Stronghand: or, The Noble Revenge
"Father – "
"Oh, re-assure yourself, Count," the old gentleman continued, pretending to misunderstand his son's meaning. "I do not intend to force on you one of those marriages in which a couple, united against their wish, only too soon hate one another through the instinctive aversion they feel. No; the wife I intend for you has been chosen by your mother and myself with the greatest care. She is young, lovely, rich, and of a nobility almost equal to ours; – in a word, she combines all the qualities necessary not only to render you happy, but also to revive the brilliancy of our house and impart a fresh lustre to it."
"Father!" Don Rodolfo stammered again.
"My son!" the Marquis continued, with a proud intonation in his voice, as if the name he was about to utter must remove all scruples; "my son, be happy, for you are about to marry Doña Aurelia de la Torre Azul, cousin in the fifth degree to the Marquis del Valle."
"Oh, my son!" the Marchioness added entreatingly "this alliance, which your father so dearly desires, will soothe my last days."
The young man was of livid pallor. He tottered, his eyes wandered hesitatingly around, and his hand, powerfully pressed to his heart, seemed trying to stifle its beating.
"You know my will, sir," the Marquis continued, not appearing to perceive his unhappy son's condition. "I hope that you will soon conform to it: and now, as you must be fatigued after a long ride in the great heat of the day, withdraw to your apartments. Tomorrow, when you have rested, we will consult as to the means of introducing you to your future wife as soon as possible."
After uttering these words, in the same cold and peremptory tone he employed during the whole interview, the Marquis prepared to rise.
By an effort over himself the young count succeeded in repressing the storm that was raging in his heart. Affecting a tranquillity he was far from feeling, he took a step forward, and bowed respectfully to the Marquis.
"Pardon me, my lord," he said, in a voice which emotion involuntarily caused to tremble, "but may I say a few words now?"
The old gentleman frowned.
"Did I not say tomorrow, sir?" he answered drily.
"Yes, my lord," the young man answered, sadly; "but, alas! If you do not consent to listen to me today, tomorrow may be too late."
"Ah!" said the Marquis, biting his lips with a passion that was beginning to break out, "And for what reason, sir?"
"Because, father," the young man said, firmly, "tomorrow I shall have left this house never to reenter it."
The Marquis gave him a thundering look from under his grey eyelashes.
"Ah, ah!" he exclaimed, "Then I was not deceived; what I have been told is really true."
"What have you been told?"
"Do you wish to know?" the old gentleman exclaimed, furiously. "After all, you are right; it is time that this pitiable farce should end."
"Sir, – sir!" the Marchioness said, with deep grief, "remember that he is your son – your firstborn!"
"Silence, madam!" the old man said, harshly; "This rebellious son has played with us long enough; the hour of punishment has pealed, and, by Heaven! It shall be terrible and exemplary."
"In God's name, sir," the Marchioness continued, "do not be inexorable to your child. Let me speak to him; perhaps you are too harsh with him, although you love him. I am his mother; I will convince him, and induce him to carry out your wishes: a mother can find words in her heart to soften her son, and make him understand that he ought not to reject his father's orders."
The old man seemed to hesitate for a moment, but immediately recovered.
"Why should I consent to what you ask, madam?" he replied, with a roughness mingled with pity; "Do you not know that the sole quality, or rather the sole vice, of his race which this rebellious son has retained is obstinacy? You will get nothing from him."
"Oh, permit me to say, sir," the old lady continued, in a suppliant voice, "he is my son as well as yours. In the name of that love and that unswerving obedience you have ever found in me, I beseech you to let me make a final attempt to break his resistance, and lead him penitent to your feet."
"And then, my lord," Don Hernando, who had hitherto remained an apparent stranger to all that was taking place, remarked in a mocking voice, "perhaps we are mistaken; do not condemn my brother without hearing him; he is too good a gentleman, and of too old a family, to have committed the faults of which he is accused."
"That is well, Hernando; I am delighted thus to hear you undertake your brother's defence," said the old lady, smiling through her tears, and deceived by his words.
"Certainly, mother; I love my brother too dearly," the young man said ironically, "to let him be accused without proof. That Rodolfo has seduced the daughter of the principal Cacique of the Opatas and made her his mistress is evident, and known to all the world as true, but it is of very little consequence. But what I will never believe until it is proved to me is, that he has married this creature, any more than I will put faith in the calumnies that represent him not only as one of the intimate friends of the Curate Hidalgo, but also as one of his most active and influential partisans in this province. No; a thousand times No! A gentleman of the name and blood of Tobar knows too well what honour demands to commit such infamy! Acting so would be utter apostasy, and complete forgetfulness of all that a noble Castilian owes to himself, his ancestors, and that honour of which he is only the holder. Come, Rodolfo; come, my brother, raise your head: confound the calumniators: give a solemn denial to those who have dared to sully your reputation! One word from you, but one that proves your perfect innocence, and the storm unjustly aroused against you will be dispersed; my father will open his arms to you, and all will be forgotten."
During this speech, whose deep perfidy the Count recognised, he was suffering from extreme emotion. At the first words his brother uttered, he started as if he felt the sting of a viper; but gradually his anger had made way for contempt in his heart; and it was with a smile of crushing disdain that he listened to the emphatic and mocking conclusion.
"Well, my son," the marquis said, "you see everybody defends you here, while I alone accuse you! What will you answer to prove your innocence to me?"
"Nothing, father!" the young man said, coolly.
"Nothing?" the old gentleman repeated, angrily.
"No, father!" he continued; "because, if I attempted to justify myself, you would not listen to me; and that, supposing you consented to listen to me, you would not comprehend me. Oh! Do not mistake my meaning," he said, on seeing the Marquis about to speak; "you would not understand me, father, not through want of intellect, but through pride. Proud of your name and the privileges it gives, you are accustomed to judge men and things from a peculiar point of view, and understand honour in your own fashion."
"Are there two sorts of honour, then?" the Marquis exclaimed, involuntarily.
"No, father," Don Rodolfo answered, calmly, "there is only one; but there are two ways of comprehending it: and my brother, who a moment back told you without incurring your disapproval that a gentleman had the right to abuse the love of a maiden and make her his mistress, but that the honour of his name would forbid him marrying her, seems to me to have studied the point thoroughly, and is better able than I to discuss it. As you said yourself, father, we must come to an end. Well, be it so. I will not attempt to continue an impossible struggle with you. When I received orders to come to you, I knew I was condemned beforehand, and yet I obediently attended your summons; it was because my resolution was irrevocably formed. What am I reproached with? Having married the daughter of an Indian Cacique? It is true; I avow openly that I have done so: her birth is perhaps as good as mine, but most certainly her heart is greater. What is the next charge – that I am a friend of the Curate Hidalgo, and one of his firmest adherents? That is also true; and I am happy and proud of this friendship: I glory in these aspirations for liberty with which you reproach me as a crime. Descendants of the first conquerors of Mexico, this land, discovered and subjugated by our fathers, has become our country; for the last three centuries we have not been Spaniards, but Mexicans. The hour has at length arrived for us to shake off the yoke of this self-called country, which has so long been battening on our blood and tears, and enriching itself with our gold. In speaking thus to you, my venerated father, my heart is broken, for Heaven is my witness that I have a profound respect and love for you. I know that I am invoking on my head all the weight of your anger, and that anger will be terrible! But, in my sorrow, one sublime hope is left to me. Faithful to the motto of our ancestors, I have done everything for honour; my conscience is calm; and some day – soon, perhaps – you will forgive me, for you will see that I have not failed in fealty."
"Never!" the Marquis shouted in a voice the more terrible because the constraint he had been forced to place on himself, in order to hear his son's speech to the end, had been so great. "Begone! I no longer know you! You are no longer my son! Begone! – villain! I give you my – "
"Oh!" the Marchioness shrieked, as she threw herself into his arms, "Do not curse him, sir! Do not add that punishment to the one you have inflicted on him. The unhappy boy is already sufficiently punished. No one has the right to curse him; a father less than any other – for in that case it is God who avenges."
The Marquis stood for a moment silent and gloomy, then stretched out his arms to his son, and shook his head sadly.
"Begone!" he said in a hollow voice. "May God watch over you – for henceforth you have no family. Farewell!"
The young man pale and trembling, bent beneath the weight of this sentence; then rose and tottered out of the room without saying a word.
"My son! – My son!" the Marchioness exclaimed in a heart-rending voice.
The implacable old man quickly stopped her at the moment when, half-mad with grief, she was rushing from the dais, and pointed to Don Hernando, who was bowing hypocritically to her.
"You have only one son, madam," he said, in a harsh voice, "and that son is here."
The Marchioness uttered a cry of despair, and, crushed with grief, fell senseless at her husband's feet; who, also overcome in this fearful struggle of pride of race against paternal love, sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands, while a mighty sob escaped from his bosom.
Don Hernando had rushed after his brother, not for the purpose of consoling or bringing him back, but solely not to let the joy be seen which covered his face at this mournful scene, all the fearful incidents in which he had been so long preparing with feline patience.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TWO BROTHERS
After quitting the Red Room, Don Rodolfo, under the weight of the condemnation pronounced against him, with broken heart and burning head had rushed onwards, flying the paternal anger, and resolved to leave the hacienda as quickly as possible, never to return to it. His horse was still in the first yard, where he had tied it up. The young man went up to it, seized the bridle, and placed his foot in the stirrup. At the same moment a hand was laid on his shoulder – Don Rodolfo turned as if seared with a hot iron. His brother was standing before him.
A feverish redness suffused his face; his hands closed, and his eyes flashed lightning; but at once extinguishing the fire of his glance and affecting a forced calmness, he said, in a firm voice —
"What do you want brother?"
"To press your hand before your departure, Rodolfo," the young man said, with a whining voice.
Rodolfo looked at him for a moment with an expression of profound disdain, then unhooking the sword that hung at his side, he handed it to his brother.
"There, Hernando," he said, ironically, "it is only right that, since you will henceforth bear the name and honour of our family, this sword should revert to you. You desired my inheritance, and success has crowned your efforts."
"Brother," the young man stammered.
"I am not reproaching you," Don Rodolfo continued, haughtily. "Enjoy in peace those estates you have torn from me. May Heaven grant that the burden may not appear to you some day too heavy, and that the recollection of the deed you have done may not poison your last years. Henceforth we shall never meet again on this earth. Farewell!" And letting the sword he had offered his brother fall on the ground, he leaped on his horse and went off at full speed, without even giving a parting glance at those walls which had seen his birth, and from which he was now eternally banished. Don Hernando stood for a moment with hanging head and pale face, crushed by the shame and consciousness of the bad action he had not feared to commit. Already remorse was beginning to prey on him. At length, when the galloping of the horse had died away in the distance, he raised his eyes, wiped away the perspiration that inundated his face, and picked up the sword lying at his feet.
"Poor Rodolfo!" he muttered, stifling a sigh; "I am very guilty."
And he slowly returned to the hacienda. Count Don Rodolfo de Moguer kept the word he had given his brother: he never reappeared. Nothing was ever heard of him, and his intimate friends never saw him again after his journey to the hacienda, nor knew what had become of him. The next year, a few Indians who escaped from the massacre at the bridge of Calderón, when Hidalgo was defeated by the Spanish General Calleja, spread the report that Don Rodolfo, who during the whole action kept by Hidalgo's side, was killed in a desperate charge he made into the heart of the Spanish lines, in the hope of restoring the fortunes of the day; but this rumour was not confirmed. In spite of all the measures taken by the Marquis, the young man's body was not found among the dead, and his fate remained a mystery for the family.
In the meanwhile, Don Hernando, by his father's orders, had succeeded to his brother's title, and almost immediately married Doña Aurelia de la Torre Azul, originally destined for Don Rodolfo. The Marquis and Marchioness lived some few years longer. They died a few days after one another, bearing with them a poisoned sting of remorse for having banished their firstborn son from their presence.
But, inflexible up to his dying hour, the Marquis never once made a complaint, and died without mentioning his son's name. However, the Marquis's hopes were realized ere he descended to the grave, for he had the supreme consolation of seeing his family continued in his grandchildren.
At the funeral, a man was noticed in the crowd wrapped up in a wide cloak, and his features concealed by the broad brim of his hat being pulled over them. No one was able to say who this man was, although one old servant declared he had recognised Don Rodolfo. Was it really the banished son who had come for the last time to pay homage to his father and weep on his tomb? The arrival of the stranger was so unexpected, and his departure so sudden, that it was impossible to get at the truth of the statement.
Then, time passed away, important events succeeded each other, and Don Rodolfo, of whom nothing was heard, was considered dead by his family and friends, and then forgotten; and Don Hernando inherited without dispute the title and estates.
The Marquis de Moguer, in spite of the light under which we have shown him to our readers, was not a wicked man, as might be supposed; but as a younger son, with no other hope than the tonsure, devoured by ambition, and freely enjoying life, he internally rebelled against the harsh and unjust law which exiled him from the pleasures of the world, and condemned him to the solitude of the cloister. Assuredly, had his brother frankly accepted his position as firstborn, and consented to undertake its duties, Don Hernando would never have thought for a moment of defrauding him of his rights. But when he saw Don Rodolfo despise the old tradition of his race – forget what he owed to his honour as a gentleman, so far as to marry an Indian girl and make common cause with the partisans of the Revolution, he eagerly seized the opportunity chance so providentially offered him to seize the power lost by his brother, and quietly put himself in his place. He thought that, in acting thus he was not committing a bad action, but almost asserting a right by substituting himself for a man who seemed to care very little for titles and fortune.
Don Hernando, while whitewashing himself in this way, only obeyed that law of justice and injustice which God has placed in the heart of man, and which impels him, when he does any dishonourable deed, to seek excuses in order to prove to himself that he was bound to act as he had done. Still, the Marquis did not dare to confess to himself that the chance by which he profited he had helped by all his power, by envenoming by his speeches and continual insinuations his brother's actions, ruining him gradually in his father's mind, and preparing, long beforehand, the condemnation eventually uttered in the Red Room against the unfortunate Rodolfo.
And yet strange contradiction of the human heart, Don Hernando dearly loved his brother; he pitied him – he would like to hold him back on the verge of the precipice down which he thrust him, as it were. Once master of the estates and head of the family, he would have liked to find his brother again, in order to share with him this badly-acquired fortune, and gain pardon for his usurpation.
Unfortunately these reflections came too late – Don Rodolfo had disappeared without leaving a trace, and hence the Marquis was compelled to restrict himself to sterile regrets. At times, tortured with the ever-present memory of the last scene at the hacienda, he asked himself whether it would not have been better for him to have had a frank explanation with his brother, after which Don Rodolfo, whose simple tastes agreed but badly with the exigencies of a great name, would have amicably renounced in his favour the rights which his position as elder brother gave him.
But now to continue our narrative, which we have too long interrupted.
At the beginning of 1822, on a day of madness which was to be expiated by years of disaster, the definitive separation took place between Spain and Mexico, and the era of pronunciamientos set in. After the ephemeral reign of the Emperor Iturbide, Mexico reverted to a republic, or, more correctly, to a military government. Under the pressure of an army of 20,000 soldiers, which had 24,000 officers, the Presidents succeeded each other with headlong speed, burying the nation deeper and deeper in the mire, in which it is now struggling, and which will eventually swallow it up.
By pronunciamiento on pronunciamiento Mexico had reached the period when this story begins; but her wealth had been swallowed up in the tornado – her commerce was annihilated, her cities were falling in ruins, and New Spain had only retained of her old splendours fugitive recollections and piles of ruins. The Spaniards had suffered greatly during the War of Independence, as had their partisans, whose property had been burned and plundered by the revolutionists. The fatal decree of 1827, pronouncing the expulsion of the Spaniards, dealt the final and most terrible blow to their fortunes.
The Marquis de Moguer was one of the persons most affected by this measure, although, during the entire War of Independence and the different governments that succeeded each other, he had taken the greatest care not to mix himself up at all in politics, and remained neutral between all parties. This position, which it was difficult and almost impossible to maintain for any length of time, had compelled him to make concessions painful to his pride: unfortunately, his fortune consisted of land and mines, and if he left Mexico he would be a ruined man.
His friends advised him frankly to join the Mexican government, and give up his Spanish nationality. The Marquis, forced by circumstances, followed their advice; and, thanks to the credit some persons enjoyed with the President of the Republic, Don Hernando was not only not disturbed, but authorized to remain in the country, where he was naturalized as a Mexican.
But things had greatly changed with the Marquis. His immense fortune had vanished with the Spanish government. During the ten years of the War of Independence, his estates had lain fallow, and his mines, deserted by the workmen he formerly employed, had gradually become filled with water. They could not be put in working order again except by enormous and most expensive works. The situation was critical, especially for a man reared in luxury and accustomed to sow his money broadcast. He was now compelled to calculate every outlay with the utmost care, if he did not wish to see the hideous spectre of want rise implacable before him.
The pride of the Marquis was broken in this struggle against poverty; his love for his children restored his failing courage, and he bravely resolved to make head against the storm. Like the ruined gentleman who tilled the soil, with their sword by their side, as a proof of their nobility, he openly became hacendero and miner, – that is to say, he cultivated his estates on a large scale, and bred cattle and horses, while trying to pump out the water which had taken possession of his mines. Unfortunately, he was deficient in two important things for the proper execution of his plans: the necessary knowledge to assist the different operations he meditated: and, above all, money, without which nothing was possible. The Marquis was therefore compelled to engage a majordomo, and borrow on mortgage. For the first few years all went well, or appeared to do so. The majordomo, Don José Paredes, to whom we shall have occasion to refer more fully hereafter, was one of those men so valuable in haciendas, whose life is spent on horseback, whose attention nothing escapes, who thoroughly understand the cultivation of the soil, and know what it ought to produce, almost to an arroba.
But if the estates of the Marquis were beginning to regain their value under the skilful direction of the bailiff, it was not the same with the mines. Taking advantage of the convulsions in which Mexico was writhing, the independent Indians, no longer held in subjection by the fear of the powerful military organization of the Spaniards, had crossed the frontiers and regained a certain portion of their territory. They had permanently settled upon it, and would not allow white men to encroach on it. Most of the Marquis's mines being situated in the very country now occupied by the Indians, were consequently lost to him. The others, almost entirely inundated, in spite of the incessant labour bestowed on them, did not yet hold out any hopes of becoming productive again.
What Don Hernando gained on one side he lost on the other; and his position, in spite of his efforts, became worse and worse, and the abyss of debt gradually enlarged. The Marquis saw with terror the moment before him when it would be impossible for him to continue the struggle. Sad and aged by sorrow rather than years, the Marquis no longer dared to regard the future, which daily became more gloomy for him. He watched in mournful resignation the downfall of his house – the decay of his race; seeking in vain, like the man without a compass on the mighty ocean, from what point of the horizon the vessel that would save him from shipwreck would arrive.
But, alas! Days succeeded days without bringing any other change in the position of the Marquis, save greater poverty, and more nearly impending ruin. In proportion as the misfortune came nearer, the Marquis had seen his relations and friends keep aloof from him; all abandoned him, with that selfish indifference which seems a fundamental law of every organized society, when the precept, "Each man for himself," is put in practice, with all the brutal force of the vae victis.
Hence Don Hernando resided alone, with his son, at the Hacienda del Toro; for he had lost his wife several years before, and his daughter was being educated in a convent at the town of Rosario; with that noble pride which so admirably becomes men of well-tempered minds, the Marquis had accepted without a murmur the ostracism passed upon him. Far from indulging in useless recriminations with men, the majority of whom had, in other days, received obligations from him, he had made his son a partner in his labours, and, aided by him, redoubled his efforts and his courage.