The Spanish dancer : being a translation from the original French by Henry L. Williams of Don Caesar de Bazan (23 page)

The mutual recognition of page and transient master was quick, but with the silence of prudence which the boy had learned and in which the other had been a proficient since long.

"A fellow at whom I shot while mounting the wall and whose hat " began Laz-arillo, to cover his impoliteness.

Caesar snatched the hat, and curiously examined it.

"Thanks, my boy! Call on me for a Christmas present!"

The king did not heed this paltry episode.

"Now that I have satisfied you, sir!" said he, sternly; "accommodate me with your name!"

"This unknown can give me points in bravado," thought the other; "what an unblushing rogue!"

Lazarillo, while pretending to hold his gun in a d^ fensive pose, whispered to Garofa:

"Good heed! It is the king!"

At this portentous disclosure, Caesar understood all fnom a slight experience in this sort of clandestine amour familiar to courtiers. But thanks to his incredible seli-command, not a tint appeared on his cheek, not a crease corrugated his brow, and not a spark glittered in his eye.

"My question embarrasses you," continued the king, which remark was not creditable to his powers of observation. "I demand an answer!"

"It is forthcoming!"

With a lordly—nay, a kingly gesture—^he waved Lazas-rillo from the room, and, seating himself, while ha clapped on his recovered sombrero, replied with income parable dignity:

"If you are Don Caesar of Bazan, I am the King ol Spain!"

"What?" faltered the other. "You—king "

"King of both the Spains!"

"You?" still protested the monarch, aghast at this counter-check.

"As surely as you are Don Csesar of Bazan!" reiten*-ated the gallant in a voice both pleasant and taunting. "This will teach him to play with pointed tools!" thought he, delighted with his discomfiture. "Ah, it would astonish you, or any one, to see majesty unattended at the door of a pretty woman who is not the queen! But I assure you that there is nothing in it to surprise you. I was in the humdrums! Our royal quacksolver gives it another and a more euphonious name, but it is the blue* devils all the same! Kings require relaxation elsewhero than in the cloister where my great ancestor sought it. But not a word of this amiable royal caprice," continueji

he, lifting his hand chidingly. "Still, with a man of your fame for gallantry, I may rest satisfied it will go no further! You will not betray our secret, will you, C^sar?"

The monarch almost cowered before this airy and sarcastic persiflage. He kept trying to remember who this could be whose manner was, while flippant, quite courtly, feathering the sharp shaft.

"Let me see—I ought to recall something of our Don Caesar! He flourished in the court when I was younger than of late! Of course, a sovereign is bound to remember all his subjects, especially those whom he ought to cherish with pride. A brave fellow in the camp, and a gay one in the court! I would that I were of his humor! He went a-duelling in sight of our royal commandment, and spitted a captain in the guards! It should teach me to hire none but masters-of-fence for 6uch a post, and not a mere master of offence! His overset was humiliating to my colors, but it spoke volumes for the sprig's dexterity! Ah, I missed my man ivhen I did not ofifer him the captaincy of my bodyguards! But I understood that he was shot for breaking the law, in the Corregidor's courtyard."

He rose and strutted up and down the room, making his heels ring before, returning to face his baited prey, he went on:

*'Do you mind answering me one little question: Being Don Caesar, what right have you to flaunt your recovered liveliness in my kingdom? You cannot be tried twice for the same ofifense, but you can be shot twice 1 SThat is in the annals! But, bless you, last of the Baz-ans and Garofas! we are not the sanguinary tyrants to betray you!"

"Your majesty forgets himself " began the other.

"That is possible. The keeper of the king's morals has

g-one hunting with the royal remembrancer! But wKai: has our majesty forgotten? other than his purse—I have not a dollar! by all that is coinable!"

"You forget that Don Csesar might readily be alive, since he received pardon in full from your miajesty?"

"Oh, did he?" He was moved.

"I have the best of reasons for affirming that his pardon was duly issued, with all the forms, and that it reached the prison in time "

"To tave him?"

"Well, it got there at eight '*

"And he was shot at seven !"

It was the king's turn to utter lan emphatic "Indeed?"

" \ es, and very deed! I have the best of reasons for affirming that!" resumed the mock monarch. "He has grounds for pleading for an indemnity against so slow a messenger!"

"Still, you see that it would be useless to shoot at a pardoned offender!" said the otlier.

"As useless now as for me to wear a title which does not belong to me."

"Gracious, d'on't say now that you are not the King ol Spain ?"

"No? you half-suspected it, eh? Am I right?"

"Then you are "

This time, there was a knocking at the door. Laza-rillo was not going to make the blunder of entering without notice another time.

"I sniff alguadls —the watch!" muttered Don Czesar. "Well, a pardoned man at his wife's door need not fear an army of tipstaffs! I am "

"Sire!" said LazariUo, venturing to interrupt, as Irei conceived the importance of his tidings, and kneeling

down to the king, "a special courier " He handleil

•him a sealed packet

The king had no sooner read this message, than he lurned pale and he muttered "Treason!"

He was informed that the queen, come to Aranjuez, knew of his absence at the Ma: juis of Castello-Rotondo's, and was seeking him there and elsewhere. The "elsewhere" was what pierced him to the quick. He had no time for jesting now.

In this perilous instant, when he was the shuttlecock for Austria and France, to have another bat in the air, eager to stril. um, was disheartening.

He beckoned imperatively to Lazarillo, whom he only knew, from hi.- position in the house, as Don Jose's trusted servant.

"See that I have a horse ready. And do not let that man quit your s-ght. Learn his true name and condition, and keep him he leash!"

The younc^ man nodded respectfully, and exdhanged a glance of s^-olimated intelligence with his former master, SPk^ho did not hinder the king's hasty departure.

CHAPTER XVII. *'you are my husband."

The page turned round, as the door dosed, and tHejl heard the quick steps on the stairs, and surveyed the intruder v/ith wondering eyes.

"Can this be you, dear lord?" faltered he, half between joy and dread.

"Yes, I am the man whom you, I think, rescued frora an unpleasant death—^by mus'ket balls! I did not like being bored!"

"Yes, I used my experience as a gunsmith to soma profit," confessed the youth, complacently. "I drew thai balls from the hand guns, so that unless you were per-" forated by the wads, you would remain unhurt. I was scX pleased when you took the feeble hint I ventured to givfli you, and dropped at the command to shoot."

"Excellent, the hint, for I assure you that I meant to fall like a soldier, stiff and firm; perforated."

"Only I regret that I had a chance myself to spare yoti and yet I fired with ball!"

Caesar smiled and put his finger in the bullethole which ventilated his.that.

"Yes, you came but now very nearly to being my executioner!"

"Bnt'^how could I dream that it was you, sir?"

"I did not think you did—for you would never gel your arrears of wages if you had drilled me in the head. 'Now, are you going to execute the royal orders as faithfully this time—expel me ?"

"Why, it is the royal order, as you say!" and the tKDgg drolly scratched his nose.

"If I refuse—if I resist, for I have lost my yielding disposition ! the thorns and briars on my road recently have teasled my hair the wrong way!"

"Resist, then! my arquebus is unloaded, and you can take down one of those swords from the trophies."

"I act on your hint 1" and the don, as if he had only come into his own, carefully selected the best of the swords, which, belonging to another age, decorated the wall in a panoply,

"There is no one to oppose you. The servants are country loons chosen for their stupidity, and they take their orders from me, whom Don Jose left in sole charge."

"You are a good page in my good books, henceforth !"

"I am Don Caesar of Bazan's most faithful and obedient servant!" returned he, bowing.

"Should I ever obtain riches "

"Retain me in your service, my lord, I pray thee, until then—and after "

"Service? you shall be major-domo—cock of the walk! and a dozen lackeys shall wait on you, hand and foot! But, Lazarillo," he went on, lowering his voice and impressing even more depth of feeling to it, "what about this lady in this house?"

"She is in there."

"I wish to see her—to apologize for my walking in here tinder fire of your cannon! Yet an odd timidity—can you arrange to announce me ?"

"I think, my lord, that the noise has excited her curiosity. No doubt she hears us, and—on my faith! she is coming!"

He ran to the inner door and opened it just as, on the ether side, Alaritana laid her hand on the door handle.

It is vain lo try to express her surprise when, in this stranger, noisily making good his entry, she recognized

her old-time defender, her partner during the dancings time and the hfe-partner decided by Don Jose, when he thought to cut short his Hfe.

"I am going to quiet the servants," said the page, softly leaving the room, with gladness, though he did not like the serious aspect of both the persons thus brought together anew.

"Well, lady fair," said Don Csesar, with a voice imperfectly controlled, "we meet at last!"

Spite of the tone being cool, she showed pleasure.

"I managed the meeting not without some trouble and danger. I have been blown up, chased like a werewolf, hunted by police, peasants and soldiers, and fired on by a tolerably good, though young marksman. A high price to pay for this interview."

"Still jesting, Don Csesar?"

"Ever jesting—I shall no doubt die with a joke choking me, and another will be found in my brain like the fowl's string of embryo eggs! But I am no longer the carouser, 'the breakneck cavalier, the dancer land the merrymaker to the court of his ill-kempt majesty of Egypt, but the Count of Garofa, your husband, my lady, the countess."

"I knew it was you all the while!" she broke forth', passionately.

"I thought you would, if any one, ithough I began to doubt. But, Maritana, I know all."

"Then, tell me, for I am bewildered."

"You thought my death was certain!" She looked! puzzled. "But that did not check you on the road to the title you coveted since long back! When you left the altar set up very appropriately as far as I, an outlaw, and you, a gypsy, were concerned, in a jail, you listened for the horrid sounds which were to bring death to me and liberty to you!"

She stared horror-stricken at this unexpected censure.

"It was a Hght price to pay for a name and rank which, however, thus you consigned to infamy!"

"Why, this is bitter falsehood! I have never wronged my husband's memory, even in thought." She answered his haughty and severe glance with a tender one, "But, say what you will and in any key—I am blessed in my belief being confirmed by your lips that you are in fact my husband, for another claimed to have stood by me at the font, and has since called himself the true Don Caesar!"

"I know that! I have met the impostor! Little did I think that I should ever be robbed, and then, by the King of Spain! Oh, mockery! he has a string of titles as long as from here to Trafalgar, and yet, insatiate tyrant, he grasps my poor countship for what influence lies in it!"

"Wliat do you mean by the king?" She shuddered to think that she had divined what presence was under that lofty and frigid mask.

"Oh, the winner!" returned Bazan, with forced lightness. "Royal wooers do not a-wooing go in vain!"

"Wait! let us stand on firm ground. Your word against the king's. How am I to know to whom I was given by Don Jose? I would not ask him, for he is a liar!"

"I agree with you, though he is my kin! His royal friend makes two of a kind—that i's the latest court news —'Straight as my sword."

"Do you remember what words you parted with—• at the altar?"

"I said something like 'I devote to your ladyship the rest of my existence!' I grant that they are unlike the last phrases which the old historians rounded off the

last moments of their heroes with, but it has the advantage, such as it is, of being perfectly sincere/'

"Those are the words my husband uttered in my ear— you are my husband!"

But he did not hold up his arms to embrace her.

"You are forgetting that I am above all a loyal subject! Rat it! one does not shake ofif allegiance because a king has winked at his loved one—a royal brooks no rival, so that I must j'oin the ranks of the enemies of Spain in order to play at evens—perhaps, on the battlefield, I may strike at the helm which is surrounded by the crown!"