“Then, there has been very, very wicked work.” Hermosa exclaimed, with extraordinary vehemence for so placid a disposition.
“Oh that I were a man—a knight. Oh, that Don Pedro, or even Señor Inique, were here to ferret out this mystery!” With which wild words, to show how much she was a woman, and how dependent on the absent hero, she fell upon the neck of her disturbed protegée, and the two wept in great harmony together.
The doubts and difficulties which perplexed these two innocent heads from this hour, and led to innumerable discussions and secret conclaves, harassed chiefly by the impression left after each debate, of subtle enmity having been at work, although why and through whose agency, they could not even conjecture. Doña Hermosa told what little she had heard of Hilo’s passion for a French ambassador’s daughter, and so accounted for his wish to break his former engagement; but all the rest remained in the dark. If Viola had received no notice of Hilo’s desire to release himself from a distasteful union, the person or persons who suppressed his letters may have used her name in such a manner as to irritate him into the extraordinary steps he had taken to be rid of an intolerable because obstinate burden, and the same miscreants had doubtless unbarred the shutter to Captain Carlo and assisted that worthy’s escape; but this was all sheer conjecture. Indeed it could not be so, for all were long proved servants except a lad she employed as a page out of respect for the old nurse who had reared her from infancy, and for the few past years had been employed in taking charge of her poor brother with Don Augustino.
While such speculations engaged their thoughts, a letter arrived from the knight by a returned caravel, announcing the safe landing of the Spanish army and strait of the French, deserted by the Portuguese, and stating the confession made by Inique on shipboard. Doña Hermosa communicated this strange intelligence to Don Augustino’s daughter, and the two, as might be predicated always of two women in like circumstances, cried over it together, and then discussed the event in all its bearings. Viola also cried a good deal in private, for despite her disavowal of love for Hilo, she found it difficult to convert a lately affianced husband into a brother on such short notice; but in the course of a day or two her reflections took another shape. Was it not better to love him as a brother who indeed would never, she knew now, have been any thing else to her even without this obstacle? But how did she know she still had a living brother; between two such fiery tempers, what collision might not take place through ignorance on the one side and rashness on the other? Oh, she must hasten to interpose, to effect a reconciliation if any misunderstanding existed, to earn some consideration, too, from her brother, by undeceiving him as to her former apparent immodesty; and moreover this mystery, so closely touching her honor, must be probed. She came down to breakfast the third morning with her mind fully made up, and before the meal was over astonished her hostess by soliciting her protection in a voyage to Tercera. At first the countess strongly opposed the design, but in the end, of course, entered into it with her whole heart. What arguments Viola used are not worth recapitulating here; they were not very strong or philosophical, but were enunciated with much self-deceptive sophistry and based on affection, which is all that is requisite in feminine debates as a general thing.
The household was put in complete order and turned over with the estate to the care of a trusty major-domo, and an old cavalier, a relative of the countess, who had been summoned to attend, was pressed into service after a feeble remonstrance; he had been a great beau in his day and could not find it in his heart to long oppose the will of a lady; and dispatched to charter a vessel in which to accompany them to the Azores. The friends, attended by a detachment of the Hermandad for protection along the road, followed close at his heels, and were soon after out of sight of the shores of Spain, and as incredulous of surviving the miseries of the voyage as any ladies of the present day.
Somewhere about this time, an old woman saying aves as fast as her trembling fingers could slip the beads, in the cabin of a crazy ship flying before a furious gale straight for the rocky shores of Graciosa, might have given the needful clue to this labyrinth of conjecture: so might, if he had possessed the capacity, the poor wretch who sat watching her in greater awe than the tempest excited, from the crib in which he lay bound, and who had wondered time and again in his imbecile way, what it was she mumbled to herself when hobbling up and down the cabin floor in fair weather, her chin elevated in the air. She never cared for his overhearing, a glance was enough at any moment to make him cower and blink in fear of the crutch which, during Señor Inique’s absence, not seldom corrected his waywardness. This vessel with others, had been driven from her moorings off Praya, and parting company became unmanageable: one afternoon the peaks of Graciosa suddenly appeared through a rift in the surging mist around, in terrible proximity, and coasting the island a few leagues, by daybreak the next morning the ship struck and immediately after took its final plunge. They had fallen into a gap of the rock-bound shores, and in the comparatively quiet sea, contrived, like St. Paul’s companions, to reach shore on whatever came to hand. The crew congratulated themselves on every soul being saved but the captain, who was below deck when the wreck went down; it was supposed he had descended to secure treasure of some sort, but the crone who listened to their talk while they all dried themselves about a fire, knew better; for at the first alarm, while clambering up the cabin stairs, she encountered the captain in wild haste to save his patron’s son. She tore herself loose from his clutch and had seen neither of them again.
“Who’s sorry, who’s sorry, eh?” she mumbled repeatedly to herself, wagging her scheming old head with a wicked leer. But she shed abundance of crocodile tears a day or two later when relating the sad event to the Countess Padilh and Doña Viola, whose vessel compelled them to touch at Graciosa to repair some little damages suffered during the gale. Other tears were shed upon the occasion, but fewer than would have followed a like announcement ten days back to Viola, whose mind was too much engrossed by the object of her mission to grieve much over a death which seemed a providence.
While the two ladies were preparing to continue their voyage, strange disclosures had followed the condemnation of the Viceroy of Tercera in the Spanish camp.
Despite their recklessness, Hilo and Carlo had judged it best to show themselves as little as possible where they were likely to meet with importunate acquaintances; their plan was to convey the prisoner after night-fall to Angra, and beg a prompt payment of the reward and a free conduct. The better to elude observation they had smeared their cheeks with the thick juice of berries used by the natives to protect the skin from the sun, and wore the loose frock and silver ear-rings of Portuguese peasants, in which costume they had conducted their search for the unfortunate count. The presence of the French troops greatly increased the risk of recognition, but with night and this disguise the adventurers considered no great risk would be run: Santa Cruz was proverbially headstrong and impetuous, and once a free conduct was granted would not easily be led to retract it.