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CHAPTER VIII.
WITHOUT AND WITHIN

Not long after Lucius had quitted that spot, there came to it a single horseman, slowly riding towards the city of Seville. The cavalier was richly attired in green and silver; a broad scarlet scarf was wound round his waist, and its fringed end hung gracefully over his shoulder. His feet, cased in high boots, rested on stirrups of peculiar shape, designed from their size and strength to act as a protection to the rider. A Spanish sombrero shaded the cavalier's brow, and his hand grasped a sharp spear. The horseman was Alcala de Aguilera, in full fico as a picador, bound for the Plaza de Toros.

But, save in costume, the young Spaniard had nothing in common with the bull-fighter by profession; Alcala's face and form were both in strong contrast to those of the low-bred favourite of the Coliseo. The form was tall and slight, and conveyed no impression of possessing great physical strength. The pale intellectual countenance, with its delicately-formed features, suggested the idea of a student or poet, rather than that of a bold picador as dead to fear as to mercy. The expression on those features was that of intense melancholy, and formed but too faithful an index to the feelings of the heart which beat beneath the folds of that brilliant scarf.

Alcala was sensible that he had committed an act of the greatest folly. He had ventured all – his sister's peace of mind, his family's comfort, his own life – for a bubble that was not worth the grasping, even were it within his reach. Alcala was not one to care for the applause of a mob; nay, his proud, reserved nature shrank sensitively from the idea of appearing to court it. The greatest success in the common circus would be rather a disgrace than an honour to an Aguilera; he could not raise but degrade himself by competing for popular favour with professional picadors.

Nor had Alcala the incitement of passion to impel him onwards in his perilous career. His admiration of the governor's daughter had been but a passing fancy, a homage paid to mere beauty; it had no strong hold on his soul. The discovery of Antonia's heartlessness and selfish pride had changed that admiration into something almost resembling contempt. Alcala contrasted Antonia with Inez, the vain selfish beauty with the loving, self-forgetting woman, and felt much as did the knight of old who scornfully flung at the feet of his lady the glove which she had bidden him bring from the arena in which wild beasts were contending.

"Were I offered the hand of Antonia de Rivadeo," mused Aguilera, "I would not now accept it, though she should bring as her dowry all Andalusia!"

Thus even in success there was nothing to attract the young Spaniard. But Alcala had scarcely any hope of success; and if the brighter side of the picture was but dull, the darker was gloomy indeed. Alcala had not frequented bull-fights; the sport was little to his taste, though he did not regard it with all the horror and disgust which he would have felt had he been brought up in England. But though the cavalier had not been frequently seen at the Plaza de Toros, he had often enough been a spectator of the scenes acted in the circus to know well what dangers attend the contest with a furious bull, and how absolutely essential to the safety of a picador is skill in the use of his weapon. Such skill could only be acquired by practice, and until this time Alcala had never handled a spear. In the grasp of the young cavalier it felt unwieldy and cumbrous. He was as little likely to use it effectually, as he would have been to climb to the mast-head of a vessel in the midst of a storm, having never had nautical training.

Superstition, from which Alcala was not perfectly free, although far more enlightened than most of his countrymen, tended to deepen the impression on his mind that he was riding to his destruction. When Alcala had been very young, his mother had consulted an old Gitana, famed for her skill in prognostications, as to the future fate of her boy. The child had never forgotten the weird appearance of the old wrinkled hag, nor the words of her mumbled reply: "He will die in his prime a violent death, and many shall look on at his fall." The warning recurred to Alcala's memory with almost the force of prophecy, now that he appeared so likely to meet such a fate as had been thus foretold.

Then, to think on the position in which his death would leave his family made Alcala de Aguilera writhe with mental torture. What would become of his aged parent, widowed and imbecile – what would become of his gentle loving sister, if their one prop were taken away? They had already parted with most of the relics left of his grandfather's wealth; not an acre which had once belonged to the estates of the Aguileras remained to them now. The mansion in Seville was out of repair, and situated in a now unfashionable quarter; should the ruined family be driven to part with their home, the sale of the house would bring but temporary relief to their need. It was not without a sharp pang that Alcala thought even of Teresa, with all her faults so loving and faithful a retainer, and revolved the probability of her ending her long life of service by becoming a beggar in Seville!

And it was his madness that had done all. He was ruthlessly sacrificing all who loved him, all whom he loved, to the Moloch of his own pride! Alcala, when tortured by such reflections, again and again almost resolved to break his fatal engagement, and make some excuse for not entering the circus. But the sneers of his acquaintance, the scoffs of his rivals, the yells of a disappointed mob, were harder to be encountered than the charge of a savage bull. Alcala had not the moral courage to face them. He could not endure to live on to be taunted as the foreign manufacturer's clerk, who with the estates of his ancestors had also lost all their courage and spirit. There was but one thing (and that thing the cavalier lacked) – the constraining power of faith and love – that could have enabled the Spaniard to throw down and trample under foot that Moloch of pride.

But worse even than fears for his family, worse than the anticipation of a violent death for himself, was the awful darkness which to Alcala hung over the future beyond the grave! To die was to him as a leap into chaos! Alcala was, as has been observed, more enlightened than many Spaniards: he had used the taper-gleams of man's knowledge; but of clear light from Heaven he had none. Alcala had read enough to make him loosen his hold on the vain superstitions of the Church in which he had been reared, but not enough to make him grasp any firm hope in their place. The Spaniard did not believe that a priest could absolve him from sin, therefore he felt that those sins were yet unforgiven. He could not ease his conscience by repeating Latin prayers or reciting a given number of penitential psalms, therefore his conscience remained oppressed. The cavalier had no faith in prescribed penance, purchased masses, or confessions to man, as means of propitiating One who was to him indeed an "unknown God"; where then was he to find peace? What was to assure Alcala that, if he gasped out his last breath that day in the circus, he might not be but exchanging the death agony for torments infinitely more terrible, because they would never be closed by death? The state of mind of the cavalier might, with little alteration, be described in the words of the poet: —

 
"Before him tortures which the soul may dare,
But doubts how well the shrinking flesh may bear,
Yet deeply feels a single cry would shame
To valour's praise his last, his dearest claim.
The life he lost below – denied above.
 

…*...*…*...*

 
A more than doubtful Paradise, his heaven
Of earthly hope, his loved one from him riven.
These were the thoughts that [Spaniard] must sustain
And govern pangs surpassing mortal pain,
And these sustained he, boots it well or ill,
Since not to sink beneath is something still."
 

In the anguish of his spirit the mind of Alcala reverted again and again to Lucius Lepine. The Spaniard was of course aware that his English companion held views of religion very different from those adopted by the Roman Catholic Church. Alcala had secretly wished to know more of these Protestant views, and now the wish became intense when it was too late to gratify it. Alcala thought his English friend the most upright and highminded man with whom he had ever met, and was acute enough to distinguish that highmindedness from pride. The Spaniard saw that Lepine had a loftier standard of duty than those around him, and asked himself whence had that standard been drawn. Alcala had never indeed heard his friend converse on the topic of Divinity; but in many things, some of them trifling in themselves, the observant eye of the cavalier had seen that his companion was guided by a sense of religion. No profane word ever crossed the lips of Lepine; he was pure in his life; he reverenced the Sabbath in a way that appeared novel and strange to Alcala, but which the Spaniard could not but respect.

And yet this noble-hearted, conscientious Englishman was one whom the Romish priests would denounce as a heretic doomed to perdition! "How strange," mused Alcala, "that from the root of error should spring a tree bearing fruits so fair!" The Spaniard had yearned for a clearer knowledge of that faith which was branded as worse than infidelity, and which yet could produce such effects. He would fain have questioned Lucius on the subject, but pride and reserve kept him silent.

Once only had the ice been slightly broken. Lucius had been led to allude in conversation to the death of his father, who, when cruising in the Pacific, had been struck dead by a flash of lightning. It was a painful subject, and one on which he rarely touched; but the two friends were together alone under the quiet moonlight, and there had been more of interchange of thought between them than there had ever been before.

"It must have embittered your trial," Alcala had observed, "that your father had no time for preparation for death – no time to receive the last rites of his Church." Greatly had the Spaniard been struck by his companion's reply, "No; for my father had made his peace with God long before." Not a shadow of doubt had darkened the countenance of the Protestant as he uttered these words; Lepine had looked as fully assured of the happiness of his parent as if he had himself seen him carried by angels into the skies. Alcala could not utter the question which trembled on his lips, "Have you then no fear of the purgatorial pains which, as our priests tell us, are needed to purify even the good?" That question was answered, ere it was asked, by the peace – the more than peace – which shone in the eyes of Lucius.

"What would not I give," thought the unhappy Alcala, as he rode towards Seville, "to know on what basis rested that assurance of hope which evidently made the Protestant look upon sudden death but as a step into glory! Lepine's father had 'made his peace with God long before!' How had he made his peace; how could he know that his sins were forgiven, and that he might stand without trembling before the awful judgment-seat of his God?"

CHAPTER IX.
THE BRIEF FAREWELL

Alcala had now reached the place where the narrow lane in which stood the posada in which he had passed the night opened into the highway leading directly to Seville. He was now on the road along which, ten minutes previously, had passed the herd of fighting-bulls destined for the arena. Alcala saw the print of their hoofs in the dust; he noticed at no great distance the gleam of their horns above the cloud raised by their tramping and that of their mounted conductors. Alcala had been near enough to hear that defiant roar of the monarch of the herd that had thrilled on the ear of Lucius. Campeador had raised his tasselled head, and pricked up his ears at the noise.

Alcala bent down to stroke the neck of his steed. "Ah! Campeador," he gloomily said as he did so, "does instinct tell you that there is death in that sound? You too will suffer from my accursed folly and pride. You deserve a better fate, my poor horse, and a far better master!"

As Alcala slowly rode onwards, following in the track of the bulls, he saw a muleteer approaching towards him. Lepine, after his brief and unsatisfactory colloquy with the herdsman, had turned off in a different direction, or he must have encountered his friend. The figure of the muleteer was the only one visible at this point upon the narrow road, which lay through a cutting.

Alcala, buried in his painful reflections, would scarcely have noticed the muleteer, had not the man, when they had almost met, respectfully greeted him by his name.

"Señor de Aguilera," said the messenger of Inez, approaching the cavalier's stirrup, "I bear to you a letter from a señorita." And the muleteer held up to Alcala the epistle which had been intrusted to his charge.

Alcala stopped his horse, shifted his lance to his bridle-hand, took the note, and with a little difficulty disengaged it from its envelope. Only the presence of a stranger made him refrain from groaning aloud as he read the impassioned words of his sister. Her threat to bury herself in a convent thrilled his soul with unspeakable anguish; for gentle and yielding as was the nature of Inez, her brother had never yet known her fail in keeping her word, even in the face of opposition. If anything could have added to the misery of the young Spaniard, it was such a letter as this. For a moment it almost shook his firm resolution to brave out the consequences of his rash boast; for a moment Alcala thought of turning his bridle and urging Campeador to bear him afar from Seville! But it could not be; every drop of proud Spanish blood in the veins of an Aguilera seemed to protest against so ignominious a flight. Alcala, whose brain was dizzy from the violence of his emotions, was recalled to himself by the muleteer's question, —

"Has the caballero any message for me to take back to the señorita?"

The muleteer was no stranger to Alcala, who knew him to be an honest but ignorant man, unable even to read. The cavalier would not send a verbal reply to the note of Inez, but had no time to return to the posada in order to write what he could not speak. Alcala drew out a pencil-case which he chanced to have on his person, but he carried with him no paper, and he would not return to the unhappy Inez her own epistle; that token of her affection he would bear with him to the last. The muleteer guessed from his gesture that the cavalier wished to write, and saw that he had no writing materials save the pencil-case in his hand. The man supplied the want, in his own rough way, by stooping and picking up from the road a dusty fragment of paper which happened to be lying upon it. There was no opportunity of procuring a more suitable sheet; Alcala scarcely even noticed that the paper was part of a leaf torn from a printed book. There was room on the margin for a few words; and resting the paper on his saddle, after giving the muleteer charge of his spear, Alcala hastily scrawled the brief note which was soon afterwards received by his sister. How many bitter tears were to be shed over that leaf!

"It is I who am blighting her young life; it is I who am riveting chains upon her whose only fault is that of loving an ungrateful brother too well," muttered Alcala to himself, as he saw his messenger speed on before him.

The painful task of answering the letter of Inez being over, Alcala thrust it under his scarf, gently shook his rein, and rode on. No prisoner condemned to suffer at an auto-da-fé had ever gone to the stake erected in the Plaza more hopeless of deliverance than Alcala felt at that moment. His embroidered vestments were to him as the san-benito worn by the doomed; the horrible ordeal from which nature shrank was before him, and he had no enthusiasm of zeal, no joy of hope, to bear him through it.

Some stragglers, bound for the sport at the Coliseo, were overtaken by Aguilera. They recognized him as a picador by his peculiar dress, turned eagerly to look at him, and in loud tones made their remarks on the horseman as he passed them.

"Brave caballero! how splendid he looks!" cried an Andalusian maiden.

"But scarcely strong enough to drive his spear deep into the tough hide of a bull," remarked her more experienced companion.

"Tush, Tomaso, it's all skill," laughed the girl. "I warrant you the picador knows how to manage his horse in the ring, and avoid the thrust of the horns – "

The conclusion of the sentence did not reach the ears of Alcala; he had urged his steed to a quicker pace, in order to get beyond hearing.

CHAPTER X.
STRUCK DOWN

Lucius endeavoured so to time the hour of his return to Seville that he might re-enter the town when the result of the bull-fight might be known. He proposed calling at the mansion in the Calle de San José on his way back to his lodging, with the hope, if not of seeing Alcala, at least of hearing tidings of his safety.

The sun was still some height above the western horizon when Lucius entered the deserted street. The glare reflected back from the high dead wall was oppressive.

"I am too early; I have been too impatient," thought the young Englishman, as he laid his hand on the bell which hung in the shadow of the archway. He marked that the grating of the patio was ajar. Inez had forgotten to lock it after receiving from the muleteer the note from Alcala which crushed her last hope. The unprotected state of the house mattered, however, little; there was no great danger of thieves invading a place in which they would find no plunder.

Lucius rang softly, as one who would by no loud summons disturb a house of mourning; but the bell was instantly answered. The grating at the end of the vestibule was thrown hastily back, and the trembling Inez herself hurried through the opening, and along the arched passage. Her dark eyes were dilated with fear, her pale lips trembled. She knew not whom she was addressing, but her whole soul appeared to flow forth in the question, "Bring you tidings from the Plaza de Toros?"

"I come to ask for them, señorita," began Lucius. But the eyes of Inez rested on him no longer, they were turned wistfully in another direction. Her ear, quickened by fear, had caught a sound which Lucius had heard not, and breathless with expectation she gazed up the street. In another moment a crowd of persons appeared emerging from the entrance of a lane which crossed the Calle de San José. They came not with shout or mirth, as if escorting a victor home, but slowly, like a throng who follow a funeral procession. There was no noise, save the tramping of feet, and ever and anon the wail of a woman. Lucius glanced at Inez, and read despair in her face. An icy numbness was creeping over her frame; she had no power to go forward to meet the corpse of her brother. Soon the crowd reached the entrance of the dwelling of Aguilera; in the midst of the throng was seen a litter borne by men. On that litter lay stretched a motionless form. Pale and ghastly, with garments blood-stained and torn, Alcala de Aguilera was borne back to the home of his fathers.

Lucius intuitively took the place of a brother. "Back – back!" he exclaimed in a tone of authority to the crowd who pressed round the litter, – "none but the bearers shall enter. Who will go for a surgeon?"

"I – I," replied several voices, and the crowd dispersed in various directions, whilst the litter was borne through the arched passage.

"Show the way to his room," said Lucius to Teresa, whom he recognized, as she followed her master closely, crying and wringing her hands.

The litter was carried across the patio, and through a long spacious corridor, at the end of which lay the cavalier's apartment. Alcala's wound had already been roughly bound up at the circus, the flowing blood had been stanched. He was, with the help of Lucius and Inez, gently lifted from the litter and placed on his bed, to await the surgeon's arrival.

"Water – bring water!" cried Lucius. Teresa hurried to obey the command, but her young mistress had forestalled her. In this emergency the energy of Inez had returned. But not a word had she uttered, not a tear had she shed; her anguish had sealed her lips, her terror had dried up her tears. Kneeling beside her brother's low bed, Inez sprinkled with water his corpse-like face; Lucius, gently supporting his head, put a cup to his lips.

"Oh, Heaven be praised! – he drinks! there is life in him still!" exclaimed Inez.

"He's dying – he's dying – last of his race! Oh, woe's me! woe's me!" moaned Teresa.

Lucius dismissed the bearers, satisfying their demands with the coin – it was but little – that he chanced to have on his person. They had scarcely left the place ere the anxiously expected surgeon arrived.

The surgeon removed the bandages from the insensible Alcala, and examined his ghastly wound. There was a deep gash in the left shoulder, from which there had been a great effusion of blood. The full extent of the injury sustained by the unfortunate cavalier could not be ascertained at once.

"He was crushed up against the barrier, – I saw it with my own eyes, – oh that I should have lived to see it!" cried Teresa, with passionate gestures. "The bull charged, and in a moment man and horse were down in the dust. Campeador never rose again, the horns of the savage – "

"Be silent, woman!" said Lucius sternly; "does not your lady already suffer enough?"

Teresa stared in angry surprise at this unexpected rebuke from the stranger, who had assumed a post of command in the house of his friend by the tacit consent of its mistress; for Inez felt as if, in her sorest need, a helper and supporter had been sent to her by Heaven. The old woman dared not reply, but muttering something between her teeth about "insolent heretic," busied herself with the bandages required for the wound.

When the surgeon had finished his work, Lucius accompanied him out of the room, that his question, "Do you think that there is hope?" might not be heard by Inez.

"It is impossible to give any decided opinion as yet, señor," answered the surgeon. "Fever will probably ensue; let some one sit up with the caballero during the night."

As the surgeon crossed the patio, it was entered by a priest. In this stout personage, swathed in long black robe with rosary and crucifix dependent; with plump, dark, close-shaven face, and tonsured head from which the huge flapped hat was now removed, Lucius recognized the priest who had touched him on the shoulder on the previous evening.

There was no word spoken between the two men; the family confessor needed no guide to the room of Alcala. But the eyes of the Spaniard and the Englishman met, and each read in the glance of the other, "I shall find an opponent in you."

From motives of delicacy, Lucius did not follow the priest into Alcala's apartment, but remained waiting in the lofty corridor. He would not by his presence disturb the visit of a spiritual director. The door was closed between them; no ordinary conversation could therefore be heard by one standing outside, who had no wish or intention to listen. The priest, however, probably purposely, spoke loudly enough in the chamber of sickness for a word or two occasionally to reach the ear of Lucius.

"Not at confession for the last year, – bad influence – heretic – Protestant," such were the words which the raised tone in which they were spoken rendered audible, – though an indistinct murmur was all that was otherwise heard of the voice of the ecclesiastic through the closed door.

"Would that I had better deserved the priest's suspicions!" thought Lucius, with some self-reproach.

When the priest left Alcala's apartment he was followed by Inez and Teresa, though the former went but a few steps beyond the door. Her hands were clasped; a look of entreaty was on her pale face.

"You will not refuse my brother the last rites of the Church?" she said faintly.

"I will come again to-morrow, and hear his confession, if Don Alcala be then able and willing to confess," was the sternly uttered reply. "I hope that I shall find him a true son of the Church;" the hope was expressed in a tone that was more suggestive of doubt. Inez bowed low with submissive reverence, and returned to her post.

As Father Bonifacio – such was the name of the priest – passed Lucius, again his eyes rested on the young Englishman with an expression of dislike and suspicion. The glance was calmly returned.

Teresa accompanied the priest to the outer arch, while Lucius went back to the room of his friend.

"I knew that there was something wrong," muttered Teresa, when Bonifacio had passed out into the street. "Don Alcala has been too much with those vile blasphemers of the saints and the blessed Virgin. If all the bulls that graze on the Sierra Nevada had come against him, the arm of an Aguilera would have prevailed, had his lance but been sprinkled with holy water. Had the caballero been to mass and confession in the morning, he would never have rolled in the dust at noon. If I had my will, that English heretic should never come near or look at him again!"

But Teresa had not her will, at least on the night which followed that anxious day. Lucius shared with Inez the long sad watch by the sufferer's pillow. As his presence certainly did not seem to be unwelcome to the sister of his friend, he remained at his post until dawn.

How often the scene in that sick-room afterwards returned to the recollection of Lucius, its most trifling accessories imprinted indelibly on his mind! The large and lofty but scantily-furnished apartment, so dimly lighted by one small lamp that its further corners were left in almost absolute darkness; the walls, on which the plaster was cracked and peeling; while square-shaped marks and projecting nails showed that pictures had once been hung where they no longer remained to bear witness to the wealth and taste of their late possessors. One family portrait alone was left, evidently painted by the hand of a master; but it had apparently served as a pistol target in the time when the French were quartered in Seville, as it was drilled with several holes. The ceiling had once been richly painted and gilded; but the gold had long since lost all trace of brightness, and the faded painting showed in the dull light like mere undefined stains of various hues. There was no carpet on the floor; this was not necessarily a sign of poverty in a climate so warm as that of Andalusia, but the boards themselves were time-worn, and in some places seemed going to decay.

The part of the scene on which interest centred was that where Alcala lay, on his bed of pain, with countenance so pale that it looked as if it belonged to a monumental recumbent figure chiselled out of marble. Almost as pale and as still, his sister sat watching beside him, scarcely ever raising her long dark lashes, so fixed was her gaze on the face of Alcala. Inez seemed scarcely to be aware of the presence of a stranger, save when Lucius helped her to change the position of the sufferer, or placed the fever-draught in her hand. Inez would then thank him by a mute and scarcely perceptible gesture.

Hour after hour passed away, whilst the only sounds that broke the stillness were the rustle of Teresa's dress, or the crack of one of the old boards under her heavy tread. The old servant flitted about uneasily, like a bird whose nest is invaded. It was against all the duenna's ideas of propriety, as well as the devotee's prejudiced views of religion, that the English heretic should remain in the sick-room, which nothing would persuade Donna Inez to quit. But Teresa dared not speak out her mind in the presence of Lucius Lepine, above all in that still and solemn apartment. Even Teresa could hardly help seeing, though she would not have openly acknowledged the fact, that the services of the young stranger could not, on that night, have been well dispensed with. No one would ever have introduced Chico into a sick-room; and before the long night was over, Teresa's own eyelids were closed in sleep. The old servant was worn out with the fatigue, excitement, and distress of the day.

Alcala gave few signs of life during the long weary hours of darkness. Occasionally he clutched his hand, sometimes his lips slightly moved and his brow was contracted with pain. Once a few scarcely articulate words escaped him: "Not a convent – no, not a convent!" Towards morning, however, the wounded man sank into quiet sleep; and Lucius felt that he could now leave him with a more easy mind.

"It is dawn – you had better depart; thanks, thanks for your kindness to him," murmured Inez, as a slight sound of movement made her aware that Lucius had risen from his seat. The Englishman bent his head to whisper a word of comfort to the poor watcher before he quitted her side.

"Señorita, trust in the mercy of God, and hope. I believe that your brother will be spared to you yet."