"Basta ya de plegarios, querida!--vete y duerme." His tone, though kindly, was imperative; and Carmen, accustomed to obey him, laid herself down by his side, and soon, for very weariness, slept.
It was a feverish sleep, nevertheless, shattered at brief intervals by terrible sounds, sounds magnified by her nervous condition--a sleep visited by dreams that mingled in a strange way with the impressions of the storm, and more than once made her heart stop, and start again at its own stopping. One of these fancies she never could forget--a dream about little Concha,--Conchita, her firstborn, who now slept far away in the old churchyard at Barcelona. She had tried to become resigned,--not to think. But the child would come back night after night, though the earth lay heavy upon her--night after night, through long distances of Time and Space. Oh! the fancied clinging of infant-lips!--the thrilling touch of little ghostly hands!--those phantom-caresses that torture mothers' hearts! ...
Night after night, through many a month of pain. Then for a time the gentle presence ceased to haunt her,--seemed to have lain down to sleep forever under the high bright grass and yellow flowers. Why did it return, that night of all nights, to kiss her, to cling to her, to nestle in her arms?
For in her dream she thought herself still kneeling before the waxen Image, while the terrors of the tempest were ever deepening about her,--raving of winds and booming of waters and a shaking of the land. And before her, even as she prayed her dream-prayer, the waxen Virgin became tall as a woman, and taller,--rising to the roof and smiling as she grew. Then Carmen would have cried out for fear, but that something smothered her voice,--paralyzed her tongue. And the Virgin silently stooped above her, and placed in her arms the Child,--the brown Child with the Indian face. And the Child whitened in her hands and changed,--seeming as it changed to send a sharp pain through her heart: an old pain linked somehow with memories of bright windy Spanish hills, and summer scent of olive groves, and all the luminous Past;--it looked into her face with the soft dark gaze, with the unforgotten smile of ... dead Conchita!
And Carmen wished to thank; the smiling Virgin for that priceless bliss, and lifted up her eyes, but the sickness of ghostly fear returned upon her when she looked; for now the Mother seemed as a woman long dead, and the smile was the smile of fleshlessness, and the places of the eyes were voids and darknesses ... And the sea sent up so vast a roar that the dwelling rocked.
Carmen started from sleep to find her heart throbbing so that the couch shook with it. Night was growing gray; the door had just been opened and slammed again. Through the rain-whipped panes she discerned the passing shape of Feliu, ****** for the beach--a broad and bearded silhouette, bending against the wind. Still the waxen Virgin smiled her Mexican smile,--but now she was only seven inches high; and her bead-glass eyes seemed to twinkle with kindliness while the flame of the last expiring taper struggled for life in the earthen socket at her feet.
