In the three zones

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

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.