The Spanish Brothers Part 28

"Here you can suffer alone and be strong. But how will you endure the loneliness of the long hereafter, away from G.o.d's presence, from light and life and hope? Are you content that you, and she for whom you give your life, should be sundered throughout eternity?"

"Nay; I am casting my lot in with hers. If the Church curses her (pure and holy as she ever was), its anathema shall fall on me too. If only the Church's key opens heaven, she and I will both stand without."

"Yet you know she will enter heaven. Shall _you_?"

Gonsalvo hesitated. "It will not be the blood of a villain that will bar my way," he said.

"G.o.d says, 'Thou shall not kill.'"

"Then what will he do with Gonzales de Munebrga?"

"He will do that with him of which, if you but dreamed, it would change your fiercest hate into saddest, deepest pity. Have you realized what a span is our life here compared with the countless ages of eternity?

Think! For G.o.d's chosen a few weeks, or months at most, of solitude and fear and pain, ended perhaps by--but that is as he pleases; _ended_, at all events. Then add up the million years, fill them with the joy of victory, and the presence and love of Christ himself. Can they not, and we for them, be content with this?"

"Are you content with it yourself?" Gonsalvo suddenly interrupted. "You seek flight."

The glow faded from the face of Carlos, and his eyes sank to the ground.

"Christ has not called me yet," he answered in a lower tone. There was a silence; then he resumed: "Turn now to the other side. Would you change, even this hour, with Gonzales de Munebrga? But take him from his wealth, and his pomp, and his sinful luxuries, all defiled with blood, and what remains for him? Everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."

"Everlasting fire!" Gonsalvo repeated, as if the thought pleased him.

"Leave him in G.o.d's hand. It is a stronger hand than yours, Don Gonsalvo."

"Everlasting fire! I would send him there to-night."

"And whither would you send your own sinful soul?"

"G.o.d might pardon, though the Church cursed."

"Possibly. But to enter G.o.d's heaven you need something besides pardon."

"What?" asked Gonsalvo, half wearily, half incredulously.

"'Holiness; without which no man can see the Lord.'"

"Holiness?" Gonsalvo questioned, as if the word was strange to him, and he attached no meaning to it.

"Yes," Carlos went on, with intense and ever increasing earnestness; "unless, even from that pa.s.sionate heart of yours, revenge and hatred are banished, you can never see G.o.d, never come where--"

"Hold thy peace, trifler!" Gonsalvo interrupted with angry impatience.

"Too long have I tarried, listening to thine idle talk. Priests and women are content with words; brave men _act_. Farewell to thee!"

"One word more, only one." Carlos drew near and laid his hand on his cousin's arm. "Nay, you _shall_ listen to me. Seemeth it to you a thing incredible that that heart of yours can be changed and softened to a love like His who prayed on the cross for his murderers? Yet it can be.

_He_ can do it. He gives pardon, holiness, peace. Peace of which you dream not now, but which _she_ knows full well. O Don Gonsalvo, better join her where she is going, than wildly, rashly, and most uselessly peril your soul to avenge her!"

"Uselessly! Were that true indeed--"

"Ay de mi! who can doubt it?"

"Would I had time for thought!"

"Take it, in G.o.d's name, and pray him to keep you from a great crime."

For a few moments he sat still--still as the dead. Then he started suddenly. "Already the hour is pa.s.sing," he exclaimed; "I shall be too late. Fool that I was, to be almost moved from my purpose by the idle words of a--The weakness is past now. Still, ere we part, give me thy hand, Don Carlos, for, on my faith, I never liked thee half so well."

Very sorrowfully Carlos extended it, rather wondering as he did so that the energetic Gonsalvo failed to spring from his seat and prepare to be gone.

Gonsalvo stirred not, even to take the offered hand. A deathlike paleness overspread his face, and a cry of terror had well nigh broken from his lips. But he choked it back.

"Something is strangely wrong with me," he faltered. "I cannot move. I feel dead--_dead_--from the waist down."

"G.o.d has spoken to you from heaven," said Carlos solemnly. He felt as if a miracle had been wrought in his presence. His Protestantism had not freed him from the superst.i.tions of his age. Had he lived three centuries later, he would have seen nothing miraculous in the disease with which Gonsalvo was stricken, but rather have called it the natural result of intense agitation and excitement, acting upon a frame already weakened.

Yet the reckless Gonsalvo was the more superst.i.tious of the two. He was at war with the creed in which he had been nurtured; but that older and deeper kind of superst.i.tion which has its root in human nature had, for this very reason, a stronger hold upon him.

"Dead--dead!" he repeated, the words falling from his lips in broken, awe-struck whispers. "The limbs I misused! The feet that led me into sin! G.o.d--G.o.d have mercy upon me! It is thy hand!"

"It is his hand; a sign he has not forsaken thee; that he means to bring thee back to himself. Oh, my cousin, do not despair. Hope yet in his mercy, for it is great."

Carlos knelt down beside him, took his pa.s.sive hand in his, and spoke earnest, loving words of hope and comfort. The last quarter, ere the single stroke that should announce that the hour appointed for his own flight was past, chimed from the clock on the church tower. Yet he did not move--he had forgotten self. At last, however, he said, "But it may be something can be done to relieve you. You ought to have medical aid without delay. I should have thought of this before. I will rouse the household."

"No; that would endanger you. Go on your way, and bid the porter do it when you are gone."

It was too late, the household _was_ roused. A loud authoritative knocking at the outer gate sent the blood back from the hearts of both with sudden and horrible fear.

There was a sound of opening gates, followed by footsteps--voices--cries.

Gonsalvo was the first to understand all. "The Alguazils of the Holy Office!" he exclaimed.

"I am lost!" cried Carlos, large drops gathering on his brow.

"Conceal yourself," said Gonsalvo; but he knew his words were vain.

Already his quick ear had caught the sound of his cousin's name; and already footsteps were on the stairs.

Carlos glanced round the room. For a moment his eye rested on the window, eighty feet above the ground. Better spring from it and perish!

No, that would be self-murder. In G.o.d's name he would await them manfully.

"You will be searched," Gonsalvo whispered hurriedly; "have you aught about your person that may add to your danger?"

Carlos drew from its place of concealment the heroic Juliano's treasured gift.

"I will hide it," said his cousin; and taking it hastily, he slipped it beneath his inner vest, where it lay in strange neighbourhood with a small, exquisitely tempered poniard, destined never to be used.

The torch-light within, perhaps the voices, guided the Alguazils to that room. A hand was placed on the door. "They are coming, Don Carlos,"

cried Gonsalvo; "I am thy murderer."

"No--no fault of thine. Always remember that," said Carlos, in his sharpest anguish generous still. Then for one brief moment, that seemed an age, he was deaf to all outward things. Afterwards he was himself again.

And something more than himself perhaps. Now, as in other moments of intense excitement, the spirit of his race descended on him. When the Alguazils entered, it was Don Carlos Alvarez de Santillanos y Menaya who met them, with folded arms, with steadfast eye, and pale but dauntless forehead.