I.

PAGANISM was the avowal of life; Christianity the sacrifice of

it. So the world civilized has always separated at the two diverging

roads, according as brain or blood has ruled their lives; the Turanian

races, and after them the Latins, to assert life; the Semitic races,

and after them the Teutons, to deny it. So the Church of Rome, as

nearest in time to Paganism, has been nearer the avowal of life, has

recognized, through all its inquisitions, human hearts; the Sects have

sought to stifle them; the Puritans have posed to ignore them. Thus

cruelty may be the crime of priests; hypocrisy has been the vice of

preachers.

Hence my poor friend Tetherby, spinning his affections from his brain,

tired with a mesh of head-wrought duties, died, or rather ceased to

live, of a moral heart-failure. His heart was too good to be made out

of brains alone; and his life was ended with the loss of that girl

of his--what was her name, Myra, Marcia?--born, in the Northland, of

a warmer blood, who fell a victim there, as the rose-tree does in too

cold a climate, to the creeping things of earth. Now it happened that

that same year I was told the story of Dolores, Marquesa del Torre y

Luna, almost the last of the old Spanish nobility of Carácas, called la

doña sola de la casa del Rey--as we should say, the lonely lady of the

house of the King--for she lived there, married and widow, fifty years,

and left no child to inherit the thick-walled city house, four square

about its garden, and the provinces of coffee-trees, and, what she

prized more and we prize less, the noble blood of Torre and of Luna,

now run dry.

There are two things in the little city of Carácas that go back to the

time when the Spanish empire made a simulacrum of the Roman round the

world--one is the great round-arched Spanish bridge, spanning the deep

arroyo on the mountain slope above the present town--useless now, for

the earthquake clefts are deeper on either side than this gorge of the

ancient river of the city, and have drained its stream away--and the

other this great stone fortress in the centre of the present town,

with walls eight feet thick, its windows like tunnels cut through to

the iron unglazed casement--for this was the only house that was left

standing on the evening of the great earthquake; and so the modern city

clusters timidly about it, its houses a modest one- or double-story,

and, on the clay slope where the older city was, the cactus grows,

and the zenith sun burns the clay banks red, and the old “gold-dust

road,” over the Cordillera to the sea, now but a mule-path of scattered

cobble-stone, winds lonely and narrow across the splendid bridge, among

the great fissures that the earthquake left. And both bridge and house

still bear the sculptured blazonry, the lions and the castles, and the

pious inscription to the greater glory of the Virgin.

Carácas lies in a plain, like the Vega of Granada, only green with

palms as well as poplars; but through its rich meadows a turbid

mountain torrent runs, and south, and west, and east are mountains;

and north the mighty Silla lifts almost to the snows, half breaking

the ceaseless east wind of the sea; trade-wind, it has been called

in history; slave-wind were better. And by the little city is the

palm-clad Calvareo, the little hill gay with orchids and shaded by

tree-ferns, in whose pleasant paths the city people still take their

pleasure (for the name of Calvary but means the view, not any sadness),

and took their pleasure, eighty years since, when this story begins.

And one evening, in the early years of the century, there walked alone,

or with but a nurse for her dueña, a girl whose beauty still smiles

down through sad tradition and through evil story, to lighten the dark

streets of the old Spanish town, whose stones for many years her feet

have ceased to press. And the memory of the old Casa Rey, the castle,

all is hers; and the people of the town, the Caraqueños, still see

her lovely face at the window; first at one, and then at the other,

but mostly at the grated window in the round tower of the corner,

that projects and commands the two streets; for there her sweet, pale

face used to show itself, between the bars, and watch for the cavalry

her noble husband led, returning from the wars. For then were wars of

liberation, when freedom was fought for, not possession and estates;

and the Marquis Sebastian Ruy del Torre led in all. And days and days

she would watch for him returning, after battles won, she sitting with

her golden needle-work at the corner window, her night-black hair

against the iron bar (for there are no glass window-panes in Carácas),

her strange blue eyes still watching down the street. So she sat there,

and broidered chasuble or altar-cloth for the holy church of Santa

Maria de las Mercedes, where she prayed each dawn and evening, yet cast

her eyes down either street between each stitch, to watch the coming of

him she loved on earth. And the people of Carácas used to gather her

glances to their hearts, like blue flowers, for of herself they saw no

more than this.

But her husband, from their wedding-day, never saw her more. For fifty

years she sat at this window, working chasuble and stole, and always,

when the distant trumpet sounded, or the first gold-and-scarlet pennon

fluttered far down the street, she would drop her work and rise. And

then she would wave her hand, and her husband would wave his hand, at

the head of his column far away. This was for the populace. But then

she would go from the window; and be seen there no more while he stayed

at Carácas.... But those that were beneath the window used to say (for

the husband was too far off then to see) that before she left the

window, she would cast a long look down the street to that distance

where he rode, and those that saw this glance say that for sweetness no

eye of mortal saw its equal, and the story is, it made little children

smile, and turned old bad men good, and even women loved her face.

Then she vanished from the tower, and they saw her no more. During all

the time that might be the Marquis’s stay, no more she came to the

window, no more to the door. State dinners were given there in the

King’s house; banquets, aye, and balls, where all that was Castilian in

Carácas came; but the custom was well known, and no one marvelled that

the châtelaine came not to meet them; the lovely Lady Dolores, whom no

one ever spoke to or saw. Some dueña, some relation, some young niece

or noble lady, cousin of either the del Torre, was there and did the

honors. And of the Marquesa no one ever spoke, for it was understood

that, though not in a convent, she was no longer in the world--even to

her husband, it was said, at first with bated breath, then openly.

For the servants told, and the family, and it was no secret, how days

and weeks before her lord returned the lady would busy herself with

preparations. And their state suite of rooms, and their nuptial-chamber

(into which, alas! she else had never come!) were prepared by her, and

made bright and joyous with rich flowers, and sweet to his heart by

the knowledge of her presence, and the touch of her dear hand. Then,

when all was done, and one white rose from her bosom in a single vase

(and in a score of years this white rose never failed), she darkened

the rooms and left them for his coming, and went back to her seat in

the stone-floored tower room, and sat there with her gold and silver

embroidery, and so watched for him. And while he stayed in his palace,

she lived in those cold, bare rooms; for they alone had not been

changed when they were married, but had been kept as they had been a

prison, and my lady Dolores loved them best; but she came not now to

the window, lest their eyes might meet.