Lolita

“ The sky was black and splendid, with four or five planets too bright for lesser stars to show, and the promontories of the keen mountains shone almost as in moonlight. A certain hill down towards the Tinaja and its slate ledge caught Genesmere’s eye, and Lolita felt him shudder, and she wound her arm more tightly about him. ”

“ Good-night, Lolita. Perhaps I shall come to-morrow, mañana en la mañana."
"Good-night," said Lolita, harshly, which increased his joy; "I cannot stop you from passing my house."
Genesmere said nothing, but sat still on his white horse, hands folded upon the horns of his saddle, and Luis, always engaging and at ease, ambled away with his song about the hunchback. He knew that the American was not the man to wait until his enemy's back was turned. ”

“ Oh, Blythe, Blythe, I give up. I have no word to say against your choice.” She put her head down on her son’s shoulder and wept softly. Then she led him to the room where Lolita sat as motionless as a statue. Dropping on her knees by the girl’s side and touching her lips to the dull purple spot on the round smooth arm she said: “Dear little girl, here is my son. Will you tell him that he has a very cruel mother, but that you forgive her and will be her daughter some day, for she has suddenly realized that a true heart and an unselfish spirit are worth more than honors or fame can bring. ”

“ She set about the routine of fire-lighting and supper as if it had been Uncle Ramon, and this evening like all evenings. He, not so easily, and with small blunderings that he cursed, attended to his horse and mules, coming in at length to sit against the wall where she was cooking.
"It is getting dark," said Lolita. So he found the lamp and lighted it, and sat down again.
"I've never hurt a woman," he said presently, the vision of his rifle's white front sight held steady on the two below the ledge once more flooding his brain. ”

“ Nowhere to sleep but in the room where we can see the sky through the rafters. Nothing to do but to listen to Hannah Maria’s incessant chatter. It may amuse you, Tina, to talk to her and to Cynthia Thompson and Laura Van Dorn, when they come in, but as for me I get tired of them. I enjoy Lolita much more. She is really entertaining and far more lovable. Besides we teach each other many things.” So off Alison would go to spend the morning with Lolita, while Christine would turn her attention to whatever she could find to occupy her. ”

“ They are all pigs. Ah, Lolita, a man needs a wife, so he may strive to win a home for her."
"I have heard men say that they needed a home before they could strive to win a wife for it. But you go about it the other way."
"I am not an American pig, I thank the Virgin! I have none of their gringo customs."
"You speak truly indeed," murmured Lolita.
"It is you who know about them," the boy said, angry like a child. He had seen her eye drawn to the trail again as by a magnet. "They say you prefer gringos to your own people."
"Who dares say that?"
The elated Luis played loudly on the guitar. ”

“ Señorita Lolita thought she knew, but she would be the last one to explain to her parents. There was a faint blush on her face yet because of the arm that had squeezed her and the words that had been whispered in her ear. ”

“ Lolita laughed a little in spite of her mood.
“You’re a great little jollier, Jimmy,” she, said, “and I’d like to believe you, but somehow I can’t. I’m a nobody, a Cedar Rapids’ nobody.”
“But you’re goin’ to be little Miss Lolita Somebody of the well known world,” he responded cheerily, “before I get through with you. I’m goin’ to drop you right into the direct center of the front page of every paper in the U.S.A. from the New York Gazette to the Wyalusing, Pa., Rocket. ”

“ It may be down among the artemisias, or perhaps behind a large yucca, whose dark whorl rises several feet above the sage, and over which the vultures are wheeling.
As the rider of Lolita arrives within gun-shot distance of the yucca-tree she checks the mustang to a slower pace—to a walk in short. In the spectacle of death, in the throes and struggles of an expiring creature, even though it be but a dumb brute, there is something that never fails to excite commiseration, mingled with a feeling of awe. ”

“ After the terrible anxiety and awful suspicion of those dark, never-to-be-forgotten days all is now happiness. The barrier ’twixt me and the rapturous peace I so long panted for is removed, and we have both emerged at last from that fatal region of mystery and doubt. At Chelmorton Towers, the beautiful old ivy-covered place in Sussex which George so generously gave to his sister for our use during her lifetime, I live in the sunshine of Lolita’s matchless beauty, charmed by the secret tenderness of her voice and thrilled by her soft caresses. ”

“ She certainly escaped from the Hall that night and met some one in the park—but whom was an utter mystery. Yet there still sounded in my ears that scream I had heard—the scream that was certainly hers and which came from the scene of the tragedy. If she were not the actual assassin, then she had of a certainty borne witness of it—and had been appalled by that terrible dénouement.
But when a man loves a woman as I loved Lolita, he cannot openly charge her with being a murderess. And yet how I longed and longed for strength to drive the demon suspicion from me ”

“ There, madam, I do not believe you are to suffer,” she added.
“But you, you,” said Christine.
“It does not matter,” said Lolita dully. “It is only my father who will care. For me it does not matter.”
“Hush, hush, such talk will never do. Come with me, both of you,” ordered Christine. And fairly dragging Lolita, Mrs. Van Dorn running by her side, she hurried to the house. “Quick, quick, Alison,” she [306] called when she was within hearing. “Get the rattlesnake cure. Mrs. Van Dorn and Lolita have been struck by a rattler.” ”

“ Lolita is very quick to learn and you would be surprised to see what a good appearance she makes anywhere. Alison watches her like a hawk, to be sure, and brings her to task if she commits any mistake at table, or anywhere else, for that matter.”
“You ought just to see some of ’em,” said Hannah Maria. “They ain’t no idea of usin’ anything but their fingers when they eat, an’ such messes as they do cook would make a cat sick. I reckon Lolita has some good blood in her. They say old Pedro belonged to right nice folks. Blythe come over, Laura?” ”

“ Believe me, Lady Lolita, although I am but a rough man unused nowadays to the ways of good society, I am not altogether devoid of sympathy for a woman, and that sympathy will cause me to guard the secret of your affection. I wish you to consider that, in me, instead of an enemy, you have a sincere friend. I am fully aware of the exposure which Mr Woodhouse might make to George, but it would not only be against my interests, but against yours. ”

“ Lolita had no eyes or ears for Luis any more. He prattled away on the stone stairs of the Tinaja, flippant after a piercing shock of fear. To him, unstrung by the silence and the Black Cross and the presence of the sinking pool, the stone had crashed like a clap of sorcery, and he had started and stared to see—not a [Pg 173] spirit, but a man, dismounted from his horse, with a rifle. At that his heart clutched him like talons, and in the flashing spasm of his mind came a picture—smoke from the rifle, and himself bleeding in the dust. Costly love-making! ”

“ The blow I have been dreading these past years will fall. I shall be crushed, and Lolita Sibberton will be but the memory of an unhappy woman who fell the victim of as foul and ingenious a plot as was ever conceived by the mind of man. ”

“ He was an honorable lad and had no idea of playing fast and loose with the pretty Lolita, though she moved him strangely. The daughter of a greaser, despised by Americans! Any nearer relation was out of the question. He had his own share of family pride; he valued public opinion; he was ambitious. His neighbors would consider the plainest, most shiftless of snuff-rubbing damsels his equal so long as she was an American, though she might be far more ignorant, and in every way inferior to Lolita. Clearly Alison was his only refuge. ”

“ Strangers make fine lovers!” With this he swelled to a fond, dangerous appearance, and muttered, “It is not difficult to kill a man, Lolita.”
“Fighting! after what I told you!” Lolita stooped [Pg 172] and kissed her cousin Luis, and he instantly made the most of that chance.
“As often as you please,” he said, as she released herself angrily, and then a stroke of sound struck their two hearts still. They jumped apart, trembling. Some of the rock slide had rattled down and plunged into the Tinaja with a gulping resonance. ”

“ You know my heart is yours alone.’ Having secured that, the intriguers turned their attention to young Wingfield and Lady Lolita. Marie, with the Frenchwoman’s keen jealousy, discovered that she had met the young man once or twice, and that he had copied his master’s checker-board cipher, and with her own name as the keyword, corresponded with her by its means. Lady Lolita had already discovered, to her great surprise, that the prepossessing young man was desperately in love with her, and his affection rather amused her than otherwise, for every woman is flattered by attention. ”

“ So is it always with the sinner with his sin and its threatened discovery. Again, in his miserable mind, he sat beside Lolita on the fence, with the moon shining through her hair; and he knew—for he had often read it—that a man could be punished his whole life through for a single moment’s weakness. ”

“ And Lolita gravely seated herself upon the grass, leaving the bench for her guest’s sole occupancy. “I wish to know——” Mrs. Van Dorn felt that it was brutal for a stranger to try to probe the girl’s secrets, but she remembered her son and steeled herself to go on. “I wish to know if my son is more than a friend; if he has said things to you such as young men will say and to which girls like to listen.” ”

“ Yet when I recollected that wild terrified declaration of Lolita’s on the previous night, how she had told me that if the Frenchwoman withheld her secret “it must result in my death,” I felt spurred to approach her at all hazards. There are moments in our lives when, disregarding our natural caution, we act with precipitation and injudiciously. I fear I was given to hot-headed actions, otherwise I should never have dared to run the risk of arousing suspicion in Bullen’s mind as I did during the hours that followed. ”

“ It was a step that father was to regret vainly for many years, but on the night of her debut he was blissfully unconscious of the possibility of any bitter repining in the future and enjoyed the proceedings almost as much as Lolita did.
From that time on Lolita felt the call of the footlights and became convinced that, given the proper opportunities for the externalization of the emotional feelings that lay dormant within her, she was destined to become an international celebrity and the queen regnant of the English speaking stage. ”

“ He could eat you—if he could see you."
"There are other things in this world besides brute muscle, Lolita. Your gringo thinks I am worth notice, if you do not."
"How little he knows you!"
"It is you he does not know very well," the boy said, with a pang.
The scornful girl stared.
"Oh, the innocent one!" sneered Luis. "Grasshopper, indeed! Well, one man can always recognize another, and the women don't know much."
But Lolita had run off to meet her chosen lover. She did not stop to read his face. He was here ”

“ And Lolita’s love was a sure thing. A woman can say love and a man will believe her—until he has experienced the genuine article once; after that he can always tell. And to have a house, with her inside waiting for you! Such a turn was strange luck for a man, not to be accounted for. If anybody had said last year—why, as late as the 20th of last March—that settling down was what you were coming to—and now—Genesmere wondered how he could ever have seen anything in riding a horse up and down the earth and caring nothing for what next. ”

“ It is rather a nuisance, of course, but a man must please his father."
Lolita bit her lips because of her quick anger. Was ever girl so courted before? she wondered.
"I shall make up my mind as soon as possible, señor," she said finally.
"Does this Captain Ramón remain long at the hacienda?"
A little hope came into Lolita's breast. Could it be. possible that Don Diego Vega was jealous? If that were true, possibly there might be stuff in the man after all. Perhaps he would awaken, and love and passion come to him, and he would be as other young men. ”

“ It was the custom of their meetings, whether at the cabin or whether she stole out to his camp, to play for the token he should bring for her when he next came from town. She named one thing, he some other, and the cards judged between them. And to see Genesmere in these hours, his oldest friend could not have known him any more than he knew himself. Never had a woman been for him like Lolita, conjuring the Saxon to forget himself and bask openly in that Southern joy and laughter of the moment. ”

“ Old Pedro has no special belief; he told me so. Lolita’s happiness has always been, and will always be, his first consideration. He has many American friends, and is not the bigoted old man you would think. Pedro is really a very superior person, if he is only a greaser. If you knew Lolita as well as I do you would see what a lovable girl she is and would be glad to welcome her as a sister.”
“Perhaps you would like to have had her for your sister,” said Laura, who had always been a little jealous of Alison’s love for Lolita. ”