As he sat in the half dark, the wrinkled duenna crept in and stood before him. Her voice was like the crumpling of paper.
“My lady wishes to speak with you,” she said.
Henry rose and walked heavily after her toward the cell. A candle was burning before the holy picture on the wall. The Madonna represented was a fat, Spanish peasant, holding a flabby child at which she looked with sad astonishment. The priest who painted it meant to put reverence on her face, but he had so little experience with reverence. He had been successful, however, in making it a good portrait of his dull mistress and his child. Four reales, the picture brought him.
Ysobel sat under the picture. When Henry entered she went quickly to him.
“It is said I am to be ransomed.”
“Your husband sent a messenger.”
“My husband! I am to go back to him? to his scented hands?”
“Yes.”
She pointed to a chair and forced Henry to seat himself. “You did not understand me,” she said. “You could not understand me. You must know something of the life I have traveled. I must tell you this thing, and then you will understand me, and then—”
She awaited his interest. Henry was silent.
“Don’t you wish to hear this thing?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, it is short. My life has been short. But I want you to understand me, and then—”
She looked sharply into his face. Henry’s mouth was pinched as though in pain. His eyes contemplated bewilderment. He made no reply to her pause.
“It was this way, you see,” she began. “I was born here in Panama, but my parents sent me to Spain when I was a small child. I lived in a convent in Cordova. I wore gray dresses and lay in watch before the Virgin on my nights given to adoration. Sometimes I went to sleep when I should have been praying. I have suffered for that laxness. When I had been there a number of years, the bravos raided my father’s plantation here in Panama and killed all of my family. I was left with no relative save one old grandfather. I was alone, and I was sad. I did not sleep on the floor before the Virgin for a time.
“I had grown handsome, that I knew, for once a Cardinal who was visiting the school looked at me, and his lips trembled, and the great veins stood out on his hands when I kissed his ring. He said, ‘Peace be with you, my daughter. Have you anything you would like to confess to me privately?’
“I heard the cry of the water sellers over the wall, and I heard the scuffle of a quarrel. Once two men fought with swords in sight of me, where I stood on a stick and looked over the wall. And one night a young man brought a girl to the shadow of the gate and lay with her there within two paces of me. I heard them whisper together, she protesting her fears, and he reassuring her. I fingered my gray gown and wondered whether this boy would plead with me if he knew me. When I spoke to one of the sisters about this night she said, ‘it is wicked to hear such things, and more wicked to think of them. You must do penance for your curious ears. What gate did you say?’
“The fishmonger would cry, ‘Come, little gray angels, and look on my basket of catch. Come out of your holy prison, little gray angels.’
“One night I climbed over the wall and went away from the city. I do not mean to tell you of my journeying, but only of the day when I came to Paris. The King was riding through the streets, and his equipage was glittering and gold. I stood high on my toes in the crowd of people and watched the courtiers go riding by. Then, suddenly, a dark face was thrust before me, and a strong hand took my arm. I was led to a doorway apart from the people.
“See, Captain; he whipped me with a thong of hard leather he had only for that purpose. His face had something of a beast’s snarl hiding very near the surface. But he was free—a bold, free, thief. He killed before he stole—always he killed. And we lived in entryways, and on the floors of churches, and under the land arch of a bridge, and we were free—free from thoughts and free from fears and worries. But once he went away from me, and I found him hanging by the neck on a gallows—oh, a great gallows festooned with men hanging by their necks.
“Can you understand that, Captain? Do you see that as I saw it? And does it mean anything at all to you?” Her eyes were on fire.
“I walked back to Cordova, and my feet were torn. I did penance until my body was torn, but I could not drive out all the devil. I was exorcised, but the devil was deep in me. Can you understand that, Captain?” She looked into Henry’s face and saw that he had not been listening. She stood beside him and moved her fingers in his graying hair.
“You are changed,” she said. “Some light is gone out of you. What fear has fallen on you?”
He stirred from his reverie.
“I do not know.”
“I was told that you killed your friend. Is it that which burdens you?”
“I killed him.”
“And do you mourn for him?”
“Perhaps. I do not know. I think I mourn for some other thing which is dead.
