Then he turned away as though to go back to the fonda, yet returned again, and, striding back to where the mute stood motionless, his expression one of absolute vacancy--as though, in truth, he was only now become dumb from utter surprise--he struck at him full in the face with his clenched fist.
"Dolt, idiot, hound!" he said. "Was it to aid in such treachery against me as this that I saved you from the Inquisition? God! that I had left them to take your useless life! Dumb fool!"
I, standing there, with Juana still clinging to my neck, as she had done since the duel was over, saw the man stagger back and wipe the blood from his lips; saw, too, his hands clench firmly; saw him take one step forward, as though he meant to throw himself upon Morales; then stop suddenly, and do nothing. Perhaps even now, after this foul blow, he remembered that he had been saved from death once by him who struck that blow.
But a moment later he approached the Alcáide, though now humbly, and like a beaten slave who sues for pardon, and entreats that no further punishment shall be dealt out to him, and, an instant after, began, with fingers and hands and many strange motions, to tell his master something--something in a dumb language that was, still, not the deaf and dumb language in common use, and which I myself chanced to know, yet one that none could doubt both of these men were in the habit of conversing in.
He was telling some strange tale, I saw and understood by one glance at my late opponent's face; neither could any doubt that who gazed upon it!
At first that face expressed amazement, incredulity--all the emotions that are to be observed on the countenance of one who listens to some story which he either cannot believe, or thinks issues, at best, from a maniac. Yet gradually, too, there came over the face of Morales another look--the look of one who does believe at last, in spite of himself; also there dawned on it a hideous, gloating expression, such as might befit a fiend who listens to the tortured cries of a victim.
What did it mean? What tale was that stricken creature telling him by those symbols, which none but he understood? What? What?
A moment later we knew--if Morales did not lie to us.
The mute had ceased his narrative, his hands made no further signs, and, slowly, he stepped back again to where the horses we had travelled on stood together, the reins of one tied to the other--and Morales turned to us, his features still convulsed with that horrible expression of gloating.
"I have wronged you," he said, raising his forefinger and pointing it at Juana, who shuddered and clasped me closer even as he did so; "and you," glancing at me. "The treachery was not yours, but another's; unless--unless"--and he paused as though seeking for words--"unless it should be termed otherwise. Say, not treachery, but--sublime sacrifice."