Carmen
the drums beat for parade, come here with your oranges. You’ll find a
better furnished room than the one in the _Calle del Candilejo_, and
you’ll see whether I am still your _Carmencita_. Then afterwards we’ll
talk about gipsy business.’
“I gave her no answer--even when I was in the street I could hear the
Englishman shouting, ‘Bring more _maquila_ to-morrow,’ and Carmen’s
peals of laughter.
“I went out, not knowing what I should do; I hardly slept, and next
morning I was so enraged with the treacherous creature that I made up
my mind to leave Gibraltar without seeing her again. But the moment
the drums began to roll, my courage failed me. I took up my net full of
oranges, and hurried off to Carmen’s house. Her window-shutters had been
pulled apart a little, and I saw her great dark eyes watching for me.
The powdered servant showed me in at once. Carmen sent him out with a
message, and as soon as we were alone she burst into one of her fits of
crocodile laughter and threw her arms around my neck. Never had I seen
her look so beautiful. She was dressed out like a queen, and scented;
she had silken furniture, embroidered curtains--and I togged out like
the thief I was!
“‘_Minchorro_,’ said Carmen, ‘I’ve a good mind to smash up everything
here, set fire to the house, and take myself off to the mountains.’ And
then she would fondle me, and then she would laugh, and she danced about
and tore up her fripperies. Never did monkey gambol nor make such faces,
nor play such wild tricks, as she did that day. When she had recovered
her gravity--
“‘Hark!’ she said, ‘this is gipsy business. I mean him to take me to
Ronda, where I have a sister who is a nun’ (here she shrieked with
laughter again). ‘We shall pass by a particular spot which I shall make
known to you. Then you must fall upon him and strip him to the skin.
Your best plan would be to do for him, but,’ she added, with a certain
fiendish smile of hers, which no one who saw it ever had any desire to
imitate, ‘do you know what you had better do? Let _El Tuerto_ come up
in front of you. You keep a little behind. The crayfish is brave, and
skilful too, and he has good pistols. Do you understand?’
“And she broke off with another fit of laughter that made me shiver.
“‘No,’ said I, ‘I hate Garcia, but he’s my comrade. Some day, maybe,
I’ll rid you of him, but we’ll settle our account after the fashion of
my country. It’s only chance that has made me a gipsy, and in certain
things I shall always be a thorough Navarrese,* as the proverb says.
* _Navarro fino_.
“‘You’re a fool,’ she rejoined, ‘a simpleton, a regular _payllo_. You’re
just like the dwarf who thinks himself tall because he can spit a long
way.* You don’t love me! Be off with you!’
* _Or esorjle de or marsichisle, sin chisnar lachinguel_.
“The promise of a dwarf is that he will spit a long way.”--A
gipsy proverb.
“Whenever she said to me ‘Be off with you,” I couldn’t go away. I
promised I would start back to my comrades and wait the arrival of the
Englishman. She, on her side, promised she would be ill until she left
Gibraltar for Ronda.
“I remained at Gibraltar two days longer. She had the boldness to
disguise herself and come and see me at the inn. I departed, I had a
plan of my own. I went back to our meeting-place with the information as
to the spot and the hour at which the Englishman and Carmen were to pass
by. I found _El Dancaire_ and Garcia waiting for me. We spent the night
in a wood, beside a fire made of pine-cones that blazed splendidly. I
suggested to Garcia that we should play cards, and he agreed. In the
second game I told him he was cheating; he began to laugh; I threw the
cards in his face. He tried to get at his blunderbuss. I set my foot on
it, and said, ‘They say you can use a knife as well as the best ruffian
in Malaga; will you try it with me?’ _El Dancaire_ tried to part us. I
had given Garcia one or two cuffs, his rage had given him courage, he
drew his knife, and I drew mine. We both of us told _El Dancaire_ he
must leave us alone, and let us fight it out. He saw there was no means
of stopping us, so he stood on one side. Garcia was already bent double,
like a cat ready to spring upon a mouse. He held his hat in his
left hand to parry with, and his knife in front of him--that’s their
Andalusian guard. I stood up in the Navarrese fashion, with my left arm
raised, my left leg forward, and my knife held straight along my right
thigh. I felt I was stronger than any giant. He flew at me like an
arrow. I turned round on my left foot, so that he found nothing in front
of him. But I thrust him in the throat, and the knife went in so far
that my hand was under his chin. I gave the blade such a twist that it
broke. That was the end. The blade was carried out of the wound by a
gush of blood as thick as my arm, and he fell full length on his face.
“‘What have you done?’ said _El Dancaire_ to me.
“‘Hark ye,’ said I, ‘we couldn’t live on together. I love Carmen and I
mean to be the only one. And besides, Garcia was a villain. I remember
what he did to that poor _Remendado_. There are only two of us left now,
but we are both good fellows. Come, will you have me for your friend,
for life or death?’
“_El Dancaire_ stretched out his hand. He was a man of fifty.
“‘Devil take these love stories!’ he cried. ‘If you’d asked him for
Carmen he’d have sold her to you for a piastre! There are only two of us
now--how shall we manage for to-morrow?’
“‘I’ll manage it all alone,’ I answered. ‘I can snap my fingers at the
whole world now.’
“We buried Garcia, and we moved our camp two hundred paces farther on.
The next morning Carmen and her Englishman came along with two muleteers
and a servant. I said to _El Dancaire_:
“‘I’ll look after the Englishman, you frighten the others--they’re not
armed!’
“The Englishman was a plucky fellow. He’d have killed me if Carmen
hadn’t jogged his elbow.
“To put it shortly, I won Carmen back that day, and my first words were
to tell her she was a widow.
“When she knew how it had all happened--
“‘You’ll always be a _lillipendi_,’ she said. ‘Garcia ought to have
killed you. Your Navarrese guard is a pack of nonsense, and he has sent
far more skilful men than you into the darkness. It was just that his
time had come--and yours will come too.’
“‘Ay, and yours too!--if you’re not a faithful _romi_ to me.’
“‘So be it,’ said she. ‘I’ve read in the coffee grounds, more than once,
that you and I were to end our lives together. Pshaw! what must be, will
be!’ and she rattled her castanets, as was her way when she wanted to
drive away some worrying thought.
“One runs on when one is talking about one’s self. I dare say all these
details bore you, but I shall soon be at the end of my story. Our new
life lasted for some considerable time. _El Dancaire_ and I gathered a
few comrades about us, who were more trustworthy than our earlier ones,
and we turned our attention to smuggling. Occasionally, indeed, I must
confess we stopped travellers on the highways, but never unless we were
at the last extremity, and could not avoid doing so; and besides, we
never ill-treated the travellers, and confined ourselves to taking their
money from them.
“For some months I was very well satisfied with Carmen. She still served
us in our smuggling operations, by giving us notice of any opportunity
of making a good haul. She remained either at Malaga, at Cordova, or at
Granada, but at a word from me she would leave everything, and come to
meet me at some _venta_ or even in our lonely camp. Only once--it was at
Malaga--she caused me some uneasiness. I heard she had fixed her fancy
upon a very rich merchant, with whom she probably proposed to play her
Gibraltar trick over again. In spite of everything _El Dancaire_ said to
stop me, I started off, walked into Malaga in broad daylight, sought for
Carmen and carried her off instantly. We had a sharp altercation.
“‘Do you know,’ said she, ‘now that you’re my _rom_ for good and all, I
don’t care for you so much as when you were my _minchorro_! I won’t be
worried, and above all, I won’t be ordered about. I choose to be free to
do as I like. Take care you don’t drive me too far; if you tire me
out, I’ll find some good fellow who’ll serve you just as you served _El
Tuerto_.’
“_El Dancaire_ patched it up between us; but we had said things to each
other that rankled in our hearts, and we were not as we had been before.
Shortly after that we had a misfortune: the soldiers caught us, _El
Dancaire_ and two of my comrades were killed; two others were taken.
I was sorely wounded, and, but for my good horse, I should have fallen
into the soldiers’ hands. Half dead with fatigue, and with a bullet in
my body, I sought shelter in a wood, with my only remaining comrade.
When I got off my horse I fainted away, and I thought I was going to
die there in the brushwood, like a shot hare. My comrade carried me to a
cave he knew of, and then he sent to fetch Carmen.
“She was at Granada, and she hurried to me at once. For a whole
fortnight she never left me for a single instant. She never closed her
eyes; she nursed me with a skill and care such as no woman ever showed
to the man she loved most tenderly. As soon as I could stand on my feet,
she conveyed me with the utmost secrecy to Granada. These gipsy women
find safe shelter everywhere, and I spent more than six weeks in a house
only two doors from that of the _Corregidor_ who was trying to arrest
me. More than once I saw him pass by, from behind the shutter. At last I
recovered, but I had thought a great deal, on my bed of pain, and I had
planned to change my way of life. I suggested to Carmen that we should
leave Spain, and seek an honest livelihood in the New World. She laughed
in my face.
“‘We were not born to plant cabbages,’ she cried. ‘Our fate is to live
_payllos_! Listen: I’ve arranged a business with Nathan Ben-Joseph at
Gibraltar. He has cotton stuffs that he can not get through till you
come to fetch them. He knows you’re alive, and reckons upon you. What
would our Gibraltar correspondents say if you failed them?’
“I let myself by persuaded, and took up my vile trade once more.
“While I was hiding at Granada there were bull-fights there, to which
Carmen went. When she came back she talked a great deal about a skilful
_picador_ of the name of Lucas. She knew the name of his horse, and how
much his embroidered jacket had cost him. I paid no attention to this;
but a few days later, Juanito, the only one of my comrades who was left,
told me he had seen Carmen with Lucas in a shop in the Zacatin. Then
I began to feel alarmed. I asked Carmen how and why she had made the
_picador’s_ acquaintance.
“‘He’s a man out of whom we may be able to get something,’ said she.
‘A noisy stream has either water in it or pebbles. He has earned twelve
hundred reals at the bull-fights. It must be one of two things: we
must either have his money, or else, as he is a good rider and a plucky
fellow, we can enroll him in our gang. We have lost such an one an such
an one; you’ll have to replace them. Take this man with you!’
“‘I want neither his money nor himself,’ I replied, ‘and I forbid you to
speak to him.’
“‘Beware!’ she retorted. ‘If any one defies me to do a thing, it’s very
quickly done.’
“Luckily the _picador_ departed to Malaga, and I set about passing in
the Jew’s cotton stuffs. This expedition gave me a great deal to do, and
Carmen as well. I forgot Lucas, and perhaps she forgot him too--for the
moment, at all events. It was just about that time, sir, that I met you,
first at Montilla, and then afterward at Cordova. I won’t talk about
that last interview. You know more about it, perhaps, than I do. Carmen