DIVERSIONS OF TRAVEL
If Sahagun puts you out of conceit with Castile, you are not likely to
be put in again by Palencia; for a second-rate town in this kingdom is
like a piece of the plain enclosed by a wall, and only emphasises the
desolation at the expense of the freedom; and as in a windy square all
the city garbage is blown into corners, so the walled town seems to
collect and set to festering all the disreputable creatures of the
waste.
Mr. Manvers, his meal over, hankered after broad spaces again. He
walked the arcaded streets and cursed the flies, he entered the
Cathedral and was driven out by the beggars. He leaned over the bridge
and watched the green river, and that set him longing for a swim. If
his maps told him the truth, some few leagues on the road to Valladolid
should discover him a fine wood, the wood of La Huerca, beyond which,
skirting it, in fact, should be the Pisuerga. Here he could bathe,
loiter away the noon, and take his _merienda_, which should be the best
Palencia could supply.
"Muera Marta,
Y muera harta,"
"Let Martha die, but not on an empty stomach," he said to himself. He
knew his Don Quixote better than most Spaniards.
He furnished his haversack, then, with bread, ham, sausages, wine and
oranges, ordered out his horse, satisfied himself that the ostler had
earned his fee, and departed at an ambling pace to seek his amusements.
But, though he knew it not, the finger of Fate was upon him, and he was
enjoying the last of that perfect leisure without which travel,
love-making, the arts and sciences, gardening, or the rearing of a
family, are but weariness and disgust. Just outside the gate of
Palencia he had an adventure which occupied him until the end of this
tale, and, indeed, some way beyond it.
The Puerta de Valladolid is really no gate at all, but a gateway. What
walls it may once have pierced have fallen away from it in their fight
with time, and now buttresses and rubbish-heaps, a moat of blurred
outline and much filth, alone testify to former pretensions. Beyond
was to be found a sandy waste, miscalled an _alameda_, a littered place
of brown grass, dust and loose stones, fringed with parched acacias,
and diversified by hillocks, upon which, in former days of strife,
standards may have been placed, mangonels planted, perhaps Napoleonic
cannon.
It was upon one of these mounds, which was shaded by a tree, that
Manvers observed, and paused in the gateway to observe, the doings of a
group of persons, some seven boys and lads, and a girl. A kind of
uncouth courtship seemed to be in progress, or (as he put it) the
holding of a rude Court. He thought to see a Circe of picaresque Spain
with her swinish rout about her. To drop metaphor, the young woman sat
upon the hillock, with the half dozen tatterdemalions round her in
various stages of amorous enchantment.
He set the girl down for a gipsy, for he knew enough of the country to
be sure that no marriageable maiden of worth could be courted in this
fashion. Or if not a gipsy then a thing of nought, to be pitied if the
truth were known, at any rate to be skirted. Her hair, which seemed to
be of a dusty gold tinge, was knotted up in a red handkerchief; her
gown was of blue faded to green, her feet were bare. If a gipsy, she
was to be trusted to take care of herself; if but a sunburnt vagrant
she could be let to shift; and yet he watched her curiously, while she
sat as impassive as a young Sphinx, and wondered to himself why he did
it.
Suppose her of that sort you may see any day at a fair, jigging outside
a booth in red bodice and spangles, a waif, a little who-knows-who,
suppose her pretty to death--what is she even then but an iridescent
bubble, as one might say, thrown up by some standing pool of vice, as
filmy, very nearly as fleeting, and quite as poisonous? It struck him
as he watched--not the girl in particular, but a whole genus centred in
her--as really extraordinary, as an obliquity of Providence, that such
ephemerids must abound, predestined to misery; must come and sin, and
wail and go, with souls inside them to be saved, which nobody could
save, and bodies fair enough to be loved, which nobody could stoop to
love. Had the scheme of our Redemption scope enough for this--for this
trifle, along with Santa Teresa, and the Queen of Sheba, and Isabella
the Catholic? He perceived himself slipping into the sententious on
slight pretence--but presently found himself engaged.
Hatless, shoeless, and coatless were the oafs who surrounded the object
of his speculations, some lying flat, with elbows forward and chins to
fist; some creeping and scrambling about her to get her notice, or fire
her into a rage; some squatting at an easy distance with ribaldries to
exchange. But there was one, sitting a little above her on the mound,
who seemed to consider himself, in a sort, her proprietor. He was
master of the pack, warily on the watch, able by position and strength
to prevent what he might at any moment choose to think on infringement
of his rights. A sullen, grudging, silent, and jealous dog, Manvers
saw him, and asked himself how long she would stand it. At present she
seemed unaware of her surroundings.
He saw that she sat broodingly, as if ruminating on more serious
things, such as famine or thirst, her elbows on her knees and her face
in her two hands. That was the true gipsy attitude, he knew, all the
world over. But so intent she was, that she was careless of her
person, careless that her bodice was open at the neck and that more
people than Manvers were aware of it. A flower was in her mouth, or he
thought so, judging from the blot of scarlet thereabouts; her face was
set fixedly towards the town--too fixedly that he might care, since she
cared so little, whether she saw him there or not. And after all, not
she, but the manners of the game centred about her, was what mattered.
Manners, indeed! The fastidious in our young man was all on edge; he
became a critic of Spain. Where in England, France, or Italy could you
have witnessed such a scene as this? Or what people but the Spaniards
among the children of Noah know themselves so certainly lords of the
earth that they can treat women, mules, prisoners, Jews, and bulls
according to the caprices of appetite? That an Italian should make
public display of his property in a woman, or his scorn of her, was a
thing unthinkable; yet, if you came to consider it, so it was that a
Spaniard should not. Set aside, said he to himself, the grand air, and
what has the Spaniard which the brutes have not?
Hotly questioning the attendant heavens, Manvers saw just such an act
of mastery, when the lumpish fellow above the girl put his hand upon
her, and kept it there, and the others thereupon drew back and ceased
their tricks, as if admitting possession had and seisin taken, as the
lawyers call it. To Manvers a hateful thing. He felt his blood surge
in his neck. "Damn him! I've a mind----! And they pray to a woman!"
But the girl did nothing--neither moved, nor seemed to be aware. Then
the drama suddenly quickened, the actors serried, and the acts, down to
the climax, followed fast.
Emboldened by her passivity, the oaf advanced by inches, visibly. He
looked knowingly about him, collecting approval from his followers, he
whispered in her ear, hummed gallant airs, regaled the company with
snatches of salt song. Fixed as the Sphinx and unfathomable, she sat
on broodingly until, piqued by her indifference, maybe, or swayed by
some wave of desire, he caught her round the waist and buried his face
in her neck; and then, all at once, she awoke, shivered and collected
herself, without warning shook herself free, and hit her bully a blow
on the nose with all her force.
He reeled back, with his hands to his face; the blood gushed over his
fingers. Then all were on their feet, and a scuffle began, the most
unequal you can conceive, and the most impossible. It was all against
one, with stones flying and imprecations after them, and in the midst
the tawny-haired girl fighting like one possessed.
A minute of this--hardly so much--was more than enough for Manvers,
who, when he could believe his eyes, pricked headlong into the fray,
and began to lay about him with his crop. "Dogs, sons of dogs, down
with your hands!" he cried, in Spanish which was fluent, if
imaginative. But his science with the whip was beyond dispute, and the
diversion, coming suddenly from behind, scattered the enemy into
headlong flight.
The field cleared, the girl was to be seen. She lay moaning on the
ground, her arms extended, her right leg twitching. She was bleeding
at the ear.