Part 1 (2/2)
He was all sheathed in golden mail, his cloak was white as shroud: His vizor down, his sword unsheathed, corpse still he rode, and proud.”
”Ruy!” Carlos called at last, just a little timidly, from the next room--”Ruy!”
Ruy is the Spanish diminutive of Rodrigo, Juan's second name, and the one by which, for reasons of his own, it pleased him best to be called; so the very use of it by Carlos was a kind of overture for peace. Juan came right gladly at the call; and having convinced himself, by a moment's inspection, that his brother's hurt signified nothing, he completed the reconciliation by putting his arm, in familiar boyish fas.h.i.+on, round his neck. Thus, without a word spoken, the brief quarrel was at an end. It happened that the rain was over also, and the sun just beginning to s.h.i.+ne out again. It was, indeed, an effect of the sunlight which had given Carlos a pretext for calling Juan again to his side.
”Look, Ruy,” he said, ”the sun s.h.i.+nes on our father's words!”
These children had a secret of their own, carefully guarded, with the strange reticence of childhood, even from Dolores, who had been the faithful nurse of their infancy, and who still cast upon their young lives the only shadow of motherly love they had ever known--a shadow, it is true, pale and faint, yet the best thing that had fallen to their lot: for even Juan could remember neither parent; while Carlos had never seen his father's face, and his mother had died at his birth.
Yet it happened that in the imaginary world which the children had created around them, and where they chiefly lived, their unknown father was by far the most important personage. All great nations in their childhood have their legends, their epics, written or unwritten, and their hero, one or many of them, upon whose exploits Fancy rings its changes at will during the ages when national language, literature, and character are in process of development. So it is with individuals.
Children of imagination--especially if they are brought up in seclusion, and guarded from coa.r.s.e and worldly companions.h.i.+p--are sure to have their legends, perhaps their unwritten epic, certainly their hero. Nor are these dreams of childhood idle fancies. In their time they are good and beautiful gifts of G.o.d--healthful for the present, helpful for after-years. There is deep truth in the poet's words, ”When thou art a man, reverence the dreams of thy youth.”
The Cid Campeador, the Charlemagne, and the King Arthur of our youthful Spanish brothers, was no other than Don Juan Alvarez de Menaya, second and last Conde de Nuera. And as the historical foundation of national romance is apt to be of the slightest--nay, the testimony of credible history is often ruthlessly set at defiance--so it is with the romances of children; nor did the present instance form any exception. All the world said that their father's bones lay bleaching on a wild Araucanian battle-field; but this went for nothing in the eyes of Juan and Carlos Alvarez. Quite enough to build their childish faith upon was a confidential whisper of Dolores--when she thought them sleeping--to the village barber-surgeon, who was helping her to tend them through some childish malady: ”Dead? Would to all the Saints, and the blessed Queen of Heaven, that we only had a.s.surance of it!”
They had, however, more than this. Almost every day they read and re-read those mysterious words, traced with a diamond by their father's hand--as it never entered their heads to doubt--on the window of the room which had once been his favourite place of retirement:--
”El Dorado Yo he trovado.”
”I have found El Dorado.”
No eyes but their own had ever noticed this inscription; and marvellous indeed was the superstructure their fancy contrived to raise on the slight and airy foundation of its enigmatical five words. They had heard from the lips of Diego many of the fables current at the period about the ”golden country” of which Spanish adventurers dreamed so wildly, and which they sought so vainly in the New World. They were aware that their father in his early days had actually made a voyage to the Indies: and they had thoroughly persuaded themselves, therefore, of nothing less than that he was the fortunate discoverer of El Dorado; that he had returned thither, and was reigning there as a king, rich and happy--only, perhaps, longing for his brave boys to come and join him.
And join him one day they surely would, even though unheard of dangers (of which giants twelve feet high and fiery dragons--things in which they quite believed--were among the least) might lie in their way, thick as the leaves of the cork-trees when the autumn winds swept down through the mountain gorges.
”Look, Ruy,” said Carlos, ”the light is on our father's words!”
”So it is! What good fortune is coming now? Something always comes to us when they look like that.”
”What do you wish for most?”
”A new bow, and a set of real arrows tipped with steel. And you?”
”Well--the 'Chronicles of the Cid,' I think.”
”I should like that too. But I should like better still--”
”What!”
”That Fray Sebastian would fall ill of the rheum, and find the mountain air too cold for his health; or get some kind of good place at his beloved Complutum.”
”We might go farther and fare worse, like those that go to look for better bread than wheaten,” returned Carlos, laughing. ”Wish again, Juan; and truly this time--your wish of wishes.”
”What else but to find my father?”
”I mean, next to that.”
<script>