My jaw dropped—I was thunderstruck; Bang’s eye met mine—”Murder!” quoth Bang, so soon as his astonishment let him collect breath enough “and here I have been for two whole days practising Spanish, “to my great improvement no doubt, upon a Scotchman—how edified he must have been!”
“But the docken, man,” said I; “fusionless as a docken—how classic! what an exclamation to proceed from the mouth of a solemn Don!”
“No gibes regarding the docken,” promptly chimed in Bang, “it is a highly respectable vegetable, let me tell you, and useful on occasion, which is more.”
The noise in the room ceased, and presently Campana joined us. “We must proceed,” said he, “it will never do for you to deliver the jewels now, Mr Cringle; she is too much excited already, even from seeing me.”
But it was more easy to determine on proceeding than to put it in execution, for a heavy cloud that had been overhanging the small valley the whole morning had by this time spread out and covered the entire face of nature like a sable pall. The birds of the air flew low, and seemed perfectly gorged with the superabundance of flies, which were thickly betaking themselves for shelter under the evergreen leaves of the bushes. All the winged creation, great and small, were fast hastening to the cover of the leaves and branches of the trees. The cattle were speeding to the hollows under the impending rocks; negroes, men, women, and children, were hurrying with their hoes on their shoulders past the windows to their huts. Several large bloodhounds had ventured into the hall, and were crouching with a low whine at our feet. The huge carrion crows were the only living things which seemed to brave the approaching chubasco, and were soaring high up in the heavens, appearing to touch the black agitated fringe of the lowering thunder-clouds. All other kinds of winged creatures, parrots and pigeons and cranes, had vanished by this time under the thickest trees, and into the deepest coverts, and the wild ducks were shooting past in long lines, piercing the thick air with outstretched neck and clanging wing.
Suddenly the wind fell, and the sound of the waterfall increased, and grew rough and loud, and the undefinable rushing noise that precedes a heavy fall of rain in the tropics—the voice of the wilderness—moaned through the high woods, until at length the clouds sank upon the valley in boiling mists, rolling half-way down the surrounding hills; and the water of the stream, whose scanty rill but an instant before hissed over the precipice, in a small transparent ribbon of clear grass-green, sprinkled with white foam, and then threaded its way round the large rocks in its capacious channel, like a silver eel twisting through a dry desert, now changed in a moment to a dark turgid chocolate colour; and even as we stood and looked, lo! a column of water from the mountains pitched in thunder over the face of the precipice, making the earth tremble, and driving up from the rugged face of the everlasting rocks in smoke, and forcing the air into eddies and sudden blasts, which tossed the branches of the trees that overhung it, as they were dimly seen through the clouds of drizzle, as if they had been shaken by a tempest, although there was, not a breath stirring elsewhere out of heaven; while little wavering spiral wreaths of mist rose up thick from the surface of the boiling pool at the bottom of the cataract, like miniature waterspouts, until they were dispersed by the agitation of the air above.
At length the swollen torrent rolled roaring down the narrow valley, filling the whole watercourse, about fifty yards wide, and advancing with a solid front a fathom high—a fathom deep does not convey the idea—like a stream of lava, or as one may conceive of the Red Sea, when, at the stretching forth of the hand of the prophet of the Lord, its mighty waters rolled back and stood heaped up as a wall to the host of Israel. The channel of the stream, which but a minute before I could have leaped across, was the next instant filled, and utterly impassable.
“You can’t possibly move,” said Don Picador; “you can neither go on nor retreat; you must stay until the river subsides.” And the rain now began pattering in large drops, like scattering shots preceding an engagement, on the wooden shingles with which the house was roofed, gradually increasing to a loud rushing noise, which, as the rooms were not ceiled, prevented a word being heard.
Don Ricardo began to fret and fidget most awfully—”Beginning of the seasons—why, we may not get away for a week, and all the ships will be kept back in their loading.”
All this time the poor sufferer’s tearing cough was heard in the lulls of the rain; but it gradually became less and less severe, and the lady of the house, and Señora Campana, and Don Picador’s daughter, at length slid into the room on tiptoe, leaving one of Don Ricardo’s nieces in the room with the sick person.
“She is asleep—hush.” The weather continued as bad as ever, and we passed a very comfortless forenoon of it, Picador, Campana, Bang, and myself, perambulating the large dark hall, while the ladies were clustered together in a corner with their work. At length the weather cleared, and I could get a glimpse of mine hostess and her fair daughter. The former was a very handsome woman, about forty; she was tall, and finely formed; her ample figure set off by the very simple, yet, to my taste, very elegant dress formerly described: it was neither more nor less than the plain black silk petticoat over a chemise, made full at the bosom, with a great quantity of lace frills: her dark glossy hair was gathered on the crown of her head in one long braid, twisted round and round, and rising up like a small turret. Over all she wore a loose shawl of yellow silk crape. But the daughter, I never shall forget her! Tall and full, and magnificently shaped—every motion was instinct with grace. Her beautiful black hair hung a yard down her back—long and glossy—in three distinct braids, while it was shaded, Madonna-like, off her high and commanding forehead. Her eyebrows—to use little Reefy’s simile—looked as if cut out of a mouse’s skin; and her eyes themselves, large, dark, and soft, yet brilliant and sparkling at the same time, however contradictory this may read; her nose was straight, and her cheeks firm and oval, and her mouth, her full lips, her ivory teeth, her neck and bosom, were perfect, the latter if anything giving promise of too matronly a womanhood; but at the time I saw her, nothing could have been more beautiful; and, above all, there was an inexpressible charm in the clear transparent darkness of her colourless skin, into which you thought you could look; her shoulders, and the upper part of her arms, were peculiarly beautiful. Nothing is so exquisitely lovely as the upper part of a beautiful woman’s arm, and yet we have lived to see this admirable feature shrouded and lost in those abominable gigots.—I say, messmate, lend a hand and originate a crusade against those vile appendages. I will lead into action if you like,—”Woe to the women that sew pillows to all arm-holes,” Ezekiel, xiii. 18. May I venture on such a quotation in such a place?—She was extremely like her brother; and her fine face was overspread with the pale cast of thought—a settled melancholy, like the shadow of a cloud in a calm day on a summer landscape, mantled over her fine features; and although she moved with the air of a princess, and was possessed of that natural politeness which far surpasses all artificial polish, yet the heaviness of her heart was apparent in every motion, as well as in all she said.
Many people labour under an unaccountable delusion, imagining, in their hallucination, that a Frenchwoman, for instance, or even an Englishwoman— nay, some have been heard to say that a Scotchwoman—has been known to walk. Egregious errors all! An Irishwoman of the true Milesian descent can walk a step or two sometimes, but all other women—fair or brown, short or tall, stout or thin—only stump, shuffle, jig, or amble—none but a Spaniard can walk.
Once or twice she tried to enter into conversation with me on indifferent subjects; but there was a constant tendency to approach (against her own prearranged determination) the one, all-absorbing one, the fate of her poor brother. “Oh, had you but known him, Mr Cringle—had you but known him in his boyhood, before bad company had corrupted him!” exclaimed she, after having asked me if he died penitent, and she turned away and wept. “Francisca,” said a low hoarse female voice from the other room—”Francisca,
ven acá, mi querida hermana.” The sweet girl rose, and sped across the floor with the grace of Taglioni (oh, the legs Taglionis!—as poor dear Bang would have ventured to have said, if the sylphide had then been known), and presently returning, whispered something to her mother, who rose and drew Don Picador aside. The waspish old man shook himself clear of his wife, as he said with indecent asperity—”No, no; she will but make a fool of herself.”
His wife drew herself up, —
“She never made a fool of herself, Don Picador, but once; and God forgive those who were the cause of it!—It is not kind of you, indeed it is not.”
“Well, well,” rejoined the querulous old man, “do as you will, do as you will; always crossing me, always crossing.”
His wife took no further notice, but stepped across the room to me,—”Our poor dying Maria knows you are here; and probably you are not aware that he wrote to her after his”—her voice quivered—”after his condemnation, the night before he suffered, that you were the only one who showed him kindness, and she has also read the newspapers giving an account of the trial. She wishes to see you—will you pleasure her? Señora Campana has made her acquainted that you are the bearer of some trinkets belonging to him, from which she infers you witnessed his last moments, as one of them, she was told, was her picture, poor dear girl; and she knew that must have grown to his heart till the last. But it will be too agitating. I will try and dissuade her from the interview until the doctor comes, at all events.”
The worthy lady stepped again into Maria’s apartment, and I could not avoid hearing what passed.
“My dear Maria, Mr Cringle has no objection to wait on you; but after your severe attack this morning, I don’t think it will be wise. Delay it until Dr Bergara comes—at any rate, until the evening, Maria.”
“Mother,” she said, in a weak, plaintive voice, although husky from the phlegm which was fast coagulating in her throat—”Mother, I have already ceased to be of this world; I am dying, dearest mother, fast dying; and oh, thou all-good and all-merciful Being, against whom I have fearfully sinned, would that the last struggle were now o’er, and that my weary spirit were released, and my shame bidden in the silent tomb, and my sufferings and very name forgotten!” She paused and gasped for breath; I thought it was all over with her; but she rallied again and proceeded—”Time is rapidly ebbing from me, dearest mother—for mother I must call you, more than a mother have you been to me—and the ocean of eternity is opening to my view. If I am to see him at all, I must see him now; I shall be more agitated by the expectation of the interview than by seeing him at once. Oh! let me see him now, let me look on one who witnessed his last moments.”
I could see Señora Cangrejo where she stood. She crossed her hands on her bosom, and looked up towards heaven, and then turned mournfully towards me, and beckoned me to approach. I entered the small room, which had been fitted up by the poor girl with some taste; the furniture was better than any I had seen in a Spanish house before, and there was a mat on the floor, and some exquisite miniatures and small landscapes on the walls. It was her boudoir, opening apparently in a bedroom beyond. It was lighted by a large open unglazed window, with a row of wooden balustrades beyond it, forming part of a small balcony. A Carmelite friar—a venerable old man, with the hot tears fast falling from his eyes over his wrinkled cheeks, whom I presently found to be the excellent Padre Carera—sat in a large chair by the bedside, with a silver cup in his hand, beside which lay a large crucifix of the same metal; he had just administered extreme unction, and the viaticum, he fondly hoped, would prove a passport for his dear child to another and a better world. As I entered he rose, held out his hand to me, and moved round to the bottom of the bed.
The shutters had been opened, and, with a suddenness which no one can comprehend who has not lived in these climates, the sun now shone brightly on the flowers and garden plants which grew in a range of pots on the balcony, and lighted up the pale features of a lovely girl, lovely even in the jaws of death, as she lay with her face towards the light, supported in a reclining position on cushions, on a red Morocco mattress, laid on a sort of frame or bed.
“Light was her form, and darkly delicate
That brow, whereon her native sun hath sat,
But had not marred.”
She was tall, so far as I could judge, but oh, how attenuated! Her lower limbs absolutely made no impression on the mattress, to which her frame appeared to cling, giving a ghastly conspicuousness to the œdematous swelling of her feet, and to her person, for, alas! she was in a way to have become a mother—
“The offspring of his wayward youth,
When he betrayed Bianca’s truth;
The maid whose folly could confide
In him, who made her not his bride.”
Her hand, grasping her pocket-handkerchief—drenched, alas, with blood—hung over the side of the bed, thin and pale, with her long taper fingers as transparent as if they had been fresh cut alabaster with the blue veins winding through her wrists, and her bosom wasted and shrunk, and her neck no thicker than her arm, with the pulsations of the large arteries as plain and evident as if the skin had been a film; and her beautiful features—although now sharpened by the near approaching death-agony—her lovely mouth, her straight nose, her arched eyebrows, black, like pencilled jet lines, and her small ears; and oh, who can describe her rich black raven hair, lying combed out, and spread all over the bed and pillow! She was dressed in a long loose gown of white crape; it looked like a winding-sheet; but the fire of her eyes—I have purposely not ventured to describe them the unearthly brilliancy of her large, full, swimming eye!
When I entered I bowed, and remained standing near the door. She said something, but in so low a voice that I could not catch the words; and when I stepped nearer, on purpose to hear more distinctly, all at once the blood mantled in her cheeks, and forehead, and throat, like the last gleam of the setting sun; but it faded as rapidly, and once more she lay pale as her smock—
“Yet not such blush as mounts as when health would show
All the heart’s hue in that delightful glow;
But ‘twas a hectic tint of secret care,
That for a burning moment fevered there;
And the wild sparkle of her eve seemed caught
From high, and lightened with electric thought;
Though its black orb these long low lashes’ fringe
Had tempered with a melancholy tinge.”
Her voice was becoming more and more weak, she said, so she must be prompt. “You have some trinkets for me, Mr Cringle?” I presented them. She kissed the crucifix fervently, and then looked mournfully on her own miniature. “This was thought like once, Mr Cringle.—Are the newspaper accounts of his trial correct?” she next asked. I answered, that in the main facts they were. “And do you believe in the commission of all these alleged atrocities by him?” I remained silent. “Yes, they are but too true. Hush, hush,” said she— “look there.”
I did as she requested. There, glancing bright in the sunshine, a most beautiful butterfly fluttered in the air, in the very middle of the open window. When we first saw it, it was flitting gaily and happily amongst the plants and flowers that were blooming in the balcony, but it gradually became more and more slow on the wing, and at last poised itself so unusually steady for an insect of its class, that even had Maria not spoken, it would have attracted my attention. Below it, on the windowsill, near the wall, with head erect, and its little basilisk eyes upturned towards the lovely fly, crouched a chameleon lizard; its beautiful body, when I first looked at it, was a bright sea-green. It moved into the sunshine, a little away from the shade of the laurel bush, which grew on the side it first appeared on, and suddenly the back became transparent amber, the legs and belly continuing green. From its breast under the chin, it every now and then shot out a semicircular film of a bright scarlet colour, like a leaf of a tulip stretched vertically, or the pectoral fin of a fish.
This was evidently
a decoy, and the poor fly was by degrees drawn down towards it, either under the impression of its being in reality a flower, or impelled by some impulse which it could not resist. It gradually flitted nearer and more near, the reptile remaining all the while steady as a stone, until it made a sudden spring, and in the next moment the small mealy wings were quivering on each side of the chameleon’s tiny jaws. While in the act of gorging its prey, a little fork, like a wire, was projected from the opposite comer of the window; presently a small round black snout, with a pair of little fiery blasting eyes, appeared, and a thin black neck glanced in the sun. The lizard saw it. I could fancy it trembled. Its body became of a dark blue, then ashy pale, the imitation of the flower; the gaudy fin was withdrawn; it appeared to shrink back as far as it could; but it was nailed or fascinated to the window-sill, for its feet did not move. The head of the snake approached, with its long forked tongue shooting out and shortening, and with a low hissing noise. By this time about two feet of its body was visible, lying with its white belly on the wooden beam, moving forward with a small horizontal wavy motion, the head and six inches of the neck being a little raised. I shrank back from the serpent, but no one else seemed to have any dread of it; indeed, I afterwards learned, that this kind, being good mousers, and otherwise quite harmless, were, if anything, encouraged about houses in the country. I looked again; its open mouth was now within an inch of the lizard, which by this time seemed utterly paralysed and motionless; the next instant its head was drawn into the snake’s mouth, and by degrees the whole body disappeared, as the reptile gorged it, and I could perceive from the lump which gradually moved down the snake’s neck, that it had been sucked into its stomach. Involuntarily I raised my hand, when the whole suddenly disappeared.
I turned, I could scarcely tell why, to look at the dying girl. A transient flush had again lit up her pale wasted face. She was evidently greatly excited. “Can you read me that riddle, Mr Cringle? Does no analogy present itself to you between what you have seen, between the mysterious power possessed by these subtile reptiles, and—Look—look again.”
Tom Cringle's Log Page 41
