DOÑA ANGELA.
Before relating, however, what took place at Guetzalli between de
Laville and the colonel, we must return to the adventurers' encampment.
Louis, still holding the maiden pressed to his breast, carried her to
the interior of the hut of branches which his comrades had built for
him at the entrance of the church. On arriving there he laid her in a
chair, and seated himself on a stool. There was a long silence, during
which both reflected deeply. A strange phenomenon took place in Louis'
heart. In spite of himself he felt hope returning to his soul: he
inhaled life through every pore--a desire to live came back to him. He
thought of the future--that future he had wished to destroy in himself,
by choosing as his mode of suicide the mad and rash expedition at the
head of which he had placed himself.
The heart of man is made up of strange contrasts. The count had wrapped
himself up in his grief; he had, as it were, settled it in his mind,
living with it and through it, making it in his own eyes an excuse for
justifying the line of conduct he had traced for himself, or rather
which his foster brother had made him adopt, only desiring and accepting
the bitterness of life, and disdainfully rejecting the joy and happiness
it contains. Now, though unable to account for the extraordinary
revolution that had taken place in him, he instinctively felt that grief
he had so nurtured and petted growing: less, and ready to disappear, to
make room for a gentle and dreamy melancholy, which, before he thought
of wrestling with it and tearing it from his heart, had put forth such
powerful roots that he felt it had seized on his whole being.
This new feeling was love. All passions are in the extreme, and, above
all, illogical. Were they not so, they would no longer be passions. Don
Louis loved Doña Angela. He loved her with the love of a man who has
reached the confines which separate youth from age; that is, furiously
and frenziedly. He loved her and hated her at the same time; for he
was angry with this new love, which caused him to forget the old, and
revealed to him that the heart of man may at times slumber, but never
die. The empire the maiden held over him was the stronger and more
powerful, because physically and morally she afforded the most striking
contrast to Doña Rosaria, the gentle creature with angel's wings, the
count's first love. Doña Angela's majestic and severe beauty, her
impetuous and ardent character--all in her had seduced and subjugated
the count. Hence he was angry at the power he had unconsciously allowed
her to gain over his will, and blamed as a weakness unworthy of his
character the reaction which this love had effected in his heart, by
obliging him to recognise that it was still possible for him to be happy.
Louis was far from forming an exception in the great human family.
All men are alike. When they have arranged their existence under the
influence of any feeling, either of joy or grief, they take pleasure in
the continual development of that feeling, convert it into a portion
of their being, and intrench themselves behind it as in an impregnable
fortress; and when, by some sudden blow, the edifice they have taken
such pains to construct falls in ruins, they feel angry with themselves
for not having known how to defend it, and, as a natural consequence,
blame the innocent cause of this great overthrow.
While reflecting, the count had let his head sink on his breast,
isolating himself in his thoughts, and plunging deeper and deeper
into his sombre reverie, following instinctively the incline on which
his mind was at the moment gliding. He raised his eyes, and fixed on
Doña Angela a glance in which all the feelings that agitated him were
reflected. The maiden was lying back, with her face buried in her hands:
the tears were slowly dropping between her fingers, and resembled a dew
of pearls. She was weeping gently and noiselessly: her breast heaved
convulsively, and she seemed a prey to intense grief. The count turned
pale. He rose hurriedly, and walked toward her.
At this sudden movement Doña Angela let her hands sink, and regarded
Don Louis with such a gentle expression of resigned grief and true
love, that the count felt a thrill of happiness flush through his body.
Exhausted, overcome, he fell on his knees, murmuring in a panting and
broken voice,--
"Oh! I love you--I love you!"
The maiden half rose from her seat, bent over him, and regarded him for
a long time pensively. Suddenly she fell into his arms, laid her head
on his shoulder, and began sobbing. The count, alarmed by this grief,
the cause of which it was impossible for him to discover, gently put her
back on her chair, sat down by her side, and took her hand, which he
held between his own.
"Why these tears?" he asked her tenderly. "Whence comes this grief that
oppresses you?"
"No, I am not weeping. Look!" she replied, trying to smile through her
tears.
"Child, you conceal something from me--you have a secret!"
"A secret! That of my love. Did I not tell you that I love you, Louis?"
"Alas! and I, too, love you," he replied sorrowfully. "And yet I cannot
think of that love without alarm."
"Why so if you love me?"
"If I love you, child! For you and your love I would sacrifice
everything."
"Well?" she said.
"Alas, child! I am an accursed man. My love is deadly, and I tremble."
"What greater joy than to die for the man I love?"
"I am proscribed--a pirate, an outlaw."
She drew herself up proudly and haughtily, with frowning brow, dilated
nostrils, and flashing eye.
"You are truly noble, Don Louis!" she almost shrieked in her excitement.
"You have dreamed of the regeneration of an enslaved people. What do
I care for the names given you, my friend? The day will come when
brilliant justice will be done you." Then growing gradually calmer, she
smiled tenderly. "You are proscribed, my poor darling," she said gently;
"and is it not woman's mission in this world to support and console? The
struggle you are about to undertake will be terrible. Your project is
almost a madman's for grandeur and boldness: perhaps you will succumb
in this struggle. You need, not a counsellor or a brother, but a woman
friend whose soul understands yours; from whose heart your heart keeps
no secrets; who consoles you, and cries 'Courage!' when you allow
despair to master you, and when, like a vanquished Titan, you feel ready
to retire. That faithful, devoted friend, ever watchful over you and for
you, I will be, Don Louis--I who will never leave you, and who, if you
fall, will fall by your side, struck by the same blow that crushed you."
"Thanks, child; but I am not worthy of such sublime devotion. Think of
the painful existence you create for yourself--think of the pleasant
calm and peaceful life you leave behind you, to affiance yourself to
grief, perchance to death."
"What do I care for that? Death will be welcome if it come by your side.
I love you!"
Don Louis hesitated.
"Think," he said presently, "of the immense grief of your father, whom
you abandon--your father who loves you so dearly, and has only you----"
She laid her hand quickly on his lips.
"Be silent--be silent!" she screamed in a heart-rending accent. "Do not
speak of my father. Why do you say that to me? Why augment my despair?
I love you, Don Louis--I love you! Henceforth you are everything to
me--fortune, parents, friends--all, I tell you. From the day when I
first saw you, powerful and terrible as the exterminating angel, my
heart fled toward yours. Something, a presentiment perhaps, revealed
to me that our two destinies were for ever enchained to each other.
When I saw you again my heart had divined you, but I remained in the
shadow, for you did not need me; but now times are changed. You are
betrayed, tracked, abandoned, by those whose interest it would have
been to support you. The country you have come to deliver renounces
you. My father, whose life you saved, has become your most implacable
foe, because you spurned his offers, and would not serve his paltry
and shameful ambition. Well, I, intrenching myself in my heart as in a
fortress, have in my turn renounced my country, abandoned my father,
and, like a true daughter of the Mexican volcanoes, feeling lava
instead of blood coursing in my veins, bounding with indignation at
the numberless acts of treachery which have begirt you on all sides--I
have forgotten everything, even that modesty innate in maidens, and
defying that world which I abhor and despise, because it rejects you, I
have come to you to love you--to render sweeter the few days which are
perhaps still left you to live; for I do not deceive myself as to the
future any more than you do, Don Louis. And when the fatal hour arrives,
when the hurricane bursts above your head, I shall be there to support
you by my presence, to encourage you by my boundless love, and to die in
your arms!"
There is in the woman who really loves, and whom passion masters, so
grand a magnetic attraction, a poesy so powerful, that the man with
the greatest self-restraint feels, in spite of himself, a species of
voluptuous dizziness, and suddenly finds his reason desert him, only to
see that love he inspires, and of which he is proud.
"But you wept, Angela," the count said. "Your tears are still flowing."
"Yes," she continued energetically, "I wept--I still weep. Well, cannot
you guess why, Don Louis? It is because I am a woman, after all; because
I am weak, and, in spite of all my will and all my love, my rebellious
nature is struggling with my heart; and because, in order to follow you,
and give myself up to you, I despise all that a woman ought to remember
under such circumstances, confined as she is by the miserable claims
of a puny civilisation, a slave to stupid proprieties, and compelled
constantly to hide her feelings in order to play an infamous comedy.
That is why I wept--why I still weep. But what matter these tears, my
well-beloved? There is as much joy as shame in them, and they prove to
you the triumph you have gained over me."
"Angela," the count answered nobly, "I will deceive neither your love
nor your confidence. Your happiness will not depend on me."
She gave him a glance of sublime abnegation.
"Nothing but your love!" she said gently. "I want nothing but that. What
do I care for aught else?"
"But I care that the woman who has given up all for me should not sink
in public opinion, and be scandalised."
"What will you do?"
"Give you my name, my child--the only property left me. At any rate, if
you are the companion of a pirate," he said bitterly, "no one shall
reproach you with being his mistress. In the eyes of the world, I swear
it to you, you shall be his wedded wife."
"Oh!" she said, clasping her hands in mad delight.
"Good, brother!" Valentine said as he entered the hut. "I will take on
myself to have your union blessed by a simple-hearted priest, to whom
the Gospel is not a dead letter, and who understands Christianity in all
its gentle and touching grandeur."
"Thanks, Don Valentine."
"Call me brother, madam; for I am so to you, as I am his brother. You
are a noble creature, and I thank you for the love you bear Don Louis.
And now," he added, with a smile, "there will be a struggle between us:
there are two of us to love him."
The count, his eyes filled with tears, but not finding words to express
all he felt, held out his hands to these two beings, who were so good
and so devoted, with an emotion that came from the heart.
"Now," Valentine said gaily, to change the conversation, "let us talk
about business."
"Business!"
"By Jove!" the hunter said with a laugh, "it seems to me that, for the
moment, what we have on hand is sufficiently important for us to trouble
ourselves about it."
"That is true," Louis answered; "but can we, in the presence of this
lady----"
"That is true: I did not think of that. I am so little accustomed to
society, I trust the lady will pardon me."
"Permit me, gentlemen," she said with a smile: "a woman is often a good
counsellor, and under present circumstances I believe I can be of some
use to you."
"I do not doubt it," the hunter said politely; "but----"
"But you do not believe a word of it," she laughingly interrupted, her
petulant character gaining the upper hand again. "However, you shall
judge for yourselves."
"We are listening," the count said.
"My father is at this moment making great preparations: his object
is to crush you before you are prepared to undertake a campaign. All
the Indios Mansos capable of bearing arms are called out, and an
extraordinary levy of troops is ordered through the whole of Sonora."
"Ah, indeed!" Louis observed. "Those are tremendous preparations."
"That is not all. Is there not somewhere near here a French colony?"
"Yes, there is," the count said, suddenly becoming serious; "the colony
of Guetzalli."
"My father intends to send there, if he has not done so already, his
aide-de-camp, Colonel Suarez."
"For what purpose?"
"I suppose to neutralise, by the brilliant promises made to the
colonists, the assistance you might expect from them."
Louis became pensive.
"We must make up our minds," Valentine said sharply, "while the
company is preparing, to open the campaign speedily. We must send some
safe person to Guetzalli. As the colonists are French it is impossible
for them not to make common cause with us in a quarrel like that
which compels us to take up arms, and which concerns them as much as
ourselves."
"You are right, brother. No more delay; but let us act vigorously. You
will accompany me to Guetzalli."
"What do you mean?"
"It is only two days' journey at the most from here. It is always best
to manage one's own business; and besides, nobody can obtain from the
colonists so much as I can."
"How so?"
"That is too long a story to tell you now. It is enough for you to know
that, on a recent occasion, I rendered rather a great service to the
colony, which I hope they have not yet had time to forget."[1]
"Oh, oh! if that be the case, I no longer object. In truth, no one can
have a better hope of succeeding in the negotiation than yourself. Let
us go, then; and may Heaven aid us!"
"Let us go," Louis answered.
"Well," Doña Angela said with a smile, "did I not say I should be a good
counsellor?"
"I never doubted it, madam," the hunter replied gallantly. "Besides, it
could not be otherwise, as my brother assured us that you would be our
guardian angel."
Don Louis, after handing the command over to the first lieutenant, and
recommending the greatest activity and vigilance, announced to his
comrades his temporary absence, though he did not reveal to them the
object of his journey, in order not to discourage them in case his
negotiation failed; and at sunset, followed only by Valentine, and after
saying farewell to Doña Angela once more, he left the mission, and
started at a gallop on the road to Guetzalli.
[1] See "The Tiger Slayer." Same publishers.