Once or twice she tried to enter into conversation with me on indifferent subjects; but there was a constant tendency to approach (against her own prearranged determination) the one, all-absorbing one, the fate of her poor brother. “Oh, had you but known him, Mr Cringle had you but known him in his boyhood, before bad company had corrupted him!” exclaimed she, after having asked me if he died penitent and she turned away and wept. “Francisca,” said a low hoarse female voice from the other room; “Francisca, ven aca, mi querida hermana.” The sweet girl rose, and sped across the floor with the grace of Taglioni, (oh, the legs Taglionis! as poor dear Bang would have ventured to have said, if the sylphide had then been known,) and presently returning, whispered something to her mother, who rose and drew Don Picador aside. The waspish old man shook himself clear of his wife, as he said with indecent asperity—“No, no, she will but make a fool of herself.”
His wife drew herself up.
“She never made a fool of herself, Don Picador, but once; and God forgive those who were the cause of it. It is not kind of you, it is not kind.”
“Well, well,” rejoined the querulous old man, “do as you will, do as you will,—always crossing me, always crossing.”
His wife took no farther notice, but stepped across the room to me, “Our poor dying Maria knows you are here; and probably you are not aware that he wrote to her after his”—her voice quavered after his condemnation, the night before he suffered, that you were the only one who shewed him kindness; and she has also read the newspapers giving an account of the trial. She wishes to see you will you pleasure her? Senora Campana has made her acquainted that you are the bearer of some trinkets belonging to him, from which she infers you witnessed his last moments, as one of them, she was told, was her picture, poor dear girl; and she knew that must have grown to his heart till the last. But it will be too agitating. I will try and dissuade her from the interview until the doctor comes, at all events.’
The worthy lady stepped again into Maria’s apartment, and I could not avoid hearing what passed.
“My dear Maria, Mr Cringle has no objection to wait on you; but after your severe attack this morning, I don’t think it will be wise. Delay it until Dr Bergara comes—at any rate, until the evening, Maria.”
“Mother,” she said, in a weak, plaintive voice, although husky from the phlegm which was fast coagulating in her throat—“Mother, I already have ceased to be of this world; I am dying, dearest mother, fast dying; and oh, thou All-good and All-merciful Being, against whom I have fearfully sinned, would that the last struggle were now o’er, and that my weary spirit were released, and my shame hidden in the silent tomb, and my sufferings and very name forgotten!” She paused and gasped for breath; I thought it was all over with her; but she rallied again and proceeded “Time is rapidly ebbing from me, dearest mother,—for mother I must call you, more than a mother have you been to me—and the ocean of eternity is opening to my view. If I am to see him at all, I must see him now; I shall be more agitated by the expectation of the interview than by seeing him at once. Oh! let me see him now, let me look on one who witnessed his last moments.”
I could see Senora Cangrejo where she stood. She crossed her hands on her bosom, and looked up towards heaven, and then turned mournfully towards me, and beckoned me to approach. I entered the small room, which had been fitted up by the poor girl with some taste; the furniture was better than any I had seen in a Spanish house before, and there was a mat on the floor, and some exquisite miniatures and small landscapes on the walls. It was her boudoir, opening apparently into a bedroom beyond. It was lighted by a large open unglazed window, with a row of wooden balustrades beyond it, forming part of a small balcony. A Carmelite friar, a venerable old man, with the hot tears fast falling from his old eyes over his wrinkled cheeks, whom I presently found to be the excellent Padre Carera, sat in a large chair by the bedside, with a silver cup in his hand, beside which lay a large crucifix of the same metal; he had just administered extreme unction, and the viaticum, he fondly hoped, would prove a passport for his dear child to another and a better world. As I entered he rose, held out his hand to me, and moved round to the bottom of the bed.
The shutters had been opened, and, with a suddenness which no one can comprehend who has not lived in these climates, the sun now shone brightly on the flowers and garden plants which grew in a range of pots on the balcony, and lighted up the pale features of a lovely girl, lovely even in the jaws of death, as she lay with her face towards the light, supported in a reclining position on cushions, on a red morocco mattrass, laid on a sort of frame or bed.