第14章 III(4)

And this was the mystery of Ramona. No wonder the Senora Moreno never told the story. No wonder, perhaps, that she never loved the child. It was a sad legacy, indissolubly linked with memories which had in them nothing but bitterness, shame, and sorrow from first to last.

How much of all this the young Ramona knew or suspected, was locked in her own breast. Her Indian blood had as much proud reserve in it as was ever infused into the haughtiest Gonzaga's veins. While she was yet a little child, she had one day said to the Senora Moreno, "Senora, why did my mother give me to the Senora Ortegna?"

Taken unawares, the Senora replied hastily: "Your mother had nothing whatever to do with it. It was your father."

"Was my mother dead?" continued the child.

Too late the Senora saw her mistake. "I do not know," she replied; which was literally true, but had the spirit of a lie in it. "I never saw your mother."

"Did the Senora Ortegna ever see her?" persisted Ramona.

"No, never," answered the Senora, coldly, the old wounds burning at the innocent child's unconscious touch.

Ramona felt the chill, and was silent for a time, her face sad, and her eyes tearful. At last she said, "I wish I knew if my mother was dead."

"Why?" asked the Senora.

"Because if she is not dead I would ask her why she did not want me to stay with her."

The gentle piteousness of this reply smote the Senora's conscience.

Taking the child in her arms, she said, "Who has been talking to you of these things, Ramona?"

"Juan Can," she replied.

"What did he say?" asked the Senora, with a look in her eye which boded no good to Juan Canito.

"It was not to me he said it, it was to Luigo; but I heard him," answered Ramona, speaking slowly, as if collecting her various reminiscences on the subject. "Twice I heard him. He said that my mother was no good, and that my father was bad too." And the tears rolled down the child's cheeks.

The Senora's sense of justice stood her well in place of tenderness, now. Caressing the little orphan as she had never before done, she said, with an earnestness which sank deep into the child's mind, "Ramona must not believe any such thing as that. Juan Can is a bad man to say it. He never saw either your father or your mother, and so he could know nothing about them. I knew your father very well. He was not a bad man. He was my friend, and the friend of the Senora Ortegna; and that was the reason he gave you to the Senora Ortegna, because she had no child of her own. And I think your mother had a good many."

"Oh!" said Ramona, relieved, for the moment, at this new view of the situation,-- that the gift had been not as a charity to her, but to the Senora Ortegna. "Did the Senora Ortegna want a little daughter very much?"

"Yes, very much indeed," said the Senora, heartily and with fervor.

"She had grieved many years because she had no child."

Silence again for a brief space, during which the little lonely heart, grappling with its vague instinct of loss and wrong, made wide thrusts into the perplexities hedging it about, and presently electrified the Senora by saying in a half-whisper, "Why did not my father bring me to you first? Did he know you did not want any daughter?"

The Senora was dumb for a second; then recovering herself, she said: "Your father was the Senora Ortegna's friend more than he was mine. I was only a child, then."

"Of course you did not need any daughter when you had Felipe," continued Ramona, pursuing her original line of inquiry and reflection without noticing the Senora's reply. "A son is more than a daughter; but most people have both," eying the Senora keenly, to see what response this would bring.