When the night was well advanced he mounted his horse and started for Carrion, although, when leaving the camp, he rode in an opposite direction.
[CHAPTER XIX]
HOW THE SINGLE PAINT THE LIFE OF THE MARRIED
Some hours after the events which happened in the encampment of the bandits, as we have just described, the scenes which we are about to relate took place in the Castle of Carrion.
Ten years before the period in which this history commenced, Don Gonzalo, Count of Carrion, died, leaving two sons, the elder named Gonzalo and the younger Suero, and also a daughter named Teresa. Gonzalo inherited the title of count, but also died in a short time, Suero succeeding him, to whom Teresa should be heiress, and after her two boys, both very young, Diego and Fernando, whom Gonzalo, the younger, had left behind when he died.
The heirs presumptive, within a certain degree of relationship, bore the name of Infantes, and that is the reason that Teresa and her nephews, Diego and Fernando, appear with that title in the "Chronicle."
Teresa was scarcely eighteen years of age at the time of which we are writing. God had endowed her soul with all the perfections and virtues that an angel might desire, if he left heaven in order to seek a mortal woman as his companion for eternity, just as all those perfections had been denied to her countenance, which are the only charms sought for by men, when they look on a woman as a material being. Teresa, then, was the reverse of her brother, both physically and morally; her soul was all compassion, all love, all sadness. Her face was as white and delicate as her soul, sad as her heart; and her entire physique was languid and infirm, by which the graces she had received from nature were concealed. That sweet and candid dove appeared always desirous of spreading her wings to mount again to heaven. If God had placed a lyre in the hands of Teresa, her soul would have exhaled itself in holy and immortal harmonies. But, alas! the sweet dove lived for ever trembling, threatened by the cruel falcon, and her angelic spirit was suffocating within the gloomy walls of the Castle of Carrion.
There was a narrow window in it, from which could be seen an extensive tract of country, covered with hamlets, the situation of each of which could be at once recognised by its belfry. Teresa delighted in sitting at that window, in order to gaze on the azure of the sky and the verdure of the fields; and to breathe the air sweetened by the perfumes of the flowers. But those were not the sole enticements which attracted her to that window: there were in addition happy souvenirs of her childhood. In the distance, on the slope of a hill, Teresa could see a smiling village; when gazing on it she was reminded of her mother, and tears trickled from her blue eyes; but to this remembrance of the loss of her mother was also joined that of the happiness which she had enjoyed by her side. She recalled to mind the delicious spring and autumn evenings, when her mother and she left the castle alone and went to wander through the fields, for then the affection of their vassals was to the lord and lady of Carrion as the wing of the guardian angel which protects the forehead of the righteous, just as, from the time that Suero inherited the title, the hatred of his retainers was as the sword of the archangel which constantly threatened the head of Luzbel. Teresa and her mother went in those times as far as that village, which could be seen from the castle window; visited, on their way, the cottages of their vassals, one by one, in order to console the sad and succour the needy; and when the sun was near setting behind the hill, they left the village crowned with blessings, and their hearts refreshed by tears of joy and gratitude, in order to return to the castle where the peace and tranquillity of the good, and a father and husband, as loving as he was honoured, were awaiting them. Some of the villagers accompanied them, in order to act as their protectors, till they were near the castle, and there, on the summit of a hill, crowned with evergreen oaks and sown with sweet-smelling herbs, from whence the eye could embrace an extensive view, the mother and daughter seated themselves, to gaze on the plain, illumined by the first rays of the moon, to listen to the songs of the shepherds who led their flocks to the sheepfolds, or those of the villager who was leaving the fields with his bullocks and plough, and proceeding to his home where his wife was impatiently awaiting him, or, if a youth, the loving maiden, who, pretending to her mother that she was going to the fountain, had left her house to meet him in the grove, through which ran the brook that served as a mirror to the country damsels. There also they could hear the toll of the vesper bell from all the church towers which were visible from the castle, and could lend an attentive ear to those numerous mysterious and confused sounds, which arise through the fields even when men and birds are silent.
At that window Teresa was standing, absorbed in her memories of former times, when she heard behind her the pitiful whining of a dog, which was running towards her, as if imploring her aid, and also the laughter of two boys, eight and ten years old, who were following it with much noisy hilarity.