Stronghand: or, The Noble Revenge. Gustave Aimard
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