The Spanish dancer : being a translation from the original French by Henry L. Williams of Don Caesar de Bazan (24 page)

"You would not turn traitor to do that! O'h, Don Caesar, husband mine!" she entreated, fervidly, "that would poorly repay my sufferings. If you hear me, you will not condemn me again, for you have, though I blame you not, judged me already. Do you not remenv ber when our dancing pleased the queen?"

"And the king, and all the rest of the royal family!" jested he.

"A nobleman came to me thereon and professed an interest in my welfare "

"Old Rotella-Castondo—or whatever the old idiot's title is—but overlook that—the (old donkey—don—is your father!"

"No, it was another—^he told me that he was commissioned by the queen to carry out her commands and to raise me to the elevation of countess. The means employed were "

"Creditable and honorable—they would be," sneered Caesar, "if, as I sharply suspect, this go-between was my dear cousin—whom heaven confound and bring down!"

"Yes, this time honorable, since I believed that in wedding you, I made one happy who had^professed a love

for me! 'It was one for whom I felt more regard than for any other m-m-

"If you are the marquis' daughter, you would not be a right gypsy—so you may not be deceiving me?" said the other, relenting.

She knelt and grasped his hand, weeping on it.

"Oh, my poor companion, my dear husband, I have been greedy in my pride—I did crave a lifting out of the slough! But I have been punished for rising, like the glowworm which is set upon the wall, where it is seen better by the admirer, but, when the sun comes, it is withered up into a dry shell! I carry, like a gitana still, the steel to preserve my honor with life—but be thou the judge and the executioner, since we are united, and slay me if I am unfaithful!"

"Fearful conditions, Maritana!" said he, pressing his brow and veiling his eyes.

The doctrine was inculcated in him early that the king was the master, the possessor of all his subjects owned, as well life as honor, as well wealth as loved ones! Blacker than the death by the shots, by the rope, than all, was the scene of the scaffold draped with black, the burning brazier to consume the regicide's hand under his own eyes, the horses neighing and striving at their halters, which should tear the culprit to pieces, the headsman with his knife to sever the joints, the pyre to bum up the very ashes of the "parricide royal."

"It is murder," thought he, as if the judge over his fate had spoken. "And to kill a king is the worst of murders !"

"Do you think that I dare not abide the issue," continued she, s'till kneeling but ceasing to weep. Indeed, her eyes were beaming up to him, as if he were looking down into two patches of sky. "Oh, my dearest lord, 5^u know not what passion has grown to, which blossomed at the

altar, but had its green leaf and its bud when we were proscripts together and all the world our enemy I Since then, the hours of fear and self-reproach which I have undergone have made your image an idol to my heart of hearts!"

There was a flow of eloquence in her which seemed impossible in one brought up among the degenerate herd.

He caught her up and embraced her as if they had been parted for an eternity and this was the last and only time they should meet.

He believed her. He became eloquent in turn and poured out his resolve, formed ever so many times, but being without an object, never begun in execution. He promised her that the racketty adventurer was no more that he had died under the blank cartridge of the arque-busiers and that it was Cse&ar, Count of Garofa and Bazan, who survived, bent on removing the blemishes from his coat, and becoming wholly worthy of a woman so beautiful and so true.

Suddenly there was an alarm. Lazarillo had again fired his gun, but as they heard the ball whizz past the window, they conjectured that it was a warning merely— that he had fired in the air.

They heard it as if it were a death-knell, however.

They heard, too, the regular beat of a drum, and a fife piped the notes to its dull burden.

There was no need to peep out to ascertain the cause.

"I see soldiers," said Caesar, trying if the old sword he had taken would play easily in the sheath. "It is a bad lookout!"

'Tf there be time, fliee! Save yourself!" cried Mari-tana.

"Flee when a king replaces me at your door?" queried he, with blazing eye and reddened cheek, from which hers drew the flame.

"I can die here as well as if I saw you slain, and then put myself to death," said she, steadily. "Let us think!"

"Oh, others have done the thinking—'that scoundrelly Jose, for example—I must act. As long as my heart impels my hand, and this blade clings to the handle, I shall do!"

"No, this is rash. I cannot live without you, so we both must be saved ! I see no hope but in my sole friend! Caesar, to the queen !"

"The queen?"

"She promised me her aid. As one offers a high price for a toy that momentarily pleases! She has forgotten you, as her lord his plight!"

He had become misanthropical by the pressure of misadventures.

"Tell her that I am in danger!"

"Oh, you do not know great people—^they are so small! Yet I will do that! But I shall be plain: she shall know what detains her lord! Then, she will rescue you 1"

"Now, go!" said she. "There is only Lazarillo under the window by which you scaled, and he "

"He will miss me again ?"

"I know how much I ask of you, who would sooner trust to a yard of steel than five feet of woman I But this is not seeking succor of a woman—it is a queen to whom you offer your arm to avenge! And redeem your wife in shameful captivity."

"By the spirits of all my forefathers back to Adam, I will bring you help !"

He boldly ran to the casement, opened it as boldly, and, indeed, spying not a soul but the page beneath, climbed over the bar and let himself slide down by the iron projections of waterspout, ornamental brackets and doortops to the ground.

Lazarillo pointed to the wall, in a spot, whence he had

cleared away the spikes and broken glass, and the young man bounded up a ladder, bestrode the parapet and jumped down. Lazarillo could not see more of him, but Maritana did at her higher point.

Caesar, as if fresh from the pillow, darted off at the same time as a company of soldiers, sent to make the hold stronger, were admitted at the gateway on the road.

"The queen," muttered the woman, incredulously, "may not be a kind heart, but she must be jealous, and I will rely on her jealousy rather than her promise to please!"

She went to the nook where a sacred image opened out its arms holding the Redeemer, and she fell there and prayed.

CHAPTER XVIII. A desperate; ride.

Poor, blind mortals that we are! It is one of our bitterest afflictions that our horizon is so bounded, that our prescience is so dim and that we have none of those instincts by which wild beasts extricate themselves from traps which seem infrangible.

Caesar had hardly begun his fresh journey when he lamented that he could not foresee what was to happen.

He was stopped by hearing a horse neigh and others whinny for the companionship. He plunged off the highway into the underbrush and carefully proceeded.

He soon spied a group of horses, forming a circle, since they were picketed by the head. Two or three men in arms guarded them. They had probably come with the soldiers seen to enter the lone house, but they had dismounted in order not to be embarrassed with their chargers in becoming the garrison around the lady.

"Oh, if I oould detach one of those horses 1" thought he, worming his way toward the place with gypsy ingenuity, of which he had imbibed his share by habitual association.

At last, near enough not to be seen, but yet to see all that happened, he reviewed the petty camp with a soldier's keenness and judgment.

"Oh, these petardiers," said he, wondering.

The petardiers, antetypes of the grenadiers, were meti charged with the desperate deed of blowing up obstacles, such as town gates, breaching walls and firing houses condemned as scenes of murders, treasons and atrocities, which should leave no trace.

He knew the uniform, marked by scarlet and yellow lace; and, besides, in a metal case, over which one stood guard with a short musket, no doubt reposed some of the bags of powder, which were their main instruments.

He counted them. Tjaere were six petardiers and their corporal; three or four others might belong to the cavalry, of which the force had entered the house. These remained to care for the horses.

Don Csesar sighed again and again for the horse by which he would lessen his fatigue and shorten the time to reach his goal.

All at once a bright, an infernal idea seized him.

"The Duke of Egypt has set me on this track!" muttered he. "I will attempt it, for those fellows are nodding—they have been roused in the barracks from slum^ ber, after a hearty meal. I believe that now I experience the novel sensation of being in love with my own wife. All will come easy for me. It is a great blessing to have an angel on the earth playing success to you."

Groping in the wood, he soon discovered one of those long saplings which, after growing tall in the hope tx) catch a little air and Hght over the heads of the immense forcst-monarchs which loaded Spain at the period, die and dry off, but still retain toughness and elasticity. The one he seized was, as he conjectured, easily snapped off at the root. He had thus in his hands a long wand, terminating with gradual tapering and fine finish in a tip like a rush.

It required great dexterity and the strength of wrist which he displayed in his fencing bouts to manipulate it.

He dragged it with him, point foremost, and the butt noiselessly glided over the dead leaves, which lay thick over untold depth of vegetable detritus.

He approached the camp from leeward, and was delighted that the horses did not neigh any more.

All he could remember of Arab cunning and gypsy patience came to his aid.

Thrusting the interminable rod before him, he let it slide, well hidden by the grass and weeds, toward the spot where the sentinel watched the case of explosives.

Its advance was without sound and unseen. Nothing would mar the experiment but the chance step of a soldier toward it, and his being tripped up by it. Even then it would not be immediately suspected that a human hand had introduced it there, and the daring operator might make his escape.

"I shall be no worse off than before," thought Caesar, methodically pushing the stick onward.

Once he gave up all as lost. The fine point had met some obstacle, which snapped it partly off. The sentry heard the sound, for he looked off over the site of the mishap. He could not see the adventurer, thirty feet aloof, and he resumed his half-somnolent watch.

This forming at the end of the pole a slight hook helped a good result. When Caesar audaciously touched the case of ammunition with it, this hook fastened itself in the strap by which the canister was carried. In consequence, when he gently drew it back, the thing followed the impulse.

He suppressed his joy and continued the movement. The case aided him by rolling on the uneven ground, and only stopped in its revolution by entering into the embers of the half-burnt-out fire.

Caesar had done all he could.

"If the ashes are hot enough, they will fuse the metal or dissolve the solder, and out will pour the heated powder."

He thanked Providence, for he believed that the petards had been brought to blow up the house in case

there had been more than one invader there and the place had to be stormed.

"Poor Marftana! she was almost living over Vesuvius !"

Having done with the long pole all that he intended, he crept in the same cautious mode in another direction and placed himself near the horses. He still bore upon him the knife which had served the sham monk to open his sackcloth when a "dead man" in the Good Works Monastery, and this was all he required for the second stage of his exploit.

Luck was with him. Nobody noticed the case smoldering in the embers until itoo late.

"Alerta!" cried a sleeper, awakened by accident, as he perceived that the canister had apparently been kicked into the imminent bed. "The powder—it is in the fire I"

He himself sprang to remove it before too late, and he might have succeeded by the skin of his teeth, to quote the popular expression, but at his first step he stumbled on the pole and measured his length, his hands failing to reach the case by a full foot.

At the same moment the heated object began to hiss, and the outbreak instantaneously followed.

The powder caught as it spread in a sheet, and the fire, almost dead, became a glowing mass.

The cinders, charcoal and ends of unbumt logs flew, blazing, and the glade was lighted up as at noonday!

"Chaos returned!" muttered Bazan, darting through the retreating soldiers, who did not try to drag their daring companion by the heels from where his hair singed.

He had previous:ly singled out the best of the horses^ a fine Andalnsian of Barbary stock, somewhat light, but u^ to his weight. It was saddled for war, and he had flK> difficulty in slinging himself across the back.

He galloped before he thought of sitting up and settling in the seat.

Hooked to the pommel was a carbine, as it would be called now, such as the officers of some doubly-armed corps carried then in addition to their swords; it took the place of the modern revolver.

The moment he sat up, a volley was fired on him, but ft was too hurried to be of avail.

"Fools!" said he, "do you not know that I am invulnerable !"

He disdained to return the shots.

He looked back, but without slowing; the glade was a flame through which the soldiers were seen hindering the Other horses from running away after breaking their faalters, and helping their comrades out of the trap, beginning to burn where the fire had caught dry and resinous branches.

He heard the bell at the lone houses tolling; it was feared there that the fire was a movement of an enemy coincident with the intruder's escape.

"Pooh! they will not revenge themselves on a iwoman!" he reasoned to correct his impulse to return. *I must speed on my mission. I am bearing not merely the fate of my love, but that of Spain! A kingdom will be divided unless I can prevent the breach opening."