Part 50 (1/2)

But when he still remained steadfast, he turned away from him with an air of deep disappointment, though more in sorrow than in anger, as one pained by keen and unexpected ingrat.i.tude.

”I speak to thee no more,” he said. ”I believe there is in thy father's heart some little spark, not only of natural feeling but of the grace of G.o.d. I address myself to him.”

Whether Don Juan had never fully comprehended the statement of Carlos that he was under sentence of death, or whether the tide of emotion caused by finding in him his own son had swept the terrible fact from his remembrance, it is impossible to say; but it certainly came to him, from the lips of the prior, as a dreadful, unexpected blow. So keen was his anguish that Fray Ricardo himself was moved; and the rather, because it was impossible to the aged and broken man to maintain the outward self-restraint a younger and stronger person might have done.

More touched, at the moment, by his father's condition than by all the horrors that menaced himself, Carlos came to his side, and gently tried to soothe him.

”Cease!” said the prior, sternly. ”It is but mockery to pretend sympathy with the sorrow thine own obstinacy has caused. If in truth thou lovest him, save him this cruel pain. For three days still,” he added, ”the door of grace shall stand open to thee. After that term has expired, I dare not promise thy life.” Then turning to the agitated father--”If _you_ can make this unhappy youth hear the voice of divine and human compa.s.sion,” he said, ”you will save both his body and his soul alive. You know how to send me a message. G.o.d comfort you, and incline his heart to repentance.” And with these words he departed, leaving Carlos to undergo the sharpest trial that had come upon him since his imprisonment.

All that day, and the greater part of the night that followed it, the two wills strove together. Prayers, tears, entreaties, seemed to the agonized father to fall on the strong heart of his son like drops of rain on the rock. He did not know that all the time they were falling on that heart like sparks of living fire; for Carlos, once so weak, had learned now to endure pain, both of mind and body, with brow and lip that ”gave no sign.” Pa.s.sing tender was the love that had sprung up between those two, so strangely brought together. And now Carlos, by his own act, must sever that sweet bond--must leave his newly-found father in a solitude doubly terrible, where the feeble lamp of his life would soon go out in obscure darkness. Was not this bitterness enough, without the anguish of seeing that father bow his white head before him, and teach his aged lips words of broken, pa.s.sionate entreaty that his son--his one earthly treasure--would not forsake him thus?

”My father,” Carlos said at last, as they sat together in the moonlight, for their light had gone out unheeded--”my father, you have often told me that my face is like my mother's.”

”Ay de mi!” moaned the penitent--”and truly it is. Is that why it must leave me as hers did? Ay de mi, Costanza mia! Ay de mi, my son!”

”Father, tell me, I pray you, to escape what anguish of mind or body would you set your seal to a falsehood told to her dishonour?”

”Boy, how can you ask? Never!--nothing could force me to that.” And from the faded eye there shot a gleam almost like the fire of old days.

”Father, there is One I love better than ever you loved her. Not to save myself, not even to save you, from this bitter pain, can I deny him or dishonour his name. Father, I cannot!--Though this is worse than the torture,” he added.

The anguish of the last words pierced to the very core of the old man's heart. He said no more; but he covered his face, and wept long and pa.s.sionately, as a man weeps whose heart is broken, and who has no longer any power left him to struggle against his doom.

Their last meal lay untasted. Some wine had formed part of it; and this Carlos now brought, and, with a few gentle, loving words, offered to his father. Don Juan put it aside, but drew his son closer, and looked at him in the moonlight long and earnestly.

”How can I give thee up?” he murmured.

As Carlos tried to return his gaze, it flashed for the first time across his mind that his father was changed. He looked older, feebler, more wan than he had done at his coming. Was the newly-awakened spirit wearing out the body? He said,--

”It may be, my father, that G.o.d will not call you to the trial. Perhaps months may elapse before they arrange another Auto.”

How calmly he could speak of it;--for he had forgotten himself. Courage, with him, always had its root in self-forgetting love.

Don Juan caught at the gleam of hope, though not exactly as Carlos intended. ”Ay, truly,” he said, ”many things may happen before then.”

”And nothing _can_ happen save at the will of Him who loves and cares for us. Let us trust him, my beloved father. He will not allow us to be tempted above that we are able to bear. For he is good--oh, how good!--to the soul that seeketh him. Long ago I believed that; but since he has honoured me to suffer for him, once and again have I proved it true, true as life or death. Father, I once thought the strongest thing on earth--that which reached deepest into our nature--was pain. But I have lived to learn that his love is stronger, his peace is deeper, than all pain.”

With many such words--words of faith, and hope, and tenderness--did he soothe his weary, broken-hearted father. And at last, though not till towards morning, he succeeded in inducing him to lie down and seek the rest he so sorely needed.

Then came his own hour; the hour of bitter, lonely conflict. He had grown accustomed to the thought, to the _expectation_, of a silent, peaceful death within the prison walls. He had hoped, nay, certainly believed, that in the slow hours of some quiet day or night, undistinguished from other days and nights, G.o.d's messenger would steal noiselessly to his gloomy cell, and heart and brain would thrill with rapture at the summons, ”The Master calleth thee.”

Now, indeed, it was true that the Master called him. But he called him to go to Him through the scornful gaze of ten thousand eyes; through reproach, and shame, and mockery; the hideous zamarra and carroza; the long agony of the Auto, spun out from daybreak till midnight; and, last of all, through the torture of the doom of fire. How could he bear it?

Sharp were the pangs of fear that wrung his heart, and dread was the struggle that followed.

It was over at last. Raising to the cold moonlight a steadfast though sorrowful face, Carlos murmured audibly, ”What time I am afraid I will put my trust in thee. Lord, I am ready to go with thee, whithersoever thou wilt; only--with thee.”

He woke, late the following morning, from the sleep of exhaustion to the painful consciousness of something terrible to come upon him. But he was soon roused from thoughts of self by seeing his father kneel before the crucifix, not quietly reciting his appointed penance, but uttering broken words of prayer and lamentation, accompanied by bitter weeping.

As far as he could gather, the burden of the cry was this, ”G.o.d help me!

G.o.d forgive me! _I have lost it_!” Over and over again did he moan those piteous words, ”I have lost it!” as if they were the burden of some dreary song. They seemed to contain the sum of all his sorrow.