Father Felix had prepared the widow of Victorio Colenzo for the sight
she would behold when she went to the rude dwelling where they had laid
the form of the prisoner whose dead body had been found lying in the
entrance to the prison on the day the people battered down the doors and
set at liberty several political prisoners confined therein, but no one
could, really, prepare a woman for the vision presented to her eyes when
she entered the cottage that had been turned into a temporary morgue,
for more than one of those engaged in the deadly strife with the
soldiery in the prado after the deliverance of the prisoners had given
up his earthly life, either at the time of the attack or afterwards from
wounds inflicted either intentionally or inadvertently by those who had
been sent to the prado to quell an uprising of the Cuban populace.
As the woman we have before described entered the rude shelter where the
dead bodies of several of the residents of the little village lay, she
was surprised and grieved by the number of the dead and, also, by the
many mourners who crowded among the slabs on which the bodies lay, for
there was little of orderly array there, everything being of the rudest
and most primitive pattern as the reigning government did not wish to
dignify those who had opposed it even after death had taken from their
limbs the power to oppose anything in the world of men and women.
The woman, who was of a higher class than most of those assembled there,
was treated with marked deference as became her superior position both
as to wealth and education, for the widow of Victorio Colenzo occupied a
proud place in her own right, having been, for a long time, the occupant
of a large and beautiful residence that commanded a wide view of the
harbor of Havana and was situated on an elevation above the little
village of San Domingo; this home had been hers long before she had ever
met the handsome peon whom she had acknowledged as her husband to Father
Felix after having learned of his death.
It was through her own instigation that the man had taken the position
which had, subsequently, placed him among the prisoners for offenses
against the reigning government who had been liberated under her direct
orders and with her pronounced sanction, although she had not actually
taken part in the work which she had directed.
This woman was of another type entirely as compared with the others in
that small dwelling and walked among them almost haughtily in spite of
her eagerness in the search after evidence that would convince her that
she had not been utterly mistaken in the man she had secretly married,
believing him to represent the finest and highest example of patriotic
courage and devotion that she had met during the whole of her long
residence in the Island of Cuba.
She had come to the Island, in her first youth, as the daughter of the
American Consul who represented the United States in the council
chambers where were gathered those who discussed affairs of state with
the ruling Spanish powers; her father had purchased the beautiful site
on which he had built the home that was still hers, although both of her
parents had died, there in Cuba, within the past few years; the girl had
been left practically without living relatives, and, so, loving her
Island home, she had remained there in spite of the solicitations of
many American friends who had visited her in Cuba and urged her to
return to the United States with them; she was of a reticent and
retiring disposition, loving a good book more than almost anything else
in the world, and being surrounded by a splendid library, her time was
fully and pleasantly occupied, as she had trustworthy retainers who
followed her mandates because they loved to fulfill them and pitied her
loneliness while they almost worshiped her superior manners and style of
speech as well as of living; Father Felix, alone, understood her mental
attainments and was greatly bewildered when she told him that she had
married Victorio Colenzo as he considered her far removed from the peons
who were the regular inhabitants of the Island and among whom he labored
as a missionary rather than as an equal, although his deep humility of
manner always led them to believe that he was on their own level of
intelligence, while the aloofness of this one woman set her apart from
all of her neighbors and made her seem to them like a being from another
and a higher world.
As she walked among the slabs on which the dead bodies had been laid,
that morning, for she had come down from her home early, having slept,
during the past night, only the few hours preceding her meeting with
Father Felix, as she hoped to have her doubts set at rest and to be
assured that the man she had secretly united to herself by marriage was
still worthy of her respect and love which she had given to him without
further knowledge of his character than what he chose to exhibit to her
in their infrequent meetings prior to his declaration of undying worship
and deep and overpowering love for herself as well as of patriotic zeal
which latter emotion she fully sympathized with, as she regarded it as
similar in many ways to her own feeling for her much-beloved land which
was all the more powerful because of her isolation from others of her
own nation, she representing, to herself at least, the whole of the
entire broad expanse of the United States; it was this sympathy with
the ardent patriotism of Victorio Colenzo that had led to her present
plight for, believing him to possess the strong feelings for his native
land which he had professed to her to have, she had urged his
participation in the plot which, on its discovery by the Spanish
authorities, had plunged him, with others, into the prison from which,
through her own earnest efforts, they had just been liberated, or, at
least, a part of them.
Now, she reached the side of the farthest slab in that small room, and
noticed, at once, crouching down beside it, a fair-haired girl who
seemed, beyond all doubt, the one bereft by the condition of the body
lying there, so straight and still, beneath the rude pall that had been
thrown over it so that even its face was hidden from sight. She softly
touched the mourner on the shoulder nearest to her and whispered:
"My poor Girl, for whom do you mourn? Is it the body of your brother
lying here, or, yet," she went on, hesitatingly, for a horrible
suspicion began to thrust its ugly head before her vision, "can he who
lies here so quietly have been, maybe, your husband? You are young but I
know well that the girls, here, marry very young...."
She ended haltingly, for the girl had raised her lovely face,
tear-stained and drawn by sorrow, and looked up into the face that bent
so near to her own:
"He was my plighted husband, Lady; he _would_ have been my husband had
death not intervened to take him from me! I _love_ him so ..." she
suddenly screamed in agony, "I _love_ him so ... Victorio! Why have you
left me all alone in a cruel world to be a widow before I was a wife?
Victorio...."
And, then, she rose, as one who had that right, and turned the pall back
from the countenance of him who lay there on that senseless slab.
The other woman did not scream, as poor Estrella had ... she did not
even move, indeed, but stood as if she had been carved from marble, for
her face was almost just as pale as death itself ... the pulsing blood
receded from her cheeks and from her trembling lips ... she stood so
tall and still that the poor girl became conscious of her in spite of
her own grief and wondered if she, also, sought to find some one she
loved among the dead; with that thought in her mind, she stepped back
from the corpse she had been leaning over, and said to her who stood
there silently as if her interest in the affairs of life had, suddenly,
ceased:
"I beg your pardon for my selfishness. Are you, too, one of those who
lost some loved one yesterday? Do you seek, here, in this sad place, the
body of one whom you've loved as I have loved the man who lies here ...
dead ... before me?"
The older girl was silent, for she could not talk to poor Estrella as
she wished to do ... as she had meant to do in case her worst fears had
to be realized; she did not wish to add a single hair's weight to the
sorrow that the poor girl felt for him who had been false to both of
those trusting women who stood there beside his corpse; she did not wish
to harm the innocent girl, for she could see how true and loving she had
been by gazing, only for a moment, in her wide, blue eyes, and, yet, it
was her right and, perhaps, it was also her duty, to the man who had
been her earthly husband, to claim his body and to bury it as would
become the husband of a woman such as she had, always, been; but, as
he'd always begged her to keep secret their marriage which had taken
place in Havana instead of having Father Felix marry them at his
request, for political reasons, he had told her, with the thought that
she, being an American, might complicate his position with the Spanish
government, as he had occupied a place of trust under the Governor,
until the proper time would come to expose his actual feelings for his
native land.
And, so, she had to think of this side of the complicated problem
presented to her by her strange position while she stood there with that
weeping, loving, sympathetic, untaught girl clinging to her hand and
questioning her. At length, having collected a little of her usual
unselfish consideration for the people living on the Island, she turned
to poor Estrella and said to her, softly, and, yet, without
condescension in her manner:
"Yes, my poor Girl, I, also, seek someone I love among the newly
dead.... I, also, wish to find the man I loved as you have loved the man
who lies here on this slab.... I, also...."
Then, her courage failed her utterly and she fainted dead away, even as
poor Estrella, herself, had, when she had first beheld the body of the
man who had made love to both of them.
The fair-haired girl bent over the older woman and lifted her in her
strong arms and carried her into the outer air and found the carriage
where it waited for its mistress and placed her in the care of those who
served her; then, for the first time, she realized who the lady was
who'd found her there beside her dead, as she supposed, for Victorio had
no family in San Domingo, having only come there recently, and having
held himself as somewhat superior to the most of his own countrymen whom
he met, so poor Estrella claimed his body as having been his sweetheart,
since he had, as she believed, no wife in all the world, for he had
often told her he had never found a woman he could love before he met
her.
Now, she helped to chafe the hands of her who lay there in that costly
carriage with her brown hair making a soft frame for her pale face which
lay upon the lap of one who loved her with the kind of love an ignorant,
older woman gives to one she much admires and who is far superior to her
in every possible way; this woman smoothed the fluffy hair back from
the high white brow, now, and spoke to her as if she were her baby
instead of one whom she looked up to and respected:
"There ... there! My Pretty! Open your sweet eyes and look at your own
loving Mage!" she said, as the long, brown lashes that fringed the
delicate white lids still brushed the rounded cheeks that were almost as
white as the smooth brow. "Look up at me and let me see your shining
eyes, again!"
"Her heart is beating, now, more regularly," said Estrella, for her hand
had sought the other's bosom to see if she still lived at all. "She
breathes more easily, too. I think she will recover very soon ... poor
Lady! She sympathized with me in my great sorrow so deeply that she
fainted. How sweet and dear she is!" she added, softly, as a shudder
shook the form before her. "How very sweet and dear she is. You _must_
love her very much indeed.... I never happened to see her before today,
but I know who she is, now, and how very kind she has been to so many of
our people."
"I wish the color would creep back into her cheeks ..." moaned Mage.
"Her cheeks are almost always rosy as the dawn ... it seems so strange
to see them white ... she don't look natural to me this way ... you
should see her when she thinks her husband's coming to the house ...
_then_ her cheeks are like a flame of light ... her eyes are just as
bright as stars at midnight ... there! They've opening, now ... my
Pretty ... my own pretty Dear ... Mage is here ... I'm right here by you
Dearie ... there! I'm afraid she's fainted away, again. She seemed to
look at you, Estrella, stand farther back so, when she opens her eyes
next time, she'll see just me ... she knows old Mage loves her
always ... she knows her own old Mage would take good care of her no
matter what would come.... Dearie ... I am right here ... old Mage is
close beside you...."
At that, the woman lying there within her faithful arms, stirred softly,
and, once again, her glorious gray eyes opened, and she looked at poor
old Mage whose face was all distraught with many wrinkles and with deep
anxiety for her. Then she raised herself to a sitting posture and put
her hands before her eyes as if to hide some horrible spectre from her
sight, and, then, she looked at poor Estrella standing there not knowing
what to do, for Mage would not allow her, even now, to come a single
step nearer to her mistress, and then she spoke:
"My poor Girl," she said, "My poor Girl, I too, sought to find the man I
loved, but his body is not here. I pity you with all my heart and wish
that I could help you bear your sorrow. Come to me and I will try to
help you ... come this evening, just at sunset, to my house. I think you
know which one it is.... Mage, you tell her where to come."
For she had reached the limit of her endurance, for the moment, and old
Mage, seeing her evident distress, hurriedly told Estrella where to come
to find her mistress, and gave the orders to the coachman to drive home
at once.
And, then, Estrella went again into the habitation of the dead and the
other woman, with her heart like lead within her breast, went back to
her own place and left the body of the man she'd called her husband for
a few short months lying there upon that senseless slab with the weeping
girl beside it.