Remember the Alamo | Page 8

It is coming."
"And you are sorry?"
"I am anxious, that is all. Go back to the dancers. In the morning we
can talk."
In the morning the doctor was called very early by some one needing
his skill. Antonia heard the swift footsteps and eager voices, and
watched him mount the horse always kept ready saddled for such
emergencies, and ride away with the messenger. The incident in itself
was a usual one, but she was conscious that her soul was moving
uneasily and questioningly in some new and uncertain atmosphere.
She had felt it on her first entrance into Senora Valdez's gran sala--a
something irrepressible in the faces of all the men present. She

remembered that even the servants had been excited, and that they
stood in small groups, talking with suppressed passion and with much
demonstrativeness. And the officers from the Alamo! How conscious
they had been of their own importance! What airs of condescension and
of an almost insufferable protection they had assumed! Now, that she
recalled the faces of Judge Valdez, and other men of years and position,
she understood that there had been in them something out of tone with
the occasion. In the atmosphere of the festa she had only felt it. In the
solitude of her room she could apprehend its nature.
For she had been born during those stormy days when Magee and
Bernardo, with twelve hundred Americans, first flung the banner of
Texan independence to the wind; when the fall of Nacogdoches sent a
thrill of sympathy through the United States, and enabled Cos and
Toledo, and the other revolutionary generals in Mexico, to carry their
arms against Old Spain to the very doors of the vice-royal palace. She
had heard from her father many a time the whole brave, brilliant
story--the same story which has been made in all ages from the
beginning of time. Only the week before, they had talked it over as they
sat under the great fig-tree together.
"History but repeats itself," the doctor had said then; "for when the
Mexicans drove the Spaniards, with their court ceremonies, their
monopolies and taxes, back to Spain, they were just doing what the
American colonists did, when they drove the English royalists back to
England. It was natural, too, that the Americans should help the
Mexicans, for, at first, they were but a little band of patriots; and the
American-Saxon has like the Anglo-Saxon an irresistible impulse to
help the weaker side. And oh, Antonia! The cry of Freedom! Who that
has a soul can resist it?"
She remembered this conversation as she stood in the pallid dawning,
and watched her father ride swiftly away. The story of the long struggle
in all its salient features flashed through her mind; and she understood
that it is not the sword alone that gives liberty--that there must be
patience before courage; that great ideas must germinate for years in
the hearts of men before the sword can reap the harvest.

The fascinating memory of Burr passed like a shadow across her
dreaming. The handsome Lafayettes--the gallant Nolans--the daring
Hunters--the thousands of forgotten American traders and
explorers--bold and enterprising--they had sown the seed. For great
ideas are as catching as evil ones. A Mexican, with the iron hand of Old
Spain upon him and the shadow of the Inquisition over him, could not
look into the face of an American, and not feel the thought of Freedom
stirring in his heart.
It stirred in her own heart. She stood still a moment to feel consciously
the glow and the enlargement. Then with an impulse natural, but
neither analyzed nor understood, she lifted her prayer-book, and began
to recite "the rising prayer." She had not said to herself, "from the love
of Freedom to the love of God, it is but a step," but she experienced the
emotion and felt all the joy of an adoration, simple and unquestioned,
springing as naturally from the soul as the wild flower from the prairie.
As she knelt, up rose the sun, and flooded her white figure and her fair
unbound hair with the radiance of the early morning. The matin bells
chimed from the convent and the churches, and the singing birds began
to flutter their bright wings, and praise God also, "in their Latin."
She took her breakfast alone. The Senora never came downstairs so
early. Isabel had wavering inclinations, and generally followed them.
Sometimes, even her father had his cup of strong coffee alone in his
study; so the first meal of the day was usually, as perhaps it ought to be,
a selfishly- silent one. "Too much enthusiasm and chattering at
breakfast, are like too much red at sunrise," the doctor always said; "a
dull, bad day follows it"--and Antonia's observation had