,” she said, “but if Perdita goes to the convent and Tomás to America there is no hurry. I wonder when Tomás will be back, by the way.”

She stopped to have a word with Manuela who was eager to hear more of the discovery of the lost earrings, and then she went out to the garden. She wandered through its paths unheeding Ba-Ba’s plaintive bleating. When she came to the door of the chapel she tried it and found it opened. She entered to find the candles before St. Anthony were low in their sockets. One flickered and went out as she stood watching it. “I wonder,” said she addressing the figure before her, “if you can also restore friends. I think candles seem more efficacious than the dousing; suppose I try candles.” She stood watching the expiring flame of the second candle when she heard the door behind her close, and a footstep on the stone floor, then someone gave an apologetic little cough.

“Is that you, Tomás?” asked Patty. “There, I said I wouldn’t look around till it went out and it has almost. Well?”

“It isn’t Tomás, Miss Patty; it is I.”

“Oh!” Patty wheeled around, the flickering candle sending up a last dying gleam. “You? It is you?”

“Yes, I am sorry if you are disappointed, but I can’t help being just Robert Lisle.”

“And I can’t help being surprised when you have been away such a long, long while. How have you been?”

“I have been quite well, though I, too, appreciate that it has been a long, long while, and I have come back because I couldn’t stay away any longer.”

“Couldn’t you? Why?”

“Because you and your sister are the only home folks I have in this land.”

Patty stiffened ever so little. “I suppose you have come to say good-bye. Do you return to England soon?”

“Not yet awhile. There is nothing special to take me there. My cousin, Walter Sterling, is with my grandfather and neither needs me.”

“But what of Miss Moffatt?”

“Her memory was buried, you know.”

“And has not been resurrected?”

“No.”

“Will you tell me about her; you said you would some day. Has she light hair? She is like a gray day, I remember, but I want to know not so much what she is as who she is.”

“She has quite light hair, yes, and blue eyes. How did you guess? She is the girl my grandfather expects me to marry.”

“Does she expect it?”

“She has no reason to. We have been friends for a couple of years and I have paid her a few dutiful attentions. She is wealthy and of good family.”

Patty’s chin went up. “So she has all that is desirable. When may we congratulate you?”

“Oh, but aren’t you forging ahead rather fast? Have you forgotten the obsequies?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten but—she seems so exactly the proper choice.”

“So my grandfather says, but I do not say so. She is not my choice and I have written to say so. She will not want for suitors. They are liable to come forward in numbers.”

“But what if—”

“Go on, please.”

“What if you are her choice? What if she believes herself to be the one you have chosen?”

“I do not see how she could think that.”

“You write to her?”

“I wrote once, a friendly letter when I first came away. The second letter I destroyed without sending. I have told my grandfather that, while I appreciated all he had done for me, in matters of this kind I must use my own judgment and that Miss Moffatt was not the woman for me, this I had discovered since I came to Spain.”

“I thought ‘absence made the heart grow fonder’?”

“It does in some cases, as I can speak from my own experience.”

Why did Patty suddenly lean forward to put an extinguishing finger on the smoking wick, since there was not light enough to discover the red which flamed up into her cheek. She said not a word but stood looking at St. Anthony.

“I am thinking of going to America, to the States,” the young man went on. “If my father left me no fortune, at least he left me friends and relatives over there who are warm-hearted and sincere.”

“Tomás is going to America, perhaps, and Perdita to a convent. Polly is going to be married and—oh, dear—”

“But there is still Don Felipe.”

“Yes, but what of him?”

“Exactly. What of him?”

“He is getting very frivolous in his old age and is talking of making all sorts of changes at the palacio.”

“What for?”

“We think he is preparing for a young wife.”

“And who might she be?”

“She might be most anyone, but there are reasons why we suspect he believes she will be your humble servant.”

“Oh!” The exclamation came sharply.

It hurt him, of that Patty was sure and her tender heart could not bear to see anyone hurt. “I didn’t say,” she broke the silence, “I was the one, I only said we thought he rather counted on it, just as your grandfather counted on Miss Moffatt, and with just as much result.”

“I am very glad of that.” The words came simply. Then after a pause: “And Tomás?”

“I could tell you tales of Tomás, but I must not. He is a dear lad and I am very fond of him, but he is going to America, as I said, and may be gone two or three years.”

Robert drew a sigh as of one rid of a load, and again silence fell.

“How did you know I was in here?” Patty asked presently.

“When I came I asked for the ladies. Doña Martina was upstairs I was told and the señorita Patty had gone into the chapel, Anita had just observed. Would I join her there? So I came and found you.”

“Are you going soon to the States?”

“I don’t know. My business here is about over. It has not been disappointing, and may lead to other things of the same sort. There is some talk of an English syndicate, composed of the same men, who may conclude to work some mines in our West. I am talked of in connection with that if it materializes, but it will not be for some months; those things take time. Aside from that I have no special prospects, and shall go to Kentucky or elsewhere as circumstances direct.”

This time it was Patty who gave a long sigh as of content. “Will you go in and see Tina?” she asked. There were hours, days, perhaps weeks ahead, and one need be in no haste when time was not an object.

They left St. Anthony in darkness and took the upper way to the house to find Doña Martina had finished her accounts and was wondering where Robert was, Anita having told her of his arrival.