She felt herself stirred profoundly. Beyond herself, yet in cool control of herself, she raised her eyes and looked steadily in his as steadily she said:
“I can be Anglo-Saxon, or English, or American, or whatever you choose to name the ability to look things squarely in the face and to talk squarely into the face of things.” She paused and debated coolly with herself, and coolly resumed. “You complain that while you have told me that you love me, I have not told you whether or not I love you. I shall settle that forever and now. I do love you——”
She thrust his eager arms away from her.
“Wait!” she commanded. “Who is the woman now? Or the Spaniard? I had not finished. I love you. I am proud that I love you. Yet there is more. You have asked me for my heart and intention. I have told you part of the one. I now tell you all of the other: I intend to marry Henry.”
Such Anglo-Saxon directness left Francis breathless.
“In heaven’s name, why?” was all he could utter.
“Because I love Henry,” she answered, her eyes still unshrinkingly on his.
“And you ... you say you love me?” he quavered.
“And I love you, too. I love both of you. I am a good woman, at least I always used to think so. I still think so, though my reason tells me that I cannot love two men at the same time and be a good woman. I don’t care about that. If I am bad, it is I, and I cannot help myself for being what I was born to be.”
She paused and waited, but her lover was still speechless.
“And who’s the Anglo-Saxon now?” she queried, with a slight smile, half of bravery, half of amusement at the dumbness of consternation her words had produced in him. “I have told you, without baffling, without fluttering, my full heart and my full intention.”
“But you can’t!” he protested wildly. “You can’t love me and marry Henry.”
“Perhaps you have not understood,” she chided gravely. “I intend to marry Henry. I love you. I love Henry. But I cannot marry both of you. The law will not permit. Therefore I shall marry only one of you. It is my intention that that one be Henry.”
“Then why, why,” he demanded, “did you persuade me into remaining?”
“Because I loved you. I have already so told you.”
“If you keep this up I shall go mad!” he cried.
“I have felt like going mad over it myself many times,” she assured him. “If you think it is easy for me thus to play the Anglo-Saxon, you are mistaken. But no Anglo-Saxon, not even you whom I love so dearly, can hold me in contempt because I hide the shameful secrets of the impulses of my being. Less shameful I find it, for me to tell them, right out in meeting, to you. If this be Anglo-Saxon, make the most of it. If it be Spanish, and woman, and Solano, still make the most of it, for I am Spanish, and woman——a Spanish woman of the Solanos——”
“But I don’t talk with my hands,” she added with a wan smile in the silence that fell.
Just as he was about to speak, she hushed him, and both listened to a crackling and rustling from the underbrush that advertised the passage of humans.
“Listen,” she whispered hurriedly, laying her hand suddenly on his arm, as if pleading. “I shall be finally Anglo-Saxon, and for the last time, when I tell you what I am going to tell you. Afterward, and for always, I shall be the baffling, fluttering, female Spaniard you have chosen for my description. Listen: I love Henry, it is true, very true. I love you more, much more. I shall marry Henry ... because I love him and am pledged to him. Yet always shall I love you more.”
Before he could protest, the old Maya priest and his peon son emerged from the underbrush close upon them. Scarcely noticing their presence, the priest went down on his knees, exclaiming, in Spanish:
“For the first time have my eyes beheld the eyes of Chia.”
He ran the knots of the sacred tassel and began a prayer in Maya, which, could they have understood, ran as follows:
“O immortal Chia, great spouse of the divine Hzatzl who created all things out of nothingness! O immortal spouse of Hzatzl, thyself the mother of the corn, the divinity of the heart of the husked grain, goddess of the rain and the fructifying sun-rays, nourisher of all the grains and roots and fruits for the sustenance of man! O glorious Chia, whose mouth ever commands the ear of Hzatzl, to thee humbly, thy priest, I make my prayer. Be kind to me, and forgiving. From thy mouth let issue forth the golden key that opens the ear of Hzatzl. Let thy faithful priest gain to Hzatzl’s treasure——Not for himself, O Divinity, but for the sake of his son whom the Gringo saved. Thy children, the Mayas, pass. There is no need for them of the treasure. I am thy last priest. With me passes all understanding of thee and of thy great spouse, whose name I breathe only with my forehead on the stones. Hear me, O Chia, hear me! My head is on the stones before thee!”
For all of five minutes the old Maya lay prone, quivering and jerking as if in a catalepsy, while Leoncia and Francis looked curiously on, themselves half-swept by the unmistakable solemnity of the old man’s prayer, non-understandable though it was.
Without waiting for Henry, Francis entered the cave a second time. With Leoncia beside him, he felt quite like a guide as he showed the old priest over the place. The latter, ever reading the knots and mumbling, followed behind, while the peon was left on guard outside. In the avenue of mummies the priest halted reverently——not so much for the mummies as for the sacred tassel.
“It is so written,” he announced, holding out a particular string of knots. “These men were evil, and robbers. Their doom here is to wait forever outside the inner room of Maya mystery.”
Francis hurried him past the heap of bones of his father before him, and led him into the inner chamber, where first of all, he prostrated himself before the two idols and prayed long and earnestly. After that, he studied certain of the strings very carefully. Then he made an announcement, first in Maya, which Francis gave him to know was unintelligible, and next in broken Spanish:
“From the mouth of Chia to the ear of Hzatzl——so is it written.”
Francis listened to the cryptic utterance, glanced into the dark cavity of the goddess’ mouth, stuck the blade of his hunting-knife into the key-hole of the god’s monstrous ear, then tapped the stone with the hilt of his knife and declared the statue to be hollow. Back to Chia, he was tapping her to demonstrate her hollowness, when the old Maya muttered:
“The feet of Chia rest upon nothingness.”
Francis caught by the idea, made the old man verify the message by the knots.
“Her feet are large,” Leoncia laughed, “but they rest on the solid rock-floor and not on nothingness.”
Francis pushed against the female deity with his hand and found that she moved easily. Gripping her with both hands, he began to wrestle, moving her with quick jerks and twists.
“For the strong men and unafraid will Chia walk,” the priest read. “But the next three knots declare: Beware! Beware! Beware!”
“Well, I guess, that nothingness, whatever it is, won’t bite me,” Francis chuckled, as he released the statue after shifting it a yard from its original position.
“There, old lady, stand there for a while, or sit down if that will rest your feet. They ought to be tired after standing on nothing for so many centuries.”
A cry from Leoncia drew his gaze to the portion of the floor just vacated by the large feet of Chia. Stepping backward from the displaced goddess, he had been just about to fall into the rock-hewn hole her feet had concealed. It was circular, and a full yard in diameter. In vain he tested the depth by dropping lighted matches. They fell burning, and, without reaching bottom, still falling, were extinguished by the draught of their flight.
“It looks very much like nothingness without a bottom,” he adjudged, as he dropped a tiny stone fragment.
Many seconds they listened ere they heard it strike.
