Stronghand: or, The Noble Revenge

CHAPTER IX

A NEW CHARACTER

Although, owing to its position on the shores of the Pacific, Sonora enjoys the blessings of the sea breeze, whose moisture at intervals refreshes the heated atmosphere; still, for three hours in the afternoon, the earth incessantly heated by the torrid sunbeams produces a crushing heat. At such times the country assumes a really desolate aspect beneath the cloudless sky, which seems an immense plate of red-hot iron. The birds suddenly cease their songs, and languidly hide themselves beneath the thick foliage of the trees, which bow their proud crests towards the ground. Men and domestic animals hasten to seek shelter in the houses, raising in their hurried progress a white, impalpable, and calcined dust, which enters mouth and nostrils. For some hours Sonora is converted into a vast desert from which every appearance of life and movement has disappeared.

Everybody is asleep, or at least reclining in the most shady rooms, with closed eyes, and with the body abandoned to that species of somnolency which is neither sleeping nor waking, and which from that very fact is filled with such sweet and voluptuous reveries – inhaling at deep draughts the artificial breeze produced by artfully contrived currents of air, and in a word indulging in what is generally called in the torrid zones a siesta.

These are hours full of enjoyment, of those sweet and beneficent influence on body and mind we busy, active Englishmen are ignorant, but which people nearer the sun revel in. The Italians call this state the dolce far niente, and the Turks, that essentially sensual race, keff.

Like that city in the "Arabian Nights," the inhabitants of which the wicked enchanter suddenly changed into statues by waving his wand, life seemed suddenly arrested at the Hacienda del Toro, for the silence was so profound: peons, vaqueros, craidos, everybody in fact, were enjoying their siesta. It was about three in the afternoon; but that indistinct though significant buzz which announces the awakening of the hour that precedes the resumption of labour was audible. Two gentlemen alone had not yielded to sleep, in spite of the crushing midday heat; but seated in an elegantly furnished cuarto, they had spent the hours usually devoted to slumber in conversation. The cause for this deviation from the ordinary custom must have been most serious. The Hispano-American, and especially the Mexican, does not lightly sacrifice those hours of repose during which, according to a Spanish proverb, only dogs and Frenchmen are to be seen in the sun.

Of these two gentlemen, one, Don Hernando de Moguer, is already known to us. Years, while stooping his back, had furrowed some wrinkles on his forehead, and mingled many silver threads with his hair; but the expression of his face, with the exception of a tinge of melancholy spread over his features by lengthened misfortunes, had remained nearly the same, that is to say, gentle and timid, although clever; slightly sarcastic and eminently crafty.

As for the person with whom Don Hernando was conversing at this moment, he deserves a detailed description, physically at least, for the reader will soon be enabled to appreciate his moral character. He was a short, plump man, with a rubicund face and apoplectic look, though hardly forty years of age. Still his hair, which was almost white, his deeply wrinkled forehead, and his grey eyes buried beneath bushy whiskers, gave him a senile appearance, harmonizing but little with the sharp gesticulation and youthful manner he affected. His long, thin, violet nose was bent like a parrot's beak over a wide mouth filled with dazzling white teeth; and his prominent cheekbones, covered with blue veins, completed a strange countenance, the expression of which bore a striking likeness to that of an owl.

This species of nutcracker, with his prominent stomach and short ill-hung limbs, whose whole appearance was most disagreeable, had such a mobility of face as rendered it impossible to read his thoughts on his features, in the event of this fat man's carcase containing a thought. His cold blue eyes were ever pertinaciously fixed on the person addressing him, and did not reveal the slightest emotion; in short, this man produced at the first contact that invariable antipathy which is felt on the approach of reptiles, and which, after nearer acquaintance, is converted into disgust and contempt.

He was a certain Don Rufino Contreras, one of the richest landowners in Sonora, and a year previously had been elected senator to the Mexican Congress for the province.

At the moment when we enter the cuarto, Don Hernando, with arms folded at his back and frowning brow, is walking up and down, while Don Rufino, seated on a butaca, with his body thrown back, is following his movements with a crafty smile on his lips while striving to scratch off an invisible spot on his knee. For some minutes, the hacendero continued his walk, and then stopped before Don Rufino, who bent on him a mocking, inquiring glance.

"Then," he said, in a voice whose anxious expression he sought in vain to conceal, "you must positively have the entire sum within a week?"

"Yes," the fat man replied, still smiling.

"Why, if that is the case, did you not warn me sooner?"

"It was through delicacy, my dear sir."

"What – through delicacy?" Don Hernando repeated, with a start of surprise.

"You shall judge for yourself."

"I shall be glad to do so."

"I believe you do me the justice of allowing that I am your friend?"

"You have said you are, at least."

"I fancy I have proved it to you."

"No matter; but let us pass over that."

"Very well. Knowing that you were in a critical position at the moment, I tried to procure the sum by all possible means, as I did not wish to have recourse to you, except in the last extremity. You see, my dear Don Hernando, how delicate and truly friendly my calculations were. Unfortunately, at the present time it is very difficult to get money in, owing to the stagnation of trade produced by the new conflict which threatens to break out between the President of the Republic and the Southern States. It was therefore literally impossible for me to obtain the smallest sum. In such a perplexing position, I leave you to judge what I was obliged to do. The money I must have; you have owed it for a long time, and I applied to you – what else could I do?"

"I do not know. Still, I think you might have sent a peon to warn me, before you left Sonora."

"No, my dear sir, that is exactly what I should not do. I have not come direct to you: in pursuance of the line of conduct I laid down I hoped to collect the required sum on my road, and not be obliged to come all the way to your hacienda."

Don Hernando made no reply. He began his walk again after giving the speaker a glance which would have given him cause for thought, had he noticed it; but the latter gentleman had begun rubbing the invisible spot again with more obstinacy than before. In the meanwhile the sunbeams had become more and more oblique; the hacienda had woke up to its ordinary life; outside the shouts of the vaqueros pricking the oxen or urging on the horses could be heard mingled with the lowing and neighing of the draught cattle. Don Hernando walked up to a window, the shutters of which he threw open, and a refreshing breeze entered the cuarto. Don Rufino gave a sigh of relief and sat up in his butaca.

"Ouf," he said, with an expression of comfort, "I was very tired; not through the long ride I was compelled to make this morning, so much as through the stifling heat."

Don Hernando started at this insinuation, as if he had been stung by a serpent; he had neglected all the laws of Mexican hospitality; for Don Rufino's visit had so disagreeably surprised him, and made him forget all else before the sudden obligation of satisfying the claims of a merciless creditor. But at Don Rufino's remarks he understood how unusual his conduct must have seemed to a weary traveller, hence he rang a bell, and a peon at once came in.

"Refreshment," he said.

The peon bowed, and left the room.

"You will excuse me, Caballero," the hacendero continued, frankly, "but your visit so surprised me, that at the moment I did not think of offering the refreshment which a tired traveller requires so much. Your room is prepared, rest yourself tonight, and tomorrow we will resume our conversation, and arrive at a solution I trust mutually satisfactory."

"I hope so, my dear sir. Heaven is my witness that it is my greatest desire," Don Rufino answered, as he raised to his lips the glass of orangeade brought by the peon. "Unhappily I fear that, with the best will in the world, we cannot come to a settlement unless – "

"Unless!" Don Hernando sharply interrupted. Don Rufino quietly sipped his orangeade, placed the glass on the table, and said, as he threw himself back on the butaca, and rolled a cigarette —

"Unless you pay me in full what you owe me, which, from what you have said, appears to me to be difficult, I confess."

"Ah!" Don Hernando remarked with an air of constraint, "What makes you suppose that?"

"I beg your pardon, my dear sir, I suppose nothing: you told me just now that you were hardly pressed."

"Well, and what conclusion do you derive from that?" the hacendero asked impatiently.

"A very simple thing – that seventy thousand piastres form a rather round sum, and that however rich a man may be, he does not always have it in his hands, especially when he is pressed."

"I can make sacrifices."

"Believe me, I shall be sincerely sorry."

"But can you not wait a few days longer?"

"Impossible, I repeat: let us understand our respective positions, in order to avoid any business misunderstanding, which should always be prevented between honourable gentlemen holding a certain position. I lent you that sum, and only stipulated for small interest, I believe."

"I allow it, Señor, and thank you for it."

"It is not really worth the trouble; I was anxious to oblige you. I did so, and let us say no more about it; but remember that I made one condition which you accepted."

"Yes," Don Hernando said, with an impatient start, "and I was wrong."

"Perhaps so; but that is not the question. This condition which you accepted was to the effect that you should repay me the sum I advanced upon demand."

"Have I said the contrary?"

"Far from it; but now that I want the money, I ask you for it, and that is natural: I have in no way infringed the conditions. You ought to have expected what is happening today, and taken your precautions accordingly."

"Hence, if I ask a month to collect the money you claim?"

"I should be heartbroken, but should refuse; for I want the money, not in a month, but in a week. I can quite put myself in your position, and comprehend how disagreeable the matter must be; but unluckily so it is."

What most hurt Don Hernando was not the recall of the loan, painful as it was to him, so much as the way in which the demand was made; the show of false good nature employed by his creditor, and the insulting pity he displayed. Carried away involuntarily by the rage that filled his heart, he was about to give Don Rufino an answer which would have broken off all friendly relations between them for ever, when a great noise was heard in the hacienda, mingled with shouts of joy and the stamping of horses. Don Hernando eagerly leant out of the window, and at the expiration of a moment turned round to Don Rufino, who was sucking his cigarette with an air of beatitude.

"Here are my children, Caballero," he said; "not a word of this affair before them, I entreat."

"I know too well what I owe you, my dear Señor," the other replied, as he prepared to rise. "With your permission, however, I will withdraw, in order to allow you entire liberty for your family joy."

"No, no!" Don Hernando added, "I had better introduce you at once to my son and daughter."

"As you please, my dear sir. I shall be flattered to form the acquaintance of your charming family."

The door opened, and Don José Parades appeared. The majordomo was a half-breed of about forty years of age, tall and powerfully built, with bow legs and round shoulders that denoted his capacity as a horseman; in fact, the worthy man's life was spent in the saddle, galloping about the country. He took a side-glance at Don Rufino, bowed to his master, and lowering his usual rough tone, said —

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