CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
Two young girls sat in a high though very narrow room of the old Moorish
palace to which King Philip the Second had brought his court when he
finally made Madrid his capital. It was in the month of November, in the
afternoon, and the light was cold and grey, for the two tall windows
looked due north, and a fine rain had been falling all the morning. The
stones in the court were drying now, in patches, but the sky was like a
smooth vault of cast lead, closing over the city that lay to the
northward, dark, wet and still, as if its life had shrunk down under
ground, away from the bitter air and the penetrating damp.
The room was scantily furnished, but the few objects it contained, the
carved table, the high-backed chairs and the chiselled bronze brazier,
bore the stamp of the time when art had not long been born again. On the
walls there were broad tapestries of bold design, showing green forests
populated by all sorts of animals in stiff attitudes, staring at one
another in perpetual surprise. Below the tapestry a carved walnut
wainscoting went round the room, and the door was panelled and flanked
by fluted doorposts of the same dark wood, on which rested corbels
fashioned into curling acanthus leaves, to hold up the cornice, which
itself made a high shelf over the door. Three painted Italian vases,
filled with last summer's rose leaves and carefully sealed lest the
faint perfume should be lost, stood symmetrically on this projection,
their contents slowly ripening for future use. The heap of white ashes,
under which the wood coals were still alive in the big brazier, diffused
a little warmth through the chilly room.
The two girls were sitting at opposite ends of the table. The one held a
long goose-quill pen, and before her lay several large sheets of paper
covered with fine writing. Her eyes followed the lines slowly, and from
time to time she made a correction in the manuscript. As she read, her
lips moved to form words, but she made no sound. Now and then a faint
smile lent singular beauty to her face, and there was more light in her
eyes, too; then it disappeared again, and she read on, carefully and
intently, as if her soul were in the work.
She was very fair, as Spaniards sometimes are still, and were more often
in those days, with golden hair and deep grey eyes; she had the high
features, the smooth white throat, and the finely modelled ears that
were the outward signs of the lordly Gothic race. When she was not
smiling, her face was sad, and sometimes the delicate colour left her
clear cheek and she grew softly pale, till she seemed almost delicate.
Then the sensitive nostrils quivered almost imperceptibly, and the
curving lips met closely as if to keep a secret; but that look came
seldom, and for the most part her eyes were quiet and her mouth was
kind. It was a face that expressed devotion, womanly courage, and
sensitiveness rather than an active and dominating energy. The girl was
indeed a full-grown woman, more than twenty years of age, but the early
bloom of girlhood was on her still, and if there was a little sadness in
the eyes, a man could guess well enough that it rose from the heart, and
had but one simple source, which was neither a sudden grief nor a
long-hidden sorrow, but only youth's one secret--love. Maria Dolores de
Mendoza knew all of fear for the man she loved, that any woman could
know, and much of the hope that is love's early life; but she knew
neither the grief, nor the disappointment, nor the shame for another,
nor for herself, nor any of the bitterness that love may bring. She did
not believe that such things could be wrung from hearts that were true
and faithful; and in that she was right. The man to whom she had given
her heart and soul and hope had given her his, and if she feared for
him, it was not lest he should forget her or his own honour. He was a
man among men, good and true; but he was a soldier, and a leader, who
daily threw his life to the battle, as Douglas threw the casket that
held the Bruce's heart into the thick of the fight, to win it back, or
die. The man she loved was Don John of Austria, the son of the great
dead Emperor Charles the Fifth, the uncle of dead Don Carlos and the
half brother of King Philip of Spain--the man who won glory by land and
sea, who won back Granada a second time from the Moors, as bravely as
his great grandfather Ferdinand had won it, but less cruelly, who won
Lepanto, his brother's hatred and a death by poison, the foulest stain
in Spanish history.
It was November now, and it had been June of the preceding year when he
had ridden away from Madrid to put down the Moriscoes, who had risen
savagely against the hard Spanish rule. He had left Dolores de Mendoza
an hour before he mounted, in the freshness of the early summer morning,
where they had met many a time, on a lonely terrace above the King's
apartments. There were roses there, growing almost wild in great earthen
jars, where some Moorish woman had planted them in older days, and
Dolores could go there unseen with her blind sister, who helped her
faithfully, on pretence of taking the poor girl thither to breathe the
sweet quiet air. For Inez was painfully sensitive of her affliction, and
suffered, besides blindness, all that an over-sensitive and imaginative
being can feel.
She was quite blind, with no memory of light, though she had been born
seeing, as other children. A scarlet fever had destroyed her sight.
Motherless from her birth, her father often absent in long campaigns,
she had been at the mercy of a heartless nurse, who had loved the fair
little Dolores and had secretly tormented the younger child, as soon as
she was able to understand, bringing her up to believe that she was so
repulsively ugly as to be almost a monster. Later, when the nurse was
gone, and Dolores was a little older, the latter had done all she could
to heal the cruel wound and to make her sister know that she had soft
dark hair, a sad and gentle face, with eyes that were quite closed, and
a delicate mouth that had a little half painful, half pathetic way of
twitching when anything hurt her,--for she was easily hurt. Very pale
always, she turned her face more upwards than do people who have sight,
and being of good average woman's height and very slender and finely
made, this gave her carriage an air of dignity that seemed almost pride
when she was offended or wounded. But the first hurt had been deep and
lasting, and she could never quite believe that she was not offensive to
the eyes of those who saw her, still less that she was sometimes almost
beautiful in a shadowy, spiritual way. The blind, of all their
sufferings, often feel most keenly the impossibility of knowing whether
the truth is told them about their own looks; and he who will try and
realize what it is to have been always sightless will understand that
this is not vanity, but rather a sort of diffidence towards which all
people should be very kind. Of all necessities of this world, of all
blessings, of all guides to truth, God made light first. There are many
sharp pains, many terrible sufferings and sorrows in life that come and
wrench body and soul, and pass at last either into alleviation or
recovery, or into the rest of death; but of those that abide a lifetime
and do not take life itself, the worst is hopeless darkness. We call
ignorance 'blindness,' and rage 'blindness,' and we say a man is 'blind'
with grief.
Inez sat opposite her sister, at the other end of the table, listening.
She knew what Dolores was doing, how during long months her sister had
written a letter, from time to time, in little fragments, to give to the
man she loved, to slip into his hand at the first brief meeting or to
drop at his feet in her glove, or even, perhaps, to pass to him by the
blind girl's quick fingers. For Inez helped the lovers always, and Don
John was very gentle with her, talking with her when he could, and even
leading her sometimes when she was in a room she did not know. Dolores
knew that she could only hope to exchange a word with him when he came
back, and that the terrace was bleak and wet now, and the roses
withered, and that her father feared for her, and might do some
desperate thing if he found her lover talking with her where no one
could see or hear. For old Mendoza knew the world and the court, and he
foresaw that sooner or later some royal marriage would be made for Don
John of Austria, and that even if Dolores were married to him, some
tortuous means would be found to annul her marriage, whereby a great
shame would darken his house. Moreover, he was the King's man, devoted
to Philip body and soul, as his sovereign, ready to give his life ten
times for his sovereign's word, and thinking it treason to doubt a royal
thought or motive. He was a rigid old man, a Spaniard of Spain's great
days, fearless, proud, intolerant, making Spain's honour his idol,
capable of gentleness only to his children, and loving them dearly, but
with that sort of severity and hardness in all questions where his
authority was concerned which can make a father's true affection the
most intolerable burden to a girl of heart, and which, where a son is
its object, leads sooner or later to fierce quarrels and lifelong
estrangement. And so it had happened now. For the two girls had a
brother much older than they, Rodrigo; and he had borne to be treated
like a boy until he could bear no more, and then he had left his
father's house in anger to find out his own fortune in the world, as
many did in his day,--a poor gentleman seeking distinction in an army of
men as brave as himself, and as keen to win honour on every field. Then,
as if to oppose his father in everything, he had attached himself to Don
John, and was spoken of as the latter's friend, and Mendoza feared lest
his son should help Don John to a marriage with Dolores. But in this he
was mistaken, for Rodrigo was as keen, as much a Spaniard, and as much
devoted to the honour of his name as his father could be; and though he
looked upon Don John as the very ideal of what a soldier and a prince
should be, he would have cut off his own right hand rather than let it
give his leader the letter Dolores had been writing so long; and she
knew this and feared her brother, and tried to keep her secret from him.
Inez knew all, and she also was afraid of Rodrigo and of her father,
both for her sister's sake and her own. So, in that divided house, the
father was against the son, and the daughters were allied against them
both, not in hatred, but in terror and because of Dolores' great love
for Don John of Austria.
As they sat at the table it began to rain again, and the big drops beat
against the windows furiously for a few minutes. The panes were round
and heavy, and of a greenish yellow colour, made of blown glass, each
with a sort of knob in the middle, where the iron blowpipe had been
separated from the hot mass. It was impossible to see through them at
all distinctly, and when the sky was dark with rain they admitted only a
lurid glare into the room, which grew cold and colourless again when the
rain ceased. Inez had been sitting motionless a long time, her elbow on
the table, her chin resting upon her loosely clasped white hands, her
blind face turned upward, listening to the turning of the pages and to
the occasional scratching of her sister's pen. She sighed, moved, and
let her hands fall upon the table before her in a helpless, half
despairing way, as she leaned back in the big carved chair. Dolores
looked up at once, for she was used to helping her sister in her
slightest needs and to giving her a ready sympathy in every mood.
"What is it?" she asked quickly. "Do you want anything, dear?"
"Have you almost finished?"
The girl's voice would almost have told that she was blind. It was sweet
and low, but it lacked life; though not weak, it was uncertain in
strength and full of a longing that could never be satisfied, but that
often seemed to come within possible reach of satisfaction. There was in
the tones, too, the perpetual doubt of one from whom anything might be
hidden by silence, or by the least tarn of words. Every passing hope and
fear, and every pleasure and pain, were translated into sound by its
quick changes. It trusted but could not always quite promise to believe;
it swelled and sank as the sensitive heart beat faster or slower. It
came from a world without light, in which only sound had meaning, and
only touch was certainty.
"Yes," answered Dolores. "I have almost finished--there is only half a
page more to read over."
"And why do you read it over?" asked Inez. "Do you change what you have
written? Do you not think now exactly as you did when you wrote?"
"No; I feel a great deal more--I want better words! And then it all
seems so little, and so badly written, and I want to say things that no
one ever said before, many, many things. He will laugh--no, not that!
How could he? But my letter will seem childish to him. I know it will. I
wish I had never written it I Do you think I had better give it to him,
after all?"
"How can I tell?" asked Inez hopelessly. "You have never read it to me.
I do not know what you have said to him."
"I have said that I love him as no man was ever loved before," answered
Dolores, and the true words seemed to thrill with a life of their own as
she spoke them.
Then she was silent for a moment, and looked down at the written pages
without seeing them. Inez did not move, and seemed hardly to breathe.
Then Dolores spoke again, pressing both her hands upon the paper before
her unconsciously.
"I have told him that I love him, and shall love him for ever and ever,"
she said; "that I will live for him, die for him, suffer for him, serve
him! I have told him all that and much more."
"More? That is much already. But he loves you, too. There is nothing you
can promise which he will not promise, and keep, too, I think. But more!
What more can you have said than that?"
"There is nothing I would not say if I could find words!"
There was a fullness of life in her voice which, to the other's
uncertain tones, was as sunshine to moonlight.
"You will find words when you see him this evening," said Inez slowly.
"And they will be better than anything you can write. Am I to give him
your letter?"
Dolores looked at her sister quickly, for there was a little constraint
in the accent of the last phrase.
"I do not know," she answered. "How can I tell what may happen, or how I
shall see him first?"
"You will see him from the window presently. I can hear the guards
forming already to meet him--and you--you will be able to see him from
the window."
Inez had stopped and had finished her speech, as if something had choked
her. She turned sideways in her chair when she had spoken, as if to
listen better, for she was seated with her back to the light.
"I will tell you everything," said Maria Dolores softly. "It will be
almost as if you could see him, too."
"Almost--"
Inez spoke the one word and broke off abruptly, and rose from her chair.
In the familiar room she moved almost as securely as if she could see.
She went to the window and listened. Dolores came and stood beside her.
"What is it, dear?" she asked. "What is the matter? What has hurt you?
Tell me!"
"Nothing," answered the blind girl, "nothing, dear. I was thinking--how
lonely I shall be when you and he are married, and they send me to a
convent, or to our dismal old house in Valladolid."
A faint colour came into her pale face, and feeling it she turned away
from Dolores; for she was not speaking the truth, or at least not half
of it all.
"I will not let you go!" answered Dolores, putting one arm round her
sister's waist. "They shall never take you from me. And if in many years
from now we are married, you shall always be with us, and I will always
take care of you as I do now."
Inez sighed and pressed her forehead and blind eyes to the cold window,
almost withdrawing herself from the pressure of Dolores' arm. Down below
there was tramping of heavy feet, as the companies of foot guards took
their places, marching across the broad space, in their wrought steel
caps and breastplates, carrying their tasselled halberds on their
shoulders. An officer's voice gave sharp commands. The gust that had
brought the rain had passed by, and a drizzling mist, caused by a sudden
chill, now completely obscured the window.
"Can you see anything?" asked Inez suddenly, in a low voice. "I think I
hear trumpets far away."
"I cannot see--there is mist on the glass, too. Do you hear the trumpets
clearly?"
"I think I do. Yes--I hear them clearly now." She stopped. "He is
coming," she added under her breath.
Dolores listened, but she had not the almost supernatural hearing of the
blind, and could distinguish nothing but the tramping of the soldiers
below, and her sister's irregular breathing beside her, as Inez held her
breath again and again in order to catch the very faint and distant
sound.
"Open the window," she said almost sharply, "I know I hear the
trumpets."
Her delicate fingers felt for the bolts with almost feverish anxiety.
Dolores helped her and opened the window wide. A strain of distant
clarions sounding a triumphant march came floating across the wet city.
Dolores started, and her face grew radiant, while her fresh lips opened
a little as if to drink in the sound with the wintry air. Beside her,
Inez grew slowly pale and held herself by the edge of the window frame,
gripping it hard, and neither of the two girls felt any sensation of
cold. Dolores' grey eyes grew wide and bright as she gazed fixedly
towards the city where the avenue that led to the palace began, but
Inez, bending a little, turned her ear in the same direction, as if she
could not bear to lose a single note of the music that told her how Don
John of Austria had come home in triumph, safe and whole, from his long
campaign in the south.
Slowly it came nearer, strain upon strain, each more clear and loud and
full of rejoicing. At first only the high-pitched clarions had sent
their call to the window, but now the less shrill trumpets made rich
harmonies to the melody, and the deep bass horns gave the marching time
to the rest, in short full blasts that set the whole air shaking as with
little peak of thunder. Below, the mounted officers gave orders,
exchanged short phrases, cantered to their places, and came back again a
moment later to make some final arrangement--their splendid gold-inlaid
corslets and the rich caparisons of their horses looking like great
pieces of jewelry that moved hither and thither in the thin grey mist,
while the dark red and yellow uniforms of the household guards
surrounded the square on three sides with broad bands of colour. Dolores
could see her father, who commanded them and to whom the officers came
for orders, sitting motionless and erect on his big black horse--a stern
figure, with close-cut grey beard, clad all in black saving his heavily
gilded breastplate and the silk sash he wore across it from shoulder to
sword knot. She shrank back a little, for she would not have let him see
her looking down from an upper window to welcome the returning visitor.
"What is it? Do you see him? Is he there?" Inez asked the questions in a
breath, as she heard her sister move.
"No--our father is below on his horse. He must not see us." And she
moved further into the embrasure.
"You will not be able to see," said Inez anxiously. "How can you tell
me--I mean, how can you see, where you are?"
Dolores laughed softly, but her laugh trembled with the happiness that
was coming so soon.
"Oh, I see very well," she answered. "The window is wide open, you
know."
"Yes--I know."
Inez leaned back against the wall beside the window, letting her hand
drop in a hopeless gesture. The sample answer had hurt her, who could
never see, by its mere thoughtlessness and by the joy that made her
sister's voice quaver. The music grew louder and louder, and now there
came with it the sound of a great multitude, cheering, singing the march
with the trumpets, shouting for Don John; and all at once as the throng
burst from the street to the open avenue the voices drowned the clarions
for a moment, and a vast cry of triumph filled the whole air.
"He is there! He is there!" repeated Inez, leaning towards the window
and feeling for the stone sill.
But Dolores could not hear for the shouting. The clouds had lifted to
the westward and northward; and as the afternoon sun sank lower they
broke away, and the level rays drank up the gloom of the wintry day in
an instant. Dolores stood motionless before the window, undazzled, like
a statue of ivory and gold in a stone niche. With the light, as the
advancing procession sent the people before it, the trumpets rang high
and clear again, and the bright breastplates of the trumpeters gleamed
like dancing fire before the lofty standard that swayed with the slow
pace of its bearer's horse. Brighter and nearer came the colours, the
blazing armour, the standard, the gorgeous procession of victorious
men-at-arms; louder and louder blew the trumpets, higher and higher the
clouds were lifted from the lowering sun. Half the people of Madrid went
before, the rest flocked behind, all cheering or singing or shouting.
The stream of colour and light became a river, the river a flood, and in
the high tide of a young victor's glory Don John of Austria rode onward
to the palace gate. The mounted trumpeters parted to each side before
him, and the standard-bearer ranged his horse to the left, opposite the
banner of the King, which held the right, and Don John, on a grey Arab
mare, stood out alone at the head of his men, saluting his royal brother
with lowered sword and bent head. A final blast from the trumpets
sounded full and high, and again and again the shout of the great throng
went up like thunder and echoed from the palace walls, as King Philip,
in his balcony above the gate, returned the salute with his hand, and
bent a little forward over the stone railing.
Dolores de Mendoza forgot her father and all that he might say, and
stood at the open window, looking down. She had dreamed of this moment;
she had seen visions of it in the daytime; she had told herself again
and again what it would be, how it must be; but the reality was beyond
her dreams and her visions and her imaginings, for she had to the full
what few women have in any century, and what few have ever had in the
blush of maidenhood,--the sight of the man she loved, and who loved her
with all his heart, coming home in triumph from a hard-fought war,
himself the leader and the victor, himself in youth's first spring, the
young idol of a warlike nation, and the centre of military glory.
When he had saluted the King he sat still a moment on his horse and
looked upward, as if unconsciously drawn by the eyes that, of all
others, welcomed him at that moment; and his own met them instantly and
smiled, though his face betrayed nothing. But old Mendoza, motionless in
his saddle, followed the look, and saw; and although he would have
praised the young leader with the best of his friends, and would have
fought under him and for him as well as the bravest, yet at that moment
he would gladly have seen Don John of Austria fall dead from his horse
before his eyes.
Don John dismounted without haste, and advanced to the gate as the King
disappeared from the balcony above. He was of very graceful figure and
bearing, not short, but looking taller than he really was by the
perfection of his proportions. The short reddish brown hair grew close
and curling on his small head, but left the forehead high, while it set
off the clear skin and the mobile features. A very small moustache
shaded his lip without hiding the boyish mouth, and at that time he wore
no beard. The lips, indeed, smiled often, and the expression of the
mouth was rather careless and good-humoured than strong. The strength of
the face was in the clean-cut jaw, while its real expression was in the
deep-set, fiery blue eyes, that could turn angry and fierce at one
moment, and tender as a woman's the next.
He wore without exaggeration the military dress of his time,--a
beautifully chiselled corslet inlaid with gold, black velvet sleeves,
loose breeches of velvet and silk, so short that they did not descend
half way to the knees, while his legs were covered by tight hose and
leather boots, made like gaiters to clasp from the knee to the ankle and
heel. Over his shoulder hung a short embroidered cloak, and his head
covering was a broad velvet cap, in which were fastened the black and
yellow plumes of the House of Austria.
As he came near to the gate, many friends moved forward to greet him,
and he gave his hand to all, with a frank smile and words of greeting.
But old Mendoza did not dismount nor move his horse a step nearer. Don
John, looking round before he went in, saw the grim face, and waved his
hand to Dolores' father; but the old man pretended that he saw nothing,
and made no answering gesture. Some one in the crowd of courtiers
laughed lightly. Old Mendoza's face never changed; but his knees must
have pressed the saddle suddenly, for his black horse stirred uneasily,
and tried to rear a little. Don John stopped short, and his eyes
hardened and grew very light before the smile could fade from his lips,
while he tried to find the face of the man whose laugh he had heard. But
that was impossible, and his look was grave and stern as he went in
under the great gate, the multitude cheering after him.
From her high window Dolores had seen and heard also, for she had
followed every movement he made and every change of his expression, and
had faithfully told her sister what she saw, until the laugh came, short
and light, but cutting. And Inez heard that, too, for she was leaning
far forward upon the broad stone sill to listen for the sound of Don
John's voice. She drew back with a springing movement, and a sort of cry
of pain.
"Some one is laughing at me!" she cried. "Some one is laughing because I
am trying to see!"
Instantly Dolores drew her sister to her, kissing her tenderly, and
soothing her as one does a frightened child.
"No, dear, no! It was not that--I saw what it was. Nobody was looking at
you, my darling. Do you know why some one laughed? It hurt me, too. He
smiled and waved his hand to our father, who took no notice of him. The
laugh was for that--and for me, because the man knew well enough that
our father does not mean that we shall ever marry. Do you see, dear? It
was not meant for you."
"Did he really look up at us when you said so?" asked Inez, in a
smothered voice.
"Who? The man who laughed?"
"No. I mean--"
"Don John? Yes. He looked up to us and smiled--as he often does at
me--with his eyes only, while his face was quite grave. He is not
changed at all, except that he looks more determined, and handsomer, and
braver, and stronger than ever! He does each time I see him!"
But Inez was not listening.
"That was worth living for--worth being blind for," she said suddenly,
"to hear the people shout and cheer for him as he came along. You who
can see it all do not understand what the sound means to me. For a
moment--only for a moment--I saw light--I know I saw a bright light
before my eyes. I am not dreaming. It made my heart beat, and it made my
head dizzy. It must have been light. Do you think it could be, Dolores?"
"I do not know, dear," answered the other gently.
But as the day faded and they sat together in the early dusk, Dolores
looked long and thoughtfully at the blind face. Inez loved Don John,
though she did not know it, and without knowing it she had told her
sister.
* * * * *