University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XVI.
JUAN DE ALAVA.

The morning, which followed the departure
of Pierre Delacroix and his companions
from the ruined rancho, dawned
as serene and gentle as the waking
of a new-born child. The sun was not
yet up above the tree-tops, which surrounded,
at a short distance, the lonely
dwelling-house of Margarita; but though
a soft blue shadow still lay over the deep
greenwood and rich barky thickets of
the garden, and though the arches of
the forest were filled with a thick mist,
the cloudless sky above was resplendent
with golden lustre. The air was vocal
with the song of birds, and the soft music
of a distant waterfall, came gratefully
to the ear blent with the fitful murmur
of the breeze among the billowy
branches.

Such were the sounds which hailed
Julia, as she awoke from her slumbers;
and for a little while as she lay in that
half conscious state, which will sometimes
intervene between perfect sleep
and perfect wakening, accustomed as
she had been for weeks to the sounds
of the forest, she fancied that she lay in
the litte tent which had so long been
her dwelling, perhaps dreamed that her
young husband slept beside her.

Suddenly she stretched out her hand,
and feeling that she was alone, started
at once from her sleep with a little cry,
and sat up in bed thoroughly aroused.
It was a minute or two, however, before
she could sufficiently collect her
thoughts to be satisfied where she was,
or how she had come thither. It was
not merely the bewilderment which often
comes upon us, when awakening
for the first time in a strange place, unconscious
of the change of scene, for

here, as she look around the chamber,
her eye failed to assist her memory.

So short a time had she remained
awake on the previous night, when she
retired to rest after the departure of her
friends, worn out by fatigue and sorrow,
that she had in fact scarcely surveyed
the room at all; and now she recognized
none of its features, although there was
something half familiar in it to her senses,
as if at some time or other, she had
seen it in a dream. For in truth, it was
the very chamber which the partisan
had described to her as that wherein
he had first beheld Margarita de Alava
amid the din and desolation of warfare.

Now all was calm and cool and silent,
except for the soft and pleasant sounds
which I have mentioned, yet in all respects
else the room and its arrangements
were unaltered. The massive
sculptured bed on which she lay, with
the light draperies of gauze festooned
in graceful curves around her; the exquisitely
carved crucifix of ebony and
ivory in a niche at the bed's head, and
in a smaller one, below it, the vase of
holy water; the fine old paintings in
rich frames upon the walls; the quaint
antiquely formed chairs and settees, the
tables with distorted legs, relics of a
past age, all met her eyes as something
which she must have seen before,
though where, she knew not.

There were books too upon the tables,
and instruments of music, and implements
of female industry, and vases
of fresh flowers, filling the air with a
pleasant perfume, and fifty other things
which indicated the habitual presence
of a refined and cultivated woman. It
must not be supposed that this uncertainty
continued long—not so long even
as it has taken us to describe it—nor
was it altogether an absolute doubt, so
much as a vague unconsciousness of
reality, which gradually yielded to the
powers of memory.

Before she had, however, fully collected
herself, a soft voice was heard singing
without, in a soft melancholy tone,
the exquisite old Spanish strain, “Rio
Verde, Rio Verde,” commemorative
of the death of brave Alonzo de Saavedra
in a wild foray with the moor, which
has been rendered into English, scarcely
interior to the original in melody and
pathos,

There was a singular pathos in the accents
and expression of the singer, nor
is it by any means improbable that the
misfortunes of her own land, prostrate
in spite of all the efforts of her bravest
sons beneath the iron heel of the invader—her
own land, every stream of
which had been well nigh choked with
native carnage, suggested themselves to
the singer so forcibly to her, as to render
accents naturally soft and pathetic,
plaintive in the extreme, and full of deep
melancholy.

A moment afterward the song ceased,
the door flew open, and Margarita de
Alava entered with her superb black
hair tightly braided round her brow,
her slender girlish form lightly arrayed
in a white linen dress, and her small
white feet unslippered. She carried in
her hands a little tray with chocolate
and sweetmeats, and little rolls of snow
white bread, and cool water from the
spring, and as she set them on the table,
she turned with a sad smile toward the
bed, saying, “You must pardon me,
lady, if I perform these little offices myself
and intrude my services upon you,
for the fortunes of war have imposed the
task of such light labors on me, happier
than many of my sisters, who are reduced
to utter penury and ruin.”

“Pardon me rather, dear Margarita
—for so you must let me call you—
that I permit you thus to wait on one,
who is so far in every way beneath you.
Except,” she added, with a winning
smile, “that in all times and countries
the character of a suppliant has been
invested with a sort of mournful dignity.”

“Is it so, lady? is it so, indeed?”
cried Margarita, half eagerly, half sorrowfully.
“No! no! I fear me, such
things are but the generous coinings of
the poet's brain. Who ever heard, who
ever felt, ever revered the dignity of a
suppliant nation? But no! no!” she
continued, in a prouder strain, with her
pale cheek kindling as she spoke, “fallen
she may be, vanquished, down-trodden,
overrun! but Mexico is not, nor
ever shall be suppliant!”

“Alas!” said Julia, deeply moved by
the constant pre-occupation of Margarita's
mind by the thought of her country's

sorrow, which became but the
more perceptible the longer they were
in company. “Alas! that I could console
you! but in such cases consolation
in insult! and yet I would pray you to
believe that there are noble and just and
wise hearts among my countrymen who
see, who deplore in this sad war, the
shame not of Mexico, but of America—
who abhor the laurels stained with the
blood of weak though desperate valor!
I would tell you that even among the
soldiery whose swords have hewed the
deepest into your steadfast ranks, there
are more than a few, who distrust the
justice of their country's cause, while
they maintain their country's honor;
who, while they exalt in the trained
valor of our armies bear honest testimony
to the strong defence, the unflinching
valor, the impassive hardihood of
yours!”

“You are generous to say so, lady!
and why should I not believe you?
There are good men, and wise and
brave in all nations, as there are base,
and bloodthirsty, and brutal. But believe
me, it is easier to be generous to
a downfallen enemy than to a conquering
foe. But come, will you not rise,
and break your fast, and then, if you
please, we will go out, and I will show
you what was once a very lovely garden,
and now is a very lovely wilderness,
and initiate you into the mysteries
of our every day life in Mexico.”

“But may I not speak farther with
you on this subject?” asked Julia, as
she arose, and proceeded to the ordering
of her simple toilet. “It seems to
me, that even if such subjects be painful,
we get rid of prejudices by conversing
on them, and perhaps learn to
love each other the better, for that we
have once been opposed in hostility.”

“It may be so, where the foes are
evenly matched, and the fight fairly
fought. It may be so with the victor's
thoughts toward the vanquished. But
believe me, believe me, the outraged,
trampled, beaten victim never can learn
to love the hand, though he may fawn
on it, which smote him. You may
have learned to think better of us, lady,
because I have heard tell that you
deemed us a poor, barbarous, base, cow
ardly, and cruel people; that you believed
our conquest would be boodless,
our subjugation easy and complete,
And lo! it has cost you the best blood
of your land, and though beaten at all
points, we are not, nor ever shall be
subjugated. Extirpate our race, annihilate
our blood, abolish our faith and
our tongue, you may, perhaps; but in
centuries, not years. Subjugate us, you
can never! Who ever saw a people
subjugated that were resolved to be
free?”

“But are you free, Margarita? I
have heard much of the oppression of
your military rulers, of the tyranny of
your great nobles, of the misery and
degradation of your people.”

“Dreams, lady! dreams or falsehoods!
Our people have all the freedom
they desire, all they are fit for?
And if not, where is the slave who
would not rather be a slave under his
native lord, than a freeman by compulsion
of a foreign ruler. No, dearest
lady, no. Those cries, those pretexts,
are the old legend, one and all—the
wolf's complaint against the lamb. The
plea of the oppressor against the oppressed
is ever fraud. And in all ages,
from the earliest, strong men have
coveted the goods, and preyed upon
the substance of the weak, and mighty
nations have despised the rights, and
devoured the very existence of small
countries; but, lady, God has judged
them for it, and will judge them for
ever.”

“We believe,” replied Julia, simply,
“that the judgments of the Great Ruler
are meted out to man, not here, but
hereafter; not in this world, but in the
world that is to come.”

“So do we, lady. So do we, also,
to men; but not to nations! To nations
there is no hereafter; for nations
there is no world to come. I have
heard wise men of my country say, long
years ago; aye, I have heard that it
was said years and years ere you or I
were born, that for the cruelies of our
race, in past time, to the poor Indians—
for the atrocities of Cortez, of Pizarro,
and their Spaniards—God would repay
to us vengeance an hundred fold, and
lo! the beginning of the payment!
Lady, I have lived to see our fields untilled,
our houses heaps of ruins, our
rivers red with blood, our brothers
slaughtered in the field, our sisters outraged

in their dwellings. I look to see
our cities level with the ground, or
worse: yet occupied, inhabited by the
invader; our altars desecrated; our
priests banished from their shrines;
our faith, our language, nay, our God
proscribed; and our people, the last
remnant of our race, fugitives on the
hills, dwellers with the wild goat and
wolf, even as the Aztecs were of old. I
look to see all this! But is our nation
guiltless? I have heard say that your
puritans, your Yankees of New England,
hunted your red men with as
keen a sword as our believers; that
they burnt whole tribes in their strong
holds—exterminated a whole race from
the very face of the green earth. I
have heard say that your government
does so still; that the Indian has no
rest, day or night, but still goes westward,
westward like the sun, like him
to set at last in the western sea. Lady,
I have heard tell of whips, and chains,
and slavery, in your proud land of
freedom! And for these things the
day shall come when God shall judge
you, even as he now judges us! May
He be merciful in that day to you and
yours, as he has in this trial to me and
mine, and may in that day raise up to
you and yours a defender and a saviour;
I will not say from my people.”

“As he has done now; as he has
done now;” cried Julia, bursting into
a fit of passionate tears; “in you who
thus protect me.”

“I thought not of that, dear lady.”

“Julia! Julia!” she cried implo
ringly. “Will you not call me Julia?
I called you Margarita; dear, dear
Margarita.”

“Julia; dear Julia, then,” replied
the Spanish girl, soothingly; “believe
me I thought not to wound you; but
my heart bleeds, my heart burns, when
I think of my country, and her wrongs.
Oh God!” she added, stamping her
foot on the marble floor with a strange
revulsion of feeling, and clenching her
small delicate hand, “Oh, God! that I
were a man!”

Julia's flesh quivered, as she heard
her speak, and she felt that singular
sensation of the hair creeping, as it
were, and bristling on the head, which
any sudden rousing of the nobler sentiments
at times produces in high and
nervous natures; and her throat seemed
to rise and swell, and her eyes were
filled with tears, though she wept not.

“And what could you do, Margarita,”
she said softly, “if you were a man?
what could the bravest man that ever
lived do for your country now? Do you
dream that, were you a man, you could
save her?”

“I could die for her!” answered the
other, still full of vehement and overwrought
feelings; when, at the very instant
of her fiery and eloquent reply, she
started, shivered in every limb, turned
paler than the drifted snow, and seemed
to be on the point of falling.

“Madre de Dios!” she exclaimed in
a low whisper, “heard you that?”

“Heard I what?” cried Julia, terrified
beyond expression at the sudden
change in her tone, manner, and countenance.
“I hear nothing but the wind,
the birds, the waterfall!”

“There! there again!” said the
other, standing erect and motionless,
with her finger upraised, her head
thrown a little backward, her lips apart,
her nostrils dilated, her eyes fixed on
vacancy. “There! there it is again!
They are coming!”

“In God's name, what do you hear?
who are coming?” almost shrieked
Julia, so fearfully were her nerves excited
and unstrung.

“That bugle! that Mexican bugle!”
answered Margarita; and, at the same
moment, the long wailing note of a
bugle rose faintly in the distance, so
faintly that even now it scarcely reached
the ears of Julia, although her companion,
more accustomed to the sound,
had recognised it long before.

Faint as it was, however, poor Julia
knew it instantly. It was the same
note she heard so often on that awful
day, when the lancers of Carrera were
engaged, hand to hand, with the Camanches,
scarcely a gunshot from her
hiding-place.

“Carrera!” she faltered, almost
fainting with excess of terror, “Is it
not Carrera?”

“It is Carerra's lancers.” was the
short stern reply of the Spanish girl,
“and that said, all is said. We are
lost! They are here!”

She added the last words hastily, for
as she paused, the sharp clatter of half-a

dozen horses entering the court-yard
at a gallop, and the jingling clash of
accoutrements, told as plainly as words,
that the cavalry were upon them.

An instant afterward, the jingling of
spurs, and the clang of a steel scabbard,
on the stone pavement of the outer-room,
was heard approaching the door
quickly.

Then Margarita's face lightened for
a moment, as she sprang to meet the
new comer.

“It is Juan!” she cried; “it is my
brother! and thanks be to God, alone!”

The door flew open, and on the threshold
stood the young guerilla. It was
the form of the Antinous, without his
effeminacy—it was the head of the conquering
Bacchus, without his sensuality.
A specimen more perfect of young manhood
never walked the earth. His rich
golden skin, his clustering black locks,
his deep dark eye, his high and massive
forehead, composed the very beau-ideal
of that type of manly beauty. His broad
round chest, thin flank, and shapely
limbs, all displayed to the utmost, by his
magnificent costume, promised a world
of agility and power.

His broad-brimmed hat, with its long
drooping plume, cast a yet deeper shadow
over the upper part of his face, from
which his eyes shone out with a strange
radiance; but there was nothing in it
fierce or angry. A dark crimson blanket
hung carelessly from his right shoulder,
half concealing the green velvet
jerkin, with its rich embroideries, and
the deer-skin pantaloons, open below the
knee, all slashed and fringed with gold;
but all the left side of his person was
exposed to the light as he paused on the
the threshold. And the first sunbeams
glittered on the hilt of the long straight
sword, which hung from his side, on the
butts of a pair of heavy pistols, and the
bright handle of a formidable stiletto in
his girdle.

There was wonder in his face, and
something that almost resembled awe, as
he gazed on the two beautiful young women,
but no fierceness of menace.

He was the very image, but cast in
a manlier and more stately mould, of
Margarita.

His eye, his features, his expression
were all hers, with all her tenderness,
her softness—almost, I had said, her
girlishness.

Yet, unless rumor lied, and in his
case it was never so believed, deeds
had been done by that soft, beardless,
tender, girlish youth, that would have
well entitled him to the fame of a hero,
or a Cataline.

“Madrc de Dios! who is this?

“Brother! Juan! brother!” exclaimed
Margarita, seizing him in her
arms, and striving to embrace him.

“What have you done, mad girl?
Who is this, I say, who is this, Margarita?”

“A suppliant, a fugitive, a friend, a
sister, a sister of the Partizan—of Pedro,
my brother, Pedro el Salvador!”

“An American,” he said slowly, his
brow gradually uniting into a black
frown, as he uttered the word, and his
eye growing lurid with a sort of concentrated
fire, then laying his hand on the
hilt of his stiletto, he muttered through
his set teeth, “She must die!”

“Never! no! for your life! for my
soul! for the name of God! for the
most holy virgin! no, brother, no! not
while I live! He brought her here!
He who preserved your life, and my
honor! He asked me to protect her!
and I swore it by my mother's soul!
and I now swear it!”

“Fool!” he almost shouted in his
rage, as he thrust her aside violently,
“Carrera will be here within ten minutes,
and all our lives are forfeit by
your treason!”

“Better so, than our honor lost!”

But he heeded not her words, but
strode forward with a firm determined
step toward Julia, who had fallen almost
senseless into a large arm chair beside
the bed. His dagger was bare; he
stood close over her, and she had neither
tongue to pray, nor hand to resist.

His arm was raised to strike—the
keen blade flashed in the sunlight as it
descended—but ere it found its living
sheath, another blade, held in as firm a
hand, although it was a woman's, crossed
it! Sparks flashed from the sharp
collision of the steel, and Juan's stiletto
flew to the further end of the room,
wrenched from his fingers by the slight
of his sister's hand.

And she, with her slight form dilated,

and her face full of glorious inspiration
stood before him, menacing, overcrowing
him.

“Strike her!” she cried, “kill her!
and by the mother of our Lord, the instant
that your dagger finds her heart,
this shall find mine!” and she shook
her own weapon in his face. “This,
which I bear to save myself from dishonor,
has saved my brother from disgrace!”

“She is saved!” said Alava, gloomily,
“but we are lost! or rather we are
all lost together! Think you, Carrera
will spare her for her beauty, or you
for your purity, or me for—my folly?
She is a prisoner; we are traitors! and
we shall all die together!”

“Be it so! we will die together. I
never knew that you feared to die, my
brother! I only fear dishonor!”

“That may precede death,” he replied,
more gloomily than before.
“Carrera's men will make small distinction
between a captive American,
and Mexican traitress!”

“You forget, brother, this can save
me,” and she again showed the weapon,
which she had wielded so boldly, so successfully.

“By your own hand, sister?”

“By yours it were better, Juan!”

“Be it so, we will die together,”
and as he spoke, he walked deliberately
across the room, and picked up his
weapon.

“But why die at all?” exclaimed
Margarita, suddenly, “they will not
tarry long. We can conceal her. In
the niche, you know, in the niche!
Sanchez, and Estefania, and Francisco,
need but a hint to make them as mute
as statues. We can conceal her, brother,
and be saved!”

“He knows that they came hither.
We have traced their hoof-tracks to the
very gate. A wounded soldier saw
them leave their hiding-place, and we
met Carrera on their track. I know
not how we failed to meet them. Besides,
Sanchez has owned that they have
been here.”

“Has he owned that she is here?”

“No. He never named her.”

“Where is he?”

“In arrest.”

“And Estefania?”

“In arrest.”

“And Francisco?”

“And he likewise.”

“Then we are saved.”

“How saved?”

“Go! Tell them, you, to swear that
the dragoons forced our hospitality by
menace, which we could not resist.
They were five strong, young men,
well armed. What could we do?”

“It may save us—who knows?”

“It will save us! Do it! away!
every moment is a life!”

Then, as he left the room in haste,
she sprang up on the bed, touched a
spring in the wall, and the back of the
shallow niche in which the crucifix
stood flew open, turning outward on a
hinge, disclosing a small circular closet,
lighted by a small air-hole, and containing
a low stone bench, wrought in the
wall.

“Up! up!” she exclaimed, shaking
Julia sharply by the arm. “Up! and
in there, or all our lives are forfeit;
and, as you live, whatever you may
hear or see, stir not, speak not, breathe
not, as you prize life and honor!

And aroused from her prostration by
the dreadful emergency, and nerved by
the firmness of the Spanish maiden,
Julia did rise, pale as a ghost, but calm
and firm, and kissed and blessed her
hostess, and mounted into the small
hiding-place, and drew the secret door
close after her.

Nearer and nearer came the bugle
horn, and then the clang of hoofs, the
orders of the officers, the din of the
men dismounting, and the clash and
clatter of their arms.

Hurriedly, in the meantime, had Margarita
thrust aside the few articles of
Julia's clothing which were scattered
about the room, but when she thought
that all was safe, and the steps of the
officers were heard in the outer hall,
she sat down quietly to her embroidery,
and took up again her mournful song,

and was singing tranquilly and unconcerned,
when her brother again entered
the apartment.