A Thorn in the Bush by Frank Herbert Read Free Book Online

needlework, cast sidelong glances at Mrs. Ross.
    She acts exactly like someone with a secret, thought Mrs. Ross.
    Paulita bit off a thread, peered toward the back of the house, returned her attention to Mrs. Ross. “I have a note from him,” she hissed.
    “A note? From …” The implications exploded in Mrs. Ross’s consciousness.
    Paulita hunched her shoulders in a giggle that made her look school-girlish. “Yes. He sent it by Antonio Muñoz. Antonio was not supposed to tell anyone except me who sent him, but my aunt is his godmother. She made him tell her.”
    Mrs. Ross swallowed with difficulty. “What did …”
    “He paid Antonio five pesos to bring the note!”
    “I see. And what did he say in the note?” Mrs. Ross felt her sore throat returning.
    “He said he had to go away for a while, but that he would return and bring me something to make me happy! Is it not exciting?” She lapsed into Spanish, speaking at a furious rate: “What a brute in the eyes! Auntie was outraged. We have not been introduced. We know nothing about him. Remember that artist who … you know … with Ferencia Alabano.” Paulita hugged her punto de cruz to her nubile bosom. “Oh, how exciting it is!”
    What has gone wrong? wondered Mrs. Ross. Something is definitely wrong. She recalled Serena’s unnatural reaction to the artist’s departure, said: “Paulita, my dear, I know this type of young man. Artists are a strange …”
    “Oh, you’re just like Auntie!” exploded Paulita. “She thinks …” She glanced at the spindly outline of her legs beneath the serape. “… just because I must use the sticks to walk that I cannot have … a real life.”
    “Perhaps all this is possible,” ventured Mrs. Ross. “But what happens when the young man discovers …” She, too, glanced at the serape.
    Paulita smiled. A knowing expression came over her proud face. “It is not just the legs that a young man admires. Surely you know this?”
    But Mrs. Ross’s thoughts were twisting through their own private horror. She had convinced herself that Hoblitt, when he learned of Paulita’s infirmity, would react as the other young artist had reacted: Beauty with a deformity must be destroyed! Let no deformity survive! She envisioned Hoblitt: jaws slavering, knife upraised, advancing on a cowering Paulita. It was a scene modified by the Gertie experience but otherwise lifted out of a B movie starring Lon Chaney that she had seen twenty-five years before.
    “It must not be!” she muttered.
    Paulita bent to her sewing. “What will be, will be,” she said. There was a mixture of Indian fatalism and the Hidalgo beauty poring over her secrets in Paulita’s manner. “God has many plans,” she said.
    In great agitation, Mrs. Ross arose, said: “I must be going. I just remembered that I have to see Don Jaime.”
    “Oh …” Paulita straightened. “But you have just arrived.”
    “Please forgive me, child,” said Mrs. Ross. “But it is something that I forgot.”
    “Well, if you must,” said Paulita.
    The journey across the village went with maddening slowness. In the first place, there was the hot, muggy afternoon. Secondly, the three days in bed had sapped her strength. Each succeeding curb seemed higher than the one before, and the cobblestones were like live things that lay in wait to make her stumble. But even worse than these was the way every doorway, with its waiting villager, drained away the minutes.
    “But you are recovered!”
    It was the fat, oily-skinned Señora Puntarilla, wife of the village pharmacist. She blocked the narrow sidewalk like a wall, slab arms outstretched in joy.
    Mrs. Ross stopped, hid exasperation behind a smile. There was no way around the woman short of detouring through the cobblestone street with its litter of burro droppings. One simply did not do that.
    “I offered a candle and my prayers,” said Señora Puntarilla. “And God has answered!”
    It took easily two minutes to get