A Volunteer with Pike Part 18

"Alisanda," I said, "has it been nothing to you, all these golden days since we met on the Monongahela?"

She raised her hand to arrange her scarf, letting fall a loose strand of hair down her cheek.

"_Santisima Virgen!_" she murmured, with fine-drawn irony. "It has ever been a marvel to me--so chance a meeting."

"Chance, indeed!" I replied. "Chance that the utmost of my effort could not trace the road by which you left Was.h.i.+ngton; chance that Colonel Burr gave me the clew for which I sought; chance that of the nine horses I rode to a stand between Philadelphia and Elizabethtown, none failed me in my need."

She gave me a mocking glance over her fan. "_Madre de los Dolores!_ What a pity! A little time, and the gulf will roll between."

"I will cross that gulf!"

"Not so; for it is the gulf of the Cross," she mocked. "I go the way of Vera Cruz--the True Cross. No heretic may pa.s.s that way."

The words struck down my last hope. It was the truth--a double truth.

The way of my body was barred by the city of the Cross; the way of my spirit by that which to her the Cross symbolized.

"So this is the end," I replied. "We have come to the parting of the ways. Do not fear that I shall weary you with annoying persistence. I shall go my way before sunrise to-morrow. Only--let me ask that this last hour with you may hold its share of sweetness with the bitterness of parting,--Alisanda!"

"An hour?" she repeated. "The air in here is close."

She laid her fingers lightly upon my arm, and we pa.s.sed out into the moonlit balcony. For a time we sat silent, she gazing out across the broken slopes of the town, I gazing at her still white face and shadowy eyes. Her loveliness was part with the night and the moonlight and the scarlet bloom of the climber upon the balcony rail.

At last I could no longer endure the thought that she was lost to me; I could no longer deny utterance to my love and longing.

"Alisanda! dearest one! Is there then no hope that I may win you? I have no gallant speeches--my love is voiceless; no less is it a love that shall endure always. Alisanda! _my_ dearest one! is my love of no worth to you? Let your heart speak! Can it not give me one word of hope?"

My voice failed me. Throughout my pa.s.sionate appeal I failed to see the slightest change in her calm face. I had failed to stir her even to mockery. Truly all was now at an end! I bowed my head and groaned in most unmanly fas.h.i.+on.

The low murmur of her voice roused me to despairing eagerness. She spoke in a tone of light inconsequence, yet I seized upon the words as the drowning man clutches at straws.

"Love?--love?" she repeated. "The word has become a jest. Men protest that they know the meaning of love--that they suffer its bitterest pangs. Yet speak to them of the days of chivalry, when gallant knights bore the colors of their ladies through deadly battle, and the ogling beaux turn an epigram on _les sauvages nous ancetres_!"

"Show me the way to the battlefield--I ask no more!" I cried.

"Words--words!" she mocked. "The Cid would have found his way to the field of glory without asking. Were the way barred, El Campeador would have hewn his way through, though the barrier were of solid rock! But the men of to-day--!"

"Wait!" I broke in. "Have you not yourself said that the way of the gulf is impa.s.sable for me?"

"True," she a.s.sented, "true! And not alone the gulf, but the barrier--the gulf of water and of the Cross; the barrier of rock and of blood."

"Blue blood and red have been known to intermingle," I argued.

"With love for solvent!" she murmured. The softness was only for the instant. "Yet what of that other barrier?" she demanded. "Between your land and the land to which I go lies the blood of Christ."

"Is it then religion that is the insurmountable barrier--the impa.s.sable gulf? You have not lived all your life in Spain. I had hoped that not even your faith could close your heart against me, if only I might prove to you the greatness of my love."

She sat silent for what seemed an endless time, toying idly with her fan. When at last she spoke, it was again in that light, inconsequential tone: "To the eastward or northeastward of Santa Fe lies a vast snow-clad sierra. My kinsman once saw it from a great distance. He says it is called the _Sangre de Cristo_."

"_Sangre de Cristo_--the Blood of Christ!" I said, lost in wonderment.

Then a great light flashed upon me. I knelt on one knee and caught to my lips a white hand that did not seek to escape my grasp. "The barrier--the barrier of rock!--Alisanda! you give me hope! If I come to you there--if I cross that barrier? Dearest one!--dearest! can you doubt it? Though I have to find my way alone among the fierce savages of the vast prairies; though I find that snowy range a mountain of ice and fire, I will come to you, Alisanda--my love!"

I saw the quick rise of her bosom and the blush that suffused her cheeks with glorious scarlet before she could raise her masking fan.

"_Santisima Virgen!_" she murmured, and broke into a little quavering, uncertain laugh. "They speak of the cold blood of your race!"

"Alisanda!--Dearest one! Tell me I may come!"

She rose quietly, already calm again, and cold as the moonlight which shone full upon her face. I rose with her, still clasping her hand.

"Tell me, Alisanda, may I come?"

"Why ask me that?" she said, in an even voice. "Could I prevent if you wished to try?"

"If I cross the barrier, may I hope?"

"There would yet be the gulf."

"Gulf or barrier, I swear I will find my way to you, though it be through fire and flood! I will seek you out and win you, though you hide your beauty beneath a nun's veil!"

Such was the force of my pa.s.sion, I again saw her bosom rise to a deep-drawn breath and the edges of her sensitive nostrils quiver. Yet this time she did not blush, and her voice cut with its fine-drawn irony: "Words--words!"

"I offer love. I ask nothing in turn but a word or a token--nothing but--my lady's colors."

She turned and opened her eyes full to my gaze as she had opened them at our parting in far-off Was.h.i.+ngton, and I looked down into their depths, vainly seeking to penetrate the darkness. At last it seemed to me I saw a gleam far down in the wells of mystery--a glow, faint yet warm, that seemed to light my way to hope.

Suddenly the glow burst into a flame of golden glory--She was swaying toward me, a line of pearls showing between her curving lips. But even as I sought to clasp her in my arms, she eluded me and glided away, vanis.h.i.+ng through the farther window.

Half mad with delight, yet unable to believe my own eyes, I sought to follow, the blood drumming in my ears from the wild intoxication of my love. None too soon I heard behind me the sharp call of Don Pedro: "_Hola, amigo!_ Have you gone deaf, that you do not answer?"

This, then, was why she had eluded me! It was his return which had robbed me of that moment of all moments. My look as I turned was as bitter as his was keen. My voice sounded to me like that of another man: "What! Back so soon, senor?"

"Senor?" he repeated, taken aback by the formal address. "Yet it is as well, Juan. All our plans are blasted. Hereafter it would seem we are to be strangers. I have no faith in the promises of that man."

"You do well to distrust him," I said. "I might have foreseen the outcome of plans in which he was to play a part."

"Whom can we trust in this self-seeking age! I find myself doubting even the fair promises of your great statesman Burr."

"Of our discredited politician Burr!" I cried. "Don Pedro, he has no claim upon me, and you have many. Let me tell you, I begin to doubt him, even as I doubt our pompous General. I have reason to believe that Colonel Burr plans to take your country from Spain, not for the benefit of you and your friends, but for his own aggrandizement. He thinks himself a second Napoleon."

"_Por Dios!_ I see it now. He plots to sell us to Spain, that Spain may aid his plot to make himself king of your Western country,--king of all that part which extends from the Alleghanies even here to New Orleans and north and west to the Pacific. I know; for did he not enter into negotiations with Marquis de Casa Yrujo?"

"With the Spanish Minister?" I exclaimed.

"With Casa Yrujo, after the death of Pitt deprived him of the hope of British s.h.i.+ps and money."

"So--he is but a crack-brained trickster," I muttered. "We have chased his rainbows and landed in the mire. This is the end, senor. I go now.

Tomorrow's sun will see me on my way up-river to St. Louis. May you find brave men enough in your own land to win freedom, without the costly aid of tricksters!"