The Spanish Cavalier: A Story of Seville
"It's not the fish, but the price, that don't suit you," retorted the hawker. "Come, you shall have them a bargain, – let's say nine cuartos a pair."
"I'll give eight, and no more," cried the dame, eying the fish with a hungry look, but clinching hard the coppers which she held in her hand.
The hawker shook his head, and shouldered his basket.
"You'll lose the custom of the house," threatened the woman.
"No great loss," laughed the hawker, as he turned from the arch; "the barber round the corner will buy all this fish, and he earns enough with his razor to pay a fair price for his dinner!"
The torrent of abuse which the old dame launched after the retreating hawker, was suddenly stopped by the question of Lucius, —
"Is Don Alcala de Aguilera within?"
Old Teresa was startled and annoyed at the preceding colloquy having been overheard by a stranger. It was also wounding to her vanity as a woman, and her pride as a retainer of a noble family, that she should be seen in the deshabille in which she had emerged from the kitchen, instead of the black silk dress in which she was wont to attend Donna Inez to mass. In a tone of irritation Teresa replied that the illustrious caballero was not in the house.
"Is he likely soon to come in?" inquired Lucius Lepine.
The servant did not know, or chose not to tell. The caballero came in and out at his pleasure: he might be spending the evening at the governor's palace, he might not be home till midnight. Teresa stood in the middle of the archway like a jealous guardian of the place, who would suffer the entrance of no stranger to disturb its dignified seclusion. But the sound of Lepine's question had reached other ears than those of Teresa.
"Alcala, is it you at last?" exclaimed a sweet, eager voice from within; and Lucius caught a glimpse of a youthful form hurrying across the patio with a rapidity very unusual in the movements of a lady of Spain. It was indeed but a glimpse, for the donna, seeing that he at the entrance was a stranger and not her expected brother, instantly retreated, disappearing behind the foliage of the shrubs that surrounded the fountain.
The young Englishman would fain have sent in his card, and presented himself to the lady or ladies within, but shyness prevented his thus making an attempt to enter the house without a formal introduction. Lucius had seen little or nothing of society in the higher circles of Seville, and feared to give offence by some unintentional breach of its rules. The manner of Teresa would have shown a less intelligent observer than Lucius, that she at least would have resented and resisted as an intrusion any attempt on his part to venture within the archway. A little disappointed at his failure in procuring an interview with his friend, Lucius placed his card in the soiled, wrinkled hand of Teresa, to be given to her master on his return. With a lingering look through the vestibule into the beautiful patio beyond, the Englishman quitted the place.
In a state of high irritation, Teresa hurried through the passage into the court, taking care to close and lock the grating between them. With the air of a duenna who, having grown gray in service, thinks that she is privileged to say what she pleases, the old woman approached her young lady.
Donna Inez, on a low marble seat, was bending over the work on which she had been engaged when roused by hearing the voice of Lucius. The work was that of decorating some garment of the gayest description, – of bright green richly embroidered with silver, into which Inez was fastening spangles of the same brilliant metal. A scarf of the most vivid scarlet lay carelessly thrown across her knees. The gay colouring of the work on which she was employed contrasted with the black dress of the Spanish maiden; and she was pursuing her occupation with anything but pleasure, if one might judge from the gushing tears which ever and anon fell on her beautiful work.
"Donna Inez, Donna Inez! how could you do anything so unseemly?" exclaimed old Teresa, giving vent to her irritation. "What would the hidalgo Don Pedro de Aguilera have said, could he have seen his grand-daughter, without so much as a veil on her head, rushing towards an English stranger – a heretic, too! – with no more dignity than if she were some wandering gitána?"
Inez raised her tear-swollen eyes, and there was no lack of dignity in the tone of her gentle reply, "Methinks you forget your place, Teresa."
"Forget!" repeated the old woman angrily; "I should remember well enough, if I knew what is, or rather what is not, my place in this house. Am I not doctor, sick-nurse, and attendant to the old señora, and duenna to the young one; purveyor, keeper of stores, preparer of meals, anything and everything here, – helped by no one but bandy-legged Chico, who only serves the señor because no one else thinks him worth the puchero5 which he eats? Ah! it was very different, child, in your grandfather's days, before the hated French soldiers swarmed like wasps into Seville!"
Inez knew that poor old Teresa had entered on an inexhaustible theme when she began to speak of the good old days before the occupation of the city by the French in 1810. Teresa had been little more than a child when she had entered the service of Donna Benita de Aguilera, then a happy young wife and mother, but soon to be left a widow with wrecked fortune and shattered mind. Her husband, Don Pedro, a wealthy nobleman, and of the bluest blood in Spain, had joined the army raised to repel the invader. The tidings of De Aguilera's death in fight had reached his young wife at a time when French soldiers were quartered in her house. The shock had weakened the lady's intellect; and though she had lived on, was living on still in extreme old age, her subsequent life had been but as a lengthened childhood.
The family fortune had also at that time received a blow from which it had never recovered. Teresa was never weary of telling of the treasures which Don Pedro once had possessed, services of silver plate, and a splendid goblet of gold, and of the jewels of his bride, – which, by her account, might have purchased half Andalusia. Bitter were Teresa's invectives against the foreign robbers, who had not only killed her master, but plundered his helpless widow and orphan. Teresa had clung to the De Aguilera family in weal and in woe; but age and adversity had rendered more irritable a temper not naturally sweet; and having once dandled in her arms the father of Inez, the old duenna always looked on his daughter as a mere child. Teresa was as ready to chide as to serve the señorita; but the retainer's long-tried fidelity made Inez tolerate from her what from another she could not have borne.
Teresa now went rambling on with her reminiscences; but the mind of Inez was so painfully preoccupied, that she took in the meaning of nothing, and was only aware of the fact that the old woman was speaking, by the babble of her voice distressing an ear intently listening for the step of Alcala. The sun had sunk, and the first faintly visible star shone over the patio, which was unprovided with the awning commonly used in the courts of the wealthy to soften the glare of a southern sky. Inez could no longer see to work; but her labour was finished – the last silver spangle had been fixed on the glossy green satin sleeve. The maiden sat listening, waiting, weeping, till startled again by a sound at the entrance to the house, which made her spring to her feet with the exclamation, "It is my brother at last!"
CHAPTER IV.
PRIDE AND ITS PENALTY
But again Inez was disappointed. Instead of her brother appearing, Teresa ushered in a visitor, Donna Maria de Rivas, a middle-aged lady of Seville, well known to the Aguileras, as she had been brought up in the same convent as the late mother of Alcala and Inez.
The señora entered the patio with the stately grace peculiar to Spanish ladies. But the expression on her face was that of keen curiosity; and even before she greeted Inez with a kiss on either cheek, the visitor's eyes were riveted on the garments of scarlet and green.
"It is then true!" exclaimed Donna Maria, "and Don Alcala is to appear in full fico6 in the Plaza de Toros to-morrow!"
The look of anguish on the pale face of the sister might have been sufficient reply, but Donna Maria was not one whose curiosity could be so easily satisfied. She was an old friend of the family, and, as such, she deemed it her right to know all that concerned them. Perhaps to the motherless girl at her side it was some relief to pour forth the tale of her sorrows to one who professed at least to feel a strong interest in the children of her early companion. In the deepening twilight, under the clear blue sky of Andalusia, while star after star twinkled forth, Inez, often interrupting herself to listen, told the cause of that distress which was blanching her cheek and well-nigh breaking her heart.
"You know – I need not tell you – that we – my grandmother and brother, I mean – have no longer the wealth possessed by our fathers."
"They were some of the most distinguished hidalgos of Spain," interrupted Donna Maria.
"My brother," continued Inez, "though willing to suffer anything himself rather than degrade his dignity by doing anything that the world might deem unbecoming in one of his rank, could not endure to see our aged grandmother wanting what her infirmities required. Alcala therefore consented to – to" – Inez was a Spaniard, and may be forgiven if she had inherited enough of the pride of her race to feel it a deep humiliation to own that the heir of the Aguileras had stooped to serve in an ironware factory, and accept the foreigner's gold.
"I know, I know, my poor child," said Donna Maria, pitying her friends under what she regarded as an almost unbearable misfortune and disgrace.
Inez went on with her story.
"But Alcala had still, of course, the right to mix in the highest society of Seville. He spent his evenings often – ah! much too often – at the palace of the governor, Don Lopez de Rivadeo."
"Ah! the governor has a daughter, and Donna Antonia has beautiful eyes," observed the visitor with a meaning smile, which it was well that Inez did not see.
"The evil eye, the evil eye!" exclaimed the poor girl with passionate emotion; "would that Alcala had never, never met their basilisk glance! It is not her wealth that he cares for, – that wealth which draws round Antonia so many idle worshippers, like moths round a flame!"
"I have heard that one of these suitors insulted De Aguilera in her presence," said Donna Maria.
"One whose ancestors would have deemed it an honour to hold the stirrup of an Aguilera disputed with Alcala the privilege of handing Donna Antonia into her galley on the Guadalquivir," said Inez. "'The hand that had accepted payment for clerk's work,' sneered the courtier, 'has no right to touch a lady's white glove.' Then Alcala fired up at the taunt; it had stung him to the quick. He was roused to speak of his fathers, of their triumphs over the Moors, and to tell how one of our race had gained a chain of gold from Queen Joanna for spearing a huge bull at a gran foncion held in her presence. 'It is pity,' said the mocking Don Riaz, 'that in these days caballeros are content to win money, though their fathers only cared to win fame.' Alcala was goaded by the taunt into saying that he was as ready as was ever an Aguilera to ride in the bull-ring, and break a lance for the smile of a lady."
"And they actually nailed him to a word so hastily spoken?" asked the visitor eagerly.
"Ay," replied Inez bitterly; "though every one knows that caballeros never now encounter the bull, that the desperate struggle is left to picador and matador7 trained and paid to expose their lives for the sport of the crowd."
"Did not Donna Antonia forbid her cavalier to attempt so rash an exploit?" asked Donna Maria.
"Forbid! oh no!" exclaimed the indignant Inez; "for an Aguilera to risk or to lose his life for her sake would be to her proud nature as the crowning triumph of her beauty! She will be there – Antonia will be in the Plaza de Toros, and she will look on with those calm, cruel eyes, whilst Alcala, my pride – my darling," – Inez could not finish the sentence, but buried her face in her hands.
"Do not despair, cara amiga," said Donna Maria, laying her hand caressingly on the shoulder of the sobbing girl; "Donna Antonia de Rivadeo may see the triumph of your brother. Don Alcala is a good horseman, and a brave cavalier."
"Brave as a lion, and he rides like the Cid!" exclaimed Inez, raising her head, and speaking with animation. "But what will that avail him?" she added sadly. "Alcala has had no training for the bull-ring, as had knights and gentlemen of old. They had active and powerful steeds; Alcala has but poor old Campeador, who bore our father ten years ago – good faithful Campeador, whom I have often fed from my hand!"
"But your brother will not be alone in the arena," suggested Donna Maria; "there will be the matadors, the picadors, the chulos,8 to divert the bull's attention, or to give him the coup-de-grace."
"May they come to the rescue! the blessing of all the saints be on them if they do!" cried Inez with fervour. "But oh! amiga mia, I hope little from those who make this horrible sport a profession. They are natural enemies of the caballero who dares to do for honour what they are trained to do for gold. These men are jealous, and they are cruel; is it not their very trade to torture and to kill? I never saw a bull-fight but once," continued Inez, speaking rapidly. "My father took me when I was a child; but he never ventured to take me again. The sight – the horrible sight of the poor gored horses madly rushing round the circus in their agony haunted me for weeks, – it brought on a nervous fever! And how the scene comes back on my memory now in terrible distinctness! I long lay awake last night trying, but trying in vain, to drive away thought by repeating aves and credos, till I dropped asleep at last, and then – and then," added Inez with a shudder, "I was in the dreadful arena! I saw the bull tearing onwards, the banderillas in his thick strong neck; with bloodshot eye, and head bent down, he made his furious charge! I shrieked so loud that I awoke my grandmother, who usually sleeps so soundly! I used to pity and grieve over her feebleness of mind, – I could almost envy it now; she is spared the horrors of my dream, and the worse misery of my waking!"
There was an oppressive silence for several seconds and then Donna Maria said, "Have you attempted to dissuade your brother from prosecuting this wild adventure?"
"Have I not?" exclaimed Donna Inez; "have I not knelt and clasped his knees, and implored as if for my life? I pained, but I could not move him; Alcala said that his honour was pledged."
"You have been preparing the picador costume," observed Donna Maria, glancing down at the embroidered jacket and scarlet scarf which lay beside her, faintly visible in the starlight.
"Yes; if Alcala must appear in the arena before all those gazing eyes, he shall appear as becomes an Aguilera," replied the Spanish maiden. She did not dwell on the theme, or tell how much of her brother's hardly-earned gains had been frittered away on that gaudy costume; nor how she had not only given the labour of her hands, but sacrificed every little silver ornament which she possessed to add to its value and beauty. Bitterly had the poor girl felt, as she plied her needle, that she was but, as it were, decking out a victim for slaughter.
"Don Alcala will look a goodly cavalier," observed Donna Maria in an encouraging tone. "We will pray the Madonna to give him success."
"I have wearied every saint with my prayers," sighed Inez de Aguilera, "and yet – hark! surely there is the sound of a ring!" and again she eagerly sprang to her feet.
"Your brother would not ring, but enter," suggested Donna Maria. "Poor child! how you are trembling!"
Inez was indeed trembling violently; she had to lean against a column for support, as the grating of the vestibule was unclosed, and not Alcala but Teresa appeared. The old servant bore in one hand a letter, in the other a lantern borrowed from Donna Maria's attendant, who was waiting with her mule-carriage in the street. Inez had a presentiment that the missive was from her brother, and that his sending it was a sign that he was not coming himself. She took the letter from Teresa, and eagerly tore it open; for by the lantern's light Inez recognized the handwriting of Alcala.
The brief note was as follows: —
"It is better, dearest, that we meet not again till all is over. Send Chico at dawn with Campeador and my dress to the Posada9 de Quesada; he knows the place well. Kiss for me the hand of our venerable parent. Farewell! a brother's blessing be with you! Inez, you have been more than a sister to Alcala."
CHAPTER V.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
It has been seen that rumours of Alcala's proposed venture had reached the ears of Lucius Lepine, but he had not been disposed to give full credence to such reports. Lucius had been long enough in Spain to be aware that in the nineteenth century it is as unusual for a Spanish nobleman to take an active part in the bull-circus, as it would be for an English one to show off his strength in the prize-ring. The strange report was, however, painfully confirmed in the mind of Lucius when on that Saturday evening he was proceeding on his way to the house of Mr. Passmore, where he was engaged to take dinner.
A large lamp burning before an image of the Virgin Mary, at the corner of one of the narrow lanes through which Lucius was passing, threw light on the opposite side, where a large space of boarding had been taken advantage of by the bill-posters of Seville. It would have required less light to have deciphered the large red capital letters in which appeared the following announcement: —
"GRAND AND EXTRAORDINARY ATTRACTION"To-morrow, August – , 1868, the most noble and illustrious caballero, Don Alcala de Aguilera, mounted on his superb charger, will encounter a bull of unequalled size and fierceness in the circus of the Coliseo."
The red letters seemed to swim before the eyes of Lucius Lepine. He stood as if rooted to the ground, till roused by a light touch on the shoulder. Turning round, he saw a stout personage, who from his black robe, huge hat with flaps turned up at the sides, and rosary with crucifix suspended from his neck, he knew to be one of the Spanish priests.
"Inglesito, mark that well!" said the priest emphatically, pointing, ere he passed on, to another placard which, printed in black and in smaller type, and therefore not so conspicuous, appeared close to the announcement of the bull-fight in the Plaza de Toros. The attention of Lucius being thus directed towards it, he read with surprise the following extraordinary charge from the Lord Bishop of Cadiz: —10
"The Enemy of mankind desists not from his infernal task of sowing tares in the field of the Great Husbandman, and to us it belongs, as sentinels of the advanced post of the house of Israel, to sound the alarm, lest his frauds and machinations should prevail. We say this, because we have read with profound grief, in a periodical lately published, that the Protestant Bible Societies and Associations for the distribution of bad books are redoubling their efforts for inoculating our Catholic Spain with the venom of their errors and destructive doctrines, selecting, in particular, our religious Andalusia as the field of their operations," &c. &c.
At another time such a placard as this would have been read by Lucius with intense interest, and would have wholly engrossed his thoughts for the time. Even under present circumstances, with his mind painfully preoccupied by anxiety for his friend, the charge of the Bishop of Cadiz left a deep impression on Lucius. Others then were actually doing the work from which he had shrunk. Others were coming forward, like Gideon's three hundred heroes moving bravely on through the darkness. Already the lights which they bore must be flashing here and there; for Rome would not sound such a cry of alarm had she not heard the tramp of an enemy's feet in her camp, and caught sight of gleams of evangelical truth carried into the midst of her hosts.
"There must be a movement going on, even in Seville," thought Lucius, "of which I never knew till this moment. Not all of my countrymen have been cold-hearted laggards like me."
Lucius, for once, arrived late for dinner, found the company already seated at table, and forgot to make an apology. Mr. Passmore, at the head of a board loaded with a repast more profuse than elegant, was too much engaged with his double occupation of eating and talking even to notice the entrance of his clerk. The familiar sound of the snorting laugh of his employer reached Lucius before he came into the room.
"Ho, ho, ho! it was a shabby trick in the cavalier to engage himself as a butcher, without giving due notice that he intended to leave the ironware business! And I paid the fine gentleman his quarter's salary only last week! Don Alcala de Aguilera is no great loss to the firm, for he took his very pay with an air which seemed to say, 'I'm a hidalgo, a gentleman born; I honour you too much by soiling my fingers with an Englishman's dirty cash.'"
"Aguilera has not a bad headpiece, though," observed one of the party.
"Oh, for a Spaniard he's clever enough," replied Passmore, speaking with his mouth full; "had it not been for his ridiculous Spanish pride, the don would have made a fair man of business. Save in that matter of the translation yesterday; – I told you that capital story! ho, ho, ho! I see now how twenty dozen bulls came to be running in the poor fellow's head; no wonder that he looked pale at the idea of such an awful squad of the beasts!" Peter Passmore leant back in his chair, and laughed till he seemed to be in danger of suffocation.
"Aguilera will find one of them enough, and too much, I'm afraid," said the former speaker.
"Perhaps the don thought that he'd do a sharp bit of business," resumed Mr. Passmore, as soon as his explosive mirth had sufficiently subsided; "he'd contrive to get double pay for double work, by writing on week-days and fighting on Sundays. I wonder now what he'll receive for sticking his bull!"
"Nothing but honour," said an onion-merchant who was one of the guests. "Folk say that there is some fair donna of Seville mixed up with the business."
"Then Don Alcala de Aguilera is a greater idiot than I took him for!" exclaimed the ironware manufacturer. "I can imagine a man's selling his blood to support himself and his family; every soldier does that, and if he get a cannon-ball instead of promotion, one can only say that the poor fellow has had the worst of the bargain. But a man who is willing to run the chance of being gored or tossed for the sake of the prettiest girl that ever danced a bolero, is madder, in my opinion, than Molière's far-famed knight of La Mancha. Ah! Lepine, so you're here at last. You are Aguilera's friend; did you know anything beforehand of this freak of romantic folly?"
Lucius only shook his head; he could not trust himself to make other reply.
"They say," observed the merchant who had spoken before, "that Don Aguilera's family, of whom he is the chief if not the only support, are mightily distressed at his venturing as a picador into the Plaza de Toros. I hear that he has a poor old grandmother, who lost her husband in the war with the first Napoleon; and a young sister who, it is said, is breaking her heart with grief."
Lucius remembered the light graceful form which he had seen springing across the patio, and the tones of the sweet eager voice which had exclaimed, "Alcala, is it you at last?" The young Englishman thought of his own favourite sister, and felt for the Spanish girl, though the reality of her misery exceeded the picture drawn by his fancy.
The conversation now turned on other subjects, but the mind of Lepine was full of but one. He could not join in discussions on Spanish politics, or the current business of the day. The untasted viands lay before him; he cared not to touch food, though he had fasted since the morning. Lucius took the earliest opportunity of quitting the party and returning to a small lodging which he had taken in one of the humbler streets of Seville.