THE COURIER AND HIS WILD VISITOR.
At a back door of the little Fonde, which stands within the enclosures
of the Alhambra, sat a little old man, or if not absolutely old, so
withered and shrunk up that it was impossible, at a little distance, not
to think him aged. But at a close view you saw, by the sharp black eyes,
the thin, but unwrinkled lips, and a certain elasticity of movement,
that he had scarcely passed the middle age of life. A coat of drab
cloth, with short-clothes of the same material, a plush waistcoat, knee
and shoe-buckles of gold, and silk stockings, at once swept away all
idea of his being a native of Granada, and to an experienced eye
proclaimed him the retainer of some old English family. Besides all
this, there was an air of rather peculiar nicety in his apparel. His
cravat was richly ruffled with lace, and flowed down ostentatiously over
the waistcoat. His wristbands were of the same costly material, with
here and there a slight fray or break, which gave suspicion of some
previous and more exalted ownership.
He sat upon a little wooden bench, with the branches of a fine mulberry
tree bending over and protecting him from the rising sun. Brushes and
blacking lay near one end of the bench, and on a drooping branch of the
mulberry tree hung a gentleman’s coat nicely brushed and left to the
air.
From the spotless purity of his dress, you would have believed it
impossible that this dainty-looking servant could have been performing
the menial services which these objects would indicate; but at the very
instant we present him to our readers, Turner had his left hand thrust
up to the sole of a delicately shaped boot, and with the lightest and
most graceful touch imaginable, was polishing it. Now and then he
paused, looked at himself in the glittering surface, and fell to work
again, not quite satisfied that the beloved image was thrown back with
sufficient distinctness. He did not sing at his work. Turner took
everything quite too seriously for that; still he kept up a faint,
broken hum to the sound of his brush when in motion; but sometimes
paused all at once, and fell into a reverie, holding the brush and boot
in his hands, as if not entirely pleased with his ruminations.
At length the boot that he had been polishing seemed to be susceptible
of no further brilliancy, and after holding it up to the sun and eyeing
it with great satisfaction, he set it down, muttering, “Now for the
other!” He drew out from beneath his bench the tattered and soiled mate,
and held it up with a disgustful shake of the head. “Alhambra dust—I’ll
swear to it—one, two, three—bah, it’s no use counting. Every night up
there——” Here he began to scatter the dust from his master’s boots with
angry vehemence.
“In search of the picturesque—fond of ruins—who believes it, I should
like to know? One man don’t, I’m sure of that, and his name is Turner,
Thomas Turner, of Greenhurst, but perhaps his opinion don’t amount to
much; we shall see!”
Here Turner worked on, pressing his thin lips hard, and dashing away at
the boot as if it had offended him mortally.
“Out all night—the whole entire night—comes home at break of day, and
steals through old Turner’s room like a thief. Thought the old man
asleep, as if Turner ever slept when things are going wrong with the
boy.”
Here the old man grew languid in his movements; his eyes took a sadder
expression, and his touch upon the boot was like a caress.
“Fear, why who knows what won’t come over him with these doings? His
coat soaked with dew and stuck full of briars; his hair dripping with
perspiration—everything at sixes and sevens; and instead of sleeping
when he does get home, rolling about on his bed and trying to cheat the
old man; lets him take away his clothes without saying a word; makes
believe he’s asleep, as if I didn’t see that forehead working as it
always does when things go wrong with him. He thinks to cheat old
Turner—fudge!”
As the old man ceased, more and more earnest, his application to the
boot became exciting enough; his elbow went to and fro like the play of
a crank; his thin lips were gathered up into a knot, and he looked
sternly around upon the coat and mulberry tree, as if challenging them
to mortal combat.
That moment the little impish figure of an old woman, with a red
kerchief twisted over her mummy-like forehead, and a faded dress of the
same color, came suddenly round a corner of the Fonde, and stood eyeing
him with a glance sharp and vigilant, like that of a rattlesnake at
rest.
Turner gave her a sidelong look over the instep of his boot as he held
it up for inspection, but the weird sharpness of her glance was too
much, even for his immovable _sang froid_. His eyes sunk, and he began
to gather up the brushes as if in preparation for a retreat.
The old woman came close up and addressed him in Spanish. He understood
the language well enough, but either from cunning, or that inveterate
hatred of everything French or Spanish which we often find among English
travelling servants, continued gathering up his property as if he did
not comprehend a word.
After uttering a few sentences, half cajoling, half imperative, the
woman turned away, muttering discontentedly between her teeth, and was
about entering the back door.
“Halloo, where are you going now?” cried old Turner, satisfied that
silence would no longer answer his purpose. “Where are you going, old
witch? not into my lord’s room, surely!”
This was spoken in very respectable Spanish, though with a sort of rude
snappishness that mingled his hatred of the language with every
syllable.
“So you _can_ speak,” answered the woman, with an oath, that springs to
a gipsy’s lips naturally as flame leaps from burning wood.
“Yes, I can speak your lingo when I choose to demean myself
particularly, and that isn’t often,” replied Turner, with considerable
vexation, that he had unwarily been drawn into speaking the hated
language. “But what do you want, old beauty? Nothing of my lord, or old
Turner, I hope?”
“I want the Busne.”
“The what?” cried Turner, looking toward the door, and kicking the
brushes on one side.
“The Busne.”
“And who on earth is that, my precious old nettle?”
The old woman answered by a gesture of sharp impatience, and moved
toward the door.
“Stop that,” cried Turner, placing himself on the narrow threshold, and
brandishing the glossy boot with one hand. “No one passes in here till I
know what his business is. Speak up now, my precious old beauty. What’s
your name? Who do you want? What on earth do you mean by coming here at
all?”
The old woman stood on the threshold alone, eyeing him keenly, and
glancing now and then with the cunning of her race on each side of his
person, to measure the possibility of passing him. But Turner was
equally vigilant, and manfully kept his post, boot in hand.
“Better come to terms at once: no one gets through here without giving a
passport, I can tell you that,” said Turner. “Is it me you come after?”
“You!” sneered the old woman, and her thin lip curled upward, revealing
the sharp, hound-like teeth beneath. “You!”
“And why not, she-wolf? It wouldn’t be the first of woman-kind that has
run after the gentleman before you.”
“I want the young gentlemen—the Busne who lodges here. Let me go by, for
I will see him!”
“Easy, easy,” persisted Turner, giving a semi-circular sweep with his
boot. “There is but one lodger here, and that is my lord. You can’t see
him, because he is in bed.”
“No matter: he must get up then!”
“Must get up!—now I like that—my master will like it—do him good to hear
the word _must_; hasn’t known the sound since he was a creeping baby;
still, and nevertheless, my sweet witch of Endor, not having a fancy to
get my head broken for teaching forgotten lessons, I shan’t step from
this spot till you go back to the master who sent you, and just have the
goodness to say from old Turner, that we have given up all dealings with
him or his imps long ago.”
“I _will_ see the Busne,” answered the Sibyl, clenching her hand till it
looked like a gnarled oak knot. “Curses rest upon you—I will see him.”
“And just add by way of private information,” said Turner, as if her
last speech had escaped him entirely, “that if he has a fancy to get us
into mischief, there would be wisdom in sending a younger face. It is
astonishing how strong a man’s principles become, what a deal of energy
is given to his conscience when temptation takes a shape like yours. The
amount of morality that lies in the contemplation of a face like a
withered prune, and a form like a good English faggot, is wonderful!”
My great grandame was very, very aged. You will believe it when I tell
you that these jeers on her person had no effect whatever. She did not
even feel that they were intended for her, but determined in her resolve
to penetrate to the young Englishman, she interrupted Turner’s
philosophical soliloquy with an impatient dash of her person toward the
space left open at his right hand. A slight scuffle ensued, in which the
gipsy buried her claw-like nails deep into the flesh of her antagonist’s
right arm, while he dropped the boot and grasped her lean throat with a
force that made the breath gurgle from her lips.
That instant the sound of a voice from within the Fonde arrested the
combatants, and after giving a farewell twist to the old woman’s neck,
and wrenching his arm from the grapple of her fingers, which fell away
with a blood tinge on the nails, Turner flung her off and disappeared
through a side door that opened near the entrance.