IN WHICH DOÑA JULIA IS REMINDED OF THE PAST
It was night; black, oppressively damp, with thunder in the air and
fitful lightning zigzagging across the sulky sky. With deep sighs, the
forest prepared for the chastisement of the threatening storm. A sound
like the sobbing of great trees followed the distant grumbling of dark,
menacing clouds. The flying, climbing, crawling creatures of the woods
and swamps and river-banks had heeded the warnings of the hour and had
stolen to shelter from the wrath of the fickle spring-time.
The majestic Mississippi, swollen with the pride of power, flowed
downward in silence through the gloom to throw its mighty arms around
the islands near the gulf. Now and again its broad expanse would
reflect for an instant the lightning’s glare and then grow blacker than
before, as if it repented of its recognition of the storm. Presently
great drops of water pelted the bosom of the stream, and far to the
westward the forest cried out against the sudden impact of the
resounding rain.
For many hours de Sancerre had been guiding his raft with an improvised
paddle, the blade of which he had made from the wood of a powderkeg,
and the long afternoon, when it had run its course, had left the
adventurers nearer to the gulf by many weary miles than they had been
at embarkation. Worthy of the trust which the dauntless Frenchman had
placed in it, the hospitable stream had gently carried de Sancerre’s
raft down the watery pathway along which Sieur de la Salle had found
the road to disaster and immortality.
An hour before sunset, however, misfortune, in defiance of the saintly
name which Doña Julia had bestowed upon their primitive vessel,
had overtaken the fugitives. Several logs, disaffected through the
treachery of rotten cord, had broken away from the sides. Fearing
the complete disintegration of his raft, de Sancerre had, with some
difficulty, succeeded in making a landing and in removing his precious
gun and stores to the shelter of the underbrush. He had hardly
completed his task, and drawn his unreliable craft up to a safe mooring
upon the shore, when the unwelcome storm had begun to fulfil its
threats.
“I fear,” exclaimed de Sancerre, drawing Doña Julia close to his
side, as they strove to shelter themselves from the rain beneath the
overhanging bushes on the river-bank--“I fear our supper will be cold
and wet to-night. I now begin to understand just why those white-robed
children of the sun should worship fire. You tremble, _ma chère_. Tell
me, are you cold?”
“No, no!” exclaimed Doña Julia, her face close to his to defeat the
uproar of the rain. “The storm will pass. Ah, señor, what cause we have
for gratitude!”
Somewhere in the forest at their backs the lightning struck a tree and
their eyes rested for an instant upon a river made of flames, which a
crash of angry thunder extinguished at their birth.
“Mother Mary, save us!” exclaimed the girl, while the hand which de
Sancerre held trembled for an instant in his grasp.
“The worst has passed, sweetheart,” he murmured, reassuringly, bending
down until his lips touched hers. “Listen! The rain falls lighter upon
the leaves above us now. These sudden storms in southern lands are like
the--”
“Si, señor?”
“Like the anger of a Spaniard, I had said,” confessed de Sancerre.
“Mayhap,” murmured the girl, her eyes meeting his despite the blackness
of the gloom. “And think you, sir, they’re like a Spaniard’s love?”
“_Ma foi_, how can I tell?” he cried, laughingly. “You, señora, must
guide me to the truth. But listen!” he went on, his voice growing
earnest, as, forgetful for the moment of the storm and perils of the
night, he gazed down upon the upturned face of a maiden who had shown
to him the unsuspected depths of his own heart, “if your love for me is
but a passing fancy, born of solitude and taught to speak by chance, I
beg of you to pray the saints that I may die to-night. To live to lose
your love-- I’d choose a thousand deaths instead!”
In the girl’s dark eyes de Sancerre could see a protest growing as he
spoke.
“Nay, señor,” she murmured, turning her gaze from his to watch the
distant lightning as it flashed across the waters from the black clouds
which covered the storm’s retreat. “My life has been so strange I fear
I may not speak as other maidens would. But why should I not confess
the truth? My love for you is not a forest growth. The saints forgive
me, I loved you at Versailles! If in this awful wilderness you’re
dearer to my heart than when, at court, you hurt my pride and showed my
heart itself, ’tis not my fickleness which is at fault. I’ve loved none
other, señor, in my life.”
“You were betrothed!” exclaimed de Sancerre, impulsively, a man rather
than a courtier at the moment.
“’Tis a story for another hour than this,” said Doña Julia, softly.
“Don Josef! Mother Mary be good to him! I always hated him,
señor--although my hand was his. But look how the moon breaks through
above those clouds! The storm is over, and the night grows clear. Shall
we launch our raft again? I fear the forest, señor, more than yonder
stream.”
“Nay, I dare not float at night, _ma chère_” answered de Sancerre,
smoothing the raven hair from her white forehead as her head rested
upon his shoulder, and they watched the fickle night change its garb
of black, fringed with fire, for the silvery costume vouchsafed by the
full moon. “I fear I might steal past my captain in the dark.”
Suddenly he pressed her face, splendid in its beauty as the moon
caressed it, to his breast, while he gazed across his shoulder at the
dripping forest with eyes large with sudden fear.
“God in heaven! There it comes again!”
Against his will, the words forced themselves from de Sancerre’s
parched lips.
“What is it, señor?” whispered Doña Julia, trembling at the horror in
his voice.
“A white, misshapen thing,” he muttered, hoarsely. “I’ve seen it once
before. It lies upon the ground beneath a tree.”
They neither moved nor spoke for a long moment. De Sancerre strove in
vain to rouse the mocking sceptic in his mind. Son of a superstitious
age, he could not conquer the idea that he was haunted in the wilds
by the lover of this girl, whom he had slain. Presently, as he still
watched the white blotch beneath the weeping tree, his will regained
its strength and he exclaimed:
“Sit here, señora. I’ll go to it!”
He sprang to his feet, and, on the instant, Doña Julia stood by his
side, while her gaze followed his toward the spectral outlines of an
out-stretched man, motionless and ghastly beneath the moon.
“The saints protect us! You shall not go alone!” exclaimed the girl,
putting an icy hand into de Sancerre’s grasp and taking a firm step
toward the mystery which tested the courage of her soul.
“You must not come with me, señora,” cried de Sancerre, budging not an
inch. “From where you stand your eyes can follow me. I shall return at
once.”
Releasing her hand, the Frenchman sprang forward, and in another moment
stood gazing down at the almost naked body of a man whose soul at that
very instant had passed from this world to the next. In death the
thin, drawn face regained the lines of youth, but on the head the hair
was white, and on his chin a tuft of beard gleamed like silver in the
moonlight. There was no flesh upon his bones. The night wind stirred
the rags still clinging to his frame and tossed an oil-skin bag,
fastened by a string around his neck, across his chest. A crucifix in
miniature rested at that instant just above his heart.
“_Nom de Dieu_, it is a Spaniard--but not the ghost of him I slew!”
exclaimed de Sancerre, breaking away from the horrid spectacle to
return to Doña Julia. He had no need to go, for the girl was at his
side, gazing down at the corpse with horror-stricken eyes.
“’Tis Juan Rodriquez!” she exclaimed, in a tone which voiced a conflict
of emotions. “He goes to God with black, foul crimes upon his soul!”
“Who was this man, señora?” asked de Sancerre in amazement, drawing the
girl to one side out of the insistent glare from the shrivelled corpse.
“An evil, treacherous creature, señor, who served my father as a
scribe. I thought that he had perished with the others in the ship. I
spoke his name to-day, when I told you the story of my father’s awful
fate. From the moment of my father’s fall, until I found myself within
the City of the Sun, my memory is dumb. That was a year ago and more.
The man who’s lying there has suffered torments, señor, before his time
was ripe.”
“He’d lost his reason and become a beast,” exclaimed de Sancerre,
shortly. “But still he was from Europe, and has a claim upon us! I’ll
get my paddle and scratch a hole to hide him from the wolves. And then
I’ll say a prayer, and let him rest in peace.”
“He was a murderer!” gasped the girl, trembling with cold as the rising
breeze forced her damp garments against her weary limbs.
“_Ma foi_, if that is so, our prayers are little worth. But come,
_chérie_, there is less wind beneath this hill. I will return and throw
some earth above those bones. If that white fragment of a wicked man
had murdered all my kin, I would not leave him there uncovered for all
time. He came from lands we know--and so I’ll treat him well! God, how
I shall welcome the sight of de la Salle!”
With quick sympathy the girl put her hand upon de Sancerre’s arm as
they turned their faces toward the glimmering flood.
“A woman is so useless, señor!” she exclaimed, “I can do naught but
pray! But show me how I best may aid you now. I will try so hard!”
“You know not what you say, señora!” cried de Sancerre in Spanish,
clasping the cold hand resting upon his arm as he led her toward the
river. “Useless, quotha? Is a woman useless who teaches a wayward,
rebellious, mocking heart the peace and glory of true love? I say to
you, my Julia, that as Mother Mary is greater than the saints, so is a
good woman better than the best of men.”
Then he added, smiling gayly as his happy eyes met her earnest gaze,
and changing his tongue to French: “Not, _chérie_, that I am the best
of men!”
“You are to me! Is not that enough?” she murmured, in a tone which made
sweet music to his ears.
A half an hour had passed and de Sancerre had returned to the girl from
his grewsome task as a grave-digger. The awful fate of the murderer
to whom he had given hasty burial depressed his spirits, for the dead
man had borne upon his emaciated frame the marks of his long year of
misery, a year during which he had wandered through the wilds in a
great circle, until hunger and exposure had made him a mad, crawling
animal, too long despised by death itself.
“There were papers in this oil-skin bag,” remarked de Sancerre,
throwing himself wearily upon the bank beside Doña Julia. “As he was
secretary to your father, I thought it best to examine what he had
kept so safe upon his breast. It was not wrong, _ma chère_?”
The girl’s face was even paler than its wont was, as she met her
lover’s questioning eyes. Her lips trembled slightly as she said:
“He boasted once, upon our vessel’s deck, that he’d be master when
we reached New Spain. Our king had granted lands and silver mines in
Mexico to my dear father, rewarding him for his success in France. ’Tis
possible--”
An exclamation uttered by de Sancerre interrupted Doña Julia’s surmise.
The Frenchman had been examining two imposing parchments by the clear
light of the full moon.
“Your father’s scribe, señora, was a man of fertile mind. King Charles
of Spain has made two grants covering the same ground, one to his
‘dear, beloved son in Christ, Don Rodrigo de Aquilar,’ and the other
to his ‘dear, beloved son in Christ, Don Juan Rodriquez.’ ’Tis clear
enough that one of these is forged, but, for my life, I could not pick
the honest parchment from the false. Why yonder villain kept them both,
I do not understand.”
“I think I know,” mused the girl, in a weary voice. “He thought less
of robbery than how to make me his. He would have torn this skilful
counterfeit into a thousand bits had I been kind to him.”
“_Nom de Dieu!_ He dared to--”
Doña Julia glanced chidingly at the impetuous Frenchman.
“You spoke not harshly of him when I told you of his awful crimes,” she
said, while her hand crept shyly into de Sancerre’s. “Is he less worthy
of your leniency because he schemed to win the hand you hold?”
“’Tis selfishness, I know,” said de Sancerre, thoughtfully, gazing
contentedly into the dark eyes which met his. “I cared but little that
he’d killed some man I never knew, but if he loved you, señora, I’m
glad he died the death!” Seizing the forged parchment upon his lap,
the Frenchman tore it to pieces and scattered the fragments upon the
ground. Then he replaced the genuine grant in the oil-skin bag and
fastened it to his sword-belt.
“I must repair my raft, _ma chère_,” he said to the girl a moment
later, bending down to kiss her cheek, cold and smooth and white. “You
will forgive me, sweetheart, for loving you so well?”
Not far away the moonlight, falling in soft radiance between the trees,
had thrown upon a rough grave, newly-made, the shadow of a cross.