The Spanish dancer : being a translation from the original French by Henry L. Williams of Don Caesar de Bazan (3 page)

He bore 'himself with perfect fearlessness, as if to be tinder royal eyes were an everyday experience.

He was taller than the gypsies, better built at the shoulders, and his hands and feet were in proportion to his height. He w^ore an old long sword, flapping on his calves, but he must have been more used to its "^rriaga than even to the lute, with which he tinkled t ic time to their step, for it did not once embarrass him.

But with all his upright and pliant form, his alacrity; and strict time-keeping, he served but as a foil to his partner.

She was already famed, for a cry of "Maritana!" had hailed her appearance on the boards from the crowd of palace servants and populace allowed to congregate in the yard before the platform.

Maritana was not swarthy, but it was difficult to judge her natural complexion. Although she was not overlaid with flour, as in her companion's case, she was daubed with rouge, her lips were made thick, and the upper one almost painted up to her nose, while immense earrings and a jeweled comb thrust through her dull hair added a barbaric accent, which marred her natural beauty.

Nevertheless, this harmonized with the surrounding; Zingari, and assorted also with her wanton dance.

Without understanding the story chanted, one might guess that the two were depicting in dumb show the chase of a gazelle by a lion on the plain. There were bounds and flights, escapes and captures, which kept the spectator in turmoil.

With excellent art, just when the fugitive, exhausted by such desperate efforts to avoid her fate, sank on one knee at the side, and the captor's arms enwreathed her head, which had dislodged the abundant tresses from the coils and the comb, she became human. She lifted her glorious blue eyes, enlarged by the fever of action, and as if disdaining to sue to this human lion, she appealed to some divinity—one which knew what love was and would intervene on her behalf.

Her ruddy lips opened and there was exhibited such a burst of purity, crystalline intonation and fervency of feeling that her own companions seemed spellbound.

The queen was no mean artiste in r usic. Her teacher was a professor from the Veronese Academy of Music, and she reveled in emotional music.

It was not astonishing, therefore, that all heard her sigh with satisfaction. She rose without the aid of her maids, and, leaning over the gilded and cushioned rail^ and detaching a heavy bracelet from her arm, let it drop with a vehement motion.

At this golden bait, all the wanderers evinced their rapacity. A hundred hands were held up. But the male dancer, as he had displayed agility in his steps, was to be in the second place to no man now. Like lightning, he had unsheathed his long sword, and, leaping up at the same time, he thrust the blade so dexterously at the gleaming, falling object that it entered the circle and it glided down to his wrist.

A cheer greeted this clever rapier trick. Almost aH the men were judges of sword-handling.

His bound had carried him to the stage edge, but, poising himself as he ahghted in an elegant pose, he whirled round, bowing at the time to the donor, and, re versing his blade so that the golden ring ran down, 'he, as deftly as in catching it, let it slip off upon the hand of his partner, just as a hoop is caught in the game of "grace."

]\Iaritana, all blushes through her rouge, her eyes like unquenchable stars, made an elaborate courtesy to the benefactress, and was about to make a triumphant exit when a sign from the queen stopped her short.

Almost instantly a chamiberlain, with a smiling mien, went over to the stage, and sweetly said:

"By favor of the queen, you are to have an audience of her majesty!"

Her redness fading, her feet no longer nimble, the dancing girl, with slower and slower step, followed th6 official as he conducted her within doors.

All the spectators, gentle and simple, held their breath and forebore comment even in whispers.

"Oh, my brothers by adoption," said the gypsy's partner to the men, in trepidation, "fear not! Alaritana's honey in the mouth will save her back from the lash! She is born to stand in the smile of Heaven!"

Don Jose, however proud, had deliberately throwTi himself in the way.

"It is a blessed morning, Maritana!" said he, meaningly.

She stared at him, her sight beginning to clear as she believed that she was not to meet the foil after the true ■metal; she was too bewildered to recognize the speaker or distinguish him, but she blurted out:

"As many to you, my lord!"

Then her eyes became downcast.

The queen had faced around on the balcony as she was

broug-ht. She had enframed herself in the long window. She looked imposing in her robe, her coronetlike comb and her jewels. The immense Hall of Battles, through which the poor dancer was led, was thronged with great lords and great ladies. Not one but wore a historic name and historic gems.

Accustomed to the open air, the perfume almost made the gypsy swoon. But luckily, her weakness was ascribed to timidity and became a pariah's approach to a monarch.

"Now, Heaven help me!" murmured she, bowing low.

The queen admired this humility and bashfulness in one whom at a distance she had presumed to be of the usual brazen herd.

Looking at her so near and with womanly eyes, she perceived what exquisite beauty was under this paltry, gaudy mask; she saw the down of virgin modesty under the red pamt; she saw in those eyes trained to look boldly into the tormentor's visage the shrinking of the virtuous and proud, though reduced out of their sphere.

"Your name, child?" said she, softening her voice.

"Maritana."

"But the rest?"

"There is no rest to us, madam! simply Maritana."

"Do you belong to Spain—to Madrid?"

"The Gitana belongs nowhere—she is a creature not of the earth, but of the air 1"

"It is true that you dance as though you were fed upon it! and you sing like the bird from the heavens, which reposes never on the sordid ground, but sleeps poised in midair!"

"I am likel}'- to take my last repose there!" returned Maritana, wittingly, but without sarcasm, as if her fate was ruled from birth.

"You! Oh, fie! Shame to the hand Which would

lead you to that halter. Look! here is a rope alone fitted for your neck."

Slowly unwinding from her own shoulders one of those prodigious ropes of pearls which were in the treasuries of Spain and Portugal at that period, she gravely put it upon the neck of her protegee, who bent low at the priceless present, altogether eclipsing the bracelet.

"Oh, your majesty!" she faltered.

Her real color came and made the rouge pale.

"Look!" cried the queen to her court painter, "is not this scene counterpart of that when the navigator Columbus returned from the Indies and presented the Indian princess to the court of Queen Isabel? But that this goodly heathen has blue eyes, and I do not believe her hair is as ebonlike as it seems, she would resemble the dusky belle-savage!"

Maritana, as if the pearls weighed her down, suffered a 'hundred pangs in ieeling that the persons viewed her as a pagan.

"Hear ye, all!" cried her patroness, "my lords of the State and the Church! I adopt this waif and will strive to make 'her enter the pale. Maritana, remember that the Queen of .Spain takes you under her personal care, and that it will fare ill with him who undertakes to harm you or prevent your elevation to the place of a Christian dame! I have spoken! Let those who love me, love this poor errant c'hild, and assist her stumbling feet on the road to salvation!"

There was a murmur of approval on the men's part, and they solemnly lifted their dagger hilts and took the royal vow. Maritana had enchanted them. Their dames were not so enthusiastic.

"Am I, then " began the gypsy, conjecturing that

she was a kind of state prisoner—a queen's ape.

■"To remain actually under my hand? It might be bet-

ter so, but no; I would not so soon break the fetters that ni'ay bind you to those who have at least brought you to this age without defacing your lovehness !"

It was the popular belief that the Egyptians disfigured their captives, while being as fond to their own offspring as any parents. It might be presumed that Maritana, therefore was a true Bohemian. Her reply as she regained courage would emphasize that belief.

"Please, your majesty, while grateful for such right-royal bounty to the fullness of my heart, I beg respectfully to desire not to be sundered wholly from those with whom I have always dwelt. I am not a house-dweller. Like the swallow I should die if not allowed to be ever on the wing. But if it is to please your kind and charitable majesty, why, let me die in your gilded cage. I live but to die for your majesty."

"Prettily capped—this answer delig'hts me better than your clutching at the offer. Go your way, child, though among the briars. It is a narrow and devious way, no doubt, but it may lead sooner to happiness than the broad walks and the wide doorways of the palace. Go, yes ; but, Maritana, rem.ember the queen is your godmother if you renounce the fellowship of the beguiler and the slavery of the sinners. I would esteem it the brightest page in my life if I might have it accredited to me that I saved your soul from the Evil One, and your person, so charming, from association with these fauns and diyads of the brake."

It was a prudent speech, for the churchmen, who had begun to look black at the gypsy, were glad to have this sop thrown them. The Archbishop of Madrid spoke to liis almoner, and his voice was audible on purpose.

"Lock after this spark, which must be plucked from those brands, fit only for the burning," said he.

"My first gentleman-in-waiting," pursued the ro^al

speaker, "accompany the girl tO' her friends. No more singing, no more dancing, for lucre. They may sing if they like, but it is to be gratuitous, and out of fullness over the entertainment with which I express my gratefulness at their having given me pleasure this red-letter day. A feast to the Egyptians !"

Maritana retired with this additional kindness to show.

"By all that is holy," thought Don Jose, ''this is mixing the one-hundred elect with the thousand excepted iThis is scvmet'hing to give my time to."

At his slight beckoning, a clerk in the throng approached him stealthily and listened to him without hav-mg the aspect of doing so.

"Look to that gypsy!" said the lord. "Keep her in iaight, for she has enchanted the brooding queen. You must not let her quit the kingdom, or in my turn I will have you followed and chastised, though you sail round Cape Aiguillas."

"I marked the whole, my good lord! As sure as that I am the last scion of the once noble and high-placed Nigueraelas, I will watch well. But she will not flee!"

"No?"

"A gypsy will stay and fawn while there are still crumbs of the cake once given. That girl will be coming back to take singing lessons of the queen's instructors in the harmonies and the orbo!"

"Let me clasp hands with him, then! for I want that castaway to Team a song by which I may fill my pouch!"

It was well that he had not attempted to pursue the quest in person, for while the gypsies and their friends were being feasted in the yard, an usher warily came up to the lieutenant-criminal, whom few accosted openly, and said, with deference:

"My Lord of Santarem, the queen would see you in ^■6 orangery at sunset this evening."

It was a private audience, such as grandees craved and hidalgoes danced attendance for.

"Ho, ho!" chuckled Don Jose. "I may yet Hve in one of Madrid's ten or twelve palaces! Sparks issue from the clash of adamant and steel; so may some particles of value strike off by the meeting of misery with mightiness."

He howed assent to the messenger, and betrayed by his high step that he thought the first ministership might not be far out of reach.

CHAPTER II.

THE queen's confidant.

Four lines of orange trees, borne in gigantic troughs, formed the Orangery of the Escurial. The bells of the Capella Mayor and of the Petty Chapel were tinkling for vespers while the police minister held his tryst. He did not feel impatience, for queens cannot keep appointments like shopkeepers' apprentices, their hours being at business or pleasure, as the kind of queen may be.

"What!" cried he at last, as the long vista was obscured by a dark, shapeless figure. "Is it off? A murrain on it—I have not so many opportunities to advance myself to my goal as to lose this one with calmness! All, yes, it is the royal confessor! Good-even, Father Gonsalvo!"

"Good-evening, my lord! What a sacrilege!"

"What, my smoking an Indian cigarro under the royal fruit?"

"No, no! that rout, that pagan rabble out there carousing under the windows of the Major Chapel! One can scarce hear the holy canticles amid those heathen jingles from the hoarse throats of sinners,"

"Oh, the gypsies revelling at the queen's expense. iWhat says the king about this adoption of one of that desperate spawn?"

"The king? Your lordship ought to know that the king never has a moment to listen to any complaint."

"I am aware of that—poor monarch! as much to be pitied as a mortal like ourselves, between French intrigue and German pertinacity! 'Fore Heaven! it is im^ pudent to pester a king in his mid-life to name his sue-