# The Spanish jade

... alone in that immensity of Castile, and as happy as a king may be, rode a young man on an April day some fifty years ago, singing to himself a wailing, winding, minor chant [...] his hair was black, and his eyes were light gray, keen, restless, and bold. He was sharp-featured, and when he smiled he could be bewitching. His name was Estéban Vincaz, his business pressing, pleasant, and pious. He was about to slay a girl.
The Spanish Jade
BY MAURICE HEWLETT
Cada puta hile: Let every jade go spin.
—Sancho Panza.
INTO the plain beyond Burgos, through that sunless glare of before-dawn, upon a soft-padding ass that cast no shadow and made no sound; well upon the stern of that ass, alone in that immensity of Castile, and as happy as a king may be, rode a young man on an April day some fifty years ago, singing to himself a wailing, winding, minor chant all about El Cid Campeador and the matchless Ximena. I say that he was young: he was very young, and looked very delicate—"handsome, beardless, and lady-faced," as an old court chronicler put it of another youth long before. He had a sagging old straw hat upon his round and shapely head, a shirt—and a dirty shirt—open to the waist; he had a broad band of scarlet cloth—his faja, as they call it—some dozen times about his middle, with a murderous long knife stuck in it; cotton drawers, bare legs, and feet as brown as walnuts. All of him that was not whitey-brown cotton or red cloth was walnut-color; but his hair was black, and his eyes were light gray, keen, restless, and bold. He was sharp-featured, and when he smiled he could be bewitching. His name was Estéban Vincaz, his business pressing, pleasant, and pious. He was about to slay a girl.
His eyes, as he sang, roamed the sun-struck land and saw that it was good. The winter corn in patches struggled sparsely through the clods; darnels, tares, dead-nettle, couch, the vetches of last year and the poppies of next, contended with it, not at all in vain. The olives were in flower—each tree in its own puddle of mud: everything was as it should be. By and by a clump of smoky-blue iris caught his chance looks; he vaulted off his ass and snatched a handful. "The sword-flower," he said to himself, accepting the omen with a laugh, and jumping into his seat again, kicked the beast with his naked heels into the shamble that does duty for a pace. He resumed his song:
"En batalla temerosa
Andaba el Cid castellano
Con Búcar, ese rey moro,
Que contra el Cid ha llegado
A le ganar á Valencia. . . ."
He hung upon the pounding rhymes, and his heart swelled with the thoughts as if his errand had been that crowning one of the hero's.
Graceless son of a perfectly graceless couple, horse-thief, sheep-thief, contrabandist, bully, all that you choose to call him, he had the look of a seraph when he sang and the voice of an angel of the Ascension. And why not? He had no doubts, he could justify every hour of his life; he had the manners of a gentleman and the morals of a hyena—that is to say, none at all. I doubt if he had anything worth having except the grand air. He only knew elementary things; he knew hunger, thirst, fatigue, desire, hatred, fear. He feared the dark and God in the Sacrament—nothing else. He regretted nothing and pitied nothing, because when it came to feeling the loss of a thing, it came naturally also to hating the cause of its loss; and so the greater need swallowed up the less. This was why he intended to kill Miguela, because she had been his sweetheart and because she had left him. Three weeks ago she had left him, in the middle of the fair of Pobledo. That had spoiled the fair for him; he had earned nothing, because all his time had been taken up in finding out where she had gone. Now that he knew, he had only delayed for one day, to get his knife ground. He knew exactly where she was, and at what hour he should find her, and with whom. God had been good, and the sword-flower a proof of that.
Presently he came within sight of, and, since he made no effort to avoid it, presently again into, the street of a mud-built village. Going in, he looked to the east to judge the light. Sunrise was nearly an hour away: he could afford to obey the summons of the cracked bell and hear mass. He tethered his beast in the little plaza and went into church. Immediately confronting him at the door was a hideous idol; a huge brown wooden Christ with black horsehair tresses, staring white eyeballs, and staring red wounds, towered before him, hanging from a cross. Estéban knelt to it, and remembering his hat, doffed it by pulling it sideways over one ear. He said his two paternosters, and then performed an odd ceremony more. He took the long knife from his waistband, laid it flat before the crucifix, and looking up at the tormented God, said Him another pater. That done and the blade slipped home again, he knelt upon the floor beyond in company with kerchiefed women and some beggars of incredible age, and rose to one knee, fell to both, covered his eyes, watched the celebrant, or the youngest of the women, just as the server's little bell bade him.
Mass over, our young avenger prepared to resume his journey by breaking his fast. A hunch of bread and handful of acorns sufficed him, and he ate these sitting on the steps of the church, watching the women as they loitered on their way home. One he approved: she had fine ankles, and wore a flower in her hair like an Andalusian. He had never been in Andalusia, but was sure that the women were handsome. A fine-sounding word, Andalusia; and besides, would women wear flowers in their hair unless they dared be looked at? Then the priest came out, fat, dew-lapped, greasy, very short-breathed, but benevolent.
"Good day, good day to you," he said. "You are a stranger—from the north?"
"My reverend, from Burgos." This was a lie.
"Ha! from Burgos! A fine city, a great city."
"Yes, sir, it's true. It is where they buried our lord the Campeador."
"So they say. You are lettered! And early astir."
"Yes, sir. I am called to be early. I still go south."
"Seeking work? You are honest, I hope?"
"Yes, sir, a perfectly honest Christian," said Estéban. "But I seek no work. I find it."
"You are lucky," said the priest, and took snuff. He waved his hand, wagging it about. "Go with God."
"At the feet of your reverence," said Estéban; "adios."
Altogether he delayed for an hour and a quarter in this village—a material time.
Ahead of him some three leagues or four, or rather, converging upon a common centre that distance from our friend, was one Osmund Manvers, a young English gentleman of easy fortune, independent habits, and pleasant disposition; also riding, also singing to himself, equally early afoot, but in very different circumstances. He rode a horse tolerably sound, and had a haversack before him reasonably stored. He had a clean shirt on and another embaled, a brace of pistols, a New Testament and a Don Quixote, white duck breeches, and brown knee-boots, a tweed jacket, and a straw hat neither picturesque, comfortable, nor convenient. He would have looked incongruous in the elfin landscape if he had not appeared to be as extremely at home in it as our young Estéban himself. But there was this difference further to be noted, that whereas Estéban seemed to belong to the laud, the land seemed to belong to Mr. Manvers—the land of Spain and all (hose vast distances of it, the enormous span of ground and the enormous arch of sky. He might have been a young squire at home, overlooking his farms—one eye for the tillage, another for a covey, or a hare in a furrow. Occasionally he whistled as he rode, but broke now and again into a singing voice, more cheerful, I think, than melodious:
"If she be not fair for me,
What care I how fair she be?"
Not an old song. Henry Chorley made the tune to it the summer before Manvers left England, and it had caught his fancy—both the air and the sentiment. They suited his scoffing mood, and helped to heal him the wound which Miss Eleanor Vernon had dealt his heart—Miss Eleanor Vernon, with her disdainful eyes. "If she be not fair for me!" Well, Eleanor Vernon was not to be that. Let her go hang, then, and—"What care I how fair she be?"
Osmund Manvers was a pleasant-looking young man, sanguine in hue, gray in the eye, with a twisted sort of smile which was by no means unattractive. His features were irregular, but he looked wholesome; his humor was fitful, sometimes easy, sometimes unaccountably stiff; he was hot-tempered and quick-tempered, but his crooked smile never deserted him, and the light beard which he had allowed himself since he left England led one to imagine his jaw less square than it really was. I suppose that he may have measured five foot ten in his boots, and I suppose him to have been strong. He was, at any rate, a strong swimmer and fond of the exercise. He had a comfortable income, derived from land in Somersetshire, upon which his mother, a widow lady, and his two unmarried sisters lived, and attended archery meetings. Cured of his wounded heart by means of travel, he was now travelling for his pleasure, or, as he told himself, to avoid the curate. By this terse periphrasis he referred to his obligations to church and state in Somersetshire.
At six o'clock on this fine April morning he had already ridden far—from Sahagun. indeed, where he had spent three or four idle days, lounging and exchanging observations with the inhabitants. He was popular with them, for he was perfectly simple; never asked what he did not want to know, and never refused to answer what it was obviously desired that he should. But man cannot live on small talk, and as he had taken up his rest in Sahagun in a moment of impulse, so now he left it. "Great Heaven!" he had cried, as he sat up in bed, "what the devil am I doing here? Nothing, nothing on earth. Let's get out of it." So out he got, and would not wait for breakfast. He rode fast, desiring to make way before the heat began, and also because the going happened to, be fair; but by six o'clock, with the sun an hour above the horizon, he was not sorry to see towers and a dome, or to hear across the emptiness the clangorous notes of a deep-toned bell. "The muezzin calls the faithful," he reflected, "but for me another bell must be rung. That town will be Palencia. I'll breakfast there by the grace of God."
Palencia it was—a town of pretence, if such a word can be applied to anything Spanish, where things either are or are not, and there's an end. It was as drab as the landscape, as bald and austere; but it had a squat officer sitting at the receipt of custom, which Sahagun had not, and a file of peasants as usual before him, bargaining for their chickens and hay. Upon the horseman's approach the functionary arose, saluted, and inquired for gate-dues with his patient eyes. "A shirt," said Manvers, touching his valise, "the New Testament of our Saviour Christ, the incredible history of Quixote de la Mancha, a tooth-brush, and a comb." He seemed to refer, in tolerable Castilian, to a Castilian gentleman of degree: so much was evident to the douanier; but his twisted smile, we may believe, won him the entry. The official just eased his peaked cap. "Go with God, sir."
"Assuredly," said Manvers, "but pray assist me to the inn."
The Providencia was named, indicated, and found. There was an old man in the yard of it plucking a live fowl—a barbarity with which our traveller had long ceased to quarrel.
"Cease your horrid task, my brother," he said; "take my horse and feed him."
The bird was released, and after shaking, by force of habit, what no longer, or only partially, existed, rejoined his companions, he showed that he could pick as well as be picked.
"Now," said Manvers to the ostler, if such he was, "give this horse half a feed of corn, then some water, then the other half-feed—but give him nothing until you have cooled him down. Do all this, and I give you one peseta. Omit it, and I give you nothing at all. Is that a bargain?"
"It will be a bad bargain for your grace, for I shall get the better of you in it."
"We shall see," said Manvers, and went into the Providencia for his breakfast of eggs in oil, fried liver, and thin wine.
A meal to which good spirits were contributed by the guest and very bad ones by the establishment, as he humorously put it, followed by a walk in the arid street of the town, which revealed nothing but some fragments of Roman masonry, a bridge, and a Gothic cathedral of real barbarity, decided the young man to tempt the heat rather than be bored. If his maps told him the truth, one league and a half on the road to Valladolid should discover him an extensive cork wood, beyond which, skirting its south-eastern face, should be the handsome river Pisuerga. Here he could bathe, loiter away the noon, and take his merienda—the best Palencia could supply:
"Muera Marta
Y muera harta "—
"Let Martha die, but not on an empty stomach." He knew his Don Quixote better than most Spaniards.
He furnished his haversack with bread, ham, sausage, wine, and oranges; ordered out his horse; satisfied himself that the ancient depilator had earned his fee, and departed at a leisurely pace. Just outside the gate he had an adventure which occupied him until the end of this narrative—and, indeed, beyond it.
The Gate of the Sun—what town in Spain has not such a gate?—is really no gate at all, but a gateway. What walls it once may have admitted to, have fallen in their contest with time. Buttress and rubbish-heap, a moat of blurred outline, a watch-tower, and much ordure alone testify to former pretensions. Outside that was a sandy waste, called an Alameda, a littered place of brown grass, dust, and loose stones, fringed with parched acacias, and diversified by hillocks, upon which, in former days of strife, standards may have been stood up, mangonels planted, perhaps Napoleonic cannon. It was upon one of these, one which was shaded by a tree and dead upon his road, that Manvers observed—and paused to observe—the doings of a group of persons—some seven boys and lads, concerned with a young girl. A kind of uncouth courtship seemed to be in progress, or (as he put it) the holding of a rude court: he saw a Circe of picaresque Spain with her satyr rout about her. To drop such flights, the young woman sat upon the hillock, with her half a dozen tatterdemalions about her in various stages of amorous enchantment.
He could not see the girl well enough to know whether she was personable or otherwise, far less to decide whether she was what she should be or not. He saw that her hair was all tumbled about her shoulders, and that it was of a dusty gold tinge; he saw that she was barefoot; he guessed her sunburnt and a vagrant, supposed that she was of that sort you see any day at a fair, jigging outside a booth in red bodice and spangles, a waif, a little who-knows-who, an iridescent bubble, one might say, thrown up by some standing pool of vice, as filmy as that, very nearly as fleeting, and quite as poisonous. It struck him, as he watched her, as really extraordinary that these ephemerids must abound, predestined to misery; must come and sin, and wail and go, with souls inside them to be saved, which no one could save, and bodies fain to be loved, which no one could stoop to love. Had the scheme of our Redemption scope enough for this—for this trifle—along with Santa Teresa, and the Queen of Sheba, and Catharine the Great, and Manon Lescaut? Idle questionings, prompted in him he knew not how.
Hatless, shoeless, coatless were the oafs who surrounded the object of his speculations, some lying prone, with elbows forward and chin to fist, some more mischievously inclined, creeping, scrambling, darting behind, to pull her hair, and duck lest she should look round; some squatting at a distance with ribaldries to exchange. And there was one, sitting a little above her, on his hams, who seemed a sort of proprietor; for he did nothing but watch, and had enough of mastery over the others to prevent what he might at any moment choose to think an infringement of his rights. A sullen, dull dog, Manvers agreed; a broad-shouldered, black-avised kind of a brute, a bully by inheritance who must end in the hulks.
"What's going on here?" he asked himself. "Is this an affair of Circe and her tributary swine, after all? Or is it a capture by satyrs, the preliminary to a horrible meal? I'm not satisfied—I'll wait a little." He was well out of eye-shot, behind the farthest fringe of trees.
He saw that the girl sat brooding, not so much enduring as ignoring the rough attentions she was receiving—as if ruminating on more serious things (such as famine or thirst), her elbows on her knees and her face cupped in her two hands. That is the true tramp's attitude, he knew. A flower was in her mouth, or he thought so, judging from the blot of scarlet thereabouts; her face was set fixedly towards the town—he thought at first that she must have seen him, but found that he had no care whether she had or not. He took no particular interest in her—all he cared about was to consider the manners of the game which centred about her. Manners! He had travelled far, and could not help reflecting upon the difference between Italy, for example, and this rude land of Spain. Where in that peninsula, outside Naples, would you have witnessed such a scene as this? Or what people but the Spaniards, among Latin races, know themselves so certainly lords of the earth that they may treat women, mules, prisoners, Jews, and bulls according to the caprices of appetite, without shame or ruth? That an Italian should make public display of his property in a woman or his scorn of her was a thing unthinkable; but if you came to consider it, so it was that a Spaniard should not. There is no other country in Europe where things so grossly cruel, or cruelly gross, may be done, and none where they may be done with an air of franchise, serenely sure enough to rob them of nearly all their vileness.
Meditating these things, Manvers saw the very thing in process, when the lumpish fellow above the girl suddenly put his hand upon her and kept it there, and the others thereupon drew back and ceased their tricks, as if recognizing just such an act of possession—a taking of seisin, as the lawyers call it. To Manvers the act was hateful. He felt the blood surge in his neck, caught himself muttering to himself, swearing: "Damn him, I've a mind— Oh, vile!" But he did nothing, because the girl did nothing whatever; she neither moved nor seemed to be aware.
Emboldened by her passivity, the swain advanced by inches, visibly. He looked knowingly about at his juniors, he whispered in her ear, whistled gallant airs, regaled the company with salted songs. Piqued at last, perhaps, or swayed by some wave of desire, he caught her round the waist and kissed her neck; and then, all at once, she seemed to awaken, to shiver and collect herself; and without warning she shook herself free from her tyrant, and hit him a blow with her fist on the side of the nose with all her force. He reeled back, the blood gushed over him; immediately a scuffle began, the most unequal you can conceive, and the most impossible; for one and all of these rascals set upon their late admiration, with fists, with stones, with horrible imprecations, revilings. How she got to her feet, how kept them, is not to be understood. She fought like one possessed, and kept her breath for the business. All that she did was done in silence, and desperately done.
A minute of this—it lasted hardly so long—was more than enough for Mr. Manvers, who, when he had recovered himself, pricked into the fray at a canter and began to lay about him with his riding-crop. "Dogs! dogs' sons! children of Judas! Jews' minions—down with your hands!" His Spanish was fluent, if imaginative, but his science with the whip beyond dispute. "Have at you there!" he cried, and thwacked a skull. "Have at you here!" and an arm went limp suddenly. Such commentary drove home the text.
The prime mover of these events was, long before the end of them, on the top of the hillock, where, with a remnant, he unmasked a battery of stones upon the attack. He had to be dislodged, to the disgust of Manvers's horse—a Spanish horse of Oviedo, who knew more of the property of stones than he cared about already; for in Spain they spare the whip in favor of the handier arm. Dislodged, however, he was, he and his force; but hillocks were plenty and stones abounded. The fire was resumed from a safer distance, and the marksmanship remained excellent.
Meantime the girl lay moaning on the ground, her arms extended, her right leg twitching. She was bleeding at the ear.
Manvers was under fire, but dismounted as coolly as he could, and led his horse about to cover her from the stones. "Come," he said, as he stooped to touch her, "I must move you, I see. Saint Stephen—blessed young man—has forestalled this means of going to heaven. You and I are too late-born." He used no ceremony, but picked her up as if she had been a dressmaker's dummy, and set her on her feet—where, after swaying about and some balancing with her hands, she presently steadied herself, and stood dazed and empty-eyed.
"Take your time, my dear," he said, and held her by the arm. "Can you stick on if I put you up?"
She nodded her head. "Up you go, then," and he would have taken her; but she held him off with a stiffening arm while she wiped her face with her petticoat and pulled herself into some sort of order. She did this deftly and methodically, with the practised hands of a woman who has had plenty to practise with. She might have been an actress at the wings, about to go on. Nor would she allow him to touch her till all was in order—her tumbled hair, the neck of her bodice, the set of her torn slip. That done, she allowed him to put her into the saddle, and sat there astride, as cool as a circus-girl.
She was handsome, in a striking, fierce way—but very thin, and apparently a child barely grown to be a woman. With this dusty gold mane of hers, with her sunburnt skin, vivid red lips, sleek and soft, with her sea-green, serious eyes, she was—and he owned it—an embarrassing addition to his equipment. Knowledge too various lay behind those eyes, acquaintance too wide made sleek those lips; she was too vivid altogether for the squire of Somerset. However, he could not leave her here to be stoned, that was certain; nor did he care for more of the martyrdom himself; there was nothing for it but he must spend the day in Palencia.
But when he turned her face that way she began to implore him urgently. "Never, never—caballero, I pray you,—never, never! Here sooner than there—for the love of God," she said, and struggled to get down. The stones were flying, Manvers had twice been hit, and was beginning to lose his temper.
"Damn the stones!—and don't be a fool, young woman." He pushed her back by the knee. "What the mischief is the matter with the town?"
"This is the truth," she then told him. "Out here I can die; but in Palencia I cannot die." She shook her head; she nodded it as she looked down at his restraining hand. "That will not be allowed me." She said this in a voice so grave and mournful, with a sincerity so shocking, and an implication so out of doubt that Manvers had nothing to reply.
"Great God!" he said. "That's it, is it? Very well, then—I take you with me. But it is to the first convent, mind you."
She nodded her head, not looking at him. "Where you will, sir," she replied. He turned his patient horse towards the south, mounted behind his convoy, and ambled off.
Seeing that she more than once lurched in the saddle, he found it necessary to stop after a little, to ply her with wine, to induce her to eat bread out of his haversack. These attentions heartened her, and, supported by his arm, she was fit to proceed. But the sun was now half-way up towards noon, burning upon them out of a cloudless sky; there was no wind and the flies were maddening. The girl stooped her head, as if she were wilting like a picked flower. The heat came surging up in waves from the cloddy ground, and to that she bent sideways and began to sway again. He knew that it was impossible that she could be exposed much longer, bareheaded as she was, to such sword-strokes of the sun. He made her drink a little more wine, then gave her his pocket-handkerchief to cover herself. At this, when she understood its use, she laughed for the first time; and having fixed it on in a fashion which hooded her face and became her well, she looked round into his for approval—found it, and smiled.
"I see that you are better, my girl," he said to himself, "and I see also that you are a handful, I am tempted to kiss you, I admit, and on that account shall be glad to be rid of you." If she be not fair for me! No, no. Manvers was a very honest young man in his way. For all that, a sort of relationship was established between them. More than once she turned her face to his and laughed, by no means unpleasantly; and more than once he laughed back.
Ahead of him now, through the crystalline flicker of the heat, he saw the dark rim of the wood, the cork forest for which he was looking, and which hid the river from his tired eyes. No foot-burnt wanderer in Sahara ever hailed his oasis with heartier thanksgiving—but it was still a league and a half away. Pushing his best, he was presently aware of a traveller behind him—not by ear, for a donkey makes no sound, but by the general sense which we all have when we are not alone. He looked back and saw a donkey and his rider come briskly in his track. And as he looked, the girl before him turned her head and shoulders also and looked. She stiffened immediately under his arm and slowly resumed her position. She said nothing, but he felt her tremble.
"God save your grace," said Esteban; for it was he, who, sitting well upon his donkey's rump, with exceedingly bright eyes and a cheerful grin, now forged level with Manvers and his burdened steed.
The horseman looked down at him and thought him a queer fish, but it did not enter his head to inquire what Estéban might think of him, for self-consciousness was not one of his vices. If an arch-bishop or a baggage or a duchess had happened to be sharing his saddle, an arrangement must be presumed—and how could it concern an Estéban on a donkey? Nor did he remark any longer that the girl before him was now sitting up, every muscle of her on the stretch, as taut as a ship's cable in the tideway, and that she kept her face rigidly in profile to the newcomer.
"Good day, good day," was the Englishman's reply. "You ride light and I ride heavy, otherwise you had not overtaken us."
Estéban showed his fine teeth and waved his hand towards the distance. "Who knows that, sir?"
"Well," said Manvers, "I do, for example."
Estéban shrugged very lightly. "There's a providence of the road," he said, "and a saint in charge of travellers. And we know, sir," he added, "á cada puerco viene su San Martin, all the world over." A tremor went through the girl's body. Manvers, not usually observant of such things, noticed that.
"Your proverb is oddly chosen, it seems to me."
Estéban gave a little chuckle.
"Not so oddly, sir, by your leave. I referred to the ways of Providence, under a figure. It might have been your destiny to have outpaced me: the odds were in your favor. On the other hand, as you have not, it must have been my destiny to have overtaken you."
"You speak philosophy," said Manvers, "and more explicitly than most. I am very glad to see you—so long as our ways coincide." Estéban raised his sombrero.
"I hope your grace's lady is not disturbed by my company; for to tell you the truth, sir, I propose to enjoy your own as long as you and she are agreeable. I am used to companionship."
"She will speak for herself, no doubt," said Manvers; but she did not; and the three kept silence for some time—a silence emphasized by the plodding hoofs, broken only by the Englishman's occasional swishing at the flies. And at last they entered the cork wood, and Manvers thanked God for the shade and the prospect of food and rest.
The forest began tentatively, with heather, with sparse trees, and mounds of cistus and bramble; and it began with a bridle-path which led apparently to the point of the compass which our traveller had appointed to himself. He followed it, therefore, without hesitation until he saw that it was taking him—as such a track would—through the more open parts of the wood. When he saw the welcome thickets on either hand, deep tunnels of dark, shadowy places where the sun could not stab, he turned aside to the broken ground. Finally, having reached what seemed to him the perfection he craved, he pulled up.
"Now, my child," he said, "I shall give you food and drink, and then you shall go to sleep, and so will I; and then I will consider what is best to be done with you. What do you say to that?"
"Si, Señor Caballero," she said, but in a whisper. Manvers dismounted and held out his arms to her. She let herself fall into them, as lightly as a feather drops to water, and very modestly. There was no more coquetry; she hardly lifted her eyes.
Estéban sat his donkey, looking gravely upon his company, blinking his keen eyes, humming a winding air. He was perfectly unhampered, seemed not to consider himself in the way, and watched with curious attention—became quite absorbed in the preparations for a meal which Manvers was now making with the ease and despatch of an expert in camps. He produced ham and sausage, rolls of bread, oranges, cheese, dates, his wine and water, salt, olives, a knife and fork, a tin plate. Every article had its own paper; many were marked in pencil, what they were. All was spread out upon a blanket, which had been laid with especial heed to ants' nests: nothing seemed wanting, and Estéban was desperately hungry. Yet the Englishman was looking at his hands and seemed dissatisfied. Presently he glanced up at Esteban as he sat watching there, and asked, "How far away do you suppose one might find water?"
Water? The young man collected himself. Water? He nodded his head towards the display on the blanket. "It is under your hand, caballero. That bottle, I take it, contains water."
Manvers agreed.
"And so it does. But, you see, I want more. I want to wash myself. I must go and find that blessed river." He turned away, saying to the girl, "Sit down, child, and eat what takes your fancy."
She showed him a face now of extreme terror; it paled her sea-green eyes to such an extent that her face looked like a mask. "What on earth—?" and he understood her caked throat to reply: "Let me come—let me come with you. I will never leave you."
"What on earth—?" indeed. He wondered at her; she was beside herself with panic. One hand was in her bosom, working there; the other arm was rigid, the fist clasped. When she opened it there was blood in the palm of her hand. What on earth—? indeed. Then he happened to see Estéban grinning like a sick dog: and yet it was the Spaniard who spoke first.
"I think she is right, sir. I think she should go with you," he said, pleasantly; adding, "The loss will be mine."
Manvers looked alternately at these curious persons, so clearly conscious of each other, yet so strict to avoid recognition. He was puzzled, but irritated too, sick of the whole business.
"I don't know what you mean, my friend"—this to the man,—"and I don't care what you lose or gain, or what your opinions are. As for you, my child"—he spoke more gently to the girl,—"I am sure you have nothing to fear now. What are you expecting, pray?"
She glanced at him hastily, then away again, searching the dark places of the wood. She struggled to compose herself, and answered him, "Nothing, sir," as if under duress.
"It is certain," said Manvers, "that you can't accompany me on my expedition—perfectly certain. I am going to bathe. There's nothing in the world for you to be afraid of, so far as I can tell; but if, while I am gone, you are really alarmed, remember that I have put you in charge of this countryman of yours. And do you remember it, my friend," he added, turning on Estéban, who waved an airy hand.
She could say no more, but shook like one in a fit of mortal cold; she held hey self forcibly with both hands, and yet shook. Manvers repeated his injunctions to the young man.
"Hark you, my friend," he said, "I shall return very shortly, and in the mean time I invite you to eat what you please. And I place this young woman in your charge—don't forget that. She has had a fright, and good reason for it: and she's been hurt. I have her in your care, with every confidence that you will protect her."
Estéban considered the words, rubbing his chin; he considered the speaker, who was waiting to be answered; and lastly he considered the shaking, yellow-haired girl in her brown rags. He became superb, rose to the height of the argument, took off his sombrero and held it at the length of his arm. "Let the young lady fear nothing, Señor Caballero. I engage my honor until your worship's return. She will be as safe as a shrine of the Virgin. Go, sir, with God." Manvers nodded and went to find the river.
Directly he was gone the girl sat down under the tree where the meal was spread, put her elbows to her knees and face between her hands. Estéban remained very still on his donkey, watching her intently. He rolled himself a papellito, still watching, and as he lighted it looked at her over the flame. After two luxurious inhalations, discharged in dense columns through his nose, he said,
"I have come to kill you, Miguela."
"I know it," she answered from between her hands. "Why don't you do it?"
He inhaled enormously, lifted his head, and shot the smoke up towards the light. It floated and spread there into radiant blue layers. Then he replied: "For reason—for good reason. I have promised your lover that I would not." She started, and looked at him now.
"My lover!"
Estéban nodded. "I must deal with him first. He will return. He will eat and drink, then he will sleep. He will not wake; and I shall have his horse."
"You are wrong," said she. "I shall tell him what you intend."
"No doubt." He was making another papellito, to light from the former. He twisted up the end of the paper. "No doubt—but he won't believe you. He will laugh—and eat."
She rose, and without fear went across to Estéban where he sat his donkey. She saw the knife in his faja, but had no fear at all. She came quite close to him, with a burning, ardent face, with eyes on fire, and her scarlet lips parted to show her teeth. She stretched out her arms like a man on a cross and lifted her face towards him.
"Kill, kill, Estéban," she said, "but listen first. That gentleman has done you no wrong. He took me out of a scuffle at Palencia, where I might have died, or worse. I never saw him until this noon, and beyond saving me then and protecting me since he has had nothing to do with me. He is taking me to a convent. All this I swear upon the Cross of Christ." He laughed her down.
"A convent—you! You swear lies, Miguela. No man would act like this—for nothing. What's lost to-day may be won to-morrow: who doesn't know that? And let me tell you, no use, your 'chuck, chuck,' to an old dog."
Tears filled her eyes, angry tears which made her blink and shake her head. But she came closer yet in a passion of entreaty. She was so close that her bosom touched his knee. She looked like one pleading desperately for love; but "Kill, kill!" was what she said. Estéban folded his arms and showed all his disdain.
"Impossible, my girl. I have promised. And besides, what kind of a fool do you think me? Am I to lose him, and lose his horse, and put my neck in his halter? Think of it, think of it! Suppose I killed you now—what would he do when he came back from his washing? He would range the Castiles for me—and find me in the end. He would be angry, his blood would be hot, he would never drop the scent. Go back, therefore, to your place and wait your turn."
Her arms were about him now, as if she must have love of him or die. "Estéban, Estéban," she was whispering, and he shivered at a memory. Closer and closer she clung to him, her face pressed against him, crimson with the stress of her anguish.
"Loose me, loose me, you jade!" he cried, sharply, but she clove the closer, and one hand crept upwards to his breast, as if it would climb to his shoulder. "Down with you, Miguela," he said again; but she whipped the long knife out of his band and with all her sobbing force drove it into his side. She stood staring at what she had done.
Estéban uttered a thick groan, threw his head up, rocked twice; then his head dropped, and he fell sideways off his donkey.
Miguola let him lie and returned to the spread food. The Englishman's tin plate was there awaiting him, his napkin, knife, and fork. She went down on hands and knees, stooped her head, and kissed the middle of the plate. Then, kneeling still, she felt within her shift and drew out a brass crucifix. She put it to her lips, pulled the string over her head, and laid it, all as it was, upon the Englishman's plate.
Her next care was to move the body, and the task made her crimson again with exertion; but she got him well away from the scene of the picnic and covered him thick with ling and palmetto, which she cut with the famous knife. It was now time to go. One last look at the preparations for the feast, one lingering touch of her crucifix, and she mounted Estéban's donkey and urged it through the trees. She never looked back.
Mr. Manvers returned whistling from his bath, in excellent spirits. He had found the river and swum in it, dressed himself, and walked slowly back lest he should get hot again. He was not very surprised to find that his companions had deserted him. "Queer people," he reflected, "but I had a notion that they knew each other. I suppose they've made a match of it. So much the better for me." Then he saw the crucifix lying on his plate. "Hulloa!" He stooped to pick it up. It was still warm. "Now that's charming of her. That's a pretty touch—from a pretty girl, too, not all baggage, I see. I'll warrant now that was all she had upon her—and I know it's the last thing to leave 'em. I'm repaid, and feel rather a scoundrel. I'll wear you for a bit, my friend, if you won't scorch a heretic's neck." Here he slipped the string over his head. "I'll treat you to a chain in Valladolid, little friend," he thought, as the cross dropped to its place.
He poured and drank, hacked at his ham-bone and ate. "By the Lord!" he went on commenting, "they've not had a bite or sup. Too busy with their match-making, or too delicate to feast without invitation—which? I invited the maja: but did I include the swain? If not, the thing's clear. She wouldn't eat without him, and he couldn't eat without me. Poor devil! and I'd taken a dislike to him for some reason. If I ever meet him again, I'll ask him to dinner—see if I don't."
He finished his meal, filled and lit a pipe, smoked half of it drowsily, then lay and slept. Nothing disturbed his three hours' rest—not even the gathering cloud of flies, whose droning over a neighboring thicket might have kept awake a lighter sleeper. Indeed, he was so fast that he did not hear footsteps in the wood, nor the sound of picking in the peaty ground.
It was four o'clock when he awoke, sat up, and looked at his watch. Yawning and stretching at ease, he then became aware of a monk, with a brown shaven head and a fine beard, who was digging not far off. The monk, who had been waiting for recognition, paused in his toil, struck his spade into the ground, and came towards him, bowing as he came.
"Good evening, caballero," he said. "My name is Fray Benito, at your service, of the Convent of N. S. de las Angustias near by. I have to be my own sexton; but will you be so obliging as to commit the body while I read the office?"
It had been said by Manvers's friends at Cambridge and elsewhere that he could only express himself by different sorts of laughter—that he had laughed at birth, would laugh when he proposed himself in marriage, and would certainly round off the death-rattle in a chuckle. I think that he did not confine his emotions within such narrow limits; and certain it is that he did not laugh when he saw the staring light eyes of Estéban Vincaz in mute appeal to the tree-tops and blue heaven above them. On the contrary, he turned very pale and let his jaw drop. "Good God! what is this?" was his unintelligent inquiry. Fray Benito explained what he knew of it. A young girl, riding an ass, had come to the church of the convent, where he happened to be watching the Blessed Sacrament. She was in haste, she said, to be absolved; but she was not in fear. She reported that she had killed a man to save the life of a gentleman who had been kind to her—who had, in fact, saved her life at the peril of his own. "If you doubt me," she had said, "go into the forest, to such and such a part. There you will find the gentleman asleep. He has a crucifix of mine. The dead man lies not far away, with his own knife near, with which I killed him. Now," she said, "absolve me, reverendo, for I must be off, lest the Guardia Civil get to hear of me."
"Sir," said Fray Benito, gravely, "I would not have you conceive that I am violating the secrets of confession. Far from that, I had it urgently from the penitent herself that I should seek you out with her tale and rehearse it to you. In obedience to her, also, I am now to ask you if it be the truth."
Manvers displayed the crucifix. "It's perfectly true," he said. "I'm going to get a chain for this thing. God in heaven! what a country! And I thought she was a baggage."
"All countries are very much the same, as I take it," said Fray Benito, "since God made them all at once, and put man to be the master of them, and took the woman out of his side. The place whence she was taken, they say, can never fully be healed until she is restored to it; and even when that is done, it is not always healed. Such being the plan of this world, it does not become us to quarrel with its manifestations. Now, Señor Caballero, if you are ready, I will proceed. A handful of earth at the proper moment is all I shall ask of you." The office was said.
"Fray Benito," said Manvers, holding out his hand, "will you take this trifle from me? A mass, I suppose, for that poor devil's soul, would not come amiss."
"Far from it," replied the monk, "it would be extremely proper. It shall be offered, I promise you."
"That's excellent. Now I wonder if you can tell me this? Which way did that young woman go off?"
Fray Benito shook his head. "No lo sé. She came to me in the church, and spoke, and passed like the Angel of Death. But she went out absolved, for her sin was pardonable and her cause just. May she go with God!"
"Hope so," said Manvers; "she has got my handkerchief." He took his horse and rode the way of Valladolid. It was some sort of gratification to him to think that each had some token of the other. He thought of it often on his road.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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