In the three zones

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

But ah, how ardently she watched for Sebastian’s consciousness to come! for his eyes to rest on hers again! She felt sure the coldness in them now was gone. Delirious, he raved of her and of his love; he that never called her but by titles in his life, now cried Dolores, Dolores, and she held his hand and waited.

She bade the doctors tell her when his recovery was likely to come. And then, when one evening his hands moved, and he closed his eyes and slept, she sat there trembling, not daring to be beside him, but her face turned away. That yearning cry—Dolores, Dolores, had been stilled for hours; but the night passed and still he was asleep. Then, when it was broad sunlight, she heard a sudden movement by the nurse, and the priest began to pray in Latin, and her heart stood still. He sat up; she retreated in the shadow, toward the door. His voice spoke; but oh! how low, how weak—not as it had been in his dreaming; alas! this was now his right mind. He saw not her; his eyes looked sanely out the window, through the crowded city. “It was a sin to marry her,” he said.

She was carried fainting to her room within the tower, and there again she waited. “Has he asked for me?” she ventured to ask, at night.

He had asked for my lady, and they told him she was ill. And the next day again; and they had told him she was in her suite about the tower. She dared not seek him now. And flowers came to her from him, but no further speech. Thrice he sent his homage to her. He could not walk yet, but he sent his homage to her. She asked to know when he could walk; and they told her they would let her know. So, one afternoon, they told her he might walk the next day; and all that night she passed in prayer.

The next day she waited for his step upon the stone floor. It came not; to her tears and prayers, it came not. Jacinta’s dead hand still held close the note. She prayed—was it wrong to pray when so unshrived?—to Maria Vergen de las Mercedes, but still it came not. Her haughty Spanish breeding forbade her showing sorrow to her servants, and they were cold and deferential to her. Jacinta? She was dead—Dolores knew, but thought that she had given him her letter. She had sinned, yes, but he was her husband.

The next day she asked the servant. The Señor General was gone. Gone? without seeing her even? He had had to go to the wars; he had not ventured to disturb my lady; he left a letter. A letter? she tore it open, read it. It sent his respectful worship to “the Marquesa;” it apologized for his illness; it prayed forgiveness from her for having married her; it was done to save her name. It said no word of love; and Sebastian Ruy del Torre was a gentleman: his love appeared not in his letter. If she loved him not, he would not wound her by showing his. It said no word of guilt. He would neither wound her by requiring love nor by suggesting blame; but to Dolores’s morbid fancy it had a sense of blame. It closed by speaking of his duty at the wars; of his country’s freedom; perhaps, a hint of hers. Dolores clasped the white paper to her breast, and, to immortal eyes its color was of blood. She read it once again; and del Torre, had he been there, could have seen her heart die in her eyes.

XIII.

We must remember that Maria Josepha Dolores, Condesa del Torre y Luna, was a lonely young girl, educated but from books, devoutedly believing in a faith we like to think superstitious. Remember, please, also, that she loved, and braved her Church for love, and had not, so she thought, won his. She deemed her soul was damned; she knew her heart was broken. Not that there were no days when she did dare hope; no days in which she tried to frame a theory by which it still might seem he cared for her; but she believed he was borne down by their great guilt. And she resolved his soul, at least, would not be lost for hers. “My lady Marquesa would have her apartments in all the house,” the letter said. “My lady had but to command. A small room in the tower was enough for him—he could but rarely be home from the wars. He trusted, if his presence[Pg 193] was painful, she would not see him,” etc., etc. And, after many months, when the General came back—his wife met him not. The rooms of state were carefully prepared for him, and all his suite; flowers, banquets were ready; all his retinue and hers, in their joint blazonry, were in attendance. Only, strangely enough, just that little tower-room was the one my lady Marchioness preferred. Would he kindly yield it to her?

Of course, and the General sent her a rope of pearls. They almost broke her resolution; but she met him not. The General only sighed; this was all as he had known. The evil nephew, done to death by his own hand, still had her heart. He sighed and his hair grew whiter. One rending memory came over him, of the last time he had seen her eyes.

He could not know, as he rode homeward up the street, after his first state visits, straining his eyes up to that tower-window frowning so blankly, how late her own had left it—those eyes of purple-gray that every beggar in Carácas soon knew well, save only he. Before the next return his glory blazed abroad, and Bolivar came back with him. Bolivar, the Liberator. All thoughtful preparation, all courtly care, all a Spanish grandee’s splendor was spread forth to receive him in the Casa Rey; but the châtelaine was never seen. It was not necessary to explain her absence; such things get quickly known; it was, of course, thought she had loved the cousin. And the strange Old-world Gothic pride made her bearing, the honor of the house, del Torre’s silence, only too easily intelligible to them. So the Marquis del Torre never saw his bride on his returning home.