THE SPANISH WILD BEAST
A great satisfaction was added to the numerous conceits which served to
flatter Gallardo's vanity. When he talked with the Marquis of Moraima,
he contemplated him now with an almost filial affection. That _senor_
dressed like a country gentleman, a rude centaur in chaps, with a strong
lance, was an illustrious personage who could cover his breast with
official sashes and wear in the palace of kings a coat covered with
embroidery, with a golden key sewed to one lapel. His most remote
ancestors had come to Seville with the monarch that expelled the Moors,
receiving as a reward for their deeds immense territories taken from the
enemy, of which the great plains where the Marquis' bulls now pastured
were the remains. His nearest forefathers had been friends and
councillors of monarchs, spending a large part of their patrimony in the
pageantry of court life. And this great lord, kind and frank, who
maintained in the simplicity of his country life the distinction of his
illustrious ancestry, was almost like a near relative of Gallardo. The
cobbler's son was as haughty as if he had become a member and formed a
part of a noble family. The Marquis of Moraima was his uncle, although
he could not confess it publicly and, though the relationship was not
legitimate, he consoled himself thinking of the dominion he exercised
over a woman of that family, thanks to a love that seemed to laugh at
all law and class prejudice. His cousins also, and relatives in greater
or less degree of proximity, were all those young gentlemen who used to
receive him with that somewhat disdainful familiarity which connoisseurs
of rank bestow upon bull-fighters; these now began to treat him as
equals. Accustomed to hear Dona Sol speak of them with the familiarity
of kinship, Gallardo thought it disadvantageous to him not to treat them
with equal freedom.
His life and habits had changed. He seldom entered the _cafes_ on
Sierpes Street where his old admirers gathered. They were good fellows,
simple and earnest, but of little importance; small merchants, workmen
who had risen to be employers; modest employees; vagabonds of no
profession who lived miraculously by unknown expedients, with no other
visible occupation than talking of bulls.
Gallardo passed the windows of the _cafes_ and bowed to these devotees,
who responded with eager signs for him to come in. "I'll return soon."
But he did not. He entered an aristocratic club on the same street, with
servants in knee breeches, with imposing Gothic decorations and silver
service on its tables. The son of Senora Angustias felt a glow of vanity
whenever he passed among the servants standing so erect, with a military
air, in their black coats, and a lackey, imposing as a magistrate, with
a silver chain around his neck, offered to take his hat and stick. It
pleased him to mix with so many distinguished people. The young men,
sunk down in high chairs like those seen in romantic dramas, talked of
horses and women, and kept account of all the duels that took place in
Spain, for they were men of fastidious honor and unquestioned valor. In
an inside room they shot at targets; in another they gambled from the
early evening hours until after sunrise. They tolerated Gallardo as an
"original" of the club, because he was a reputable bull-fighter, who
dressed well, spent money, and had good connections.
"He is very celebrated," said the members, with great tact, realizing
that he knew as much as they did.
The character of Don Jose, who was charming and well-born, served the
bull-fighter as a guarantee in this new existence. Moreover, Gallardo,
with his cleverness as an old-time street gamin, knew how to make
himself popular with this assemblage of gay youths in which he met
acquaintances by the dozens.
He gambled much. It was the best means of coming into contact with his
"new family" and strengthening the relationship. He gambled and lost
with the bad luck of a man fortunate in other undertakings. He spent his
nights in the "hall of crime," as the gambling room was called, and he
seldom managed to gain. His ill-luck was a cause of pride to the club.
"Last night Gallardo took a good laying out," said the members. "He lost
at least eleven thousand _pesetas_."
And this prestige as a strong "bank," as well as the serenity with which
he gave up his money, made his new friends respect him, finding in him a
firm upholder of society's game. The new passion rapidly took possession
of him. The excitement of the game dominated him even to the point of
sometimes making him forget the great lady who was to him the most
interesting object in the world. To gamble with the best in Seville! To
be treated as an equal by the young gentlemen, with the fraternal
feeling that the loaning of money and common emotions creates!
Suddenly one night a great cluster of electric globes that stood on the
green table and illuminated the room went out. There was darkness and
disorder, but Gallardo's imperious voice rose above the confusion.
"Silence, gentlemen! Nothing has happened. On with the game! Let them
bring candles!"
And the game went on, his companions admiring him for his energetic
oratory even more than for the bulls he killed. The manager's friends
asked him about Gallardo's losses. He would be ruined; what he earned by
the bulls was being eaten up by gaming. But Don Jose smiled
disdainfully, doubling the glory of his _matador_.
"We have more bull-fights for this year than any one else. We're going
to get tired of killing bulls and earning money. Let the boy amuse
himself. That's what he works for, and that's why he is what he is--the
greatest man in the world!"
Don Jose considered that the people's admiration for the serenity with
which he lost added glory to his idol. A _matador_ could not be like
other men who keep chasing after a cent. He did not earn his money for
nothing. Besides, it pleased him as a personal triumph, as something
that was an accomplishment of his own, to see him established in a
social set which not everybody could join.
"He is the man of the day," he said with an aggressive air to those who
criticised Gallardo's new habits. "He doesn't go with nobodies, nor does
he sit around taverns like other bull-fighters. And what does that
prove? He is the bull-fighter of the aristocracy, because he wants to
be, and can be. The others are jealous."
In his new existence, Gallardo not only frequented the club, but some
afternoons he mingled with the Society of the Forty-five. It was a kind
of senate of tauromachy. Bull-fighters did not find easy access to its
_salons_, thus leaving the respectable nobility of the connoisseurs free
to voice their opinions.
During the spring and summer the Forty-five gathered in the vestibule
and on the sidewalk, seated in willow arm-chairs, to await the telegrams
from the bull-fights. They had little faith in the opinions of the
press; moreover they must get the news before it came out in the papers.
Telegrams from all parts of the Peninsula where bull-fights were held
came at nightfall, and the members, after listening with religious
gravity to their reading, argued and built suppositions upon these
telegraphic brevities. It was a function that filled them with pride,
elevating them above common mortals, this of remaining quietly seated at
the door of the Society, enjoying the cool air and hearing in a certain
manner, without prejudiced exaggerations, what had occurred that
afternoon in the bull plaza of Bilbao, or of Coruna or Barcelona, or
Valencia, of the ears one _matador_ had received or the hisses that had
greeted another, while their fellow-citizens remained in the saddest
depths of ignorance and walked the streets obliged to wait till night
for the coming out of the newspapers. When there was an accident, and a
telegram arrived announcing the terrible goring of a native
bull-fighter, emotion and patriotic sentiment softened the respectable
senators to the point of communicating the important secret to some
passing friend. The news instantly circulated through the _cafes_ on
Sierpes Street, and no one doubted it at all. It was a telegram received
at the Forty-five.
Gallardo's manager, with his aggressive and noisy enthusiasm, disturbed
the social gravity; but they tolerated him on account of his being an
old friend and they ended by laughing at his ways. It was impossible for
such critical persons to discuss the merits of the bull-fighters
tranquilly with Don Jose. Often, on speaking of Gallardo as "a brave
boy, but with little art," they looked timorously toward the door.
"Pepe is coming," they said, and the conversation was suddenly broken
off.
Don Jose entered waving the blue paper of a telegram above his head.
"Have you got news from Santander? Here it is: Gallardo, two strokes,
two bulls, and with the second, the ear. Now, didn't I tell you? The
greatest man in the world!"
The telegram for the Forty-five was often different, but the manager
scarcely conceded it a scornful glance, bursting out in noisy protest.
"Lies! All jealousy! My message is the one that's worth something. That
one shows pique because my boy gets all the favors."
And the members in the end laughed at Don Jose, touching their foreheads
with a finger to indicate his madness, joking about "the greatest man in
the world" and his funny manager.
Little by little, as an unheard of privilege, he managed to introduce
Gallardo into the Society. The bull-fighter came under the pretext of
looking for his manager and finally seated himself among the gentlemen,
many of whom were not his friends and had chosen _their matador_ among
the rival swordsmen.
The decorations of this club-house had distinction, as Don Jose said;
high wainscotings of Moorish tiles, and on the immaculately white walls,
gay posters recalling past bull-fights; mounted heads of bulls famous
for the number of horses they had killed or for having wounded some
celebrated _matador_; glittering capes and swords presented by certain
bull-fighters on "cutting the queue" and retiring from the profession.
Servants in frock coats waited on gentlemen in country dress or in
negligee during the hot summer afternoons. In Holy Week and during other
great feasts of Seville, when illustrious connoisseurs from all over
Spain called to greet the Forty-five, the servants dressed in knee
breeches and wore white wigs with red and yellow livery. In this guise,
like lackeys of a royal house, they served trays of _manzanilla_ to the
wealthy gentlemen, some of whom had even taken off their cravats.
In the afternoons, when the dean of the Club, the illustrious Marquis of
Moraima, presented himself, the members formed in a circle in deep
arm-chairs and the famous cattle-breeder occupied a seat higher than the
others like a throne, from which he presided over the conversation. They
always began by talking about the weather. They were mostly breeders and
rich farmers who lived on the products of the earth when favored by the
variable heavens. The Marquis expounded the observations drawn from the
knowledge acquired on interminable horseback rides over the Andalusian
plain. Upon this immense desert, with a boundless horizon like a sea of
land, the bulls resembled drowsy sharks moving slowly among the waves
of herbage. The drought, that cruel calamity of the Andalusian plains,
led to discussions lasting whole afternoons, and when, after long weeks
of expectation, the lowering sky let fall a few drops, big and hot, the
great country gentlemen smiled joyfully, rubbing their hands, and the
Marquis said impressively, looking at the broad circles that wet the
pavement:
"The glory of God! Every drop of these is a five dollar gold piece!"
When they were not busying themselves talking about the weather, cattle
became the subject of their conversation, and especially bulls, as
though they were united to them by a blood relationship. The breeders
listened with respect to the Marquis' opinions, recognizing the prestige
of his superior fortune. The mere amateurs, who never went out of the
city, admired his skill as a raiser of noble animals. What that man
knew! He showed himself convinced of the greatness of his occupation
when he talked of the care the bulls needed. Out of every ten calves
eight or nine were only good for meat, after being tested for their
temper. Only one or two which proved themselves ferocious and aggressive
before the point of the spear came to be considered animals suitable for
combat, living apart, with all manner of care--and such care!
"A herd of fierce bulls," said the Marquis, "should not be treated as a
business. It is a luxury. They give, for a fighting bull, four or five
times more than for an ox for the butcher-shop--but what they cost!"
They must be cared for at all hours, heed must be taken in regard to
their pasture and water, they must be moved from one place to another
with changes of temperature. Each bull costs more to maintain than a
family. And when he is ready he must be watched till the last minute so
that he may not disgrace himself in the ring but do honor to the emblem
of the breeder which he wears on his neck.
The Marquis had been compelled to quarrel with the managers and
authorities of certain plazas, and had refused to furnish his animals
because the band of music was placed over the bull-pens. The noise of
the instruments upset the animals, taking away their courage and
serenity when they entered the arena.
"They are just like ourselves," he said with tenderness. "They lack only
speech. What do I say? Like us? There are some that are better than some
people."
And he told about Lobito, an old bull, a leader, which he declared he
would not sell even if they would give him the whole of Seville with its
Giralda. He no sooner galloped in sight of the drove in which this jewel
lived on the vast pastures, than a shout was enough to call his
attention. "Lobito!" And Lobito, abandoning his companions, came to meet
the Marquis, moistening the horseman's boots with his gentle muzzle; yet
he was an animal of immense power and the rest of the herd lived in fear
of him.
The breeder dismounted, and taking a piece of chocolate out of his
saddle bags, he gave it to Lobito, who gratefully bowed his head armed
with its gigantic horns. The Marquis advanced with an arm resting over
the leader's neck, walking quietly through the drove of bulls, which
grew restless and ferocious at the presence of the man. There was no
danger. Lobito marched like a dog, covering the master with his body,
looking in all directions, compelling respect among his companions with
his flashing eyes. If one more audacious drew near to nose the Marquis
he encountered the threatening horns of the leader. If several united
with dull stupidity to bar his passage, Lobito thrust his armed head
among them and opened the way.
An expression of enthusiasm and tenderness moved the Marquis' beardless
lips and his white side-whiskers as he recalled the great deeds of some
of the animals produced in his pastures.
"The bull! The noblest animal in the world! If men were more like them
the world would be better off. There was Coronel. Do you remember that
treasure?"
And he showed an immense photograph with a handsome mounting, that
represented himself in mountaineer dress, much younger and surrounded by
several girls dressed in white, all seated in the centre of a meadow on
a dark mass at one end of which was a pair of horns. This mass was
Coronel. Immense and fierce toward his companions in the herd, he showed
affectionate submission to the master and his family. He was like a
mastiff, fierce to strangers, but letting the children pull him about by
the tail and ears and put up with all their deviltry with growls of
kindness. The Marquis had with him his young daughters, and the animal
smelt of the little girls' white skirts as they timidly clung to their
father's legs, until, with the sudden audacity of childhood, they ended
by rubbing his nose. "Down, Coronel!" Coronel went down on his knees and
the family seated themselves on his side, which moved up and down like a
bellows with the _ru-ru_ of his powerful respiration.
One day, after much hesitation, the Marquis sold him to the plaza of
Pamplona and attended the bull-fight. Moraima was moved by the
recollection of this event; his eyes filled with emotion. He had never
in all his life seen a bull like that. He came courageously into the
arena and stood planted in the middle of it, surprised at the light
after the darkness of the bull-pen, and at the clamor of thousands of
persons after the silence of the stables. But the moment a _picador_
pricked him he seemed to fill the whole plaza with his tremendous
fierceness.
Before him, men, horses, nothing could stand. In one minute he threw the
horses and tossed the _picadores_ into the air. The _peones_ ran. The
plaza was like a regular branding-pen. The public shouted for more
horses, and Coronel, in the meantime, stood waiting for some one to
stand up and face him. Nothing like that for nobility and power will
ever be seen again.
As soon as they incited him to come on, he rushed up with a courage and
speed that set the public wild. When they gave the sign to kill, with
the fourteen stabs he had in his body, and the complete set of
_banderillas_, he was as brave and valiant as though he had never gone
out of the pasture. Then--
The breeder, when he arrived at this point, always stopped, to
strengthen his voice, which grew tremulous.
Then--the Marquis of Moraima, who had been in a box, found himself, he
knew not how, behind the barrier among attendants who were running about
with the excitement of the eventful contest, and near to the _matador_,
who was making ready his _muleta_ with a certain deliberation, as if
wishing to put off the moment for standing face to face with an animal
of such power. "Coronel!" shouted the Marquis, leaning his body half
over the barrier and beating the boards with his hands.
The animal stood still but raised his head at these cries--distant calls
from a country he would never see again. "Coronel!" Turning his head the
bull saw a man calling to him from the wall and he started in a direct
line to attack him. But in the midst of his advance he slackened his
pace and slowly approached until he touched with his horns the arms held
out to him. His throat was varnished red with little streams of blood
which escaped from the barbs buried in his neck and from the wounds in
his hide, in which the blue muscle could be seen. "Coronel! My son!" And
the bull, as if he understood these outbursts of tenderness, raised his
dripping muzzle and dampened the Marquis' white beard. "Why hast thou
brought me here?" those wild and blood-shot eyes seemed to say. And the
Marquis, unheeding what he did, pressed kisses upon the animal's nose
that was wet with his furious bellowings.
"Don't let him be killed!" shouted a good soul in the galleries; and as
if these words reflected the mind of the public, an explosion of voices
filled the plaza, while thousands of handkerchiefs fluttered above the
tiers of seats like flocks of doves. "Don't let him be killed!" For a
moment the multitude, moved by a vague tenderness, despised its own
diversion, hated the bull-fighter with his glittering dress and his
useless heroism, admired the valor of the animal, and felt inferior to
it, recognizing that among so many thousands of reasoning beings the
greater nobility and sensibility were represented by the poor brute.
"I took him back," said the Marquis, with emotion. "I returned the
management their two thousand _pesetas_. I would have given my whole
hacienda. After he had been pastured in the meadow a month he didn't
even have the scars on his neck. It was my intention to let that brave
beast die of old age, but the good do not prosper in this world. A
tricky bull that was not fit to look him in the face treacherously gored
him to death."
The Marquis and his fellow cattle-breeders passed suddenly from this
tenderness toward the animals, to the pride they felt in their ferocity.
One should see the scorn with which they talked of the enemies of
bull-fights, of those who protested against this art in the name of
prevention of cruelty to animals. Foreigners' nonsense! Errors of
ignoramuses, who only distinguish animals by their horns and think a
slaughter-house ox the same as a fighting-bull! The Spanish bull was a
wild-beast; the most heroic wild beast in the world. And they recounted
the numerous combats between bulls and terrible felines, always followed
by the noisy triumph of the national wild beast.
The Marquis laughed as he recollected another of his animals. A combat
was arranged in a plaza between a bull, and a lion, and a tiger
belonging to a certain famous tamer, and the breeder sent Barrabas, a
wicked animal he had always kept by himself in the pasture because he
was ever goring his companions, and had killed many cattle.
"I saw that, also," said Moraima. "A great iron cage in the centre of
the ring, and in it was Barrabas. First they let the lion loose at him
and the damned beast, taking advantage of the bull's lack of cunning,
jumped onto his hind quarters and began to tear him with his claws and
teeth. Barrabas jumped with fury to unfasten him and get him in front of
his horns where his defences lay. At last, in one of his turns, he
managed to toss the lion in front of him and gored him, and then,
gentlemen, just like a ball, he smelled him from tip to tip a long
while, shook him about like a figure stuffed with straw, till finally,
as if he despised him, he tossed him to one side and there lay what they
call the 'king of beasts' rolled up into a heap, mewing like a cat that
has had a beating. Then they let the tiger at him and the affair was
shorter yet. He had scarcely stuck his nose in before Barrabas hooked
him and tossed him up, and after getting a good shaking, he went into
the corner like the other, curling himself up and playing baby."
These recollections always provoked great laughter at the Forty-five.
The Spanish bull! Little wild beasts to face him! And in their joyful
exclamations there was an expression of national pride, as if the
arrogant courage of the Spanish wild beast signified equally the
superiority of the land and race over the rest of the world.
At the time Gallardo began to frequent the Society, a new subject of
conversation interrupted the endless discussions about bulls and the
country's crops.
At the Forty-five, as well as all over Seville, they talked about
"Plumitas," a bandit celebrated for his audacity, who each day acquired
fresh fame by the fruitless efforts of his pursuers. The newspapers
related his deeds as if he were a national personage; the Government was
interpellated in the Cortes and promised an immediate capture which
never took place; the civil guard concentrated and a regular army was
mobilized for pursuing him while Plumitas, always alone, with no other
auxiliary than his carbine and his restless steed, slipped in and out
among them like a phantom. When their numbers were not great he faced
them and dropped some one of them lifeless, and he was revered and
assisted by the poor country people, miserable slaves on enormous
estates, who saw in the bandit an avenger of the hungry, a quick and
cruel justice, like that exercised by the ancient mail-clad knight
errant. Plumitas demanded money from the rich and, with the air of an
actor who sees himself watched by an immense audience, from time to time
he succored some poor old woman or a laborer burdened with a family.
These acts of generosity were enlarged upon by the gossips of the rural
multitude, who at all hours had the name of Plumitas on their lips but
who were blind and dumb when questioned by the military or the police.
He passed from one province to another with the ease of one who knew the
country well, and the land-owners of Seville and Cordova contributed
equally to his sustenance. Whole weeks would pass without talk of the
bandit, when he would suddenly present himself on a plantation, or make
his entrance into a town, scornful of danger.
At the Forty-five they had direct news of him, the same as if he were a
killer of bulls.
"Plumitas was at my place yesterday," said a rich farmer. "The overseer
gave him thirty _duros_ and he went away after breakfast."
They patiently tolerated this contribution and did not communicate the
news to any but their friends. A denunciation meant declarations and all
kinds of turmoil. Of what use? The civil guard pursued the bandit
fruitlessly and when he became angry with the informers their property
was at the mercy of his vengeance, utterly unprotected.
The Marquis talked about Plumitas and his deeds without dismay, smiling
as if he were discussing a natural and inevitable calamity.
"They are poor boys that have been unlucky and have taken to the woods.
My father (may he rest in peace!) knew the famous Jose Maria and
breakfasted with him twice. I have come across many of less fame who
went around doing mischief. They are like bulls; courageous, simple
people. They only attack when they are pressed, growing hotter under
persecution."
"He had left orders at his farmhouses and at all the herders' huts on
his vast territories for them to give Plumitas whatever he asked for.
According to tales of the overseers and cowboys, the bandit, with the
old time respect of the peasant for good and generous masters, spoke in
greatest praise of him, offering to kill any one who might offend the
Senor Marques in the least. Poor fellow! For a pittance, which was what
he asked when he presented himself, tired and hungry, it was not worth
while to irritate him and attract his vengeance."
"The breeder, who galloped alone over the plains where his bulls
pastured, had a suspicion of having several times crossed Plumitas' path
without recognizing him. He must be one of those gaunt-looking horsemen
he met in the country solitudes with no town in sight and who raised his
hand to his grimy hat, saying with respectful simplicity:
"God be with you, Senor Marques!"
Moraima, when he talked of Plumitas, sometimes glanced at Gallardo,
who, with the vehemence of the neophyte, railed against the authorities
because they did not protect property.
"Some fine day he'll present himself to thee at La Rincona', boy," said
the Marquis with his grave drawl.
"Damn it! Well, that will not please me, Senor Marques. Man alive! And
must one pay such heavy taxes for that?"
No; it would not please him to run against that bandit on his excursions
at La Rinconada. He was a brave man when killing bulls, and he forgot
his life in the ring; but these professional man-killers inspired him
with the terrors of the unknown.
His family was at his plantation. Senora Angustias loved country life
after years spent in poverty in city houses. Carmen also enjoyed the
peace of the country. Her industrious disposition inclined her to see to
the work of the farm, enjoying the sweetness of ownership as she
realized the extent of her property. Moreover, the leather-worker's
children, those nephews and nieces who consoled her for her barrenness,
needed the country air for the good of their health.
Gallardo had promised to join them, but put off his trip with all manner
of pretexts. He lived in his city house without other companionship than
that of Garabato, like a bachelor, and this permitted him complete
liberty in his relations with Dona Sol. He thought this the happiest
time of his life. Sometimes he even forgot the existence of La Rinconada
and its inhabitants.
Mounted on fiery steeds he and Dona Sol rode out in the same costumes as
on that day when they first met, sometimes alone, sometimes in the
company of Don Jose, who by his presence seemed to mollify the scandal
of the people at this exhibition. They were going to see bulls on the
pastures near Seville, to test calves in the Marquis' herds, and Dona
Sol, eager for danger, was enraptured when a young bull, instead of
running away, turned against her at the prick of her javelin and
attacked her so that Gallardo had to rush to her rescue.
Again they went to the station at Empalme, if a shipment of bulls had
been announced for the plazas which gave extra bull-fights late in the
winter.
Dona Sol curiously examined this place, the most important centre of
exportation for the taurine industry. Near the railroad there were
extensive enclosures in which enormous boxes of gray wood, mounted on
wheels, and with two lift-doors, stood by the dozens, awaiting the busy
times of exhibitions, or the summer bull-fights. These boxes had
travelled all over the Peninsula, carrying noble bulls to distant plazas
and returning empty to be occupied by another, and yet another.
Human fraud and cunning succeeded in managing as easily as merchandise
these wild beasts habituated to the freedom of the country. The bulls
that were to be sent off on the train came galloping along a broad dusty
road between two barbed wire fences. They came from far away pastures,
and as they drew near Empalme their drivers started them on a disorderly
race, so as to deceive them more completely by their scurrying speed. In
advance, at full gallop, rode the overseers and herders, with pikes over
their shoulders, followed by the prudent leaders covering the others
with enormous horns, showing them to be old cattle. After them trotted
the fierce bulls, the wild beasts destined for death, marching well
flanked by tame bulls, who prevented their getting out of the road, and
by strong cowboys who ran, sling in hand, ready to check with an
unerring stone the pair of horns that separated from the group.
When they reached the enclosures the advance riders separated, remaining
outside the gate, and the whole troop of bulls, an avalanche of dust,
kicking, bellowing, and bell ringing, rushed impetuously into the place,
the barricade suddenly closing behind the tail of the last animal.
People astride the walls or peering through the galleries excited them
with shouts or by waving hats. They crossed the first enclosure, not
noticing that they were shut in, but as though they still ran in the
open country. The leaders, taught by experience and obedient to the
herders, stood to one side as soon as they went through the door,
letting the whirlwind of bulls that ran snorting after them, pass
quietly through. They only stopped, with surprise and uncertainty, in
the second enclosure, seeing the wall ahead of them, and as they turned,
they found the gate closed in the rear.
Then the boxing up began. One by one the bulls were urged, by the waving
of rags, by shouts and blows, toward a little lane in the centre of
which was placed the travelling box with its lift-doors. It was like a
little tunnel at the end of which could be seen the open space of other
grassy enclosures and leaders that walked peacefully about; a fiction of
a far-away pasture which attracted the wild beast.
He advanced slowly along the lane, now suspicious of danger and fearing
to set his feet on the gently sloping gangway that led to the box
mounted on wheels. The bull divined peril in this little tunnel which
presented itself before him as an inevitable passage. He felt on his
hind quarters the goad that urged him along the lane, obliging him to
advance; he saw above him two rows of people looking over the barriers
and exciting him with gesticulations and whistles. From the roof of the
box, where the carpenters were hidden ready to let the doors fall, hung
a red rag, waving in the rectangle of light framed by the other exit.
The pricks, the shouts, the shapeless mass that danced before his eyes
as if defying him, and the sight of his tranquil companions pastured on
the other side of the passage, finally decided him. He began to run
through the little tunnel; he made the wooden inclined plane tremble
with his weight, but he had scarcely entered the box when the door in
front fell, and before he could turn back the one behind him slid down.
The loud grating of the locks was heard and the animal was swallowed up
in darkness and silence, a prisoner in a little space wherein he could
only lie down with his legs doubled up. Through a trap in the roof
armfuls of forage fell upon him; men pushed the perambulating dungeon on
its little wheels toward the nearby railroad, and immediately another
box was placed in the passage, repeating the deception, until all the
animals for the _corrida_ were ready to start on their journey.
Dona Sol admired these proceedings in the great national industry with
all her enthusiasm for "color," and longed to imitate the overseers and
cowboys. She loved life in the open, the gallop over the immense plains
followed by sharp horns and bony foreheads that could give death with
the slightest movement. Her soul overflowed with strong love for the
pastoral life which we all feel sometimes within us, as an inheritance
from remote ancestors in that epoch in which man, not yet knowing how to
extract riches from the womb of the earth, lived by gathering the beasts
together and depending on their products for his sustenance. To be a
herder, and a herder of wild beasts, seemed to Dona Sol the most
interesting and heroic of professions.
Gallardo, when he had overcome the first intoxication of his good luck,
contemplated the lady in wonder in the hours when they were alone,
asking himself if all women of the great world were like her. Her
caprices, her versatility, astounded him. He dared not _thou_ her; no,
not that. She had never encouraged him to such familiarity, and once
when he tried it, with hesitating tongue and trembling voice, he saw in
her eyes of gilded splendor such an expression of aloofness that he drew
back ashamed, returning to his old form of address.
She on the other hand used _thou_ in her speech to him, as did the great
gentlemen friends of the bull-fighter, but this was only in hours of
intimacy. Whenever she had to write him a short note, telling him not to
come because she was obliged to go out with her relatives, she used
_you_, and in her letters were no other expressions of affection than
the coldly courteous ones which she might employ when writing to a
friend of the lower class.
"That _gachi!_" murmured Gallardo disheartened. "It seems as if she has
always lived with scrubs who might show her letters to everybody and she
is afraid. Anybody would say she doesn't think me a gentleman because I
am a _matador!_"
Other peculiarities of the great lady made the bull-fighter sulky and
sad. Sometimes, when he presented himself at her house, one of those
servants who looked like fine gentlemen in reduced circumstances coldly
barred the way. "The Senora is not in. The Senora has gone out." And he
guessed it was a lie, feeling Dona Sol's presence a short distance away
on the other side of door and curtains. No doubt she was getting tired,
was feeling a sudden aversion to him, and just at the moment of the call
gave orders to her servants not to receive him.
"Well; the coal is burned up!" said he as he walked away. "I'll never
come back again. That _gachi_ is amusing herself with me."
But when he returned he was ashamed of having believed in the
possibility of not seeing Dona Sol again. She received him holding out
to him white firm arms like those of an Amazon, her eyes wide and
wandering, with a strange light that seemed to reflect mental disorder.
"Why dost thou perfume thyself?" she complained, as though she perceived
the most repugnant odors. "It is something unworthy of thee. I wish thee
to smell of bulls, of horses. What rich odors! Dost thou not love them?
Tell me yes, Juanin; beast of God, my animal!"
One afternoon the bull-fighter, seeing her inclined to confidences, felt
curiosity regarding her past and asked about the kings and great
personages who, according to gossip, had crossed Dona Sol's life.
She responded with a cold look in her light eyes.
"And what does that matter to thee? Thou art jealous, maybe? And even if
it were true, what then?"
She remained silent a long while, her gaze wandering, her look of
madness accompanied always by fantastic thoughts.
"Thou must have beaten women," she said, looking at him with curiosity.
"Deny it not. That would greatly interest me! Not thy wife; I know that
she is good. I mean other women, all those that bull-fighters meet; the
women that love with more fury the more they are beaten. No? Truly hast
thou never beaten one?"
Gallardo protested with the dignity of a brave man, incapable of
ill-treating those who were not so strong as he. Dona Sol showed a
certain disappointment on hearing his explanations.
"Some day thou must beat me. I want to know what that is." She spoke
with resolution, and then her face clouded, her brows met, a blue
effulgence animated the gold dust of her pupils.
"No, my strong man; mind me not; risk it not. Thou wouldst come out the
loser."
The advice was valid and Gallardo had occasion to remember it. One day,
in a moment of intimacy, a somewhat rude caress from his bull-fighter
hands awoke the fury of this woman who was attracted to the fellow--and
hated him at the same time. "Take that!" And her right hand, clenched
and hard as a club, gave a blow up and down the swordsman's jaw, with an
accuracy that seemed to follow fixed rules of defence.
Gallardo was stupefied with pain and shame, while the lady, as if she
understood the suddenness of her aggression, tried to justify it with a
cold hostility.
"That is to teach thee a lesson. I know what you are, you bull-fighters.
If I should let myself be trampled on once thou wouldst end by flogging
me every day like a gypsy of Triana. That was well done. Distances must
be preserved."
One afternoon, in the early spring, they were returning from a testing
of calves in the Marquis' pasture. He, with a troop of horsemen, rode
along the highway. Dona Sol, followed by the swordsman, turned her horse
through the fields, enjoying the elasticity of the sod under the horses'
feet. The setting sun dyed the verdure of the plain a soft purple, the
wild flowers dotted it with white and yellow. Across this expanse, on
which the colors took the ruddy tone of distant fire, the shadows of the
riders were outlined, long and slender. The spears they carried on their
shoulders were so gigantic in the shadow that their dark lines were lost
on the horizon. On one side shone the course of the river like a sheet
of reddish steel--half hidden in the grass. Dona Sol looked at Gallardo
with imperious eyes.
"Put thy arm around my waist!"
The swordsman obeyed and thus they rode, the two horses close together,
the riders united from the waist up. The lady contemplated their blended
shadows through the magic light of the meadow moving ahead of their slow
march.
"It seems as though we were living in another world," she murmured, "a
world of legend; something like the scenes one sees on tapestries or
reads of in books of knight errantry; the knight and the Amazon
travelling together with the lance over the shoulder, enamoured and
seeking adventure and danger. But thou dost not understand that, beast
of my soul. Isn't it true that thou dost not comprehend me?"
The bull-fighter smiled, showing his wholesome, strong teeth of
gleaming whiteness. She, as if charmed by his rude ignorance, pressed
her body against his, letting her head fall on his shoulder and
trembling at the caress of Gallardo's breath upon her neck. Thus they
rode in silence. Dona Sol seemed to be sleeping. Suddenly she opened her
eyes and in them shone that strange expression that was a forerunner of
the most extravagant questions.
"Tell me, hast thou ever killed a man?"
Gallardo was agitated, and in his astonishment drew away from Dona Sol.
Who? He? Never! He was a good fellow who had made his way without doing
harm to anybody. He had scarcely ever quarrelled with his companions in
the _capeas_, not even when they kept the copper coins because they were
stronger. A few fisticuffs in some disputes with his comrades in the
profession; a blow with a flask in a _cafe_; these were the sum of his
deeds. He was inspired with an invincible respect for the life of man.
Bulls were another thing!
"So thou hast never had a desire to kill a man? And I thought that
bull-fighters--!"
The sun hid itself, the meadow lost its fantastic illumination, the
light on the river went out, and the lady saw the tapestry scene she had
admired so much become dark and commonplace. The other horsemen rode far
in advance and she spurred her steed to join the group, without a word
to Gallardo, as if she took no heed of his following her.