“Si je vis, c'est bien; si je meurs, c'est bien.”
“Ai-i-ieah,” the people cried, as Juan Quereno passed--the cry of the
muleteers, in fact. And this was considered an excellent joke. It had
been a joke in the country-side for nearly twenty years; one of perhaps
half a dozen, for the uneducated mind is slow to comprehend, and slower
to forget. Some one had nicknamed Juan Quereno the “Mule” when he was at
school, and Spain, like Italy and parts of Provence, is a country where
men have two names--the baptismal, and the so-called. Indeed, the custom
is so universal, that official records must needs take cognizance of
it, and grave Government papers are made out in the name of so-and-so,
“named the monkey.”
There were, after all, worse by-names in the village than the Mule,
which is, as many know, a willing enough beast if taken the right way.
If taken in the wrong--well, one must not take him in the wrong way,
and there is an end of it! A mule will suddenly stop because, it would
appear, he has something on his mind and desires to think it out then
and there. And the man who raises a stick is, of course, a fool. Any
one knows that. There is nothing for it but to stand and watch his
ears, which are a little set back, and cry, “Ai-i-ieah,” patiently and
respectfully, until the spirit moves him to go on. And then the mule
will move on, slowly at first, without enthusiasm, a quality which, by
the way, is, of all the animals, only to be found in the horse and the
dog.
The quick-witted who had dealings with Quereno knew, therefore, by his
name what manner of man this was, and dealt with him accordingly. Juan
Quereno was himself a muleteer, and in even such a humble capacity as
scrambling behind a beast of burden over a rocky range of mountains and
through a stream or two, a man may make for himself a small reputation
in his small world. Juan Quereno was, namely, a Government muleteer, and
carried the mails over nineteen chaotic miles of rock and river. When
the mails were delayed owing, it was officially announced, to heavy snow
or rain in the mountains, the delay never occurred on Quereno's etapa.
For nine years, winter and summer, storm and shine, he got his mails
through, backwards and forwards, sleeping one night at San Celoni, the
next at Puente de Rey. Such was Juan Quereno, “a stupid enough fellow,”
the democratic schoolmaster of San Celoni said, with a shrug of
his shoulders and a wave of the cigarette which he always carried
half-smoked and unlighted in his fingers.
The schoolmaster was, nevertheless, pleasant enough when the Mule,
clean-shaven and shy, with a shrinking look in his steady, black eyes,
asked one evening if he could speak to him alone.
“But yes--amigo!” he replied; “but yes.” And he drew aside on the bench
that stands at the schoolhouse door. “Sit down.”
The Mule sat down, leant heavily against the wall, and thrust out first
one heavy foot and then the other. Then he sat forward with his elbows
on his knees, and looked at his dusty boots. His face was tanned a deep
brown--a stolid face--not indicative of much intelligence perhaps, not
spiritual, but not bad on the other hand, which is something in a world
that abounds in bad faces. He glanced sideways at the schoolmaster,
and moistened his lips with his tongue, openly, after the manner of the
people.
“It is about Caterina, eh?” inquired the elder man.
“Yes,” replied the Mule, with a sort of gasp. If the Mule had ever been
afraid in his life, it was at that moment--afraid, if you please, of a
little democrat of a schoolmaster no bigger than the first-class boys,
blinking through a pair of magnifying spectacles which must have made
the world look very large, if one could judge from the effect that they
had upon his eyes.
The schoolmaster looked up towards the mountains, to the goats poised
there upon the broken ground, seeking a scanty herbage in the crannies.
“How many beasts is it that you have--four or five?” he inquired kindly
enough, after a moment, and the Mule drew a deep breath.
“Five,” he replied; and added, after a minute's deep and honest thought,
“and good ones, except Cristofero Colon, the big one. He eats much, and
yet, when the moment comes”--he paused and looked towards the mountains,
which rose like a wall to the south, a wall that the Mule must daily
climb--“when the moment comes he will sometimes refuse--especially in an
east wind.”
The schoolmaster smiled, thinking perhaps of that other Cristofero Colon
and the east wind that blew him to immortal fame.
“And Caterina,” he asked. “What does she think of it?”
“I don't know.”
The schoolmaster looked at his companion with an upward jerk of the
head. It was evident that he thought him a dull fellow. But that
assuredly was Caterina's affair. It was, on the other hand, distinctly
the affair of Caterina's father to remember those five beasts of the
Mule's, than which there were none better in the country-side--to
recollect that the Mule himself had a good name at his trade, and
was trusted by the authorities. There was no match so good in all
the valley, and certainly none to compare with this dull swain in the
accursed village of San Celoni. The schoolmaster never spoke of the
village without a malediction. He had been planted there in his youth
with a promise of promotion, and promotion had never come. For a man
of education it was exile--no newspapers, no passing travellers at the
Cafe. The nearest town was twenty miles away over the Sierra Nevada, and
Malaga--the paved Paradise of his rural dreams--forty rugged miles to
the south. No wonder he was a democrat, this disappointed man. In a
Republic, now, such as his father had schemed for in the forties,
he would have succeeded. A Republic, it must be remembered, being a
community in which every man is not only equal, but superior to his
neighbour.
“You don't know?”
“No,” answered the Mule, with a dull look of shame at his own
faint-heartedness. Moreover, he was assuredly speaking an untruth. The
man who fears to inquire--knows.
As a matter of fact, he had hardly spoken to Caterina. Conversation was
not the Mule's strong point. He had exchanged the usual greetings with
her at the fountain on a fiesta day. He had nodded a good morning to
her, gruff and curt (for the Mule had no manners), more times than he
could count. And Caterina had met his slow glance with those solemn eyes
of hers, and that, so to speak, had settled the Mule's business. Just as
it would have settled the business of five out of six men. For Caterina
had Moorish eyes--dark and solemn and sad, which said a hundred things
that Caterina had never thought of--which seemed to have some history
in them that could hardly have been Caterina's history, for she was only
seventeen. Though, as to this, one cannot always be sure. Perhaps the
history was all to come. Of course, the Mule knew none of these things.
He was a hard-working, open-air Andalusian, and only knew that he wanted
Caterina, and, as the saying is, could not live without her. Meantime he
lived on from day to day without that which he wanted, and worked--just
as the reader may be doing. That, in fact, is life--to live on without
something or other, and work. Than which there is one thing worse,
namely, to live on and be idle.
“But--” said the schoolmaster, slowly, for Andalusian tongues are slow,
if the knives are quick--“but one may suppose that you would make her a
good husband.”
And a sudden gruff laugh was the answer. A woman would have understood
it; but Caterina had no mother. And the schoolmaster was thinking of the
five beasts and the postal appointment. The muleteer's face slowly sank
back into stolidity again. The light that had flashed across it had
elevated that dull physiognomy for a moment only.
“Yes,” said the Mule slowly, at length.
“You can read and write?” inquired the man of education.
“Yes, but not quickly!”
“That,” said the schoolmaster, “is a matter of practice. You should read
the newspapers.”
Which was bad advice, for the Mule was simple and might have believed
what he read.
The conversation was a long one; that is to say, it lasted a long time;
until, indeed, the sun had set and the mountains had faded from blue to
grey, while the far-off snow peaks reared their shadowy heads into the
very stars. The schoolmaster had a few more questions to ask, and the
Mule answered them in monosyllables. He was tired, perhaps, after his
day's journey; for he had come the northward trip, which was always
the hardest, entailing as it did a rocky climb on the sunny side of the
mountains. He had nothing to say in his own favour, which is not such a
serious matter as some might suspect. The world does not always take us
at our own valuation, which is just as well--for the world.
Indeed, the schoolmaster only succeeded in confirming his own suspicion
that this was nothing but a dull fellow, and he finally had to
dismiss the Mule, who had not even the savoir faire to perceive when
conversation was ended.
“Vederemos,” he said, judicially, “we shall see.”
And the Mule went away with that heaviness of heart which must surely
follow a mean action. For he knew that in applying to Caterina's father
he had placed Caterina at a disadvantage. The schoolmaster, be it
remembered, was a democrat, and such are usually autocrats in their
own house. He was, moreover, a selfish man, and had long cherished the
conviction that he was destined to be great. He thought that he was an
orator, and that gift, which is called by those who do not possess it
the gift of the gab, is the most dangerous that a man can have. There
was no one in San Celoni to listen to him. And if Caterina were married
and he were a free man, he could give up the school and go to Malaga,
where assuredly he could make a name.
So the schoolmaster told Caterina the next morning that she was to
marry the Mule--that the matter was settled. The dusky roses faded from
Caterina's cheek for a moment, and her great dark eyes had a hunted
look. That look had often come there of late. The priest had noticed it,
and one or two old women.
“Almost as if she were in the mountains,” they said, which is a local
polite way of referring to those unfortunate gentlemen who, for some
reason or another, do not desire to meet the Guardia Civil, and haunt
the upper slopes of the Sierra Nevada, where they live, as live the
beasts of the forest, seeking their meat from God, while the charitable,
and, it is even whispered, the priest or the Alcalde himself, will
at times lay an old coat or a loaf of bread at the roadside above the
village, and never inquire who comes to take it.
The Mule himself, it is known, buys more matches than he can ever burn,
so much as six boxes at a time, of those cheap sulphurous wooden matches
that are made at Barcelona, and the next day will buy more. The Mule,
however, is such a silent man that those who are “in the mountains” make
no concealment with him, but meet him (wild, unkempt figures that appear
quietly from behind a great rock) as he passes on his journeys, and ask
him if he has a match upon him. They sometimes look at the mail-bags
slung across the stubborn back of Cristofero Colon with eyes that have
the hunted, hungry look which Caterina has.
“There is, perhaps, money in there,” they say.
“Perhaps,” answers the Mule, without afterthought.
“It may be a thousand pesetas.”
“Perhaps.”
And the Mule, who is brave enough where Caterina is not concerned,
quietly turns his back upon a man who carries a gun, and follows
Cristofero Colon. It sometimes happens that he trudges his nineteen
miles without meeting any one, with no companion but his mules and his
dog. This last-named animal is such as may be met in Spain or even
in France at any street corner--not a retriever, nor a foxhound, nor
anything at all but a dog as distinguished from a cat or a goat, living
a troubled and uncertain life in a world that will always cringe to a
pedigree, but has no respect for nondescripts. It was on these journeys
that the Mule had so much leisure for thought. For even he could think,
according to his dim lights. He was only conscious, however, of an
ever-increasing feeling of a sickness--a physical nausea (for he was,
of course, a mere earthy-creature)--at the thought of a possible life
without Caterina. And it was at the end of a grilling day that the
schoolmaster beckoned to him as he passed the school-house, and told him
that it was settled--that Caterina would marry him.
“Would you like to see her? She is indoors,” inquired the bearer of the
tidings.
“No,” answered the Mule, after a dull pause. “Not to-night. I have my
mail-bags, as you see.”
And he clattered on down the narrow street with a dazed look, as if the
brightness of Paradise had flashed across his vision.
So it was settled. Caterina and the Mule were to be married, and there
had been no love-making, the old women said. “And what,” they asked, “is
youth for, if there is to be no love-making?”
“And God knows they were right,” said the priest who heard the remark,
and who was a very old man himself.
Two days after that, the Mule met Caterina as she was going to the
fountain. He said “Good morning.” They both stopped, and the Mule looked
into Caterina's eyes and had nothing to say. For he saw something there
which he did not understand, and which made him feel that he was no
better than Cristofero Colon, scraping and stumbling up the narrow
street with the mail-bags, in such a vile temper, by the way, that the
Mule had to hurry after him.
“It is a slow business,” said the schoolmaster to Sergeant Nolveda, of
the Guardia Civil, who lived in San Celoni and trained one young recruit
after another according to the regulations of this admirable corps. For
one never meets a Guardia Civil alone, but always in company--an old
head and a pair of young legs. “A slow business. He is not a lover such
as I should choose were I a pretty girl like Caterina; but one can never
tell with women--eh?”
Indeed, matters did not progress very quickly. The Mule appeared to take
so much for granted--to take as said so much that had not been said.
Even the love-making seemed to him to have been understood, and he
appeared to be quite content to go his daily journeys with the knowledge
that Caterina was to be his wife. There were, of course, others in the
valley who would have been glad enough to marry Caterina, but she
had shown no preference for any of these swains, who knew themselves
inferior, in a worldly sense, to the Mule. So the whole country-side
gradually accustomed itself also to the fact that Caterina was to marry
Quereno. The news even spread to the mountains. The Mule heard of it
there one day when he had accomplished fourteen daily journeys to the
accompaniment of this new happiness.
As he was nearing the summit of the pass he saw Pedro Casavel, who had
been “in the mountains” three years, seated on a stone awaiting him.
Pedro Casavel was a superior man, who had injured another in a dispute
originating in politics. His adversary was an old man, now stricken with
a mortal disease. And it was said that Pedro Casavel could safely return
to the village, where his father owned a good house and some land. His
enemy had forgiven him, and would not prosecute. But Casavel lingered in
the mountains, distrusting so Christian a spirit.
He rose as the Mule slowly approached. He carried a gun always, and was
more daring than his companions in retreat. The Mule mechanically sought
in his jacket pocket for a box of matches, which he knew would be a
welcome gift, and held them out silently as he neared Casavel. But
Casavel did not take them.
“I hear that you are to marry Caterina,” he said, with a half disdainful
laugh. “Is it true?”
“It is true,” answered the Mule.
“If you do,” cried the other, passionately, with a bang on the stock of
his gun that startled Cristofero Colon--“if you do, I will shoot you.”
The Mule smiled slowly, just as he smiled when the people cried
“Ai-i-ieah” as he passed them.
“I am going to marry her,” he said, with a shake of the head. And
mechanically he handed the other the box of matches, which Casavel took,
though his eyes still flashed with anger and that terrible jealousy
which flows in Southern blood. Then the Mule walked slowly on, while
his dog shambled after him, turning back once or twice to glance
apprehensively at the man left standing in the middle of the rocky path.
Dogs, it is known, have a keener scent than human beings--perhaps, also,
they have a keener vision, and see more written on the face of man than
we can perceive.
The Mule turned at the summit of the pass, and looked down, as he always
did, at the village where Caterina lived, before turning his face to the
sunnier southern slope. He saw Casavel standing where he had left him,
holding up the gun with a threatening gesture. The Mule had no eye for
effect. He did not even shrug his shoulders.
It was finally the schoolmaster who hurried matters to their natural
conclusion. By his advice, the Mule, who had hitherto lodged in the
house of the postmaster, rented a cottage of his own and bought some
simple furniture. He consulted Caterina on several points, and she was
momentarily aroused from a sort of apathy which had come over her of
late, by a very feminine interest in the kitchen fittings. The best that
could be said for Caterina was that she was resigned. As for the Mule,
like the animal from which he had acquired his habits of thought as well
as his name, he seemed to expect but little from life. So, one morning
before departing on his daily journey, the Mule was unobtrusively
married to Caterina in the little pink stucco chapel that broods over
the village of San Celoni like a hen over her chickens. And Cristofero
Colon and the dog waited outside.
It was a commonplace ceremony, and at its conclusion the bridegroom
trudged off up the village street behind his mail-bags. The Mule, it
must be admitted, was a deadly dull person--y nada mas--and nothing
more, as his fond father-in-law observed at the cafe that same morning.
But when he returned on the second evening, he made it evident that
he had been thinking of Caterina in his absence, for he gave her, half
shyly and very awkwardly, some presents that he had brought from a
larger village than San Celoni, which he had passed on his way. There
were shops in the village, and it was held in the district that articles
bought there were of superior quality to such as came even from Granada
or Malaga. The Mule had expended nearly a peseta on a coloured kerchief
such as women wear on their heads, and a brooch of blue glass.
“Thank you,” said Caterina, taking the presents and examining them with
bright eyes. She stood before him in a girlish attitude, folding the
kerchief across her hand, and holding it so that the light of their new
lamp fell upon it. “It is very pretty.”
The Mule had washed his face and hands at the fountain, as he came into
San Celoni, remembering that he was a bridegroom. He stood, sleek and
sunburnt, looking down at her, and, if he had only had the words, the
love-making might have commenced then and there, at a point where the
world says it usually ends.
“There was nothing,” he said slowly at length, “in the shops that seemed
to me pretty at all--” He paused, and turned away to lay his beret
aside, then, with his back towards her, he finished the sentence. “Not
pretty enough for you.”
Caterina winced, as if he had hurt instead of pleased her. She busied
herself with the preparations for their simple supper, and the Mule sat
silently watching her--as happy, perhaps, in his dull way, as any king
has ever been. Then suddenly Caterina's fingers began to falter, and
she placed the plates on the table with a clatter, as if her eyes were
blinded. She hesitated, and with a sort of wail of despair, sat down and
hid her face in her apron. And the Mule's happiness was only human
after all, for it was transformed in the twinkling of an eye into abject
misery.
He sat biting his lip, and looking at her as she sobbed. Then at length
he rose slowly, and, going to her, laid his great, solid, heavy hand
upon her shoulder. But he could not think of anything to say. He could
only meet this as he had met other emergencies, with that silence which
he had acquired from the dumb beasts amid the mountains.
At length, after a long pause, he spoke. He had detected a movement,
made by Caterina and instantly restrained, to withdraw from the touch
of his hand, and this had set his slow brain thinking. He had dealt with
animals more than with men, and was less slow to read a movement than to
understand a word.
“What is it?” he asked. “Is it that you are sorry you married me?”
And Caterina, who belonged to a people saying yea, yea, and nay, nay,
nodded her head.
“Why?” asked the Mule, with a deadly economy of words. And she did not
answer him. “Is it because--there is another man?”
It was known in the valley that the Mule had never used his knife, not
even in self-defence. Caterina did not dare, however, to answer him. She
only whispered a prayer to the Virgin.
“Is it Pedro Casavel?” asked the Mule; and the question brought her to
her feet, facing him with white cheeks.
“No--no--no!” she cried. “What made you think that? Oh--no!”
Woman-like, she thought she could fool him. The Mule turned away from
her and sat down again. Woman-like, she had forgotten her own danger at
the mere thought that Casavel might suffer.
“And he--in the mountains,” said the Mule, thinking aloud. He was
beginning to see now, at last, when it was too late, as better men than
he have done before, and will continue to do hereafter. Caterina could
not have held out as an objection to her marriage the fact that she
loved a man who was in the mountains. The schoolmaster was not one to
listen to such an argument as that, especially from a girl who could
not know her own mind. For the schoolmaster was, despite his radical
tendencies, bigoted in his adherence to the old mistakes.
Caterina might have told the Mule, perhaps, if he had asked her; for she
knew that he was gentle even with the stubborn Cristofero Colon. But he
had not asked her, failing the necessary courage to face the truth.
It was, of course, the woman who spoke first, in a quiet voice, with
that philosophy of life which is better understood by women than by men.
“You must, at all events, eat,” she said, “after your journey. It is a
cocida that I have made.”
She busied herself among the new kitchen utensils with movements hardly
yet as certain as the movements of a woman, but rather those of a child,
hasty and yet deft enough. The Mule watched her, seated clumsily, with
round shoulders, in the attitude of a field labourer indoors. When the
steaming dish, which smelt of onions, was set upon the table, he rose
and dragged his chair forward. He did not think of setting a chair in
place for Caterina, who brought one for herself, and they sat down--to
their wedding feast.
They appeared to accept the situation, as the poor and the hard-worked
have to accept the many drawbacks to their lot, without further comment.
The Mule cultivated a more complete silence than hitherto; but he was
always kind to Caterina, treating her as he would one of his beasts
which had been injured, with a mutual silent acceptance of the fact that
she had a sorrow, a weak spot as it were, which must not be touched.
With a stolid tact he never mentioned the mountains, or those
unfortunate men who dwelt therein. If he met Pedro Casavel he did not
mention the encounter to Caterina. Neither did he make any reference to
Caterina when he gave Pedro a box of matches. Indeed, he rarely spoke to
Casavel at all, but nodded and passed on his way. If Casavel approached
from behind he stopped without looking round, and waited for him just
as his mules stopped, and as mules always do when they hear any one
approaching from behind.
So time went on, and the schoolmaster, resigning his situation, departed
to Malaga, where, by the way, he came to no good; for of talking there
is too much in this world, and a wise man would not say thank you for
the gift of the gab. The man whom Pedro Casavel had injured died quietly
in his bed. Caterina went about her daily work with her unspoken history
in her eyes, while Pedro himself no doubt ate his heart out in the
mountains. That he ate it out in silence could scarcely be, for the tale
got about the valley somehow that he and Caterina had been lovers before
his misfortune.
And as for the Mule, he trudged his daily score of miles, and said
nothing to any man. It would be hard to say whether he noticed that
Pedro Casavel, when he showed himself now in the mountains, appeared
rather ostentatiously without his gun--harder still to guess whether the
Mule knew that as he passed across the summit Casavel would sometimes
lie amid the rocks, and cover him with that same gun for a hundred yards
or so, slowly following his movements with the steady barrel so that
the mail-carrier's life hung, as it were, on the touch of a trigger for
minutes together. Pedro Casavel seemed to shift his hiding place, as
if he were seeking to perfect certain details of light and range and
elevation. Perhaps it was only a grim enjoyment which he gathered from
thus holding the Mule's life in his hand for five or six minutes two
or three times a week; perhaps, after all, he was that base thing, a
coward, and lacked the nerve to pull a trigger--to throw a bold stake
upon life's table and stand by the result. Each day he crept a little
nearer, grew more daring; until he noticed a movement made by the lank,
ill-fed dog, that seemed to indicate that the beast, at all events, knew
of his presence in the rocks above the footpath.
Then one day, when there was no wind, and the light was good and the
range had been ascertained, Pedro Casavel pulled the trigger. The
report and a puff of bluish smoke floated up to heaven, where they were
doubtless taken note of, and the Mule fell forward on his face.
“I have it,” he muttered, in the curt, Andalusian dialect. And then and
there the Mule died.
It happened to be Cristofero Colon's day to do the southward journey,
and despite the lank dog's most strenuous efforts, he continued his
way, gravely carrying the dusty mail-bags to their destination. The dog
remained behind with the Mule, pessimistically sniffing at his clothing,
recognizing, no doubt, that which, next to an earthquake, is the easiest
thing to recognize in nature. Then at length he turned homewards,
towards San Celoni, with hanging ears and a loose tail. He probably
suspected that the Mule had long stood between him and starvation--that
none other would take his place or remember to feed a dog of so
unattractive an appearance and no pedigree whatever.
Caterina did not expect the Mule to return that evening, which was
his night away from home at Puente de Rey. She hurried to the door,
therefore, when she heard, after nightfall, the clatter of hoofs in the
narrow street, and the shuffling of iron heels at her very step. She
opened the door, and in the bright moonlight saw the cocked-hats and
long cloaks of the Guardia Civil. There were other men behind them, and
a beast shuffled his feet as he was bidden to stand still.
“What is it?” she asked. “An accident to the Mule?”
“Not exactly that,” replied the Sergeant, grimly, as he made way for two
men who approached carefully, carrying a heavy weight. It was the Mule
whom they brought in and laid on the table.
“Shot,” said the Sergeant, curtly. He had heard the gossip of
the valley, and doubted whether Caterina would need much pity or
consideration. His companion-in-arms now appeared, leading by the sleeve
one who was evidently his captive. Caterina looked up and met his eyes.
It was Pedro Casavel, sullen, ill-clad, half a barbarian, with the seal
of the mountains upon him. “The mail-bags are missing,” pursued the
Sergeant, who in a way was the law-giver of the valley. “Robbery was
doubtless the object. We shall find the mail-bags among the rocks. The
Mule must have shown fight; for his pistol was in his pocket with one
barrel discharged.”
As he spoke he laid his hand upon the Mule's broad chest without heeding
the stained shirt. That stain was no new sight to an old soldier.
“Robbery,” he repeated, with a glance at Casavel and Caterina, who stood
one on each side of the table that bore such a grim burden, and looked
at each other. “Robbery and murder. So we brought Pedro Casavel, whose
hiding-place we have known these last two years, with us--on the chance,
eh?--on the chance. It was the dog that came and told us. Whoever shot
the man should have shot the dog too--for safety's sake.”
As the Sergeant spoke, he mechanically made sure that the Mule's pockets
were empty. Suddenly he stopped, and withdrew a folded paper from the
inside pocket of the jacket. He turned towards the lamp to read the
writing on it. It was the Mule's writing. The Sergeant turned, after a
moment's thought, and faced Casavel again.
“You are free to go, Pedro,” he said. “I have made a mistake, and I ask
your pardon.”
He held out the paper, which, however, Casavel did not take, but stood
stupidly staring, as if he did not understand.
Then the Sergeant turned to the lamp again. He unfolded the paper, which
was crumpled as if with long friction in the pocket, and read aloud--
“Let no one be accused of my death. It is I, who, owing to private
trouble, shall shoot myself. Juan Quereno, so-called the 'Mule.'”