THE VALLEY OF SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
The voice died away and it was still, with a breathless silence which
made the beating of my heart ring in my ears. It was as though I
stood outside the world, in the Empty Places. And then slowly
consciousness returned, if I had been unconscious, and I opened my
eyes and found that I was no longer in that old temple of Tzin Piaôu.
I was glad of that. I had grown weary and half afraid of seeing that
old man who lay there on his slab of stone, looking, looking, looking
into vacancy, watching the strivings and disasters and the grimy
ludicrousness of his fellows, while a little flame of derisive
laughter danced and flickered in his eyes. He seemed to me in truth
a heathen man.
Now I lay in a spacious, dusky chamber, on a wide divan cushioned
with softest stuff, and above me, suspended from the lofty ceiling by
curiously wrought chains of silver and swaying slowly, silver lamps
burned very dimly, and the swaying light and shadow of them moved on
the age-blackened teak-wood of the floor and the mellowed silken
tapestries with which the walls were hung. The air was sweet, and
very heavy, with the fumes of burning incense, and it was vibrant
with the rise and fall of many distant voices, as if they spoke
softly, or prayed, perhaps, in unison.
In my wonderment, I stirred a little on my couch, and from a dusky
corner of the chamber a woman came swiftly forward and stood before
me,--such a woman as I had never thought to behold. If every
perfection of every perfect beauty men have famed could have been
stolen to deck one woman only, and have been blended cunningly
together by a master hand and made instinct with life, that might
have been the birth of her I looked on then.
A thin gold circlet glinted dully in the darkness of her hair, and
she was robed in a single garment of some thin, clinging, gauzy,
precious stuff which revealed the more fully her womanly perfections,
the while it pretended to conceal them. She walked swiftly and
lightly, with lithe hips swaying in the way of Eastern women, and her
rosy feet twinkled in the swaying yellow lamplight; she came and
stood before me and looked down with serious, starry eyes.
"Where am I?" I asked. "And who are you? A Heathen Goddess?"
She laughed softly. "You are in the temple of Lal," she said, "and I
am a priestess of Lal."
"Why am I here?" I asked.
"I do not know," she said, "but you were sent, I think, to see."
"What," I asked, "is that murmur of voices, as if many prayed
together?"
"They are praying," she said. "Look and see!"
She drew aside a fold of the tapestry, and I looked into the cavern
of a temple. Around a lofty, mystic figure other swaying lamps of
silver burned, and other priestesses in shining, gauzy robes held
offerings aloft. And all the vast floor of the temple was one
heaving sea of the women of the East, who knelt, and held their hands
on high, imploringly, and laid their foreheads on the flagstones.
And as they knelt they prayed, and the soft ripple of their voices
made all the arches of the temple murmur.
"What do they pray for," I asked, "so many of them together?"
"For fruitfulness," said the priestess of Lal softly. "For fruitful
love. They know that if a woman has that, she has all that the world
can give her. So they pray for it."
"That," said I, "is the fate of women. The bitter fate, for when
their love must prove unfruitful--"
"It is still love," said the priestess of Lal softly, "and sweeter
than all else in life."
In the dimness behind me, I thought I heard the echo of a chuckle of
cynical laughter, but I did not heed it. "Yes," I said, "any love
that's true is sweeter than all else--"
"Sweeter than life itself," murmured the priestess of Lal, and
started, half afraid. For louder, more unmistakable, sounded that
mocking chuckle.
But I did not heed it. Her words had stirred old memories in me, and
once again I was wandering in the sun-flooded length and breadth of a
Valley of Sunshine and Shadow intermingled.
Far up in the northern end of Luzon the cloud-hung cordillera divides
to east and west before it sinks abruptly in the sea, enclosing the
great central valley of the Cagayan. A dim, far-off region it has
always been, of which the good folk of Manila spoke with vague words,
as old men on the hills of Spain used to speak of Ultramar, that
unknown somewhere into which their sons were forever disappearing.
And even the people of the valley did not know it. At Aparri, on the
coast, where in the old days bales of tobacco were piled like houses
along the sandy streets while the shipping season lasted, the busy
laborers would tell you that it all came from "up there," with a wide
vague sweep of the hand toward the south. You took a canoe and went
southward for days between gray forests where the parrots screamed
and monkeys climbed lazily down the creepers to scoop up water in
their tiny hands, and you found Tuguegarao, the little city, sleeping
on the bluffs, perched high and safe above the river; and men still
told you of the wonders to be seen "up there." And then, after lazy
days and days, poling upward past endless fields of corn and tobacco,
you came to Ilagan, and the clerks in the offices of the Compañia
General spoke to you of great plantations to be seen "up there." But
at Ilagan most men wearied of the journey, and gave up their quest
before they had gone half way.
They should have persisted, for the real "up there" is the wonderful
place they dreamed of, a land of magnificent spaces, of great
stretches of plain and rolling hills. In every little valley is a
forest where deer and wild boars and buffalo hide. And all the
reaches of the river and the clear tributary mountain streams, the
_pinaucanauanes_, are covered with clouds of ducks. And everywhere
is tobacco--in the fields and in the houses, and in the big,
flat-bottomed boats, the _barangayanes_, on the river. There is a
stretch of country where it seems the rich, deep, warm soil never
tires of growing things--tobacco and corn and flowers and canes and
grasses and bamboo--and men have called it "_La Flor de la Isabela_,"
the flower of the land of good Queen Ysabel. It is a very quiet
region, but there is a charm in the broad fields, and the hot, sunny
air, and the wild hunts over plain and hill, and the expeditions now
and then in search of gold in the distant, purple mountains where the
wild men live. The valley grows upon one till one forgets the hills
of Spain and the people one knew, and even the nearer delights of
Manila, and stays on "up there" till one passes from the world which
already has, and is, forgotten.
Sometimes they emerged for a moment, even came down to "el Capital"
for the Christmas festivities,--lean, bronzed, bearded men who
wandered silent through the gay crowds. How should they speak when
they knew nothing of all the gossip of Manila,--the ball his
Excellency was giving, and Don Fulano's promotion, and the match
between that young Diego de Tal and the General's daughter? But let
two of them meet in a café, over the tiny glasses of cognac, and they
could talk readily enough, though always in that quiet, self-retained
way which men of the open have.
"Brr-r-gh, it's chilly here; it would not be like this in the
valley!"--"No, they will be planting now. And the river must be
rising; the young daredevils will be having great sport shooting the
rapids at Alcala. Remember the whirlpool on the west bank?"--"_Do_
I? Have you heard that Don Enrique will hold a great _fiesta_ on
Shrove Tuesday?"--"Well, he can afford it, with this crop. Don
Enrique has covered more thousands this year than you have hairs on
your chin, _hombre_."
Always the valley and the river and tobacco, and Don Enrique. For
Don Enrique was their lord. The Company back in Barcelona and Madrid
might own everything--the lean, silent, white men, and the brown,
toiling thousands in the fields, and the boats on the river, and the
great white fortresses of warehouses--but in the valley Don Enrique
was Company and King. For him they toiled and died forgotten, from
him they thankfully received their meagre wage, and when an order
came signed in his heavy hand, "_Valdez y de las Vegas_," all men
hurried to do his will. Any one would be proud to serve such a man.
There was a Valdez with every great captain that ever sailed, and a
Vegas keeps his hat on with the highest yet. And since this is a
commercial age, and mere family renown can count for little in the
balance against hard cash, each year brought Don Enrique one hundred
thousand _pesos_, five hundred thousand_ pesetas_, eight hundred
thousand _reales_! _Mira, amigo_, you could buy your bread and
sausage with that, eh? and have something left for a bit of a present
for the wife?
And then he was no make-believe ruler, this Don Enrique. He knew the
valley, every day's journey of it, from lonely Cordón lying in the
threatening shadows of the pass, to the latest change in the bar
outside Aparri; knew the capacity of each warehouse to the last bale;
knew the shifting channel of the river, and could foretell the
treacherous floods. And he knew what each subordinate of his was
doing. No one knew when to expect a visit from him, and there were
few who did not dread being called to ride with him. Yet he would
dismount at the end of a long day in the saddle with as much calm
grace as though he were merely returning from a canter round the town.
For he was always calm and dignified and silent, as only a gentleman
of Castile can be. Not taciturn or insolent, or overbearing, but
merely closed in himself. He treated all men--all white men, of
course I mean, for natives do not count--with quiet courtesy, and
made neither enemies nor friends. Even the guests who shared the
hospitality of the great house at Echague knew very little of their
host.
It was a house, that place at Echague, built four-square and heavy as
a fort, of great blocks of sandstone, and back of it was a huge
walled garden. Of course Don Enrique had other houses, three of
them, at Ilagan and Aparri and Manila. But he was as much a man of
the open as any of his world-searching forebears, and he loved
far-off Echague better than all the rest. Here, when the shipping
was over and the last _barangayan_ lay loaded to the water's edge
above the rapids at Alcala, waiting for the first gentle lift of the
rains to carry her safe down to Aparri, Don Enrique would retire with
a band of chosen companions to hunt and game hard and long. Few men
were invited a second time, or wished to be, for with all his
courtesy Don Enrique was an exacting host in the hunting season.
Long before dawn, the hounds would be belling in the _patio_, the
great tiled courtyard, and the sleepy guest, turning on his pillow
for another nap, would hear a mighty splashing from the room of his
host, and the vicious squeals of the fiery little stallions in the
stables, and the clink of bits and stirrups and spears. And before
the unhappy sportsman could quite fall asleep, there would come a
peal of trumpets in the haunting reveille and boys pounding at each
door: "Ready, Señor. Ready. Your coffee is ready." And so they
were up and away in a mad rush over hill and valley in the gloom,
anything but attractive to a man who had a decent regard for his neck.
And when they returned, Don Enrique would come riding at the head of
the long line, grave and composed as ever, while the huntsmen were
loaded down with a beautiful great buck or a boar, killed by a single
thrust of which any matador in Madrid need not have been ashamed.
Then, after the huge hunt breakfast, would come the welcome torpor of
the siesta, and in the evening a mighty game, _malilla_ or monte or
billiards, for Don Enrique played as he worked and rode, with a
carelessness of consequences not at all pleasant to a man with a
decent regard for his purse.
So, one by one, the guests sailed away down the mysterious river, and
left Don Enrique alone in the great house at Echague, to be master of
all he surveyed. And there he moved about his lost world, and was
capped and bowed down to, and had his courteous, imperious way, until
I think he began to feel that he was really a very great man indeed.
And perhaps he was, as great as any other.
But solitary grandeur has its drawbacks, even to as grave and great a
man as Don Enrique; and as the summers came treading on each other's
heels with their burden of endless days, Don Enrique, sipping his
Rioja in solitary state in the great dining-room, where the sweetness
of orange-blossoms stole in through the wide windows, began to dream
dreams of a companion who should sit always with him of an evening
across the big, gleaming table, or come close beside him and share
his thoughts. No, Don Enrique was not thinking of a wife; he had had
a wife, and "lost" her, as he told the world. But there was his
"little girl," Mercedes, back in a great gray convent in Madrid. His
little girl, he called her in the letters he sent back every month,
for she lived in his memory as the shy little maid he had given to a
sweet-voiced Mother Superior, so many years before. It was for her
he had been working all these years and piling up these princely
possessions, and a look of almost womanish tenderness would come over
his proud, grave face when he thought of her. This thought of her
had sustained him in all the loneliness, and he had always dreamed of
her coming as the crowning touch to his life. "Sometime," said Don
Enrique often to the lizards darting across the table in the evening,
as lizards will, "sometime she shall come to us." And somehow
sometime always lingered in the future.
But at last, one evening when the odor of the blossoms hung very
heavy in the damp, still air, and the thunder was muttering in the
pass far back of Santa Lucia, Don Enrique stopped his sipping to look
very hard at the great-grandfather of all the lizards, a tremendous
old fellow almost five inches long. And the lizard returned the
stare with his bright, beady eyes.
"_Por Diós_, my big friend," said Don Enrique to the lizard, at last,
"she shall come to us at once." And if you realize what a very great
man Don Enrique was, you will understand that when he began to make
companions of the lizards, even the biggest and most respectable of
them, it was quite time that he sent for Doña Mercedes.
Letters came and went, and in the Christmas season Don Enrique found
himself in Manila waiting for the good old _Ysla de Panay_ to bring
his little girl to him. Many longing hearts have followed those old
ships of the Spanish Mail in the days that are gone. For all this
was long ago. Not long as you count, perhaps, but I have seen Doña
Mercedes' eyes, and they told me that it happened long, long ago,
when the world was very young indeed.
But the old ship did not bring Don Enrique his little girl, after
all. I wish you might have seen the Doña Mercedes who did come.
Your heart would have beaten as fast, I hope, as that of the spruce
young lieutenant who almost let her fall as he was helping her into
the launch, and retired quite as full of confusion and blushes and
speechlessness as if he had never worn shoulder-straps and a smart
small-sword, and been aide-de-camp to his Excellency the
Gobernador-General. For Doña Mercedes was tall and slight, with all
the stateliness of her house, and her head was poised like a queen's
on her slender neck, and her little, high-arched feet seemed scarce
to touch the deck. Yet it was not the proud lady who made the young
lieutenant's hand unsteady--he lived and moved among proud
ladies,--it was the eyes of the young girl. For Doña Mercedes still
looked out on the world from the shelter of her convent window, with
such a gentle, timid, inquiring smile in the depths of her great dark
eyes that she was far more dangerous to the peace and happiness of
his Majesty's forces than all the natives of the Philippines, with
Cuba thrown in besides.
When Don Enrique saw the eyes of the stately lady who had come to him
in place of his little girl, he was comforted, for so the little maid
whom he gave to the Mother Superior had looked at him. And Tia Maria
had good report to make.
"She is the best, dearest, kindest child in the world," said Tia
Maria. "She is as good as the Virgin herself, and never has a fault.
Only she will not keep her feet dry; and oh! Don Enrique, if you knew
how I have to work to make her take care of her complexion--" I
suppose old servants are the same all the world over.
So Don Enrique received his little girl, the very finest little girl
in all the world, which is not surprising when you consider what a
very great man her father was.
While the two were getting acquainted, as Don Enrique put it, he
condescended to share Doña Mercedes with the little world of Manila.
He gave a great ball, and his Excellency danced the old minuet with
her, whereat the beholders cried that the days of chivalry were come
again. Doña Mercedes smiled a little, and blushed a little, and the
stout, red-faced old soldier led her to his stout, jolly old wife
with the remark: "My dear, when you are good enough to die, here is
your successor, if--" and he dropped forty years and a dozen
campaigns to make Mercedes a wonderful bow.
"Tush, old wives are good enough for such as you," said her
Excellency bluntly. "Sit down here beside me, my dear, and tell me
how you like Manila."
"It is very good to be with my father again," said Doña Mercedes
simply, "and you are all so kind to me."
And then the young officers, who had been tugging at their fierce
moustaches and settling their chins in their stocks, came tramping
stiffly up and begging for the honor. So it went on for several
weeks, till one day her Excellency called. "Valdez," said she, in
her straightforward way, "are you going to marry your daughter or
not?"
"That, madame," he replied, "depends on--"
"On whether you find any one good enough for her, eh?" said her
Excellency. "And there is no one, is there?"
"Not one in the world," he replied gravely, but with the gleam of a
smile. Most people smiled when that simple old lady was near. "Not
one in the world, madame," said Don Enrique. "But marriage is not a
necessity of life; my little girl and I will be happy together for a
time, I hope."
"Love of the saints," cried her Excellency, "he is as young as his
daughter! He thinks to keep the bees always from his honey. Look at
their eyes; they are boy and girl together! God grant you may be
successful, Valdez. She is a dear, sweet child. But take her away
to your kingdom," she added. "Take an old woman's advice. They are
busy bees, and gay uniforms are unsettling for little girls who are
to love only their fathers. And, besides, I can't find an aide to do
an errand for me while she's in town!"
So Doña Mercedes, having had only a sip of the life most people lead,
passed from the lost world of the convent to the lost world of the
valley, with her proud, dainty ways, and a friendly, inquiring smile
in her eyes for every one she met. I suppose you and I can't
understand how Doña Mercedes felt; one must step directly from the
convent to the world to do that. But of course her smile was
friendly, for she had never known any one who was not a friend; and
it was inquiring, for the world was all one great puzzle to her, and
she was interested in the multitude of people she saw doing so many
seemingly hard and disagreeable and useless things. Of bad things,
of course, she knew nothing, except for some words in her prayers.
So Doña Mercedes, young woman and little girl, looked into the world
with frank, interested eyes.
And a very delightful place she found it. There was the great house,
with its thick walls and heavily barred windows and big, cool, dark
rooms. There was the garden, with the old familiar orange and lemon
trees and tinkling fountains. There were strange, sweet, new trees
as well, ylang-ylang and clove and cinnamon, and a hundred other
cool, fragrant, snowy-blossomed things, and poincianas, and orchids,
and great ferns, and palms. Best of all, trained up and about her
windows, were real Spanish roses, big white and pink and red and
yellow fellows. And at the far end of the garden was a
wide-spreading old veteran of a mango, big as a small mountain, and
in its shade a little summer-house for her, almost hidden in a tangle
of roses. Here she used to sit through the day, embroidering or
reading, or dozing. It might have seemed a dull life to you and me,
but then we never knew the quiet of the convent, and the peace of it.
Besides, she looked forward always to the evening. You never knew
that either, perhaps--the coolness and delight of the tropical
evening coming after the long glare of the day, when through the
windows steals a fresh damp air, heavy with the scent of flowers and
moist earth, and one hears the strange cries of birds and insects,
and sees the big, silent, fluttering bats and the fireflies that make
a living fountain of every tree; and all these but passing shadows on
the background of a dim, happy, sleepy world of darkness.
Most of all, Doña Mercedes was interested in the creatures who worked
and played in this huge new world. First there was her father. The
long evenings were never too long with him, for Don Enrique cast
aside all the gravity and dignity and silence, and laughed and jested
and talked and dreamed with his little girl, till the grandfather of
all the lizards became disgusted at the unseemly disturbance of the
established order, and retired with an indignant flip of the tail,
which nearly lost him that brittle member.
Then there was good, grumbling Tia Maria, who found it hard to adjust
herself to new conditions. "How can one live in a country where
there are no sidewalks?" Tia Maria mourned, "and where there are
monkeys and bats--ur-gh-h--and scorpions and spiders--oogh-h!
Spiders big as _that_, child!" cried Tia Maria, pushing out a sturdy
foot from under her limp black skirts.
Then there were the servants, with their eternal cheery smiles and
careless ways, who first revealed to Doña Mercedes that she inherited
the family temper. And the women and the little brown babies in the
town, and the dull men in the fields--Mercedes wondered if it was not
very hot and unpleasant to work in the fields, and so smiled most
kindly at them, till they forgot their sullenness and smiled back.
There were the treacherous river and the great clumsy boats, and the
fierce-looking river-men with their knives and the bright
handkerchiefs about their heads. And once she met some wild men in
the streets--sturdy fellows with great muscles and long black hair,
stiff and rough as the mane of a horse, dressed mostly, to her
frightened gaze, in shields and spears and head-axes and knives. But
when she smiled timidly, they responded with wide grins, and tried to
sell her little silver pipes and copper betelnut-boxes.
So Doña Mercedes moved about, learning many things concerning life,
even in that far-off valley. She was destined to learn the greatest
thing of all there, but that came later. I've often wished I could
have seen the stately, slender child-woman in those days, with her
big, inquisitive eyes--seen her just as the Captain did, when he came
tearing into town to see her and nearly ran over her.
It was characteristic of Captain Manuel to come that way, forty miles
in four hours, when after two slow months the news of her arrival
penetrated far into the mountains, where he was happily busy hunting
outlaws. It was characteristic of him to gallop full tilt down on
the lady he had come to see, before he knew she was there. And it
was characteristic of him also to rein his horse back on its haunches
with one tug, and sweep his hat off with a gesture that would have
done honor to Quixote himself, and insist on escorting the lady home,
despite the uneasy grumbling of Tia Maria, and a sudden access of
stateliness on Doña Mercedes' part.
Everything Captain Manuel did was characteristic, for he was a
Catalan. And while no one can foretell what a Catalan may do, it is
always safe to say that he will do what he pleases, and do it with
all his might. And this gray-eyed, fair-haired boy with the frank,
smiling face, had chosen to play at living, thus far. He was the
commander of the Guardia Civil in all the southern valley, put in
that unenviable post that puzzled bureaucrats might be saved from his
unbounded energy. And he played with the bandits and outlaws and
savages, purposely left them undisturbed that they might grow bold
and troublesome, and then went out with a laugh and destroyed them,
as you might a cage of rats. When the fighting was over, he would
come back unwearied and amuse himself with wondrous speculations in
tobacco, or stake his last peso on a stroke at billiards with Don
Enrique. The most fascinating of all the playthings he had
discovered in his brief life was something he was pleased to call
love. He played at that with his usual wholeheartedness, till a
score of girls up and down the valley were ever watching for the
lithe figure on the wild black horse, and more than a score of men
were breathing threats of vengeance. Whereat the Captain laughed
boyishly, and invited the discontented to step out and settle it once
for all with pistol or rifle or knife or spear or bolo or bare hands.
I'm sorry you couldn't have known Captain Manuel instead of merely
hearing about him from me, for you may get the idea that he was a
good-for-nothing young reprobate, whereas he was only a gay,
good-hearted boy, dissipating his splendid strength in a hundred
useless ways, just because no one had ever shown him a useful one.
But he was a dangerous person, with his ready tongue and tossing
hair, to come prancing before the wondering eyes of that bewildered
woman-child, Doña Mercedes. Dangerous, I mean, to Don Enrique's
dreams of the future. For of course he fell in love with Doña
Mercedes at once. He was quite sure of that, before he had walked a
dozen steps with the lady, that first night.
With him, to decide that he was in love was to be there; so behold
the Captain, of a morning after drill, come clanking to the little
summer-house, all brave in sword and spurs, to sit and regale Doña
Mercedes with weird tales of the little fights, till terrified Tia
Maria crossed herself and peered anxiously up into the branches of
the great mango, more than half expecting to see a naked head-hunter
there ready to leap upon her venerable wig.
And Doña Mercedes, poor, little, stately Mercedes, watched this
strange newcomer as she watched all others, but with a shade more
interest, for she felt that she understood him. The frank, friendly
smile in his eyes seemed so exactly what she felt to all the world.
Soon she began to find his presence a welcome relief to the length of
the days, and missed him when he did not come. Don Enrique should
have taken care then. But Don Enrique was careless. In the first
place, it was rather a strenuous undertaking to keep Captain Manuel
away from where he chose to be. And in the second place, any fear
that he could awaken the heart in Doña Mercedes was absurd. He was a
penniless youngster, without a "de" or an "Y" or a "Don" to his name,
and she was Doña Mercedes, a Valdez and a Vegas; and, furthermore,
she had him, Don Enrique, to fill her every want. So Don Enrique
smiled and jested and talked and dreamed of an evening in the great
dining-room, and was very happy with his little girl. And Captain
Manuel laughed and joked and sang in the little summer-house of a
morning, and was in heaven, or thought he was, which, after all,
amounts to just as much while it lasts. And Doña Mercedes looked on
them all with friendly, inquiring eyes.
At last one morning, the Captain was holding a skein of silk for her
to wind. Tia Maria had fallen into an uneasy doze through very
excess of terror at the latest tale. Several times their eyes met
when the skein was tangled--such a tiny skein of golden-yellow silk
to mean so much. And each time Doña Mercedes became more stately and
more timid, while the Captain's cheeks burned like a boy's. Their
talk died away to broken sentences, and then the hush of noontide lay
over the great, hot, fragrant garden, and only the heavy droning of
bees among the roses broke the stillness. Doña Mercedes put out a
trembling hand to clear another snarl, and--Tia Maria popped bolt
upright in her chair. "Blood of all the blessed saints!" she cried.
"What was that I heard?" And she peered up into the gently stirring
branches of the old tree, and made ready to flee.
"It was a wild man, perhaps," said the Captain, with a tremulous
laugh; and Doña Mercedes took up the conversation quite as composedly
as if she had lived in the world all her life. But when the Captain
was going, she murmured: "You must tell Don Enrique for me."
Of course he told Don Enrique at once, and of course Don Enrique was
quite astonished at the commonplace thing which had been going on
right under his patrician nose, and quite scandalized, and very
positive, in his grave, courteous way, that all such thoughts must be
dropped at once--positive as only a great man who ruled a valley
could be. And Captain Manuel was quite sure that he loved the lady,
could not live without her, would win her in the end--sure as only a
big, impetuous heart like his could make a man. So Don Enrique
politely regretted that he could not have the honor of receiving the
Captain in his home again, and the Captain bowed very low and clanked
out under the big, gloomy arch of the gateway for almost the last
time.
Now I doubt if either of them had really been in love. But they were
ready to grow into it, and forced separation has been a fertile soil
for propagating love, ever since the world began. The little girl
was very dutiful and sat with her father every evening, merry and
smiling and tender as ever; but across the big, gleaming table she
may sometimes have seen a vision of a longing, boyish face. Don
Enrique had seen visions across that same table, you remember.
Perhaps in time Doña Mercedes might have watched the vision till it
came to mean more to her than the great house and the family name and
the love of her father himself.
And the Captain fell into a very fever of devotion, and for more than
a month he stayed in his quarters, writing Catalan love-songs on the
edges of commissary returns, and gazing gloomily at his sword and
spurs. Billiards and cards knew him no more; the black horse fretted
in the paddock and looked unsayable things at the frightened groom;
the brown-skinned girls of the countryside lived in peace and amity
with their reconciled lovers. Perhaps the Captain's devotion might
have endured, and all that splendid energy of his might have been
turned to good and useful things at last.
All that is mere speculation. We shall never know, and it does not
matter. The day of Spain was passing in the Islands. Outside there
had long been rumors of ugly things; sudden, secret death and
smoldering insurrection, killing of priests and burning of towns and
terror-stricken people everywhere. Now at last they penetrated even
to the valley,--stories of raids on distant _haciendas_, and
assassinations on lonely trails, and a little army massed in the
foot-hills back of Santa Lucia. It was as if a chill wind swept over
the sunny plains and rolling hills and busy, treacherous river, and
none of the lean, bearded, sun-bronzed men could tell whence it came.
Don Enrique, that great man, did not heed it. When news came of a
wondrous great buck seen near Ascaris, he insisted on setting out to
capture it. "A bit of venison is what you need to put the roses
back," he said to Doña Mercedes, standing tall and strong in his
boots, and tapping her cheek with his gauntlet. "Insurrection!
Nonsense, _chiquita_, it is only the talk of these poor, foolish
Indians. I wave my riding-whip at them, and phooh!"--he blew a quick
breath, kissed her, and rode off in the gray chill of the morning.
But toward evening a man dragged himself in--old Canute the huntsman,
cut and bleeding--and told Doña Mercedes how the party had been
ambuscaded and had fought its way to a thicket of bamboo, and how
they must have help or perish.
While she stood half stunned and helpless, came Captain Manuel,
uncalled, and said simply: "I am going to him, Doña mia." He did not
tell her that all the country was up in arms, that he was going to
his death. I doubt if he even thought of that, as he stood before
her and saw her big, beseeching eyes. All the carelessness and
lightness of his nature fell away, as he stood before the lady for
whom he was to die. And yet, as he turned to go, a bit of the spirit
of old Spain stirred in him, and he bent toward her. "I kiss your
hand, my lady," he said.
Then Doña Mercedes understood, and with a little cry she flung
herself into his arms. One little moment she knew that all the
secret of life was hers--and then she took a white rose from her hair
and gave it to him. "My colors!" she said, and none of her ancient
house had ever stood more proud and stately to watch her knight go
out to battle, and none ever went more steadfast and strong and
lovable than that boy of the common folk of Cataluña.
There's not much more to tell, of course. The Captain found Don
Enrique, and at dawn they went out together, with their men, in one
of those deeds of splendid courage which once made their country
mistress of half the world. But a poor, foolish Indian, with a
well-cleaned Mauser and a firm rest at five hundred _metres_, and the
wrongs of three centuries to right, stopped their poor, proud,
Spanish hearts.
The few men who were left brought them back to Doña Mercedes,
standing pale and stately in the great courtyard, and on Don
Enrique's breast they found a miniature which might have been his
little girl, but was not, and on the Captain's a white rose dabbled
with red.
As I said, all this happened when the world was young. I know, for I
rode through Echague once, and I saw Doña Mercedes' eyes. They are
friendly and inquiring still, but the smile comes from an old, old
heart. And yet, after all, is it so bad? Don Enrique and the
Captain are very quiet indeed in the great garden, and perhaps the
valley is none the less happy that their imperious wills are quiet,
too. The river still runs, and the boatmen sing on its long reaches,
and the hot sunny air floats over field and hill and forest with
vivifying strength, and you would hardly know that they were gone.
Perhaps Don Enrique might never have been reconciled. Perhaps the
Captain might have changed. There are a dozen perhapses. And now
Doña Mercedes has the great house--after all it is not unlike a
convent in its quiet and its peace--and the memory of two strong men
who loved her until death.