The Fair God; or, The Last of the 'Tzins

“His guest; he came by invitation.”

“All the gods of our race threaten him.”

“Yet I love him, and would quit everything to follow him.”

“Gods ask not the love we give each other.”

“You mean he would despise me. Never! I am the daughter of a king.”

“You are mad, Nenetzin.”

“Then love is madness, and I am very mad. O, I was so happy yesterday! Once I thought he saw me. It was when he was passing the coatapantli. The base artisan was shouting, and he heard him, or seemed to, for he raised his glance to the azoteas. My heart stood still; the air brightened around me; if I had been set down in the Sun itself, I could not have been happier.”

“Have you mentioned this to the queen Acatlan?”

“Why should I? I will choose my own love. No one, not even my mother, would object to the king Cacama: why should she when my choice is nobler, handsomer, mightier than he?”

“What do you know of the strangers?”

“Nothing. He is one of them; that is enough.”

“I meant of their customs; marriage, for instance.”

“The thought is new.”

“Tell me, Nenetzin: would you go with him, except as his wife?”

She turned away her glowing eyes, confused. “I know not what I would do. If I went with him except as his wife, our father would curse me, and my mother would die. I shudder; yet I remember how his look from a distance made me tremble with strange delight.”

“It was magic, like Mualox’s.”

“I do not know. I was about to say, if such was his power over me at a distance, what may it be near by? Could I refuse to follow him, if he should ask me face to face, as we now are?”

“Avoid him, then.”

“Stay here, as in a prison! Never look out of doors for fear of seeing him whom I confess I so love! And then, the music, marching, banquets: shall I lose them, and for such a cause?”

“Nenetzin, the strangers will not abide here in peace. War there will be. The gods have so declared, and in every temple preparation is now going on.”

“Who told you so?” the girl asked, tremulously.

“This morning I was in the garden, culling flowers. I met Mualox. He seemed sad. I saluted him, and gave him the sweetest of my collection, and said something about them as a cure for ills of the mind. ‘Thank you, daughter,’ he said, ‘the ills I mourn are your father’s. If you can get him to forego his thoughts of war against Malinche, do so at any price. If flowers influence him, come yourself, and bring your maidens, and gather them all for him. Leave not a bud in the garden.’ ‘Is he so bent on war?’ I asked. ‘That is he. In the temples every hand is making ready.’ ‘But my father counsels otherwise.’ The old man shook his head. ‘I know every purpose of his soul.’”

“And is that all?” asked Nenetzin.

“No. Have you not heard what took place in the tianguez this morning?”

And Tula told of the appearance of the horse and the stranger’s head; how nobody knew who placed them there; how they were thought to have come from Huitzil’, and with what design; and how the wish for war was spread, until the beggars in the street were clamoring. “War there will be, O my sister, right around us. Our father will lead the companies against Malinche. The ’tzin, Cuitlahua, Io’, and all we love best of our countrymen will take part. O Nenetzin, of the children of the Sun, will you alone side with the strangers? Tonatiah may slay our great father.”

“And yet I would go with him,” the girl said, slowly, and with sobs.

“Then you are not an Aztec,” cried Tula, pushing her away.

Nenetzin stepped back speechless, and throwing her scarf over her head, turned to go.

The elder sister sprang up, conscience-struck, and caught her. “Pardon, Nenetzin. I did not know what I was saying. Stay—”

“Not now. I cannot help loving the stranger.”

“The love shall not divide us; we are sisters!” And Tula clung to her passionately.

“Too late, too late!” sobbed Nenetzin.

And she passed out the door; the curtain dropped behind her; and Tula went to the couch, and wept as if her heart were breaking.

Not yet have all the modes in which ills of state become ills of society been written.

CHAPTER IV.

ENNUYÉ IN THE OLD PALACE

“Father, holy father!—and by my sword, as belted knight, Olmedo, I call thee so in love and honor,—I have heard thee talk in learned phrase about the saints, and quote the sayings of monks, mere makers of books, which I will swear are for the most part dust, or, at least, not half so well preserved as the bones of their scribblers,—I say I have thus heard thee talk and quote for hours at a time, until I have come to think thy store of knowledge is but jargon of that kind. Shake thy head! Jargon, I say a second time.”

“It is knowledge that leadeth to righteousness. Bien quisto! Thou wouldst do well to study it,” replied the padre, curtly.

A mocking smile curled the red-haired lip of the cavalier. “Knowledge truly! I recollect hearing the Señor Hernan once speak of thee. He said thou wert to him a magazine, full of learning precious as breadstuffs.”

“Right, my son! Breadstuffs for the souls of sinners irreverent as—”

“Out with it!”

“As thou.”

“Picaro! Only last night thou didst absolve me, and, by the Palmerins, I have just told my beads!”

“I think I have heard of the Palmerins,” said the priest, gravely; “indeed, I am certain of it; but I never heard of them as things to swear by before. Hast thou a license as coiner of oaths?”

“Cierto, father, thou dost remind me of my first purpose; which was to test thy knowledge of matters, both ancient and serious, outside of what thou callest the sermons of the schoolmen. And I will not take thee at disadvantage. O no! If I would play fairly with the vilest heathen, and slay him with none but an honest trick of the sword, surely I cannot less with thee.”

“Slay me!”

“That will I,—in a bout at dialectics. I will be fair, I say. I will begin by taking thee in a field which every knight hath traversed, if, perchance, he hath advanced so far in clerkliness as to read,—a field divided between heralds, troubadours, and poets, and not forbidden to monks; with which thou shouldst be well acquainted, seeing that, of late days at least, thou hast been more prone to knightly than saintly association!”

“Santa Maria!” said Olmedo, crossing himself. “It is our nature to be prone to things sinful.”

“I smell the cloister in thy words. Have at thee! Stay thy steps.”

The two had been pacing the roof of the palace during the foregoing passage. Both stopped now, and Alvarado said, “Firstly,—nay, I will none of that; numbering the heads of a discourse is a priestly trick. To begin, by my conscience!—ho, father, that oath offends thee not, for it is the Señor Hernan’s, and by him thou art thyself always ready to swear.”