CHAPTER VIIIOF A GREAT CALAMITY
I hadnot even time to mutter my prayers, which, considering what lay before me, were never so sorely needed, ere I was in a sweet oblivion. Upon returning from this pleasant bourne a joyful sense of refreshment stole over my veins, for my slumber had been dreamless, and for several hours the sun had been in attendance on the morning.
The first thing I observed was my companion of the previous night. He was seated on his stool, and was blowing with his mouth upon a basin of porridge.
“Landlord,” I heard him roar, “if you do not bring me a cup of sack to cool my throat, which I have blistered already with your damnable gruel, the worms will have fresh meat in their larder.”
He pointed this threat by thrusting his dagger into the loose earth which formed the floor.
“Ha! Spaniardo,” said he, observing that I had opened my eyes, “do I perceive you to be awake already? You have slept round the clock. What a notable gift is that of youth.”
“I give you good morrow, Sir Richard Pendragon,” said I, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and slowly recalling my situation.
Hardly had I done so than I remembered that eightcrowns was my fortune, in an old piece of goatskin. Instantly I pressed my hand where I had placed it last. How shall I record the terrible pang that seized me when I pressed and felt in vain.
I got up and looked all about my corner; looked under the settle on which I had lain; examined the dry earth which composed the floor; felt in all my pockets yet again, and even groped among the ashes of the newly kindled fire. But my purse was not. I cannot tell you what a desperate pang overcame me when I discovered that I was bereft of every maravedi I had in the world.
By the time I had concluded these investigations the Englishman, who had been far too much employed with his breakfast to heed these actions, had taken himself off out of doors. I was glad to find him gone; and I proceeded to conduct my search in every corner of the place, in the vain hope that it had fallen from me in those energetic passages of the previous night. But I should have done as well to look in a sandpit for a precious stone.
I was standing with my hands tucked in my doublet, and trying ruefully enough to confront my position, when the innkeeper entered. I was hungry, yet I had no money with which to purchase a breakfast. Further, I had not a friend; I had not a home; I was in a country as foreign to me as a distant land; and I hardly dared in this predicament to turn to a stranger to crave a word of kindness. And now did I feel so tender in my years, and so plainly did I discern that my experience of mankind was insufficient for my needs, that even as I stood I felt despair spread over me in a manner that I should have thought impossible.So far was I from my valiancy of the previous evening that I nearly shed tears before the innkeeper when I mentioned to him my loss.
Now here you shall mark the difference between a man who has breeding and a man who has not. No sooner did I confide my loss to the innkeeper and that I was left as penniless as a beggar, than this notorious coward, who the previous night had called for my aid, pulled the wryest mouth I ever saw and looked upon me rudely.
“Does Pedro understand by this,” he said in a desperate tone of injury, “that you will not pay him for your lodging and the quantities of wine and victual you had of him last night?”
“Notwill not, landlord—cannot,” said I miserably, not having now the spirit to defend myself from his reproaches. “I grieve to say I have not so much as a penny in the world. The amount of my score must stand as a loan you have made to me, and I will not sleep of a night until you are repaid. I will charter a messenger to bring you your just due as soon as I can obtain it.”
“Why, what words are these?” the innkeeper whined. “Loan—sleep of a night—a messenger! Oh, by the Virgin Mary, I have been robbed and cheated! Look here, you who pretend to be a gentleman, I will have it out of you. Pedro has been mishandled by such as you before this morning. And oh, good Our Lady, how he did cozen you, Pedro, when you told of this foreign cut-throat who for three weeks has used you the same.”
It made my ear burn, reader, that I, Miguel JesusMaria de Sarda y Boegas, of the sangre azul of my native Asturias, should stand before this common fellow in the light of a rogue. Yet in spite of the innkeeper’s hard words I strove to bear myself with patience and dignity, for it was ever my father’s opinion that Fortune is a capricious mistress, who will oft humiliate her wooers not so much to do them hurt, but to make proper trial of their fortitude. Yet it was not my spirit alone that was to be vexed in this affair; my body was to be mortified also. Having slept many hours, and being in the flush of a vigorous youth, I grew bitterly hungry.
“Not a sip, not a crumb,” snarled the landlord, when I asked modestly enough that my breakfast and that of my horse might be scored up with the rest.
Now here it was that the brave little serving-wench, who the previous evening had saved my life, came up to her master.
“Give the young gentleman his wine and his porridge,” said she, “and, master, I myself will bear his charges.”
“You, good wench!” I asked incredulously, for she was so ragged that she looked in worse case than myself.
“Yes, young gentleman, I can pay,” she answered proudly. “I make it a practice to save a hundred maravedis of my wages a year.”
“Very well then, Casilda,” said the innkeeper. “Fetch me fifty of your maravedis, and you may bring this young rogue his breakfast. But you are a little fool, I say, for he is but a travelling cheat who will never repay you.”
No sooner had her master spoken thus to my disparagement than the kindly creature, who was really very handsome if you will believe me, reader, stood up most majestically upon all her few inches, and said like a little queen,—
“Shame upon you, master! He is no cheat, but a very gentleman, with the sweetest face and an honest and kind expression, just like Victor, our old mule. I would trust him to the utmost of my wages; and if I do not see my money again, I shall know that fortune has used him ill.”
It touched me to the soul to hear this rude and tattered little creature speak up for me like this—for me, a beggar, without a friend in the whole of the world. There was no reason, except that furnished by a kind heart, why she should confide her savings to one unknown to her, one from whom all things were averse.
While I ate my breakfast with not so good a relish as I had expected, I could not but meditate upon so much goodness proceeding out of a low condition, and, further, upon the humiliation of my state. I had not got through with this food for the mind when the Englishman entered, and in great sickness of the spirit I asked him how far it was to Toledo.
“An hundred leagues or so,” he said lightly, as though such a journey was no great affair.
I felt my heart sink. My beggary began to oppress me like a distemper, for how was I to win such a distant place without so much as a piece of silver in my coat? Wherefore, with many misgivings and with deep discomfiture, I laid my case before him. And I asked counsel of him, for in spite of his mad humours, forwhich his nation was to blame, he was a man of birth, a man of excellent native shrewdness, and he knew the world.
When I told him of my pass, he blinked his eyes a good deal, rubbed his chin, and held his jaw in his hand with an air of deep perplexity.
“This is a devil of a matter,” he said very gravely. “You would not suppose, Master Miguel, that this purse of yours took to itself a pair of legs, walked out of your pocket, and started out into the desert to admire the scenery?”
“I fail to see how it could do so.”
“I share your opinion, good Don; therefore I adjudge the landlord, who is a scurvy fellow, to have picked it out of your pocket as you lay asleep.”
“Ah no,” said I; “the unhappy man is sorely afflicted at the loss. I cannot pay my score, and he has accused me of not having had the money at all.”
“Has he so?” said Sir Richard Pendragon. “That sounds like a deep rascal. I am convinced this accursed innkeeper has the eye of a picker and stealer.”
“I pray you, sir, not to accuse the poor man. I feel sure he would not stoop to such an act, and already he has been misused grievously.”
“Well, good Don, if you are clear as to his innocence—and I am not sure of it myself—and you really had this amount of money?”
“Oh yes, to be sure I had—it was my patrimony.”
“And it did not walk out of the inn of itself, and that black-eyed little wench has not touched it—and though she’s a rude quean I believe she would not—andthere is no hole in your pocket—is it possible there is a hole in your pocket, good Don?”
“There is no hole in my pocket, sir.”
“And there is no cat or dog about the premises; and the innkeeper, by an odd chance—for he is the first of his kidney that is—is an honest man—you have either mislaid your purse, good Don, you never had it, or as you lay asleep you must have dreamed of fortune and have swallowed it.”
Although the Englishman’s gravity was so admirable, it helped me but little; and when I got on my knees to creep all over the ground to seek for my treasure, and met all manner of filth by the way, he too began poking about with the point of his sword, yet met with no better success than did I.
“It is a case for a physician,” he said, “for a man to dream of fortune, and in the unnatural excitation of his mind to swallow all his money.”
“I know not what to do,” said I miserably. “I have not a groat to take me to Toledo.”
The Englishman rubbed his chin again; and this I observed was his habit when he thought heavily.
“This is indeed a devil of a matter,” he said. “You see, if you had had a little money you could have been my squire and I could have borne you with me; but I do not see how one of my condition can take a squire into his service unless he receives a fee for so doing.”
“Well, sir,” I said, feeling that now no choice was left to me, “I am prepared to take service with you.”
“Are you so?” said the Englishman, rubbing his chin harder than ever. “Yes, but you see, MasterMiguel, a person of my quality does not receive a squire into his service for the love of his eyes.”
“My blood, sir, is of the first condition,” said I humbly. “My father’s pedigree is contained in the archives of Simancas.”
“Yes, fair shrew; but a pedigree will not grow apples, as we say in our plain English manner. My own pedigree can be referred to between the hours of eleven and three at the Herald’s College in the city of London; but I should not have got so much as a cup of sack by it unless it had been accompanied by a good sword. You see, Master Miguel, had you had an hundred crowns you might have borne your knee by my saddle and looked at the world; but since you have had the misfortune to swallow every silver piece in your possession, body of God!—to use a profane expression—I do not see what is to be done with you.”
“Oh, sir,” I said, oppressed with my despair, “I pray you to consider of my situation. Bear me with you to this duke you mention, and half of my first year’s emolument shall be yours.”
“Emolument! Why, my young companion, this duke is about as rich as yourself. Still, it is an offer that betrays an honourable disposition; and not being likely to receive anything more substantial in your present pass, I dare say it behoves me to take it, and prove myself not to be covetous. But all the same, Master Miguel, I could have wished you had had a little something to eke out your charges by the way, for I have noticed that living is very expensive in this part of the world.”
In this manner I sealed the momentous compact toenter the service of the Englishman. You will readily conceive, good reader, that in this matter the choice was none of my own. Indeed, had I not gone forth in his company I might never have come to the duke at all. And at least, although he was not of our peninsula, he was a man of birth, with a fine genius for the sword, and a deep acquaintance with the world. Yet I did not like to think what my father would have suffered could he have known of my case, and how such blood as his had come to be the body servant of one of a foreign nationality.
Shortly after this affair was settled we arranged to go upon our road, and I went forth to the stable to put the saddle on Babieca. As I made to do this, the Englishman called out to me in a loud and insolent tone such as would not have come amiss to a groom or a varlet,—
“Miguel, you had best put the saddle on my own horse also. Beware he does not bite you; he is as rude as a lion to all except his personal friends.”
Upon the instant the blood sang in my ears to hear a stranger apply my baptismal name with such familiarity, and to such a tune, as though I were a menial. Indeed, it galled me so, that I drew back to remonstrate with him upon the matter, in order that a wrong impression of our relationship might not get abroad. But even in this pass I was able to reflect and was visited by wisdom. For what is manhood, and what is blood, and what is dignity that they must be asserted on the smallest occasion? “Knaves protest of their virtue too much, low persons of their condition” was a saying of Don Ygnacio’s. Yet to prove that mythoughts had run in the mind of another, no sooner had I come to the stable and had taken up the saddle of Babieca, perhaps with my head somewhat high and a proud consideration in my mien, than there came a rustle of the straw, and upon looking up I saw at my side that little wench who had already stood so much my friend.
“Will the gentleman señor let me do it?” she asked shyly. “I can see he is of that condition that ought never to saddle horses.”
These words were spoken with such soft earnestness that quite a gentle beauty was thrown about this rustic creature.
“You are very kind, good girl, but as I am setting forth to bend the world to my devices with my own two hands I must learn to do these things.”
She lowered her looks, and said with a softness almost as of music, “My name is Casilda. If you could speak it once, young gentleman, before you go away forever into the world, I would always remember you, for I have never seen such sweetness and kindness before.”
There was such a strange breaking in her voice as thus she spoke that I felt a sinking of the heart; and looking down upon her I saw her little form was trembling through its rags, and that her black eyes were full of tears.
“Casilda,” said I, with a pang which once only had I felt and that was as my father closed his eyes; “little Casilda, wherever I go, whether it be all over this great country of Spain, or even as far as foreign places, and even if I enter into wisdom and riches, and I am called to sit with the great, so long as God allows me amemory I will never forget so much goodness as is yours. You are the friend that saved me from the sword; and now you see me without means and in despair you bring me your all and you stand my surety.”
“These be true words, young gentleman,” said she in a kind of modest joy, putting one foot in Babieca’s stirrup that she might raise herself to look into my eyes. “You speak but your thoughts, sweet gentleman. And were I a proud lady and might wed you, I would choose your face before the King’s, and I would cherish it beyond all my great possessions.”
Upon such speaking I could not forbear to press this sweet little slattern to my bosom, and yielded my lips to the gentlest mouth that the night before had been so fierce in my service. And as my embrace fell about this lowly but honest creature the world itself took a fairer hue. This was a revelation of my father’s wisdom. Harshness and unkindness were not the world’s true condition.
The rough voice of the landlord was now calling Casilda lustily. But the little wench would not leave me until she had brought some oats for Babieca’s breakfast, which otherwise the honest horse was like to go without. And even as she left the stable at last, crying, “Go with God, señor; my prayers and my constant heart are yours forever,” she ran back again to whisper with the most urgent instancy, “Be wary, señor, of that foreign man. I would not have you trust him at all. He is much less of a caballero than he speaks, and very much more of a thief.”
I had to reprove the little quean for this counsel, lest I should prove untrue to my master’s service. Andalthough by this time the innkeeper was promising to visit her with a cudgel if she did not come to him directly, she ran back to me yet again, jumped into Babieca’s stirrup, just like a cat, and snatched another embrace, declaring that in spite of every innkeeper in the world, her leave of me should be one of kindness.
These were almost my final passages at this inn, since in less than twenty minutes my new master and I were breasting our way to the south. Yet I mourn to tell you, reader, that as soon as we were in the saddle there came the bitter curses of the landlord to our ears. Neither of us had requited him with so much as a peseta in return for our benefits. But in this matter I must declare Sir Richard Pendragon to be by far the more reprehensible. He had dwelt full twenty nights under the roof-tree of this inn, whereas I had dwelt but one. Besides in his pouch was the wherewithal, but I regret to state that the inclination was not in his heart; whereas with me, as I will leave you to suppose, the contrary was the true state of the case.
Indeed, I learned that the Englishman had a conviction of a deep-seated sort upon this subject. For when I heard the innkeeper’s outcry I felt unable to suffer it, and begged my companion to make me a loan of the amount of my score, that my debt at least might be expunged. To the which he replied that I appeared to have an incredible ignorance of human nature, and the more particularly that part of it that included innkeepers. He said he would prefer to cast his money in the sea than put it to such misuse.
“To rise a little earlier than an innkeeper,” said he, “is a civil practice and has the sanction of Heaven.I would have you to know, Miguel, that my hair has been bleached before its season for consideration of the poor souls that this monstrous race has brought to ruin. Young men, old men, virgins, widows, matrons, small children of both sexes—oh! I tell you, Miguel, to think of this breeds a dreadful sickness within me. I will always rise, please Heaven, a little earlier than an innkeeper, for this iniquitous tribe has been the sworn enemy of my family for a thousand years. Was it not the landlord of ‘The Rook and Flatfish’ in the Jewry, a little bald fellow with an eye like a kite, that mulcted my revered ancestor, Sir Andrew Pendragon, in the sum of two shillings and ninepence—think on it, good Don!—for a pint of sack and a gurnet when the true price was never more than twelvepence halfpenny in a time of famine. And this is only to mention one matter out of an hundred in that sort. Oh, believe me, Miguel, we Pendragons have suffered miserably at the hands of innkeepers all through the course of history; but if the present wearer of this name does not redress a few of these injustices, call him not a true man, not a good fellow, but a rogue on whom the sun shines by courtesy.”
I was glad to find that Sir Richard Pendragon had these deep reasons for his action in this affair. Evidently he had meditated to a purpose upon the subject, and in the name of his own race, of which he was the last representative, was determined to be avenged upon its hereditary foes.
As we continued our way across the sandy plain or desert, the heat grew so severe that in the afternoon we were compelled to seek the shade of the first tree that offered. Under this pleasant canopy of leavesSir Richard flung himself prone, with his enormous length stretched out to the full, and a kerchief laid across his face to defend it from the flies. He soon fell to snoring in a furious manner. No repose came to me, however, for my strange situation ran in my mind continually, turning my thoughts into a queer sort of vertigo which left me uncertain whether to be of good courage or to yield to despair.