Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories Part 15

It was a commonplace ceremony, and at its conclusion the bridegroom trudged off up the village street behind his mail-bags. The Mule, it must be admitted, was a deadly dull person--y nada mas--and nothing more, as his fond father-in-law observed at the cafe that same morning.

But when he returned on the second evening, he made it evident that he had been thinking of Caterina in his absence, for he gave her, half shyly and very awkwardly, some presents that he had brought from a larger village than San Celoni, which he had pa.s.sed on his way. There were shops in the village, and it was held in the district that articles bought there were of superior quality to such as came even from Granada or Malaga. The Mule had expended nearly a peseta on a coloured kerchief such as women wear on their heads, and a brooch of blue gla.s.s.

"Thank you," said Caterina, taking the presents and examining them with bright eyes. She stood before him in a girlish att.i.tude, folding the kerchief across her hand, and holding it so that the light of their new lamp fell upon it. "It is very pretty."

The Mule had washed his face and hands at the fountain, as he came into San Celoni, remembering that he was a bridegroom. He stood, sleek and sunburnt, looking down at her, and, if he had only had the words, the love-making might have commenced then and there, at a point where the world says it usually ends.

"There was nothing," he said slowly at length, "in the shops that seemed to me pretty at all--" He paused, and turned away to lay his beret aside, then, with his back towards her, he finished the sentence. "Not pretty enough for you."

Caterina winced, as if he had hurt instead of pleased her. She busied herself with the preparations for their simple supper, and the Mule sat silently watching her--as happy, perhaps, in his dull way, as any king has ever been. Then suddenly Caterina's fingers began to falter, and she placed the plates on the table with a clatter, as if her eyes were blinded. She hesitated, and with a sort of wail of despair, sat down and hid her face in her ap.r.o.n. And the Mule's happiness was only human after all, for it was transformed in the twinkling of an eye into abject misery.

He sat biting his lip, and looking at her as she sobbed. Then at length he rose slowly, and, going to her, laid his great, solid, heavy hand upon her shoulder. But he could not think of anything to say. He could only meet this as he had met other emergencies, with that silence which he had acquired from the dumb beasts amid the mountains.

At length, after a long pause, he spoke. He had detected a movement, made by Caterina and instantly restrained, to withdraw from the touch of his hand, and this had set his slow brain thinking. He had dealt with animals more than with men, and was less slow to read a movement than to understand a word.

"What is it?" he asked. "Is it that you are sorry you married me?"

And Caterina, who belonged to a people saying yea, yea, and nay, nay, nodded her head.

"Why?" asked the Mule, with a deadly economy of words. And she did not answer him. "Is it because--there is another man?"

It was known in the valley that the Mule had never used his knife, not even in self-defence. Caterina did not dare, however, to answer him. She only whispered a prayer to the Virgin.

"Is it Pedro Casavel?" asked the Mule; and the question brought her to her feet, facing him with white cheeks.

"No--no--no!" she cried. "What made you think that? Oh--no!"

Woman-like, she thought she could fool him. The Mule turned away from her and sat down again. Woman-like, she had forgotten her own danger at the mere thought that Casavel might suffer.

"And he--in the mountains," said the Mule, thinking aloud. He was beginning to see now, at last, when it was too late, as better men than he have done before, and will continue to do hereafter. Caterina could not have held out as an objection to her marriage the fact that she loved a man who was in the mountains. The schoolmaster was not one to listen to such an argument as that, especially from a girl who could not know her own mind. For the schoolmaster was, despite his radical tendencies, bigoted in his adherence to the old mistakes.

Caterina might have told the Mule, perhaps, if he had asked her; for she knew that he was gentle even with the stubborn Cristofero Colon. But he had not asked her, failing the necessary courage to face the truth.

It was, of course, the woman who spoke first, in a quiet voice, with that philosophy of life which is better understood by women than by men.

"You must, at all events, eat," she said, "after your journey. It is a cocida that I have made."

She busied herself among the new kitchen utensils with movements hardly yet as certain as the movements of a woman, but rather those of a child, hasty and yet deft enough. The Mule watched her, seated clumsily, with round shoulders, in the att.i.tude of a field labourer indoors. When the steaming dish, which smelt of onions, was set upon the table, he rose and dragged his chair forward. He did not think of setting a chair in place for Caterina, who brought one for herself, and they sat down--to their wedding feast.

They appeared to accept the situation, as the poor and the hard-worked have to accept the many drawbacks to their lot, without further comment.

The Mule cultivated a more complete silence than hitherto; but he was always kind to Caterina, treating her as he would one of his beasts which had been injured, with a mutual silent acceptance of the fact that she had a sorrow, a weak spot as it were, which must not be touched.

With a stolid tact he never mentioned the mountains, or those unfortunate men who dwelt therein. If he met Pedro Casavel he did not mention the encounter to Caterina. Neither did he make any reference to Caterina when he gave Pedro a box of matches. Indeed, he rarely spoke to Casavel at all, but nodded and pa.s.sed on his way. If Casavel approached from behind he stopped without looking round, and waited for him just as his mules stopped, and as mules always do when they hear any one approaching from behind.

So time went on, and the schoolmaster, resigning his situation, departed to Malaga, where, by the way, he came to no good; for of talking there is too much in this world, and a wise man would not say thank you for the gift of the gab. The man whom Pedro Casavel had injured died quietly in his bed. Caterina went about her daily work with her unspoken history in her eyes, while Pedro himself no doubt ate his heart out in the mountains. That he ate it out in silence could scarcely be, for the tale got about the valley somehow that he and Caterina had been lovers before his misfortune.

And as for the Mule, he trudged his daily score of miles, and said nothing to any man. It would be hard to say whether he noticed that Pedro Casavel, when he showed himself now in the mountains, appeared rather ostentatiously without his gun--harder still to guess whether the Mule knew that as he pa.s.sed across the summit Casavel would sometimes lie amid the rocks, and cover him with that same gun for a hundred yards or so, slowly following his movements with the steady barrel so that the mail-carrier's life hung, as it were, on the touch of a trigger for minutes together. Pedro Casavel seemed to shift his hiding place, as if he were seeking to perfect certain details of light and range and elevation. Perhaps it was only a grim enjoyment which he gathered from thus holding the Mule's life in his hand for five or six minutes two or three times a week; perhaps, after all, he was that base thing, a coward, and lacked the nerve to pull a trigger--to throw a bold stake upon life's table and stand by the result. Each day he crept a little nearer, grew more daring; until he noticed a movement made by the lank, ill-fed dog, that seemed to indicate that the beast, at all events, knew of his presence in the rocks above the footpath.

Then one day, when there was no wind, and the light was good and the range had been ascertained, Pedro Casavel pulled the trigger. The report and a puff of bluish smoke floated up to heaven, where they were doubtless taken note of, and the Mule fell forward on his face.

"I have it," he muttered, in the curt, Andalusian dialect. And then and there the Mule died.

It happened to be Cristofero Colon's day to do the southward journey, and despite the lank dog's most strenuous efforts, he continued his way, gravely carrying the dusty mail-bags to their destination. The dog remained behind with the Mule, pessimistically sniffing at his clothing, recognizing, no doubt, that which, next to an earthquake, is the easiest thing to recognize in nature. Then at length he turned homewards, towards San Celoni, with hanging ears and a loose tail. He probably suspected that the Mule had long stood between him and starvation--that none other would take his place or remember to feed a dog of so unattractive an appearance and no pedigree whatever.

Caterina did not expect the Mule to return that evening, which was his night away from home at Puente de Rey. She hurried to the door, therefore, when she heard, after nightfall, the clatter of hoofs in the narrow street, and the shuffling of iron heels at her very step. She opened the door, and in the bright moonlight saw the c.o.c.ked-hats and long cloaks of the Guardia Civil. There were other men behind them, and a beast shuffled his feet as he was bidden to stand still.

"What is it?" she asked. "An accident to the Mule?"

"Not exactly that," replied the Sergeant, grimly, as he made way for two men who approached carefully, carrying a heavy weight. It was the Mule whom they brought in and laid on the table.

"Shot," said the Sergeant, curtly. He had heard the gossip of the valley, and doubted whether Caterina would need much pity or consideration. His companion-in-arms now appeared, leading by the sleeve one who was evidently his captive. Caterina looked up and met his eyes.

It was Pedro Casavel, sullen, ill-clad, half a barbarian, with the seal of the mountains upon him. "The mail-bags are missing," pursued the Sergeant, who in a way was the law-giver of the valley. "Robbery was doubtless the object. We shall find the mail-bags among the rocks. The Mule must have shown fight; for his pistol was in his pocket with one barrel discharged."

As he spoke he laid his hand upon the Mule's broad chest without heeding the stained shirt. That stain was no new sight to an old soldier.

"Robbery," he repeated, with a glance at Casavel and Caterina, who stood one on each side of the table that bore such a grim burden, and looked at each other. "Robbery and murder. So we brought Pedro Casavel, whose hiding-place we have known these last two years, with us--on the chance, eh?--on the chance. It was the dog that came and told us. Whoever shot the man should have shot the dog too--for safety's sake."

As the Sergeant spoke, he mechanically made sure that the Mule's pockets were empty. Suddenly he stopped, and withdrew a folded paper from the inside pocket of the jacket. He turned towards the lamp to read the writing on it. It was the Mule's writing. The Sergeant turned, after a moment's thought, and faced Casavel again.

"You are free to go, Pedro," he said. "I have made a mistake, and I ask your pardon."

He held out the paper, which, however, Casavel did not take, but stood stupidly staring, as if he did not understand.

Then the Sergeant turned to the lamp again. He unfolded the paper, which was crumpled as if with long friction in the pocket, and read aloud--

"Let no one be accused of my death. It is I, who, owing to private trouble, shall shoot myself. Juan Quereno, so-called the 'Mule.'"

IN LOVE AND WAR

"Secret de deux, secret de Dieu."

"Guess anybody could be a soldier and swing a sword, while it takes brains to make a doctor."

Now I was a doctor, and a very young one in those days, new to the regiment and conscious of my inferiority to its merest subaltern. The young person who made the above observation was, moreover, pretty, with dark eyes and the most bewitching lips that ever gave voice to an American accent. My heart was young, and therefore easily stirred by such vanities--nothing stirs it now but the cry of the bugle and the sullen roar that rises from the ranks when, at last, T. Atkins is allowed to get to the bayonet.

We were sitting in the verandah of the Residency in the capital of a northern tributary state which need not be further specified here. The Rajah was in difficulties and unable, without our aid, to dispose of a claimant to his throne, whose hereditary right originated somewhere in the lifetime of St. Paul. General Elias J. Watson, of Boston, U.S.A., was travelling for the enlargement of his own and his daughter's mind.

"Pa is just going to write a book about things in general," explained Miss Bertha Watson, with a wise little smile, when her father's thirst for information became irksome.

Hearing in Simla that an expeditionary force was about to be despatched to the a.s.sistance of the Rajah of Oadpur, General Watson hastened thither. He had letters of introduction from sundry persons who wished to get rid of him to sundry others who had no desire to a.s.sist in any way. But the old man's naivete and characteristically simple interest in details soon made their way, while Bertha's wise little smile carried all before it. It somehow conveyed the impression that she knew a thing or two of which we were ignorant, and like one man we fell to desiring knowledge of those things. I was nowhere. Doctors never are anywhere in regimental compet.i.tions, for they are usually, like myself, deadly poor.

Sometimes Bertha danced with me, as on this occasion, at the impromptu entertainments given by the Resident.

"Say, shall we have another?" she observed before my heart had recovered from the effect of the last remark. And she handed me the stationery department envelope which served as a programme on these occasions.