Carmen
out of on your cheeks, and I’ll paint a draught-board on them!’ * And
thereupon, slap, bank! She began making St. Andrew’s crosses on the
girl’s face with a knife she had been using for cutting off the ends of
the cigars.
* _Pintar un javeque_, “paint a xebec,” a particular type of
ship. Most Spanish vessels of this description have a
checkered red and white stripe painted around them.
“The case was quite clear. I took hold of Carmen’s arm. ‘Sister mine,’ I
said civilly, ‘you must come with me.’ She shot a glance of recognition
at me, but she said, with a resigned look: ‘Let’s be off. Where is my
mantilla?’ She put it over her head so that only one of her great eyes
was to be seen, and followed my two men, as quiet as a lamb. When we
got to the guardroom the sergeant said it was a serious job, and he must
send her to prison. I was told off again to take her there. I put her
between two dragoons, as a corporal does on such occasions. We started
off for the town. The gipsy had begun by holding her tongue. But when we
got to the _Calle de la Serpiente_--you know it, and that it earns its
name by its many windings--she began by dropping her mantilla on to her
shoulders, so as to show me her coaxing little face, and turning round
to me as well as she could, she said:
“‘_Oficial mio_, where are you taking me to?’
“‘To prison, my poor child,’ I replied, as gently as I could, just as
any kind-hearted soldier is bound to speak to a prisoner, and especially
to a woman.
“‘Alack! What will become of me! Senor Oficial, have pity on me! You are
so young, so good-looking.’ Then, in a lower tone, she said, ‘Let me get
away, and I’ll give you a bit of the _bar lachi_, that will make every
woman fall in love with you!’
“The _bar lachi_, sir, is the loadstone, with which the gipsies declare
one who knows how to use it can cast any number of spells. If you can
make a woman drink a little scrap of it, powdered, in a glass of white
wine, she’ll never be able to resist you. I answered, as gravely as I
could:
“‘We are not here to talk nonsense. You’ll have to go to prison. Those
are my orders, and there’s no help for it!’
“We men from the Basque country have an accent which all Spaniards
easily recognise; on the other hand, not one of them can ever learn to
say _Bai, jaona_!*
* Yes, sir.
“So Carmen easily guessed I was from the Provinces. You know, sir, that
the gipsies, who belong to no particular country, and are always moving
about, speak every language, and most of them are quite at home in
Portugal, in France, in our Provinces, in Catalonia, or anywhere else.
They can even make themselves understood by Moors and English people.
Carmen knew Basque tolerably well.
“‘_Laguna ene bihotsarena_, comrade of my heart,’ said she suddenly. ‘Do
you belong to our country?’
“Our language is so beautiful, sir, that when we hear it in a foreign
country it makes us quiver. I wish,” added the bandit in a lower tone,
“I could have a confessor from my own country.”
After a silence, he began again.
“‘I belong to Elizondo,’ I answered in Basque, very much affected by the
sound of my own language.
“‘I come from Etchalar,’ said she (that’s a district about four hours’
journey from my home). ‘I was carried off to Seville by the gipsies.
I was working in the factory to earn enough money to take me back to
Navarre, to my poor old mother, who has no support in the world but me,
besides her little _barratcea_* with twenty cider-apple trees in it.
Ah! if I were only back in my own country, looking up at the white
mountains! I have been insulted here, because I don’t belong to this
land of rogues and sellers of rotten oranges; and those hussies are
all banded together against me, because I told them that not all their
Seville _jacques_,** and all their knives, would frighten an honest lad
from our country, with his blue cap and his _maquila_! Good comrade,
won’t you do anything to help your own countrywoman?’
* Field, garden.
** Bravos, boasters.
“She was lying then, sir, as she has always lied. I don’t know that that
girl ever spoke a word of truth in her life, but when she did speak, I
believed her--I couldn’t help myself. She mangled her Basque words, and
I believed she came from Navarre. But her eyes and her mouth and her
skin were enough to prove she was a gipsy. I was mad, I paid no more
attention to anything, I thought to myself that if the Spaniards had
dared to speak evil of my country, I would have slashed their faces just
as she had slashed her comrade’s. In short, I was like a drunken man, I
was beginning to say foolish things, and I was very near doing them.
“‘If I were to give you a push and you tumbled down, good
fellow-countryman,’ she began again in Basque, ‘those two Castilian
recruits wouldn’t be able to keep me back.’
“Faith, I forgot my orders, I forgot everything, and I said to her,
‘Well, then, my friend, girl of my country, try it, and may our Lady of
the Mountain help you through.’
“Just at that moment we were passing one of the many narrow lanes one
sees in Seville. All at once Carmen turned and struck me in the chest
with her fist. I tumbled backward, purposely. With a bound she sprang
over me, and ran off, showing us a pair of legs! People talk about a
pair of Basque legs! but hers were far better--as fleet as they were
well-turned. As for me, I picked myself up at once, but I stuck out my
lance* crossways and barred the street, so that my comrades were checked
at the very first moment of pursuit. Then I started to run myself, and
they after me--but how were we to catch her? There was no fear of that,
what with our spurs, our swords, and our lances.
* All Spanish cavalry soldiers carry lances.
“In less time than I have taken to tell you the story the prisoner
had disappeared. And besides, every gossip in the quarter covered her
flight, poked scorn at us, and pointed us in the wrong direction. After
a good deal of marching and countermarching, we had to go back to the
guard-room without a receipt from the governor of the jail.
“To avoid punishment, my men made known that Carmen had spoken to me in
Basque; and to tell the truth, it did not seem very natural that a blow
from such a little creature should have so easily overthrown a strong
fellow like me. The whole thing looked suspicious, or, at all events,
not over-clear. When I came off guard I lost my corporal’s stripes, and
was condemned to a month’s imprisonment. It was the first time I had
been punished since I had been in the service. Farewell, now, to the
sergeant’s stripes, on which I had reckoned so surely!
“The first days in prison were very dreary. When I enlisted I had
fancied I was sure to become an officer, at all events. Two of
my compatriots, Longa and Mina, are captains-general, after all.
Chapalangarra was a colonel, and I have played tennis a score of times
with his brother, who was just a needy fellow like myself. ‘Now,’ I kept
crying to myself, ‘all the time you served without being punished
has been lost. Now you have a bad mark against your name, and to get
yourself back into the officers’ good graces you’ll have to work ten
times as hard as when you joined as a recruit.’ And why have I got
myself punished? For the sake of a gipsy hussy, who made game of me, and
who at this moment is busy thieving in some corner of the town. Yet I
couldn’t help thinking about her. Will you believe it, sir, those silk
stockings of hers with the holes in them, of which she had given me such
a full view as she took to her heels, were always before my eyes? I
used to look through the barred windows of the jail into the street,
and among all the women who passed I never could see one to compare with
that minx of a girl--and then, in spite of myself, I used to smell the
acacia blossom she had thrown at me, and which, dry as it was, still
kept its sweet scent. If there are such things as witches, that girl
certainly was one.
“One day the jailer came in, and gave me an Alcala roll.*
* _Alcala de los Panaderos_, a village two leagues from
Seville, where the most delicious rolls are made. They are
said to owe their quality to the water of the place, and
great quantities of them are brought to Seville every day.
“‘Look here,’ said he, ‘this is what your cousin has sent you.’
“I took the loaf, very much astonished, for I had no cousin in Seville.
It may be a mistake, thought I, as I looked at the roll, but it was so
appetizing and smelt so good, that I made up my mind to eat it, without
troubling my head as to whence it came, or for whom it was really
intended.
“When I tried to cut it, my knife struck on something hard. I looked,
and found a little English file, which had been slipped into the dough
before the roll had been baked. The roll also contained a gold piece of
two piastres. Then I had no further doubt--it was a present from Carmen.
To people of her blood, liberty is everything, and they would set a
town on fire to save themselves one day in prison. The girl was artful,
indeed, and armed with that roll, I might have snapped my fingers at the
jailers. In one hour, with that little file, I could have sawn through
the thickest bar, and with the gold coin I could have exchanged my
soldier’s cloak for civilian garb at the nearest shop. You may fancy
that a man who has often taken the eaglets out of their nests in our
cliff would have found no difficulty in getting down to the street
out of a window less than thirty feet above it. But I didn’t choose to
escape. I still had a soldier’s code of honour, and desertion appeared
to me in the light of a heinous crime. Yet this proof of remembrance
touched me. When a man is in prison he likes to think he has a friend
outside who takes an interest in him. The gold coin did rather offend
me; I should have very much liked to return it; but where was I to find
my creditor? That did not seem a very easy task.
“After the ceremony of my degradation I had fancied my sufferings were
over, but I had another humiliation before me. That came when I left
prison, and was told off for duty, and put on sentry, as a private
soldier. You can not conceive what a proud man endures at such a moment.
I believe I would have just as soon been shot dead--then I should have
marched alone at the head of my platoon, at all events; I should have
felt I was somebody, with the eyes of others fixed upon me.
“I was posted as sentry on the door of the colonel’s house. The colonel
was a young man, rich, good-natured, fond of amusing himself. All
the young officers were there, and many civilians as well, besides
ladies--actresses, as it was said. For my part, it seemed to me as if
the whole town had agreed to meet at that door, in order to stare at me.
Then up drove the colonel’s carriage, with his valet on the box. And who
should I see get out of it, but the gipsy girl! She was dressed up, this
time, to the eyes, togged out in golden ribbons--a spangled gown, blue
shoes, all spangled too, flowers and gold lace all over her. In her hand
she carried a tambourine. With her there were two other gipsy women, one
young and one old. They always have one old woman who goes with them,
and then an old man with a guitar, a gipsy too, to play alone, and also
for their dances. You must know these gipsy girls are often sent for to
private houses, to dance their special dance, the _Romalis_, and often,
too, for quite other purposes.
“Carmen recognised me, and we exchanged glances. I don’t know why, but
at that moment I should have liked to have been a hundred feet beneath
the ground.
“‘_Agur laguna_,’ * said she. ‘Oficial mio! You keep guard like a
recruit,’ and before I could find a word in answer, she was inside the
house.