One day, while mousing or, as President Lincoln used to say, browsing
among the manuscripts, and musing about the dead and gone heroes, and
how times have altered since they rode out like Paladins of romance to
tempt Fortune in her high places, I came on a letter which differed
from the commonplace documents littered about, and was not emblazoned
with the splash of any great seal. It was very yellow and musty,
stained in one corner by a blue book thrown on it in the time of
President Johnson. It required the daintiest handling. Carefully I
unfolded the sheet, almost thick as vellum and in danger of dropping
to tatters, and marked a spot once sealed with wax, flaked off long
ago. The address was Antonio Eusebio de Cubero, Secretary of Gen. Don
Diego de Vargas, Governor of Nueva Mejico. I opened the quaint missive,
and lo! a love-letter, dated Seville, November, 1692. It began with
stately, sweet salute: “To my own true love and faithful knight, from
his Rosita de Castile.” Like the Dantean lovers,
“I turned no further leaf.”
Nearly two centuries the antique billet had lain entombed in this
earthy sepulchre; now would I bring it to the light again, and,
tenderly folding the sheet, I bore it to the quiet of my own room, for
reading at leisure.
This is the way it runs, written in diminutive hand, indistinct at
the beginning, now almost illegible. With tender words, not always
in correctest spelling, the little Rose of Castile writes to Eusebio
Antonio, that her father and big brother wage war in Algeria. She had
just learned to sing, with her mandolin, a madrigal, which she quotes
at length and will not bear translation. I cannot catch the subtle
essence, the exquisite Spanish-Arab perfume and prison it in harsh
English. I know nothing in our language so nearly approaching the
dainty love-ditty as the song of Burns, which will live till the last
lover dies:
“Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,
Never met and never parted,
We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”
She told how, when the young moon was shining, and the fat, cross
duenna was fast asleep, she had crept from her side and out of reach of
her snoring, to wander along the Guadalquivir where the citron shade
is deepest and the silver lilies shadow singing waters. She was tired
of dances and of flattery, and that odious Manuelita, and, lighted only
by the moon and the glow-worm, the maiden lingered by the fountain till
the bell in the tower rang two. “There, by the bed of sweet basil--dost
remember Eusebio caro?”
And what for, lady fair? _Ay de mi!_ Is there a reader so dull as not
to know, without telling, ’twas to dream, and to dream, and to dream?
Easy to picture her in graceful youth and all beautiful. The delicate
Murillo head; the Andalusian eyes glancing this way and that from the
arched window Moresque; shyly she flitted out the barred gate among the
myrtles, stepping so lightly she scarcely startled the dove who stirred
in her nest; the flower-like face draped by the veiling, envious
_rebosa_, held close by the rose-leaf hand; the one bright circlet
shining on the taper finger--can you not see her stealing along through
the golden orange orchard, the almond’s snow-white glitter? There, with
infinite love and longing, with lips waiting to be kissed, she listened
to the nightingale’s song to the rose, starting at the silken rustle
of her dress; and as the strokes of the bell shook the giant pillars
of the cathedral, fleeing like a guilty thing back to the snoring, fat
aunt. Only she lingered a moment to look up at the indigo sky and the
slim Giralda tower, there by the bed of sweet basil--“dost remember,
Eusebio caro?”
Such was the soft Rosita de Castile, and she asks the old question:
When dost thou dream of me, dearest? It is a sort of treachery to
publish the deep secret, and I beg pardon of the shade of the gentle
lady, if it lingers round the hard clay of which these walls are
made. O tender love! O fond young heart, that stopped beating nearly
two hundred years ago! I fear Don Antonio Eusebio was hardly so true
as thou wast. Knights-errant, tilting through the New World, had
no such quest as the blameless Sir Galahad, though they pushed the
“_pundonor_” to the very verge of nonsense. Cortez set an example which
his successors were quick to follow. Under the garb of gallantry, they
wedded _paramour_, and with high Castilian pride proclaimed their honor
bright when they were ready to fight dragons and die in steel harness
full knightly.
You remember, reader dear, Millais’s “Huguenot Lovers”? Of course,
you must, for you have often seen it, and even the poor prints retain
some hint of the lovely original. In all her long galleries Art has no
fairer creation. It is lovelier even than Ary Scheffer’s “Marguerite,”
than the fallen “Francesca di Rimini.” The loving arms clinging to
the handsome youth; the wistful, upturned face, so anxious, pale
and tearful, on the eve of parting, which her fears make sad as St.
Bartholomew’s--such charm was in the face of my Rosita de Castile; mine
by right of adoption, though she died more than a century before I was
born.
How he looked we know by the portraits of Velasquez. Tall and stately
was he, lithe and sinewy as one skilled in arms, manly sports, and fond
of hounds and hunting; a long lean hand, with blazing jewels--one a
precious fire-opal, the Girasol of Zimapan; olive skin and heavy brows;
eyes like sharp stilettos; peaked beard, curled mustachios, trimmed
and perfumed; black dress-coat, silken hose, silver shoe-buckles,
spotless neck-ruff; chains and ribbons of honor; golden cross richly
broidered on his mantle; jingling spurs, the mark of knighthood--this
was Don Antonio Eusebio de Cubero, who thought to swell his fortune
and fill the measure of his fame under the royal banner upheld by
Governor-General Vargas.
Nor must we forget to name the good long rapier, worn yet in old Spain,
where the sword forever stays the scepter. Add to this pictorial dress
the graces which wait on youth--refined courtesy and lofty presence,
come of the habit of command--and you have the secretary of the hero
who went, saw, and conquered Santa Fé for the crown of Spain.
The beloved Eusebio Antonio kept no copy of his vows and promises;
but I warrant, when there were none but the angels to hear, they were
given--made binding and strong. In fair Seville the young lovers stole
from the lights and the dancing, down by the bed of sweet basil to seal
their contract with solemn oaths.
“Mixed with kisses, sweeter, sweeter
Than anything on earth.”
The dear Eusebio was lured away from Rosita’s bower to that New World
which is the old. Across the sea had floated, faint and far, like dying
echoes coming near, stories of a land of wild men and beasts, strange
birds, and hissing serpents; of mountains of rock inscribed with mystic
hieroglyphs, and terraced pyramids, upholding undying fires--temples
the incense of whose altars ascended forever into a sky of speckless
sapphire. These were the regions of finest furs, of gold-dust and
ivory, of silver, pearls, and precious stones, all to be had for the
gathering. Such tales were as singing sirens, as airy hands beckoning
in the shadowy distances of dim and unknown shores.
What wonder the young men were fired with the idea of enriching
impoverished estates by the plunder of opulent cities, and old men
approved their resolution to grasp some portion of this wealth, to
march with triumphant banners through the length and breadth of the
land, all the while striking stout blows for Holy Cross?
In that age of few books, when writing was a clerkly accomplishment,
there had come down from the fathers many traditions of the hero who
had wrested the scepter from the hand of Atahualpa on the heights of
the Andes. The discoverer of the Mississippi was a century asleep under
its rushing waters. They had heard the name and fame of the peerless
Englishman--seaman, soldier, courtier, poet, historian--who sought
a city of gold on the banks of the Orinoco. Nor could they believe
that genius and valor died when the aged paralytic, beggared and
heart-broken, laid his head on the block, saying: “It matters little
how the head lieth, so that the heart be right,” the noblest head that
ever rolled in English dust.
The supernatural swayed men’s minds in those days, and myriads of
imaginary foes were to be fought, besides the beasts in their dens and
the naked, painted savage. No doubt that Antonio Eusebio de Cubero felt
equal to every danger he must face--the perilous voyage, and the many
miseries which Rosita’s fears magnified out of all bounds.
The parting for years so weary shook the heart of the little Rose.
Better than I can tell, my reader knows it. The lingering clasp of
hands, the yearning gaze, the tears, the vows, the prayers; the slow
ship (there was no steamer then), with gay pennons and fluttering
signals, sailing straight into the sunset, into eternity, away, away
out of the world; a fading sail on the flushed water, a speck on the
horizon’s edge; he is gone, taking with him her happiness, her smiles,
her passionate young heart.
But they would return, those _Caballeros_ on the deck of the
“Columella,” heroes every one, bringing the wealth of Pizarro and the
glory of Cortez. The thought was cheer and comfort to Rosita in the
long, slow waiting--one of the hardest things to be learned in the
lesson of loving. Men have a thousand objects to live for--the whole
world is theirs, and in their changeful, many-colored life love is only
one slender, shining thread; women have nothing but their hearts. He
went out to a field of limitless possibilities, filled with the charm
of novelty, variety, adventure; she to her maiden bower, her lute,
her embroidery, to dream over the love-words till his very name would
thrill and send the blood dancing through her veins; to wait through
the dull sameness of empty days, dropping one by one into weary, silent
nights; to watch the last light against the towers, the last sparkles
on the sea, making it a sea of glass mingled with fire, and entreat
the Mother of Sorrows with piteous prayers for the wanderer in the
vague, far-off country beyond them; to sicken for gracious messages and
letters that do not come, and yet be loyal in the belief they have been
written, they are somewhere--this is the sweet patience born of woman,
the brave, persistent faith, almost a religion.
It is the one who sails away who forgets; the one who stays at home who
remembers. He was a false teacher who said Paradise is in the shadow of
the crossing of cimeters. You and I know, dear reader, and our little
Rose of Seville knew, it is in the shadow of the one we love.