DOLORES spent the night before the wedding kneeling in the
little chapel of her dwelling. So we read that Eastern Catholics “lay
all that night in the form of a cross.” She was praying for her husband
that had been to be--perhaps praying that he might be still, praying
for light to see if there were sin in it. Perhaps she had remorses
of her own. She had known the dead man he had killed as a boy, bold,
reckless, wild; I suppose she had looked at him once or twice. A
Southern maiden’s glances return to torture her when they have led to
blood; prudent maids of other climes are chary of them for tradition of
some such reason.
Dolores never wept, but knelt there, dry-eyed, praying. In intervals
she thought, “Would he be well enough to come?” as she knew that he
was gravely wounded; but somehow she felt sure he would; and that if
this marriage-bond were sin, he would venture it for her sake. A
woman’s conscience rules her heart, even in Spain; but a man, even
Roman Catholic, will risk his own perdition to save her sorrow, or that
no sin be hers. She must save him, she must be the judge. And sunrise
found her pale but decided. Then she called Jacinta to her side, and
asked her if she had carried to her husband (so she called him) her
note.
Jacinta looked at her fiercely; but at the word “Husband,” started.
Then she said she had torn it up.
At the Countess’s look she quailed, and lied again. She had it still,
she said. Dolores bade her give it to him as he came from early mass.
Then Jacinta cried and told the truth. She admitted that she had given
it to Don Ramon.
Dolores heard this with the blood about her heart, but sat there
silent, while the Indian woman grovelled at her feet. It was her note,
then, that caused the duel.
Then mine, too, is the sin, she thought, not his alone; and this
thought gave her joy. But where was he? was he strong enough to come?
She took her writing-case and wrote an exact copy of her other note;
and this was what she had said, and Ramon had read, and then had fought
his uncle:
“SEÑOR: The rose you asked of yesterday I gave Don Ramon; but
the message that went with it was given him for you.
“MARIA JOESPHA DOLORES, CONDESA DE LUNA.”
As she finished writing, the General was announced. His face was
bloodless, but his wounds had been carefully dressed, so that the
bandages could not be seen. He knelt over her hand, though the kneeling
set them bleeding once again. But Dolores, timid only in her love,
still saw but remorse and duty in his eyes. With him he brought his own
priest, a priest from the Liberal army. “Pobra,” he said, “we must be
married early--early and privately.”
She sought his eyes timidly and tried to say it; to say what words
her note said in her hand. But she could not. She could only say, “I
know--I have heard,” and she clenched the letter closer in her hand.
She could not give it to him.
Del Torre’s face could not turn whiter. But he said: “Forgive me--only
your forgiveness I can ask. At noon, then?”
“At noon.” She saw him leave the house; then, then she turned and cried
to Jacinta: “Run, run, and give him this letter--at the Cathedral.”
And again, upon her wedding-morning, Dolores went to pray. She was
interrupted by a visit from the Archbishop. Some presentiment made her
rise in apprehension; and as she stood erect, she saw, through the
priest, the man. And she saw that he, too, had her secret; first the
lover, then the priest, had found it out.
“This marriage must not be,” said he.
“Holy Father, I have confessed yesterday.”
“This marriage must not be. You loved Don Ramon.”
Dolores’s lips curled. “I confessed, yesterday. I see you have been
told.”
“Yesterday ’twas a duty--to-day it is a sin. Thou lovest Ramon.”
Then Dolores rose to her full height and her blue eyes flamed like ice.
“Sebastian, the Liberador, him I love, in this life and the next; God
knows it, and Ramon knows it, and now may you, and soon, please God,
shall he!”
All forewarned that he was, the priest started at her vehemence. Fool
that he had been!
“He has murdered his nephew--and thou art the cause.”
The Countess was silent. All Catholic that she was, she had resolved to
appeal from his judgment to God’s.
“Thou wilt not obey?” said the priest.
Her lips half formed the word no.
“Then on thee and on him, on thy house I pronounce the curse of God.
Thy family shall have cause to remember this day, this Holy Thursday,
until it and both thy names shall have vanished from the earth.”
Scarcely had the Archbishop left the house when del Torre came. She
saw that he had not been to church. But she was married to him without
another word. “If he has not my note,” she thought, “he shall have it
soon.”
But before that night Jacinta, with the note in her hand, was buried
with ten thousand others behind the closed cathedral doors.