Remember the Alamo | Page 7

to manhood. His eyes filled with tears when he
remembered the red brick house in Canal Street, with its white door
and dormer windows, and its one cherry tree in the strip of garden
behind.
But Dona Maria's national and religious principles, or rather prejudices,
were very strong. She regarded the college of San Juan de Lateran in
Mexico as the fountainhead of knowledge. Her confessor had told her
so. All the Yturbides and Landesas had graduated at San Juan.
But the resolute father would have none of San Juan. "I know all about
it, Maria," he said. "They will teach Thomas Latin very thoroughly.
They will make him proficient in theology and metaphysics. They will
let him dabble in algebra and Spanish literature; and with great pomp,
they will give him his degree, and `the power of interpreting Aristotle
all over the world.' What kind of an education is that, for a man who
may have to fight the battles of life in this century?"
And since the father carried his point it is immaterial what precise
methods he used. Men are not fools even in a contest with women.
They usually get their own way, if they take the trouble to go wisely
and kindly about it. Two years afterwards, Antonia followed her
brother to New York, and this time, the mother made less opposition.
Perhaps she divined that opposition would have been still more useless

than in the case of the boy. For Robert Worth had one invincible
determination; it was, that this beautiful child, who so much resembled
a mother whom he idolized, should be, during the most susceptible
years of her life, under that mother's influence.
And he was well repaid for the self-denial her absence entailed, when
Antonia came back to him, alert, self-reliant, industrious, an intelligent
and responsive companion, a neat and capable housekeeper, who
insensibly gave to his home that American air it lacked, and who set
upon his table the well- cooked meats and delicate dishes which he had
often longed for.
John, the youngest boy, was still in New York finishing his course of
study; but regarding Isabel, there seemed to be a tacit relinquishment of
the purpose, so inflexibly carried out with her brothers and sister. Isabel
was entirely different from them. Her father had watched her carefully,
and come to the conviction that it would be impossible to make her
nature take the American mintage. She was as distinctly Iberian as
Antonia was Anglo-American.
In her brothers the admixture of races had been only as alloy to metal.
Thomas Worth was but a darker copy of his father. John had the
romance and sensitive honor of old Spain, mingled with the love of
liberty, and the practical temper, of those Worths who had defied both
Charles the First and George the Third. But Isabel had no soul-kinship
with her father's people. Robert Worth had seen in the Yturbide
residencia in Mexico the family portraits which they had brought with
them from Castile. Isabel was the Yturbide of her day. She had all their
physical traits, and from her large golden-black eyes the same
passionate soul looked forth. He felt that it would be utter cruelty to
send her among people who must always be strangers to her.
So Isabel dreamed away her childhood at her mother's side, or with the
sisters in the convent, learning from them such simple and useless
matters as they considered necessary for a damosel of family and
fortune. On the night of the Senora Valdez's reception, she had
astonished every one by the adorable grace of her dancing, and the
captivating way in which she used her fan. Her fingers touched the

guitar as if they had played it for a thousand years. She sang a Spanish
Romancero of El mio Cid with all the fire and tenderness of a Castilian
maid.
Her father watched her with troubled eyes. He almost felt as if he had
no part in her. And the thought gave him an unusual anxiety, for he
knew this night that the days were fast approaching which would test to
extremity the affection which bound his family together. He contrived
to draw Antonia aside for a few moments.
"Is she not wonderful?" he asked. "When did she learn these things? I
mean the way in which she does them?"
Isabel was dancing La Cachoucha, and Antonia looked at her little
sister with eyes full of loving speculation. Her answer dropped slowly
from her lips, as if a conviction was reluctantly expressed:
"The way must be a gift from the past--her soul has been at school
before she was born here. Father, are you troubled? What is it? Not
Isabel, surely?"
"Not Isabel, primarily. Antonia, I have been expecting something for
twenty years.