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Updated: May 17, 2025
It may have been the thunderings of nature, or of war she did not heed them; her heart was filled with bitter, rebellious thoughts, and her flying feet seemed to skim over the road; nor did she check her hasty steps until she was about to enter her father's room. Mauer sat in his arm-chair, absorbed in thought. She threw herself down on her knees beside him, and flung her arms about his waist.
Mauer lay quiet, with his eyes half closed; while his daughter sat holding his hand in a loving clasp, her head buried in the coverlid. In the stillness which prevailed in the chamber of death, the door was heard to open, and some one entered noiselessly; but the draught caused by the open window closed the door sharply behind the visitor.
Brother Mauer, you remember, went away from the mission to his plantation, where, although he did not sever himself from our communion, there was not much to remind him of his religious obligations. His last wife, a hot-blooded Creole, could not be considered much help as regards keeping the faith. She loved best to swing herself into the saddle and gallop away over the plains.
I was conducted to his bedside, at which Inez knelt, her face buried on her father's pillow. At the foot of the bed stood the physician, Brother Jonathan. "Don Manuel motioned me to his side. 'Don Mauer, he said in a faint voice, 'I must die; but, before I leave this world, I would like to provide for the future of my child, who, as you know, has no mother.
Heaving a deep sigh, he had again recourse to his old trick of brushing an invisible speck of dust from his sleeve, and then continued in the orthodox, placid manner: "It was a fearful sin for a member of our faith to fall into, and Brother Mauer should have resisted the temptation. I spoke to him frequently about it, but he had lost all power of self-control.
And this shadow did not pass away when, shortly after Christmas, her wedding was celebrated, and Mauer informed her that he had divided the fortune left him by Inez from his own property, in order to make it over to her daughter, to whom it by right belonged.
"Carmen lives here in this house," she answered, at length. "Can it be possible that you are " "Brother Mauer, who you have thought was dead ages ago," he replied falteringly. "Heaven be praised!" cried Agatha, and sank into a chair.
At this moment there was a knock at the door; it opened, and Brother Jonathan entered. Father and daughter stared at him without stirring; no one uttered a word; no one moved. Mauer remained leaning back in his chair; Carmen did not rise from her kneeling posture, and only pressed her head closer to her father's bosom. Jonathan silently regarded the pair.
"Mein Herr," he said coldly, turning to Jonathan, "will you have the kindness, as superintendent of the Sisters, to inform them that Fraulein Carmen Mauer and her betrothed husband, Captain von Trautenau, have gone to her father's apartments; that this lady, on account of her betrothal to me, declines the destiny chosen for her by lot; and will, moreover, be obliged to leave the community and follow her husband?
"Who is dead, Carmen?" asked Mauer, listening intently as he sat by the window. "Is that not the dirge of a bachelor Brother? I remember the air, as I do that of all our funeral hymns. How often, when suffering under my bondage as a slave, I have thought that at my death no music would be heard.
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