THE AVOWAL.
There had seemed to be a constantly recurring thread of circumstances,
which operated to separate Lorenzo Bezan and Isabella Gonzales.
Isabella had received a fearful shock in the remarkable occurrences of
the last few days. The devoted love of the countess, her
self-sacrificing spirit, her risk and loss of her life to save him she
loved, all had made a most indelible impression upon her. There was a
moment, as the reader has seen, when she doubted the truth and honor of
Lorenzo Bezan; but it was but for a moment, for had not his own
truthfulness vindicated itself to her mind and heart, the words of the
Countess Moranza had done so. That faithful and lovely woman told her
also of the noble spirit of devoted love that the soldier bore her, and
how honestly he had cherished that love he bore for her when surrounded
by the dazzling beauty and flattery of the whole court, and bearing the
name of the queen’s favorite.
All this led her of course to regard him with redoubled affection, and
to increase the weight of indebtedness of her heart towards one whom
she had treated so coldly, and who for her sake had borne so much of
misery. “But ah!” she said to herself, “if he could but read this
heart, and knew how much it has suffered in its self-imposed misery, he
would indeed pity and not blame me. I see it all now; from the very
first I have loved him-from the hour of our second meeting in the
Paseo-poor, humble and unknown, I loved him then; but my spirit was too
proud to own it; and I have loved him ever since, though the cold words
of repulse have been upon my tongue, and I have tried to impress both
him and myself to the contrary. How bitter are the penalties of
pride-how heavy the tax that it demands from frail humanity! No more
shall it have sway over this bosom!” As she spoke, the beautiful girl
threw back the dark clustering hair from her temples, and raised her
eyes to heaven, as if to call for witness upon her declaration.
The proper steps were taken for sending the body of the countess home
to Madrid, where it would receive the highest honors, and those marks
of distinction which its connection with the royal blood of Spain
demanded. Lorenzo Bezan mourned sincerely the loss of one who had been
so dear and kind a friend to him. An instinctive feeling seemed to
separate Isabella and the lieutenant-governor for a brief period. It
was not a period of anxiety, nor of doubt, concerning each other.
Strange to say, not one word had yet been exchanged between them since
that bitter farewell was uttered in the prison walls of the military
keep. No words could have made them understand each other better than
they now did; each respected the peculiar feelings of the other. But
weeks soon pass, and the time was very brief that transpired before
they met in the drawing-room of Don Gonzales’s house. Ruez welcomed
Lorenzo Bezan as he entered, led him to the apartment, and calling his
sister, declared that they must excuse him, for he was going with his
father for a drive in the Paseo.
Lorenzo Bezan sat for some moments alone, when he heard a light
footstep upon the marble floor of the main hall, and his heart throbbed
with redoubled quickness. In a moment more Isabella Gonzales stood
before him; her eyes bent upon the floor, seemed immovably there; she
could not raise them; but she held forth her hand towards him! He
seized it, pressed it to his lips again and again, then drawing her
closely to his bosom, pressed his lips to her forehead, and asked:
“Isabella, Isabella, do you, can you really love me?”
“Love you, Lorenzo Bezan?”
“Yes, dear one, love me as I have for years loved you.”
She raised her eyes now; they were streaming with tears; but through
them all she said:
“I have looked into my heart, and I find that I have ever loved you!”
“Sweet words! O, happy assurance,” said the soldier, rapturously.
“One word will explain all to thee. I was spoiled when in childhood. I
was told that I was beautiful, and as I grew older a spirit of
haughtiness and pride was implanted in my bosom by the universal homage
that was offered to me on all hands. I had no wish ungratified, was
unchecked, humored, in short spoiled thy affectionate indulgence, and
but for one good influence-that exercised by the lovely character of my
dear brother, Ruez-I fear me, I should have been undeniably lost to the
world and myself in some strange denouement of my life. A startling and
fearful event introduced you to me under circumstances calculated to
fix your form and features forever in my memory. It did so. I could not
but be sensible of your noble and manly qualities, though seen through
what was to my mind a dark haze of humble associations.
“This was my first impression of you. You boldly wooed me, told me you
loved me above all else. Your very audacity attracted me; it was so
novel, so strange to be thus approached. I, who was the acknowledged
belle of Havana, before whom the best blood and highest titles of the
island knelt, and who was accustomed to be approached with such
deference and respect, was half won before I knew it, by the Lieutenant
Lorenzo Bezan, on the Plato. Singular circumstances again threw us
together, where again your personal bravery and firmness served us so
signally. I knew not my own heart even then, though some secret
whisperings partly aroused me, and when you were sent to prison, I
found my pride rising above all else. And yet by some uncontrollable
impulse I visited you, disguised, in prison; and there again I can see
how nearly I had acknowledged my true feelings; but once more the
secret whisper sounded in my ear, and I left you coldly, nay, almost
insultingly. But bitterly have I wept for that hour.
“In vain have I struggled on, in vain strove to forget; it was
impossible; and yet, never until you sent me that note, have I frankly
acknowledged, even to my own heart, the feeling which I have so long
been conscious of. Ah, it has been a bitter experience that I have
endured, and now I can see it all in its true light, and own to thee
freely, that I have loved even from the first.”
While she had spoken thus, Lorenzo Bezan had gently conducted her to a
couch, and seated by her side he had held her hand while he listened
and looked tenderly into the depths of her lustrous and beautiful eyes.
He felt how cheaply he had earned the bliss of that moment, how richly
he was repaid for the hardships and grief he had endured for Isabella’s
sake.
“Ah, dearest, let us forget the past, and live only for each other and
the future.”
“Can you so easily forget and forgive?” she asked him, in softest
accents.
“I can do anything, everything,” he said, “if thou wilt but look ever
upon me thus,” and he placed his arms about that taper waist, and drew
her willing form still nearer to his side, until her head fell upon his
shoulder. “There will be no more a dark side to our picture of life,
dear Isabella.”
“I trust not.”
“And you will ever love me?”
“Ever!” repeated the beautiful girl, drawing instinctively nearer to
his breast.
At that moment, Ruez, returning from the Plato to procure some article
which he had left behind, burst hastily into the room, and, blushing
like a young girl at the scene that met his eye, he was about to retire
hastily, when Lorenzo Bezan spoke to him, not the least disconcerted;
he felt too secure in his position to realize any such feeling:
“Come hither, Ruez, we have just been speaking of you.”
“Of me?” said the boy, rather doubtfully, as though he suspected they
had been talking of matters quite foreign to him.
“Yes, of you, Ruez,” continued his sister, striving to hide a tell-tale
blush, as her eyes met her brother’s. “I have been telling General
Bezan what a dear, good brother you have been to me—how you have ever
remembered all his kindnesses to me; while I have thought little of
them, and have been far from grateful.”
“Not at heart, sister,” said the boy, quickly; “not always in your
sleep, since you will sometimes talk in your day dreams!”
“Ah, Ruez, you turned traitor, and betray me? well, there can be little
harm, perhaps, to have all known now.”
“Now?” repeated Ruez. “Why do you use that word so decidedly?”
“Why, you must know, my dear Ruez,” said the general, “that a treaty
has been partially agreed upon between us, which will necessarily put
all hostilities at an end; and, therefore, any secret information can
be of no possible use whatever.”
“Is it so, Isabella?” asked Ruez, inquiringly, of his sister.
“Yes, brother, we are to ‘bury the hatchet,’ as the American orators
say.”
“Are you in earnest? but no matter; I am going-let me see, where was I
going?”
“You came into the room as though you had been shot out of one of the
port-holes of Moro Castle,” said the general, playfully. “No wonder you
forget!”
The boy looked too full for utterance. He shook the general’s hand,
heartily kissed Isabella, and telling them he believed they had turned
conspirators, and were about to perpetrate some fearful business
against the government, and sagely hinting that unless he was also made
a confidant of, he should forthwith denounce them to Tacon, he shook
his hand with a most serious mock air and departed.
It would be in bad taste for us, also, not to leave Isabella and
Lorenzo Bezan alone. They had so much to say, so much to explain, so
many pictures to paint on the glowing canvass of the future, with the
pencils of hope and love, that it would be unfair not to permit them to
do so undisturbed. So we will follow Ruez to the volante, and dash away
with him and Don Gonzales to the Paseo, for a circular drive.
“I left General Bezan and Isabella together in the drawing-room,” began
Ruez to his father, just as they passed outside of the city walls.
“Yes. I knew he was there,” said the father, indifferently.
“That was a very singular affair that occurred between him and the
Countess Moranza.”
“Queer enough.”
“Yet sister says that the general was not to blame, in any respect.”
“Yes, I took good care to be satisfied of that,” said the father, who
had indeed made it the subject of inquiry. “Had he been guilty of
deceiving that beautiful and high-born lady, he should never have
entered my doors again. I should have despised him.”
“He seems very fond of Isabella,” continued the boy, after a brief
silence.
“Fond of her!”
“Yes, and she of him,” said Ruez.
“Lorenzo Bezan fond of my daughter, and she of him?”
“Why, yes, father; I don’t see anything so very strange, do you?”
“Do I? Lorenzo Bezan is but a nameless adventurer—a—a—”
“Stop, father—a lieutenant-governor, and the queen’s favorite.”
“That is true,” said Don Gonzales, thoughtfully. “Yes, but he’s poor.”
“How do you know, father?”
“Why, it is but reasonable to think so; and my daughter shall not marry
any one with less position or fortune than herself.”
“As to position, father,” continued the boy, “General Bezan wears
orders that you would give half your fortune to possess!”
“I forgot that.”
“And has already carved a name for himself in Spanish history,” said
Ruez.
“True.”
“Then I see not how you can complain of him on the score of position.”
“No; but he’s poor, and I have sworn that no man, unless he brings as
large a fortune as Isabella will have in her own right, shall marry
her. How do I know but it may be the money, not Isabella, that he
wants?”
“Father!”
“Well, Ruez.”
“You are unjust towards the noble nature of that man; there are few men
like him in the queen’s service, and it has not required long for her
to discern it.” As the boy spoke, he did so in a tone and a manner that
almost awed his father. At times he could assume this mode, and when he
did so, it was because he felt what he uttered, and then it never
failed of its influence upon the listener.
“Still,” said Don Gonzales, somewhat subduedly, “he who would wed my
peerless child must bring something besides title and honor. A fortune
as large as her own-nothing else. This I know Lorenzo Bezan has not,
and there’s an end of his intimacy with your sister, and I must tell
her so this very evening.”
“As you will, father. You are her parent, and can command her
obedience; but I do not believe you can control Isabella’s heart,” said
Ruez, earnestly.
“Boy, I do not like thee to talk to me thus. Remember thy youth, and
thy years. Thou art ever putting me to my metal.”
“Father, do I not love thee and sister Isabella above all else on
earth?”
“Yes, yes, boy, I know it; thou dost love us well; say no more.”
Ruez had broken the ice. He found that it was time, however, to be
silent now, and leaning back thoughtfully in the volante, he neither
spoke again, nor seemed to observe anything external about him until he
once more entered the Plato and his father’s noble mansion.