Adam turned to stare at her in astonishment and she asked
with a little smile, `Are you shocked at finding me after all to be only a tart's by blow?'
`Good Lord, no! That makes you no wit less adorable. And what does it matter who your mother was? It's your own personality that counts, and you created that yourself in your past incarnations.'
`Of course that's so. I was only pulling your leg.' `What, about the whole thing?'
`Oh no. It wasn't until I was ten that I became the Senorita Chela Enriquez.'
`There must be an extraordinary story behind all this. Do tell it to me.'
`I'd like to, because I want you to know everything about me.' After lighting a cigarette, Chela went on. `I'm twenty six, so it must have been some twenty seven years ago that Father or Bernadino, as I suppose I ought to call him was living in Monterrey. That was before he had increased the fortune he inherited to millions, but he was already very well off and the managing director of a big company there.
`My mother was a hostess in a night club; and you know what that meant in those days. She must have been very lovely as a girl, although, as I remember her, she had sadly gone to seed. Anyhow, he took her out of this dive, made her his mistress and set her up in an apartment. Three months later Bernadino formed an amalgamation with some other companies, moved his office to Mexico City and paid mother off with quite a nice sum of money.
`A month or so after Bernadino left her, mother found that she was pregnant; but it may not have been with his child because, knowing that the money he had given her would not last indefinitely, she had begun to use her pleasant apartment to receive gentlemen on a cash basis. All the same, she attempted to father me on to him.
'Bernadino would not be where he is today if he were not a tough egg, and he wasn't falling for that one. His reply to her letter was to send one of his people down to see her and tell her that if she persisted in this nonsense he would have her put in prison. In Mexico, you know, rich men used to be able to get that sort of thing done to people without influence, on a trumped up charge, for the price of quite a moderate bribe.
`Naturally, mother drew in her horns and for a while I believe made quite a good thing out of whoring. But a few years later she was fool enough to fall for a brute of a man. He drank like a fish and spent all her money. The time came when she had to sell her
apartment and move from one place to another till they were
living in the slums, and he drove her out every night to work as a street walker.
`From the age of seven I can remember the ghastly life we lived the man always stinking of drink and beating up mother if she did not bring home enough money; never enough food to eat and the place filthy from neglect. The end came when I was just over nine. The man was more than usually drunk one night and tried to rape me. Mother hit him over the head with the pestle with which she ground our maize. Whether she killed him we'll never now. I hope she did, but I doubt it.
`Anyhow, she thought she had; so she jammed our few belongings into a wicker basket and we beat it back to the Indian village where she had been born. When she had been moderately prosperous she had never sent her family any money; but the poor are always generous, so her people took us in. After that we lived like pigs. Six of us sleeping on the floor in a tumbledown shack. But at least people were kind to me and we were free of the man. `Mother was already ill with an awful hacking cough and it turned out that she had consumption. The hospitals were only for the better off, so nothing could be done for her and she died just before my tenth birthday. But before she died she made an attempt to save me from the usual fate of a wretched Indian child.
`She had secretly kept one quite good ring. With the money it fetched, she bought me a pretty dress, shoes, stockings and had my hair done. Then she wrote a letter and sent me with it to Bernadino.'
`What, on your own at the age of ten!' Adam exclaimed.
`Yes. Children who have lived as I had are far more grownup at that age than children of the upper classes when they are fourteen. All I felt was intense excitement at going for the first time on a train, and amazement when I saw the great buildings in Mexico City. But everyone was kind and helpful. They gave me sweets and sandwiches and a kind old lady found out for me where Bernardino’s office was and took me there from the station.
`When I got there I was a bit scared, and going up in the lift frightened me out of my wits. But when the receptionist wanted to take the letter from me I clung to it and insisted, as I had been told, that I must give it to Bernadino personally. Fortunately he was in, so I was taken through to him.
`He read the letter and asked if I knew its contents. “Yes, I said. ”I am your daughter and mother wrote it when she was dying. She says that for old times' sake you must take care of me."
`Then he sat there staring at me. For how long I don't know. It seemed to me to be for hours, but I am sure it was for a good ten minutes. During that time I suppose he made up his mind that he would like to have a girl, because his wife had given him only a son Ramon, who was then twelve years old and had died when he was only an infant.
`At last he smiled at me and said, "Yes, you are a pretty little thing, and you are my daughter. Your name from now on is Chela Enriquez. Remember that Chela Enriquez. You must do your best to forget the past. Never, never mention it. When anyone asks you about yourself you are to tell them I married your mother in Monterrey eleven years ago, but that shortly afterwards we secured an annulment. Since then you have lived with her there in moderate comfort. Now, what would you like best of all
things in the world?"
` “A plate of roast pork, please,” I burst out.
`He roared with laughter and said, “From now on you shall have roast pork every day, if you wish. And as many sweets as you can eat and all the toys that money can buy. Because you are my daughter, Chela Enriquez.” Then his eyes hardened and he added, “But should you forget that, and ever tell anyone of the life that I gather from your mother's letter you have been leading, it will be as though an evil fairy had waved her wand. For you, the good things of life will vanish overnight and I will send you back to that squalid Indian village.”
`He had me taken to a convent and there I was given special tuition. Being fairly intelligent, I soon caught up on the schooling I had missed. From time to time Bernadino came to see me and brought me wonderful toys. At the age of seventeen I became a member of his household. He had skilfully prepared the way and everyone accepted me as his daughter by a second marriage that had not succeeded. I think he even put it about that he had become infatuated with an Indian woman then, realising the damage having married her must do him, quickly got rid of her. Anyhow, I'm happy to think that I've never given him cause to regret having made me what I am today.'
When Chela had ceased speaking, Adam murmured, `What an extraordinary story. Oh darling, how I feel for you at having been through the horror of those early years.'
`No,' she replied, `you needn't. I've no doubt that my mother was paying off a most unpleasant time that she had given that awful man in a previous incarnation, and that the time had come for me to learn what it is like to suffer dire poverty in childhood. Anyhow, I've no regrets about that. It was a valuable experience.
But you understand now how deeply I feel for the sufferings of my people.'
`Of course I do.'
`Would you,' she asked, `be willing to give your help in the attempt that my friends and I are about to make to redeem them?'