MY GOD! WHO IS HE?
All that night we rode, yet slowly, too, for the sake of the horses,
and in the morning--which broke bright, clear and frosty, the sun
sparkling and shining gaily amongst the leafless branches and trees of
the forests through which we passed--reached a little town, or
village, about half way 'twixt the frontier and Lugo, a place called
Chantada, and not far from another town named Orense, which, because
it had a large population--as we gathered from a sight of its roofs
and spires, all a-shining in the morning sun, as we could see very
well from the mountains as we passed along them--we avoided. Also, we
avoided it because it lay not so much upon our direct route, by some
three or four leagues, as Chantada itself.
"Now, come what may," said I to Juan, as we drew near this place, "and
even though we should be pursued from the border--which is not very
like--we must stop here for some hours. We require rest ourselves; as
for the beasts, they must have it; otherwise they will have to be left
behind and others found. And that would be a pity--they are better
than might have been looked for!" As, indeed, they were, especially
considering the haphazard manner in which we had come by them, both
having kept on untiring on the road, while, as for the jennet which
Juan bestrode, it was, possibly because of his light weight, as fresh
as on the hour we set out.
Then, turning to him, I said, even as I noticed that he showed no
signs of fatigue--at which I marvelled somewhat!--and that his
handsome face was as bright and full of colour as it had ever been:
"You must be a-weary, Juan? Three or four hours' sleep will do you a
world of good. And you shall have it, my lad, even though I sit at
your door with a drawn sword in my hand to prevent interruption."
As usual, he smiled that gracious, winsome smile upon me--a smile
which was always forthcoming in response to any simple little kindness
I evidenced to him--and said:
"I could ride on for hours thus--feel no fatigue. Maybe 'tis the
brightness of the morning that heartens me so; perhaps the crisp
coolness of these mountains--Heavens! how different 'tis from aught we
know of in the Indies!--that makes me insensible to it! Yet, Mervan,"
and he gave me a glance from his eyes, under the dark and now
dishevelled curls that hung almost over them, "there is one thing I
long to do now. Mervan, do not refuse. I have earned the right!"
"What is it, child?" I asked, wondering what strange request he might
be about to prefer.
"Let me sing and play a little. 'Twill do no harm, and--and--you
know--the viol is here," and he touched lightly the valise strapped in
front of his saddle.
"Sing, if you will," I said, yet casting a glance around and ahead of
me to see if there were any about whose curiosity might be attracted
by the music--though in sober truth it would not much have mattered
had there been. In such a land as this--though I scarce knew it
then!--for a traveller to pass along on his way singing for
cheerfulness and for solace was no strange thing, but rather, instead,
the custom. "Sing, if you wish--I shall be glad enough to hear a merry
note or so. For audience, however, there will be no other."
"I want none," he replied, "if you are content." And by now, having
got out the little viol d'amore, he struck a few notes upon it and
began to sing.
At first his song was, as I understood and as he told me afterward, a
love-ballad addressed by a youth to his mistress; the words--as he
uttered them--soft and luscious as the trill of the nightingale on
summer night. And his marvellous beauty added also to the effect it
had on me, made me wonder how many dark, tropic beauties in the lands
he came from had already lost their hearts to him. Nay, wondered so
much that, as the last sweet tones of both his voice and viol died
upon the crisp morning air, I asked him a question to that effect.
"Ho! Ho!" he laughed, yet softly as he had just now sung. "None! None!
None! In the Indies I am nothing; all are as dark as I except when
they are golden--fair--and--and--Mervan, _mon ami_, no woman has ever
said a word of love to me."
"Humph!" I said, doubting. "Nor you, perhaps, a word of love to them."
"Nor I a word of love to them. Never, never. _Le grand jamais!_"
"Nor ever loved?" with a tone of doubt so strong in my voice now that
he could not fail to understand it.
"Nor ever loved," he repeated. "Yes--yes--I love now. Now!" Then,
impetuously, as he ever spoke--like a torrent let loose from mountain
side--he went on:
"Love! Love! Love! With heart and soul, and brain on fire. Love! so
that for the creature I adore--have learnt to worship, I would--ah!
what would I not do? Cast my body beneath that creature, plunge
through fire or water--Oh!" he exclaimed, breaking off as suddenly as
he had begun, "Oh! I am a fool! A fool! A fool!"
"But, surely," I said, "surely, with such as you are, that love does
not go unrequited. If you have spoken to the object of this passion,
told of this love you say you bear--and are believed--it must be
returned. Such love as yours would not be simulated, must therefore be
appreciated."
"Simulated!" he exclaimed. "Simulated. It cannot be simulated, not
assumed like a mountebank's robe ere he plays a part. Any one can
paint a flame, any tawdry daubster of an inn signboard, but not even
Murillo himself could paint the heat. And my love is heat--not--not
flame."
"And the lady? The lady?" I asked almost impatiently. "Surely she
does--she must--return this love."
Volatile as he was, and, changing his mood again in a moment, he
looked slyly at me under the dark locks, twanged the viol again and
burst into another song, different from the one he had but recently
finished, the song which I had previously known him to sing:
"Oh! have you heard of a Spanish lady,
How she wooed an Englishman?"
"I am an Englishman now, you know, Mervan," interrupting the song.
Then going on:
"Garments gay and rich as may be,
Decked with jewels, she had on."
"Did she woo you, then?" I asked, as he paused a moment.
For answer he sang again:
"As his prisoner fast he kept her,
In his hands her life did lie;
Cupid's bands did tie them faster
By the twinkling of an eye----"
He stopped abruptly and pointed ahead of him with the little viol,
then wrapped it up again in his valise and said:
"See, _amígo_, there is the village--what was its name cut on the
pedestal? Now what are we? Eh? And whence come we if any questions are
asked?"
"You are a young Spanish gentleman," I said, repeating a lesson I had
hitherto in our ride tutored him in, "from Vigo. I am a Frenchman. We
are on our way to Bayonne to join the French forces. Also, we neither
of us know English."
"_Bon, pas un mot_," he replied, catching me up brightly. "_Et nous
parlons Anglais comme une vache parle Espagnol. N'est-ce fas, mon
ami?_"
"_C'est ça. En avant_," I replied, and with a laugh we each touched
our horses with the heel and cantered down into the village of
Chantada.
'Twas a poor place enough for any travellers to see, consisting of a
long, but very wide street, with a fountain in the midst of a wide
open square, around which there lay a number of grunting swine--lean
and repulsive--and also some score or so of geese, all basking in the
morning sun.
Yet next in importance to the church, which was on one side of this
_plaza_, was that which we most sought for, an inn, and, perhaps
because of the road being one of importance 'twixt both Portugal and
Vigo to France, it was a large, substantial-looking house, long, and
with many rooms on either side the great porte, as well as in the two
stories beneath its sloping and serrated Spanish roof; also, it looked
prosperous--a huge gilt coronet hung out over the unpaved street. For
name it had painted along all its front, the words "Taverna Duquesa
Santa Ana."
Under the great archway we rode in, seeing that in a vast courtyard
there stood a travelling coach on which, although there were no horses
attached to it, some baggage was still left piled up beneath some
skins; hearing also the stamping of several horses in their stables.
"Ask," said I to Juan, speaking in French--as agreed between us, there
was to be no more English spoken unless we were certain no ears could
overhear us--"ask if we can be accommodated for some hours, say, until
night. Then we must resume our journey. Ask that."
Obedient to my behest, the youth turned to a man who came out from the
door giving entrance to the inn itself and, in Spanish, made his
demand, whereupon the fellow, after bowing politely, said:
"There is ample accommodation for--for more--alas!--than travel these
roads."
Then, because I addressed a word or so in French to him, he continued
in that language, which, however, he had exceedingly badly:
"Messieurs will stay here till night, then push on to Lugo? _Bon_,
they will be there by morning. So! So! Yes, in verity, they can have a
good meal. There are geese, fowls, meat, also some wine of excellence.
Messieurs may refresh themselves in all ways."
Our horses put in the stable, therefore, we sat down half an hour
later in a vast _sala_--in which a great banquet might have been given
with ease--to a dish of veal, a fowl, and an _olla-podrida_, all of
which would have been good enough had they not been flavoured so much
with garlic that--to my taste, at least--all pleasure was destroyed;
also we had some most excellent chocolate and some good spirituous
liquor to follow--at which latter Juan turned a wry face. Then
ordering another meal to be ready ere we set out--with strict
injunctions that the flavouring should on this occasion be omitted--we
betook ourselves to the rooms above, where we were to get a few hours'
rest.
Yet, as we passed along the whitewashed corridor, the windows of which
gave on to the stable yard, the travelling coach standing there caught
our eyes, and I said to the host:
"You have at least some one else here besides us. Some great
personage, I should suppose, by his equipage," and I directed my
glance to where the great carriage was.
"Ho!" said the man with the true Spanish shrug of the shoulder, which
is even more emphatic than the French one, more suggestive, as it
seems to me; "a personage of wealth, I should say, but no grandee--of
Spain, at least."
"Of what land, then?" I asked. "And why a personage of wealth, yet no
grandee?"
"Oh! well, for that," the man said, with again the inimitable shrug,
"his deportment, his conduct is not that which our nobility permit
themselves. Though I know not--perhaps it may be so--he is a nobleman
of--well--possibly, England. He drinks heavily--name of a dog! but he
drinks like a fiend, _un enragé_--cognac, cognac, cognac--also he
sings all the night, sometimes so that even the fowls and the dogs are
awakened, also all our house. Yet he pays well--very well!"
"Doubtless," I replied, quietly, "an English nobleman. Such is their
custom, according to the ideas of other nations. Well, let us to
rest," whereon Juan and I turned each into a room which the landlord
indicated, and, so far as I was concerned, I slept calmly and
peacefully until awakened by him at three of the afternoon.
Now, when I descended to where our other repast was prepared for us,
which would probably be the last one of a substantial nature which we
should be likely to get ere reaching Lugo, I found Juan there walking
up and down the great _sala_, his sword swishing about against his
left leg as he turned backward and forward petulantly. Also, I could
see that something had ruffled his usually sweet disposition--that
his colour was a little higher than in general, and that the soft
velvet-looking eyes were sparkling angrily.
"Why, what is it?" I asked, even as the landlord brought in the first
cover, "what is it, my boy? You are ruffled."
"Be very sure I am!" he exclaimed, speaking rapidly, and of course in
French, so that the man heard and understood all he said. "I have been
insulted----"
"Insulted!"
"At least rebuffed, and rudely, too; and by, of all men, a filthy
blackamoor--a--a--_por Diôs!_--a slave! Oh! that I had him in the
Indies! He would insult no white one again, I tell you!" and he
fingered the hilt of his weapon and stamped his shapely foot on the
uncarpeted floor till his spurs jangled.
"Come," I said, "you can afford to despise the creature. How did it
happen?"
"Happen! Happen!" Juan replied, still angry. "How?"
"Monsieur saw the black man preparing the luggage on the great coach,"
the landlord said, as he removed the dish-cover from a course of pork
and raisins, "and asked which way his master went. And the fellow was
surly, rude--said that was their business, not the affair of
strangers. Also, they sought no companions, if--if the young señor
meant that----"
"Who never offered our company," Juan broke in again. "Curse him! I
wish I had him in the Indies!" he repeated.
"Come," I said again, "come. This is beneath you, Juan--to be angry
with a slave! As well be vexed with a dog that yaps and snaps at you
when you go to pat it. Sit down and eat your meal. We have a long ride
before us."
Perhaps he saw some sense in my suggestion, for he flung himself into
a chair and began to eat; and meanwhile the host, who was still
hovering about, handing us now a dish of mutton dressed with oysters
and pistachio nuts, and now some stewed pomegranates, chattered away
at one side, telling us that the negro's master was not well--that he
had been drinking again; but yet he was determined to set out at once.
"Though," said he, "but an hour before the caballeros rode in he had
resolved to stay until to-morrow. I know not why he has changed his
mind so swiftly. Oh!--the drink, the drink, the drink!" and he wagged
his head.
That the dissolute man whom the landlord considered to be, in
consequence, an English nobleman, was about to depart there could be
no possibility of doubt. From where we sat at table, and because
curtains to the windows seemed to be things of which those who kept
the inn had never thought, we could see out into the courtyard quite
plainly. Saw first the horses brought out--four of them--and harnessed
to the huge, lumbering vehicle--the nobleman would have proved himself
a kinder-hearted man if he had used six!--saw their cloths taken off
their backs by the postillion, and observed the latter make ready to
mount the near side leader. Also we saw the _facchinos_ on ladders
strapping tight the baggage which had been brought down and hoisted on
top, then heard the landlord, who had now left serving us to attend to
his parting guest, give orders that the noble traveller should be
informed that all was ready for his departure. Upon which we quitted
our seats at the table and walked over to the window, Juan's curiosity
much excited at the chance of seeing this drunken English _milor_, as
he called him. We had not long to wait. For presently we heard a
considerable trampling on the stairs and some mumbled words--to my
surprise the deep, guttural tones seemed familiar!--and then we saw a
wrapped figure carried out between two of the _facchinos_ and lifted
up into the carriage.
And behind that figure walked a negro, his head also enveloped in a
rich red shawl--as though the black creature feared the cold night
air, forsooth!
But, even as they lifted the debauched man into his carriage, the
wrappings about his face became disturbed and fell back on his
shoulders, so that I could see his face--and I started as I did so.
Started even more, too, when, a second later, I heard Juan exclaim in
a subdued voice:
"My God, who is he? Almost I could swear----"
While in my excitement I interrupted him, saying:
"That an English nobleman! That!--Why, 'tis the drunken old ruffian
who came from Rotterdam with me in the ship."
"And his name? His name?" Juan asked, breathlessly. "His name?"
"John Carstairs."
Even as I spoke the postillion cracked his whip, and the great
carriage rolled out of the courtyard, the lamps twinkling and
illuminating our faces as it passed before the window. Showed, too, as
they flashed on Juan's face, that he was once more deathly pale and
all his rich colouring vanished--as I had seen it vanish more than
once before.