The Spanish dancer : being a translation from the original French by Henry L. Williams of Don Caesar de Bazan (16 page)

Maritana turned bewildered to her father, saying:

"Did you hear those last words, father? You are the host and mvited all the party! Will another present himself w^hom 1 have not seen in our family circle ?"

"I dare say so!"

"Who?"

"Oh, that is the mystery—the crowning surprise!" replied the old lord. "I did not catch what Don Jose was driving at—or rather, driving in upon us, nolly-volly; but I thmk it is my duty to echo everything he says!"

"Father!" cried Maritana, "What does all this mean? Why this continued mystery? I am told that the marriage ceremony through which I went as meekly as a captive slave, was the wish of my benefactress, the queen. But the queen—she does not accompany her mate to this 'holiday—^and I am told, on begging to be allowed to see her, that I must wait!"

Her blue eyes burned as if to emit sparks to consume those who impeded her.

"Here I am, perplexed, racked about my husband of an hour! All sorts of stories pester me like ephemerae! The> sting and they rankle! I am told that he has been exiled; that he was shot and has died; that the very soul of him was carried away by the Enemy of all!" She crossed herself devoutly, showing that either her earliest

training had come back or that, in a few hours, she had absorbed the manners of 'her regained degree.

"Wait, wait! but I am not used to waiting! The poor vanderer would not wait—I do not see th'at the rich girl, daughter of an old imperious house, and wife oi a noble, should be told to wait! Tell me, dear mother, dearest father—is Don Jose deceiving us—is he trifling with me!" Her eyes expressed no good will to him who made a jest of her.

"But, my dear, you must have seen your husband when you stood beside him ?"

"It was because I stood beside him, and not before him, that I saw next to nothing of him," replied Maritana, crossly. 'T was stifling in a provokingly thick veil, and he seemed bound not to draw it aside! I could have wished that the priest would have insisted on bestowing upon me the kiss of benediction, but in order that my husband might have seen, I trust, that he was not drawing a blank, as the gypsies say, in the lottery of love! But, no I did not see him then—he did not see me and I—I—that is, he—^he! we have not seen one another since!" and she began to sob in her handkerchief.

"This," said tihe marquis, "this is the downright blindness of love! To marry and not see the man! There could be nothing to admire!"

"You are mistaken, sir!" rebuked M'aritana, "for it was his generosity in hfting out of the straw the poor wanderer, the dancer and singer who lived on the alms of the liberal! He defended me when I most lacked a defender, fate having deprived me of those naturally my shield and buckler!"

"You are her shield, I am her buckler! well said, tnj dear!" said the marquis, clapping his bony hands.

"For my sake—^for I believe he remained with the band merely to enjoy my coquettish company! I was

cruel to him—I made him my butt, my music-holder, m/jj accompanyist, my—'my "

"Well, all comes right! He is a count; you a marquis* child! Hope on—I will, once fixed in the royal favor, have this matter set right despite a dozen Don Joses!"

"Hist, he returns!'" whispered the marchioness.

Her husband wilted as if a sirocco had bounded over the sea and blasted him.

"I will demand," said Maritana, "yes, demand of this Don Jose when I shall see the queen and the king, if I must have resort to the highest tribunals for justice and enlightenment!"

"Hush, he is here!" stammered the marquis, as the person in question re-entered the apartment.

He wore a joyous, contented mien. He advanced without trepidation to Maritana, who had taken a step toward him also unflinchingly.

"Sir, my lord, when am I to see my husband?"

"I am glad to be in the nick to answer that question,*' responded he without hesitation as if he had full satisfaction ready. "You are to see your mate this day."

"That is direct—this day?"

"This evening, then."

The marquis turned to the speaker with an inquiring, puzzled eye.

"Then he is not dead, and his soul "

Jose made a crushing sign for him to be silent.

"Surely, sir, I have misunderstood the facts all along," faltered Maritana, with pain at her relief being at tht cost of too hastily reprimanding one still her friend.

"Pray be calm," said the minister, with cold suavity. *1 have hurried hither with the good news."

The marquis clasped his wife's arm and drew her t^ ward the pair.

"Now we shall learn something at last," said he.

Unfortunately, Jose heard him, and, wheeling round and taking him by the hand, as he was holding the marchioness', drew him up to the nearest doorway, saying imperatively:

"Leave me with your daughter, my cousin's wife, which authorizes the breach of decorum! Besides, your guests are clamoring for you."

The old couple withdrew with disappointment clouding their brows.

Maritana faced round as the noble returned, and firmly •aid:

"Now that we are at last alone, kt me hear all—^best or worst! Where is my husband ?"

"'He is at hand !"

A cloaked figure, indeed, crept out from behind the tapestry screening a secret door, and stood like an actor, waiting for the cue to discover himself, his glowing eyes, however, fastened rather upon the woman than the man.

"At hand?" muttered Maritana, without comprising all die room in her hasty glance.

"Remember that he has made his peace with his king, but not with the Church, whose offices he spurned, and with whose born enemies the gypsies, he too long ran his course! He is under the ban and must keep himself close lest he sleep in the dungeons of the Holy Inquisition !"

His hearer shivered, for the dread of the Holy Brotherhood was more poignant in a gitana than in any other, even the Jew. The Jew sometimes became a convert; a Bohemian never!

"But you say he is here?"

"Yes, for your sake he has ventured I"

"Oh, my cousin, you shall be my brother for this! Let us find a place of security for him, between us! Let me flee with him if there is no harbor in Spain! Let me—oh.

where is he? Do you not see I am dying a hundred deaths? Where is my beloved?"

"Here!" answered Jose, dramatically, as he beckoned! the mantled man to approach, confident that he had leveled the path.

CHAPTER XI.

Two CLAIMANTS.

When the cloak was thrown aside from the form of the cavaher who stepped into the place from which Jose respectfully retired, Maritana shrank, but it was purely with surprise, not with repugnance.

She was gazing upon a somewhat remarkable man.

Don Carlos was handsome after the Bourbon pattern; lie was generous of money as a Medici, frank in speech as a descendant of King Henry of Navarre and France. He was very winsome, after an acquaintance. When he was forced by the united powers of Spain, France and Austria to give way as to the Duchy of Tuscany in favor of this youth, Jean-Gaston received him with tears, but when, later, this displacer was called away, he bade him fare-iwrell with tears of regret.

He saluted her with the courtesy of a royal cavalier.

"The Lady Maria del Castello-Rotondo," said he, with «ad reproach, "do you not remember me?"

"Ye-es; I have seen you before," She still shrank back and whispered to Don Jose: "This is not the man I was raarried to!"

"It is the man beside whom you stood at the altar!" said the liar, stoutly. "You gave your hand to that hand —that hand was clasped in yours!"

The Father of Lies could not have articulated more distinctly or used a more sincere tone.

"But that was Don Caesar de Bazan!"

**Oh, this is Don Csesar! Am I to be cheated in my own •ousin? The Don Csesar whom you knew among those 4ogs of Mahound was but a byblow of our family—he as-

sumed the name to draw it in the dust! It is he on wKoiil all the ill-odor should fall and cling! This is my honored cousin—your favored husband!"

"No," said Maritana to herself, laying her hand on het bosom, where responded not a flutter, "This is not my Don Caesar—not my love, not my mate!"

"Come, come," interrupted the king, disconcerted by this odd check to the usual current of royal whims, and too enrapt to show his vexation, "is this the reception meet for one whose eyes followed you in many of your erratic strolls, whose servants watched you when the hotbloods would have carried you off as the Romans bore away the Sabines; who was charmed, when the gross populace turned, disgusted, away by the poesy in your songs falling into the melancholy strain \"

"I GO not forget how generous you were to me! It is a further recompense for a songstress to meet with a syno-pathetic admirer, but I trembled while I accepted your bounty."

"You trembled—good! for it is the tremor of love that the bards ever tell of; the current shooting from one breast to another, the circulation of love which Ovid related long before the surgeons found it out to be imitated by the blood! My happiness was centered in you as your fortunes in me! I determined to raise you, pearl in the slime, to the diadem where you instinctively aspired. Resolving that I should share my passion with you, I resolved tha^ you should share my wealth I"

"That is,' suggested Don Jose, "wealth when it was restored to you, for, as Don Caesar, under a cloud you had but your title!"

"But now we meet both under happier auspices! You are elevated to your place of birth, I am promised restora-' tion of all I forfeited by my rebellion against social laws and the king's edicts. Now, you have but to give m%

one smile, one word of love, and you will be my sovereign mistress! I live for you again, and for you alone!"

Don Jose rubbed his hands and nodded like a stage-instructor, proud of his pupil.

"Not so loud, Don Caesar!" said he, but with such mild reproof; "the menials might hear!"

"Lovely one," continued the king, believing her silence was in his favor, and pursuing a course cut-and-dried between him and his accomplice, "my return must not be known until I am formally declared free from apprehension, moral and physical. But my danger should not separate you from me "

"Danger," broke in the unctuous, sermonizing voice of the chorus, "ought to more closely unite husband and wife!"

"What is the world to us? We can be happy remote! Let us dwell in a nook of Arcady together !"

"Together!" repeated Maritana, confounded like a wild bird between two of those dogs which hunt together, one chasing until the prey is exhausted, whereupon the other ■springs upon it the more securely.

"A few miles from town is a blessed hermitage for lovers."

"Lovers," added the prompter in this duet, "on whose plight Mother Church has smiled !"

"If we meet there " pursued the royal courtier.

"Pray, my cousin, do not delay! The guests will be inquiring for you," whispered Don Jose.

"My lord, I cannot leave my parents thus suddenly," said Maritana, who had time to consider over her part.

"Leave her to me," suggested the intriguer to the king. "The guests are returning indoors, methinks. Sir, the countess is right. It would not be seemly to have her leave her home in the midst of the joviality without explanation. She might be followed by some of those hot-

spurs, and you might be followed, also! Come away—I guarantee that she will keep the tryst!"

"Some one is coming!" snarled the king, wild with indignation that his privacy was intruded upon, and about to draw his dagger, if not his sword. He had forgotten that he was pretending to be less than sovereign.

"Oh, to let go my grip "

The king's face was suffused with angry blood ; his eyes had the yellow tint of tiger's, taunted with a withdrawn bone.

"Quick, quick!" cried 'his sycophant, throwing the cloak over him and clasping it. "This is the safest way. Into the gardens and begone!"

Maritana saw the exit managed with skill and expe-" dition. She looked sorrowfully at her trinkets and resplendent dresses.

'She thought that she had sold herself to a keener misery than she had previously known, and at what a cost. Wife of a man who daunted her without her knowing why—one whose wealth, which his air proclaimed, attracted her less than Don Caesar's poverty.

It was the marchioness whose stiff petticoats had rustled loudly in 'the corridor. She looked amazed at seeing Maritana in tears. Don Jose made her a sign to conduct her daughter out and condole with her.

He remained there, smiling, as if tears always caused him joy.

"The king is a schoolboy at love-making," sneered he. "But the wildered dove must be put in the cage alone, and then all the obstacles which still bafrle me will be brushed away like motes that temporarily obscure the sunbeam."

He prepared to excuse himself to the host, and make him have a coach got ready and place his daughter in it for a dieparture which political reasons connected with

her husband, commanded. He was on the doorsill when he felt a hand pluck him humbly by the sleeve.

He turned quickly and angrily. A bent form, clad in a monk's greasy and threadbare russet robe, presented a blot on the thick Tunisian rug and against the Bruges arras.