“You can read and write?” inquired the man of education.
“Yes, but not quickly!”
“That,” said the schoolmaster, “is a matter of practice. You should read the newspapers.”
Which was bad advice, for the Mule was simple and might have believed what he read.
The conversation was a long one; that is to say, it lasted a long time; until, indeed, the sun had set and the mountains had faded from blue to grey, while the far-off snow peaks reared their shadowy heads into the very stars. The schoolmaster had a few more questions to ask, and the Mule answered them in monosyllables. He was tired, perhaps, after his day's journey; for he had come the northward trip, which was always the hardest, entailing as it did a rocky climb on the sunny side of the mountains. He had nothing to say in his own favour, which is not such a serious matter as some might suspect. The world does not always take us at our own valuation, which is just as well—for the world.
Indeed, the schoolmaster only succeeded in confirming his own suspicion that this was nothing but a dull fellow, and he finally had to dismiss the Mule, who had not even the savoir faire to perceive when conversation was ended.
“Vederemos,” he said, judicially, “we shall see.”
And the Mule went away with that heaviness of heart which must surely follow a mean action. For he knew that in applying to Caterina's father he had placed Caterina at a disadvantage. The schoolmaster, be it remembered, was a democrat, and such are usually autocrats in their own house. He was, moreover, a selfish man, and had long cherished the conviction that he was destined to be great. He thought that he was an orator, and that gift, which is called by those who do not possess it the gift of the gab, is the most dangerous that a man can have. There was no one in San Celoni to listen to him. And if Caterina were married and he were a free man, he could give up the school and go to Malaga, where assuredly he could make a name.
So the schoolmaster told Caterina the next morning that she was to marry the Mule—that the matter was settled. The dusky roses faded from Caterina's cheek for a moment, and her great dark eyes had a hunted look. That look had often come there of late. The priest had noticed it, and one or two old women.
“Almost as if she were in the mountains,” they said, which is a local polite way of referring to those unfortunate gentlemen who, for some reason or another, do not desire to meet the Guardia Civil, and haunt the upper slopes of the Sierra Nevada, where they live, as live the beasts of the forest, seeking their meat from God, while the charitable, and, it is even whispered, the priest or the Alcalde himself, will at times lay an old coat or a loaf of bread at the roadside above the village, and never inquire who comes to take it.