XLIV.
Upon the very morning that Doña Isabel and her companion left Guanapila, news which might perhaps have changed their movements had they heard of it flew like wildfire over the city. The convents throughout Mexico had been simultaneously opened under a decree of the Liberal government, and thousands of women dedicated to a cloistered life were thus set free to choose anew their destiny.
Women who for half a century, perhaps, had lived apart from life and love were returned to die amid the turmoils of a home where love for them had ceased, or to pass over seas to seclusion in strange lands. Others, in whom voices as of demons were but just then ceasing to tempt the memory with whispers of the world and its alluring joys, saw those joys actually within their reach, and with dismay sought to turn their eyes away, and prayed for strength to brave the perils of the deep, and bear the homesickness that in a strange country would torment the soul of the cloistered nun as surely as if she had been free to gaze upon the valleys and mountains of the native land she was about to leave forever. Younger women, those to whom the early years of seclusion had brought but disenchantment, were cruelly roused from the stupor of habit which was succeeding pain and presaging content, and with secret regret now clung to the vows they fain would have cast aside forever, or in a few—a very few—cases became that shunned and despised creature, a recreant nun. That night was the signal for horror and tears throughout the land. A wail arose from thousands of families, about to catch a glimpse of their consecrated dear ones, and then to know them banished forever. Such uprooting of ties, such griefs, such domestic woes, are inevitable in all great national or social revolutions.
A certain secrecy had been observed in the preparations for and execution of this stroke of policy, which had indeed been threatened and openly urged as a political necessity, but which in spite of the exile of the archbishops and the suppression of monasteries had been thought—even by those who acknowledged its probable benefits to the nation—too daring a measure ever to be carried into effect. It had been thought a dream of the arch-iconoclast Juarez. But he was a man whose dreams were apt to come true; and so it happened upon this summer night, striking admiration and consternation to the hearts of Liberals and Conservatives alike, for there was scarce a family of either party throughout Mexico that was not represented in the vast religious houses which abounded in every town. Into these, overcoming their superstitious scruples, the populace for the first time now penetrated, and learned something of the surroundings and consequent life of those whom for centuries they had supported as saints, dedicated to prayer and fasting for the sins of the people. To their disenchantment and surprise, the people found many of these gloomy piles filled with wide and beautiful chambers, where flowers and musical instruments stood side by side with the altar andprie Dieu, and parlors and refectories which opened upon gardens planted with the choicest and most luxuriant shrubs and flowers. There were kitchens too where the choice conserves were made which sometimes found a way to the outer world, and where doubtless other savory dishes were prepared for the saintly sisterhoods. In many of these retreats each nun had her servant, who came and went at her command, and life—if one may judge from the inanimate things and the low whispers that sometimes reached the outer air—was made a soft and sensuous prelude to the celestial harmony of eternity.
But there were others—and they were many—where the utmost austerity pictured by the devout secular mind was practised; where entered the poor daughter, or she whom the priests perceived had a true vocation, or a deep and agonizing grief, which would keep her faithful to the vows of poverty, of devotion, and obedience. There were none of those amiable daughters of rich families too bountifully supplied with girls, and for whom a dowry to theChurch provided a safe and pleasant home, whence they might easily glide through this life into another,—where female angels would never be esteemed too plentiful,—but where were only the poor, the sorrowful, the despairing; and the well-filled vaults beneath the gloomy chapels attested how rich a harvest death had gleaned in those dreary abodes of penance.
For many days the officers in command at various points had been in possession of orders,—which it is to be conjectured were in many cases transmitted to the abbesses of the principal nunneries, that they might take advantage of this notice by quietly disbanding their sisterhoods and sending each member to her own family, or in communities to the United States or some transatlantic land. But the opportunity for moral martyrdom was not to be destroyed by a mere concession to convenience, and not in a single case was the knowledge acted upon,—except perhaps that in a few convents upon the designated night the nuns refrained from repairing to their dormitories, but prepared for exit, awaited the mandate praying in the lighted chapels; and where this occurred, the mothers superior afterward acquired reputations of specialsanctitysanctityfor the supposed spirit of prophecy which had moved them. But in the majority of these establishments, so absolute was the belief that the threatened invasion would never be attempted, or if attempted would bring upon the intruders the instant vengeance of the Almighty, that no change was made in usual habits, and an outward composure was maintained, which we may believe among the initiated at least disguised many a beating heart filled with genuine horror, or with a wild guilty anticipation from which it shrank in remorse. The world! the world! With a turn of the lock, with scarce more than a step, they would be in it; and then—then!
Guanapila was not, strictly speaking, a convent city. The few small retreats within it were vacated with so little commotion that, except in the houses to which the sisters were removed, nothing was known of the measure until the following morning. But in the much smaller town of El Toro there were whole streets lined on either side with high, massive, and windowless walls which were the façades of vast cloisters. It was with feelings of intensethough repressed excitement that Vicente Gonzales placed himself at the head of a small force which was to demand entrance to those formidable but peaceful structures, while the mass of the troops remained at the citadel, ready upon a signal to enforce his authority, whether questioned by Church or people. It was true the populace had declared itself Liberal in sentiment ever since the defeat of Ramirez had left them under the guns of theJuaristas; but bred as they had been under the very shadow of these colossal monuments of the Church it was not unlikely that when their sanctity was threatened, the momentary conversion of the citizens to patriotism might yield to zeal in the defence of institutions that had appeared to them as unassailable as the very heavens.
Vicente Gonzales might readily have sent another to fulfil the dubious task before him,—in fact in most cases men of dignity unconnected with the army were chosen as peaceful ambassadors of the power that held the sword; but the hour had arrived for which this man had prayed and fought,—for which he would have prayed and fought had no individual suffering added sharpness to the sting of the thorn that for so long had tormented his nation. He himself, he resolved, would execute the decree that should sweep this great incubus from the land. Perchance among the released he might find one whom he had never consciously for one moment forgotten; he might see her, if but for a moment, as she passed in the throng. He had never ceased to see the yearning, despairing, yet resolute expression upon the young face of Herlinda Garcia, as amid clouds of incense it faded from his sight behind the iron bars that separated her and her sister nuns from the body of the church whence he had witnessed her living entombment. That was in a city far away; most likely she was there now. Yet there was a chance,—a mere chance!
Strangely enough, Ashley Ward had never spoken the name of Herlinda to Gonzales; nor had either mentioned that of Chinita—an inexplicable yet differing motive holding both silent. The rapid events of the war, which had given full occupation to body and mind, had prevented discussion of domestic matters, and there was something in the reticence of Gonzales that forbade aught but deeplyserious investigation; and for the present Ward was unprepared to attempt this. They were friends; but there were deeps in the nature of each that the other made no attempt to fathom. Upon this night Ward knew the mind of Gonzales perhaps better than did the man himself; and throughout the unwonted scenes of which he was a mere passive spectator, to him the most engrossing were the emotions that betrayed themselves upon the countenance of the commanding officer.
As Ashley and Gonzales left their quarters together, behind them followed closely a man in a sergeant’s uniform, who halted painfully, and across whose face was a livid scar. To those who had heard nothing of the torture he had undergone, Pedro Gomez would have been scarcely recognizable,—for besides the disfiguring scar, there was an expression of vengeful and ferocious daring where before had been but dogged obstinacy and a certain rough kindliness; and to those who had believed him dead, his appearance would have brought a superstitious horror as that of one escaped from the torments of the damned.
Besides these three, several officers and other gentlemen, with a small guard of soldiers, passed out of the citadel afoot, and at a short interval were followed by all the available carriages of the town. What occurred thereafter may perhaps be best described by a translation of the chronicles of the time:—
“One night—one terrible night—a long and unusual sound, a prolonged rumble, was heard in the streets. It seemed shortly as if all the carriages in the city had become mad, now rushing hither, now thither, waking from sleep the peaceful neighborhood; so that each person demanded of the other, ‘What is this?’ ‘What has happened?’ and no one could answer with certainty the other.“While the people wondered, the carriages stopped at the doors of the nunneries, and the gentlemen charged with the commission demanded entrance, and intimated to the nuns the order to leave their cells and refrain from reuniting in cloister.“‘But, gentlemen, for God’s love!’“‘How can this be?’“‘His will be done!’“‘But where can we go? Oh, what iniquity!’“Such were the phrases that broke the startled stillness of the cloisters. But the commissioners were deaf to all appeals, merely rubbing their hands and saying,—“‘Let us go. Let us go on, Señoritas! We have no time to lose!’“Truly the time was limited,—that night only, for perchance by day the gentlemen commissioners would have had a distaste to penetrate the convents; or perhaps only by night can certain mischievous deeds be carried to the desired exit.“It is said that some naughty novices upon hearing themselves called señoritas forgot for an instant their grief, and smiled. There did not lack also of those who had entered the category of grave mothers who did the same! And after all, was not this a venial and excusable fault? Should not a girl, beautiful and fragrant as a jasmine, become tired of hearing herself addressed every hour and every day in the year as ‘Little Mother,’ ‘My Reverend Mother,’ ‘How is your Reverence?’...“This was an event which each one was obliged to accept as she would, but none the less surely. ‘Came it from God? Came it from Satan?’ By either it may have come; but is it not true that Satan is—ourselves?”
“One night—one terrible night—a long and unusual sound, a prolonged rumble, was heard in the streets. It seemed shortly as if all the carriages in the city had become mad, now rushing hither, now thither, waking from sleep the peaceful neighborhood; so that each person demanded of the other, ‘What is this?’ ‘What has happened?’ and no one could answer with certainty the other.
“While the people wondered, the carriages stopped at the doors of the nunneries, and the gentlemen charged with the commission demanded entrance, and intimated to the nuns the order to leave their cells and refrain from reuniting in cloister.
“‘But, gentlemen, for God’s love!’
“‘How can this be?’
“‘His will be done!’
“‘But where can we go? Oh, what iniquity!’
“Such were the phrases that broke the startled stillness of the cloisters. But the commissioners were deaf to all appeals, merely rubbing their hands and saying,—
“‘Let us go. Let us go on, Señoritas! We have no time to lose!’
“Truly the time was limited,—that night only, for perchance by day the gentlemen commissioners would have had a distaste to penetrate the convents; or perhaps only by night can certain mischievous deeds be carried to the desired exit.
“It is said that some naughty novices upon hearing themselves called señoritas forgot for an instant their grief, and smiled. There did not lack also of those who had entered the category of grave mothers who did the same! And after all, was not this a venial and excusable fault? Should not a girl, beautiful and fragrant as a jasmine, become tired of hearing herself addressed every hour and every day in the year as ‘Little Mother,’ ‘My Reverend Mother,’ ‘How is your Reverence?’...
“This was an event which each one was obliged to accept as she would, but none the less surely. ‘Came it from God? Came it from Satan?’ By either it may have come; but is it not true that Satan is—ourselves?”
The party headed by Gonzales asked themselves no such questions as these, but cautiously, swiftly, and effectively did the work, which history might criticise. No time was allowed the nuns for preparation. Even from the richest convents few articles were carried away as the nuns dispersed. Perhaps more previous preparation than was suspected or afterward acknowledged had been made; certain it is that the most magnificent and valuable jewels had disappeared from the vestments of the virgins and saints upon the altars. But as quickly as might be the weeping and lamenting sisters were placed in carriages and conveyed to houses ready to receive them; though many in the confusion wandered out into the darkness and rain afoot, and gave a pathetic chapter to the tale of bloodless martyrdom. As one by one the convents were vacated, the party passed on; until the smallestand dreariest of those retreats, that which nestled beneath the shadow of the parish church, was reached.
Throughout the work Gonzales had spoken only to give the necessary orders. The measure that in itself had been so dear to his soul was now in its actual execution repugnant to him,—the tears, the sighs, the long processions of black-robed and wailing women distressed his heart, and filled him with shame and anger. As all this continued, his face darkened and a profound melancholy oppressed him. It was raining dismally. In other towns doubtless the same scenes were being enacted. He turned faint, his eyes filled as with blood. Even Ashley Ward, amid the intense interests of the scenes around him,—the views of those grand interiors lighted by the candles borne by the retiring nuns, and the red glare of the soldier’s torches,—felt the influence of the deep sadness of this solemn exodus. The clouds of incense sickened him, and through them the glorified Madonnas, the bleeding Christs upon the altars, the troops of black-robed nuns themselves, seemed alike beings of another world, into which he had stepped unbidden. The light shone upon rows and rows of white faces, which looked forth from their wrappings like faces of dead saints. He seemed to see each individual one. He was excited to the utmost; the blood pulsed hotly through every vein, yet a sense of keen disappointment chilled his heart, and unconsciously to himself something of what he read upon the faces of Gonzales and Pedro was reflected upon his own. A profound quiet and solemnity fell upon the party, as they passed the vestibule and penetrated the dim recesses of the Convent of the Martyrs.
There the nuns were all gathered in the chapel, praying and waiting, and the wail of the Miserere stole from the great organ through the dim arches and bare cells. In that place there was nothing of beauty, of grace, of sensuous luxury. The stern austerities of an asceticism scarce surpassed in mediæval days was found behind those massive and windowless walls, which shut out the light, material and moral, of the nineteenth century.
As the men entered the chapel, the nuns fell upon their knees and covered their faces,—all except the abbess, who remained standing to hear the mandate of expulsion.
“Blessed be God!” responded her deep, pathetic voice, “Blessed be God in all his works! Sisters, let us go hence;” and taking up the woful strains when the organ ceased, with each nun adding to them the weird beauty of her voice, the abbess led the way to the portal, and the sisterhood passed into the bleak darkness of the unfamiliar street.
By this time the wind was blowing,—a summer’s wind, yet it pierced the bodies upon which for years no air of heaven had blown,—and it was raining heavily. Fortunately many vehicles had gathered at the curb, and ere long the banished nuns were under shelter; and the work of the night was accomplished.
Ashley Ward, with other officers and gentlemen, had busied himself in bestowing the poor ladies as rapidly and commodiously as possible in the carriages, and as the last one turned the corner of the great building, the soldiers fell into line at the word of command; and in a few moments he found himself alone. He discovered this when he turned to speak to Gonzales. He was nowhere to be seen, and Ashley remembered that when he had last seen him it was at the chapel door, watching with pale and anxious countenance the exit of the nuns.
Gonzales had been suffering from a recent wound. Had the fatigue and exposure, and that deadly sickness of crushed and dying hope overcome him? Ashley caught up a torch, which was sputtering and about to expire on the dripping pave, fanned for a moment its flame, and then made his way back into the forsaken building.
He found Gonzales standing on the spot where he had parted from him, and before him stood a man with a flickering torch. Both were in an attitude of extreme dejection; both started as Ashley’s footsteps broke the stillness. Pedro—for the second man was he—led the way into the outer darkness, and Gonzales, having in his hand the heavy key which had been delivered by the abbess, turned to lock the abandoned house. He paused and looked to the right and left. The street was utterly forsaken; the rain came in gusts, and it was with much ado that Pedro, turning hither and thither, kept alive the flame of the torch.
Once as he turned, the light fell full upon the face andfigure of Ward; and at the instant an exclamation of incredulous joy, followed by a groan, fell upon their ears. Gonzales dropped the key, and it rang sharply upon the stones at his feet.
“There is a woman here!” he ejaculated breathlessly. Something in the tones had drawn the blood from his heart. “Here! here! a light, Pedro, in God’s name!”
The senses of Pedro were even more acute than those of Gonzales and Ward. Not only had he heard the voice, but he knew whose it was, and whence it had come. His torch flashed upon an alcove of the deep wall; and there ensconced they saw the sombre and meanly clad figure of a nun. She had covered her face; her form shook violently.
“Señorita,” said Gonzales, recovering himself and respectfully approaching the woman, “forgive us that you are left behind. We thought all had been provided for—all.”
“It is I who would have it so,—I who promised myself I would escape,” answered the nun, brokenly, yet with an almost fierce intensity. “Have I not prayed and wept for this hour? Could I let it pass? No, no! I lingered—I fled—I could not, would not, go with them. They would have dragged me with them across the seas—away—away from her,—my child! my child!”
She uttered the last words almost in a scream, yet her gaze followed Ward. “Who is he? who is he?” she asked in a feverish whisper. “It is not my murdered angel,—my love, my husband,—it is not he; and yet so like! Oh my God, is it because thou hast forgiven me that thou bringest this vision before me?”
Gonzales started back; gazed eagerly, rapturously at the nun; then rushed to clasp the coarse folds of her drapery. Pedro dropped at her feet. Ward alone uttered her name,—“Herlinda!”
Gonzales bent over her hand, uttering inarticulate words of greeting. She scarcely seemed to hear them. “Vicente, is it thou?” she said faintly. “But he, who is he?—the man of the yellow hair, with the face that at prayer and at penance, asleep and awake, has ever haunted me?”
Herlinda stepped nearer to Ward. Her lips were parted, her eyes aflame; never in all his life before and neveragain saw he a woman so beautiful as this one in the unsightly garb, so coarse it grazed the skin where it touched it. “No wonder,” he thought, “my cousin loved her; he could have done no other, even had he known he was doomed to die for her!”
Ah! the unhappy daughter of the haughty Garcias was far more beautiful that night than ever John Ashley had beheld her. Suffering first had refined, and now the divine inspiration of hope illumined those perfect features. Ashley Ward comprehended this; but Gonzales with horror recalled her words, and thought her mad. “Maria Sanctissima!” she cried as the light flashed full on the American, “I am forgiven, that I behold the living likeness of his face.”
Ward bent before her, inexpressibly touched. He would have spoken, but at this instant her eyes fell upon the kneeling man at her feet. “It is Pedro,—yes, it is Pedro,” Herlinda said in a low voice. “Perhaps he knows of her,—yet, my God, he dares not look at me!”
“Niña, Niña!”
“Speak, Pedro, speak! thou must know of her. Tell me, was Feliz faithful? Is my child well, happy?”
“Merciful God, she is indeed mad!” interjected Gonzales. “O Herlinda, know you not you never were married, never had a child?”
Herlinda turned on him a glance of mingled entreaty and impatience, then raised her eyes piteously toward heaven. “They said I was not married,” she moaned brokenly; “but oh, I had a child,—and they took her from me. Oh, if I could have died!”
Gonzales turned from her with a groan. How bitter was the revelation! Married! It could not have been! And a child? Ah! he knew then why a convent had been her doom.
In a broken voice Pedro began to speak. Ashley, with the red glare of the torch he held falling full upon him, seemed to Gonzales a mocking witness of the shame and woe which from Herlinda were reflected upon him, the man who loved her, had ever loved her; yet he felt instinctively that the American had a right to hear, to judge, as well as he. Ah, it was an American who—“An American!” he gasped, and his hand touched the hilt of his sword.
“Niña, Niña!” Pedro was saying. “They brought the child to me. Oh, the sweet child, with its soft, dark eyes,—oh, the child with its ruddy curls! and I remembered all that you had said, my Señorita. I watched over it, I cherished it, it was my own!”
“Thine! thine!” cried the nun clasping her hands, and in her excitement even thrusting him from her. “It could not be! Oh Feliz, Feliz! thou couldst not be so false!”
The tone of incredulity, of horror, in which she spoke pierced Pedro to the quick; yet he answered humbly, “I thought to please you, Niña, to keep her from those you distrusted; and she was happy, oh quite happy, all through her little childhood. You know one can be quite happy playing in the free air.”
The released nun burst into sudden tears. “Happy in the free air! Oh yes, yes!” she cried. “Oh, if all these years I could have begged even from door to door with my child, even with the brand of shame upon me! Oh the suffering, the suffering of these long, long desolate years!”
Gonzales stepped to her side, and placed her arm within his own. “Thou shalt be desolate no more, Herlinda,” he said, “thou betrayed angel of purity!”
“Betrayed, no!” cried Ashley Ward, looking up. “Deceived perhaps they both were, but the man who was slain as her betrayer believed himself her husband, as she believed herself his wife,—as I believe now she most truly was. Thank God I am here to champion their cause and that of their child!”
Gonzales left Herlinda a moment to embrace Ward in his southern fashion; then supporting her again listened to what Pedro had to say.
The mother’s face grew whiter and whiter as the tale proceeded. “That,thatmy child!” she murmured at intervals, and her head sank lower and lower upon her breast. Even Gonzales and Ward heard with amazement the story of Chinita’s appearance at the cave where Pedro had lain wounded. “What!” one cried, “has she not been all this time in the house of Doña Carmen? Did you not tell us that in a strange freak of impatience she had hastened there?”
“It was you, Señores, who affirmed it must be she,when you heard of the young girl who had been taken there, from the Indian whom you captured as a spy of Ramirez,” answered Pedro, with the humble cunning of the true ranchero; “and why should your servant contradict you, when Chinita herself had commanded otherwise—”
“And where in God’s name is she now?” demanded Ward. “You know who I am. You know all this time I could not have rested tranquil had I thought—”
“Have no anxiety, Señor,” answered the man with his old sullenness. “And I swear to you, Niña, she is safe, quite safe. She is with a woman who can guard her well. She is gone to seek the man who murdered her father. Ah, Niña, your daughter has the blood of the Garcia; she will avenge you!”
Herlinda sank with a moan. Ashley would have raised her, but Gonzales motioned him back. There was a house at a little distance where a widow and her daughters dwelt, and thither he bore her.
It was then at the middle hour between midnight and dawn; and long before light, after a hurried consultation, the three men met again before the widow’s door. All arrangements had been made for the brief transfer of the command of the troops. Gonzales, Ashley, and Pedro acted as outriders for a strong military coach drawn by four fleet mules. Into this stepped Herlinda and the widow, both dressed as respectable gentlewomen; and before the people of El Toro wakened from their deep sleep that followed the excitement of the early night, the travellers were far upon the road, and though the way was long and rough were gaining fast upon the diligence which bore Doña Isabel, her daughter, and Chata.