Carmen
watch was missing.
Various considerations prevented me from going to claim it next day, or
requesting the _Corregidor_ to be good enough to have a search made
for it. I finished my work on the Dominican manuscript, and went on
to Seville. After several months spent wandering hither and thither in
Andalusia, I wanted to get back to Madrid, and with that object I had to
pass through Cordova. I had no intention of making any stay there, for
I had taken a dislike to that fair city, and to the ladies who bathed
in the Guadalquivir. Nevertheless, I had some visits to pay, and certain
errands to do, which must detain me several days in the old capital of
the Mussulman princes.
The moment I made my appearance in the Dominican convent, one of the
monks, who had always shown the most lively interest in my inquiries
as to the site of the battlefield of Munda, welcomed me with open arms,
exclaiming:
“Praised be God! You are welcome! My dear friend. We all thought you
were dead, and I myself have said many a _pater_ and _ave_ (not that I
regret them!) for your soul. Then you weren’t murdered, after all? That
you were robbed, we know!”
“What do you mean?” I asked, rather astonished.
“Oh, you know! That splendid repeater you used to strike in the library
whenever we said it was time for us to go into church. Well, it has been
found, and you’ll get it back.”
“Why,” I broke in, rather put out of countenance, “I lost it--”
“The rascal’s under lock and key, and as he was known to be a man who
would shoot any Christian for the sake of a _peseta_, we were
most dreadfully afraid he had killed you. I’ll go with you to the
_Corregidor_, and he’ll give you back your fine watch. And after that,
you won’t dare to say the law doesn’t do its work properly in Spain.”
“I assure you,” said I, “I’d far rather lose my watch than have to
give evidence in court to hang a poor unlucky devil, and especially
because--because----”
“Oh, you needn’t be alarmed! He’s thoroughly done for; they might hang
him twice over. But when I say hang, I say wrong. Your thief is an
_Hidalgo_. So he’s to be garrotted the day after to-morrow, without
fail.* So you see one theft more or less won’t affect his position.
Would to God he had done nothing but steal! But he has committed several
murders, one more hideous than the other.”
* In 1830, the noble class still enjoyed this privilege.
Nowadays, under the constitutional _regime_, commoners have
attained the same dignity.
“What’s his name?”
“In this country he is only known as Jose Navarro, but he has another
Basque name, which neither your nor I will ever be able to pronounce.
By the way, the man is worth seeing, and you, who like to study the
peculiar features of each country, shouldn’t lose this chance of noting
how a rascal bids farewell to this world in Spain. He is in jail, and
Father Martinez will take you to him.”
So bent was my Dominican friend on my seeing the preparations for this
“neat little hanging job” that I was fain to agree. I went to see the
prisoner, having provided myself with a bundle of cigars, which I hoped
might induce him to forgive my intrusion.
I was ushered into Don Jose’s presence just as he was sitting at table.
He greeted me with a rather distant nod, and thanked me civilly for the
present I had brought him. Having counted the cigars in the bundle I
had placed in his hand, he took out a certain number and returned me the
rest, remarking that he would not need any more of them.
I inquired whether by laying out a little money, or by applying to
my friends, I might not be able to do something to soften his lot. He
shrugged his shoulders, to begin with, smiling sadly. Soon, as by an
after-thought, he asked me to have a mass said for the repose of his
soul.
Then he added nervously: “Would you--would you have another said for a
person who did you a wrong?”
“Assuredly I will, my dear fellow,” I answered. “But no one in this
country has wronged me so far as I know.”
He took my hand and squeezed it, looking very grave. After a moment’s
silence, he spoke again.
“Might I dare to ask another service of you? When you go back to your
own country perhaps you will pass through Navarre. At all events you’ll
go by Vittoria, which isn’t very far off.”
“Yes,” said I, “I shall certainly pass through Vittoria. But I may very
possibly go round by Pampeluna, and for your sake, I believe I should be
very glad to do it.”
“Well, if you do go to Pampeluna, you’ll see more than one thing that
will interest you. It’s a fine town. I’ll give you this medal,” he
showed me a little silver medal that he wore hung around his neck.
“You’ll wrap it up in paper”--he paused a moment to master his
emotion--“and you’ll take it, or send it, to an old lady whose address
I’ll give you. Tell her I am dead--but don’t tell her how I died.”
I promised to perform his commission. I saw him the next day, and spent
part of it in his company. From his lips I learned the sad incidents
that follow.
CHAPTER III
“I was born,” he said, “at Elizondo, in the valley of Baztan. My name is
Don Jose Lizzarrabengoa, and you know enough of Spain, sir, to know at
once, by my name, that I come of an old Christian and Basque stock. I
call myself Don, because I have a right to it, and if I were at Elizondo
I could show you my parchment genealogy. My family wanted me to go into
the church, and made me study for it, but I did not like work. I was too
fond of playing tennis, and that was my ruin. When we Navarrese begin
to play tennis, we forget everything else. One day, when I had won the
game, a young fellow from Alava picked a quarrel with me. We took to our
_maquilas_,* and I won again. But I had to leave the neighbourhood.
I fell in with some dragoons, and enlisted in the Almanza Cavalry
Regiment. Mountain folks like us soon learn to be soldiers. Before long
I was a corporal, and I had been told I should soon be made a sergeant,
when, to my misfortune, I was put on guard at the Seville Tobacco
Factory. If you have been to Seville you have seen the great building,
just outside the ramparts, close to the Guadalquivir; I can fancy I see
the entrance, and the guard room just beside it, even now. When Spanish
soldiers are on duty, they either play cards or go to sleep. I, like an
honest Navarrese, always tried to keep myself busy. I was making a chain
to hold my priming-pin, out of a bit of wire: all at once, my comrades
said, ‘there’s the bell ringing, the girls are coming back to work.’ You
must know, sir, that there are quite four or five hundred women employed
in the factory. They roll the cigars in a great room into which no man
can go without a permit from the _Veintiquatro_,** because when the
weather is hot they make themselves at home, especially the young ones.
When the work-girls come back after their dinner, numbers of young men
go down to see them pass by, and talk all sorts of nonsense to them.
Very few of those young ladies will refuse a silk mantilla, and men who
care for that sort of sport have nothing to do but bend down and pick
their fish up. While the others watched the girls go by, I stayed on my
bench near the door. I was a young fellow then--my heart was still in
my own country, and I didn’t believe in any pretty girls who hadn’t
blue skirts and long plaits of hair falling on their shoulders.*** And
besides, I was rather afraid of the Andalusian women. I had not got used
to their ways yet; they were always jeering one--never spoke a single
word of sense. So I was sitting with my nose down upon my chain, when I
heard some bystanders say, ‘Here comes the _gitanella_!’ Then I lifted
up my eyes, and I saw her! It was that very Carmen you know, and in
whose rooms I met you a few months ago.
* Iron-shod sticks used by the Basques.
** Magistrate in charge of the municipal police
arrangements, and local government regulations.
*** The costume usually worn by peasant women in Navarre and
the Basque Provinces.
“She was wearing a very short skirt, below which her white silk
stockings--with more than one hole in them--and her dainty red morocco
shoes, fastened with flame-coloured ribbons, were clearly seen. She had
thrown her mantilla back, to show her shoulders, and a great bunch of
acacia that was thrust into her chemise. She had another acacia blossom
in the corner of her mouth, and she walked along, swaying her hips, like
a filly from the Cordova stud farm. In my country anybody who had seen
a woman dressed in that fashion would have crossed himself. At Seville
every man paid her some bold compliment on her appearance. She had
an answer for each and all, with her hand on her hip, as bold as the
thorough gipsy she was. At first I didn’t like her looks, and I fell to
my work again. But she, like all women and cats, who won’t come if you
call them, and do come if you don’t call them, stopped short in front of
me, and spoke to me.
“‘_Compadre_,’ said she, in the Andalusian fashion, ‘won’t you give me
your chain for the keys of my strong box?’
“‘It’s for my priming-pin,’ said I.
“‘Your priming-pin!’ she cried, with a laugh. ‘Oho! I suppose the
gentleman makes lace, as he wants pins!’
“Everybody began to laugh, and I felt myself getting red in the face,
and couldn’t hit on anything in answer.
“‘Come, my love!’ she began again, ‘make me seven ells of lace for my
mantilla, my pet pin-maker!’
“And taking the acacia blossom out of her mouth she flipped it at me
with her thumb so that it hit me just between the eyes. I tell you, sir,
I felt as if a bullet had struck me. I didn’t know which way to look.
I sat stock-still, like a wooden board. When she had gone into the
factory, I saw the acacia blossom, which had fallen on the ground
between my feet. I don’t know what made me do it, but I picked it up,
unseen by any of my comrades, and put it carefully inside my jacket.
That was my first folly.
“Two or three hours later I was still thinking about her, when a
panting, terrified-looking porter rushed into the guard-room. He told
us a woman had been stabbed in the great cigar-room, and that the guard
must be sent in at once. The sergeant told me to take two men, and go
and see to it. I took my two men and went upstairs. Imagine, sir, that
when I got into the room, I found, to begin with, some three hundred
women, stripped to their shifts, or very near it, all of them screaming
and yelling and gesticulating, and making such a row that you couldn’t
have heard God’s own thunder. On one side of the room one of the women
was lying on the broad of her back, streaming with blood, with an X
newly cut on her face by two strokes of a knife. Opposite the wounded
woman, whom the best-natured of the band were attending, I saw Carmen,
held by five or six of her comrades. The wounded woman was crying out,
‘A confessor, a confessor! I’m killed!’ Carmen said nothing at all. She
clinched her teeth and rolled her eyes like a chameleon. ‘What’s this?’
I asked. I had hard work to find out what had happened, for all the
work-girls talked at once. It appeared that the injured girl had boasted
she had money enough in her pocket to buy a donkey at the Triana Market.
‘Why,’ said Carmen, who had a tongue of her own, ‘can’t you do with a
broom?’ Stung by this taunt, it may be because she felt herself rather
unsound in that particular, the other girl replied that she knew nothing
about brooms, seeing she had not the honour of being either a gipsy
or one of the devil’s godchildren, but that the Senorita Carmen would
shortly make acquaintance with her donkey, when the _Corregidor_ took
her out riding with two lackeys behind her to keep the flies off.
‘Well,’ retorted Carmen, ‘I’ll make troughs for the flies to drink