The Spanish dancer : being a translation from the original French by Henry L. Williams of Don Caesar de Bazan (5 page)

The queen entered her rooms.

When alone, she went into the praying-closet, but instead of praying, she muttered:

"I do not wholly trust that ambitiouts spirit. I am going to manage my own police, and chief among them will be this gypsy girl, who, unless I much underrate her intelligence, knows what goes on in the Jewry among these pernicious outcasts."

She looked at a mirror set in the cover of her missal, irreverent concession to mortality! and continued to herself:

"Oh, to be face to face with this rival! It is the lowly that too often debase the exalted to their dusty level!"

CHAPTER III.

SERPENT AND DOVE.

As Madrid was the center of Spain, so is its Grand Plaza the heart, full of lifeblood and fire, of Madrid.

This was an epitome of the whole city.

In the cathedral, the church; in the grand mansions, the nobility; in the shops and stores, the merchants and 'bankers; in the hovels of the back streets and winding alleys, the lowest orders.

Between a fountain, due to the Saracens or perhaps the Romans, and a drinking-den, two contrasts of provisions allowing the toper and the temperate to suit their tastes, opened the dirty maw of the ghetto, the sink into which was poured at dusk all the cripples, the ailing, the contaminating, the denounced, the outlaws, the espewed and the revengeful of humanity.

It was toward evening; beggars and musicians, bearers of Oriental and African musical instruments, hideo'us in tune and exasperating when out of tune, limped home to their burrows. But as was the order among these brothers of the lute and "loot," all took a halt before the wine-house.

Here hobnobbed the still honest, ill-paid soldier, the thief whose pence was the residue of the gains the receiver made of his hard-got spoil, the wreck and the youth just emba'rked on the perilous voyage.

While the lime-frothed wine flowed, and the children groped in the gutter for crusts and half-gnawed bones, Maritana, returning from her day'^s performances, darted upon the old stone block guarding the entrance of the court from the coach wheels, and began to sing, while the

varied instruments accompanied her as well as the Voices

O'f the chorus.

Those who had witnessed her vocalism at the palace would have comprehended that a great artist is inspired by the company. What there was chaste and soaring in her verse under the royal eyes, was free and tantalizing with her cronies around.

"Pahli (brothers), tread a merry measure I We're the boys who furnish pleasure

Cheaper than what tapsters bring! But for us there'd be no laughter— Maybe there comes none hereafter—

So be jolly; let Care swing!"

"Viva los Egipchios!" said the young man who had been Maritana's partner at the palace dance, and who, taking off his tattered sombrero, went the rounds to collect of the vagrants as they had collected of the burghers.

"Are you going indoors so early, Maritana of my heart?" said this volunteer attendant, pouring the coinis of all sorts into her kerchief, which she took off and tied it up as in a bag.

"No, I am going to the bridge to catch a breath of fresher air. It is like the plague in the passages to-night. I am depressed as if a calamity ovei4iung us."

"Can I still be your cavalier?"

"No, I would rather be alone." She paused at a stand v/here a harridan, draped in second-hand clothes, and wearing a gaudy Indian scarf over her gray head, was selling black beans cooked in oil. She grasped a handful, hot though they were, and laughing in the hag's face at the idea of payment, bounded off.

"Ah, they are fresh, Maritana," reproached the woman, "and what is two coppers to you who amass fortunes?"

"Pay her Csesario!" cried the girl at a distance, to her

Serpent and Dove. JJ

cavalier, and she •disappeared in the crowd on the plaza, mixed, of every degree.

"Pay her! It is all very well to say pay, but " the

man went playfully t'hroug*h the mockery of running his pockets through. "Why, she has taken the collection with her."

"Not to throw it into the Manzanares, mark you," said a gypsy.

"A pound of pence would make our river overflow its banks," retorted the ragged knight, repeaiting 'his forlorn search.

The toothless beldame looked up and mumbled with a ■grin:

"Beseeching the liberty, my lord, let this go over to your account. Lord ha' mercy on the downfallen. I knew your father's house when the butler courted me. Never shall it be said that the Count of Garofa, who has the born right to wear his hat before the king, should want to fill that hat with fried beans, and Dame Discon-•olada should require cash for it."

"Oh, you, too, know me! Why, I might as well have my title branded on my shoulder, like most of you carry the town-mark! But you are mistaken, pretty dame. We have acquaintances at court, now, in the kitchen, and we have money in some of our pockets. Tomaso!"

He called out to a young gypsy of elegant manners who passed on a horse which, halt and fagged, would on the morrow sell as a magnificent Arab courser at the horse mart, thanks to the gypsy jockeying.

"Tomaso, pay Dame Disconsolada ten crowns for me! Against my steward next sending my rents to town."

All laughed at the rider as he stopped, and, drawing some silver out of a satchel, tossed the pieces upon the pile of uncooked beans before the frying-pan.

"T-ten crowns!" repeated the old woman, unable toj

believe her senses, for she supplemented that of sight by feeling without being convinced.

"Why, so! Because you trusted the lady and the broken-down gentleman? Remember, Tomaso, at my next haul!"

"Your honor is too good," replied the horseman, riding off negligently.

"I wish," said this associate of the riff-raff, whom the bean-fryer had hailed as the Count of Garofa, one of the oldest peers of the United Kingdoms, "I wish the lass had not carried off the bag. I fear that she may fall the prey to highwaymen."

This was the cream of jokes. Rob a gypsy in the sight of her tribe and all their allies! And dark coming on, by the same token!

And Maritana, their idol! If a hair of her head were brushed the wrong way, why all Madrid had not the garrison to prevent the outcasts wreaking vengeance.

"I suppose I had better go look after her."

"Go and look after her, brother," said a dilapidated blackamoor, who was "Duke of Egypt;" that is, king of the pariahs for the season. "Though you have not yet jumped over the beggar's staff with her and drawn the straws out of the beggar's wallet to learn from futurity how many years you should live together, you are, Don Caesar, of my bosom, brother of the girl and ours. Go in peace!"

But as Don Caesar de Bazan, Count of Garofa y Bel-orda, for he had not usurped the proud titles, started on his chivalrous errand, he was startled to see the girl hurriedly returning.

Her face had turned pale, her steps were unsteady, so that she almost tripped in the wretched hollows, and her hands twitched with terror. Out of them she designedly

poured the beans, at which she had been pecking like a pigeon, when she quitted the alley mouth.

"What the devil is pursuing her, that she throws the black beans behind her to stall off the pursuit!" criedli Don C^sar, long enough familiar with these birds of the night to know this superstitious counter-charm. "Why, there is a fellow, in a cloak worth snatching, following her as the fish follows the bait! And, zoons! another doak in the recess of the goldsmith's a-watching both with eyes like coals."

He carried a hand round to his long sword hilt, and, without drawing it, proceeded to intervene between the dancing-girl and this too fervent admirer.

But, abruptly changing her intention, the girl not only ceased to retreat, but, disengaging a tambourine hung by a ribbon at her girdle of gilt metal, in proof of her being an outlaw, she faced the pursuer with this extended as a sexton holds out the alms box.

Her defender stopped, but retained hold of his rapier.

The second cloaked stranger remained in his concealment, and watched with the burning eyes the gypsy's colleague had remarked.

"I had forgot," said the dancer, to herself. "I must make up a great sum to enable me to follow the instruc-ti'on which the queen's singing-master assures me is necessary to fit me for a rise out of this hateful mire." Then retracing a few steps, so that the follower had to stop not to run up against her, she said, sweetly, overcoming her scruples:

"If you please, though you did not come in time to hear the ballad—maravedi?"

"A maravedi, forsooth!" said the gentleman; for he was one, by the richness of his habiliments under the cloak which had in itself betrayed his degree to the ex-

perienced Don Caesar. "I scorn to pay such melody with copper!"

His scornful gesture was mistaken by the dancer, v/hoi murmured disappointedly:

"Ah, am I losing the charm of gleaning coin from purses ?"

But as the stranger, perceiving the mob at the ghetto entrance very forbidding, rapidly turned to flee, she heard a heavy piece fall and rebound on the Basquei drum, and she exclaimed:

"Gold! A piece of two pistoles—seventeen shillings! Oh, I cannot tell how many silver crowns, without the abacus! I can buy a new psaltery with this! And 1 was afeard to wait for that noble, generous caballero, because he looked at me so hard and ardently."

The spy in the doorway watched after the donor with a startled mien.

"By the hope of my life, that is Don Carlos! The royal adventurer steers his bark into rocky seas. This is his weak side, his foible, is it! He has fallen in love with this waif, this bit of tinsel afloat on the kennel pooll And do I censure him? Not I, for faith!—it is no hard confession—I am enamored with her up to the eyes myself!"

"If this police spirit in the goldsmith's archway stared at me as he did at that liberal virtuoso," observed Don Csesar, fidgeting with his sword handle, "I should fee! inclined to spit him to that doorway, which is of good ironwood out of Brazil; but methinks this fleeing one is of importance. I must learn how he bestows himself."

But the chase was not so easily carried out as projected.

Hardly had he put this plan into execution than his way was impeded by the purest of accidents or the best arranged of obstacles. First, a passenger parting with a friend, with a prodigious bow. backed into him; andl

th«n two mulatto women, carrying a huge buck-basket loaded with linen, forced him into a wide detour; and, finally, three soldiers of the Foreign Guards, linked arm in arm, and swaggering over the space, brought him to a standstill, or he would have had a triple quarrel on his hands.

He was forced to desist and see, at a distance, the ostentatious rewarder of vocalism disappear in a horse-litter waiting at a corner under an illuminated shrine.

"If it is one of the four sword-bearing saints!" ejaculated the baffled defender of the gitana, then may St. George, Michael, Peter, or Abdiel—I am forgetting my beads among these infidels! and I a zndame, champion of an abbey, as an inheritance! may these saints bring me to meet that rogue again! We shall see if his bilbo is as long as his infernal purse, which has made Maritana's eyes start out of her head! She is beauteous—she is iwitty, and she—'but she is covetous! I begin to believe she is a born gypsy, and not a stolen Christian babe!"

Hiding this conclusion from its object, he returned to her side. She gave him a handful of small pieces, saying:

"Pay for the beans, and distribute the rest with the comrades ! This is my birthday!"

"The deuce it is!"

"Did you mark the giver of that doubloon?"

"I did not pay any heed! Just a gallant who had won a giold-washed groat at a gambling-house!"

"Washed? As well say he was no genuine gentleman !" and she gave a little scream of fright in handling the denounced coin.

"Oh, if he had been a courtier, I should have recog-mized him!" said the downfallen count, earnestly.

"Not a nobleman—^not a good doubloon!" muttered

}8 Serpent and Dove.

Maritana, sadly. Suddenly shaking off her moadine|8, she exclaimed, joyously, or at least relieved:

"Here is a goldsmith! We shall learn in a trie* [whether this is sham and, consequently, the giver another counterfeit of his betters."

Don Csesar paused, but, unfortunately, he heard a lottd [whoop of intense enjoyment.

"The rogues—they have had a heaping harvest! They 'have had the host of the Water-porters' Arms broach a fresh barrel of that goodish Miravel wine, as strong as its castle!"

He considered that his partner was following and hastened to join the revellers.

Maritana proceeded up into the deep overhang of the goldsmith's, which was the fair title for a shop where valuables were left for security, the safekeeper kindly providing for the owner's immediate wants by a small loan out of all proportion to the value.

But no sooner had she entered this kind of trap, when she was stopped by the man in a cloak, who, letting it drop aside, showed that he was splendidly clad in bright colors and rare cloth; a gold chain gleamed, and his sword had a magnificent handle. The feather in his conical hat was also of price,

"A gold coin!" cried he, as if he had not seen how it had been thrust upon her. "Let me appraise it."

"No, I "

"Pooh! you can trust me more than that! a trifle to what your musical gifts earn you—and what the honorable patroness whose assistance you stupidly reject will shower in a hundredfold! But, to prove that I am above robbing you, take this!" he said, giving her a heavy gold piece.

*Tt is the same!" she cried.

Serpent and Dove. }9

"It is the fellow. Out of the same royal mint, look

ye?"

"Thank you; but, sir "

"It will buy you music books to spell over the lute you yearn for!"

"Yet, I fear "

"What?" and he laughed with forced mirth, for he sought to please her; "my powers of divination? Oh, I can leave those tricks to you and your tribe.'

"I shrink from the tempter!" continued she, shuddering while unable to tear her sight from the glittering coins.