Presently the penitents came from amid the shelter of the trees, like mournful ghosts upon the moonlit road. They were all men,—men to whom the memory of their sins was intolerable,—and as they walked they wielded the cruel scourges on their bared shoulders, and ceaselessly intoned the dirge. It was past midnight, and for hours they had continued the dreadful flagellation and the unceasing march. Blood streamed from many a gaping wound; they staggered as they walked; more than once a fainting sufferer fell, and was lifted to his feet by the man who walked beside him. All this dismal company were masked; each wore a friar’s gown and a rough shirt of hair, which hung pendant from the girdle at the waist, above which was seen the cut and bleeding skin.
Sick with horror, when the last of the miserable wretches had gone by, Chata leaned sobbing on her husband’s breast. But he gently set her upon the grassy bank of the roadside, and followed by Pepé hastened to the help of a poor wretch, above whose prostrate form his faithful attendant bent with despairing gestures. They raised the apparently dying man, and turned aside the mask. The moonlight fell upon the face of Leon Vallé, worn with the passions of other years and with the griefs of the present, yet nobler than they had ever beheld it. At that moment the likeness between this man and Chata became in Ashley’s eyes peculiarly intensified.
The trembling and sensitive young wife had approached, with an absolute certainty that something was transpiring which was to touch her own being. Scarcely surprised, though with a shock, she recognized Leon Vallé. Presently she bent and kissed him with tears. From that moment Chata had no secret rancor to regret,—the penitent was forgiven.
“Señores, Señores, I pray you leave us; he revives, he will in a moment recover consciousness,” cried the rough voice of Pedro Gomez. With that complete self-abnegation which, when the claims and interests of his seignorial chieftain are involved, is perhaps presented in its highest development by the Mexican peasant, he had ignored the revengeful abhorrence with which the memory of Leon Vallé had for years inspired him, and for the sake of her whom he had loved and served as the scion of a noble race, had dedicated his life to the father for whom she had gladly died.
As Doña Feliz had once done years before, Chata kissed with reverence the hand of this embodiment of fidelity, and with a throbbing heart turned from the last scene in the drama of which her life had formed a part. Thenceforth a new act was entered upon, in which deep and tender memories and present peace and trust are working out the trite but blissful tale of wedded love.
University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.
Transcriber’s Note
The proper nouns Castile and Castilian are sometimes spelled with a double ‘ll’.