Of the _dramatis personae_ of our tale, already known to our reader,
Carlos Santander, Florence Kearney, and Cris Rock were not the only ones
who had shifted residence from the City of New Orleans to that of
Mexico. Within the months intervening two others had done the same--
these Don Ignacio Valverde and his daughter. The banished exile had not
only returned to his native land, but his property had been restored to
him, and himself reinstated in the favour of the Dictator.
More still, he had now higher rank than ever before; since he had been
appointed a Minister of State.
For the first upward step on this progressive ladder of prosperity Don
Ignacio owed all to Carlos Santander. The handsome _aide-de-camp_,
having the ear of his chief, found little difficulty in getting the ban
removed, with leave given the refugee--criminal only in a political
sense--to come back to his country.
The motive will easily be guessed. Nothing of either friendship or
humanity actuated Santander. Alone the passion of love; which had to do
not with Don Ignacio--but his daughter. In New Orleans he himself dared
no longer live, and so could no more see Luisa Valverde there. Purely
personal then; a selfish love, such as he could feel, was the motive for
his intercession with the political chief of Mexico to pardon the
political criminal. But if he had been the means of restoring Don
Ignacio to his country, that was all. True, there was the restitution
of the exile's estates, but this followed as a consequence on
reinstatement in his political rights. The after honours and
emoluments--with the appointment to a seat in the Cabinet--came from the
Chief of the State, Santa Anna himself. And his motive for thus
favouring a man who had lately, and for long, been his political foe was
precisely the same as that which actuated Carlos Santander. The
Dictator of Mexico, as famed for his gallantries in love as his
gallantry in war--and indeed somewhat more--had looked upon Luisa
Valverde, and "saw that she was fair."
For Don Ignacio himself, as the recipient of these favours, much may be
said in extenuation. Banishment from one's native land, with loss of
property, and separation from friends as from best society; condemned to
live in another land, where all these advantages are unattainable,
amidst a companionship uncongenial; add to this the necessity of work,
whether mental or physical toil, to support life--the _res augustae
domi_; sum up all these, and you have the history of Don Ignacio
Valverde during his residence in New Orleans. He bore all patiently and
bravely, as man could and should. For all he was willing--and it cannot
be wondered at that he was--when the day came, and a letter reached him
bearing the State seal of the Mexican Republic--for its insignia were
yet unchanged--to say that he had received pardon, and could return
home.
He knew the man who had procured it for him--Carlos Santander--and had
reason to suspect something of the motive. But the mouth of a gift
horse must not be too narrowly examined; and Santander, ever since that
night when he behaved so rudely in Don Ignacio's house, had been chary
in showing his face. In point of fact, he had made but one more visit
to the Calle de Casa Calvo here, presenting himself several days after
the duel with a patch of court plaister on his cheek, and his arm in a
sling. An invalid, interesting from the cause which made him an
invalid, he gave his own account of it, knowing there was but little
danger of its being contradicted; Duperon's temper, he understood, with
that of the French doctor, securing silence. The others were all G.T.T.
(gone to Texas), the hack-drivers, as he had taken pains to assure
himself. No fear, therefore, of what he alleged getting denial or being
called in question.
It was to the effect that he had fought Florence Kearney, and given more
and worse wounds than he himself had received--enough of them, and
sufficiently dangerous, to make it likely that his adversary would not
long survive.
He did not say this to Luisa Valverde--only to her father. When she
heard it second hand, it came nigh killing her. But then the informant
had gone away--perhaps luckily for himself--and could not further be
questioned. When met again in Mexico, months after, he told the same
tale. He had no doubt, however, that his duelling adversary, so
terribly gashed as to be in danger of dying, still lived. For an
American paper which gave an account of the battle of Mier, had spoken
of Captain Kearney in eulogistic terms, while not giving his name in the
death list; this Santander had read. The presumption, therefore, was of
Kearney being among the survivors.
Thus stood things in the city of Mexico at the time the Mier prisoners
entered it, as relates to the persons who have so far found place in our
story--Carlos Santander, a colonel on the staff of the Dictator; Don
Ignacio Valverde, a Minister of State; his daughter, a reigning belle of
society, with no aspirations therefor, but solely on account of her
beauty; Florence Kearney, late Captain of the Texan filibusters, with
Cris Rock, guide, scout, and general skirmisher of the same--these last
shut up in a loathsome prison, one linked leg to leg with a robber, the
other sharing the chain of a murderer, alike crooked in soul as in body!
That for the Texan prisoners there was yet greater degradation in
store--one of them, Kearney, was made aware the moment after the
gaol-governor had so unceremoniously shut the door of their cell. The
teaching of Don Ignacio in New Orleans had not been thrown away upon
him; and this, with the practice since accruing through conversation
with the soldiers of their escort, had made him almost a master of the
Spanish tongue.
Carlos Santander either did not think of this, or supposed the cloister
door too thick to permit of speech in the ordinary tone passing through
it. It did, notwithstanding; what he said outside to the governor
reaching the Irishman's ear, and giving him a yet closer clue to that
hitherto enigma--the why he and Cris Rock had been cast into a common
gaol, among the veriest and vilest of malefactors.