XXXVIII.
Nuera Again
"Happy places have grown holy;
If ye went where once ye went,
Only tears would fall down slowly,
As at solemn Sacrament.
Household names, that used to flutter
Through your laughter unawares,
God's divine one ye can utter
With less troubling in your prayers."
E.B. Browning.
A chill and dreary torpor stole over Juan's fiery spirit after the Auto. The settled conviction that his brother was dead took possession of his mind. Moreover, his soul had lost its hold upon the faith which he once embraced so warmly. He had consciously ceased to be true to his best convictions, and those convictions, in turn, had ceased to support him. His confidence in himself, his trust in his own heart, had been shaken to its foundations. And he was very far from having gained in its stead that strong confidence in God which would have infinitely more than counterbalanced its loss.
Thus two or three slow and melancholy months wore away. Then, fortunately for him, events happened that forced him, in spite of himself, to the exertion that saves from the deadly slumber of despair. It became evident, that if he did not wish to see the last earthly treasure that remained to him swept out of his reach for ever, he must rouse himself from his lethargy so far as to grasp and hold it; for now Don Manuel commanded his ward to bestow her hand upon his rival, Señor Luis Rotelo.
In her anguish and dismay, Beatriz fled for refuge to her kind-hearted cousin, Doña Inez.
Doña Inez received her into her house, where she soothed and comforted her; and soon found means to despatch an "esquelita," or billet, to Don Juan, to the following effect: – "Doña Beatriz is here. Remember, my cousin, 'that a leap over a ditch is better than another man's prayer.'"
To which Juan replied immediately: —
"Señora and my cousin, I kiss your feet. Lend me a helping hand, and I take the leap."
Doña Inez desired nothing better. Being a Spanish lady, she loved an intrigue for its own sake; being a very kindly disposed lady, she loved an intrigue for a benevolent object. With her active co-operation and assistance, and her husband's connivance, it was quickly arranged that Don Juan should carry off Doña Beatriz from their house to a little country chapel in the neighbourhood, where a priest would be in readiness to perform the solemn rite which should unite them for ever. Thence they were to proceed at once to Nuera, Don Juan disguising himself for the journey as the lady's attendant. Doña Inez did not anticipate that her father and brothers would take any hostile steps after the conclusion of the affair – glad though they might have been to prevent it – since there was nothing which they hated and dreaded so much as a public scandal.
All Juan's latent fire and energy woke up again to meet the peril and to secure the prize. He was successful in everything; the plan had been well laid, and was well and promptly carried out. And thus it happened, that amidst December snows he bore his beautiful bride home to Nuera in triumph. If triumph it could be called, overcast by the ever-present memory of the one who "was not," which rested like a deep shadow upon all joy, and subdued and chastened it. Few things in life are sadder than a great, long-expected blessing coming thus; – like a friend from a foreign land whose return has been eagerly anticipated, but who, after years of absence, meets us changed in countenance and in heart, unrecognizing and unrecognized.
Dolores welcomed her young master and his bride with affection and thankfulness. But he noticed that the dark hair, at the time of his last visit still only threaded with silver, had grown white as the mountain snows. In former days Dolores could not have told which of the noble youths, her lady's gallant sons, had been the dearer to her. But now she knew full well. Her heart was in the grave with the boy she had taken a helpless babe from his dying mother's arms. But, after all, was he in the grave? This was the question which she asked herself day by day, and many times a day. She was not quite so sure of the answer as Señor Don Juan seemed to be. Since the day of the Auto, he had assumed all the outward signs of mourning for his brother.
Fray Sebastian was also at Nuera, and proved a real help and comfort to its inmates. His very presence served to shield the household from any suspicions that might have been awakened with regard to their faith. For who could doubt the orthodoxy of Don Juan Alvarez, while he not only contributed liberally to the support of his parish church, but also kept a pious Franciscan in his family, in the capacity of private chaplain? Though it must be confessed that the Fray's duties were anything but onerous; now, as in former days, he showed himself a man fond of quiet, who for the most part held his peace, and let every one do what was right in his own eyes.
He was now on far more cordial terms with Dolores than he had ever been before. This was partly because he had learned that worse physical evils than ollas of lean mutton, or cheese of goat's milk, might be borne with patience, even with thankfulness. But partly also because Dolores now really tried to consult his tastes and to promote his comfort. Many a savoury dish "which the Fray used to like" did she trouble herself to prepare; many a flask of wine from their diminishing store did she gladly produce, "for the kind words that he spake to him in his sorrow and loneliness."
In spite of the depressing influences around her, Doña Beatriz could not but be very happy. For was not Don Juan hers, all her own, her own for ever? And with the zeal love inspires, and the skill love imparts, she applied herself to the task of brightening his darkened life. Not quite without effect. Even from that stern and gloomy brow the shadows at length began to roll away.
Don Juan could not speak of his sorrow. For weeks indeed after his return to Nuera his brother's name did not pass his lips. Better had it been otherwise, both for himself and for Dolores. Her heart, aching with its own lonely anguish and its vague, dark surmisings, often longed to know her young master's true innermost thought about his brother's fate. But she did not dare to ask him.
At last, however, this painful silence was partially broken through. One morning the old servant accosted her master with an air of some displeasure. It was in the inner room within the hall. Holding in her hand a little book, she said, – "May it please your Excellency to pardon my freedom, but it is not well done of you to leave this lying open on your table. I am a simple woman; still I am at no loss to know what and whence it is. If you will not destroy it, and cannot keep it safe and secret, I implore of your worship to give it to me."
Juan held out his hand for it. "It is dearer to me than any earthly possession," he said briefly.
"It had need to be dearer than your life, señor, if you mean to leave it about in that fashion."
"I have lost the right to say so much," Juan answered.
"And yet, Dolores – tell me, would it break your heart if I sold this place – you know it is mortgaged heavily already – and quitted the country?"
Juan expected a start, if not a cry of surprise and dismay. That Alvarez de Meñaya should sell the inheritance of his fathers seemed indeed a monstrous proposal. In the eyes of the world it would be an act of insanity, if not a crime. What then would it appear to one who loved the name of Santillanos y Meñaya far better than her life?
But the still face of Dolores never changed. "Nothing would break my heart now," she said calmly.
"You would come with us?"
She did not even ask whither. She did not care: all her thoughts were in the past.
"That is of course, señor," she answered. "If I had but first assurance of one thing."
"Name it; and if I can assure you, I will."
Instead of naming it she turned silently away. But presently turning again, she asked, "Will your Excellency please to tell me, is it that book that is driving you into exile?"
"It is. I am bound to confess the truth before men; and that is impossible here."
"But are you sure then that it is the truth?"
"Sure. I have read God's message both in the darkness and in the light. I have seen it traced in characters of blood – and fire."
"But – forgive the question, señor – does it make you happy?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because, Señor Don Juan" – she spoke with an effort, but firmly, and fixing her eyes on his face – "he who gave you yon book found therein that which made him happy. I know it; he was here, and I watched him. When he came first, he was ill, or else very sorrowful, I know not why. But he learned from that book that God Almighty loved him, and that the Lord and Saviour Christ was his friend; and then his sorrow passed away, and his heart grew full of joy, so full that he must needs be telling me – ay, and even that poor dolt of a cura down there in the village – about the good news. And I think" – but here she stopped, frightened at her own boldness.
"What think you?" asked Juan, with difficulty restraining his emotion.
"Well, Señor Don Juan, I think that if that good news be true, it would not be so hard to suffer for it. Blessed Virgin! Could it be aught but joy to me, for instance, to lie in a dark dungeon, or even to be hanged or burned, if that could work out his deliverance? There be worse things in the world than pain or prisons. For where there's love, señor – Moreover, it comes upon me sometimes that the Lords Inquisitors may have mistaken his case. Wise and learned they may he, and good and holy they are, of course – 'twere sin to doubt it – yet they may mistake sometimes. 'Twas but the other day, my old eyes growing dim apace, that I took a blessed gleam of sunlight that had fallen on yon oak table for a stain, and set to work to rub it off; the Lord forgive me for meddling with one of the best of his works! And, for aught we know, just so may they be doing, mistaking God's light upon the soul for the devil's stain of heresy. But the sunlight is stronger than they, after all."
"Dolores, you are half a Lutheran already yourself," answered Juan in surprise.
"I, señor! The Lord forbid! I am an old Christian, and a good Catholic, and so I hope to die. But if you must hear all the truth, I would walk in a yellow sanbenito, with a taper in my hand, before I would acknowledge that he ever said one word or thought one thought that was not Catholic and Christian too. All his crime was to find out that the good Lord loved him, and to be happy on account of it. If that be your religion also, Señor Don Juan, I have nothing to say against it. And, as I have said, God granting me, in his great mercy, one assurance first, I am ready to follow you and your lady to the world's end."
With these words on her lips she left the room. For a time Juan sat silent in deep thought. Then he opened the Testament, and turned over its leaves until he found the parable of the sower. "'Some fell upon stony places,'" he read, "'where they had not much earth; and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: and when the sun was up, they were scorched; and, because they had no root, they withered away.' There," he said within himself, "in those words is written the history of my life, from the day my brother confessed his faith to me in the garden of San Isodro. God help me, and forgive my backsliding! But at least it is not too late to go humbly back to the beginning, and to ask him who alone can do it to break up the fallow ground."
He closed the book, walked to the window and looked out. Presently his eye was attracted to those dear mystic words on the pane, which both the brothers had loved and dreamed over from their childhood, —
"El Dorado
Yo hé trovado."
And at that moment the sun was shining on them as brightly as it used to do in those old days gone by for ever.
No vague dream of any good, foreshadowed by the omen to him or to his house, crossed the mind of the practical Don Juan. But he seemed to hear once more the voice of his young brother saying close beside him, "Look, Ruy, the light is on our father's words." And memory bore him back to a morning long ago, when some slight boyish quarrel had been ended thus.
Over his stern, handsome face there passed a look that shaded and softened it, and his eyes grew dim – dim with tears.
But just then Doña Beatriz, radiant from a morning walk, and with her hands full of early spring flowers, tripped in, singing a Spanish ballad, —
"Ye men that row the galleys,
I see my lady fair;
She gazes at the fountain
That leaps for pleasure there."
Beatriz was a child of the city; and, moreover, her life hitherto had been an unloved and unloving one. Now her nature was expanding under the wholesome influences of home life and home love, and of simple healthful pleasures. "Look, Don Juan, what pretty things grow in your fields here! I have never seen the like," she said, breaking off in her song to exhibit her treasures.
Don Juan looked carelessly at them, lovingly at her. "I would fain hear a morning hymn from those sweet, tuneful lips," he pleaded.
"Most willingly, amigo mio, —
'Ave Sanctissima – '"
"Hush, my beloved; hush, I entreat of you." And laying his hand lightly on her shoulder, he gazed in her face with a mixture of fond and tender admiration and of gentle reproach difficult to describe. "Not that. For the sake of all that lies between us and the old faith, not that. Rather let us sing together, —
'Vexilla Regis prodeunt.'
For you know that between us and our King there stands, and there needs to stand, no human mediator. Do you not, my beloved?"
"I know that you are right," answered Beatriz, still reading her faith in Don Juan's eyes. "But we can sing afterwards, whatever you like, and as much as you will. I pray you let us come forth now into the sunshine together. Look, what a glorious morning it is!"
XXXIX.
Left Behind
"They are all gone into a world of light,
And I alone am lingering here."
Henry Vaughan.
The change of seasons brought little change to those dark cells in the Triana, where neither the glory of summer nor the breath of spring could come. While the world, with its living interests, its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, kept surging round them, not even an echo of its many voices reached the doomed ones within, who lay so near, yet so far from all, "fast bound in misery and iron."
Not yet had the Deliverer come to Carlos. More than once he had seemed very near. During the summer heats, so terrible in that prison, fever had wasted the captive's already enfeebled frame; but this was the means of prolonging his life, for the eve of the Auto found him unable to walk across his cell. Still he heard without very keen sorrow the fate of his beloved friends, so soon did he hope to follow them.
And yet, month after month, life lingered on. In his circumstances restoration to health was simply impossible. Not that he endured more than others, or even as much as some. He was not loaded with fetters, or buried in one of the frightful subterranean cells where daylight never entered. Still, when to the many physical sufferings his position entailed was added the weight of sickness, weakness, and utter loneliness, they formed together a burden heavy enough to have crushed even a strong heart to despair.
Long ago the last gleam of human sympathy and kindness had faded from him. Maria Gonsalez was herself a prisoner, receiving such payment as men had to give her for her brave deeds of charity. God's payment, however, was yet to come, and would be of another sort. Herrera, the under-gaoler, was humane, but very timid; moreover, his duties seldom led him to that part of the prison where Carlos lay. So that he was left dependent upon the tender mercies of Gaspar Benevidio, which were indeed cruel.
And yet, in spite of all, he was not crushed, not despairing. The lamp of patient endurance burned on steadily, because it was continually fed with oil by an unseen Hand.
It has been beautifully said, "The personal love of Christ to you, felt, delighted in, returned, is actually, truly, simply, without exaggeration, the deepest joy and the deepest feeling that the heart of man or woman can know. It will absolutely satisfy your heart. It would satisfy your heart if it were his will that you should spend the rest of your life alone in a dungeon."
Just this, nothing else, nothing less, sustained Carlos throughout those long slow months of suffering, which had now come to "add themselves and make the years." It proved sufficient for him. It has proved sufficient for thousands – God's unknown saints and martyrs, whose names we shall learn first in heaven.
Those who still occasionally sought access to him, in the hope of transforming the obstinate heretic into a penitent, marvelled greatly at the cheerful calm with which he was wont to receive them and to answer their arguments.
Sometimes he would even brave all the wrath of Benevidio, and raising his voice as loud as he could, he would make the gloomy vaults re-echo to such words as these: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" Or these: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."
But still it was not in Christ's promise, nor was it to be expected, that his prisoner should never know hours of sorrow, weariness, and heart-sinking. Such hours came sometimes. And on the very morning when Don Juan and Doña Beatriz were going forth together into the spring sunshine through the castle gate of Nuera, Carlos, in his dungeon, was passing through one of the darkest of these. He lay on his mat, his face covered with his wasted hands, through which tears were slowly falling. It was but very seldom that he wept now; tears had grown rare and scarce with him.
The evening before, he had received a visit from two Jesuits, bound on the only errand which would have procured their admission there. Irritated by his bold and ready answers to the usual arguments, they had recourse to declamation. And one of them bethought himself of mentioning the fate of the Lutherans who suffered at the two great Autos of Valladolid. "Most of the heretics," said the Jesuit, "though when they were in prison they were as obstinate as thou art now, yet had their eyes opened in the end to the error of their ways, and accepted reconciliation at the stake. At the last great Act of Faith, held in the presence of King Philip, only Don Carlos de Seso – " Here he stopped, surprised at the agitation of the prisoner, who had heard their threatenings against himself so calmly.
"De Seso! De Seso! Have they murdered him too?" moaned Carlos, and for a few brief moments he gave way to natural emotion. But quickly recovering himself he said, "I shall only see him the sooner."
"Were you acquainted with him?" asked the Jesuit.
"I loved and honoured him. My avowing that cannot hurt him now," answered Carlos, who had grown used to the bitter thought that any name would be disgraced and its owner imperilled, by his mentioning it with affection.
"But if you will do me so much kindness," he added, "I pray you to tell me anything you know of his last hours. Any word he spoke."
"He could speak nothing," said the younger of his two visitors. "Before he left the prison he had uttered so many horrible blasphemies against Holy Church and Our Lady that he was obliged to wear the gag during the whole ceremony, 'lest he should offend the little ones.'"31
This last cruel wrong – the refusal of leave to the dying to speak one word in defence of the truths he died for – stung Carlos to the quick. It wrung from lips so patient hitherto words of indignant threatening. "God will judge your cruelty," he said. "Go on, fill up the measure of your guilt, for your time is short. One day, and that soon, there will be a grand spectacle, grander than your Autos. Then shall you, torturers of God's saints, call upon the mountains and rocks to cover you, and to hide you from the wrath of the Lamb."
Once more alone, his passionate anger died away. And it was well. Surrounded as he was on every side by strong, cold, relentless wrong and cruelty, if his spirit had beaten its wings against those bars of iron, it would soon have fallen to the ground faint and helpless, with crushed pinions. It was not in such vain strivings that he could find, or keep, the deep calm peace with which his heart was filled; it was in the quiet place at his Saviour's feet, from whence, if he looked at his enemies at all, it was only to pity and forgive them.
But though anger was gone, a heavy burden of sorrow remained. De Seso's noble form, shrouded in the hideous zamarra, his head crowned with the carroza, his face disfigured by the gag, – these were ever before his eyes. He well-nigh forgot that all this was over now – that for him the conflict was ended and the triumph begun.
Could he have known even as much as we know now of the close of that heroic life, it might have comforted him.
Don Carlos de Seso met his doom at the second of the two great Autos celebrated at Valladolid during the year 1559. At the first, the most steadfast sufferers were Francisco de Vibero Cazalla, one of a family of confessors; and Antonio Herezuelo, whose pathetic story – the most thrilling episode of Spanish martyrology – would need an abler pen than ours.
During his lingering imprisonment of a year and a half, De Seso never varied in his own clear testimony to the truth, never compromised any of his brethren. Informed at last that he was to die the next day, he requested writing materials. These being furnished him, he placed on record a confession of his faith, which Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, thus describes: – "It would be difficult to convey an idea of the uncommon vigour of sentiment with which he filled two sheets of paper, though he was then in the presence of death. He handed what he had written to the Alguazil, with these words: 'This is the true faith of the gospel, as opposed to that of the Church of Rome, which has been corrupted for ages. In this faith I wish to die, and in the remembrance and lively belief of the passion of Jesus Christ, to offer to God my body, now reduced so low.'"
All that night and the next morning were spent by the friars in vain endeavours to induce him to recant. During the Auto, though he could not speak, his countenance showed the steadfastness of his soul – a steadfastness which even the sight of his beloved wife amongst those condemned to perpetual imprisonment failed to disturb. When at last, as he was bound to the stake, the gag was removed, he said to those who stood around him, still urging him to yield, "I could show you that you ruin yourselves by not following my example; but there is no time. Executioners, light the fire that is to consume me."
Even in the act of death it was given him, though unconsciously, to strengthen the faith of another. In the martyr band was a poor man, Juan Sanchez, who had been a servant of the Cazallas, and was apprehended in Flanders with Juan de Leon. He had borne himself bravely throughout; but when the fire was kindled, the ropes that bound him to the stake having given way, the instinct of self-preservation made him rush from the flames, and, not knowing what he did, spring upon the scaffold where those who yielded at the last were wont to receive absolution. The attendant monks at once surrounded him, offering him the alternative of the milder death. Recovering self-possession, he looked around him. At one side knelt the penitents, at the other, motionless amidst the flames, De Seso stood,
"As standing in his own high hall."
His choice was made. "I will die like De Seso," he said calmly; and then walked deliberately back to the stake, where he met his doom with joy.
Another brave sufferer at this Auto, Don Domingo de Roxas, ventured to make appeal to the justice of the King, only to receive the memorable reply, never to be read without a shudder, – "I would carry wood to burn my son, if he were such a wretch as thou!"
All these circumstances Carlos never heard on this side of the grave. But in the quiet Sabbath-keeping that remaineth for the people of God, there will surely be leisure enough to talk over past trials and triumphs. At present, however, he only saw the dark side – only knew the bare and bitter facts of suffering and death. He had not merely loved De Seso as his instructor; he had admired him with the generous enthusiasm of a young man for a senior in whom he recognizes his ideal – all that he himself would fain become. If the Spains had but known the day of their visitation, he doubted not that man would have been their leader in the path of reform. But they knew it not; and so, instead, the chariot of fire had come for him. For him, and for nearly all the men and women whose hands Carlos had been wont to clasp in loving brotherhood. Losada, D'Arellano, Ponce de Leon, Doña Isabella de Baena, Doña Maria de Bohorques, – all these honoured names, and many more, did he repeat, adding after each one of them, "At rest with Christ." Somewhere in the depths of those dreary dungeons it might be that the heroic Juliano, his father in the faith, was lingering still; and also Fray Constantino, and the young monk of San Isodro, Fray Fernando. But the prison walls sundered them quite as hopelessly from him as the River of Death itself.
Earlier ties sometimes seemed to him only like things he had read or dreamed of. During his fever, indeed, old familiar faces had often flitted round him. Dolores sat beside him, laying her hand on his burning brow; Fray Sebastian taught him disjointed, meaningless fragments from the schoolmen; Juan himself either spoke cheerful words of hope and trust, or else talked idly of long-forgotten trifles.
But all this was over now: neither dream nor fancy came to break his utter, terrible loneliness. He knew that he was never to see Juan again, nor Dolores, nor even Fray Sebastian. The world was dead to him, and he to it. And as for his brethren in the faith, they had gone "to the light beyond the clouds, and the rest beyond the storms," where he would so gladly be. Why, then, was he left so long, like one standing without in the cold? Why did not the golden gate open for him as well as for them? What was he doing in this place? – what could he do for his Master's cause or his Master's honour? He did not murmur. By this time his Saviour's prayer, "Not my will, but thine be done," had been wrought into the texture of his being with the scarlet, purple, and golden threads of pain, of patience, and of faith. But it is well for His tried ones that He knows longing is not murmuring. Very full of longing were the words – words rather of pleading than of prayer – that rose continually from the lips of Carlos that day, – "And now, Lord, what wait I for?"