Itmay have been the Flor de Mayo, Rosa del Sur, or Tres de Junio, or again but have been known as the Pulperia upon the Huesos, or the Esquina on the Napostá. But let its name have been what chance or the imagination of some Neapolitan or Basque had given it, I see it, and seeing it, dismounting, fastening my “redomon” to the palenque, enter, loosen my facon, feel if my pistol is in its place, and calling out “Carlon,” receive my measure of strong, heady red Spanish wine in a tin cup. Passing it round to the company, who touch it with their lips to show their breeding, I seem to feel the ceaseless little wind which always blows upon the southern plains, stirring the dust upon the pile of fleeces in the court, and whistling through the wooden “reja” where the pulpero stands behind his counter with his pile of bottles close beside him, ready for what may chance. For outward visible signs, a low, squat, mud-built house, surrounded by a shallow ditch on which grew stunted cactuses, and with paja brava sticking out of the abode of the overhanging eaves. Brown, sun-baked, dusty-looking, it stands up, an island in the sea of wavinghard-stemmed grasses which the improving settler passes all his life in a vain fight to improve away; and make his own particular estancia an Anglo-Saxon Eden of trim sheep-cropped turf, set here and there with “agricultural implements,” broken and thrown aside, and though imported at great trouble and expense, destined to be replaced by ponderous native ploughs hewn from the solid ñandubay, and which, of course, inevitably prove the superiority of the so-called unfit. For inward graces, the “reja” before which runs a wooden counter at which the flower of the Gauchage of the district lounge, or sit with their toes sticking through their potro boots, swinging their legs and keeping time to the “cielito” of the “payador” upon his cracked guitar, the strings eked out with fine-cut thongs of mare’s hide, by jingling their spurs.
Behind the wooden grating, sign in the Pampa of the eternal hatred betwixt those who buy and those who sell, some shelves of yellow pine, on which are piled ponchos from Leeds, ready-made calzoncillos, alpargatas, figs, sardines, raisins, bread—for bread upon the Pampa used to be eaten only at Pulperias—saddle-cloths, and in a corner the “botilleria,” where vermuth, absinthe, square-faced gin, Carlon, and Vino Seco stand in a row, with the barrel of Brazilian caña, on the top of which the pulpero ostentatiously parades his pistol and his knife. Outside, the tracks led through thebiscacheras, all converging after the fashion of the rails at a junction; at the palenque before the door stood horses tied by strong raw-hide cabrestos, hanging their heads in the fierce sun, shifting from leg to leg, whilst their companions, hobbled, plunged about, rearing themselves on their hind-legs to jump like kangaroos.
Now and then Gauchos rode up occasionally, their iron spurs hanging off their naked feet, held by a raw-hide thong; some dressed in black bombachas and vicuña ponchos, their horses weighted down with silver, and prancing sideways as their riders sat immovable, but swaying from the waist upwards like willows in a wind. Others, again, on lean young colts, riding upon a saddle covered with sheepskin, gripping the small hide stirrup with their toes and forcing them up to the posts with shouts of “Ah bagual!” “Ah Pehuelche!” “Ahijuna!” and with resounding blows of their short, flat-lashed whips, which they held by a thong between their fingers or slipped upon their wrists, then grasping their frightened horses by the ears, got off as gingerly as a cat jumps from a wall. From the rush-thatched, mud-walled rancheria at the back the women, who always haunt the outskirts of a pulperia in the districts known as tierra adentro (the inside country), Indians and semi-whites, mulatresses, and now and then a stray Basque or Italian girl turned out, to share the quantity they considered love with all mankind.
But gin and politics, with horses’ marks, accounts of fights, and recollections of the last revolution, kept men for the present occupied with serious things, so that the women were constrained to sit and smoke, drink maté, plait each other’s hair (searching it diligently the while), and wait until Carlon with Vino Seco, square-faced rum, cachaza, and the medicated log-wood broth, which on the Pampa passes for “Vino Francés,” had made men sensible to their softer charms. That which in Europe we call love, and think by inventing it that we have cheated God, who clearly planted nothing but an instinct of self-continuation in mankind, as in the other animals, seems either to be in embryo, waiting for economic advancement to develop it; or is perhaps not even dormant in countries such as those in whose vast plains the pulperia stands for club, exchange, for meeting-place, and represents all that in other lands men think they find in Paris or in London, and choose to dignify under the style of intellectual life. Be it far from me to think that we have bettered the Creator’s scheme; or by the substitution of our polyandry for polygamy, bettered the position of women, or in fact done anything but changed and made more complex that which at first was clear to understand.
But, be that as it may and without dogmatism, our love, our vices, our rendering wicked things natural in themselves, our secrecy, our pruriency, adultery, and all the myriad ramifications of thingssexual, without which no novelist could earn his bread, fall into nothing, except there is a press-directed public opinion, laws, bye-laws, leaded type and headlines, so to speak, to keep them up. True, nothing of all this entered our heads as we sat drinking, listening to a contest of minstrelsy “por contrapunto” betwixt a Gaucho payador and a “matrero negro” of great fame, who each in turn taking the cracked “changango” in their lazo-hardened hands, plucked at its strings in such a style as to well illustrate the saying that to play on the guitar is not a thing of science, but requires but perseverance, hard finger-tips, and an unusual development of strength in the right wrist. Negro and payador each sang alternately; firstly old Spanish love songs handed down from before the independence, quavering and high; in which Frasquita rhymed to chiquita, and one Cupido, whom I never saw in Pampa, loma, rincon, bolson, or medano, in the Chañares, amongst the woods of ñandubay, the pajonales, sierras, cuchillas, or in all the land, figured and did nothing very special; flourished, and then departed in a high falsetto shake, a rough sweep of the hard brown fingers over the jarring strings forming his fitting epitaph.
The story of “El Fausto,” and how the Gaucho, Aniceto, went to Buenos Ayres, saw the opera of “Faust,” lost his puñal in the crush to take his seat, sat through the fearsome play, saw face to face theenemy of man, described[170a]as being dressed in long stockings to the stifle-joint, eyebrows like arches for tilting at the wing, and eyes like water-holes in a dry river bed, succeeded, and the negro took up the challenge and rejoined. He told how, after leaving town, that Aniceto mounted on his Overo rosao,[170b]fell in with his “compadre,” told all his wondrous tale, and how they finished off their bottle and left it floating in the river like a buoy.
The payador, not to be left behind, and after having tuned his guitar and put the “cejilla” on the strings, launched into the strange life of Martin Fierro, type of the Gauchos on the frontier, related his multifarious fights, his escapades, and love affairs, and how at last he, his friend, Don Cruz, saw on an evening the last houses as, with a stolen tropilla of good horses, they passed the frontier to seek the Indians’ tents. The death of Cruz, the combat of Martin with the Indian chief—he with his knife, the Indian with the bolas—and how Martin slew him and rescued the captive woman, who prayed to heaven to aid the Christian, withthe body of her dead child, its hands secured in a string made out of one of its own entrails, lying before her as she watched the varying fortunes of the fight, he duly told. La Vuelta de Martin and the strange maxims of Tio Viscacha, that Pampa cynic whose maxim was never to ride up to a house where dogs were thin, and who set forth that arms are necessary, but no man can tell when, were duly recorded by the combatants, listened to and received as new and authentic by the audience, till at last the singing and the frequent glasses of Carlon made payador and negro feel that the time had come to leave off contrapunto and decide which was most talented in music, with their facons. A personal allusion to the colour of the negro’s skin, a retort calling in question the nice conduct of the sister of the payador, and then two savages foaming at the mouth, their ponchos wrapped round their arms, their bodies bent so as to protect their vitals, and their knives quivering like snakes, stood in the middle of the room. The company withdrew themselves into the smallest space, stood on the tops of casks, and at the door the faces of the women looked in delight, whilst the pulpero, with a pistol and a bottle in his hands, closed down his grating and was ready for whatever might befall. “Negro,” “Ahijuna,” “Miente,” “carajo,” and the knives flash and send out sparks as the returns de tic au tac jar the fighters’ arms up to the shoulder-joints. In a moment all is over, and from the payador’s rightarm the blood drops in a stream on the mud floor, and all the company step out and say the negro is a “valiente,” “muy guapeton,” and the two adversaries swear friendship over a tin mug of gin. But all the time during the fight, and whilst outside the younger men had ridden races barebacked, making false starts to tire each other’s horses out, practising all the tricks they knew, as kicking their adversary’s horse in the chest, riding beside their opponent and trying to lift him from his seat by placing their foot underneath his and pushing upwards, an aged Gaucho had gradually become the centre figure of the scene.
Seated alone he muttered to himself, occasionally broke into a falsetto song, and now and then half drawing out his knife, glared like a tiger-cat, and shouted “Viva Rosas,” though he knew that chieftain had been dead for twenty years.
Tall and with straggling iron-grey locks hanging down his back, a broad-brimmed plush hat kept in its place by a black ribbon with two tassels under his chin, a red silk Chinese handkerchief tied loosely round his neck and hanging with a point over each shoulder-blade, he stood dressed in his chiripa and poncho, like a mad prophet amongst the motley crew. Upon his feet were potro boots, that is the skin taken off the hind-leg of a horse, the hock-joint forming the heel and the hide softened by pounding with a mallet, the whole tied with a garter of a strange pattern woven by the Indians,leaving the toes protruding to catch the stirrups, which as a domador he used, made of a knot of hide. Bound round his waist he had a set of ostrich balls covered in lizard skin, and his broad belt made of carpincho leather was kept in place by five Brazilian dollars, and through it stuck a long facon with silver handle shaped like a half-moon, and silver sheath fitted with a catch to grasp his sash. Whilst others talked of women or of horses, alluding to their physical perfections, tricks or predilections, their hair, hocks, eyes, brands or peculiarities, discussing them alternately with the appreciation of men whose tastes are simple but yet know all the chief points of interest in both subjects, he sat and drank. Tio Cabrera (said the others) is in the past, he thinks of times gone by; of the Italian girl whom he forced and left with her throat cut and her tongue protruding, at the pass of the Puán; of how he stole the Indian’s horses, and of the days when Rosas ruled the land. Pucha, compadre, those were times, eh? Before the “nations,” English, Italian and Neapolitan, with French and all the rest, came here to learn the taste of meat, and ride, the “maturangos,” in their own countries having never seen a horse. But though they talked at, yet they refrained from speaking to him, for he was old, and even the devil knows more because of years than because he is the devil, and they knew also that to kill a man was to Tio Cabrera as pleasant an exercise as forthem to kill a sheep. But at last I, with the accumulated wisdom of my twenty years, holding a glass of caña in my hand, approached him, and inviting him to drink, said, not exactly knowing why, “Viva Urquiza,” and then the storm broke out. His eyes flashed fire, and drawing his facon he shouted “Muera! . . . Viva Rosas,” and drove his knife into the mud walls, struck on the counter with the flat of the blade, foamed at the mouth, broke into snatches of obscene and long-forgotten songs, as “Viva Rosas! Muera Urquiza dale guasca en la petiza,” whilst the rest, not heeding that I had a pistol in my belt, tried to restrain him by all means in their power. But he was maddened, yelled, “Yes, I, Tio Cabrera, known also as el Cordero, tell you I know how to play the violin (a euphemism on the south pampa for cutting throats). In Rosas’ time, Viva el General, I was his right-hand man, and have dispatched many a Unitario dog either to Trapalanda or to hell. Caña, blood, Viva Rosas, Muera!” then tottering and shaking, his knife slipped from his hands and he fell on a pile of sheepskins with white foam exuding from his lips. Even the Gauchos, who took a life as other men take a cigar, and from their earliest childhood are brought up to kill, were dominated by his brute fury, and shrank to their horses in dismay. The pulpero murmured “salvage” from behind his bars, the women trembled and ran to their “tolderia,” holding each other by the hands, and the guitar-playerssat dumb, fearing their instruments might come to harm. I, on the contrary, either impelled by the strange savagery inherent in men’s blood or by some reason I cannot explain, caught the infection, and getting on my horse, a half-wild “redomon,” spurred him and set him plunging, and at each bound struck him with the flat edge of my facon, then shouting “Viva Rosas,” galloped out furiously upon the plain.
Theworld went very well with Higginson; and about that time—say fifteen years ago—he found himself, his fortune made, settled down in Noumea. The group of islands which he had, as he said, rescued from barbarism, and in which he had opened the mines, made all the harbours, and laid out all the roads, looked to him as their Providence; and to crown the work, he had had them placed under the French flag. Rich,décoré,respected, and with no worlds to conquer in particular, he still kept adding wealth to wealth; trading and doing what he considered useful work for all mankind in general, as if he had been poor.
Strange that a kindly man, a cosmopolitan, half French, half English, brought up in Australia, capable, active, pushing, and even not devoid of that interior grace a speculative intellect, which usually militates against a man in the battle of his life, should think that roads, mines, harbours, havens, ships, bills of lading, telegraphs, tramways, a European flag, even the French flag itself, could compensate his islanders for loss of liberty. Stranger in his case than in the case of those whogo grown up with all the prejudices, limitations, circumscriptions and formalities of civilization become chronic in them, and see in savage countries and wild peoples but dumping ground for European trash, and capabilities for the extension of the Roubaix or the Sheffield trade; for he had passed his youth amongst the islands, loved their women, gone spearing fish with their young men, had planted taro with them, drunk kava, learned their language, and become as expert as themselves in all their futile arts and exercises; knew their customs and was as one of them, living their life and thinking it the best.
’Tis said (Viera, I think, relates it) that in the last years of fighting for the possession of Teneriffe, and when Alonso de Lugo was hard pressed to hold his own against the last Mencey, Bencomo, a strange sickness known as the “modorra” seized the Guanches and killed more of them than were slain in all the fights. The whole land was covered with the dead, and once Alonso de Lugo met a woman sitting on the hill-side, who called out, “Where are you going, Christian? Why do you hesitate to take the land? the Guanches are all dead.” The Spanish chroniclers say that the sickness came about by reason of a wet season, and that, coming as it did upon men weakened by privation, they fell into apathy and welcomed death as a deliverer. That may be so, and it is true that in hill-caves even to-day in the lone valleys byIcod el Alto their bodies still are found seated and with the head bowed on the arms, as if having sat down to mourn the afflictions of their race, God had been merciful for once and let them sleep. The chroniclers may have been right, and the wet season, with despair, starvation and the hardships they endured, may have brought on the mysterious “modorra,” the drowsy sickness, under which they fell. But it needs nothing but the presence of the conquering white man, decked in his shoddy clothes, armed with his gas-pipe gun, his Bible in his hand, schemes of benevolence deep rooted in his heart, his merchandise (that is, his whisky, gin and cotton cloths) securely stored in his corrugated iron-roofed sheds, and he himself active and persevering as a beaver or red ant, to bring about a sickness which, like the “modorra,” exterminates the people whom he came to benefit, to bless, to rescue from their savagery, and to make them wise, just, beautiful, and as apt to differentiate evil from good as even he himself. So it would seem, act as we like, our presence is a curse to all those people who have preserved the primeval instincts of our race. Curious, and yet apparently inevitable, that our customs seem designed to carry death to all the so-called inferior races, whom at a bound we force to bridge a period which it has taken us a thousand years to pass.
In his prosperity, and even we may suppose during the Elysium of dining with sous-préfets inNoumea, and on the occasions when in Melbourne or in Sydney he once again consorted with Europeans, he always dreamed of a certain bay upon the coast far from Noumea, where in his youth he had spent six happy months with a small tribe, fishing and swimming, hunting, spearing fish, living on taro and bananas, and having for a friend one Tean, son of a chief, a youth of his own age. The vision of the happy life came back to him; the dazzling beach, the heavy foliage of the palao and bread-fruit trees; the grove of cocoa-nuts, and the zigzag and intricate paths leading from hut to hut, which when a boy he traversed daily, knowing them all by instinct in the same way that horses in wild countries know how to return towards the place where they were born. And still the vision haunted him; not making him unhappy, for he was one of those who find relief from thought in work, but always there in the same way that the remembrance of a mean action is ever present, even when one has made atonement, or induced oneself to think it was not really mean, but rendered necessary by circumstances; or, in fact, when we imagine we have put to sleep that inward grasshopper which in our bosoms, blood, brain, stomach, or wheresoever it is situated, is louder or more faint according to our state of health, digestion, weakness, or what it is that makes us hear its chirp.
And so it was that cheap champagne seemed flat to him; the company of the yellow-haired andfadeddemi-mondaineswhom Paris dumps upon New Caledonia insipid; the villas on the cliff outside Noumea vulgar; and the prosperity and progress of the place to which he had so much contributed, profitless and stale. Not that for a single instant he stopped working, planning and improving his estates, or missed a chance to acquire “town lots,” or if a profitable 10,000 acres of good land with river frontage came into the market, hesitated for a moment to step in and buy. Now, though by this time he had long got past the need of actually trading with the natives at first hand, and kept, as rich men do, captains and secretaries and lawyers to do his lying for him, and only now and then would condescend to exercise himself in that respect when the stake was large enough to make the matter reputable, yet sometimes he would take a cruise in one of his own schooners and play at being poor. Nothing so tickles a man’s vanity as to look back upon his semi-incredible past, and talk of the times when he had to live on sixpence a day, and to recount his breakfast on a penny roll and glass of milk, and then to put his hands upon his turtle-bloated stomach, smile a fat smile and say, “Ah, those were the days, then I was happy!” although he knows that at that halcyon period he was miserable, not perhaps so much from poverty, as from that envy which is as great a curse to poor men as is indigestion to the rich.
So running down the coast of New Caledonia ina schooner, trading in pearls and copra, he came one evening to a well-remembered bay. All seemed familiar to him, the low white beach, tall palm-trees, coral reef with breakers thundering over it, and the still blue lagoon inside the clump of breadfruit trees, the single tall grey stone just by the beach all graven over with strange characters, all struck a chord long dormant in his mind. So telling his skipper to let go his anchor, he rowed himself ashore. On landing he was certain of the place; the tribe, about five hundred strong, ruled over by the father of his friend Tean, lived right along the bay, and scattered in palm-thatched huts throughout the district. Then he remembered a certain cocoa-nut palm he used to climb, a spring of water in a thicket of hibiscus, a little stream which he used to dam, and then divert the course to take the fish, and sitting down, all his past life came back to him. As he himself would say, “C’etait le bon temps; pauvre Tean il doit être Areki (chef) maintenant; sa soeur peut-être est morte ou mariée . . . elle m’aimait bien . . . ”
But this day-dream dispelled, it struck him that the place looked changed. Where were the long low huts in front of which he used to pass his idle hours stretched in a hammock, the little taro patches? The zigzag paths which used to run from house to house across the fields to the spring and to the turtle-pond were all grown up. Couch-grass and rank mimosa scrub, with here and thereropes of lianas, blocked them so that he rubbed his eyes and asked himself, Where is the tribe? Vainly he shouted, cooeed loudly; all was silent, and his own voice came back to him muffled and startling as it does when a man feels he is alone. At last, following one of the paths less grown up and obliterated than the rest, he entered a thick scrub, walked for a mile or two cutting lianas now and then with his jack-knife, stumbling through swamps, wading through mud, until in a little clearing he came upon a hut, in front of which a man was digging yams. As many of the natives in New Caledonia speak English and few French, he called to him in English, “Where black man?” Resting upon his hoe, the man replied, “All dead.” “Where Chief?” And the same answer, “Chief, he dead.” “Tean, he dead?” “No, Tean Chief; he ill, die soon; Tean inside that house.” And Higginson, not understanding, but feeling vaguely that his dream was shattered in some way he could not understand, called out, “Tean, oh, Tean, your friend Johnny here!” Then from the hut emerged a feeble man leaning upon a long curved stick, who gazed at him as he had seen a ghost. At last he said, “That you, John? I glad to see you once before I die.” Whether they embraced, shook hands, rubbed noses, or what their greeting was is not recorded, for Higginson, in alluding to it, always used to say, “C’est bête, mais le pauvre homme me faisait de la peine.”
This was his sickness. “Me sick, John; why you wait so long? you no remember, so many years ago when we spear fish, you love my sister, she dead five years ago . . . When me go kaikai (eat) piece sugar-cane, little bit perhaps fall on the ground, big bird he come eat bit of sugar-cane and eat my life.”
Poor Higginson being a civilized man, with the full knowledge of all things good and evil contingent on his state, still was dismayed, but said, “No, Tean, I get plenty big gun; you savey when I shoot even a butterfly he fall. I shoot big bird so that when you go kaikai he no eat pieces, and you get well again.” Thus Higginson from his altitude argued with the semi-savage, thinking, as men will think, that even death can be kept off with words. But Tean smiled and said, “Johnny, you savey heap, but you no savey all. This time I die. You go shoot bird he turn into a mouse, and mouse eat all I eat, just the same bird.” This rather staggered Higginson, and he felt his theories begin to vanish, and he began to feel a little angry; but really loving his old friend, he once more addressed himself to what he now saw might be a hopeless task.
“I go Noumea get big black cat, beautiful cat, all the same tiger—you savey tiger, Tean?—glossy and fat, long tail and yellow eyes; when he see mouse he eat him; you go bed sleep, get up, and soon quite well.” Tean, who by this time had changed position with his friend, and become out of hisknowledge a philosopher, shook his head sadly and replied, “You no savey nothing, John; when black man know he die there is no hope. Suppose cat he catch mouse, all no use; mouse go change into a big, black cloud, all the same rain. Rain fall upon me, and each drop burn right into my bones. I die, John, glad I see you; black man all die, black woman no catch baby, tribe only fifty ’stead of five hundred. We all go out, all the same smoke, we vanish, go up somewhere, into the clouds. Black men and white men, he no can live. New Caledonia (as you call him) not big enough for both.”
What happened after that Higginson never told, for when he reached that point he used to break out into a torrent of half French, half English oaths, blaspheme his gods, curse progress, rail at civilization, and recall the time when all the tribe were happy, and he and Tean in their youth went spearing fish. And then bewildered, and as if half-conscious that he himself had been to blame, would say, “I made the roads, opened the mines, built the first pier, I opened up the island; ah, le pauvre Tean, il me faisait de la peine . . . et sa soeur morte . . . she was so pretty with a hibiscus wreath . . . ah, well, pauvre petite . . . je l’aimais bien.”
Justwhere the River Plate, split by a hundred islands, forms a sort of delta, a tract of marshy land in Entre Rios, known as the Rincones of the Ibicuy, spreads out flat, cut by a thousand channels, heavily timbered, shut in upon the landward side by a long range of hills of dazzling sand, and buried everywhere in waving masses of tall grass.
Grass, grass, and yet more grass. Grass at all seasons of the year, so that the half-wild horses never know the scarcity of pasture which in the winter makes them lean and rough upon the outside plains. A district shut by its sand-hills and the great river from the outer world. A paradise for horses, cattle, tigers, myriads of birds, for capibaras, nutrias, and for the stray Italians who now and then come from the cities with a rotten boat, and miserable, cheap, Belgian gun, to slaughter ducks.
The population, sparse and indolent, a hybrid breed between the Gauchos and the Chanar Indians, who at the conquest retreated into the thickest swamps and islands of the River Plate. But still a country where life flows easily away amongst the cane-brakes, thickets of espinillo, tala and ñandubay, and where from out the pajonales thehalf-wild horses bound like antelopes, shaking their manes, their tails aloft like flags, snorting and frisking in the pride of strength, and lighting up the landscape with their variegated colours like a herd of fallow deer. A land of vegetation so intense as to bedwarf mankind almost as absolutely as we bedwarf ourselves with our machinery in a manufacturing town. Air plants upon the trees; oven-birds’ earthen, gourd-like nests hanging from boughs; great wasp nests in the hollows of the trunks; scarlet and rose-pink flamingoes fishing in the shallow pools; nutrias floating down the streams, their round and human-looking heads appearing just awash; and the dark silent channels of the stagnant backwaters, so thickly grown with water weeds that by throwing a few branches on the top a man may cross his horse.
Commerce, that vivifying force, that bond of union between all the basest instincts of the basest of mankind, that touch of lower human nature which makes all the lowest natures of mankind akin, was quite unknown. Cheating was elementary, and rarely did much harm but to the successful cheat; at times a neighbour passed a leaden dollar on a friend, was soon detected, and was branded as a thief; at times a man slaughtered a neighbour’s cow, and sold the hide, stole a good horse, or perpetrated some piece of petty villainy, sufficient by its transparent folly to reassure the world that he was quite uncivilized, and not fit by his exertions ever to grow rich.
Adultery and fornication were frequent, and, again, chiefly concerned the principals, as there were no self-instituted censors, eager to carry tales, and to revenge themselves upon the world for their own impotency.
All were apt lazoers, great with the bolas, and all rode as they had issued from their mothers’ wombs mounted upon a foal, and grown together with him, half horse, half man—quiet and almost blameless centaurs, and as happy as it is possible for men to be who come into the world ready baptized in tears.
So much for man in the Rincones of the Ibicuy, and let us leave him quiet and indolent, fighting occasionally at the “Pulperia” for a quart of wine, for jealousy, for politics, or any of the so-called reasons which make men shed each other’s blood.
But commerce, holy commerce, thrice blessed nexus which makes the whole world kin, reducing all men to the lowest common multiple; commerce that curses equally both him who buys and him who sells, and not content with catching all men in its ledgers, envies the animals their happy lives, was on the watch. Throughout the boundaries of the River Plate, from Corrientes to the bounds of Tucuman, San Luis de la Punta to San Nicholas, and to the farthest limits of the stony southern plains, nowhere were horses cheaper than in the close Rincones of the Ibicuy. Three, four, or five, or at the most six dollars, bought the best,especially if but half-tamed, and a convenient curve of the river allowed a steamboat to discharge or to load goods, tied to a tree and moored beside the bank.
Upon a day a steamer duly arrived, whistled, and anchored, and from her, in a canoe, appeared a group of men who landed, and with the assistance of a guide went to the chief estancia of the place. The owner, Cruz Cabrera, called also Cruz el Narigudo, came to his door, welcomed them, driving off his dogs, wondered, but still said nothing, as it is not polite to ask a stranger what is the business that brings him to your house. Maté went round, and gin served in a square-faced bottle, and drank out of a solitary wine-glass, the stem long snapped in the middle, and spliced by shrinking a piece of green cow-hide round a thin cane, and fastening the cane into a disc of roughly-shaped soft wood. “Three dollars by the cut, and I’ll take fifty.” “No, four and a half; my horses are the best of the whole district.” And so the ignoble farce of bargaining, which from the beginning of the world has been the touchstone of the zero of the human heart, pursued its course.
At last the “higgling of the market”—God-descended phrase—dear to economists and those who in their studies apart from life weave webs in which mankind is caught, decreed that at four dollars the deal was to be made. But at the moment of arrangement one of the strangers saw a fine chestnut colt standing saddled at the door, andclaimed him as a “sweetener,” and to save talk his master let him go, and then, the money counted over, the buyer, prepared to give a hand to catch the horses, and to lead them singly to the boat. Plunging and snorting, sweating with terror, and half dead with fear, kicked, cuffed, and pricked with knives, horse after horse was forced aboard, and stood tied to a ring or stanchion, the sweat falling in drops like rain from legs and bellies on the deck. Only the chestnut stood looking uneasily about, and frightened by the struggles and the sound of blows falling upon the backs of those his once companions in the wild gallops through the forest glades, who had been forced aboard.
Then Cruz Cabrera cursed his folly with an oath, and getting for the last time on his back made him turn, passage, plunge, and started and checked him suddenly, then getting off unsaddled him, and gave his halter to a man to lead him to the ship. The horse resisted, terrified at the strange unusual sight, and one of the strangers, raising his iron whip, struck him across the nose, exclaiming with an oath, “I’ll show you what it is to make a fuss, you damned four dollars’ worth, when once I get you safe aboard the ship.” And Cruz Cabrera, gripping his long knife, was grieved, and said much as to the chastity of the stranger’s mother, and of his wife, but underneath his breath, not that he feared to cut a “gringo’s” throat, but that the dollars kept him quiet, as they have rendered dumb, priests, ministers of state, bishops and merchants, princes and peasants,and have closed the mouths of three parts of mankind, making them silent complices in all the villainies they see and hate, and still dare not denounce, fearing the scourge of poverty, and the smart lash which Don Dinero flourishes over the shoulders of all those who venture even remotely to express their thoughts.
Quickly the Ibicuy melted into the mist, as the wheezy steamer grunted and squattered like a wounded wild duck, down the yellow flood. Inside, the horses, more dead than alive, panted with thirst, and yet were still too timid to approach the water troughs. They slipped and struggled on the deck, fell and plunged up again, and at each fall or plunge, the blows fell on their backs, partly from folly, partly from the satisfaction that some men feel in hurting anything which fate or Providence has placed without the power of resistance in their hands. Instinct and reason; the hypothetic difference which good weak men use as an anæsthetic when their conscience pricks them for their sins of omission and commission to their four-footed brethren. But a distinction wholly without a difference, and a link in the long chain of fraud and force with which we bind all living things, men, animals, and most of all our reasoning selves, in one crass neutral-tinted slavery. Who that has never put his bistouri upon the soul, and hitherto no vivisectionist (of men or animals) can claim the feat, shall say who suffers most—the biped or the four-footed animal? I know the cant of education,the higher organism, and the dogmatics of the so-called scientists which bid so fair to worthily replace those of the theologians, but who shall say if animals, when suddenly removed from all that sanctifies their lives, do not pass agonies far more intense than such endured by those whose education or whose reason—what you will—still leaves them hope?
By the next morning the wheezy, wood-fired steamer was in the roads of Buenos Ayres, the exiles of the Ibicuy with coats all starring, flanks tucked up, hanging their heads, no more the lightsome creatures of but yesterday.
Steam launches, pitching like porpoises in the shallow stream, whale-boats manned by Italians girt with red sashes, and with yellow shirts made beautiful with scarlet horse-shoes, and whose eyes glistened like diamonds in their roguish, nut-coloured faces, came alongside the ship. Lighters, after much expenditure of curses and vain reaches with boat-hooks at the paddle-floats, hooked on, and dropped astern. The donkey-engine started with a whirr, giving the unwilling passengers another tremor of alarm, and then the work of lowering them into the flat-bottomed lighters straight began. Kickings and strugglings, and one by one, their coats all matted with the sweat of terror, they were dropped into the boat. One or two slipped from the slings, and landed with a broken leg, and then a dig with a “facon” ended their troubles, and their bodies floated on the shallow waves, followed by flocks of gulls. Puffing and pitching,the tug dragging the lighter reached the ocean-steamer’s side. Again the donkey-engine rattled and whirred, and once again the luckless animals were hoisted up, stowed on the lower deck in rows in semi-darkness, and after a due interval the vessel put to sea.
“Who would not sell a farm and go to sea?” the sailor says, and turns his quid remarking, “Go to sea for pleasure, yes, and to hell for fun.” The smell of steam, confinement, the motion of the ship, monotony of days, time marked but by the dinner-bell, a hell to passengers who in their cabins curse the hours, and kill the time with cards, books, drink and flirtation, and yet find every day a week. But to the exiles of the Ibicuy, stricken with terror, too ill to eat, parching, and yet afraid to drink, hopeless and fevered, sick at heart, slipping and falling, bruised with each motion of the ship, beaten when restless, and perhaps in some dim way conscious of having left their birthplace, and foreseeing nothing but misery, who shall say what they endured during the passage, in the hot days, the stifling nights, and in the final change to the dark skies and chilling breezes of the north? Happiest those who died without the knowledge of the London streets, and whose bruised carcasses were flung into the sea, their coats matted with sweat and filth, legs swelled, and heads hanging down limply as they trailed the bodies on the decks.
The docks, the dealer’s yard, the breaking in to harness, and the sale at Aldridge’s, and one by onethey were led out to meet no more; as theologians who have blessed man with hell, allow no paradise to beasts. Perhaps because their lives being innocent, they would have filled it up so that no man could enter, for what saint in any calendar could for an instant claim to be admitted if his life were compared to that of the most humble of his four-footed brethren in the Lord? Docked duly, to show that nature does not know how to make a horse, bitted and broken, the chestnut colt, once Cruz Cabrera’s pride, started on cab work, and for a time gave satisfaction to his owner, for, though not fast, he was untiring, and, as his driver said, “yer couldn’t kill ’im, ’e was a perfect glutton for ’ard work.”
Streets, streets, and yet more streets, endless and sewer-like, stony and wood-paved, suburbs interminable, and joyless squares, gaunt stuccoed crescents, “vales,” “groves,” “places,” a perfect wilderness of bricks, he trotted through them all. Derbies and boat-races, football matches, Hurlingham and the Welsh Harp, Plaistow and Finchley, Harrow-on-the-Hill, the wait at theatres, the nightly crawl up Piccadilly watching for fares, where men and women stop to talk; rain, snow, ice, frost, and the fury of the spring east wind, he knew them all, struggled and shivered, baked, shook with fatigue, and still resisted. But time, that comes upon us and our horses, stealthily creeping like Indians creep upon the war trail without a sign, loosening the sinews of our knees, thickening their wind, and making both of us useless except for worms, beganto tell. The chronic cough, the groggy feet, the eye covered with a cloud, caused by a flick inside the blinkers, and the staring coat, soon turned the chestnut, from a cab with indiarubber tyres, celluloid fittings, and a looking-glass upon each side (for fools to see how impossible it is that they can ever have been made after God’s image), to a night hack, and then the fall to a fish-hawker’s cart was not too long delayed.
Blows and short commons, sores from the collar, and continued overwork, slipping upon the greasy streets, struggling with loads impossible to move, finished the tragedy; and of the joyous colt who but a year or two ago bounded through thickets scarcely brushing off the dew, nothing was left but a gaunt, miserable, lame, wretched beast, a very bag of bones, too thin for dog’s meat, and too valueless even to afford the mercy of the knacker’s fee. So, struggling on upon his Via Crucis, Providence at last remembered, and let him fall, and the shaft entering his side, his blood coloured the pavement; his owner, after beating him till he was tired, gave him a farewell kick or two; then he lay still, his eyes open and staring, and white foam exuding from his mouth.
The scent of horse dung filled the fetid air, cabs rattled, and vans jolted on the stones, and the dead horse, bloody and mud-stained, formed, as it were, a sort of island, parting the traffic into separate streams, as it surged onward roaring in the current of the streets.
Rain, rain, and more rain, dripping off the sodden trees, soaking the fields, and blotting out the landscape as with a neutral-tinted gauze. The sort of day that we in the land “dove il doce Dorico risuona” designate as “saft.” Enter along the road to me a neighbour of some fifty to sixty years of age, one Mr. Campbell, a little bent, hair faded rather than grey, frosty-faced as we Scotsmen are apt to turn after some half a century of weather, but still a glint of red showing in the cheeks; moustache and whiskers trimmed in the fashion of the later sixties; “tacketed” boots, and clothes, if not impervious to the rain, as little affected by it as is the bark of trees. His hat, once black and of the pattern affected at one time by all Free Church clergymen, now greenish and coal-scuttled fore and aft and at the sides. In his red, chapped, dirty, but grey-mittened hands a shepherd’s stick—long, crooked, and made of hazel-wood.
“It’ll maybe tak’ up, laird.”
“Perhaps.”
“An awfu’ spell o’ it.”
“Yes, disgusting.”
“Aye, laird, the climate’s sort o’ seekenin’. I mind when I was in New Zealand in the sixties, aye, wi’ a surveyor, just at the triangulation, ye ken. Man, a grand life, same as the tinklers, here to-day and gane to-morrow, like old Heather Jock. Hoot, never mind your dog, laird, there’s just McClimant’s sheep, puir silly body, I ken his keel-mark. Losh me, a bonny country, just a pairfect pairadise, New Zealand. When I first mind Dunedin it wasna bigger than the clachan there, out by. A braw place noo, I understan’, and a’ the folk fearfu’ took up wi’ horse, driving their four-in-hands, blood cattle, every one of them. There’s men to-day like Jacky Price—he was a Welshmen, I’m thinking—who I mind doing their day’s darg just like mysel’ aboot Dunedin, and noo they send their sons hame to be educated up aboot England.
“When? ’Oo aye, I went oot in the oldLondonwi’ Captin Macpherson. He’d bin the round trip a matter o’ fifteen times, forbye a wee bit jaunt whiles after the ‘blackbirds’ (slaves, ye ken, what we called free endentured labourers) to the New Hebrides. TheLondon, aye, ’oo aye, she foundered in the Bay (Biscay, ye ken) on her return. It’s just a special providence I wasna a passenger myself.
“Why did I leave the country? Eh, laird, ye may say. I would hae made my hame out there, but it was just the old folks threap, threaping on me to come back, I’m telling ye. A bonny toon,Dunedin, biggit on a wee hill just for a’ the wurrld like Gartfarran there, and round the point a wee bit plain just like the Carse o’ Stirling. Four year I wrocht at the surveyin’, maistly triangulation, syne twa at shepherdin’, nane o’ your Australlian fashion tailing them a’ day, but on the hame system gaen’ aboot; man, I mind whiles I didna see anither man in sax weeks’ time.”
“Then you burned bricks, you say?”
“Aye, I didna’ think ye had been so gleg at the Old Book. Aye, aye, laird, plenty of stra’, or maybe it was yon New Zealand flax stalk. The awfiest plant ye ever clapt your eyes on, is yon flax. I mind when I first landed aff the oldLondon—she foundered in the Bay. It was just a speecial interposition . . . but I mind I telt ye. Well, I just was dandering aboot outside the toon, and hettled to pu’ some of yon flax; man, I wasna fit; each leaf is calculated to bear a pressure of aboot a ton. The natives, the Maories, use it to thack their cottages. A bonny place, New Zealand, a pairfect pairadise—six-and-thirty years ago—aye, aye, ’oo aye, just the finest country in God’s airth.
“Het? Na, na, nane so het as here in simmer, a fine, dry air, and a bonny bright blue sky. Dam’t, I mind the diggings opening tae. There were a wheen captins. Na, na, not sea captins, airmy captins, though there were plenty of the sea yins doon in the sooth; just airmy captins who had gone out and ta’en up land; blocked it, ye ken, faras frae here to Stirlin’. Pay for it, aye, aboot a croon the acre, and a wee bit conseederation to the Government surveyor just kept things square. Weel, when the diggins opened, some of them sold out and made a fortune. Awfu’ place thae diggins, I hae paid four shillin’ a pound for salt mysel’, and as for speerits, they were just fair contraband.
“And the weemen. Aye, I mind the time, but ye’ll hae seen the Circassian weemen aboot Africa. Weel, weel, I’m no saying it’s not the case, but folk allow that yon Circassians are the finest weemen upon earth. Whiles I hae seen some tae, at fairs, ye ken, in the bit boothies, but to my mind there’s naething like the Maories, especially the half-casted yins, clean-limbed, nigh on six feet high the maist o’ them. Ye’ll no ken Geordie Telfer, him that was a sojer, he’s got a bit place o’ his ain out by Milngavie. Geordie’s aye bragging, bostin’ aboot weemen that he’s seen in foreign pairts. He just is of opeenion that in Cashmere or thereaboots there is the finest weemen in the warld. Black, na, na, laird, just a wee toned and awfu’ tall, ye ken. Geordie he says that Alexander the Great was up aboot Cashmere and that his sojers, Spartans I think they ca’ed them, just intromitted wi’ the native weemen, took them, perhaps, for concubines, as the Scriptures say; but ye’ll ken sojers, laird; Solomon, tae, an awfu’ chiel yon Solomon. The Maori men were na blate either, a’ ower sax fut high, some nigh on seven fut, sure as death, I’m tellin’ ye. Bonnywrestlers, tae; man, Donald Dinnie got an unco tirl wi’ ane o’ them aboot Dunedin, leastwise if it wasna Dinnie, it was Donald Grant or Donald McKenzie, or ane of they champions frae Easter Ross. Sweir to sell their land tae they chaps, I mind the Government sent out old Sir George Grey, a wise-like man, Sir George, ane o’ they filantrofists. Weel, he just talkit to them, ca’ed them his children, and said that they shouldna resist legeetimate authority. Man, a wee wiry fella’, he was the licht-weight champion wrestler at Tiki-Tiki, just up and said, ‘Aye, aye, Sir George,’ though he wasna gi’en him Sir George, but just some native name they had for him, ‘we’re a’ your children, but no sic children as to gie our land for naething.’ Sir George turnit the colour of a neep, ane o’ yon swedes, ye ken, and said nae mair.”
“How did they manage it?”
“The Government just arranged matters wi’ the chiefs. Bribery, weel a’ weel, I’ll no gae sae far as to impute ony corruption on them, but a Government, a Government, ye ken, is very apt to hae its way.
“Dam’t, ’twas a fine country, a pairfect pairadise. I mind aince going oot with Captin Brigstock, Hell-fire Jock they ca’ed him, after they bushrangers. There was ane Morgan frae Australlia bail’t up a wheen folks, and dam’t, says Captin Brigstock, ye’ll hae to come, Campbell. Shot him, yes, authority must be respected, and the majesty o’ law properly vendeecated, or else things dinnathrive. It was in a wood of gora-gora we came on him about the mouth of day. Morgan, ye ken, was boiling a billy in a sort o’ wee clearin’, his horse tied to a tree close by, when Brigstock and the others came upon him. Brigstock just shouted in the name o’ the law and then let fly. Morgan, he fell across the fire, and when we all came up says he, ‘Hell-fire, ye didna gie me ony chance,’ and the blood spouted from his mouth into the boiling pan.
“Deid, ’oo aye, deid as Rob Roy. I dinna care to mind it. But a fine life, laird, nae slavin’ at the plough, but every ane goin’ aboot on horseback; and the bonny wee bit wooden huts, the folk no fashed wi’ furniture, but sittin’ doon to tak’ their tea upon the floor wi’ their backs against the wall. That’s why they ca’ed them squatters. They talk aboot Australlia and America, but if it hadna been for the old folks I would hae made my hame aboot a place ca’ed Paratanga, and hae taken up with ane o’ they Maori girls, or maybe a half-caste. Married, weel, I widna say I hae gane to such a length. Dam’t, a braw country, laird, a pairfect pairadise, I’m telling ye;” and then the rain grew thicker, and seemed to come between us as he plodded on towards the “toon.”
Ranksupon ranks of rastaquoères, Brazilians, Roumanians, Russians, Bulgarians, with battalions of Americans, all seated round the “piazza” of the Grand Hotel. Ladies from Boston, Chicago, and New York, their heels too high, their petticoats too much belaced, their Empire combs bediamonded so as to look almost like cut-glass chandeliers, as in their chairs they sat and read the latest news from Tampa, Santiago, and how Cervera’s Squadron met the fate which they (the ladies) reckoned God prepares for those who dare to fight against superior odds.
Outside upon the boulevards, cocottes, guides, cabmen, and androgynous young men, touts, and all those who hang about that caravansary where the dulcet Suffolk whine, made sharper by the air of Massachusetts, sounds, passed and repassed.
Smug-faced, black-coated citizens from Buffalo and Albany, and from places like Detroit and Council Bluffs, to which the breath of fashion has not penetrated, scanned theNew York Herald, read the glorious news, and, taking off their hats, deigned publicly to recognize the existence of a God, and after standing reverently silent,masticating their green cigars in contemplation of His wondrous ways, to take a drink.
Aquatic plants and ferns known only to hotels, and constituting a sub-family of plants, which by the survival of the ugliest have come at last to stand gas, dust, saliva, and an air befogged with Chypre, grew in the fountain where, in the tepid water, gold fish with swollen eyes, and blotched with patches of unhealthy white, swam to and fro, picking up crumbs and rising to the surface when some one threw a smoked-out cigarette into the basin, in the midst of which a fig-leaved Naiad held a stucco shell.
The corridors were blocked with Saratoga trunks; perspiring porters staggered to and fro, bending beneath the weight of burdens compared to which a sailor’s chest is as a pill-box.
All went well; the tapes clicked off their international lies, detailing all the last quotations of the deep mines upon the Rand, the fall in Spanish Fours; in fact, brought home to those with eyes to see, the way in which the Stock Exchange had put a rascals’ ring around the globe.
Waiters ran to and fro, their ears attuned to every outrage upon French, seeking to find the meaning of the jargons in which they were addressed.
Majestic butlers in black knee-breeches, and girt about the neck with great brass chains, moved slowly up and down, so grave and so respectable that had you laid your hands upon any one of themand made a bishop of him he would have graced the post.
Mysterious, well-dressed men sat down beside you, and after a few words proposed to take you in the evening to show you something new.
Women walked to and fro, glaring at one another as they had all been tigresses, or again, catching each other’s eyes, reddened, and looked ashamed, as if aware, though strangers, that they understood the workings of the other’s heart.
Burano chandeliers and modern tapestry, with red brocade on the two well-upholstered chairs, imparted beauty and a look of wealth, making one feel as if by striking an electric bell a door would open and a troop of half-dressed women file into the court, after the fashion of another kind of inn.
Outside the courtyard Paris roared, chattered, and yelped, cycles and automobiles made the poorpiéton’slife a misery, and set one thinking how inferior after all the Mind which thought out Eden was to our own.
Upon the asphalt the horizontales lounged along, pushing against the likely-looking passer-by like cats against a chair.
Cabs rattled, and the wholeclinquanttown wore its best air of unreality, which it puts off alone upon the morning of a revolution.
Through boulevards, parvis, cités, along the quays, in the vast open spaces which, like Saharas of grey stone, make the town desolate, in cafés, brothels, theatres, in church and studio, andwherever men most congregate, groups stood about reading the news, gesticulating, weeping, perspiring, and agog with a half-impotent enthusiastic orgasm of wildest admiration for Spain, Cervera, and the men who without bunkum or illusion steamed to certain death. And, curiously enough, the execration fell not so much upon Chicago as on “ces cochons d’Anglais,” who by their base connivance had wrought the ruin of the Spanish cause.
Yankees themselves read and remarked with sneers that England’s turn was coming next, and after “Kewby,” that they reckoned to drag the British flag through every dunghill in New York; then one winked furtively and said, “We need them now, but afterwards we’ll show Victoria in a cage for a picayune a peep, and teach the Britishers what to do with their old Union Jack,” thinking no doubt of the ten-cent paper which is sold in every city of the States, stamped with the Spanish flag.
And as I sat, musing on things and others—thinking, for instance, that when you scratch a man and see his blood you know his nature by the way he bears his wound, and that the Spaniards, wounded to the death, were dying game (after the fashion of the English in times gone by, before Imperialism, before the Nonconformist snuffle, the sweating system, and the rest had changed our nature), and that the Yankees at the first touch cried out like curs, though they had money, numbers, and everything upon their side—I fell a-thinking on the Spain of old. Inigo Lopez deMendoza, el Gran Capitan, Cortes (not at the siege of Mexico, but in the rout before Algiers) came up before me, and I thought on the long warfare, extending over seven hundred years, by which Spain saved the southern half of Europe from the Moors; upon Gerona, Zaragoza, and, most of all, upon Cervera, last of the Quixotes, Vara de Rey, Linares, and the poor peasants from Galician hills, thyme-scented wastes in Lower Aragon, Asturian mountains, and Estremenian oak-woods, who, battling against superior numbers, short of food, of ammunition, and bereft of hope, were proving their descent from the grim soldiers of the Spanish “Tercios” of the Middle Ages, and making the invaders of their country pay for their piracy in blood.
Blood is the conqueror’s coin the whole world over, and if the island which Columbus found for Spain pass into other hands, let those who take it pour out their blood like water to inaugurate their reign of peace.
Where the connection between the senses and the brain comes in, which influences first, and how, or whether a wise Providence, always upon His guard (after the fashion of an operator in a Punch and Judy show), influences each man directly, as by celestial thought suggestion, I cannot tell.
All that I know is, that once walking on the rampart gardens which in Cadiz overhang the sea and form the outside rim of the “Taza de Plata,” as the Spaniards call the town, I on a sudden sawthe River Plate. The Gauchos, plains, wild horses, the stony wastes, the ostriches (the “Alegria del Desierto”), came up before me, and in especial a certain pass over a little river called the Gualiyan; the sandy dip, the metallic-looking trees, the greenish river with the flamingoes and white herons and the black-headed swans; the vultures sitting motionless on the dead trees, and most of all the penetrating scent of the mimosa, known to the natives as the “espinillo de olor.”
Turning and wondering why, I saw a stunted tree with yellow blossoms duly ticketed with its description “Mimosa” this or that, and with its “habitat” the warmer district of the River Plate.
I leave these things to wise philosophers and to those men of science who seem to think mankind is worth the martyrdom of living dogs and cats; or who, maybe, drag out the entrails of their quivering fellow-mortals merely to stimulate their senses or erotic powers.
But the “dwawm” over, looking about, fenced in by swarms of overjoyed Americans, all talking shrilly, reading out the news, exultant at the triumph of their fleet, puffed up and arrogant as only the descendants of the Puritans can be, I saw a Spaniard sitting with his daughter, a girl about nineteen.
Himself a Castellano rancio, silent and grave, dressed all in black, moustache waxed to a point, square little feet like boxes, brown little hands, face like mahogany, hair cropped close, and with theunillusional fatalistic air of worldly wisdom mixed with simplicity which characterizes Spaniards of the older school.
Being a Christian, he spoke no tongue but that which Christians use, was proud of it, proud of his ignorance, proud (I have no doubt) of his descent.
No doubt he saw everything through the clear dazzling atmosphere of old Castille, which Spaniards of his kind seem to condense and carry off with them for use in other climes.
Seeing so clearly, he saw nothing clear, for the intelligence of man is so contrived as to be ineffective if a mist of some sort is not interposed.
The daughter fair, fair with the fairness of a Southern, blue-eyed, and skin like biscuit china, hands and feet fine, head well set on, and yet with the decided gestures and incisive speech, the “aire recio,” and the “meneo” of the hips in walking, of the women of her race.
They sat some time before a pile of newspapers, the father smoking gravely, taking down the smoke as he were drinking it, and then in a few minutes breathing it out to serve as an embellishment to what he said, holding his cigarette meanwhile fixed in a little silver instrument contrived like two clasped hands.
The Spanish newspapers were, of course, all without news, or said they had none, and as the daughter read, the old man punctuated with “Valiente,” “Pobrecitas,” and the like, when he heard how before El Caney, Vara de Rey haddied, or how the Americans had shot the three Sisters of the Poor whose bodies were found lying with lint and medicine in their hands.
“Read me the papers of the Americans, hija de mi corazon,” and she began, translating as she read.
Reading of the whole agony, choking but self-possessed, she read: theVizcaya,Almirante Oquendo, and the rest; the death of Villamil, he who at least redeemed the promise made to the Mother of his God in Cadiz before he put to sea.
And as she read the old man gave no sign, sitting impassive as a fakir, or like an Indian warrior at the stake.
She went on reading; the fleet steamed through the hell of shot and shell, took fire, was beached, blew up, and still he gave no sign.
Cervera steps on board the conqueror’s ship, weeping, gives up his sword, and the old man sat still.
When all was finished, and the last vessel burning on the rocks, slowly the tears fell down his old brown cheeks, and he broke silence. “Virgen de Guadalupe, has not one escaped?” and the girl, looking at him through her now misty eyes, “No, papa, God has so willed it. . . . What is wrong with your moustache?”
Then, with an effort, he took down his grief, said quietly, “I must change my hairdresser,” got up, and offering his daughter his arm, walked out impassible, through the thick ranks of the defeated foe.
Shortand broad-shouldered, with the flaxen hair and porcelain-coloured eyes of the true man of Kiel or Koenigsberg, Dr. Karl Rothenberger prided himself on being a townsman of the Great Kant, “who make the critique of pure sense.” For him in vain the modern mystic spread his nets; his mass, his psychological research, his ethics based on the saving of his own gelatinous soul, said nothing to the man of Koenigsberg. His work to minister by electricity to the rheumatic, the gouty; to those who had loved perhaps well, but certainly in a vicarious and post-prandial fashion; his passion fishing with a float; a “goode felawe,” not too refined, but yet well educated; his literary taste bounded by idealistic novels about materialistic folk, and the drum-taps of the bards of Anglo-Saxon militarism; the doctor looked on the world as a vast operating theatre, sparing not even his own foibles in his diagnosis of mankind. All sentiment he held if not accursed, yet as superfluous, and though he did not pride himself exactly on his opinions, knowing them well to be but the result of education, and of a few molecules of iron, more or less, in thecomposition of his blood, yet would deliver them to all and sundry, as he were lecturing to students in a university. Women he held inferior to men, as really do almost all men, although they fear to say so; but again, he said, “de womens they have occupy my mind since I was eighteen years.”
So after many wanderings in divers lands, he came, as wise men will, to London, and set up his household gods in a vast plane-tree-planted square (with cat ground in the middle called a garden), and of which the residents each had a key, but never walked in, sat in, or used in any way, though all of them would have gone to the stake rather than see a member of the public enter into its sacred precincts, or a stray child play in it, unless attended by a nurse.
Honours and fees fell thick on Rothenberger, and he became greatly belettered, member of many a learned, dull society. He duly purchased a degree; and squares and crescents quite a mile away sent out their patients, and were filled with the sonorous glory of his name. One thing was wanting, and that one thing troubled him not a little; but he yet saw it was inevitable if he would rise to Harley Street or Saville Row, and the sleek pair of horses which (without bearing-reins) testify to a doctor’s status in the scientific world. A wife, or as he said, a “real legitimate,” to prove to all his patients that he was a moral man. Strange that the domestic arrangements of a public man shouldmilitate for or against him; but so it is, at least in England, where even if a man cheat and spread ruin to thousands, yet he may find apologists, chiefly, of course, amongst that portion of the public who have not suffered by his delinquencies, so that his life be what is known as pure. Morals and purity in our group of islands seem to condone drunkenness, lies, and even theft (so that the sum stolen be large enough), and to have crystallized themselves into a censorship of precisely the very thing as to which no man or woman has the right to call another to account.
So Rothenberger, looking about for a vessel by means of which to purify himself (and push his business), lit on a girl with money, living, as he said, “oot by Hampstead way;” went through the process known as courting, in a mixture of German and of English, eked out with Plaat-Deutsch, and finally induced the lady to fix the day on which to make him pure. Science and business jointly having so taken up his time that he had learnt but little English, he was at some loss, and left arrangements to the family of his intended wife.
Not knowing English customs, he had written asking in what costume he should appear on the great day, and received a letter telling him to make his appearance at the church duly dressed in a tall hat, light trousers, and a new frock coat. Frock coat he read as “frac,” and ordered wedding garments such as he thought suitable, with theaddition of a brand-new evening coat. The wedding breakfast having been ordered at the Hotel Metropole, he there transferred himself, proposing to pass the night before his final entry into moral life quietly and decently, as befits one about to change his state. But as he said, “God or some other thing was of another mind,” for when I was arriving at the place, mein head feel heavy, and I was out of sorts, and when I ring the bell, a housemaid answer it wit a hot-water jug, and came into the room. Himmel, what for a girl, black hair like horse’s tail, great glear plue eyes, and tall and fat, it was a miracle. I fall in love wit her almost at once, but I say nothings, only wink little at her with my eye. All the night long I could not schleep, thinking part of the housemaid, part of mein wife, and part if perhaps I was not going to do a very silly ding. When it was morning I have quite forgot the church, but still remember what the clergyman was like. So I go to the porter (he was a landsman of my own), and ask him to get me a cab, and then explain, I was to be married oot by Hampstead way, that morning at eleven and half o’clock. The porter say what church shall I tell the schelm to drive to, but mein Got I have forgot. So I say, go to Hampstead, and I will go to all the churches and ask if a German is to be married, till I find the right one out. The cabman think that I was mad, and I get into the cab dressed in clear trousers, white waistcoat, and plue necktie, mit little spot;shiny new boots that hurt me very much; with yellow gloves three-quarter-eight in size, and with my new “frac” coat, so that I think myself, eh, Rothenberger, was that really you? The cabman wink mit de porter, and we start away. We drive and drive, first to one church and then another, and I always ask, is it in this church that a German is to be marry at half twelve o’clock? Dey grin at me, and every one say no. De dime approach, and I was sweating in the cab, not knowing what they say if at half twelve o’clock I not turn up to time. At last looking out from the window I see the clergyman walking along the street mit a big hymnbook in his hand. I cry to him, Ach Himmel, it is I, Karl Rothenberger, that you must marry at half twelve o’clock. He stop, and shomp into the cab, and then we drive to church.
All was so glad to see me, for I hear one say, I thought the German must have change his mind. I ran into the church, and my wife say, What for a costume is it that you have? Frock coat and clear grey pants, dat is not wedding dress; so I say I know dat, but why you write to me, mind and buy a new “frac coat”?
They mumble out their stuff, and when the clergyman ask me if I want this woman for mein wife, I say, all right, and all the people laugh like everythings. Then when he say, I, Karl, do promise and etcetera, I say, dat is so, and de people laugh again. At last it all was done, and we drive off tothe hotel to have the breakfast, and mein wife look beautiful in her new travelling dress. At the hotel the company was met, and I go up to mein apartment to change the dam frac coat, to wash mein hands, and put a little brillantine on my moustache, whilst mein wife mit the bridesmaids go to another room, and all the company was waiting down below.
I want hot water, so I rang the bell, and the stout pretta chambermaid she bring it in a jug. How the thing pass I never knew till now, but I wink at her, and she laugh, and then—she put down the jug, just for a moment,—for the company, mein wife, her father, and the bridesmaids, all was waiting down below. So I come down and make mein speech, talk to the bridesmaids, and we eat like anythings, and then we drive away to pass our honeymoon, and somehow I feel mein head much lighter than before. Marriage is good for man, it sober him, it bring him business, and it bring him children, and . . . I am happy mit my wife . . . The housemaid, oh yes, ach Got, I hear that some one take from the place to live mit him, and it is not a wonder, for she was so tall, so stout, have such black hair, and such great eyes, it was a pity that she spend her life answering the bell, and bringing up hot water in a jug.