Gaspar Ruiz

by Joseph Conrad

  VII

  GENERAL SANTIERRA was right in his surmise. Such was the exact nature ofthe assistance which Gaspar Ruiz, peasant son of peasants, receivedfrom the Royalist family whose daughter had opened the door--of theirmiserable refuge to his extreme distress. Her sombre resolution ruledthe madness of her father and the trembling bewilderment of her mother.

  She had asked the strange man on the door-step, "Who wounded you?"

  "The soldiers, senora," Gaspar Ruiz had answered, in a faint voice.

  "Patriots?"

  "Si."

  "What for?"

  "Deserter," he gasped, leaning against the wall under the scrutiny ofher black eyes. "I was left for dead over there."

  She led him through the house out to a small hut of clay and reeds, lostin the long grass of the overgrown orchard. He sank on a heap of maizestraw in a corner, and sighed profoundly.

  "No one will look for you here," she said, looking down at him. "Nobodycomes near us. We too have been left for dead--here."

  He stirred uneasily on his heap of dirty straw, and the pain in his neckmade him groan deliriously.

  "I shall show Estaban some day that I am alive yet," he mumbled.

  He accepted her assistance in silence, and the many days of pain wentby. Her appearances in the hut brought him relief and became connectedwith the feverish dreams of angels which visited his couch; for GasparRuiz was instructed in the mysteries of his religion, and had evenbeen taught to read and write a little by the priest of his village. Hewaited for her with impatience, and saw her pass out of the dark hut anddisappear in the brilliant sunshine with poignant regret. He discoveredthat, while he lay there feeling so very weak, he could, by closing hiseyes, evoke her face with considerable distinctness. And this discoveredfaculty charmed the long solitary hours of his convalescence. Later,when he began to regain his strength, he would creep at dusk from hishut to the house and sit on the step of the garden door.

  In one of the rooms the mad father paced to and fro, muttering tohimself with short abrupt laughs. In the passage, sitting on a stool,the mother sighed and moaned. The daughter, in rough threadbareclothing, and her white haggard face half hidden by a coarse manta,stood leaning against the lintel of the door. Gaspar Ruiz, with hiselbows propped on his knees and his head resting in his hands, talked tothe two women in an undertone.

  The common misery of destitution would have made a bitter mockery of amarked insistence on social differences. Gaspar Ruiz understood this inhis simplicity. From his captivity amongst the Royalists he could givethem news of people they knew. He described their appearance; and whenhe related the story of the battle in which he was recaptured the twowomen lamented the blow to their cause and the ruin of their secrethopes.

  He had no feeling either way. But he felt a great devotion for thatyoung girl. In his desire to appear worthy of her condescension, heboasted a little of his bodily strength. He had nothing else to boastof. Because of that quality his comrades treated him with as great adeference, he explained, as though he had been a sergeant, both in campand in battle.

  "I could always get as many as I wanted to follow me anywhere, senorita.I ought to have been made an officer, because I can read and write."

  Behind him the silent old lady fetched a moaning sigh from time to time;the distracted father muttered to himself, pacing the sala; and GasparRuiz would raise his eyes now and then to look at the daughter of thesepeople.

  He would look at her with curiosity because she was alive, and also withthat feeling of familiarity and awe with which he had contemplatedin churches the inanimate and powerful statues of the saints, whoseprotection is invoked in dangers and difficulties. His difficulty wasvery great.

  He could not remain hiding in an orchard for ever and ever. He knew alsovery well that before he had gone half a day's journey in any direction,he would be picked up by one of the cavalry patrols scouring thecountry, and brought into one or another of the camps where the patriotarmy destined for the liberation of Peru was collected. There hewould in the end be recognised as Gaspar Ruiz--the deserter to theRoyalists--and no doubt shot very effectually this time. There did notseem any place in the world for the innocent Gaspar Ruiz anywhere.And at this thought his simple soul surrendered itself to gloom andresentment as black as night.

  They had made him a soldier forcibly. He did not mind being a soldier.And he had been a good soldier as he had been a good son, because of hisdocility and his strength. But now there was no use for either. They hadtaken him from his parents, and he could no longer be a soldier--not agood soldier at any rate. Nobody would listen to his explanations. Whatinjustice it was! What injustice!

  And in a mournful murmur he would go over the story of his capture andrecapture for the twentieth time. Then, raising his eyes to the silentgirl in the doorway, "Si, senorita," he would say with a deep sigh,"injustice has made this poor breath in my body quite worthless to meand to anybody else. And I do not care who robs me of it."

  One evening, as he exhaled thus the plaint of his wounded soul, shecondescended to say that, if she were a man, she would consider no lifeworthless which held the possibility of revenge.

  She seemed to be speaking to herself. Her voice was low. He drank in thegentle, as if dreamy sound, with a consciousness of peculiar delight, ofsomething warming his breast like a draught of generous wine.

  "True, senorita," he said, raising his face up to hers slowly: "there isEstaban, who must be shown that I am not dead after all."

  The mutterings of the mad father had ceased long before; the sighingmother had withdrawn somewhere into one of the empty rooms. All wasstill within as well as without, in the moonlight bright as day on thewild orchard full of inky shadows. Gaspar Ruiz saw the dark eyes of DonaErminia look down at him.

  "Ala! The sergeant," she muttered disdainfully.

  "Why! He has wounded me with his sword," he protested, bewildered by thecontempt that seemed to shine livid on her pale face.

  She crushed him with her glance. The power of her will to be understoodwas so strong that it kindled in him the intelligence of unexpressedthings.

  "What else did you expect me to do?" he cried, as if suddenly driven todespair. "Have I the power to do more? Am I a general with an army at myback?--miserable sinner that I am to be despised by you at last."