“Did I not warn you at this gate?” responded Doña Feliz, “that the day would come when you would bitterly repent the words you uttered; when you bade me take and hide the babe even from your knowledge,—never to mention her whether living or dead, that to you it might be as though she had never existed? Have I not obeyed your mandate? Ay, even when my heart bled because I saw the agony, the delusion under which you labored, I have suffered with you, but I have been faithful.”
Doña Isabel bent her head in speechless woe. For her there might not be even the poor consolation of reproach. Yet she murmured, “In pity, where is Herlinda’s child?”
“She is here. Thank God she is here!” replied Doña Feliz,—“this[“this] girl whom you have believed to be the daughter of my son. Weeks[Weeks] ago your brother, Leon Vallé, reft her from us, believing her his own. Only by revealing the secret we had sworn to keep could Rafael have saved her. Ah, God knows! Perhaps at the last moment, when hastening from the strong room she threw herself into the power of the ravisher that she might save her foster-father from death, then perhaps his will might have failed; but he was speechless. I have been ill; yes, near to death,”—her haggard face, her sunken eyes, her wasted figure attested that,—“yet we sought her far and near. Until last night we had no tidings. A rough soldier listened in the inn to the tale we everywhere proclaimed. He came to me secretly; ‘Señora,’ he said, ‘the girl you seek is perhaps in the house of Doña Carmen. Ramirez himself is deceived.’ This was the first stage of our route to Guanapila. We need go no farther; for standing there, Herlinda, with Carmen, is your child.”
Doña Feliz broke into sobs, sinking weak as a child into the arms of Don Rafael. “The struggle is over,” she said to him; “our task is accomplished, the long dissimulation is ended!”
Herlinda and Chata had not needed the conclusion of the brief words of Doña Feliz; they had clasped each other in a rapturous embrace. But the sobs of the distressed lady recalled them from their joy, and hastening to her side they poured out in fervent gratitude such words as seemed to repay to her sensitive heart its long years of devotion as truly as though each word had been a priceless jewel.
“Ah!” said Doña Feliz, “all, all is nothing to merit the happiness of this hour. It is the poor Pedro, he whose matchless devotion mocked my poor work, who is worthy of such words as these. Ah, my heart bled for him, but I could not, dared not speak.”
“Oh foolish unreasoning girl that I was so to bind you!” cried Herlinda. She turned to speak to Pedro, but he was nowhere to be seen. There was a movement among the villagers, who, repulsed from the windows of the house by the soldiers, began to disperse, when the voice of the priest stopped them.
“Listen, friends,” he said. “This has been a dread and fearful hour, an hour to try the souls of men. I am old, yet never have I known such anguish as this day has brought to me. Some sixteen years ago, a stranger in this land, ignorant of its language and customs, I came to this village with a young American whom I met. He was a handsome youth and won my heart,—a warm, Irish heart that often led me contrary to my judgment. The American told me that here his love was staying. I laughed at him for fixing his heart upon some brown-skinned, dark-eyed peasant girl. He did not contradict me, but bade me be ready in the early morning to wed him to the lovely object of his youthful passion. I remonstrated, yet was glad to serve him. Though no priest lived here, the little church was open; the people were glad of the opportunity to hear Mass. Just before it began, John Ashley and Herlinda Garcia were married. As she for a moment loosened the reboso she wore to make the necessary responses, I caught a glimpse of a face that led me to suspect it was no simple peasant who stood before me. Yet it was only in after years, when the requirements of the law and the customs unalterable as law among the different castes existing in your land became known to me, that I remembered with disquiet the marriage I had celebrated here. I was a missionary among the tribes of Northern Indians, doing good work. I strove to assure myself that, irregular as I knew the marriage to be,—contracted in secret, unknown to and probably against the consent of the young girl’s parents, in a language unintelligible to the few witnesses,—the parties were probably living in amity, satisfied, as surely God and man might be, with a marriage which only the quibbles of the law made disputable. Yet I could not be at ease; a voice seemed calling me hither. Alas, alas! I came but to witness the consummation of the tragedy begun years, years ago,—a tragedy, the direct outcome of my fatal error. But I will atone. I will go—would to God in penance it might be upon my knees—to the Holy Father in Rome, and pray him to ratify the marriage. Doña Herlinda Garcia, pure in name as in deed, shall give a spotless name to the child of her virtuous love!”
The old monk ceased; tremblingly he wiped away his tears. “Pardon, pardon!” he murmured to Herlinda. “Oh my daughter, how you have suffered! But daughter, the certificate I gave,—had you not the paper? That, however subject to cavil, would have declared your purity.”
“Ah, a paper!” cried Herlinda. “I have thought of it a thousand times. It was in English. I thought it was a blessed prayer, though John told me to treasure it as my life; that was why I sewed it in the reliquary I placed about my baby’s neck.”