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XLVI.
Is it too Late?

 
"Death upon his face
 Is rather shine than shade;
 A tender shine by looks beloved made:
 He seemeth dying in a quiet place."
 

E.B. Browning.

The mountain-snow lay white around the old castle of Nuera; but within there was light and warmth. Joy and gladness were there also, "thanksgiving and the voice of melody;" for Doña Beatriz, graver and paler than of old, and with the brilliant lustre of her dark eyes subdued to a kind of dewy softness, was singing a cradle-song beside the cot where her first-born slept.

The babe had just been baptized by Fray Sebastian. With a pleading, wistful look had Dolores asked her lord, the day before, what name he wished his son to bear. But he only answered, "The heir of our house always bears the name of Juan." Another name was far dearer to memory; but not yet could he accustom his lips to utter it, or his ear to bear the sound.

Now he came slowly into the room, holding in his hand an unsealed letter. Doña Beatriz looked up. "He sleeps," she said.

"Then let him sleep on, señora mia."

"But will you not look? See, how pretty he is! How he smiles in his sleep! And those dear small hands – "

"Have their share in dragging me further than you wot of, my Beatriz."

Nay; what dost thou mean? Do not be grave and sad to-day – not to-day, Don Juan."

"My beloved, God knows I would not cloud thy brow with a single care if I could help it. Nor am I sad. Only we must think. Here is a letter from the Duke of Savoy (and very gracious and condescending too), inviting me to take my place once more in His Catholic Majesty's army."

"But you will not go? We are so happy together here."

"My Beatriz, I dare not go. I would have to fight" – (here he broke off, and cast a hasty glance round the room, from the habit of dreading listeners) – "I would have to fight against those whose cause is just the cause I hold dearest upon earth. I would have to deny my faith by the deeds of every day. But yet, how to refuse and not stand dishonoured in the eyes of the world, a traitor and a coward, I know not."

"No dishonour could ever touch thee, my brave and noble Juan."

Don Juan's brow relaxed a little. "But that men should even think it did, is what I could not bear," he said. "Besides" – and he drew nearer the cradle, and looked fondly down at the little sleeper – "it does not seem to me, my Beatriz, that I dare bring up this child God has given me to the bitter heritage of a slave."

"A slave!" repeated Doña Beatriz, almost with a cry. "Now Heaven help us, Don Juan; are you mad? You, of noblest lineage – you, Alvarez de Meñaya – to call your own first-born a slave!"

"I call any one a slave who dares not speak out what he thinks, and act out what he believes," returned Don Juan sadly.

"And what is it that you would do then?"

"Would to God that I knew! But the future is all dark to me. I see not a single step before me."

"Then, amigo mio, do not look before you. Let the future alone, and enjoy the present, as I do."

"Truly that baby face would charm many a care away," said Juan, with another fond glance at the sleeping child. "But a man must look before him, and a Christian man must ask what God would have him to do. Moreover, this letter of the duke demands an answer, Yea or Nay."

"Señor Don Juan. I desire to speak with your Excellency," said the voice of Dolores at the door.

"Come in, Dolores."

"Nay, señor, I want you here." This peremptory sharpness was very unlike the wonted manner of Dolores.

Don Juan came forth immediately. Dolores signed to him to shut the door. Then, not till then, she began, – "Señor Don Juan, two brethren of the Society of Jesus have come from Seville, and are now in the village."

"What then? Surely you do not fear that they suspect anything with regard to us?" asked Juan, in some alarm.

"No; but they have brought tidings."

"You tremble, Dolores. You are ill. Speak – what is it?"

"They have brought tidings of a great Act of Faith, to be held at Seville, upon a day not yet fixed when they left the city, but towards the end of this month."

For a moment the two stood silent, gazing in each other's faces. Then Dolores said, in an eager breathless whisper, "You will go, señor?"

Juan shook his head. "What you are thinking of Dolores, is a dream – a vain, wild dream. Long since, I doubt not, he rests with God."

"But if we had the proof of it, rest might come to us," said Dolores, large tears gathering slowly in her eyes.

"It is true," Juan mused; "they may wreak their vengeance on the dust."

"And for the assurance that would give that nothing more was left them, I, a poor woman, would joyfully walk barefoot from this to Seville and back again."

Juan hesitated no longer. "I go" he said. "Dolores, seek Fray Sebastian, and send him to me at once. Bid Jorge be ready with the horses to start to-morrow at daybreak. Meanwhile, I will prepare Doña Beatriz for my sudden departure."

Of that hurried winter journey, Don Juan was never afterwards heard to speak. No one of its incidents seemed to have made the slightest impression on his mind, or even to have been remembered by him.

But at last he drew near Seville. It was late in the evening, however, and he had told his attendant they should spend the night at a village eight or nine miles from their destination.

Suddenly Jorge cried out. "Look there, señor, the city is on fire."

Don Juan looked. A lurid crimson glow paled the stars in the southern sky. With a shudder he bowed his head, and veiled his face from the awful sight.

"That fire is without the gate," he said at last. "Pray for the souls that are passing in anguish now."

Noble, heroic souls! Probably Juliano Hernandez, possibly Fray Constantino, was amongst them. These were the only names that occurred to Don Juan's mind, or were breathed in his fervent, agitated prayer.

"Yonder is the posada, señor," said the attendant presently.

"Nay, Jorge, we will ride on. There will be no sleepers in Seville to-night."

"But, señor," remonstrated the servant, "the horses are weary. We have travelled far to-day already."

"Let them rest afterwards," said Juan briefly. Motion, just then, was an absolute necessity to him. He could not have rested anywhere, within sight of that awful glare.

Two hours afterwards he drew the rein of his weary steed before the house of his cousin Doña Inez. He had no scruple in asking for admission in the middle of the night, as he knew that, under the circumstances, the household would not fail to be astir. His summons was speedily answered, and he was conducted to a hall opening on the patio.

Thither, after a brief interval, came Juanita, bearing a lamp in her hand, which she set down on the table. "My lady will see your Excellency presently," said the girl, with a shy, frightened air, which was very unlike her, but which Juan was too preoccupied to notice. "But she is much indisposed. My lord was obliged to accompany her home from the Act of Faith before it was half over."

Juan expressed the concern he felt, and desired that she would not incommode herself upon his account. Perhaps Don Garçia, if he had not yet retired to rest, would converse with him for a few moments.

"My lady said she must speak with you herself," answered Juanita, as she left the room.

After a considerable time Doña Inez appeared. In that southern climate youth and beauty fade quickly; and yet Juan was by no means prepared for the changed, worn, haggard face that gazed on him now, There was no pomp of apparel to carry off the impression. Doña Inez wore a loose dark dressing-robe; and a hasty careless hand seemed to have untwined the usual ornaments from her black hair. Her eyes were like those of one who has wept for hours, and then only ceased for very weariness.

She stretched out both her hands to Juan – "O Don Juan, I never meant it! I never meant it!"

"Señora and my cousin, I have but just arrived here. I do not understand you," said Juan, rising to greet her.

"Santa Maria! Then you know not! – Horrible!"

She sank into a seat. Juan stood gazing at her eagerly, almost wildly. "Yes; I understand all now," he said at last. "I suspected it."

He saw in imagination a black chest, with a little lifeless dust within it; a rude shapeless figure, robed in the hideous zamarra, and bearing in large letters the venerated name, "Alvarez de Santillanos y Meñaya." While she saw a living face, that would never cease to haunt her memory until death shadowed all things.

"Let me speak," she gasped; "and I will try to be calm. I did not wish to go. It was the day of the last Auto, you remember, that my poor brother died, and altogether – But Don Garçia insisted. He said everybody would talk, and especially when the taint had touched our own house. Besides, Doña Juana de Bohorques, who died in prison, was to be publicly declared innocent, and her property restored to her heirs. Out of regard to the family, it was thought we ought to be present. O Don Juan, if I had but known! I would rather have put on a sanbenito myself than have gone there. God grant it did not hurt him!"

"How could it possibly hurt him, my tender-hearted cousin?"

"Hush! Let me go on now, while I can speak of it; or I shall never, never tell you. And I must. He would have wished – Well, we were seated in what they called good places; very near the condemned; in fact, the scaffold opposite was plain to us as you are to me now. But that last time, and Doña Maria's look, and Dr. Cristobal's, haunted me, so that I did not dare to raise my eyes to where they sat; – not until long after the mass had begun. And I knew besides there were so many women there – eight on that dreadful top bench, doomed to die. But at last a lady who sat near me bade me look at one of the relaxed, a little man, who was pointing upwards and making signs to his companions to encourage them. 'Do not look, señora,' said Don Garçia, quickly – but too late. O Don Juan, I saw his face!"

"His LIVING face? Not his living face?" cried Juan, with a shudder that convulsed his strong frame from head to foot. And the Name – the one awful Name that rises to all human lips in moments of supreme emotion – broke from his in a wail of anguish.

Doña Inez tried to speak; but in vain. Thoroughly broken down, she wept and sobbed aloud. But the sight of the rigid, tearless face before her checked her tears at last. She gained power to go on. "I saw him. Worn and pale, of course; yet not changed so greatly, after all. The same dear, kind, familiar face I had seen last in this room, when he caressed and played with my child. Not sad, not as though he suffered. Rather as though he had suffered long ago; but was beyond it all, even then. A still, patient, fearless look, eyes that saw everything; and yet nothing seemed to trouble him. I bore it until they were reading the sentences, and came to his. But when I saw the Alguazil strike him – the blow that relaxed to the secular arm – I could endure no more. I believe I cried aloud. But in fact I know not what I did. I know nothing more till Don Garçia and my brother Don Manuel were carrying me through the crowd."

"No word? Was there no word spoken?" asked Juan wildly.

"No; but I heard some one near me say that he talked with that muleteer in the court of the Triana, and spoke words of comfort to a poor woman amongst the penitents, whom they called Maria Gonsalez."

All was told now. Maddened with rage and anguish, Juan rushed from the room, from the house; and, without being conscious of any settled purpose, in five minutes found himself far on his way to the Dominican convent adjoining the Triana.

His servant, who was still waiting at the gate, followed him to ask for orders, and with difficulty overtook him, and arrested his steps.

Juan sternly silenced his faltering, agitated question as to what was wrong with his lord. "Go to rest," he said, "and meet me in the morning by the great gate of Sun Isodro." Nothing was clear to him; but that he must shake off as soon as possible the dust of the wicked, cruel city from his feet. And San Isodro was the only trysting-place without its walls that happened at the moment to occur to his bewildered brain.

XLVII.
The Dominican Prior

 
"Oh, deep is a wounded heart, and strong
 A voice that cries against mighty wrong!
 And full of death as a hot wind's blight,
 Doth the ire of a crushed affection light."
 

Hemans.

Tell the prior Don Juan Alvarez de Santillanos y Meñaya desires to speak with him, and that instantly," said Juan to the drowsy lay brother who at last answered his impatient summons, lantern in hand.

"My lord has but just retired to rest, and cannot now be disturbed," answered the attendant, looking with some curiosity, not to say surprise, at the visitor, who seemed to think three o'clock of a winter morning a proper and suitable hour to demand instant audience of a great man.

"I will wait," said Juan, walking into the court.

The attendant led him to a parlour; then, holding the door ajar, he said, "Let his Excellency pardon me, I did not hear distinctly his worship's honourable name."

"Don Juan Alvarez de Santillanos y Meñaya. The prior knows it – too well."

It was evident from his face that the poor lay brother knew it also. And so that night did every man, woman, and child in Seville. It had become a name of infamy.

With a hasty "Yes, yes, señor," the door was closed, and Juan was left alone.

What had brought him there? Did he mean to accuse the Dominican of his brother's murder, or did he only intend to reproach him – him who had once shown some pity to the captive – for not saving him from that horrible doom? He himself scarcely knew. He had been driven thither by a wild, unreasoning impulse, an instinct of passionate rage, prompting him to grasp at the only shadow of revenge that lay within his reach. If he could not execute God's awful judgments against the persecutors, at least he could denounce them. A poor substitute, but all that remained to him. Without it his heart must break.

Yet that unreasoning impulse had a kind of unconscious reason in it, since it led him to seek the presence of the Dominican prior, and not that of the far more guilty Munebrãga. For who would accuse a tiger, reproach a wolf? Words would be wasted upon such. For them there is no argument but the spear and the bullet. A man can only speak to men.

To do Fray Ricardo justice, he was so much of a man that sleep did not visit his eyes that night. When at length his attendants thought fit to inform him that Don Juan desired to see him, he was still kneeling, as he had knelt for hours, before the crucifix in his private oratory. "Saviour of the world, so much didst thou suffer," this was the key-note of his thoughts; "and shall I weakly pity thine enemies, or shrink from seeing them suffer what they have deserved at thy hands and those of thy holy Church?"

"Alvarez de Santillanos y Meñaya waits below!" Just then Don Fray Ricardo would rather have held his right hand in the fire than have gone forth to face one bearing that name. But, for that very reason, no sooner did he hear that Don Juan awaited him than he robed himself in his cowl and mantle, took a lamp in his hand (for it was still dark), and went down to meet the visitor. For that morning he was in the mood to welcome any form of self-torture that came in his way, and to find a strange but real relief in it.

"Peace be with thee, my son," was his grave but courteous salutation, as he entered the parlour. He looked upon Juan with mournful compassion, as the last of a race over which there hung a terrible doom.

"Let your peace be with murderers like yourselves, or with slaves like those that work your will; I fling it back to you in scorn," was the fierce reply.

The Dominican recoiled a step – only a step, for he was a brave man, and his face, pale with conflict and watching, grew a shade paler.

"Do you think I mean to harm you?" cried Juan in yet fiercer scorn. "Not a hair of your tonsured head. See there!" He unbuckled his sword, and threw it from him, and it fell with a clang on the floor.

"Young man, you would consult your own safety as well as your own honour by adopting a different tone," said the prior, not without dignity.

"My safety is little worth consulting. I am a bold, rough soldier, used to peril and violence. Would it were such, and such alone, that you menaced. But, fiends that you are, would no one serve you for a victim save my young, gentle, unoffending brother; he who never harmed you nor any one? Would nothing satisfy your malice but to immure him in your hideous dungeons for two-and-thirty long slow months, in what suffering of mind and body God alone can tell; and then, at last, to bring him forth to that horrible death? I curse you! I curse you! Nay, that is nothing; who am I to curse? I invoke God's curse upon you! I give you up into God's hands this hour! When He maketh inquisition for blood – another inquisition than yours – I pray him to exact from you, murderers of the innocent, torturers of the just, every drop of blood, every tear, every pang of which he has been the witness, as he shall be the avenger."

At last the prior found a voice. Hitherto he had listened spell-bound, as one oppressed by nightmare, powerless to free himself from the hideous burden. "Man!" he cried, "you are raving; the Holy Office – "

"Is the arch-fiend's own contrivance, and its ministers his favourite servants," interrupted Juan, reckless in his rage, and defying all consequences.

"Blasphemy! This may not be borne," and Fray Ricardo stretched out his hand towards a bell that lay on the table.

But Juan's strong grasp prevented his touching it. He could not shake off that as easily as he had shaken off a pale thin hand two days before. "I shall speak forth my mind this once," he said. "After that, what you please. – Go on. Fill your cup full to the brim. Immure, plunder, burn, destroy. Pile up, high as heaven, your hecatomb of victims, offered to the God of love. At least there is one thing that may be said in your favour. In your cruelties there is a horrible impartiality. It can never be spoken of you that you have gone out into the highways and hedges, taken the blind and the lame, and made of them your burnt sacrifice. No. You go into the closest guarded homes; you take thence the gentlest, the tenderest, the fairest, the best, and of such you make your burnt-offering. And you – are your hearts human, or are they not? If they are, stifle them, crush them down into silence while you can; for a day will come when you can stifle them no longer. That will begin your punishment. You will feel remorse."

"Man, let me go!" interrupted the indignant yet half-frightened prior, struggling vainly to free himself from his grasp. "Cease your blasphemies. Men only feel remorse when they have sinned; and I serve God and the Church."

"Yet, servant of the Church (for God's servant I am not profane enough to call you), speak to me this once as man to man, and tell me, did a victim's pale face never haunt you, a victim's agonized cry never ring in your ears?"

For just an instant the prior winced, as one who feels a sharp, sudden pain, but determines to conceal it.

"There!" cried Juan – and at last he released his arm and flung it from him – "I read an answer in your look. You, at least, are capable of remorse."

"You are false there," the prior broke in. "Remorse is not for me."

"No? Then all the worse for you – infinitely the worse. Yet it may be. You may sleep and rise, and go to your rest again untroubled by an accusing conscience. You may sit down to eat and drink with the wail of your brother's anguish ringing in your ears, like Munebrãga, who sits feasting yonder in his marble hall, with the ashes yet hot on the Quemadero. Until you go down quick into hell, and the pit shuts her mouth upon you. Then, THEN shall you drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and you shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb."

"Thou art beside thyself," cried the prior; "and I, scarce less mad than thou, to listen to thy ravings. Yet hear me a moment, Don Juan Alvarez. I have not merited these insane reproaches. To you and yours I have been more a friend than you wot of."

"Noble friendship! I thank you for it, as it deserves."

"You have given me, this hour, more than cause enough to order your instant arrest."

"You are welcome. It were shame indeed if I could not bear at your hands what my gentle brother bore."

The last of his race! The father dead in prison; the mother dead long ago (Fray Ricardo himself best knew why); the brother burned to ashes. "I think you have a wife, perhaps a child?" asked the prior hurriedly.

"A young wife, and an infant son," said Juan, softening a little at the thought.

"Wild as your words have been, I am yet willing, for their sakes, to show you forbearance. According to the lenity which ministers of the Holy Office – "

"Have learned from their father the devil," interrupted Juan, the flame of his wrath blazing up again. "After what the stars looked down on last night, dare to mock me with thy talk of lenity!"

"You are in love with destruction," said the prior. "But I have heard you long enough. Now hear me. You have been, ere this, under grave suspicion. Indeed, you would have been arrested, only that your brother endured the Question without revealing anything to your disadvantage. That saved you."

But here he stopped, struck with astonishment at the sudden change his words had wrought.

A man stabbed to the heart makes no outcry, he does not even moan or writhe. Nor did Juan. Mutely he sank on the nearest seat, all his rage and defiance gone now. A moment before he stood over the shrinking Inquisitor like a prophet of doom or an avenging angel; now he cowered crushed and silent, stricken to the soul. There was a long silence. Then he raised a changed, sad look to the prior's face. "He bore that for me," he said, "and I never knew it."

In the cold gray morning light, now filling the room, he looked utterly forlorn and broken. The prior could even afford to pity him. He questioned, mildly enough, "How was it you did not know it? Fray Sebastian Gomez, who visited him in prison, was well aware of the fact."

In Juan's present mood every faculty was stimulated to unnatural activity. This perhaps enabled him to divine a truth which in calmer moments might have escaped him. "My brother," he said, in a low tone of deep emotion, "my heroic, tender-hearted brother must have bidden him conceal it from me."

"It was strange," said the prior, and his thoughts ran back to other things which were strange also – to the uniform patience and gentleness of Carlos; to the fortitude with which, whilst acknowledging his own faith, he had steadily refused to compromise any one else; to the self-forgetfulness with which he had shielded his father's last hours from disturbance. Granted that the heretic was a wild beast, "made to be taken and destroyed," even the hunter may admire unblamed the grace and beauty of the creature who has just fallen beneath his relentless weapon. Something like a mist rose to the eyes of Fray Ricardo, taking him by surprise.

Still, the interests of the Faith were paramount with him. All that had been done had been well done; he would not, if he could, undo any part of it. But did his duty to the Faith and to Holy Church require that he should hunt the remaining brother to death, and thus "quench the coal that was left"? He hoped not; he thought not. And, although he would not have allowed it to himself, the words that followed were really a peace-offering to the shade of Carlos.

"Young man, I am willing, for my own part, to overlook the wild words you have uttered, regarding them as the outpourings of insanity, and making moreover due allowance for your natural fraternal sorrow. Still you must be aware that you have laid yourself open, and not for the first time, to grave suspicion of heresy. I should not only sin against my own conscience, but also expose myself to the penalties of a grievous irregularity, did I take no steps for the vindication of the Faith and your just and well-merited punishment. Therefore give ear to what I say. This day week I bring the matter before the Table of the Holy Office, of which I have the honour to be an unworthy member. And God grant you the grace of repentance, and his forgiveness."

Having said this, Fray Ricardo left the room. He disappears also from our pages, where he occupied a place as a type of the less numerous and less guilty class of persecutors – those who not only thought they were doing God service (Munebrãga may have thought that, but he was only willing to do God such service as cost him nothing), but who were honestly anxious to serve him to the best of their ability. His future is hidden from our sight. We cannot even undertake to say whether, when death drew near, – if the name of Alvarez de Meñaya occurred to him at all, – he reproached himself for his sternness to the brother whom he had consigned to the flames, or for his weakness to the brother to whom he had generously given a chance of life and liberty.

It is not usually the most guilty who hear the warning voice that denounces their crimes and threatens their doom. Such words as Don Juan spoke to Fray Ricardo could not, by any conceivable possibility, have been uttered in the presence of Gonzales de Munebrãga.

Soon afterwards a lay brother, the same who had admitted Don Juan, entered the room and placed wine on the table before him. "My lord the prior bade me say your Excellency seemed exhausted, and should refresh yourself ere you depart," he explained.

Juan motioned it away. He could not trust himself to speak. But did Fray Ricardo imagine he would either eat bread or drink water beneath the roof that sheltered him?

Still the poor man lingered, standing before him with the air of one who had something to say which he did not exactly know how to bring out.

"You may tell your lord that I am going," said Juan, rising wearily, and with a look that certainly told of exhaustion.

"If it please your noble Excellency – " and the lay brother stopped and hesitated.

"Well?"

"Let his Excellency pardon me. Could his worship have the misfortune to be related, very distantly no doubt, to one of the heretics who – "

"Don Carlos Alvarez was my brother," said Juan proudly.

The poor lay brother drew nearer to him, and lowered his voice to a mysterious whisper. "Señor and your Excellency, he was here in prison for a long time. It was thought that my lord the prior had a kindness for him, and wished him better used than they use the criminals in the Santa Casa. It happened that the prisoner whose cell he shared died the day before his —removal. So that the cell was empty, and it fell to my lot to cleanse it. Whilst I was doing it I found this; I think it belonged to him."

He drew from beneath his serge gown a little book, and handed it to Juan, who seized it as a starving man might seize a piece of bread. Hastily taking out his purse, he flung it in exchange to the lay brother; and then, just as the matin bells began to ring, he buckled on his sword and went forth.