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 [Pg 178]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.
It is the custom in Spanish America, now forgotten in old Spain, to lead the holy images of the church about the streets, with a slow processional, before Good Friday. As del Torre spoke, they found themselves behind one of these. In this Church of Santa Teresia is a famed old image of Christ bearing the Cross, brought two centuries before from Spain. It is especially venerated by the merchants of Carácas; large sums are subscribed by them each Easter time to dress it up, thousands of dollars and doubloons. Behind this image now they found themselves. Eight chanting priests, in mourning black and lilac, bore it on either side, but the image was gay with beaten gold, borne in a canopy of costly lace, a hundred tall wax candles giving light. The priests move very slowly, scarce a step a minute, making stations at each shrine, so that to bear these images from one church to another may take half a day. Del Torre and the wounded officer could not, of course, pass it; so that it was half an hour when they reached the open air, and the square nearly emptied of the worshippers; del Torre heard the distant band of the army down the mountain slope.
As they came out into the heat, he felt a slight shudder, like a quiver of the earth, and thought it was the shock of seeing his nephew. Don Ramon del Torre spoke loudly, disregarding the presence of the bystanders, pressing rudely by the sacred shrine, and crying that the old man would not fight.