THE soldiers in Carácas march to mass and the service is
performed at beat of drum. At the muffled tap of a march the regiment
files in to fill the nave, and kneels, ringing their bayonets upon the
stones; the people fill the sides, and stand behind the columns on the
aisles. The General was there, as usual, but he could not see Dolores;
she was kneeling at a shrine upon one side, a shrine of Mary, Mother of
Pity. All the pictures and gold images were heavily draped in crape,
for it was Holy Week. The brazen trumpets of the military band sounded
through the Kyrie Eleison; the church was dark, for every woman was
in black until Good Friday, and the crape hangings shrouded close the
walls. Del Torre stood erect in his green uniform, but, save for his
figure, the nave was a mass of red and gold and glittering steel. He
looked for her; he looked back to the doors which were thrown back
inward; from the dark, shrouded church he looked through into the empty
square, blazing with the zenith sun of the equinox. Again a muffled
drumbeat, and the regiment knelt, with a rattle of their bayonets, upon
the stones; it was the elevation of the host, and he, too, knelt and
crossed himself.
When mass was over, the soldiers filed out first; as del Torre
followed, he met the wounded captain again, with bloodless cheeks. “You
are too pale to be out, sir,” said the General, almost lovingly, his
hand resting lightly on the other’s shoulder.
“Don Ramon is outside,” he answered.
“I have no fear--the youth is mad,” said del Torre.
It is the custom in Spanish America, now forgotten in old Spain, to
lead the holy images of the church about the streets, with a slow
processional, before Good Friday. As del Torre spoke, they found
themselves behind one of these. In this Church of Santa Teresia is a
famed old image of Christ bearing the Cross, brought two centuries
before from Spain. It is especially venerated by the merchants of
Carácas; large sums are subscribed by them each Easter time to dress
it up, thousands of dollars and doubloons. Behind this image now they
found themselves. Eight chanting priests, in mourning black and lilac,
bore it on either side, but the image was gay with beaten gold, borne
in a canopy of costly lace, a hundred tall wax candles giving light.
The priests move very slowly, scarce a step a minute, making stations
at each shrine, so that to bear these images from one church to another
may take half a day. Del Torre and the wounded officer could not, of
course, pass it; so that it was half an hour when they reached the open
air, and the square nearly emptied of the worshippers; del Torre heard
the distant band of the army down the mountain slope.
As they came out into the heat, he felt a slight shudder, like a quiver
of the earth, and thought it was the shock of seeing his nephew.
Don Ramon del Torre spoke loudly, disregarding the presence of the
bystanders, pressing rudely by the sacred shrine, and crying that the
old man would not fight.
“There stands the old man that will wed my cousin.”
“Mention not her name,” said General del Torre----
“I would kill him first, but that his old blood dare not spill itself
for her.”
“Mention not her name,” said del Torre----. Then Ramon’s voice hissed
louder.
“My cousin Dolores de Luna that has been my mistress----”
That night a Jesuit priest, leaving the King’s House, where he had
confessed Dolores, ran hastily to the Archbishop’s. While he was there,
another frightened messenger brought the news that Don Sebastian and
his nephew had been fighting on Calvareo. But Jacinta, crying, brought
the news to the Countess earlier, how Don Sebastian and Don Ramon at
last had met, and how the nephew lay full of wounds upon the Calvary,
literally cut in pieces, killed at his own uncle’s hands.