ON this Thursday, March 26, 1812, while the services of the
Hours of Agony were being celebrated in the great cathedral, in the
presence of ten thousand people, the mountains trembled and the earth
opened. The multitude pressed for the doors, but they opened inward,
and the thronging masses pressed them fast. At the second shock the
walls opened and the roof fell in. The Archbishop and many priests were
buried at the altar. Thirty thousand people are said to have perished.
Many were swallowed in the chasm that opened on the mountain-side, like
rents in a bulging sail bursted in a gale. No stone houses in Carácas
more than one-story high were standing on that night--except the old
Spanish castle where, in the tower-room, Dolores sat watching for her
husband.
Through all that night del Torre worked amid the ruins. At dawn he
was brought home insensible, fainting from his labors, bleeding at his
opened wounds. Dolores met him at the door, and led the bearers to the
room that should have been their bridal-room. There he was laid, and
lay delirious many weeks with fever. Dolores never left his side.
The Archbishop was known to have been killed. Jacinta, the bride knew,
must have perished too. The priest that had married them stayed with
her; but Dolores, though brave enough to sin, was not false to her
faith. The over-wrought heart of the poor girl and great noblewoman
connected all that had happened with what she deemed her sins--firstly,
that she had caused her cousin’s death, her husband’s crime, but
chiefly that she had braved the Church, and the curse its head, now
dead, had launched upon her and upon Carácas. That their house alone
was standing seemed only to mark them guilty.
Dolores was a noble heart, and did not falter in her course. She had
followed love, she had married him she loved; his wife she was, his
wife she would remain. But she sought no soothing palliation from the
friendly priest. She went to no confession; in all her life she never
would confess herself, seek absolution again. Excommunicated she would
live, that the curse might rest on her and not on him.
But ah, how ardently she watched for Sebastian’s consciousness to come!
for his eyes to rest on hers again! She felt sure the coldness in them
now was gone. Delirious, he raved of her and of his love; he that never
called her but by titles in his life, now cried Dolores, Dolores, and
she held his hand and waited.
She bade the doctors tell her when his recovery was likely to come.
And then, when one evening his hands moved, and he closed his eyes and
slept, she sat there trembling, not daring to be beside him, but her
face turned away. That yearning cry--Dolores, Dolores, had been stilled
for hours; but the night passed and still he was asleep. Then, when it
was broad sunlight, she heard a sudden movement by the nurse, and the
priest began to pray in Latin, and her heart stood still. He sat up;
she retreated in the shadow, toward the door. His voice spoke; but
oh! how low, how weak--not as it had been in his dreaming; alas! this
was now his right mind. He saw not her; his eyes looked sanely out the
window, through the crowded city. “It was a sin to marry her,” he said.
She was carried fainting to her room within the tower, and there again
she waited. “Has he asked for me?” she ventured to ask, at night.
He had asked for my lady, and they told him she was ill. And the next
day again; and they had told him she was in her suite about the tower.
She dared not seek him now. And flowers came to her from him, but no
further speech. Thrice he sent his homage to her. He could not walk
yet, but he sent his homage to her. She asked to know when he could
walk; and they told her they would let her know. So, one afternoon,
they told her he might walk the next day; and all that night she passed
in prayer.
The next day she waited for his step upon the stone floor. It came
not; to her tears and prayers, it came not. Jacinta’s dead hand
still held close the note. She prayed--was it wrong to pray when
so unshrived?--to Maria Vergen de las Mercedes, but still it came
not. Her haughty Spanish breeding forbade her showing sorrow to her
servants, and they were cold and deferential to her. Jacinta? She was
dead--Dolores knew, but thought that she had given him her letter. She
had sinned, yes, but he was her husband.
The next day she asked the servant. The Señor General was gone. Gone?
without seeing her even? He had had to go to the wars; he had not
ventured to disturb my lady; he left a letter. A letter? she tore it
open, read it. It sent his respectful worship to “the Marquesa;” it
apologized for his illness; it prayed forgiveness from her for having
married her; it was done to save her name. It said no word of love; and
Sebastian Ruy del Torre was a gentleman: his love appeared not in his
letter. If she loved him not, he would not wound her by showing his. It
said no word of guilt. He would neither wound her by requiring love nor
by suggesting blame; but to Dolores’s morbid fancy it had a sense of
blame. It closed by speaking of his duty at the wars; of his country’s
freedom; perhaps, a hint of hers. Dolores clasped the white paper to
her breast, and, to immortal eyes its color was of blood. She read it
once again; and del Torre, had he been there, could have seen her heart
die in her eyes.