Part 18 (1/2)
”Alisanda,” I said, ”has it been nothing to you, all these golden days since we met on the Monongahela?”
She raised her hand to arrange her scarf, letting fall a loose strand of hair down her cheek.
”_Santisima Virgen!_” she murmured, with fine-drawn irony. ”It has ever been a marvel to me--so chance a meeting.”
”Chance, indeed!” I replied. ”Chance that the utmost of my effort could not trace the road by which you left Was.h.i.+ngton; chance that Colonel Burr gave me the clew for which I sought; chance that of the nine horses I rode to a stand between Philadelphia and Elizabethtown, none failed me in my need.”
She gave me a mocking glance over her fan. ”_Madre de los Dolores!_ What a pity! A little time, and the gulf will roll between.”
”I will cross that gulf!”
”Not so; for it is the gulf of the Cross,” she mocked. ”I go the way of Vera Cruz--the True Cross. No heretic may pa.s.s that way.”
The words struck down my last hope. It was the truth--a double truth.
The way of my body was barred by the city of the Cross; the way of my spirit by that which to her the Cross symbolized.
”So this is the end,” I replied. ”We have come to the parting of the ways. Do not fear that I shall weary you with annoying persistence. I shall go my way before sunrise to-morrow. Only--let me ask that this last hour with you may hold its share of sweetness with the bitterness of parting,--Alisanda!”
”An hour?” she repeated. ”The air in here is close.”
She laid her fingers lightly upon my arm, and we pa.s.sed out into the moonlit balcony. For a time we sat silent, she gazing out across the broken slopes of the town, I gazing at her still white face and shadowy eyes. Her loveliness was part with the night and the moonlight and the scarlet bloom of the climber upon the balcony rail.
At last I could no longer endure the thought that she was lost to me; I could no longer deny utterance to my love and longing.
”Alisanda! dearest one! Is there then no hope that I may win you? I have no gallant speeches--my love is voiceless; no less is it a love that shall endure always. Alisanda! _my_ dearest one! is my love of no worth to you? Let your heart speak! Can it not give me one word of hope?”
My voice failed me. Throughout my pa.s.sionate appeal I failed to see the slightest change in her calm face. I had failed to stir her even to mockery. Truly all was now at an end! I bowed my head and groaned in most unmanly fas.h.i.+on.
The low murmur of her voice roused me to despairing eagerness. She spoke in a tone of light inconsequence, yet I seized upon the words as the drowning man clutches at straws.
”Love?--love?” she repeated. ”The word has become a jest. Men protest that they know the meaning of love--that they suffer its bitterest pangs. Yet speak to them of the days of chivalry, when gallant knights bore the colors of their ladies through deadly battle, and the ogling beaux turn an epigram on _les sauvages nous ancetres_!”
”Show me the way to the battlefield--I ask no more!” I cried.
”Words--words!” she mocked. ”The Cid would have found his way to the field of glory without asking. Were the way barred, El Campeador would have hewn his way through, though the barrier were of solid rock! But the men of to-day--!”
”Wait!” I broke in. ”Have you not yourself said that the way of the gulf is impa.s.sable for me?”
”True,” she a.s.sented, ”true! And not alone the gulf, but the barrier--the gulf of water and of the Cross; the barrier of rock and of blood.”
”Blue blood and red have been known to intermingle,” I argued.
”With love for solvent!” she murmured. The softness was only for the instant. ”Yet what of that other barrier?” she demanded. ”Between your land and the land to which I go lies the blood of Christ.”
”Is it then religion that is the insurmountable barrier--the impa.s.sable gulf? You have not lived all your life in Spain. I had hoped that not even your faith could close your heart against me, if only I might prove to you the greatness of my love.”
She sat silent for what seemed an endless time, toying idly with her fan. When at last she spoke, it was again in that light, inconsequential tone: ”To the eastward or northeastward of Santa Fe lies a vast snow-clad sierra. My kinsman once saw it from a great distance. He says it is called the _Sangre de Cristo_.”
”_Sangre de Cristo_--the Blood of Christ!” I said, lost in wonderment.