Volume Ii Part 4 (1/2)
”I will shrive me then, and then let me go, for thy presence persecutes me.--Well, and perhaps it is better; for it is long since I have looked upon a man of G.o.d--long since I have spoken with any just Christian but _one_,--and him I have given up to the murderers. Hear me then, and then absolve or condemn as thou wilt, for I judge myself; and I confess to thee, only that my words may drive thee away, as would the moans of a coming pestilence. Hear me then, friar, and then begone from me.”
”Arise,” said Camarga, ”I seek not thy confession, at least not now: I have that will draw it from thee, at a fitter time and place. In this distant spot, thou art exposed to danger from the infidels.”
”If thou fearest them, away! Why dost thou trouble me? If thou stayest, listen to my words; for though they come too late, yet will they cause thee to do justice to the name, and say ma.s.ses for the soul, of Juan Lerma.”
”Speak of Juan Lerma,” said Camarga, with a trembling voice, ”and I will indeed listen to thee. _In nomine Dei Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti_, speak and speak truly. Cursed be thou, even by my lips, if thou speakest that which is false, or concealest aught that is true!”
”Truth, though I die,--and let me die when it is spoken,” said Magdalena, placing her lips with the instinctive reverence of habit to the cross which Camarga extended. As she kissed it, her heart seemed to soften, and she shed many bitter tears, while pouring forth her broken and melancholy story.
”Know, father,” she said, not once doubting that she had a true father of the church before her, ”that it was my misfortune never to have known the kindness and care of a parent.”
”Let that be pa.s.sed,” said Camarga, hurriedly. ”Speak not of the sins of thy youth, a thousand times confessed, and a thousand times absolved.
Speak of thy coming to the island,--of thy broken vows,--thy--” But here perceiving that Magdalena started with a sort of affright, at finding how far his knowledge had antic.i.p.ated her divulgements, he continued, with better discretion, ”Thus much do I know--_how_ I know, ask not; and yet thou mayst be told, too, that much of thy fate was interwoven with that of Villafana.”
”_My_ fate, and that of Villafana!” cried Magdalena, with a withering look of contempt. But instantly changing to a more submissive air, she exclaimed, ”My _story_, indeed, father, but not my fate. If he have confessed to you, then do you know enough,--perhaps all. He told you, then, that his avarice, gratified at the expense of a horrible crime,--the destruction of the s.h.i.+p, and the lives of all within it, abbess, nuns, sailors, and all,--was the cause of all my calamities, since it was my hard fate not to perish with the rest. He robbed the s.h.i.+p of the golden and silver church-vessels, when we were near to the port, and made his escape to the sh.o.r.e, leaving us to sink in the midst of a storm then rising. Our pilot having no hope but in running upon the sh.o.r.e, then within sight, ran the vessel among certain rocks, where it was beaten to pieces. Father, it chanced to be my fate, and mine alone, to be plucked out of that roaring sea, by one to whom, when lying in a gulf ten times more hideous, I refused to stretch out my hand. Father!
last night a word from my lips would have saved the life of Juan Lerma, and I did not speak it!”
”Dwell not on this,” said Camarga, sternly. ”Rather thank heaven that thou wert rendered unable by any exercise of criminal love, to preserve on the earth's surface a wretch, at whose footstep it shuddered.”
”Hah!” cried Magdalena, starting up in a transport of indignation, and sending daggers from her eyes, ”who art thou, that speakest so falsely and foully of Juan Lerma? Wert thou, instead of a pattering friar, a canonized saint in heaven, still wert thou but a thing of dross and earth, compared with him thou malignest!”
Before Camarga could rebuke this burst of pa.s.sion, she sank, as before, to the earth, weeping afresh; for she was in that pitiable state of mental feebleness, in which life seems only to continue in impulses,--a chain of convulsions and exhaustions. ”Alas, father,” she continued, with sobs, ”you have been taught, like the rest, to misconceive and belie the best and most unfortunate of men;--for such is Juan Lerma;--and you have perhaps joined with the rest to compa.s.s his destruction. Has he wronged you? no--you have imagined a wrong. Has he wronged Cortes? no--he has wronged no one; but the ear of Cortes was open to his enemies. Hear me, father, and while you condemn me, listen to the refutation of slander. Father, when I opened mine eyes to the light, and in the presence of him who had saved me, I forgot my vows; nay, I thought that heaven had absolved them in the wreck, and ordained that I should be happy in a new existence. Never before had I looked upon the world, and the people of the world,--never before had I looked upon Juan Lerma. When had I seen one smile upon me with affection?
Father, for a second such smile, I would have moaned again on the wreck, seeing my companions swept from me one by one. I grew cunning and deceitful, and when they asked me of the s.h.i.+p and people, I told them falsehoods, lest they should bring me the veil and the priest, and carry me from his presence. Alas! and my deceit availed not; he smiled no more; and when Hilario spoke of affection--affection for me,--Juan Lerma withdrew without a sigh, without a struggle.”
”Saints of heaven!” cried Camarga, starting with horror, gasping for breath, and, in the sense of suffocation, forgetting his a.s.sumed character so much as to fling back the cowl that had concealed his features. ”Dost thou speak me the truth? On thy life,--on thy hopes of heaven's forgiveness,--on thy love even for this lost, perhaps this dead, youth,--I charge thee speak me the truth. Went there no more than this between you? And Juan Lerma loved you not? and Villafana belied ye both? And you are not--”
He paused in agitation, unable to utter another word; and Magdalena, surprised as much at his extraordinary interest in her story, as well as confounded by the absence of the tonsure, and the glittering of an iron gorget about his throat, seemed for a moment unable to answer his questions. But summoning her spirits at last, she said,
”Thou art not a priest, but a layman, a stranger, and a man of sin! But be who thou wilt, friend or foe, thou knowest now enough of my history to be ent.i.tled to know all. Never did man couple my name with shame, and think of any but him who died under the dagger of Villafana. As for Juan Lerma, not even Cortes, his bitterest enemy, would dare accuse him of a deed of dishonour. Stranger, if thou art interested in the betrayed and murdered Juan, know at least that he died innocent of any wrong to Magdalena.”
”Now G.o.d be praised for this good word!” said Camarga, dropping on his knees, and speaking with what seemed a distraction of fervour and delight: ”G.o.d be praised that I may not think, at my death-hour, that my sins have caused among my children the crime of incest! G.o.d be praised!
G.o.d be praised!”
”Incest! _Thy_ children!” exclaimed Magdalena, wildly. ”What art thou?
What is this thou sayst?”
”What do I say I and why need I say it?” cried Camarga, springing up and wringing his hands--”have we not slain him among us? Oh, wretched Magdalena, if, by thine influence, he was brought to this pa.s.s, know that thou hast slain thine own brother!”
At this strange and exciting revelation, Magdalena, who had, in the ecstacy of expectation, seized upon Camarga's hands with a convulsive grasp, uttered a scream, wild, loud, and thrilling, and yet how unlike to that which rose from her breaking heart in the prison! It was some such cry as might be supposed to come from a despairing Christian, who finds that the gates, which he thinks are conducting him to h.e.l.l, have suddenly ushered him into the walks of paradise. It mingled fear and astonishment with joy, but joy predominant over the others; and though it sounded as if coming from a bursting heart, it was as if from one bursting in the over-bound and expansion of a breast released from a mountain of oppression. It echoed over the lake, and seemed to have called up the spirits thereof; for before its last hysterical echo had vibrated on the ear, there sprang up, as if they had risen from the earth or the waters, six or seven athletic barbarians, flouris.h.i.+ng heavy macanas, who rushed at once upon the pair.
At the sight of such unexpected and formidable antagonists, though taken entirely by surprise, Camarga s.n.a.t.c.hed his concealed sword from the scabbard, leaped with great intrepidity betwixt Magdalena and the nearest savage, who seemed the leader of the party, and made a blow at him, while calling to her,
”Fly! fly! and tell Cortes that thy brother--” But his lips finished not the sentence. Whether it was that he was rendered helpless by long continued disease, was embarra.s.sed by the friar's ca.s.sock, or was really unskilful in the use of weapons, it is certain that his blade dropped harmless on the macana of the warrior. Before he could recover his guard, the battle-axe of the Mexican fell upon his head with deadly violence, and he rolled, to all appearance a dying man, on the ground.
At the same instant, another warrior clutched upon Magdalena, who, though pale as death, and agitated by a long succession of pa.s.sions, yet drew the dagger she always carried at her girdle, and aimed it at the breast of the infidel. Before it could do him any harm, it was s.n.a.t.c.hed out of her hand, and she herself caught up as by the grasp of a giant, in the arms of the leader, and hurried to the water. In an instant more, she was placed in a piragua, which her capturers drew from a reed-brake hard by, and secured, though not rudely, beyond the possibility of further resistance, among the infidels. They caught up their paddles, uttered a wild yell, and the next moment dashed from the sh.o.r.e, and were hidden among the mists of the lake.
CHAPTER VII.