“I understand your noble motives, señor, and by your calling me by name, you probably know Señor Inique also.”
“Intimately,” said the unblushing vagabond; “we were comrades in arms against the Moors in the last war; and but that my mother’s being a Portuguese induces a reasonable distaste to waging war on one’s own kindred, we would have been lying side by side in Portugal, at this very hour. We disagree, perhaps, in this little matter, but there is no ill-feeling between us; and you may imagine, señora, the haste I made to snatch my distinguished friend’s daughter from such pressing danger.”
“Señor,” cried the lady at this, simply, “the house and all it contains is yours. (Capt. Carlo wished it was.) Command me; you have only to make known your wishes.”
Saying this, she left the room to order refreshments for her guest. Don Wolfang, in high feather at his success, and looking upon a part of the Doña’s property as his own in right of salvage, which saved any scruples arising in his tender conscience, pocketed a few valuables lying about, and assumed the bearing of a Rico, occupying four chairs with his burly person, for the better, that is, more truthful enactment of the character in hand. In which easy attitude he lolled until the tray, with its choice eatables, arrived; and it was while on the point of putting into his mouth a pâté-de-fois-gras (I use the word generally, as designating something good; but did you ever hear Dr. C. talk of real pâtés) that—
But what happened I must begin in a different manner to relate, or the moral of this episode will be lost.
I have said Doña Viola was no fool, and here I intend bringing forward proof of my position. No one would have supposed any thing like nerve existed in so delicate a creature, unless they had seen her descending the stairs with a light in one hand, and a great sword, too stiff for her to draw, in the other, to rally the servants, while that timid old soul, her duenna, was creeping under the bed above as fast as a sudden weakness in her ancient knees would allow. The girl was brimfull of character, and made a worse impression on her first appearance, because fevered and crushed in spirit by the final wickedness of her betrothed husband, and its likely consequences; possibly the fever which afterward brought her to death’s door, had begun to show itself already in unnatural excitement of the brain, for it is not easy otherwise to reconcile the crazy eagerness she showed with her usual modesty.
But this is straying from the truffle-eating captain. Poor, simple, lamb-like captain! what could have induced him to pull off his leathern doublet and mask under the eyes of a girl not out of her teens, to be sure, but whose Gallician blood was all afire while watching from a dark window what was passing beneath. I am filled with pity and admiration for Doña Viola, when I think how, with one protector leagues away in Portugal, and the other up stairs, making her toilette to appear becoming in the eyes of this prince who had come to their rescue, she traversed the whole house, accompanied by a desperado whose only restraint lay in the greatness of his hopes dependent in part on present good conduct. She was a little fluttered, and ready to faint with fear, as any other woman short of a novel heroine would have been, but for all that she spoke so connectedly, and showed such faith in the captain’s will and ability to protect her, that it never entered his slow, Netherlandish brain, the figure before him was possessed of no more vitality in itself than an electro-magnetized body, or that she had noticed without start or scream his left, jetty whisker slip down far enough to expose the scrubby red growth underneath. Still less did it occur to him as a remote possibility, the idea of taking him, Captain Wolfang Carlo, fairly in the trap, could be occupying her head at the very moment he talked of “his dear friend, Don Augustino, her father;” and when one servant went up with the tray, a second went out with a summons to the Hermandad.
So Capt. Carlo was on the point (as I have said) of putting a pâté into his capacious mouth, when there came a rapping at the street-door, such as only the Hermandad made, it being the custom of the holy brotherhood to give due notice of their arrival on such occasions, lest one of themselves should prove to be the culprit. The captain knew to a stroke what mercy he would be likely to receive if arrested, and alert enough when danger pressed, clapped a couple of goblets in his pockets, and in the same instant seized by the throat the tray-bearer, (who had his hand already on the latch,) so that the poor simpleton had not breath enough in his body to whisper, when his assailant threw him into the corner limp as a bundle of rags.
The former had not perambulated the house without using his eyes, and knew the shortest way to the leads, where he dodged the Hermandad until an opportunity presented itself for making good his descent, the citizen police probably being not wide awake at two o’clock in the morning.
That estimable youth, Hilo, was highly amused when the adventure reached his ears, and in his customary reckless speech gave his Flemish associate to understand he was not wise beyond his years, and had quite overshot his aim by too much caution; nothing could have caused himself more pleasure than to be rid of that (what I don’t choose to write in Spanish or English,) who had cheated him out of his estate by her artful behavior. And he would not mind settling a round sum out of the to be recovered fortune on Wolfang, provided he could contrive to enter the house a second time, without so much useless stir; but our prudent friend had the Hermandad in too vivid remembrance, and excused himself, suggesting, however, a scheme no less rascally, which all readers of this true history know already to have been carried out to its full extent.