In the Palace of the King: A Love Story of Old Madrid by F. Marion Crawford (e books free to read txt) 📗

lips almost colourless, but firm, and evenly closed. There were lines of suffering in her young face that looked as if they never could be effaced. It seemed to her that the worst conflict of all was raging in her heart as she watched her father's face, waiting for the sound of his voice; and as for him, he would rather have gone back to the King's presence to be tormented under the eyes of Antonio Perez than stand there, forced to see her and speak to her. In his eyes, in the light of what he had been told, she was a ruined and shameless woman, who had deceived him day in, day out, for more than two years. And to her, so far as she could understand, he was the condemned murderer of the man she had so innocently and truly loved. But yet, she had a doubt, and for that possibility, she had cast her good name to the winds in the hope of saving his life. At one moment, in a vision of dread, she saw his armed hand striking at her lover--at the next she felt that he could never have struck the blow, and that there was an unsolved mystery behind it all. Never were two innocent human beings so utterly deceived, each about the other.

"Father," she said, at last, in a trembling tone, "can you not speak to me, if I can find heart to hear you?"

"What can we two say to each other?" he asked sternly. "Why did you stop me? I am ready to die for killing the man who ruined you. I am glad. Why should I say anything to you, and what words can you have for me? I hope your end may come quickly, with such peace as you can find from your shame at the last. That is what I wish for you, and it is a good wish, for you have made death on the scaffold look easy to me, so that I long for it. Do you understand?"

"Condemned to death!" she cried out, almost incoherently, before he had finished speaking. "But they cannot condemn you--I have told them that I was there--that it was not you--they must believe me--O God of mercy!"

"They believe you--yes. They believe that I found you together and killed him. I shall be tried by judges, but I am condemned beforehand, and I must die." He spoke calmly enough. "Your mad confession before the court only made my conviction more certain," he said. "It gave the reason for the deed--and it burned away the last doubt I had. If they are slow in trying me, you will have been before the executioner, for he will find me dead--by your hand. You might have spared me that--and spared yourself. You still had the remnant of a good name, and your lover being dead, you might have worn the rag of your honour still. You have chosen to throw it away, and let me know my full disgrace before I die a disgraceful death. And yet you wish to speak to me. Do you expect my blessing?"

Dolores had lost the power of speech. Passing her hand now and then across her forehead, as though trying to brush away a material veil, she stood half paralyzed, staring wildly at him while he spoke. But when she saw him turn away from her towards the door, as if he would go out and leave her there, her strength was loosed from the spell, and she sprang before him and caught his wrists with her hands.

"I am as innocent as when my mother bore me," she said, and her low voice rang with the truth. "I told the lie to save your life. Do you believe me now?"

He gazed at her with haggard eyes for many moments before he spoke.

"How can it be true?" he asked, but his voice shook in his throat. "You were there--I saw you leave his room--"

"No, that you never saw!" she cried, well knowing how impossible it was, since she had been locked in till after he had gone away.

"I saw your dress--not this one--what you wore this afternoon."

"Not this one? I put on this court dress before I got out of the room in which you had locked me up. Inez helped me--I pretended that I was she, and wore her cloak, and slipped away, and I have not been back again. You did not see me."

Mendoza passed his hand over his eyes and drew back from her. If what she said were true, the strongest link was gone from the chain of facts by which he had argued so much sorrow and shame. Forgetting himself and his own near fate, he looked at the court dress she wore, and a mere glance convinced him that it was not the one he had seen.

"But--" he was suddenly confused--"but why did you need to disguise yourself? I left the Princess of Eboli with you, and I gave her permission to take you away to stay with her. You needed no disguise."

"I never saw her. She must have found Inez in the room. I was gone long before that."

"Gone--where?" Mendoza was fast losing the thread of it all--in his confusion of ideas he grasped the clue of his chief sorrow, which was far beyond any thought for himself. "But if you are innocent--pray God you may be, as you say--how is it possible--oh, no! I cannot believe it--I cannot! No woman could do that--no innocent girl could stand out before a multitude of men and women, and say what you said--"

"I hoped to save your life. I had the strength. I did it."

Her clear grey eyes looked into his, and his doubt began to break away before the truth.

"Make me believe it!" he cried, his voice breaking. "Oh, God! Make me believe it before I die!"

"It is true," she cried, in a low, strong voice that carried belief to his breast in spite of such reasoning as still had some power over him. "It is true, and you shall believe it; and if you will not, the man you have killed, the man I loved and trusted, the dead man who knows the whole truth as I know it, will come back from the dead to prove it true--for I swear it upon his soul in heaven, and upon yours and mine that will not be long on earth--as I will swear it in the hour of your death and mine, since we must die!"

He could not take his eyes from hers that held him, and suddenly in the pure depths he seemed to see her soul facing him without fear, and he knew that what she said was true, and his tortured heart leapt up at the good certainty.

"I believe you, my child," he said at last, and then his grey lids half closed over his eyes and he bent down to her, and put his arm round her.

But she shuddered at the touch of his right hand, and though she knew that he was a condemned man, and that she might never see him again, she could not bear to receive his parting kiss upon her forehead.

"Oh, father, why did you kill him?" she asked, turning her head away and moving to escape from his hold.

But Mendoza did not answer. His arm dropped by his side, and his face grew white and stony. She was asking him to give up the King's secret, to keep which he was giving his life. He felt that it would be treason to tell even her. And besides, she would not keep the secret--what woman could, what daughter would? It must go out of the world with him, if it was to be safe. He glanced at her and saw her face ravaged by an hour's grief. Yet she would not mourn Don John the less if she knew whose hand had done the deed. It could make but a little difference to her, though to himself that difference would be great, if she knew that he died innocent.

And then began a struggle fierce and grim, that tore his soul and wounded his heart as no death agony could have hurt him. Since he had judged her unjustly, since it had all been a hideous dream, since she was still the child that had been all in all to him throughout her life, since all was changed, he did not wish to die, he bore the dead man no hatred, it was no soothing satisfaction to his outraged heart to know him dead of a sword wound in the breast, far away in the room where they had left him, there was no fierce regret that he had not driven the thrust himself. The man was as innocent as the innocent girl, and he himself, as innocent as both, was to be led out to die to shield the King--no more. His life was to be taken for that only, and he no longer set its value at naught nor wished it over. He was the mere scapegoat, to suffer for his master's crime, since crime it was and nothing better. And since he was willing to bear the punishment, or since there was now no escape from it, had he not at least the human right to proclaim his innocence to the only being he really loved? It would be monstrous to deny it. What could she do, after all, even if she knew the truth? Nothing. No one would dare to believe her if she accused the King. She would be shut up in a convent as a mad woman, but in any case, she would certainly disappear to end her life in some religious house as soon as he was dead. Poor girl--she had loved Don John with all her heart--what could the world hold for her, even if the disgrace of her father's death were not to shut her out of the world altogether, as it inevitably must. She would not live long, but she would live in the profoundest sorrow. It would be an alleviation, almost the greatest possible, to know that her father's hand was not stained by such a deed.

The temptation to speak out was overwhelming, and he knew that the time was short. At any moment Ruy Gomez might open the door, and bid him part from her, and there would be small chance for him of seeing her again. He stood uncertain, with bent head and folded arms, and she watched him, trying to bring herself to touch his hand again and bear his kiss.

His loyalty to the King, that was like a sort of madness, stood between him and the words he longed to say. It was the habit of his long soldier's life, unbending as the corslet he wore and enclosing his soul as the steel encased his body, proof against every cruelty, every unkindness, every insult. It was better to die a traitor's death for the King's secret than to live for his own honour. So it had always seemed to him, since he had been a boy and had learned to fight under the great Emperor. But now he knew that he wavered as he had never done in the most desperate charge, when life was but a missile to be flung in the enemy's face, and found or not, when the fray was over. There was no intoxication of fury now, there was no far ring of glory in the air, there was no victory to be won. The hard and hideous fact stared him in the face, that he was to die like a malefactor by the hangman's hand, and that the sovereign who had graciously deigned to accept the sacrifice had tortured him for nearly half an hour without mercy in the presence of an inferior, in order to get a few facts on paper which might help his own royal credit. And as if that were not enough, his own daughter was to live after him, believing that he had cruelly murdered the man she most dearly loved. It was more than humanity could bear.

His brow unbent, his arms unfolded themselves, and he held them out to Dolores with a smile almost gentle.

"There is no blood on these hands, my little girl," he said tenderly. "I did not do it, child. Let me hold you in my arms once, and kiss you before I go. We are both innocent--we can bless one another before we part for ever."

The pure, grey eyes opened wide in amazement. Dolores could hardly believe her ears, as she made a step towards him, and then stopped, shrinking, and then made one step more. Her lips moved and wondering