CHAPTER XII
A GLIMPSE OF MANUELA
Gil Perez had listened gravely to the tale which his master told him. He nodded once or twice, and asked a few questions in the course of the narrative—questions of which Manvers could not immediately see the bearing. One was concerned with her appearance. Did she wear rings in her ears? He had to confess that he had not observed. Another was interjected when he described how she had grown stiff under his arm when Estéban drew alongside.
Gil had nodded rapidly, and became impatient as Manvers insisted on the fact. "Of course, of course!" he had said, and then he asked, Did she stiffen her arm and point the first and last fingers of it, keeping the middle pair clenched?
Manvers understood him, and replied that he had not noticed any such thing, but that he did not believe she feared the Evil Eye. He went on with his story uninterrupted until the climax. He had found the crucifix, he said, on his return from bathing, and had been pleased with her for leaving it. Then he related the discovery of the body and his talk with Fray Juan de la Cruz. Here came in Gil's third question. "Did she return your handkerchief?" he asked—and sharply.
Manvers started. "By George, she never did!" he exclaimed. "And I don't wonder at it," he said on reflection. "If she had to knife that fellow, and confess to Fray Juan, and escape for her life, she had enough to do. Of course, she may have left it in the wood."
Gil Perez pressed his lips together. "She got it still," he said. "We find 'er—I know where to look for it."
If he did he kept his knowledge to himself, though he spoke freely enough of Manuela on the way to Madrid.
"This Manuela," he explained, "is a Valenciana—where you find fair women with black men. Valencianos like Moors—love too much white women. I think Manuela is not Gitanilla; she is what you call a Alfanalf. Then she is like the Gitanas, as proud as a fire, but all the same a Christian—make free with herself. A Gitana never dare love Christian man—imposs' she do that. Sometimes all the same she do it. I think Manuela made like that."
Committed to the statement, he presently saw a cheerful solution of it. "Soon see!" he added, and considered other problems. "That dead man follow Manuela to kill 'er," he decided. "When 'e find 'er with you, master, 'e say, 'Now I know why you run, hija de perra. Now I kill two and get a 'orse.' You see?"
"Yes," said Manvers, "I see that. And you think that he told her what he meant to do?"
"Of course 'e tell," said Gil Perez with scorn. "Make it too bad for 'er. Make 'er feel sick."
"Brute!" cried Manvers; but Gil went blandly on.
"'E 'ate 'er so much that 'e feel 'ungry and thirsty. 'E eat before 'e kill. Must do it—too 'ungry. Then she go near 'im, twisting 'erself about—showing 'erself to please him. 'You kiss me, my 'eart,' she say; 'I love you all the same. Kiss me—then you kill.' 'E look at 'er—she very fine girl—give pleasure to see. 'E think, 'I love 'er first—strangle after'—and go on looking. She 'old 'im fast and drag down 'is 'ead—all the time she know where 'e keep navaja. She cling and kiss—then nip out navaja, and click! 'E dead man." Enthusiasm burned in his black eyes, he stood cheering in his stirrups. "Señor Don Dios! that very fine! I give twenty dollars to see 'er make 'im love."
Manvers for his part, grew the colder as his man waxed warm. He was clear, however, that he must find the girl and protect her from any trouble that might ensue. She had put herself within the law to save him from the knife; she must certainly be defended from the perils of the law.
From what he could learn of Spanish justice that meant money and influence. These she should have; but there should be no more pastorals. Her kisses had been sweet, the aftertaste was sour in the mouth. Gil Perez with his eloquence and dramatic fire had cured him of hankering after more of them. The girl was a rip, and there was an end of it.
He did not blame himself in the least for having kissed a rip—once. There was nothing in that. But he had kissed her twice—and that second kiss had given significance to the first. To think of it made him sore all over; it implied a tender relation, it made him seem the girl's lover. Why, it almost justified that sick-faced, grinning rascal, whose staring eyes had shocked him out of his senses. And what a damned fool he had made of himself with the crucifix! He ground his teeth together as he cursed himself for a sentimental idiot.
For the rest of the way it was Gil Perez who cried up the quest—until he was curtly told by his master to talk about something else; and then Gil could have bitten his tongue off for saying a word too much.
A couple of days at the Escorial, with nothing of Manuela to interfere, served Manvers to recover his tone. Before he was in the capital he was again that good and happy traveller, to whom all things come well in their seasons, to whom the seasons of all things are the seasons at which they come. He liked the bustle and flaunt of Madrid, he liked its brazen front, its crowded carreras, and appetite for shows. There was hardly a day when the windows of the Puerta del Sol had not carpets on their balconies. Files of halberdiers went daily to and from the Palace and the Atocha, escorting some gilded, swinging coach; and every time the Madrileños serried and craned their heads. "Viva Isabella!" "Abajo Don Carlos!" or sometimes the other way about, the cries went up. Politics buzzed all about the square in the mornings; evening brimmed the cafés.
Manvers resumed his soul, became again the amused observer. Gil Perez bided his time, and contented himself with being the perfect body-servant, which he undoubtedly was.
On the first Sunday after arrival, without any order, he laid before his master a ticket for the corrida, such a one as comported with his dignity; but not until he was sure of his ground did he presume to discuss the gory spectacle. Then, at dinner, he discovered that Manvers had been more interested in the spectators than the fray, and allowed himself free discourse. The Queen and the Court, the alcaldé and the Prime Minister, the manolos and manolas—he had plenty to say, and to leave unsaid. He just glanced at the performers—impossible to omit the espada—Corchuelo, the first in Spain. But the fastidious in Manvers was awake and edgy. He had not liked the bull-fight; so Gil Perez kept out of the arena. "I see one very grand old gentleman there, master," was one of his chance casts. "You see 'im? 'E grandee of Espain, too much poor, proud all the same. Put 'is 'at on so soon the Queen come in—Don Luis Ramonez de Alavia."
"Who's he?" asked Manvers.
"Great gentleman of Valladolid," said Gil Perez. "Grandee of Espain—no money—only pride." He did not add, as he might, that he had seen Manuela, or was pretty sure that he had. That was delicate ground.
But Manvers, who had forgotten all about her, went cheerfully his ways, and amused himself in his desultory fashion. After the close-pent streets of Segovia, where the wayfarer seems throttled by the houses, and one looks up for light and pants towards the stars and the air, he was pleased by the breadth of Madrid. The Puerto del Sol was magnificent—like a lake; the Alcalá and San Geronimo were noble rivers, feeding it. He liked them at dawn when the hose-pipe had been newly at work and these great spaces of emptiness lay gleaming in the mild sunlight, exhaling freshness like that of dewy lawns. When, under the glare of noon, they lay slumbrous, they were impressive by their prodigality of width and scope; in the bustle and hum of dusk, with the cafés filling, and spilling over on to the pavements, he could not tire of them; but at night, the mystery of their magic enthralled him. How could one sleep in such a city? The Puerto del Sol was then a sea of dark fringed with shores of bright light. The two huge feeders of it—with what argosies they teemed! Shrouded craft!
Madrid by night.
That touch of the East, which you can never miss in Spain, wherever you may be, was unmistakable in Madrid, in spite of Court and commerce, in spite of newspaper, Stock Exchange, or Cortes. The cloaked figures moved silently, swiftly, seldom in pairs, without speech, with footfall scarcely audible. Now and again Manvers heard the throb of a guitar, now and again, with sudden clamour, the clack of castanets. But such noises stopped on the instant, and the traffic was resumed—whatever it was—secret, swift, impenetrable business.
For the most part this traffic of the night was conducted by men—young or old, as may be. The capa hid them all, kept their semblance as secret as their affairs. Here and there, but rarely, walked a woman, superbly, as Spanish women will, with a self-sufficiency almost arrogantly strong, robed in white, hooded with a white veil. The mantilla came streaming from the comb, swathed her pale cheeks and enhanced her lustrous eyes; but from top to toe she was (whatever else; she may have been, and it was not difficult to guess) in white.
Manvers watched them pass and repass; at a distance they looked like moths, but close at hand showed the carriage and intolerance of queens. They looked at him fairly as they passed, unashamed and unconcerned. Their eyes asked nothing from him, their lips wooed him not. There was none of the invitation such women extend elsewhere; far otherwise, it was the men who craved, the women who dispensed. When they listened it was as to a petitioner on his knees, when they gave it was like an alms. Imperious, free-moving, high-headed creatures, they interested him deeply.
It was true, as Gil Perez was quick to see, that at his first bull-fight Manvers had been unmoved by the actors, but stirred to the deeps by the spectators; if he had cared to see another it would have been to explore the secrets of this wonderful people, who could become animals without ceasing to be men and women. But why jostle on a bench, why endure the dust and glare of a corrida when you can see what Madrid can show you: the women by the Manzanares, or the nightly dramas of the streets?
Love in Spain, he began to learn, is a terrible thing; a grim tussle of wills, a matter of life and death, of meat and drink. He saw lovers, still as death, with upturned faces, tense and white, eating the iron of guarded balconies. Hour by hour they would stand there, waiting, watching, hoping on. No one interfered, no one remarked them. He heard a woman wail for her lover—wail and rock herself about, careless of who saw or heard her, and indeed neither seen nor heard. Once he saw a couple close together, vehement speech between them. A lovers' quarrel, terrible affair! The words seemed to scald. The man had had his say, and now it was her turn. He listened to her, touched but not persuaded—had his reasons, no doubt. But she! Manvers had not believed the heart of a girl could hold such a gamut of emotions. She was young, slim, very pale; her face was as white as her robe. But her eyes were like burning lakes; and her voice, hoarse though she had made herself, had a cry in it as sharp as a violin's, to out the very soul of you. She spoke with her hands too, with her shoulders and bosom, with her head and stamping foot. She never faltered though she ran from scorn of him to deep scorn of herself, and appealed in turn to his pride, his pity, his honour and his lust. She had no reticence, set no bounds: she was everything, or nothing; he was a god, or dirt of the kennel. In the end—and what a climax!—she stopped in the middle of a sentence, covered her eyes, sobbed, gave a broken cry, turned and fled away.
The man, left alone, spread his arms out, and lifted his face to the sky, as if appealing for the compassion of Heaven. Manvers could see by the light of a lamp which fell upon him that there were tears in his eyes. He was pitying himself deeply. "Señor Jesu, have pity!" Manvers heard him saying. "What could I do? Woe upon me, what could I do?"
To him there, as he stood wavering, returned suddenly the girl. As swiftly as she had gone she came back, like a white squall. "Ah, son of a thief? Ah, son of a dog!" and she struck him down with a knife over the shoulder-blade. He gasped, groaned, and dropped; and she was upon his breast in a minute, moaning her pity and love. She stroked his face, crooned over him, lavished the loveliest vocables of her tongue upon his worthless carcase, and won him by the very excess of her passion. The fallen man turned in her arms, and met her lips with his.
Manvers, shaking with excitement, left them. Here again was a Manuela! Manuela, her burnt face on fire, her eyes blown fierce by rage, her tawny hair streaming in the wind; Manuela with a knife, hacking the life out of Estéban, came vividly before him. Ah, those soft lips of hers could bare the teeth; within an hour of his kissing her she must have bared them, when she snarled on that other. And her eyes which had peered into his, to see if liking were there—how had they gleamed. upon the man she slew? Her sleekness then was that of the cat; but she had had no claws for him.
Why had she left him her crucifix? After all, had she murdered the fellow, or protected herself? She told the monk that she had been driven into a corner—to save Manvers and herself. Was he to believe that—or his own eyes? His eyes had just seen a Spanish girl with her lover, and his judgment was warped. Manuela might be of that sort—she had not been so to him. Nor could she ever be so, since there was no question of love between them now, and never could be.
"Come now," thus he reasoned with himself. "Come now, let us be reasonable." He had pulled her out of a scuffle and she had been grateful; she was pretty, he had kissed her. She was grateful, and had knifed a man who meant him mischief—and she had left him a crucifix.
Gratitude again. What had her gipsy skin and red kerchief to do with her heart and conscience? "Beware, my son, of the pathetic fallacy," he told himself, and as he turned into the carrera San Geronimo, beheld Manuela robed in white pass along the street.
He knew her immediately, though her face had but flashed upon him, and there was not a stitch upon her to remind him of the ragged creature of the plain. A white mantilla covered her hair, a white gown hid her to the ankles. He had a glimpse of a white stocking, and remarked her high-heeled white slippers. Startling transformation! But she walked like a free-moving creature of the open, and breasted the hot night as if she had been speeding through a woodland way. That was Manuela, who had lulled a man to save him.
After a moment or so of hesitation he followed her, keeping his distance. She walked steadily up the carrera, looking neither to right nor to left. Many remarked her, some tried to stop her. A soldier followed her pertinaciously, till presently she turned upon him in splendid rage and bade him be off.
Manvers praised her for that, and, quickening, gained upon her. She turned up a narrow street on the right. It was empty. Manvers, gaining rapidly, drew up level. They were now walking abreast, with only the street-way between them; but she kept a rigid profile to him—as severe, as proud and fine as the Arethusa's on a coin of Syracuse. The resemblance was striking; straight nose, short lip, rounded chin; the strong throat; unwinking eyes looking straight before her; and adding to these beauties of contour her splendid colouring, and carriage of a young goddess, it is not too much to say that Manvers was dazzled.
It is true; he was confounded by the excess of her beauty and by his knowledge of her condition. His experiences of life and cities could give him no parallel; but they could and did give him a dangerous sense of power. This glowing, salient creature was for him, if he would. One word, and she was at his feet.
For a moment, as he walked nearly abreast of her, he was ready to throw everything that was natural to him to the winds. She stirred a depth in him which he had known nothing of. He felt himself trembling all over—but while he hesitated a quick step behind caused him to look round. He saw a man following Manuela, and presently knew that it was Gil Perez.
And Gil, with none of his own caution, walked on her side of the street and, overtaking her, took off his hat and accosted her by some name which caused her to turn like a beast at bay. Nothing abashed, Gil asked her a question which clapped a hand to her side and sent her cowering to the wall. She leaned panting there while he talked rapidly, explaining with suavity and point. It was very interesting to Manvers to watch these two together, to see, for instance, how Gil Perez comported himself out of his master's presence; or how Manuela dealt with one of her own nation. They became strangers to him, people he had never known. He felt a foreigner indeed.
The greatest courtesy was observed, the most exact distance. Gil Perez kept his hat in his hand, his body at a deferential angle. His weaving hands were never still. Manuela, her first act of royal rage ended, held herself superbly. Her eyes were half closed, her lips tightly so; and she so contrived as to get the effect of looking down upon him from a height. Manvers imagined that his name or person was being brought into play, for once Manuela looked at her companion and bowed her head gravely. Gil Perez ran on with his explanations, and apparently convinced her judgment, for she seemed to consent to something which he asked of her; and presently walked on her way with a high head, while Gil Perez, still holding his hat, and still explaining, walked with her, but a little way behind her.
A cooling experience. Manvers strolled back to his hotel and his bed, with his unsuspected nature deeply hidden again out of sight. He wondered whether Gil Perez would have anything to tell him in the morning, or whether, on the other hand, he would be discreetly silent as to the adventure. He wondered next where that adventure would end. He had no reason to suppose his servant a man of refined sensibilities. Remembering his eloquence on the road to Madrid, the paean he blew upon the fairness of Valencian women, he laughed. "Here's a muddy wash upon my blood-boltered pastoral," he said aloud. "Here's an end of my knight-errantry indeed!"
There was nearly an end of him—for almost at the same moment he was conscious of a light step behind him and of a sharp stinging pain and a blow in the back. He turned wildly round and struck out with his stick. A man, doubled in two, ran like a hare down the empty street and vanished into the dark. Manvers, feeling sick and faint, leaned to recover himself against a doorway, and probably fell; for when he came to himself he was in his bed in the hotel, with Gil Perez and a grave gentleman in black standing beside him.