The Spanish Brothers: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

by Deborah Alcock

  XLI.

  More about the Penitent.

  "Ay, thus thy mother looked, With such a sad, yet half-triumphant smile. All radiant with deep meaning."--Hemans

  A slight incident, that occurred the following morning, partially brokedown the barrier of reserve between the two prisoners. After his earlydevotions, the penitent laid aside his mantle, took up a besom made oflong slips of cane, and proceeded, with great deliberation and gravity,to sweep out the room. The contrast that his stately figure, his nobleair, and the dignity of all his movements, offered to the menialoccupation in which he was engaged, was far too pathetic to beludicrous. Carlos could not but think that he wielded the lowlyimplement as if it were a chamberlain's staff of office, or a grandmarshal's baton. He himself was well accustomed to such tasks; for everyprisoner of the Santa Casa, no matter what his rank might be, was hisown servant. And it spoke much for the revolution that had taken placein his ideas and feelings, that though taught to look on all servileoccupations as ineffably degrading, he had never associated a thought ofdegradation with anything laid upon him to do or to suffer as theprisoner of Christ.

  And yet he could not endure to see his aged and stately fellow-prisonerthus occupied. He rose immediately, and earnestly entreated to beallowed to relieve him of the task, pleading that all such duties oughtto devolve on him as the younger. At first the penitent resisted,saying that it was part of his penance. But when Carlos continued tourge the point, he yielded; perhaps the more readily because his will,like his other faculties, was weakened for want of exercise. Then, withmore apparent interest than he had shown in any of his previousproceedings, he watched the rather slow and difficult movements of hisyoung companion.

  "You are lame, senor," he said, a little abruptly, when Carlos, havingfinished his work, sat down to rest.

  "From the pulley," Carlos answered quietly; and then his face beamedwith a sudden smile, for the secret of the Lord was with him, and hetasted the sweet, strange joy that springs out of suffering borne forHim.

  That look was the wire that drew an electric flash of memory from theclouds that veiled the old man's soul. What that sudden flash revealedwas a castle gate, at which stood a stately yet slender form robed insilk. In the fair young face tears and smiles were contending; but asmile won the victory, as a little child was held up, and made to kiss ababy-hand in farewell to its father.

  In a moment all was gone; only a vague trouble and uneasiness remained,accompanied by that strange sense of having seen or felt just the samething before, with which we are most of us familiar. Accustomed tosolitude, the penitent spoke aloud, perchance unconsciously.

  "Why did they bring you here?" he said, in a half fretful tone. "Youhurt me. I have done very well alone all these years."

  "I am sorry to incommode you, senor," returned Carlos. "But I did notcome here of my own will; neither, unhappily, can I go. I am aprisoner, like yourself; but, unlike you, I am a prisoner under sentenceof death."

  For several minutes the penitent did not answer. Then he rose, andtaking a step or two towards the place where Carlos sat, gravelyextended his hand. "I fear I have spoken uncourteously," he said. "Somany years have passed since I have conversed with my fellows, that Ihave well-nigh forgotten how I ought to address them. Do me the favour,senor and my brother, to grant me your pardon."

  Carlos warmly assured him no offence had been given; and taking theoffered hand, he pressed it reverently to his lips. From that moment heloved his fellow-prisoner in his heart.

  There was an interval of silence, then the penitent of his own accordresumed the conversation. "Did I hear you say you are under sentence ofdeath?" he asked.

  "I am so actually, though not formally," Carlos replied. "In thelanguage of the Holy Office, I am a professed impenitent heretic."

  "And you so young!"

  "To be a heretic?"

  "No; I meant so young to die.'

  "Do I look young--even yet? I should not have thought it. To me thelast two years seem like a long life-time."

  "Have you been two years, then, in prison? Poor boy! Yet I have beenhere ten, fifteen, twenty years--I cannot tell how many. I have lostthe account of them."

  Carlos sighed. And such a life was before him, should he be weak enoughto surrender his hope. He said, "Do you really think, senor, that theselong years of lonely suffering are less hard to bear than a speedythough violent death?"

  "I do not think it matters, as to that," was the penitent's not veryapposite reply. In fact, his mind was not capable, at the time, ofdealing with such a question; so he turned from it instinctively. Butin the meantime he was remembering, every moment more and more clearly,that a duty had been laid upon him by the authority to which his soulheld itself in absolute subjection. And that duty had reference to hisfellow-prisoner.

  "I am commanded," he said at last, "to counsel you to seek the salvationof your soul, by returning to the bosom of the one true Catholic andApostolic Church, out of which there is no peace and no salvation."

  Carlos saw that he spoke by rote; that his words echoed the thought ofanother, not his own. It seemed to him, under the circumstances,scarcely generous to argue. He spared to put forth his mental powersagainst the aged and broken man, as Juan in like case would have sparedto use his strong right arm.

  After a moment's thought, he replied,--

  "May I ask of your courtesy, senor and my father, to bear with me for alittle while, that I may frankly disclose to you my real belief?"

  Appeal could never be made in vain to that penitent's courtesy. Noheresy, that could have been proposed, would have shocked him half somuch as the supposition that one Castilian gentleman could beuncourteous to another, upon any account. "Do me the favour to stateyour opinions, senor," he responded, with a bow, "and I will honourmyself by giving them my best attention."

  Carlos was little used to language such as this. It induced him tospeak his mind more freely than he had been able to do for the last twoyears. But, mindful of his experience with old Father Bernardo at SanIsodro, he did not speak of doctrines, he spoke of a Person. In wordssimple enough for a child to understand, but with a heart glowing withfaith and love, he told of what He was when he walked on earth, of whatHe is at the right hand of the Father, of what He has done and is doingstill for every soul that trusts him.

  Certainly the faded eye brightened; and something like a look ofinterest began to dawn in the mournfully still and passive countenance.For a time Carlos was aware that his listener followed every word, andhe spoke slowly, on purpose to allow him so to do. But then there camea change. The listening look passed out of the eyes; and yet they didnot wander once from the speaker's face. The expression of the wholecountenance was gradually altered, from one of rather painful attentionto the dreamy look of a man who hears sweet music, and gives free courseto the emotions it is calculated to awaken. In truth, the voice ofCarlos was sweet music in his fellow-captive's ear; and he wouldwillingly have sat thus for ever, gazing at him and enjoying it.

  Carlos thought that if this was their reverences' idea of "asatisfactory penitent," they were not difficult to satisfy. And hemarvelled increasingly that so astute a man as the Dominican priorshould have put the task of his conversion into such hands. For thepiety so lauded in the penitent appeared to him mere passiveness--thesubmission of a soul out of which all resisting forces had been crushed."It is only life that resists," he thought; "the dead they can movewhithersoever they will."

  Intolerance always sets a premium on mental stagnation. Nay, it actuallyproduces it; it "makes a desert, and calls it peace." And what theInquisition did for the penitent, that it has done also for thepenitent's fair fatherland. Was the resurrection of dead and buriedfaculties possible for _him_? Is such a resurrection possible for _it_?

  And yet, in spite of the deadness of heart and brain, which he doubtednot was the result of cruel suffering, Carlos loved his fellow
-prisonerevery hour more and more. He could not tell why; he only knew that "hissoul was knit" to his.

  When Carlos, for fear of fatiguing him, brought his explanations to aclose, both relapsed into silence; and the remainder of the day passedwithout much further conversation, but with a constant interchange oflittle kindnesses and courtesies. The first sight that greeted the eyesof Carlos when he awoke the next morning, was that of the penitentkneeling before the pictured Madonna, his lips motionless, his handscrossed on his breast, and his face far more earnest with feeling--itmight be thought with devotion--than he had ever seen it yet.

  Carlos was moved, but saddened. It grieved him sore that his agedfellow-prisoner should pour out the last costly libation of love andtrust left in his desolated heart before the shrine of that which was nogod. And a great longing awoke within him to lead back this weary andheavy-laden one to the only Being who could give him true rest.

  "If, indeed, he is one of God's chosen, of his loved and redeemed ones,he will be led back," thought Carlos, who had spent the past two yearsin thinking out many things for himself. Certain aspects of truth,which may be either strong cordials or rank poisons, as they are used,had grown gradually clear to him. Opposed to the Dominican prior uponmost subjects, he was at one with him upon that of predestination. Forhe had need to be assured, when the great water floods prevailed, thatthe chain which kept him from drifting away with them was a strong one.And therefore he had followed it up, link by link, until he came at lastto that eternal purpose of God in which it was fast anchored. Since theday that he first learned it, he had lived in the light of that greatcentre truth, "I have loved thee"--_thee_ individually. But as he layin the gloomy prison, sentenced to die, something more was revealed tohim. "I have loved thee _with an everlasting love, therefore_ withloving-kindness have I drawn thee." The value of this truth, to him asto others, lay in the double aspect of that word "everlasting;" its lookforward to the boundless future, as well as backward on the mysteriouspast. The one was a pledge and assurance of the other. And now he wastaking to his heart the comfort it gave, for the penitent as well as forhimself. But it made him, not less, but more anxious to be God'sfellow-worker in bringing him back to the truth.

  In the meantime, however, he was quite mistaken as to the feelings withwhich the old man knelt before the pictured Virgin and Child. His heartwas stirred by no mystic devotion to the Queen of Heaven, but by somevery human feelings, which had long lain dormant, but which were nowbeing gradually awakened there. He was thinking not of heaven, but ofearth, and of "earth's warm beating joy and dole." And what attractedhim to that spot was only the representation of womanhood and childhood,recalling, though far off and faintly, the fair young wife and babe fromwhom he had been cruelly torn years and years ago.

  A little later, as the two prisoners sat over the bread and fruit thatformed their morning meal, the penitent began to speak more frankly thanhe had done before. "I was quite afraid of you, senor, when you firstcame," he said.

  "And perhaps I was not guiltless of the same feeling towards you,"Carlos answered. "It is no marvel. Companions in sorrow, such as weare, have great power either to help or to hurt one another."

  "You may truly say that," returned the penitent. "In fact, I oncesuffered so cruelly from the treachery of a fellow-prisoner, that it isnot unnatural I should be suspicious."

  "How was that, senor?"

  "It was very long ago, soon after my arrest. And yet, not soon. Forweary months of darkness and solitude, I cannot tell how many, I heldout--I mean to say, I continued impenitent."

  "Did you?" asked Carlos with interest. "I thought as much."

  "Do not think ill of me, I entreat of you, senor," said the penitentanxiously. "I am _reconciled_. I have returned to the bosom of thetrue Church, and I belong to her. I have confessed and receivedabsolution. I have even had the Holy Sacrament; and if ill, or indanger of death, it is promised I shall receive 'su majestad'[#] at anytime. And I have abjured and detested all the heresies I learned fromDe Valero."

  [#] "His Majesty," the ordinary term applied by Spaniards to the Host.

  "From De Valero? Did you learn from him?" The pale cheek of Carloscrimsoned for a moment, then grew paler than before. "Tell me, senor,if I may ask it, how long have you been here?"

  "That is just what I cannot tell. The first year stands out clearly;but all the after years are like a dream to me. It was in that firstyear that the caitiff I spoke of anon, who was imprisoned with me--youobserve, senor, I had already asked for reconciliation. It was promisedme. I was to perform penance; to be forgiven; to have my freedom._Pues_, senor, I spoke to that man as I might to you, freely and from myheart. For I supposed him a gentleman. I dared to say that theirreverences had dealt somewhat hardly with me, and the like. Idle words,no doubt--idle and wicked. God knows, I have had time enough to repentthem since. For that man, my fellow-prisoner, he who knew what prisonwas, went forth straightway and delated me to the Lords Inquisitors forthose idle words--God in heaven forgive him! And thus the door was shutupon me--shut--shut for ever. Ay de mi! Ay de mi!"

  Carlos heard but little of this speech. He was gazing at him witheager, kindling eyes. "Were there left behind in the world any that itwrung your heart to part from?" he asked, in a trembling voice.

  "There were. And since you came, their looks have never ceased to hauntme. Why, I know not. My wife, my child!" And the old man shaded hisface, while in his eyes, long unused to tears, there rose a mist, likethe cloud in form as a man's hand, that foretold the approach of thebeneficent rain, which should refresh and soften the thirsty soil,making all things young again.

  "Senor," said Carlos, trying to speak calmly, and to keep down the wildtumultuous throbbing of his heart--"senor, a boon, I entreat of you.Tell me the name you bore amongst men. It was a noble one, I know."

  "True. They promised to save it from disgrace. But it was part of mypenance not to utter it; if possible, to forget it."

  "Yet, this once. I do not ask idly--this once--have pity on me, andspeak it," pleaded Carlos, with intense tremulous earnestness.

  "Your face and your voice move me strangely; it seems to me that I couldnot deny you anything. I am--I ought to say, I _was_--Don Juan Alvarezde Santillanos y Menaya."

  Before the sentence was concluded, Carlos lay senseless at his feet.