FAILURE.
Lucius was dizzy from want of sleep when he left the mansion of the
Aguileras and went forth into the fresh morning air. But he had no
time for repose. He could but partake of a simple breakfast at his
lodging before beginning the week's work in the Calle San Francisco.
Lepine's presence in the counting-house and factory was now more
indispensable than usual, as he would, at least till a substitute
could be found for Alcala, have to do the young Spaniard's work in
addition to his own.
The mind of Lucius Lepine was very full of his friend. What he had
seen of the interior of the fine old house in the Calle de San Jose
had made Lucius sure of what he had long suspected, that Alcala de
Aguilera, though of high lineage and aristocratic bearing, was yet
exceedingly poor. Lucius doubted that the wounded man's family would
be able to procure for him even the common comforts which his
exhausted state required. Never had Lepine been more tempted to wish
himself rich. He could give no further pecuniary help; he had cut down
already to a very narrow limit his own personal expenses; his savings
had been lately forwarded to England to pay for a brother's schooling.
Lucius saw no way of supplying the need of Alcala, unless he could
interest his employer in the behalf of his friend. Mr. Passmore had a
well-filled purse, his business profits were large, and the
disbursement of twenty, thirty, or fifty doubloons would not alter his
style of living, or cause the absence of one dainty from his luxurious
table.
But Peter Passmore was not a man from whom it was pleasant to ask a
favour, or easy to draw a donation. Lucius, when he made up his mind
to plead for assistance for Alcala, was doing for his friend a thing
which nothing short of starvation would have induced him to do for
himself.
Lepine had been for two hours in the counting-house before he heard
the heavy step and puffing breathing of Mr. Passmore.
"So your friend, the picador, was yesterday carried home dead," was
the first sentence with which the master of the iron-works greeted his
clerk.
"Not dead, sir, I am thankful to say, but gored and sorely injured,"
was the reply.
"How he escaped with life is a miracle," said the manufacturer; "but
of course the chulos went to his help. It was indeed a sight to make
one hold one's breath! The bull, a magnificent brute, rushed on with
the force of a steam-engine. The horse received the goring thrust full
in his chest, so was put at once out of pain, more lucky than the
wretched hacks usually are. Of all barbarous sports invented by man or
by demon, bull-fighting is to my mind the most atrocious."
"The sufferings which I witnessed last night," said Lucius, "make me
more ready than ever to subscribe to that opinion;" and he gave a
graphic description of what he had seen in the Calle de San Jose, but
as briefly as possible, for Passmore was never a patient listener, at
least to the tale of other's woe. But the glimpse given by Lucius of
the poverty of Alcala's home made the manufacturer more indignant than
ever.
"Not the means of getting comforts!" he exclaimed, striking his flabby
hand on the desk; "then why, in the name of common sense, did the
madman, when in the receipt of a handsome salary--punctually
paid--choose to ruin not only himself but his family, in order to
gratify some fantastic, most incomprehensible whim of his own?"
"I understand that De Aguilera had some mistaken idea of honour,"
began Lucius; but his employer would not suffer him to finish the
sentence.
"Honour! fiddlestick and nonsense!" exclaimed Mr. Passmore. "What has
a clerk in an ironware factory to do with honour? Nay, you need not
fire up, young man; the blow does not hit you. My notion of true
honour is for a man to pay his way and earn his pay; and I'm satisfied
that you do both. But for this wretched Spanish pride I've no
patience! It is anything but honourable in a man to take the bread
from the mouths of his family by squandering all his money on finery
only fit for the stage; it is anything but honourable to cheat his
employer by spending on bull-sticking the time which should have been
given to book-keeping--a much wiser, safer, and, to any man with an
atom of sense, a far more agreeable employment!"
Lucius saw that it was utterly useless to attempt to draw a single
dollar from Mr. Passmore for the relief of the Aguileras. He was
disappointed, but scarcely surprised. It was impossible to refute what
the manufacturer had said, however unpalatable truth might be,
conveyed in a manner so coarse.
Another disappointment awaited Lucius Lepine. After a day of unusual
toil, rendered more irksome by the heat of the weather acting on a
frame wearied by a long night of watching, Lucius, as soon as his work
was done, set out for the Calle de San Jose. He was anxious to know
the state of his friend, and again to take his place by his bedside.
Should the improvement in Alcala's state continue--and Lucius, who was
hopeful by nature, regarded recovery as probable--what opportunities
there would be during his convalescence for quiet religious converse!
Lucius felt that he could and would say by the bedside what he could
not say in the counting-house or the Prado. Aguilera would have to
pass many long weary hours of confinement in his apartment, and then
his mind would be free to receive the good seed of the Word.
"Into how rich a soil," thought the young Englishman, "that seed will
be dropped; and who can estimate what may be the result, not only to
Alcala, but to others whom he may influence! The man who dared face a
horrible death for love or honour, must become a Christian hero if
once he embrace evangelical truth."
It was with a feeling of triumph, that made him forget for awhile
personal weariness and anxiety for his friend, that Lucius glanced
again at the placard-covered boarding which had arrested his
attention on the Saturday night preceding the bull-fight. The
invitation to the Plaza de Toros had either been torn down as out of
date, or covered with more recent advertisements; the charge from the
Bishop of Cadiz, in all the clearness of its black type, remained
there still. Lucius smiled at the thought that he himself was about to
join the band of those who were attacking Rome in her stronghold; his
second attempt to strike at superstitious error was, he trusted, not
likely to end like his first.
Lucius soon found himself at the entrance of the Aguilera mansion. The
grating at the end of the arched passage was shut, which it had not
been on the occasions of his two previous visits.
The Englishman rang gently, but his summons remained unanswered. He
rang again rather more loudly, and then walked up to the grating. He
heard a heavy step crossing the patio, and through the perforated iron
screen which divided them saw the bent form of Teresa approaching
towards him.
"How fares the senor?" inquired Lucius.
"Better, thanks to the blessed Santa Veronica, a lock of whose holy
hair has been under the caballero's pillow," was the old woman's
reply.
"Pray open the gate; I have come to nurse your master to-night," said
Lucius.
"The caballero wants none of your nursing," exclaimed Teresa, in her
harshest tone; "and if you wait till I open the gate for you, why, you
may stand there till the Guadalquivir runs dry! Away with you and your
white Judaism![12] To have the like of you prowling about sick men's
beds is enough to make the bones of good old Torquemada[13] shake in
the grave!"
Teresa's form vanished from behind the grating, and Lucius, not a
little annoyed at this unexpected obstacle to his intercourse with
Alcala, returned to his cheerless lodging.
Evening after evening the young Englishman renewed his attempt to gain
admission into the mansion of De Aguilera, but always with a similar
result. In vain he hoped for a sight of the senorita; she at least, he
believed, would not shut out the friend of her brother. Lucius saw no
one during repeated visits but the bandy-legged, ill-favoured Chico,
or the fanatic Teresa. The latter as jealously guarded the entrance to
forbidden ground as ever did fabled dragon of old. As regarded Chico,
the case was different. Lucius more than suspected that when this
servant answered his summons, the grating might have been unlocked by
means of a silver key. But Lucius was too poor to give bribes, and
the disappointed Chico became almost as rude as Teresa herself. The
young foreigner only exposed himself to insult and abuse by his
attempts to visit Alcala.
"This is my just punishment for former neglect of a clear duty," said
Lucius to himself one evening, as he turned from the Moorish archway.
"There was a time when an open gate was before me, but now the gate is
shut."
FOOTNOTES:
[12] "White Judaism, which includes all kinds of heresy, such as
Lutheranism, Freemasonry, and the like." See the Spanish priest's
definition of the term, in the seventeenth chapter of Borrows' "Bible
in Spain."
[13] A celebrated Spanish inquisitor.