THE TRAVELLER AT LARGE
Ahead of Esteban some five or six hours, or, rather converging upon a
common centre so far removed from him, was one Osmund Manvers, a young
English gentleman of easy fortune, independent habits and analytical
disposition; also riding, also singing to himself, equally early
afoot, but in very different circumstances. He bestrode a horse
tolerably sound, had a haversack before him reasonably stored. He had
a clean shirt on him, and another embaled, a brace of pistols, a New
Testament and a "Don Quixote"; he wore brown knee-boots, a tweed
jacket, white duck breeches, and a straw hat as little picturesque as
it was comfortable or convenient. Neither revenge nor enemy lay ahead,
of him; he travelled for his pleasure, and so pleasantly that even Time
was his friend. Health was the salt of his daily fare, and curiosity
gave him appetite for every minute of the day.
He would have looked incongruous in the elfin landscape--in that empty
plain, under that ringing sky--if he had not appeared to be as
extremely at home in it as young Esteban himself; but there was this
farther difference to be noted, that whereas Esteban seemed to belong
to the land, the land seemed to belong to Mr. Manvers--the land of the
Spains and all those vast distances of it, the enormous space of
ground, the dim blue mountains at the edge, the great arch of sky over
all. He might have been a young squire at home, overlooking his farms,
one eye for the tillage or the upkeep of fence and hedge, another for a
covey, or a hare in a farrow. He was as serene as Esteban and as
contented; but his comfort lay in easy possession, not in being easily
possessed. Occasionally he whistled as he rode, but, like Esteban,
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?"
An old song. But Henry Chorley made a tone for it the summer before
Mr. Manvers left England, and it had caught his fancy, both the air and
the sentiment. They had come aptly to suit his scoffing mood, and to
help him salve the wound which a Miss Eleanor Vernon had dealt his
heart--a Miss Eleanor Vernon with her clear disdainful eyes. She had
given him his first acquaintance with the hot-and-cold disease.
"If she be not fair for me!" Well, she was not to be that. Let her go
spin then, and--"What care I how fair she be?" He had discarded her
with the Dover cliffs, and resumed possession of himself and his seeing
eye. By this time a course of desultory journeying through Brittany
and the West of France, a winter in Paris, a packet from Bordeaux to
Santander had cured him of his hurt. The song came unsought to his
lips, but had no wounded heart to salve.
Mr. Manvers was a pleasant-looking young man, sanguine in hue, grey in
the eye, with a twisted sort of smile by no means unattractive. His
features were irregular, but he looked wholesome; his humour was
fitful, sometimes easy, sometimes unaccountably stiff. They called him
a Character at home, meaning that he was liable to freakish asides from
the common rotted road, and could not be counted on. It was true. He,
for his part, called himself an observer of Manvers, which implied that
he had rather watch than take a side; but he was both hot-tempered and
quick-tempered, and might well find himself in the middle of things
before he knew it. His crooked smile, however, seldom deserted him,
seldom was exchanged for a crooked scowl; and the light beard which he
had allowed himself in the solitudes of Paris led one to imagine his
jaw less square than it really was.
I suppose him to have been five foot ten in his boots, and strong to
match. 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 in company of
the curate. The disdain of Miss Eleanor Vernon had cured him of a
taste for such simple joys, and now that, by travel, he had cured
himself of Miss Eleanor, he was travelling on for his pleasure, or, as
he told himself, to avoid the curate. Thus neatly he referred to his
obligations to Church and State in Somersetshire.
By six o'clock on this fine May morning he had already ridden far--from
Sahagun, indeed, where he had spent some idle days, lounging, and
exchanging observations on the weather with the inhabitants. He had
been popular, for he was perfectly simple, and without airs; never
asked what he did not want to know, and never refused to answer what it
was obviously desired he should. But man cannot live upon small talk;
and as he had taken up his rest in Sahagun in a moment of impulse--when
he saw that it possessed a church-dome covered with glazed green
tiles--so now he left it.
"High Heaven!" he had cried, sitting up in bed, "what the deuce am I
doing here? Nothing. Nothing on earth. Let's get out of it." So out
he had got, and could not ask for breakfast at four in the morning.
He rode fast, desiring to make way before the heat began, and by six
o'clock, with the sun above the horizon, was not sorry to see towers
and pinnacles, or to hear across the emptiness the clangorous notes of
a deep-toned bell. "The muezzin calls the faithful, but for me another
summons must be sounded. That town will be Palencia. There I
breakfast, by the grace of God. Coffee and eggs."
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 weatherworn and austere; but
it had a squat officer sitting at the receipt of custom, which Sahagun
had not, and a file of anxious peasants before him, bargaining for
their chickens and hay.
Upon the horseman's approach the functionary raised himself, looking
over the heads of the crowd as at a greater thing, saluted, and
inquired for gate-dues with his patient eyes. "I have here," said
Manvers, who loved to be didactic in a foreign language, "a shirt and a
comb, the New Testament, the History of the Ingenious Gentleman, Don
Quixote de la Mancha, and a toothbrush."
Much of this was Greek to the _doganero_, who, however, understood that
the stranger was referring in tolerable Castilian to a provincial
gentleman of degree. The name and Manvers' twisted smile together won
him the entry. The officer just eased his peaked cap. "Go with God,
sir," he directed.
"Assuredly," said Manvers, "but pray assist me to the inn."
The Providencia was named, indicated, and found. There was an elderly
man in the yard of it, placidly plucking a live fowl, a barbarity with
which our traveller had now ceased to quarrel.
"Leave your horrid task, my friend," 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 its companions. They
received it coldly, but it soon showed that it could pick as well as be
picked.
"Now," said Manvers to the ostler, "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 these things, and I present you
with one _peseta_. Omit any of them, and I give you nothing at all.
Is that a bargain?"
The old man haled off the horse, muttering that it would be a bad
bargain for his Grace, to which Manvers replied that we should see.
Then he went into the Providencia for his coffee and eggs.