“Come, courage daughter; courage, my poor child,” continued the spiritual father, in accents that every moment grew more tender and consoling. “And in the name of God and of His Holy Mother, to Spain! To Spain, to-morrow!”
“He is packing his trunks to leave Paris to-night. He is going to Madrid. He is leaving you. If you would throw yourself at his feet and humbly and repentantly----”
“Not that, Father,” cried the proud Castilian. “He would think I was what he has called me; no, no.” And more gently she added: “Father, I have done what is right to-day, but I am exhausted. Ask nothing more from me to-day. I have no strength left. Pity, Señor; pity!”
“Yes, I will ask you for the love of Jesus Christ to set out to-morrow for Spain. I shall not leave you until I put you on board the train. Go, my dear daughter, to your father. Can you not see that I am right in advising you as I do? What would your husband think of you if you were to remain here?--with only a wall between you. You are too good and prudent even to think of such a thing. In the name of your child! That its father may be convinced--for in time, witnessing your conduct, he will be convinced. Ah, let man not divide those whom God has joined together. He will return, he will return to his wife. Do not doubt it. To-day he has allowed himself to be carried away by his anger--but later----”
Sobs deeper and more piteous than before were Lucía’s only answer.
Father Arrigoitia pressed the hands of the weeping woman tenderly in his.
“Will you give me your promise?” he murmured, with earnest entreaty, but also with the authority of one accustomed to exact spiritual obedience.
“Yes,” answered Lucía, “I will go to-morrow; but let me give way to my misery now--I can bear it no longer.”
“Yes, weep,” answered the Jesuit. “Relieve your sorrow-laden heart. Meanwhile, I will pray.”
And returning to the bedroom he knelt down beside the bed of death, and taking out his breviary began in grave and composed accents to read by the flickering light of the tapers the solemn service for the dead.
For more than a fortnight the idle tongues of Leon found food for gossip in the strange circumstance of Lucía Gonzalez’s arrival alone, sad and deteriorated in looks, at her father’s home. The wildest stories were invented to explain the mystery of her return, the seclusion in which she chose to live, the heavy cloud of gloom that rested constantly on the countenance of Uncle Joaquin Gonzalez, the disappearance of the husband, and the innumerable other things which hinted at scandal or domestic infelicity. As usually happens in similar cases, a few grains of truth were mixed up with a great deal of fiction, and some of what was said was not without a semblance of reason; but for want of the necessary data wherewith to complete and elucidate the known facts of the story, public opinion groped about blindly for a time and at last went altogether astray. As may be inferred, however, the scandalmongers performed their part with diligence and zeal, some criticising the mature dandy who had wanted to marry a young wife; some the vain and foolish father who had sacrificed his daughter’s happiness to his wish to make her a lady; some the crazy girl who---- In short, they tacked on so many morals to Lucía’s story, that I may well be excused from adding another. What was most severely criticized, however, was the modern fashion of the _wedding trip_, a foreign and reprehensible innovation, calculated only to give rise to disgusts and annoyances of all kinds. I suspect that, warned by Lucía’s sad example, handed down by tradition, and repeated in turn to all the marriageable girls of the place, that for a century to come not a Leonese bride will be found willing to stir an inch from the domestic hearth, at least during the first ten years of her married life.