Montezumas Daughter | Page 6

of Flixton Abbey; to the right the
steep bank is green with the Earsham oaks, to the left the fast marsh
lands spotted with cattle stretch on to Beccles and Lowestoft, while
behind me my gardens and orchards rise in terraces up the turfy hill that
in old days was known as the Earl's Vineyard. All these are about me,
and yet in this hour they are as though they were not. For the valley of
the Waveney I see the vale of Tenoctitlan, for the slopes of Stowe the
snowy shapes of the volcanoes Popo and Iztac, for the spire of Earsham
and the towers of Ditchingham, of Bungay, and of Beccles, the soaring
pyramids of sacrifice gleaming with the sacred fires, and for the cattle
in the meadows the horsemen of Cortes sweeping to war.
It comes back to me; that was life, the rest is but a dream. Once more I
feel young, and, should I be spared so long, I will set down the story of
my youth before I am laid in yonder churchyard and lost in the world of
dreams. Long ago I had begun it, but it was only on last Christmas Day
that my dear wife died, and while she lived I knew that this task was
better left undone. Indeed, to be frank, it was thus with my wife: She
loved me, I believe, as few men have the fortune to be loved, and there
is much in my past that jarred upon this love of hers, moving her to a
jealousy of the dead that was not the less deep because it was so gentle
and so closely coupled with forgiveness. For she had a secret sorrow
that ate her heart away, although she never spoke of it. But one child

was born to us, and this child died in infancy, nor for all her prayers did
it please God to give her another, and indeed remembering the words of
Otomie I did not expect that it would be so. Now she knew well that
yonder across the seas I had children whom I loved by another wife,
and though they were long dead, must always love unalterably, and this
thought wrung her heart. That I had been the husband of another
woman she could forgive, but that this woman should have borne me
children whose memory was still so dear, she could not forget if she
forgave it, she who was childless. Why it was so, being but a man, I
cannot say; for who can know all the mystery of a loving woman's
heart? But so it was. Once, indeed, we quarrelled on the matter; it was
our only quarrel.
It chanced that when we had been married but two years, and our babe
was some few days buried in the churchyard of this parish of
Ditchingham, I dreamed a very vivid dream as I slept one night at my
wife's side. I dreamed that my dead children, the four of them, for the
tallest lad bore in his arms my firstborn, that infant who died in the
great siege, came to me as they had often come when I ruled the people
of the Otomie in the City of Pines, and talked with me, giving me
flowers and kissing my hands. I looked upon their strength and beauty,
and was proud at heart, and, in my dream, it seemed as though some
great sorrow had been lifted from my mind; as though these dear ones
had been lost and now were found again. Ah! what misery is there like
to this misery of dreams, that can thus give us back our dead in
mockery, and then departing, leave us with a keener woe?
Well, I dreamed on, talking with my children in my sleep and naming
them by their beloved names, till at length I woke to look on emptiness,
and knowing all my sorrow I sobbed aloud. Now it was early morning,
and the light of the August sun streamed through the window, but I,
deeming that my wife slept, still lay in the shadow of my dream as it
were, and groaned, murmuring the names of those whom I might never
see again. It chanced, however, that she was awake, and had overheard
those words which I spoke with the dead, while I was yet asleep and
after; and though some of this talk was in the tongue of the Otomie, the
most was English, and knowing the names of my children she guessed

the purport of it all. Suddenly she sprang from the bed and stood over
me, and there was such anger in her eyes as I had never seen before nor
have seen since, nor did it last long then, for presently indeed it