Chapter I: HAD deferred my call upon Miss Bruce until I should receive (2)

THE freight engine had been loaned us by telegram from Colonel Carington, and we had found our Pullman car pulled up on an old rusty side-track that ran into a bed of wild flowers; on the front platform, half smothered by them, our two darkies were asleep. They wakened, however, to greet us with smiles of such expansive intimacy that I felt bound, when we were safely on the way, to put them _au courant_ of the situation. The solemnity and sympathy their faces at once assumed guaranteed their discretion; though I afterward heard the “conductor” adjuring the engineer from the front platform to “git up that thar burro-engine wif’m bacon-ham.” Whereupon the engineer sanded the track and blew “off brakes.”

The long journey was rather distressing, however. The brave girls did not lose their spirits, but they kept to themselves, resting in the state-room, while Raoul and I sat on the rear platform and watched the dust eddy up from the long single track behind us. We had innumerable waits and sidings; where often the girls and I wandered into the woods after wild flowers, while Raoul stayed behind to pepper Mrs. Judge Pennoyer with telegrams. We were now by the highest mountains of the East; Roan Mountain still, though it was June, was rosy-robed about its shoulders with the laurel.

The day wore on, and I could get no speech with Jeanie. I looked for my _dédommagement_ to the journey home. This I no longer dreaded; it was a rosy hope. But Jeanie was so timid, now--or I was bolder. In the evening we had a long wait for the night express, which rattled by our siding at a wood-and-water station.

“Perhaps Mr. Bruce is on that train,” I laughed.

“No,” said Raoul, gravely (he never had a sense of humor); “I am confident he is not.”

“How do you know?”

“I have had a telegram from Mrs. Judge Pennoyer.”

“Is she his confidante?”

“She says that he has suddenly decided to await your return in Knoxville.”

“Await my return?”

“Certainly--yours and Miss Jeanie’s. I conclude the Judge this morning wired him an answer that it was not Jeanie who was getting married.”

I gasped. “Then it was not you, after all, he was chasing?”

“Why, of course not.”

“Why did you run away so?”

Raoul looked at me as who should say, “Oh, these Northerners!”

“Perhaps it wasn’t necessary,” he added, with that faint tinge of sarcasm which is akin to humor. “Is that your ring you wear upon your finger?”

I know I started; and I felt myself blush. “It--it was given to me to wear,” I gasped.

“Exactly--and by Miss Jeanie Bruce--and Mr. Kirk Bruce gave it to Miss Jeanie. Of course he thought--when he heard a Miss Bruce and a gentleman had gone off to get married----”

“Kirk Bruce gave it to her?” I said. My mind works slowly at such times.

“Certainly. Did she not tell you so?”

“She said a gentleman gave it her----”

“Well, he was the gentleman.”

“Who had shot a schoolmate at boarding-school----”

“Same man, I assure you.”

“For being attentive to a young lady who----”

“Kirk Bruce, to a T.”

“Went out without a revolver----”

“As you did yourself. I think,” concluded Raoul, “you had better give Miss Jeanie her ring back.”

“If I do,” said I, “I’m damned.”

10.

THEY were married the next day in the pretty little Episcopal church in Spartanburg, by the Bishop of Georgia. They left the same afternoon on their wedding journey back to “Old White” and the North. Miss Jeanie Bruce and I accompanied them--or rather, they us--as far as the junction station (I forget its name), where they met the east-bound train, and we were to keep on to Knoxville.

Jeanie’s sweet face was very pale, but her eyes were like deep wells--so deep now that they indeed “unravelled the coiled night and saw the stars by noon.” She had to sit by me now; but her silence appealed even to a blunted Northern sense of chivalry. I foresaw that I, too, should have to keep silence until I had brought her home to Knoxville. But not a day longer! Not an hour, I finally vowed.

But oh, the beauty of that immediate future! The long twenty hours’ journey after they left us at the junction--where she was under my protection, and no Kirk Bruce could say me nay! Even chivalry at such times is like a _sordine_ on one harp-string--heart-string I had almost said. And one’s being is so resonant that the note of speech is hardly missed.

So, I had my two-hours’ day-dream, and then Mrs. Judge Pennoyer turned up on that east-bound train, as chaperone to bring us home.

“You telegraphed for her?” I said to Jeanie.

She did not deny it; and I thought Mrs. Pennoyer cast one look at me as of contempt.

Then I saw her see the ring upon my finger, and her expression seemed to change.

We saw the happy pair go off, and we went back to our seats in the returning train. We three; and one of us most miserable, and that was I.

I had given up all hope of talking with Jeanie any more. She went off with Mrs. Pennoyer to a front seat, where I saw them in earnest consultation; and that ancient relict of justice tempered by mercy appeared to be speaking of me. I watched them; and I heard the words “Mr. Bruce” and “the ring;” and I saw Jeanie grow still more pale.

Finally, to my glad astonishment, she rose, and like a brave lady--not like those Northern girls I knew in Salem, who would not dare throw a man a life preserver to save him from drowning--sweet and gracious, she came back to me.

“Mr. Higginbotham” (what a name to set by Raoul, or even Bruce), “I must have my ring again,” said she.

“Never,” I answered. “It is not your ring, but mine.”

“I only lent it to you. I did not give it.”

“Then lend it to me a little longer--till I have seen you home,” I said.

Her eyes filled with tears, and my heart was drowned in them.

“But Mrs. Pennoyer says Cousin Kirk is waiting for us there. Oh, please.”

“Let him wait,” I said.

“But, please. I implore you--as you----”

“As I love you,” I said. “As I love you, I shall keep it. Will you marry me?”

“I--I do not love you,” she answered, almost in a whisper. “Now, will you give it back?”

“No,” I said.

I saw her tears. “He will kill you;” and she left me, sobbing.

“Then, you can take it,” I called out, after her.

Man can be brutal at such times.

Mrs. Pennoyer came back and tried to move me. Who could, after Jeanie Bruce had failed? Moreover, I thought she thought she would have done like me.

I fear Jeanie cried most of that journey home. But I, as is the way of man, was happy.

We got back to Knoxville in the early morning. They did not wish me to go home with them from the station; so I put them in a carriage, and sat upon the box. We drove up to the piazza of the little house upon which sat a man in a black frock-coat, smoking a cigar. He threw it away, and took off his hat to the ladies. We both assisted them out; and Jeanie ran quickly into the house, Mrs. Judge Pennoyer following. I paid the carriage, and it drove away.

“Now, sir,” said Mr. Kirk Bruce.

“Now, sir,” said I.

“I will request you, sir, for to give me that ring that is on your finger.”

“That ring does not belong to me.”

“That is why, sir, I ask you as a gentleman, fo’ to give it up.”

“That is why, sir, I am compelled as a gentleman, fo’ to refuse.”

Insults to one’s diction come next to those that touch the heart. Mr. Bruce had me, forthwith, “covered” with his revolver.

“Are you engaged to Miss Jeanie Bruce?”

“I am not.”

“Then, sir, as a gentleman, you have no right to wear that ring.”

I had heard vague stories of firing through one’s coat pocket; and I felt in mine for the little revolver Jeanie had given me. But the miserable little toy was turned the wrong way, and I could not twist it about.

“He is engaged to me--he is,” cried Jeanie, bursting out from the front door. “He asked me on the train.”

“And you refused me,” I said, turning my eyes for one moment away from Bruce to look at her.

“I did not--I only----”

How it happened, I do not know; but at that instant the confounded revolver went off in my pocket. With a cry, Jeanie threw up her arms and fell upon the floor of the piazza. Bruce and I were at her feet instantly. Mrs. Pennoyer rushed out. The neighbors rushed across from over the way.

“Is she killed?” said Bruce and I, together.

As we spoke Jeanie made a dart, and picking up Bruce’s revolver, which he had dropped upon the grass, threw it over a high board fence into the neighboring lot. Then turning, “Give me your ring,” said she.

I gave it to her.

“And now,” she said, replacing it on another finger, “Cousin Kirk, let me introduce to you the gentleman to whom I am to be married--Mr. Higginbotham, of Boston.”

“Salem,” I corrected, in a dazed way.

“Of Salem. Cousin Kirk--congratulate him.”

Cousin Kirk looked at her, at me, and at the board fence.

“As a gentleman, sir, I have no other thing to do. Of course--if my cousin loves you--you may keep the ring. Though I must allow, sir, you shoot rather late.”

With this one simple sarcasm he departed. Jeanie and I watched him groping in the long grass of the next lot for his revolver and then go slouching down the road. We turned and our eyes met. I tried to take her hand; but suddenly her face grew scarlet. “Oh, what have I done?” and she rushed into the house.

I went back to Salem.

* * * * *

I stayed there just four days. In New York I met Jerry Sullivan and had a talk with him. He will, in future, suppress his sense of humor when inditing telegrams.

Then I wrote and asked Jeanie if she would accept me, save at the pistol’s mouth.

Mr. and Mrs. Raoul accompanied us on our wedding journey; and we were married at White Sulphur by the genial justice _de céans_.

LOS CARAQUEÑOS

BEING THE LIFE HISTORY OF DON SEBASTIAN MARQUES DEL TORRE AND OF DOLORES, HIS WIFE, CONDESA DE LUNA

I.

PAGANISM was the avowal of life; Christianity the sacrifice of it. So the world civilized has always separated at the two diverging roads, according as brain or blood has ruled their lives; the Turanian races, and after them the Latins, to assert life; the Semitic races, and after them the Teutons, to deny it. So the Church of Rome, as nearest in time to Paganism, has been nearer the avowal of life, has recognized, through all its inquisitions, human hearts; the Sects have sought to stifle them; the Puritans have posed to ignore them. Thus cruelty may be the crime of priests; hypocrisy has been the vice of preachers.

Hence my poor friend Tetherby, spinning his affections from his brain, tired with a mesh of head-wrought duties, died, or rather ceased to live, of a moral heart-failure. His heart was too good to be made out of brains alone; and his life was ended with the loss of that girl of his--what was her name, Myra, Marcia?--born, in the Northland, of a warmer blood, who fell a victim there, as the rose-tree does in too cold a climate, to the creeping things of earth. Now it happened that that same year I was told the story of Dolores, Marquesa del Torre y Luna, almost the last of the old Spanish nobility of Carácas, called la doña sola de la casa del Rey--as we should say, the lonely lady of the house of the King--for she lived there, married and widow, fifty years, and left no child to inherit the thick-walled city house, four square about its garden, and the provinces of coffee-trees, and, what she prized more and we prize less, the noble blood of Torre and of Luna, now run dry.

There are two things in the little city of Carácas that go back to the time when the Spanish empire made a simulacrum of the Roman round the world--one is the great round-arched Spanish bridge, spanning the deep arroyo on the mountain slope above the present town--useless now, for the earthquake clefts are deeper on either side than this gorge of the ancient river of the city, and have drained its stream away--and the other this great stone fortress in the centre of the present town, with walls eight feet thick, its windows like tunnels cut through to the iron unglazed casement--for this was the only house that was left standing on the evening of the great earthquake; and so the modern city clusters timidly about it, its houses a modest one- or double-story, and, on the clay slope where the older city was, the cactus grows, and the zenith sun burns the clay banks red, and the old “gold-dust road,” over the Cordillera to the sea, now but a mule-path of scattered cobble-stone, winds lonely and narrow across the splendid bridge, among the great fissures that the earthquake left. And both bridge and house still bear the sculptured blazonry, the lions and the castles, and the pious inscription to the greater glory of the Virgin.

Carácas lies in a plain, like the Vega of Granada, only green with palms as well as poplars; but through its rich meadows a turbid mountain torrent runs, and south, and west, and east are mountains; and north the mighty Silla lifts almost to the snows, half breaking the ceaseless east wind of the sea; trade-wind, it has been called in history; slave-wind were better. And by the little city is the palm-clad Calvareo, the little hill gay with orchids and shaded by tree-ferns, in whose pleasant paths the city people still take their pleasure (for the name of Calvary but means the view, not any sadness), and took their pleasure, eighty years since, when this story begins. And one evening, in the early years of the century, there walked alone, or with but a nurse for her dueña, a girl whose beauty still smiles down through sad tradition and through evil story, to lighten the dark streets of the old Spanish town, whose stones for many years her feet have ceased to press. And the memory of the old Casa Rey, the castle, all is hers; and the people of the town, the Caraqueños, still see her lovely face at the window; first at one, and then at the other, but mostly at the grated window in the round tower of the corner, that projects and commands the two streets; for there her sweet, pale face used to show itself, between the bars, and watch for the cavalry her noble husband led, returning from the wars. For then were wars of liberation, when freedom was fought for, not possession and estates; and the Marquis Sebastian Ruy del Torre led in all. And days and days she would watch for him returning, after battles won, she sitting with her golden needle-work at the corner window, her night-black hair against the iron bar (for there are no glass window-panes in Carácas), her strange blue eyes still watching down the street. So she sat there, and broidered chasuble or altar-cloth for the holy church of Santa Maria de las Mercedes, where she prayed each dawn and evening, yet cast her eyes down either street between each stitch, to watch the coming of him she loved on earth. And the people of Carácas used to gather her glances to their hearts, like blue flowers, for of herself they saw no more than this.

But her husband, from their wedding-day, never saw her more. For fifty years she sat at this window, working chasuble and stole, and always, when the distant trumpet sounded, or the first gold-and-scarlet pennon fluttered far down the street, she would drop her work and rise. And then she would wave her hand, and her husband would wave his hand, at the head of his column far away. This was for the populace. But then she would go from the window; and be seen there no more while he stayed at Carácas.... But those that were beneath the window used to say (for the husband was too far off then to see) that before she left the window, she would cast a long look down the street to that distance where he rode, and those that saw this glance say that for sweetness no eye of mortal saw its equal, and the story is, it made little children smile, and turned old bad men good, and even women loved her face.

Then she vanished from the tower, and they saw her no more. During all the time that might be the Marquis’s stay, no more she came to the window, no more to the door. State dinners were given there in the King’s house; banquets, aye, and balls, where all that was Castilian in Carácas came; but the custom was well known, and no one marvelled that the châtelaine came not to meet them; the lovely Lady Dolores, whom no one ever spoke to or saw. Some dueña, some relation, some young niece or noble lady, cousin of either the del Torre, was there and did the honors. And of the Marquesa no one ever spoke, for it was understood that, though not in a convent, she was no longer in the world--even to her husband, it was said, at first with bated breath, then openly.

For the servants told, and the family, and it was no secret, how days and weeks before her lord returned the lady would busy herself with preparations. And their state suite of rooms, and their nuptial-chamber (into which, alas! she else had never come!) were prepared by her, and made bright and joyous with rich flowers, and sweet to his heart by the knowledge of her presence, and the touch of her dear hand. Then, when all was done, and one white rose from her bosom in a single vase (and in a score of years this white rose never failed), she darkened the rooms and left them for his coming, and went back to her seat in the stone-floored tower room, and sat there with her gold and silver embroidery, and so watched for him. And while he stayed in his palace, she lived in those cold, bare rooms; for they alone had not been changed when they were married, but had been kept as they had been a prison, and my lady Dolores loved them best; but she came not now to the window, lest their eyes might meet.

II.

SO fifty years she lived there; and that is why the old Spaniard of Carácas still points out the house, and young men and maidens like to make their trysting-places of its gardens, which are public and where the band plays evenings--if that can be called trysting to our northern notions, which is but a stolen mutual glance in passing. But hearts are warm in Catholic Spain, and they dare not more; right hard they throb and burn for just so much as this--aye, and break for the lack of it. I say, fifty years--fifty years she lived there, but forty she lived alone, for at the end of ten years he died; and the manner of her living and his dying is what I have to tell.

But after that still forty years she lived on alone. Now she no longer worked at the window, and she came there but rarely. It seemed she came there for compassion, that the people, whom she felt so loving, might see her smile. For her smile was sweet as ever, only now it bore the peace of heaven, not the yearning love of earth. Yet never went she out her doors. And when she died--it is only some years since--they buried her upon Good Friday, and she sleeps in her own church, beneath the great gold shrine she loved and wrought for, of Mary, Mother of the Pities. And all the people of the city saw her funeral; and there is, in the church, a picture of the Virgin, that is really her, painted by a dying artist that had seen her face at the window many years before.

And did they not, the Caraqueños, wonder and ask the cause of this?--What was it?--They do not know--But did they not ask the story of the lonely lady, so well known to them?--They asked many years since; but soon gave over; partly that the secret was impenetrable, partly for love of her. For they had, the poorest peasant of them, that quick sympathy to stanch heart’s wounds that all the conventions of the strenuous North must lack. God gives in all things compensation; and even sins, that are not mean or selfish, have their half atoning virtues. Their silence was soothing to her sorrow; they never knew. But the priest?--The Church of Rome is cruel, but it keeps its secrets. And only it and Heaven know if their lives were one long agony of misguidance, as many lives must be on earth--perhaps sometimes the priest-confessor may help in such affairs; if so, God speed the Jesuits. But one thing is sure: in all their lives, after their marriage, they never met. She died old, in gentle silence; he still young, upon a bloody field; and now their eyes at last met in Heaven, “her soul he knows not from her body, nor his love from God.”

And we may, harmless, venture to tell what the people of Carácas say--with reverent memory, and loving glances at the old stone house; the hearts that inhabited it are cold; but its Spanish arms above the door still last, clear-cut as on the day the pride of this world’s life first bade the owner place them there.

III.

IN the Calvareo that evening the Doña Dolores walked alone, with only old Jacinta, the black nurse; black she was called, but her hair alone was black--blue-black; her face was of that fiery brown that marks the Venezuelan Indian; she was not fat, as most nurses, but stood erect, with fierce lurid eyes, her hair in two tight braids, and was following and watching her gentle charge. Jacinta had things to do in our story; her race has nothing of the merry sloth, the gross animality of the negro; what things Jacinta found to do, were done. She was scarce a dozen years older than her mistress, and her form was still as lithe, her step as firm and quick as that of that boy of hers, now twelve, in the military school, training under the _soutane’d_ Jesuits for the service of the Church--or Bolivar. And in the Calvareo also that evening were two men--nephew and uncle, both cousins of Dolores--and not, of course, walking with her or speaking to her, save by reverent bows; and, on the nephew’s part at least, by looks of fire. Yet the uncle might, perhaps, have walked with her, even in Carácas; for he, whom men called the General, despite his prouder titles, was not her cousin only, but her guardian.

Dolores and her maid have traversed the spiral path to the summit of the little hill; there is a little pool and fountain that the Moors, generations back, had taught these people’s ancestors to build; and from a bench among the orchids and the jasmine, and the charming amaryllis lily, standing sentry by her, like a band of spearmen, sees Dolores the lovely valley, purple in the first shadows of the short tropic day, and, on the southern mountain, the white walls of the Archbishop’s new convent; to the north, and higher, the little mountain fort guarding the road to the coast, and, as she looks, it dips its colors to the sunset, which are the yellow and red--the blood and gold--of Spain, and the booming of its little cannon echoes down the valley and the Angelus replies. Then she turns, and touches tenderly (not plucks) a marvellous lonely flower that blooms beside her. It is the Eucharis Amazonica, the lily of the Amazon, but known to her only as the _Flor del Espiritu santo_--the flower of the Holy Ghost. One moment, it seems that she will be disturbed. The younger man has left the older on his walk--for they are not always together, and gossip has made him suitor for his cousin’s hand, and he stands a moment watching her, behind a group of tree-ferns. No lovelier a girl had surely even his eyes ever rested on, as she sat there stilly, though her wonderful eyes were lost to him, following the sunset. And she was the greatest heiress in all the Spanish Main.

He might have stepped forward, into the open, to her, and no one but Jacinta would have known. Perhaps he was about to do so; but suddenly there appeared, on the hilltop beside them, a tall figure dressed in a purple gown, with hood and trimmings of bright scarlet, looking like a fuchsia flower; on his head was a little black velvet covering shaped half like a crown. It was the young Jesuit, the Archbishop of the Guianas. Dolores rose and kissed his hand, bending the knee respectfully; he sat down beside her.

IV.

THE Condesa de Luna, the orphan daughter of dead parents who represented both branches of a famous old Gothic family, already known about the capital for her beauty, was known far and wide as the richest heiress in all Venezuela and Guiana; her prairies stretched from the ocean to the Apure, her herds so countless that they roamed wild upon pampas which were hers, hunted by peons who were hers. The old stone castle with the Spanish arms was hers, and another like it stood empty for her in far Madrid. Her guardian, the Marquis del Torre, was a poor man beside her; and his nephew, Don Ramon, poorer still.

Dolores was brought up as follows: At five she rose, and went, with Jacinta, to early mass--nearly always to a different church, as is the seemly custom in Carácas, lest young men should take advantage of it and take position behind the chairs of their adored ones in church, where they could not be repelled; for, of course, no young gentleman, however madly in love, would insult his lady by accosting her in the open street. After mass, at six, being the time of sunrise and by comparison safe, Jacinta would take her charge for a walk, usually on the Calvareo, then deserted. At seven they would be home, and then in the great court-yard, under the palms and rose-red orchids, Dolores would take her lessons--French, English, music--all from priests. At eleven, bath; at twelve, breakfast; then reading, perhaps a siesta in a hammock made of birds’ plumage. So she passed her days, all in the half-light of the great court-yard; only toward sunset again would she see the open sky, driving with one of her two governesses in the state carriage down the broad valley to where the wheel road stopped, and back again; or more rarely, as on this night, venturing on another walk. And all the youth of Carácas would gaze after her carriage; the young men driving out too, by themselves, in carriages, who had passed their days more in gambling or cock-fighting than with books and music; never, indeed, at mass. For here the lords of creation vent their authority in ordaining their wives and sisters to the Church and goodness, themselves to evil. But the most hardened duellist among them could no more than look at Dolores; only her reckless cousin Ramon would venture to ride athwart her carriage, and presume upon his cousinship to bow.

Yet intercourse is possible always betwixt young people who seek each other out; and all Carácas gave Ramon to her for her suitor. And to-night even, as he stood and glowered at the Archbishop from behind the tree-ferns, he had another chance. For there is, and was, one more strange custom in this strange city; at the sunset hour the young ladies of Carácas, all in their gayest dresses, sit in the great open windows and look upon the street--a curious sight it is to see the bright eyes and white throats thrust, like birds from a cage, through the iron bars of the sombre stone windows. (For no wind or cold ever needs a window of glass in that perpetual perfect weather; the high sun never makes a shutter needful in the narrow streets.) And there they sit, unoccupied; and the young men of the city, dressed also in their best, walk by as slowly, and look as lingeringly, as they dare; and perhaps, if the dark shadow of mamma or the dueña does not come out too quickly from the inner room, a few quick words are spoken, and a flower left or given. And what says the old proverb of the Caraqueños?

“_Better two words in secret than a thousand openly._”

Sebastian Ruy, Marques del Torre, too, was bred as a young nobleman of oldest lineage should be, or should have been, in that early eighteenth century that still lingered then in the Andes. But this took him to Madrid and to Paris in the years VII. and VIII.; and the eighteenth century, as one knows, ended in those wee small numbers. Torre came back to plunge his country in a revolution which lasted intermittently, like one of its own volcanoes, for more than twenty years. The young Parisian étudiant began his first émeute in Carácas itself, with a barricade after the orthodox fashion of the years I. and II. This being quickly suppressed--partly that there were no pavements, and partly that each house was an impregnable fortress--but mostly that the city was of the governing class and stood with Spain--Torre had had to leave the capital for the pampas, where, for over twelve years, he maintained discursive warfare with a changeable command of Indians and peons, which, however, on the whole, increased in numbers, officered by a few young gentlemen, under himself. His marquisate he forgot, and sought to make others forget it. He was, throughout Venezuela, The General. He had never been back within the walls of Carácas; and, at nearly forty, he learned of his only aunt’s death following his uncle’s, and of the little girl they left, and of his guardianship.

A little girl she appeared to his imagination on the pampas; when he got to Carácas, she was a young woman. The General’s locks were already grizzled and his face weather-beaten with ten years’ open life on the plains; his face was marked, close beside the eye, with the scar of a sabre. He had one interview with Dolores, saw her nurse, her instructors, her father confessor; heard stories about his nephew Don Ramon, which troubled him, went back to camp.

Then intervened a brief campaign in the mountains of the Isla Margarita; Torre went there to take command. This is the famed old island of pearls; they lie there in the reefs amid the bones of men and ships. Torre found no pearls, but he defeated the royal troops in the first engagement resembling an open battle he had ventured fight. This matter settled, he lay awake at night, and thought about his new ward. Further tidings reached him from Carácas, of his nephew. It was said young Ramon boasted he would marry her. Then the King, as is the royal way after defeat in battle, made further concessions to the “Liberals,” as the revolutionists were called; and in the coaxing amity of the time, Torre was permitted, nay, invited, to return to the capital. He did so, and was immediately tendered a banquet by the royal Governor, and a ball at which his ward was present. The royal Governor and his lady sat beneath a pavilion, webbed of the scarlet and gold of Spain. The Countess Dolores came and curtsied deeply to them; then she rose the taller for it, and as she turned haughtily away they saw that she was almost robed in pearls; three strands about her neck and six about her waist; and the ribbon in her mantilla was pale green, white, and red. El Gobernador only smiled at this, the liberal tricolor, and made a pretty speech about it; but the vice-regal lady made some ill-natured reference to the pearls, as spoils from Margarita. Don Ramon was standing by and heard it. The General saw it not.

After the formal dance the General went up to compliment his ward. This was the first time he had seen her since his return; for even he could not call save in the presence of the family; and she had no other family than himself. He could not call on her until--unless--he married her. He said, “I am glad my lady Countess is kinder to our colors than my nephew.” He watched her as he said this; she started, and at the end of the sentence blushed. He saw her blush. Then he bowed, as if to retire.

“The pearls,” she said, hastily, “are all I have; see!” And the Marquis, bowing, saw that the neck-strands were not a necklace, but after passing thrice around her neck, descended to be lost in the laces of her dress.

The Marquis ended his bow, and went back to camp. Next week there came an Indian soldier to Dolores with a box of island pearls; they were large as grapeshot, and went thrice about her waist. But the General no longer contradicted her engagement to his nephew.

V.

THE General had never known women; he had only known what men (and women, too) say of women. At Paris, and Madrid, he had seen his friends see dancers, figurantes; he did not confound other women with these, but he had known none other. Of girls, in particular, he was ignorant. A man of Latin race never sees a girl; in America, North America, it is different, and one sometimes wonders if we justify it.

Some weeks after the General got back to his camp (which was high up amid the huge mountain, the first mainland that Columbus saw, which fends the Gulf of Paria from the sea), he was astounded by the appearance of no less a person than his nephew Ramon. He had broken with the royal cause, he said, and come to seek service beneath his uncle. He did not say what statement he had left behind him in Carácas--no explanation was necessary in the then Venezuela for joining any war--but how he had justified his delaying his coming nuptials with Dolores. For he loved her, this young fellow; yet he said--allowed it to be said--that in the process _de se ranger_, in the process of arrangement, for his bride, that she might find her place unoccupied, certain other arrangements had been necessary which took time.

He did not tell this story to his uncle, who took him and sought to make a soldier of him. Not this story; but he told him that he loved Dolores; and his uncle--was he not twenty years younger?--believed him. Twenty years, or fifteen; ’tis little difference when you pass the decade.

But the General found him hard material to work up. He was ready enough at a private brawl; ready enough, if the humor struck him, to go at the enemy; but not to lead his men there. And his men were readier to gamble with him than to follow him; though brave enough, in a way.

Yet the General Marquis blinded his faults--aye, and paid his debts--for when he lost at “pharaon” a certain pearl he wore, the uncle bought it back for him, with a caution to risk his money, not his honor; at which the young captain grit his teeth, and would have challenged any but a creditor. And when a certain girl, a Spanish woman, followed him to camp, del Torre knew of it, and helped Ramon to bid her go; and if the General thought the worse of him, he did not think Dolores loved him less; for was not Sebastian himself brought up on that cruel half-truth that some women still do their sex the harm to make a whole one? that women love a rake reformed. Then came a battle, and both were wounded, and more concessions from his Catholic Majesty; and in their wake the wounded gentlemen went back to Carácas.

The General’s hair was grayer, and in that stay again he saw Dolores only once, and that was in church. At mass, high mass, _Te Deum_, for the Catholic Majesty’s concessions, Don Ramon stood behind her chair; and del Torre saw them from a pillar opposite, and again the girl countess blushed. And after mass the new Archbishop met him in the street and talked--of him, and of his ward, and of Don Ramon.

“He is a graceless reprobate,” said this peon-priest.

The Marquis sighed. “A soldier--for a brave man there is always hope.”

The Archbishop eyed him.

“She loves him?”

“She loves him.”

“He is poor!”

“She is rich.”

“You should marry her,” said the Archbishop, and shrugged his shoulders.

A week after he met them all again; and this was that evening in the garden.

VI.

NOW, this arch-priest had been a peon, and a soldier in del Torre’s army; and then he had left it, and had seen the viceroy and been traitor to the rebels, and so became a priest; and then, heaven and the vice-queen knew how, bishop; and but that his archiepiscopal credentials were now fresh from Rome, del Torre, still a Catholic, had called him traitor! Del Torre could not like the man, though he stood between him and God; and he knew that disliking must be mutual; and he marvelled, simple soldier! that the intoxicating message came from him. But he put this cup of heaven from his lips.

For del Torre, from his fierce August of war, had learned to love this April maiden with all his heart, and with all his life and his strong soul. Were not his hairs gray, and his face so worn and weather-beaten? And his heart--he had none fit for this lady of the light. Enough that it was his pearls that clasped her slender waist.

The Archbishop, too, had seen his gray hairs; yet he thought that it was best? He had said so. Perhaps he wanted her possessions for the Church. His nephew Don Ramon cursed the Archbishop for sitting there that night, and saying to her--what? Novitiate and convent, perhaps, or his own sins. For the lady Dolores was devout as only girls can be who have warm hearts and noble souls, and are brought up in cloisters.

Del Torre stood on the other side of the Calvary hill, where the sunset lay, and looked at it, dimly--for his heart was breaking; the Archbishop kept close his converse with Dolores; perhaps he saw her fiery younger lover lurking in the branches. She rose--she and Jacinta--and the priest walked home with them. He talked to her of nephew Ramon and his crimes--not his sins with women, for the priest, too, was a crafty man, and did her sex no honor--but of his gambling, his brawling, his unsaintliness. He said Ramon was a coward; and when Dolores’ pale cheek reddened, he marked it again; and when she broke at this, he told her a trumped-up story of his last battle under his grave uncle. For Dolores, noble maiden, had not yet confessed her life’s love to herself--how then to her confessor?

The Archbishop walked slowly home with her, Jacinta just behind, and left her under that old stone scutcheon on the door. Del Torre and Don Ramon lingered behind; and when they had passed her window, she was sitting there, looking weary. The old General passed by, sweeping off his hat, his eyes on the ground. He had been talking to the youth of all the duties of his life and love; but Ramon was inattentive, watching for her. As they passed her window Ramon lingered, daring a word to Dolores through the iron bars. He asked her for a rose she wore. She looked at him a moment, then gave it to him, with a message. The Marquis saw her give the rose; he did not hear the message. Don Ramon did; and his face turned the color of a winter leaf. As he walked on, he crushed the rose, then threw it in the gutter. For the girl, womanlike, had told the rival first.

That night Ramon intoxicated himself in some tavern brawl. He had a companion with him, not of his own sex; and when another officer reproached him with it, for his cousin, he swore that he would marry her, and that she had been---- Then they fought a duel, and both were wounded.

VII.

THE General heard of it the next morning, and it was even the Archbishop brought him the news. The priest besought del Torre to marry his ward, but he was obdurate; the crafty priest wrestled with the soldier’s will all through that day, and neither conquered. But the General’s face looked worn; he argued, only sadly, of the hot blood of youth, of the hope in her love for the nephew, and of his bravery. Then late in the day came the young officer, wounded, the bandage on his breast half stanching the heart’s blood he had shed for her, and besought the general not to give her to Don Ramon. Del Torre stood as if at bay. “You love her too?” he cried.

“Ay, and would save her,” said the young man, faintly.

“You must protect her from this libertine,” then said the priest. For he wished her to marry the one he thought she loved not.

“She loves him!” sighed the General.

“You must save her----”

“I will live with her, and guard her as my own----”

“You may not,” said the priest.

“I am her guardian----”

“You may not--you must marry her.”

“I am old and she is young----”

“The holy Church demands it!”

“I love her not--I----” the lie stuck in his lips.

Late in the afternoon del Torre went to see Dolores. She was at vesper service, and he waited until she came back, pale. He began to speak. “I have heard all,” she interrupted; “Jacinta told me.” And again he saw her blush.

Del Torre groaned; he turned aside. Then he strode back to her, his sabre clanking as he walked. “God forgive me if I err. Dolores, you may not marry this man--you--you must--Señorita Condesa, will you marry me?”

Dolores looked up; she had been red, she was now pale. So blushes lie.

“Santissima Maria,” she said, below her breath.

“The Church--the Archbishop--demand it,” del Torre hurried on, not looking at her, for he heard her exclamation. “I love you--well enough--to wed you.” The soldier’s voice broke, too feeble now to cry a charge. He never saw her look at him. God pardon him for looking down.

“You love me--well enough to wed me----” She had turned red again, and her voice was low. He looked, and saw it.

“I will keep you, and watch over you, Dolores, with my life. The Church demands it--I am but a soldier--will you marry me?”

Her dark head was bowed, and the purple of her eyes he saw not.

“Yes,” she said; but, oh, so gravely, so coldly!

He bowed ceremoniously, and touched her hand to his lips; then he turned and left the stone-walled tropic garden. And as his sabre clanked in the passage-way, she threw herself on the hammock in a flood of tears.

And that is how they were affianced.

VIII.

THE love of a man for a girl is perhaps different from any other passion our souls on earth are tempered with. Daphnis and Chloe are pretty, natural, charming to paint and write _vers de société_ about; but so simple as to be shallow, so natural as to be replaceable. To Daphnis, we know that any other Chloe will be Chloe too. And they are in reality selfish; they seek the consummation of their wishes: he his, she hers. It may be the same human energy; but in the fierce, almost blasphemous, self-abnegation of the man’s love, it seems as different a manifestation as the earth-rending power of freezing water from the swelling of a bud at spring. The man can renounce his love; but he desires her well-being with a will to which murder is an incident and the will divine but an obstacle to be overcome.

The Archbishop had told del Torre that his nephew had been married already--secretly, but married--married to the woman who came to seek him out at the camp. Against this wall del Torre’s will had been beating in vain before his own betrothal to Dolores was announced. If she _could_ not marry Ramon, it might, indeed, be best she married him. But it was with a fierce suspicion he received his friends’ congratulations at his club and camp. Among his officers no other look or accent mingled with an unaffected joy. But in the city, he fancied--he was ever ready to fancy--among the young men, a shade of irony in their congratulations on his happiness. Was he not so old!

Don Ramon heard of it from Jacinta. Jacinta was on the side of the younger man. She looked upon del Torre’s gray hairs with fierce eyes. Ramon’s liquid voice and peachy lip had fascinated this supple creature of the forest. Don Ramon heard; and his own answer was characteristic.

“The old fool!”

Jacinta nodded impatiently. She asked him for a message back. He took pen and paper and wrote:

“SEÑORITA CONDESA: Thou lovest me. On the morning thou shalt
wed Don Sebastian I kill him.

“RAMON DEL TORRE.”

He read it over; then he stopped and thought. His first impulse was to boast; his second, to intrigue. He was not all tiger; something of the serpent lay within the handsome youth.

“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.