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The next morning Chonita, clad in a long gown of white wool, a silver cross at her throat, her hair arranged like a coronet, sat in a large chair in the dispensary. Her father stood beside a table, parcelling drugs. The sick-poor of Santa Barbara passed them in a long line. The Doomswoman exercised her power to heal, the birthright of the twin.
But the bull was not satisfied; he pawed the ground with demanding hoofs; and the vaqueros galloped into the ring with another bear. Nor had they time to detach their reatas before the bull was upon the second antagonist; and they were obliged to retire in haste. Estenega, who stood between Chonita and myself, watched The Doomswoman attentively.
I sent Castro away from the table in a towering rage, and it is too hot to excite you. Even the impassive Doomswoman became so angry that she could not eat her dinner." "It is your old wish for American occupation the bandoleros! No; I will not discuss it with you: I have gone to bed with my head bursting when we have talked of it before. You might have spared poor José.
She never posed for any one, at least, but herself. For some reason a youthful reason probably the iron in her nature was most admired by her. Wherefore, also, as she had the power, as twin, to heal and curse, I had named her the Doomswoman, and by this name she was known far and wide.
"What is she?" he thought, "this Californian woman with her hair of gold and her unmistakable intellect, her marble face crossed now and again by the animation of the clever American woman? What an anomaly to find on the shores of the Pacific! All I had heard of The Doomswoman, The Golden Señorita, gave me no idea of this. What a pity that our houses are at war!
I was The Doomswoman no longer. I was a supplementary being who could meet you in every mood and complete it; who would so understand that I could be man and woman and friend to you. A delusion? But so long as I shall never know, let me believe. An extraordinary tumultuous desire that rose in me like a wave and shook me often at first, had, in those last sad weeks, less part in my musings.
"Canst thou not put thy meaning in fewer words?" "My sister, he loves thee, and thou lovest thy brother and thy house." Chonita rose to her full height, and although he rose too, and was taller, she seemed to look down upon him. "Thou wouldst have me marry him? Is that thy meaning?" "Ay." His voice trembled. Under his swagger he was always a little afraid of the Doomswoman.
Pomegranate trees and sweet peas, bridal wreath and camellia, begonia, fuchsias, heliotrope, hydrangea, chrysanthemums, roses, roses, roses....Little orchards of almond trees, their blossoms a pink mist against a clear blue sky....The mariposa lily was awake in the forests; infinitesimal yellow pansies made a soft carpet for the feet of the deer and the puma....In the old Spanish towns of the south, the Castilian roses were in bloom and as sweet and pink and poignant as when Rezanov sailed through the Golden Gate in the April of eighteen-six, or Chonita Iturbi y Moncada, the doomswoman, danced on the hearts of men in Monterey....From end to end of the great Santa Clara Valley the fruit trees were in bloom, a hundred thousand acres and more of pure white blossoms or delicate pink.
"Either natural or acquired coquetry has more to do with saving her from the solitary plane of the intellectual woman than her beauty or her father's wealth. I am inclined to think that it is acquired. I do not believe that she is a coquette at heart, any more than that she is the marble doomswoman she fondly believes herself."
The blood blazed in her cheeks, her eyes were like green stars and sparkled wickedly. The cold curves of her statuesque mouth were warm and soft, her chin was saucily uplifted, her heavy waving hair fell over her shoulders to her knees, a glittering veil. Where had The Doomswoman, the proud daughter of the Iturbi y Moncadas, gone?
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