Part 8

“I will send it this evening,” he said to Jacinta. And in the evening this is what he wrote:

“SEÑORITA CONDESA: The Archbishop is my enemy and makes my uncle marry you. Have you confessed to him? Surely, you have loved me? On the day he marries you he shall kill your

“RAMON.”

This letter he sent. So he played upon the poor girl’s conscience, that as a child she had given him a smile; and bragged even to her that he had had her heart. This was Thursday, March 19, 1812. The marriage was set for the 26th. Ramon went to the club, the café which served as club to the aristocracy of Carácas, and announced publicly that his uncle was forcing his ward to marry him against his will. The General, when this story was brought to him, winced, but only replied: “My nephew knows I cannot fight him; I must leave my honor to the kind opinion of my friends.” This speech was repeated--“to the kindness of my friends;” and that night a dozen young gentlemen called upon the marquis and asked to be permitted to provoke Don Ramon. The General refused it to all, with one wave of his hand. “I marry my ward for family reasons; my nephew must be permitted to make what criticism he chooses.”

Don Ramon then announced his uncle a coward, and promised to prevent the marriage by force. Del Torre took no notice. Jacinta had taken the letter to Dolores, but Ramon got no reply. After his last threat, however, he received a call from a Jesuit priest, who was sent by the Archbishop and hinted of the Inquisition. Then the young man was silent for two days, and in devouring his rage he produced this letter to Dolores:

“DOLORES: Hast thou confessed? And why no answer to me? “For death (_para la muerte_), “RAMON.”

To this Jacinta brought back a line:

“I shall confess upon my wedding-day. My answer to my husband, with the message that your Honour” (V., only, in Spanish) “did not give. “DOLORES, CONDESA DE LUNA.”

For Ramon had never given the message that went with the rose.

All this was in Holy Week. Palm Sunday passed; the Wednesday came; Holy Thursday was the day fixed for the wedding--by the Archbishop’s special will.

Now, it must be remembered that in all this time del Torre had spoken with Dolores face to face three times, and three times only. Each time he had seen her he had mentioned his nephew’s name, and each time she had changed color. He would have married her to Don Ramon could he have done so; even now he had dared but for Ramon’s own conduct. But all this time del Torre was in an agony of doubt, through which even Ramon’s insults could not penetrate. He would have sent Dolores to a convent, but the archbishop forbade it; the priest feared not Don Ramon against Don Sebastian; perhaps, however, he feared him at the convent doors. But all this time del Torre had seen Dolores twice a day, at mass, where he went and gazed upon her, dim through incense.

IX.

ON Wednesday morning the Marquis del Torre had a last interview with his bride. She was to go to her last maidenly confession on that day; and he called early in the morning, in his uniform as General of the Liberal army. When he came upon her she was all in white and girt about with pearls. Pearls were in her dark hair, pearls in the folds of her white dress, pearls in her neck, no other color about her save the magic amethystine in her eyes. Her face was pale.

Del Torre bowed over her hand, then stood beside her. After the greeting, he said:

“Señorita Dolores, I am still your guardian--I would only marry you to make you happy. Do you think I can?” His lips were paler than hers, and his voice sounded cold. She only answered:

“Quite sure, señor.”

“And the rose I saw you give my nephew--is it dead?”

Again the rush of color to her face; but, after a start, she answered, “It is dead.” She stammered slightly, trying to say more; to relieve her embarrassment he rose and left her. “Hasta mañaña!”

“Mañaña por la mañaña,” she answered, forcing brightness in her voice. The marquis went out into the sunlight; he felt his heart as cold as hers.

But again Dolores burst into tears; then, quickly drying them, she wrote a letter and sealed it. Then she called Jacinta.

The Indian nurse came quickly, and as she stood looking at Dolores a dog’s love was in her eyes. “This letter--the marquis must have it in the morning,” said the countess.

“He shall have it--in the morning,” answered Jacinta. Then Dolores went to her confessor. And Jacinta could not read the letter; so she took it to Don Ramon first, and asked him what it was. And it was Don Ramon read it, Jacinta looking on.

Then Ramon girt his sword about him, and went to mass.

X.

THE soldiers in Carácas march to mass and the service is performed at beat of drum. At the muffled tap of a march the regiment files in to fill the nave, and kneels, ringing their bayonets upon the stones; the people fill the sides, and stand behind the columns on the aisles. The General was there, as usual, but he could not see Dolores; she was kneeling at a shrine upon one side, a shrine of Mary, Mother of Pity. All the pictures and gold images were heavily draped in crape, for it was Holy Week. The brazen trumpets of the military band sounded through the Kyrie Eleison; the church was dark, for every woman was in black until Good Friday, and the crape hangings shrouded close the walls. Del Torre stood erect in his green uniform, but, save for his figure, the nave was a mass of red and gold and glittering steel. He looked for her; he looked back to the doors which were thrown back inward; from the dark, shrouded church he looked through into the empty square, blazing with the zenith sun of the equinox. Again a muffled drumbeat, and the regiment knelt, with a rattle of their bayonets, upon the stones; it was the elevation of the host, and he, too, knelt and crossed himself.

When mass was over, the soldiers filed out first; as del Torre followed, he met the wounded captain again, with bloodless cheeks. “You are too pale to be out, sir,” said the General, almost lovingly, his hand resting lightly on the other’s shoulder.

“Don Ramon is outside,” he answered.

“I have no fear--the youth is mad,” said del Torre.

It is the custom in Spanish America, now forgotten in old Spain, to lead the holy images of the church about the streets, with a slow processional, before Good Friday. As del Torre spoke, they found themselves behind one of these. In this Church of Santa Teresia is a famed old image of Christ bearing the Cross, brought two centuries before from Spain. It is especially venerated by the merchants of Carácas; large sums are subscribed by them each Easter time to dress it up, thousands of dollars and doubloons. Behind this image now they found themselves. Eight chanting priests, in mourning black and lilac, bore it on either side, but the image was gay with beaten gold, borne in a canopy of costly lace, a hundred tall wax candles giving light. The priests move very slowly, scarce a step a minute, making stations at each shrine, so that to bear these images from one church to another may take half a day. Del Torre and the wounded officer could not, of course, pass it; so that it was half an hour when they reached the open air, and the square nearly emptied of the worshippers; del Torre heard the distant band of the army down the mountain slope.

As they came out into the heat, he felt a slight shudder, like a quiver of the earth, and thought it was the shock of seeing his nephew. Don Ramon del Torre spoke loudly, disregarding the presence of the bystanders, pressing rudely by the sacred shrine, and crying that the old man would not fight.

“There stands the old man that will wed my cousin.”

“Mention not her name,” said General del Torre----

“I would kill him first, but that his old blood dare not spill itself for her.”

“Mention not her name,” said del Torre----. Then Ramon’s voice hissed louder.

“My cousin Dolores de Luna that has been my mistress----”

That night a Jesuit priest, leaving the King’s House, where he had confessed Dolores, ran hastily to the Archbishop’s. While he was there, another frightened messenger brought the news that Don Sebastian and his nephew had been fighting on Calvareo. But Jacinta, crying, brought the news to the Countess earlier, how Don Sebastian and Don Ramon at last had met, and how the nephew lay full of wounds upon the Calvary, literally cut in pieces, killed at his own uncle’s hands.

XI.

DOLORES spent the night before the wedding kneeling in the little chapel of her dwelling. So we read that Eastern Catholics “lay all that night in the form of a cross.” She was praying for her husband that had been to be--perhaps praying that he might be still, praying for light to see if there were sin in it. Perhaps she had remorses of her own. She had known the dead man he had killed as a boy, bold, reckless, wild; I suppose she had looked at him once or twice. A Southern maiden’s glances return to torture her when they have led to blood; prudent maids of other climes are chary of them for tradition of some such reason.

Dolores never wept, but knelt there, dry-eyed, praying. In intervals she thought, “Would he be well enough to come?” as she knew that he was gravely wounded; but somehow she felt sure he would; and that if this marriage-bond were sin, he would venture it for her sake. A woman’s conscience rules her heart, even in Spain; but a man, even Roman Catholic, will risk his own perdition to save her sorrow, or that no sin be hers. She must save him, she must be the judge. And sunrise found her pale but decided. Then she called Jacinta to her side, and asked her if she had carried to her husband (so she called him) her note.

Jacinta looked at her fiercely; but at the word “Husband,” started. Then she said she had torn it up.

At the Countess’s look she quailed, and lied again. She had it still, she said. Dolores bade her give it to him as he came from early mass.

Then Jacinta cried and told the truth. She admitted that she had given it to Don Ramon.

Dolores heard this with the blood about her heart, but sat there silent, while the Indian woman grovelled at her feet. It was her note, then, that caused the duel.

Then mine, too, is the sin, she thought, not his alone; and this thought gave her joy. But where was he? was he strong enough to come? She took her writing-case and wrote an exact copy of her other note; and this was what she had said, and Ramon had read, and then had fought his uncle:

“SEÑOR: The rose you asked of yesterday I gave Don Ramon; but the message that went with it was given him for you. “MARIA JOESPHA DOLORES, CONDESA DE LUNA.”

As she finished writing, the General was announced. His face was bloodless, but his wounds had been carefully dressed, so that the bandages could not be seen. He knelt over her hand, though the kneeling set them bleeding once again. But Dolores, timid only in her love, still saw but remorse and duty in his eyes. With him he brought his own priest, a priest from the Liberal army. “Pobra,” he said, “we must be married early--early and privately.”

She sought his eyes timidly and tried to say it; to say what words her note said in her hand. But she could not. She could only say, “I know--I have heard,” and she clenched the letter closer in her hand. She could not give it to him.

Del Torre’s face could not turn whiter. But he said: “Forgive me--only your forgiveness I can ask. At noon, then?”

“At noon.” She saw him leave the house; then, then she turned and cried to Jacinta: “Run, run, and give him this letter--at the Cathedral.”

And again, upon her wedding-morning, Dolores went to pray. She was interrupted by a visit from the Archbishop. Some presentiment made her rise in apprehension; and as she stood erect, she saw, through the priest, the man. And she saw that he, too, had her secret; first the lover, then the priest, had found it out.

“This marriage must not be,” said he.

“Holy Father, I have confessed yesterday.”

“This marriage must not be. You loved Don Ramon.”

Dolores’s lips curled. “I confessed, yesterday. I see you have been told.”

“Yesterday ’twas a duty--to-day it is a sin. Thou lovest Ramon.”

Then Dolores rose to her full height and her blue eyes flamed like ice. “Sebastian, the Liberador, him I love, in this life and the next; God knows it, and Ramon knows it, and now may you, and soon, please God, shall he!”

All forewarned that he was, the priest started at her vehemence. Fool that he had been!

“He has murdered his nephew--and thou art the cause.”

The Countess was silent. All Catholic that she was, she had resolved to appeal from his judgment to God’s.

“Thou wilt not obey?” said the priest.

Her lips half formed the word no.

“Then on thee and on him, on thy house I pronounce the curse of God. Thy family shall have cause to remember this day, this Holy Thursday, until it and both thy names shall have vanished from the earth.”

Scarcely had the Archbishop left the house when del Torre came. She saw that he had not been to church. But she was married to him without another word. “If he has not my note,” she thought, “he shall have it soon.”

But before that night Jacinta, with the note in her hand, was buried with ten thousand others behind the closed cathedral doors.

XII.

ON this Thursday, March 26, 1812, while the services of the Hours of Agony were being celebrated in the great cathedral, in the presence of ten thousand people, the mountains trembled and the earth opened. The multitude pressed for the doors, but they opened inward, and the thronging masses pressed them fast. At the second shock the walls opened and the roof fell in. The Archbishop and many priests were buried at the altar. Thirty thousand people are said to have perished. Many were swallowed in the chasm that opened on the mountain-side, like rents in a bulging sail bursted in a gale. No stone houses in Carácas more than one-story high were standing on that night--except the old Spanish castle where, in the tower-room, Dolores sat watching for her husband.

Through all that night del Torre worked amid the ruins. At dawn he was brought home insensible, fainting from his labors, bleeding at his opened wounds. Dolores met him at the door, and led the bearers to the room that should have been their bridal-room. There he was laid, and lay delirious many weeks with fever. Dolores never left his side.

The Archbishop was known to have been killed. Jacinta, the bride knew, must have perished too. The priest that had married them stayed with her; but Dolores, though brave enough to sin, was not false to her faith. The over-wrought heart of the poor girl and great noblewoman connected all that had happened with what she deemed her sins--firstly, that she had caused her cousin’s death, her husband’s crime, but chiefly that she had braved the Church, and the curse its head, now dead, had launched upon her and upon Carácas. That their house alone was standing seemed only to mark them guilty.

Dolores was a noble heart, and did not falter in her course. She had followed love, she had married him she loved; his wife she was, his wife she would remain. But she sought no soothing palliation from the friendly priest. She went to no confession; in all her life she never would confess herself, seek absolution again. Excommunicated she would live, that the curse might rest on her and not on him.

But ah, how ardently she watched for Sebastian’s consciousness to come! for his eyes to rest on hers again! She felt sure the coldness in them now was gone. Delirious, he raved of her and of his love; he that never called her but by titles in his life, now cried Dolores, Dolores, and she held his hand and waited.

She bade the doctors tell her when his recovery was likely to come. And then, when one evening his hands moved, and he closed his eyes and slept, she sat there trembling, not daring to be beside him, but her face turned away. That yearning cry--Dolores, Dolores, had been stilled for hours; but the night passed and still he was asleep. Then, when it was broad sunlight, she heard a sudden movement by the nurse, and the priest began to pray in Latin, and her heart stood still. He sat up; she retreated in the shadow, toward the door. His voice spoke; but oh! how low, how weak--not as it had been in his dreaming; alas! this was now his right mind. He saw not her; his eyes looked sanely out the window, through the crowded city. “It was a sin to marry her,” he said.

She was carried fainting to her room within the tower, and there again she waited. “Has he asked for me?” she ventured to ask, at night.

He had asked for my lady, and they told him she was ill. And the next day again; and they had told him she was in her suite about the tower. She dared not seek him now. And flowers came to her from him, but no further speech. Thrice he sent his homage to her. He could not walk yet, but he sent his homage to her. She asked to know when he could walk; and they told her they would let her know. So, one afternoon, they told her he might walk the next day; and all that night she passed in prayer.

The next day she waited for his step upon the stone floor. It came not; to her tears and prayers, it came not. Jacinta’s dead hand still held close the note. She prayed--was it wrong to pray when so unshrived?--to Maria Vergen de las Mercedes, but still it came not. Her haughty Spanish breeding forbade her showing sorrow to her servants, and they were cold and deferential to her. Jacinta? She was dead--Dolores knew, but thought that she had given him her letter. She had sinned, yes, but he was her husband.

The next day she asked the servant. The Señor General was gone. Gone? without seeing her even? He had had to go to the wars; he had not ventured to disturb my lady; he left a letter. A letter? she tore it open, read it. It sent his respectful worship to “the Marquesa;” it apologized for his illness; it prayed forgiveness from her for having married her; it was done to save her name. It said no word of love; and Sebastian Ruy del Torre was a gentleman: his love appeared not in his letter. If she loved him not, he would not wound her by showing his. It said no word of guilt. He would neither wound her by requiring love nor by suggesting blame; but to Dolores’s morbid fancy it had a sense of blame. It closed by speaking of his duty at the wars; of his country’s freedom; perhaps, a hint of hers. Dolores clasped the white paper to her breast, and, to immortal eyes its color was of blood. She read it once again; and del Torre, had he been there, could have seen her heart die in her eyes.

XIII.

WE must remember that Maria Josepha Dolores, Condesa del Torre y Luna, was a lonely young girl, educated but from books, devoutedly believing in a faith we like to think superstitious. Remember, please, also, that she loved, and braved her Church for love, and had not, so she thought, won his. She deemed her soul was damned; she knew her heart was broken. Not that there were no days when she did dare hope; no days in which she tried to frame a theory by which it still might seem he cared for her; but she believed he was borne down by their great guilt. And she resolved his soul, at least, would not be lost for hers. “My lady Marquesa would have her apartments in all the house,” the letter said. “My lady had but to command. A small room in the tower was enough for him--he could but rarely be home from the wars. He trusted, if his presence was painful, she would not see him,” etc., etc. And, after many months, when the General came back--his wife met him not. The rooms of state were carefully prepared for him, and all his suite; flowers, banquets were ready; all his retinue and hers, in their joint blazonry, were in attendance. Only, strangely enough, just that little tower-room was the one my lady Marchioness preferred. Would he kindly yield it to her?

Of course, and the General sent her a rope of pearls. They almost broke her resolution; but she met him not. The General only sighed; this was all as he had known. The evil nephew, done to death by his own hand, still had her heart. He sighed and his hair grew whiter. One rending memory came over him, of the last time he had seen her eyes.

He could not know, as he rode homeward up the street, after his first state visits, straining his eyes up to that tower-window frowning so blankly, how late her own had left it--those eyes of purple-gray that every beggar in Carácas soon knew well, save only he. Before the next return his glory blazed abroad, and Bolivar came back with him. Bolivar, the Liberator. All thoughtful preparation, all courtly care, all a Spanish grandee’s splendor was spread forth to receive him in the Casa Rey; but the châtelaine was never seen. It was not necessary to explain her absence; such things get quickly known; it was, of course, thought she had loved the cousin. And the strange Old-world Gothic pride made her bearing, the honor of the house, del Torre’s silence, only too easily intelligible to them. So the Marquis del Torre never saw his bride on his returning home.

But, had he known it, he never opened a door that she had not vanished through it. He never touched a flower she had not placed for him. He never looked in a mirror her gray eyes had not just left. He never touched a wine-glass to his lips that her lips had not kissed it. The very missal that he read from had been warmed within her bosom.

O, ghosts, and mediums, and vulgar spirits of air! and stupid tables, mirrors that are flattered with tales of second sight! Why did you not hold a look of hers one moment longer? why did not the roses keep a second longer her lips’ breath for him? Poor fables of visions in the air, that could not draw the image of her eyes to his as he rode up the street scarce a hundred mortal bodies’ breadths away! But they never did; he never saw her, she saw him only as he rode away upon his horse; and so for many--nay, not many (such poor slight power has heaven)--not for many, years. And as his horse bore him away, she came to the tower-window and watched him go--and there she sat weeks, months, until the pennons flashed or the trumpet’s note announced to her, waiting, that he was come again. For he always came in such guise, announced with ceremony. And he did not dream her eyes had been at the tower-window ever since. For their eyes never met.

But the people knew, and so they called her “Our Lady of the Tower.” And Nuestra Doña del Torre is she called there still. And thus they lived there alone within that great house, each for pity of the other in courage, each for awe of love in silence; each so loving, so brave, so silent, that the other never knew.

XIV.

“NUESTRA DOÑA DEL TORRE”--by that title, I fancy, she is known in heaven. For in that city all the good that was worked was hers; after the earthquake, then through siege and civil war, her heart directed her handmaidens, ladies loving her did her soft work. Her own life was but a gentle message. For she never but for the convent left her tower-room. Thither, however, poor old men, children, troubled girls, would come to see her.