WE must remember that Maria Josepha Dolores, Condesa del Torre
y Luna, was a lonely young girl, educated but from books, devoutedly
believing in a faith we like to think superstitious. Remember, please,
also, that she loved, and braved her Church for love, and had not, so
she thought, won his. She deemed her soul was damned; she knew her
heart was broken. Not that there were no days when she did dare hope;
no days in which she tried to frame a theory by which it still might
seem he cared for her; but she believed he was borne down by their
great guilt. And she resolved his soul, at least, would not be lost for
hers. “My lady Marquesa would have her apartments in all the house,”
the letter said. “My lady had but to command. A small room in the tower
was enough for him--he could but rarely be home from the wars. He
trusted, if his presence was painful, she would not see him,” etc.,
etc. And, after many months, when the General came back--his wife met
him not. The rooms of state were carefully prepared for him, and all
his suite; flowers, banquets were ready; all his retinue and hers, in
their joint blazonry, were in attendance. Only, strangely enough, just
that little tower-room was the one my lady Marchioness preferred. Would
he kindly yield it to her?
Of course, and the General sent her a rope of pearls. They almost broke
her resolution; but she met him not. The General only sighed; this was
all as he had known. The evil nephew, done to death by his own hand,
still had her heart. He sighed and his hair grew whiter. One rending
memory came over him, of the last time he had seen her eyes.
He could not know, as he rode homeward up the street, after his first
state visits, straining his eyes up to that tower-window frowning
so blankly, how late her own had left it--those eyes of purple-gray
that every beggar in Carácas soon knew well, save only he. Before the
next return his glory blazed abroad, and Bolivar came back with him.
Bolivar, the Liberator. All thoughtful preparation, all courtly care,
all a Spanish grandee’s splendor was spread forth to receive him in the
Casa Rey; but the châtelaine was never seen. It was not necessary to
explain her absence; such things get quickly known; it was, of course,
thought she had loved the cousin. And the strange Old-world Gothic
pride made her bearing, the honor of the house, del Torre’s silence,
only too easily intelligible to them. So the Marquis del Torre never
saw his bride on his returning home.
But, had he known it, he never opened a door that she had not vanished
through it. He never touched a flower she had not placed for him. He
never looked in a mirror her gray eyes had not just left. He never
touched a wine-glass to his lips that her lips had not kissed it. The
very missal that he read from had been warmed within her bosom.
O, ghosts, and mediums, and vulgar spirits of air! and stupid tables,
mirrors that are flattered with tales of second sight! Why did you
not hold a look of hers one moment longer? why did not the roses keep
a second longer her lips’ breath for him? Poor fables of visions in
the air, that could not draw the image of her eyes to his as he rode
up the street scarce a hundred mortal bodies’ breadths away! But they
never did; he never saw her, she saw him only as he rode away upon
his horse; and so for many--nay, not many (such poor slight power has
heaven)--not for many, years. And as his horse bore him away, she
came to the tower-window and watched him go--and there she sat weeks,
months, until the pennons flashed or the trumpet’s note announced to
her, waiting, that he was come again. For he always came in such guise,
announced with ceremony. And he did not dream her eyes had been at the
tower-window ever since. For their eyes never met.
But the people knew, and so they called her “Our Lady of the Tower.”
And Nuestra Doña del Torre is she called there still. And thus they
lived there alone within that great house, each for pity of the other
in courage, each for awe of love in silence; each so loving, so brave,
so silent, that the other never knew.