In the three zones

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

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.