He had asked that question before; but Carlos had contrived, with tact and gentleness, to evade the answer. Up to this hour he had not dared to tell his father the truth upon this important subject. Besides the terrible risk that in some moment of fear or forgetfulness the prior or his agents might draw an incautious word from the old man's lips, there was a haunting dread of listeners at key-holes, or secret apertures, quite natural in one who knew the customs of the Holy Office. But now he bent down close to the dying man, and spoke to him in a long earnest whisper.
"Thank God," murmured Don Juan. "I would have no earthly wish unsatisfied now--if only you were safe. But still," he added, "it seemeth somewhat hard to me that Juan should have all, and you nothing."
"I nothing!" Carlos exclaimed; and had not the room been in darkness his father would have seen that his eye kindled, and his whole countenance lighted up. "My father, mine has been the best lot, even for earth. Were it to do again, I would not change the last two years for the deepest love, the brightest hope, the fairest joy life has to offer. For the Lord himself has been the portion of my cup, my inheritance in the land of the living."
After a silence, he continued, "Moreover, and beside all, I have thee, my father. Therefore to me it is a joy to think that my beloved brother has also something precious. How he loved her! But the strangest thing of all, as I ponder over it now, is the fulfilment of our childhood's dream. And in me, the weak one who deserved nothing, not in Juan the hero who deserved everything. It is the lame who has taken the prey. It is the weak and timid Carlos who has found our father."
"Weak--timid?" said Don Juan, with an incredulous smile. "I marvel who ever joined such words with the name of my heroic son. Carlos, have we any wine?"
"Abundance, my father," answered Carlos, who carefully treasured for his father's use all that was furnished for both of them. Having given him a little, he asked, "Do you feel pain to-night!"
"No--no pain. Only weary; always weary."
"I think my beloved father will soon be where the weary are at rest"--"and where the wicked cease from troubling," he added mentally, not aloud.
He would fain have dropped the conversation then, fearing to exhaust his father's strength. But the sick man's restlessness was soothed by his talk. Ere long he questioned, "Is it not near Christmas now?"
Well did Carlos know that it was; and keenly did he dread the return of the season which ought to bring "peace upon earth." For it would certainly bring the prisoners a visit; and almost certainly there would be the offer of special privileges to the penitent, perhaps sacramental consolation, perhaps permission to hear mass. He shuddered to think what a refusal to avail himself of these indulgences might entail. And once and again did he breathe the fervent prayer, that whatever came upon him, neither violence, insult, nor reproach might be allowed to touch his father.