The Spanish Brothers Part 38

Of Fray Constantino, the most contradictory stories were told him. At one time he was a.s.sured that the great preacher had not only admitted his own guilt, but also, on the rack, had informed against his brethren.

Again he was told, and this time with truth, that the Emperor's former chaplain and favourite had been spared the horrors of the Question, but that the eagerly desired evidence against him had been obtained by accident. A lady of rank, one of his chief friends, was amongst the prisoners; and the Inquisitors sent an Alguazil to her house to demand possession of her jewels. Her son, without waiting to ascertain the precise object of the officer's visit, surrendered to him in a panic some books which Fray Constantino had given his mother to conceal.

Amongst them was a volume in his own handwriting, containing the most explicit avowal of the principles of the Reformation. On this being shown to the prisoner, he struggled no longer. "You have there a full and candid confession of my belief," he said. And he was now in one of the dark and loathsome subterranean cells of the Triana.

Amongst those who most frequently visited Carlos was the prior of the Dominican convent. This man seemed to take a peculiar interest in the young heretic's fate. He was a good specimen of a character oftener talked about than met with in real life,--the genuine fanatic. When he threatened Carlos, as he spared not to do, with the fire that is never quenched, at least he believed with all his heart that he was in danger of it. Carlos soon perceived this, and accepting his honest intention to benefit him, came to regard him with a kind of friendliness. Besides, the prior listened to what he said with more attention than did most of the others, and even in the prison of the Inquisition a man likes to be listened to, especially when his opportunities of speaking are few and brief.

Many weeks pa.s.sed by, and still Carlos lay on his mat, in weakness and suffering of body, though in calm gladness of spirit. Surgical and medical aid had been afforded him in due course. And it was not the fault of either surgeon or physician that he did not recover. They could stanch wounds and set dislocated joints, but when the springs of life were sapped, how could they renew them? How could they quicken the feeble pulse, or send back life and energy into the broken, exhausted frame? At this time Carlos himself felt certain--even more certain than did his physician--that never again would his footsteps pa.s.s the limits of that narrow cell.

Once, indeed, there came to him a brief and fleeting pang of regret. It was in the spring-time; everywhere else so bright and fair, but making little change in those gloomy cells. Maria Gonsalez now sometimes obtained access to him, partly through Benevidio's increased inattention to all his duties, partly because, any attempt at escape on the part of the captive being obviously out of the question, he was somewhat less jealously watched. And more than once the gaoler's little daughter stole in timidly beside her nurse, bearing some trifling gift for the sick prisoner. To Carlos these visits came like sunbeams; and in a very short time he succeeded in establishing quite an intimate friendship with the child.

One morning she entered his cell with Maria, carrying a basket, from which she produced, with shy pleasure, a few golden oranges. "Look, senor," she said, "they are good to eat now, for the blossoms are out.[#] I gathered some to show you;" and filling both her hands with the luscious wealth of the orange flowers, she flung them carelessly down on the mat beside him. In her eyes they were of no value compared with the fruit.

[#] The people of Seville do not think the oranges fit to eat until the new blossoms come out in spring.

With Carlos it was far otherwise. The rich perfume that filled the cell filled his heart also with sweet sad dreams, which lasted long after his kindly visitors had left him. The orange-trees had just been in flower last spring when all G.o.d's free earth and sky were shut out from his sight for ever. Only a year ago! What a long, long year it seemed!

And only one year further back he was walking in the orange gardens with Dona Beatriz, in all the delicious intoxication of his first and last dream of youthful love. "Better here than there, better now than then,"

he murmured, though the tears gathered in his eyes. "But oh, for one hour of the old free life, one look at orange-trees in flower, or blue skies, or the gra.s.sy slopes and cork-trees of Nuera! Or"--and more painfully intense the yearning grew--"one familiar face, belonging to the past, to show me it was not all a dream, as I am sometimes tempted to think it. Thine, Ruy, if it might be.--O Ruy, Ruy!--But, thank G.o.d, I have not betrayed thee!"

In the afternoon of that day visitors were announced. Carlos was not surprised to see the stern narrow face and white hair of the Dominican prior. But he was a little surprised to observe that the person who followed him wore the gray cowl of St. Francis. The prior merely bestowed the customary salutation upon him, and then, stepping aside, allowed his companion to approach.

But as soon as Carlos saw his face, he raised himself eagerly, and stretching out both his hands, grasped those of the Franciscan. "Dear Fray Sebastian!" he cried; "my good, kind tutor!"

"My lord the prior has been graciously pleased to allow me to visit your Excellency."

"It is truly kind of you, my lord. I thank you heartily," said Carlos, frankly and promptly turning towards the Dominican, who looked at him with somewhat the air of one who is trying to be stern with a child.

"I have ventured to allow you this indulgence," he said, "in the hope that the counsels of one whom you hold in honour may lead you to repentance."

Carlos turned once more to Fray Sebastian, whose hand he still held.

"It is a great joy to see you," he said. "Only to-day I had been longing for a familiar face. And you are changed never a whit since you used to teach me my humanities. How have you come hither? Where have you been all these years?"

Poor Fray Sebastian vainly tried to frame an answer to these simple questions. He had come to that prison straight from Munebrga's splendid patio, where, amidst the gleam of azulejos and of many-coloured marbles, the scent of rare exotics and the music of rippling fountains, he had partaken of a sumptuous mid-day repast. In this dark foul dungeon there was nothing to please the senses, not even G.o.d's free air and light. Everything on which his eye rested was coa.r.s.e, painful, loathsome. By the prisoner's side lay the remains of a meal, in great contrast to his. And the sleeve, fallen back from the hand that held his own, showed deep scars on the wrist. He knew whence they were. Yet the face that was looking in his, with kindling eyes, and a smile on the parted lips, might have been the face of the boy Carlos, when he praised him for a successful task, only for the pain in it, and, far deeper than pain, a look of a.s.sured peace that boyhood could scarcely know.

Repressing a choking sensation, he faltered, "Senor Don Carlos, it grieves me to the heart to see you here."

"Do not grieve for me, dear Fray Sebastian; for I tell you truly, I have never known such happy hours as since I came here. At first, indeed, I suffered; there was storm and darkness. But then"--here for a moment his voice failed, and his flushed cheek and quivering lip betrayed the anguish a too hasty movement cost the broken frame. But, recovering himself quickly, he went on: "Then He arose and rebuked the wind and the sea; and there was a great calm. That calm lasts still. And oftentimes this narrow room seems to me the house of G.o.d, the very gate of heaven.

Moreover," he added, with a smile of strange brightness, "there is heaven itself beyond."

"But, senor and your Excellency, consider the disgrace and sorrow of your n.o.ble family--that is, I mean"--here the speaker paused in perplexity, and met the keen eye of the prior, fixed somewhat scornfully, as he thought, upon him. He was quite conscious that the Dominican was thinking him incapable, and incompetent to the task he had so earnestly solicited. He had sedulously prepared himself for this important interview, had gone through it in imagination beforehand, laying up in his memory several convincing and most pertinent exhortations, which could not fail to benefit his old pupil. But these were of no avail now; in fact, they all vanished from his recollection.

He had just begun something rather vague and incoherent about Holy Church, when the prior broke in.

"Honoured brother," he said, addressing with scrupulous politeness the member of a rival fraternity, "the prisoner may be more willing to listen to your pious exhortations, and you may have more freedom in addressing him, if you are left for a brief s.p.a.ce alone together.

Therefore, though it is scarcely regular, I will visit a prisoner in a neighbouring apartment, and return hither for you in due time."

Fray Sebastian thanked him, and he withdrew, saying as he did so, "It is not necessary for me to remind my reverend brother that conversation upon worldly matters is strictly forbidden in the Holy House."

Whether the prior visited the other prisoner or no, it is not for us to inquire; but if he did, his visit was a short one; for it is certain that for some time he paced the gloomy corridor with troubled footsteps.

He was thinking of a woman's face, a fair young face, to which that of Don Carlos Alvarez wore a startling likeness. "Too harsh, needlessly harsh," he murmured; "for, after all, _she_ was no heretic. But which of us is always in the right? Ave Maria Sanctissima, ora pro me! But if I can, I would fain make some reparation--to _him_. If ever there was a true and sincere penitent, he is one."

After a little further delay, he summoned Fray Sebastian by a peremptory knock at the inner door, the outer one of course remaining open. The Franciscan came, his broad, good-humoured face bathed in tears, which he scarcely made an effort to conceal.

The prior glanced at him for a moment, then signed to Herrera, who was waiting in the gallery, to come and make the door fast. They walked on together in silence, until at length Fray Sebastian said, in a trembling voice, "My lord, you are very powerful here; can _you_ do nothing for him?"

"I _have_ done much. At my intercession he had nine months of solitude, in which to recollect himself and ponder his situation, ere he was called on to make answer at all. Judge my amazement when, instead of entering upon his defence, or calling witnesses to his character, he at once confessed all. Judge my greater amazement at his continued obstinacy since. When a man has broken a giant oak in two, he may feel some surprise at being baffled by a sapling."

"He will not relent," said Fray Sebastian, hardly restraining his sobs.

"He will die."

"I see one chance to save him," returned the prior; "but it is a hazardous experiment. The consent of the Supreme Council is necessary, as well as that of my Lord Vice-Inquisitor, and neither may be very easy to obtain."

"To save his body or his soul?" Fray Sebastian asked anxiously.

"Both, if it succeeds. But I can say no more," he added rather haughtily; "for my plan is bound up with a secret, of which few living men, save myself, are in possession."

x.x.xIV.

Fray Sebastian's Trouble.

"Now, with fainting frame, With soul just lingering on the flight begun, To bind for thee its last dim thoughts in one, I bless thee. Peace be on thy n.o.ble head.

Years of bright fame, when I am with the dead!

I bid this prayer survive me, and retain Its power again to bless thee, and again.

Thou hast been gathered into my dark fate Too much; too long for my sake desolate Hath been thine exiled youth; but now take back From dying hands thy freedom."--Hemans

It was late in August. All day long the sky had been molten fire, and the earth bra.s.s. Every one had dozed away the sultry noontide hours in the coolest recesses of dwellings made to exclude heat, as ours to exclude cold. But when at last the sun sank in flame beneath the horizon, people began to creep out languidly to woo the refreshment of the evening breeze.

The beautiful gardens of the Triana were still deserted, save by two persons. One of these, a young lad--we beg pardon, a young gentleman--of fifteen or sixteen, sat, or rather reclined, by the river-side, eating slices from an enormous melon, which he cut with a small silver-hilted dagger. A plumed cap, and a gay velvet jerkin lined with satin, had been thrown aside for coolness' sake, and lay near him on the ground; so that his present dress consisted merely of a ma.s.s of the finest white holland, delicately starched and frilled, velvet hosen, long silk stockings, and fashionable square-toed shoes. Curls of scented hair were thrown back from a face beautiful as that of a girl, but bold and insolent in its expression as that of a spoiled and mischievous boy.

The other person was seated in the arbour mentioned once before, with a book in his hand, of which, however, he did not in the course of an hour turn over a single leaf. A look of chronic discontent and dejection had replaced the good-humoured smiles of Fray Sebastian Gomez. Everything was wrong with the poor Franciscan now. Even the delicacies of his patron's table ceased to please him; and he, in his turn, was fast ceasing to please his patron. How could it be otherwise, when he had lost not only his happy art of indirect ingenious flattery, but his power to be commonly agreeable or amusing? No more poems--not so much as the briefest sonnet--on the suppression of heresy were to be had from him; and he was fast becoming incapable of turning a jest or telling a story.

It is said that idiots often manifest peculiar pain and terror at the sound of music, because it awakens within them faint stirrings of that higher life from which G.o.d's mysterious dispensation has shut them out.

And it is true that the first stirrings of higher life usually come to all of us with pain and terror. Moreover, if we do not crush them out, but cherish and foster them, they are very apt to take away the brightness and pleasantness of the old lower life altogether, and to make it seem worthless and distasteful.

A new and higher life had begun for Fray Sebastian. It was not his conscience that was quickened, only his heart. Hitherto he had chiefly cared for himself. He was a good-natured man, in the ordinary acceptation of the term; yet no sympathy for others had ever spoiled his appet.i.te or hindered his digestion. But for the past three months he had been feeling as he had not felt since he clung weeping to the mother who left him in the parlour of the Franciscan convent--a child of eight years old. The patient suffering face of the young prisoner in the Triana had laid upon him a spell that he could not break.

To say that he would have done anything in his power to save Don Carlos, is to say little. Willingly would he have lived for a month on black bread and brackish water, if that could have even mitigated his fate.

But the very intensity of his desire to help him was fast making him incapable of rendering him the smallest service. Munebrga's flatterer and favourite might possibly, by dint of the utmost self-possession and the most adroit management, have accomplished some little good. But Fray Sebastian was now consciously forfeiting even the miserable fragment of power that had once been his. He thought himself like the salt that had lost its savour, and was fit neither for the land nor yet for the dunghill.

Absorbed in his mournful reflections, he continued unconscious of the presence of such an important personage as Don Alonzo de Munebrga, the Lord Vice-Inquisitor's favourite page. At length, however, he was made aware of the fact by a loud angry shout, "Off with you, varlets, sc.u.m of the people! How dare you put your accursed fishing-smack to sh.o.r.e in my lord's garden, and under his very eyes?"

Fray Sebastian looked up, and saw no fishing-boat, but a decent covered barge, from which, in spite of the page's remonstrance, two persons were landing: an elderly female clad in deep mourning, and her attendant, apparently a tradesman's apprentice, or serving-man.

Fray Sebastian knew well how many distracted pet.i.tioners daily sought access to Munebrga, to plead (alas, how vainly!) for the lives of parents, husbands, sons, or daughters. This was doubtless one of them.

He heard her plead, "For the love of Heaven, dear young gentleman, hinder me not. Have you a mother? My only son lies--"