Produced by Al Haines
[Transcriber's note: superscripted characters in this file are
indicated by surrounding them with the vertical bar character, e.g.
"|d|".]
[Illustration: Inside front cover art (left side)]
[Illustration: Inside front cover art (right side)]
[Frontispiece: Castilian table lands.]
THE SPANISH JADE
BY
MAURICE HEWLETT
WITH FULL PAGE COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS
BY WILLIAM HYDE
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
MCMVIII
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
I. THE PLEASANT ERRAND
II. THE TRAVELLER AT LARGE
III. DIVERSIONS OF TRAVEL
IV. TWO ON HORSEBACK
V. THE AMBIGUOUS THIRD
VI. A SPANISH CHAPTER
VII. THE SLEEPER AWAKENED
VIII. REFLECTIONS OF AN ENGLISHMAN
IX. A VISIT TO THE JEWELLER'S
X. FURTHER EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF DON LUIS RAMONEZ
XI. GIL PEREZ DE SEGOVIA
XII. A GLIMPSE OF MANUELA
XIII. CHIVALRY OF GIL PEREZ
XIV. TRIAL BY QUESTION
XV. NEMESIS--DON LUIS
XVI. THE HERALD
XVII. LA RACOGIDA
XVIII. THE NOVIO
XIX. THE WAR OPENS
XX. MEETING BY MOONLIGHT
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CASTILIAN TABLE LANDS . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
UPON A BLUE FIELD LAY VALLADOLID
THE TOWERS OF SEGOVIA
MADRID BY NIGHT
INTRODUCTION
Cada puta hile (Let every jade go spin).--SANCHO PANZA.
Almost alone in Europe stands Spain, the country of things as they are.
The Spaniard weaves no glamour about facts, apologises for nothing,
extenuates nothing. _Lo que ha de ser no puede faltar_! If you must
have an explanation, here it is. Chew it, Englishman, and be content;
you will get no other. One result of this is that Circumstance, left
naked, is to be seen more often a strong than a pretty thing; and
another that the Englishman, inveterately a draper, is often horrified
and occasionally heart-broken. The Spaniard may regret, but cannot
mend the organ. His own will never suffer the same fate. _Chercher le
midi a quatorze heures_ is no foible of his.
The state of things cannot last; for the sentimental pour into the
country now, and insist that the natives shall become as self-conscious
as themselves. The _Sud-Express_ brings them from England and Germany,
vast ships convey them from New York. Then there are the newspapers,
eager as ever to make bricks without straw. Against Teutonic
travellers, and journalists, no idiosyncrasy can stand out. The
country will run to pulp, as a pear, bitten without by wasps and within
by a maggot, will get sleepy and drop. But that end is not yet, the
Lord be praised, and will not be in your time or mine. The tale I have
to tell--an old one, as we reckon news now--might have happened
yesterday; for that was when I was last in Spain, and satisfied myself
that all the concomitants were still in being. I can assure you that
many a Don Luis yet, bitterly poor and bitterly proud, starves and
shivers, and hugs up his bones in his _capa_ between the Bidassoa and
the Manzanares; many a wild-hearted, unlettered Manuela applies the
inexorable law of the land to her own detriment, and, with a sob in the
breath, sits down to her spinning again, her mouldy crust and cup of
cold water, or worse fare than that. Joy is not for the poor, she
says--and then, with a shrug, _Lo que ha de ser_...!
But, as a matter of fact, it belongs to George Borrow's day, this tale,
when gentlemen rode a-horseback between town and town, and followed the
river-bed rather than the road. A stranger then, in the plains of
Castile, was either a fool who knew not when he was well off, or an
unfortunate, whose misery at home forced him afield. There was no
_genus_ Tourist; the traveller was conspicuous and could be traced from
Spain to Spain. When you get on you'll see; that is how Tormillo
weaselled out Mr. Manvers, by the smell of his blood. A great, roomy,
haggard country, half desert waste and half bare rock, was the Spain of
1860, immemorially old, immutably the same, splendidly frank,
acquainted with grief and sin, shameless and free; like some brown
gipsy wench of the wayside, with throat and half her bosom bare, who
would laugh and show her teeth, and be free with her jest; but if you
touched her honour, ignorant that she had one, would stab you without
ruth, and go her free way, leaving you carrion in the ditch. Such was
the Spain which Mr. Manvers visited some fifty years ago.
THE SPANISH JADE
CHAPTER I
THE PLEASANT ERRAND
Into the plain beyond Burgos, through the 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, and with two bare heels to kick him; alone
in the immensity of Castile, and as happy as a king may be, rode a
young man on a May morning, singing to himself a wailing, winding chant
in the minor which, as it had no end, may well have had no beginning.
He only paused in it to look before him between his donkey's ears; and
then--"_Arre, burra, hijo de perra!_"--he would drive his heels into
the animal's rump. In a few minutes the song went spearing aloft again
.... "_En batalla-a-a temero-o-sa-a_....!"
I say that he was young; he was very young, and looked very delicate,
with his transparent, alabaster skin, lustrous grey eyes and pale, thin
lips. He had a sagging straw hat upon his round and shapely head, a
shirt--and a dirty shirt--open to the waist. His _faja_ was a broad
band of scarlet cloth wound half a dozen times about his middle, and
supported a murderous long knife. For the rest, cotton drawers, bare
legs, and feet as brown as walnuts. All of him that was not
whitey-brown cotton or red cloth was the colour of the country; but his
cropped head was black, and his eyes were very light grey, keen,
restless and bold. He was sharp-featured, careless and impudent; but
when he smiled you might think him bewitching. His name he would give
you as Esteban Vincaz--which it was not; his affair was pressing,
pleasant and pious. Of that he had no doubt at all. He was intending
the murder of a young woman.
His eyes, as he sang, roamed the sun-struck land, and saw everything as
it should be. Life was a grim business for man and beast and herb of
the field, no better for one than for the others. The winter corn in
patches struggled sparsely through the clods; darnels, tares,
deadnettle and couch, the vetches of last year and the thistles of
next, contended with it, not in vain. The olives were not yet in
flower, but the plums and sloes were powdered with white; all was in
order.
When a clump of smoky-blue iris caught his downward looks, he slipped
off his ass and snatched a handful for his hat. "The Sword-flower," he
called it, and accepting the omen with a chuckle, jumped into his seat
again and kicked the beast with his naked heels into the shamble that
does duty for a pace. As he decorated his hat-string he resumed his
song:--
"En batalla temerosa
Andaba el Cid castellano
Con Bucar, ese rey moro,
Que contra el Cid ha llegado
A le ganar a Valencia..."
He hung upon the pounding assonances, and his heart thumped in accord,
as if his present adventure had been that crowning one of the hero's.
Accept him for what he was, the graceless son of his
parents--horse-thief, sheep-thief, contrabandist, bully, trader of
women--he had the look of a seraph when he sang, the complacency of an
angel of the Weighing of Souls. And why not? He had no doubts; he
could justify every hour of his life. If money failed him, wits did
not; he had the manners of a gentleman--and a gentleman he actually
was, hidalgo by birth--and the morals of a hyaena, that is to say, none
at all. I doubt if he had anything worth having except the grand air;
the rest had been discarded as of no account.
Schooling had been his, he had let it slip; if his gentlehood had been
negotiable he had carded it away. Nowadays he knew only elementary
things--hunger, thirst, fatigue, desire, hatred, fear. What he craved,
that he took, if he could. He feared the dark, and God in the
Sacrament. He pitied nothing, regretted nothing; for to pity a thing
you must respect it, and to respect you must fear; and as for regret,
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 lust swallowed up the
less.
He had felt regret when Manuela ran away; it had hurt him, and he hated
her for it. That was why he intended at all cost to find her again,
and to kill her; because she had been his _amiga_, and had left him.
Three weeks ago, it had been, at the fair of Pobledo. The fair had
been spoiled for him, he had earned nothing, and lost much; esteem, to
wit, his own esteem, mortally wounded by the loss of Manuela, whose
beauty had been a mark, and its possession an asset; and time--valuable
time--lost in finding out where she had gone.
Friends of his had helped him; he had hailed every _arriero_ on the
road, from Pamplona to La Coruna; and when he had what he wanted he had
only delayed for one day, to get his knife ground. He knew exactly
where she was, at what hour he should find her, and with whom. His
tongue itched and brought water into his mouth when he pictured the
meeting. He pictured it now, as he jogged and sang and looked
contentedly at the endless plain.
Presently he came within sight, and, since he made no effort to avoid
it, presently again into the street of a mud-built village. Few people
were astir. A man slept in an angle of a wall, flies about his head; a
dog in an entry scratched himself with ecstasy; a woman at a doorway
was combing her child's hair, and looked up to watch him coming.
Entering in his easy way, he looked to the east to judge of the light.
Sunrise was nearly an hour away; he could afford to obey the summons of
the cracked bell, filling the place with its wrangling, with the
creaking of its wheel. He hobbled his beast in the little _plaza_, and
followed some straying women into church.
Immediately confronting him at the door was a hideous idol. A huge and
brown, wooden Christ, with black horse-hair tresses, staring white
eyeballs, staring red wounds, towered before him, hanging from a cross.
Esteban knelt to it on one knee, and, remembering his hat, doffed it
sideways over his ear. He said his two _Paternosters_, and then
performed one odd ceremony more. Several people saw him do it, but no
one was surprised. He took the long knife from his _faja_, running his
finger lightly along the edge, laid it flat before the Cross, and
looking up at the tormented God, said him another _Pater_. That done,
he went into the church, and knelt upon the floor in company with
kerchiefed women, children, a dog or two, and some beggars of
incredible age and infirmities beyond description, 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.
Simple ceremonies, done by rote and common to Latin Europe; certainly
not learned of the Moors.
Mass over, our young avenger prepared to resume his journey by breaking
his fast. A hunch of bread and a few raisins sufficed him, and he ate
these sitting on the steps of the church, watching the women as they
loitered on their way home. Esteban had a keen eye for women; pence
only, I mean the lack of them, prevented him from being a collector.
But the eye is free; he viewed them all from the standpoint of the
cabinet. One he approved. She carried herself well, had fine ankles,
and wore a flower in her hair like an Andalusian. Now, it was one of
his many grudges against fate that he had never been in Andalusia and
seen the women there. For certain, they were handsome; a _Sevillana_,
for instance! Would they wear flowers in their hair--over the
ear--unless they dared be looked at? Manuela was of Valencia, more
than half _gitana_: a wonderfully supple girl. When she danced the
_jota_ it was like nothing so much as a snake in an agony. Her hair
was tawny yellow, and very long. She wore no flower in it, but bound a
red handkerchief in and out of the plaits. She was vain of her
hair--heart of God, how he hated her!
Then the priest came out of church, fat, dewlapped, greasy, very short
of breath, but benevolent. "Good-day, good-day to you," he said. "You
are a stranger. From the North?"
"My reverence, from Burgos."
"Ha, from Burgos this morning! 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 afoot."
"Yes, sir. I am called to be early. I still go South."
"Seeking work, no doubt. You are honest, I hope?"
"Yes, sir, a very honest Christian. But I seek no work. I find it."
"You are lucky," said the priest, and took snuff. "And where is your
work? In Valladolid, perhaps?"
Esteban blinked hard at that last question. "No, sir," he said. "Not
there." Do what he might he could not repress the bitter gleam in his
eyes.
The old priest paused, his fingers once more in the snuff-box. "There
again you have a great city. Ah, and there was a time when Valladolid
was one of the greatest in Castile. The capital of a kingdom! Chosen
seat of a king! Pattern of the true Faith!" His eyelids narrowed
quickly. "You do not know it?"
"No, sir," said Esteban gently. "I have never been there."
The priest shrugged. "_Vaya_! it is no affair of mine," he said. Then
he waved his hand, wagging it about like a fan. "Go your ways," he
added, "with God."
"Always at the feet of your reverence," said Esteban, and watched him
depart. He stared after him, and looked sick.
Altogether he delayed for an hour and a quarter in this village: a
material time. The sun was up as he left it--a burning globe, just
above the limits of the plain.