“NUESTRA DOÑA DEL TORRE”--by that title, I fancy, she is known
in heaven. For in that city all the good that was worked was hers;
after the earthquake, then through siege and civil war, her heart
directed her handmaidens, ladies loving her did her soft work. Her own
life was but a gentle message. For she never but for the convent left
her tower-room. Thither, however, poor old men, children, troubled
girls, would come to see her.
All this time Bolivar was battling with the might of Spain, and del
Torre (del Torre y Luna now he always called himself, liking, at least,
to link his name with hers; but she had dropped her own name and
called herself del Torre alone--Maria Dolores del Torre) was Bolivar’s
captain. Years the war lasted. Once our General was captured in the
city; he came to Carácas at a time of war, when it was legal for the
Governor to capture him; he had heard some rumor that his wife was ill.
He would have been shot but that he escaped from gaol, and this so
easily that the prison doors seemed to turn of themselves. No youth, or
woman, or child in all Carácas but would have turned a traitor for our
lady.
Del Torre’s face looked old--Dolores knew it not. She never saw
him--except, perhaps, a distant figure on a horse. When he was out,
she roamed the house; when he came back she shut herself within her
apartments. He never returned, from the shortest absences, a walk
or a mass, without making formal announcement. He wondered only at
the flowers; the perfections of his banquets, the splendor of his
household, were for his guest and as it should be. At first del Torre
had hoped to see at least a handkerchief fly from her window, a
greeting or a wave of the hand, on his return. But it was always black
and blank when he saw it. At first, this cost him tears: a greeting
seemed so little--only courtesy! But afterward he only sighed; no man
should repine that events fulfil his expectations rather than his
hopes.
Their money grew apace. With part of hers Dolores built a church at Los
Teques, a property that had been her mother’s, not far from the city.
Half her time she spent there; and it stands there still, and is called
after the Vergen de las Mercedes--Our Lady of Pity--to whom alone
Dolores dared to pray. But the Church took her treasure and it kept her
secret. Sometimes, in God’s providence, even pity is withheld.
One’s heart beats quick to think what might have happened had she
ventured to confession--the priest who married them still was with
her, in the household, an honest priest, who loved del Torre, too. But
Rome, which knows how to be gentle as a mother, can also be as cruel as
the grave. So Dolores went on in building churches, and Don Sebastian
offered his brave heart wherever he saw a bullet fly for liberty. The
best work of the world is done by broken hearts.
One time that he came home, he found a medallion by his plate. It
was set with pearls, in tricolor enamel. He opened it, and it was a
miniature of her. Then once a rush of human blood bore all his barriers
of honor, duty, resolves of conduct, far away. He hastened through
the house to the tower, where she lived. He hastened--crying Dolores,
Dolores, as he had cried in his delirium. Her maid opened--not Jacinta,
but Jacinta’s daughter, now a woman. My Lady Marquesa had gone to the
convent at Los Teques for some weeks’ prayer.