Chapter IV: Part 4

“I am going to marry her,” he said, with a shake of the head. And mechanically he handed the other the box of matches, which Casavel took, though his eyes still flashed with anger and that terrible jealousy which flows in Southern blood. Then the Mule walked slowly on, while his dog shambled after him, turning back once or twice to glance apprehensively at the man left standing in the middle of the rocky path. Dogs, it is known, have a keener scent than human beings--perhaps, also, they have a keener vision, and see more written on the face of man than we can perceive.

The Mule turned at the summit of the pass, and looked down, as he always did, at the village where Caterina lived, before turning his face to the sunnier southern slope. He saw Casavel standing where he had left him, holding up the gun with a threatening gesture. The Mule had no eye for effect. He did not even shrug his shoulders.

It was finally the schoolmaster who hurried matters to their natural conclusion. By his advice, the Mule, who had hitherto lodged in the house of the postmaster, rented a cottage of his own and bought some simple furniture. He consulted Caterina on several points, and she was momentarily aroused from a sort of apathy which had come over her of late, by a very feminine interest in the kitchen fittings. The best that could be said for Caterina was that she was resigned. As for the Mule, like the animal from which he had acquired his habits of thought as well as his name, he seemed to expect but little from life. So, one morning before departing on his daily journey, the Mule was unobtrusively married to Caterina in the little pink stucco chapel that broods over the village of San Celoni like a hen over her chickens. And Cristofero Colon and the dog waited outside.

It was a commonplace ceremony, and at its conclusion the bridegroom trudged off up the village street behind his mail-bags. The Mule, it must be admitted, was a deadly dull person--y nada mas--and nothing more, as his fond father-in-law observed at the cafe that same morning.

But when he returned on the second evening, he made it evident that he had been thinking of Caterina in his absence, for he gave her, half shyly and very awkwardly, some presents that he had brought from a larger village than San Celoni, which he had passed on his way. There were shops in the village, and it was held in the district that articles bought there were of superior quality to such as came even from Granada or Malaga. The Mule had expended nearly a peseta on a coloured kerchief such as women wear on their heads, and a brooch of blue glass.

“Thank you,” said Caterina, taking the presents and examining them with bright eyes. She stood before him in a girlish attitude, folding the kerchief across her hand, and holding it so that the light of their new lamp fell upon it. “It is very pretty.”

The Mule had washed his face and hands at the fountain, as he came into San Celoni, remembering that he was a bridegroom. He stood, sleek and sunburnt, looking down at her, and, if he had only had the words, the love-making might have commenced then and there, at a point where the world says it usually ends.

“There was nothing,” he said slowly at length, “in the shops that seemed to me pretty at all--” He paused, and turned away to lay his beret aside, then, with his back towards her, he finished the sentence. “Not pretty enough for you.”

Caterina winced, as if he had hurt instead of pleased her. She busied herself with the preparations for their simple supper, and the Mule sat silently watching her--as happy, perhaps, in his dull way, as any king has ever been. Then suddenly Caterina's fingers began to falter, and she placed the plates on the table with a clatter, as if her eyes were blinded. She hesitated, and with a sort of wail of despair, sat down and hid her face in her apron. And the Mule's happiness was only human after all, for it was transformed in the twinkling of an eye into abject misery.

He sat biting his lip, and looking at her as she sobbed. Then at length he rose slowly, and, going to her, laid his great, solid, heavy hand upon her shoulder. But he could not think of anything to say. He could only meet this as he had met other emergencies, with that silence which he had acquired from the dumb beasts amid the mountains.

At length, after a long pause, he spoke. He had detected a movement, made by Caterina and instantly restrained, to withdraw from the touch of his hand, and this had set his slow brain thinking. He had dealt with animals more than with men, and was less slow to read a movement than to understand a word.

“What is it?” he asked. “Is it that you are sorry you married me?”

And Caterina, who belonged to a people saying yea, yea, and nay, nay, nodded her head.

“Why?” asked the Mule, with a deadly economy of words. And she did not answer him. “Is it because--there is another man?”

It was known in the valley that the Mule had never used his knife, not even in self-defence. Caterina did not dare, however, to answer him. She only whispered a prayer to the Virgin.

“Is it Pedro Casavel?” asked the Mule; and the question brought her to her feet, facing him with white cheeks.

“No--no--no!” she cried. “What made you think that? Oh--no!”

Woman-like, she thought she could fool him. The Mule turned away from her and sat down again. Woman-like, she had forgotten her own danger at the mere thought that Casavel might suffer.

“And he--in the mountains,” said the Mule, thinking aloud. He was beginning to see now, at last, when it was too late, as better men than he have done before, and will continue to do hereafter. Caterina could not have held out as an objection to her marriage the fact that she loved a man who was in the mountains. The schoolmaster was not one to listen to such an argument as that, especially from a girl who could not know her own mind. For the schoolmaster was, despite his radical tendencies, bigoted in his adherence to the old mistakes.

Caterina might have told the Mule, perhaps, if he had asked her; for she knew that he was gentle even with the stubborn Cristofero Colon. But he had not asked her, failing the necessary courage to face the truth.

It was, of course, the woman who spoke first, in a quiet voice, with that philosophy of life which is better understood by women than by men.

“You must, at all events, eat,” she said, “after your journey. It is a cocida that I have made.”

She busied herself among the new kitchen utensils with movements hardly yet as certain as the movements of a woman, but rather those of a child, hasty and yet deft enough. The Mule watched her, seated clumsily, with round shoulders, in the attitude of a field labourer indoors. When the steaming dish, which smelt of onions, was set upon the table, he rose and dragged his chair forward. He did not think of setting a chair in place for Caterina, who brought one for herself, and they sat down--to their wedding feast.

They appeared to accept the situation, as the poor and the hard-worked have to accept the many drawbacks to their lot, without further comment. The Mule cultivated a more complete silence than hitherto; but he was always kind to Caterina, treating her as he would one of his beasts which had been injured, with a mutual silent acceptance of the fact that she had a sorrow, a weak spot as it were, which must not be touched. With a stolid tact he never mentioned the mountains, or those unfortunate men who dwelt therein. If he met Pedro Casavel he did not mention the encounter to Caterina. Neither did he make any reference to Caterina when he gave Pedro a box of matches. Indeed, he rarely spoke to Casavel at all, but nodded and passed on his way. If Casavel approached from behind he stopped without looking round, and waited for him just as his mules stopped, and as mules always do when they hear any one approaching from behind.

So time went on, and the schoolmaster, resigning his situation, departed to Malaga, where, by the way, he came to no good; for of talking there is too much in this world, and a wise man would not say thank you for the gift of the gab. The man whom Pedro Casavel had injured died quietly in his bed. Caterina went about her daily work with her unspoken history in her eyes, while Pedro himself no doubt ate his heart out in the mountains. That he ate it out in silence could scarcely be, for the tale got about the valley somehow that he and Caterina had been lovers before his misfortune.

And as for the Mule, he trudged his daily score of miles, and said nothing to any man. It would be hard to say whether he noticed that Pedro Casavel, when he showed himself now in the mountains, appeared rather ostentatiously without his gun--harder still to guess whether the Mule knew that as he passed across the summit Casavel would sometimes lie amid the rocks, and cover him with that same gun for a hundred yards or so, slowly following his movements with the steady barrel so that the mail-carrier's life hung, as it were, on the touch of a trigger for minutes together. Pedro Casavel seemed to shift his hiding place, as if he were seeking to perfect certain details of light and range and elevation. Perhaps it was only a grim enjoyment which he gathered from thus holding the Mule's life in his hand for five or six minutes two or three times a week; perhaps, after all, he was that base thing, a coward, and lacked the nerve to pull a trigger--to throw a bold stake upon life's table and stand by the result. Each day he crept a little nearer, grew more daring; until he noticed a movement made by the lank, ill-fed dog, that seemed to indicate that the beast, at all events, knew of his presence in the rocks above the footpath.

Then one day, when there was no wind, and the light was good and the range had been ascertained, Pedro Casavel pulled the trigger. The report and a puff of bluish smoke floated up to heaven, where they were doubtless taken note of, and the Mule fell forward on his face.

“I have it,” he muttered, in the curt, Andalusian dialect. And then and there the Mule died.

It happened to be Cristofero Colon's day to do the southward journey, and despite the lank dog's most strenuous efforts, he continued his way, gravely carrying the dusty mail-bags to their destination. The dog remained behind with the Mule, pessimistically sniffing at his clothing, recognizing, no doubt, that which, next to an earthquake, is the easiest thing to recognize in nature. Then at length he turned homewards, towards San Celoni, with hanging ears and a loose tail. He probably suspected that the Mule had long stood between him and starvation--that none other would take his place or remember to feed a dog of so unattractive an appearance and no pedigree whatever.

Caterina did not expect the Mule to return that evening, which was his night away from home at Puente de Rey. She hurried to the door, therefore, when she heard, after nightfall, the clatter of hoofs in the narrow street, and the shuffling of iron heels at her very step. She opened the door, and in the bright moonlight saw the cocked-hats and long cloaks of the Guardia Civil. There were other men behind them, and a beast shuffled his feet as he was bidden to stand still.

“What is it?” she asked. “An accident to the Mule?”

“Not exactly that,” replied the Sergeant, grimly, as he made way for two men who approached carefully, carrying a heavy weight. It was the Mule whom they brought in and laid on the table.

“Shot,” said the Sergeant, curtly. He had heard the gossip of the valley, and doubted whether Caterina would need much pity or consideration. His companion-in-arms now appeared, leading by the sleeve one who was evidently his captive. Caterina looked up and met his eyes. It was Pedro Casavel, sullen, ill-clad, half a barbarian, with the seal of the mountains upon him. “The mail-bags are missing,” pursued the Sergeant, who in a way was the law-giver of the valley. “Robbery was doubtless the object. We shall find the mail-bags among the rocks. The Mule must have shown fight; for his pistol was in his pocket with one barrel discharged.”

As he spoke he laid his hand upon the Mule's broad chest without heeding the stained shirt. That stain was no new sight to an old soldier.

“Robbery,” he repeated, with a glance at Casavel and Caterina, who stood one on each side of the table that bore such a grim burden, and looked at each other. “Robbery and murder. So we brought Pedro Casavel, whose hiding-place we have known these last two years, with us--on the chance, eh?--on the chance. It was the dog that came and told us. Whoever shot the man should have shot the dog too--for safety's sake.”

As the Sergeant spoke, he mechanically made sure that the Mule's pockets were empty. Suddenly he stopped, and withdrew a folded paper from the inside pocket of the jacket. He turned towards the lamp to read the writing on it. It was the Mule's writing. The Sergeant turned, after a moment's thought, and faced Casavel again.

“You are free to go, Pedro,” he said. “I have made a mistake, and I ask your pardon.”

He held out the paper, which, however, Casavel did not take, but stood stupidly staring, as if he did not understand.

Then the Sergeant turned to the lamp again. He unfolded the paper, which was crumpled as if with long friction in the pocket, and read aloud--

“Let no one be accused of my death. It is I, who, owing to private trouble, shall shoot myself. Juan Quereno, so-called the 'Mule.'”

IN LOVE AND WAR

“Secret de deux, secret de Dieu.”

“Guess anybody could be a soldier and swing a sword, while it takes brains to make a doctor.”

Now I was a doctor, and a very young one in those days, new to the regiment and conscious of my inferiority to its merest subaltern. The young person who made the above observation was, moreover, pretty, with dark eyes and the most bewitching lips that ever gave voice to an American accent. My heart was young, and therefore easily stirred by such vanities--nothing stirs it now but the cry of the bugle and the sullen roar that rises from the ranks when, at last, T. Atkins is allowed to get to the bayonet.

We were sitting in the verandah of the Residency in the capital of a northern tributary state which need not be further specified here. The Rajah was in difficulties and unable, without our aid, to dispose of a claimant to his throne, whose hereditary right originated somewhere in the lifetime of St. Paul. General Elias J. Watson, of Boston, U.S.A., was travelling for the enlargement of his own and his daughter's mind.

“Pa is just going to write a book about things in general,” explained Miss Bertha Watson, with a wise little smile, when her father's thirst for information became irksome.

Hearing in Simla that an expeditionary force was about to be despatched to the assistance of the Rajah of Oadpur, General Watson hastened thither. He had letters of introduction from sundry persons who wished to get rid of him to sundry others who had no desire to assist in any way. But the old man's naivete and characteristically simple interest in details soon made their way, while Bertha's wise little smile carried all before it. It somehow conveyed the impression that she knew a thing or two of which we were ignorant, and like one man we fell to desiring knowledge of those things. I was nowhere. Doctors never are anywhere in regimental competitions, for they are usually, like myself, deadly poor. Sometimes Bertha danced with me, as on this occasion, at the impromptu entertainments given by the Resident.

“Say, shall we have another?” she observed before my heart had recovered from the effect of the last remark. And she handed me the stationery department envelope which served as a programme on these occasions.

I fumbled for my pencil in a seventh heaven of joy. I had read somewhere that women sometimes give their hearts to small and insignificant men. But it seemed unlikely that this referred to such women as Bertha Watson. I had never dreamt of cutting out the other men: Major Le Mesurier-Groselin, who had money, for instance, or Austin Graham--especially Austin Graham. There had been a rumour in the air--planted there, no doubt, by some of the women who have a marvellous scent for a light trail--that there was an understanding between Graham and Bertha. I noticed that she never looked at him with her bewitching little smile as she did at the rest of us. But that was all I could detect. Perhaps she thought that he was wiser than herself. Perhaps, moreover, she was right; for Graham was the wisest man up there, and I think the bravest. He meant business, he told me, and had come to make his name in this little war.

He was a quiet-going, fair man, with that inestimable advantage of looking at all times exactly what he was, namely, a gentleman by long descent. He was a great friend of mine, and we shared quarters in a sort of gatehouse to the Rajah's palace, where I knew that he worked night and day, for he was chief of the staff, and had a great scheme of crushing the insurrection, at one blow, by a surprise assault of the fortified town twenty miles away, where the claimant lay with his forces.

“Seems to me,” said Bertha, when I had duly inscribed my name on the Government envelope, “that this is what you call a demonstration in force. This is not serious war. You are not going to fight at all. Things are much too quiet and orderly--with church parade, and soirees-dansantes, and visiting cards.”

She looked at me, and if I had had any secrets I should have told them to her then and there.

“Then you think there'll be fighting,” she added, with a calmness of demeanour which was in itself unusual and fascinating enough.

She had no reason to arrive at such a conclusion, for I had not uttered a sound. I probably did not know, however, in those days that the lies requiring the minutest care are the unspoken ones.

“You see, I'm only a doctor,” I answered, “and, strange to say, the Brigadier has not as yet taken me into his confidence.”

“I know a lot about war,” she went on after a momentary pause. She appeared to have some misgiving about one of the buttons on her long glove which she had undone and was tentatively tugging at the thread.

“May I button that?” I said hurriedly in my extreme youth, and with a palpitating courage.

“Why, yes--if you have any ambition that way.” And she extended her arm towards me. “Now,” she said, with a grave air of confidence which I now distrust whenever it is tried upon me, “if I was the man in charge of this show, I would just go on like this, giving balls and private theatricals and exchanging visiting cards. This place is full of spies, of course. The very servants who wait on the General probably read all his letters and send copies of them to the enemy. The plan of campaign is probably as well known to What-'em-you-call-it Khan as it is to the Brigadier.”

“No, I am sure it isn't,” I interrupted; “because Graham keeps it locked up in a medical-comfort chest with his dressing-case locked, which we screwed on ourselves.”

“Ah, is that so, doctor? Well, you can't be too careful, can you? As I was saying, I should convey to the spies the impression that it was only a demonstration in force. Then one night I should start off quietly, march twenty miles, and give What-'em-you-call-it Khan Hail Columbia before sunrise.”

She looked at me, gave a knowing little nod of the head, and began fanning herself.

“That is my plan of campaign,” she said. “You know Pa is here on purpose to see the British soldier fight. We have been waiting here a month now, and I hope you are going to ring up the curtain soon. Pa has theories about the British soldier, and although he is a General, you know he has never seen a fight. I tell him if I was a General who hadn't seen a fight, I'd just go out and sell myself cheap! What?”

“Nothing.”

“I guess you spoke.”

“I said you'd probably do that at any rate.”

“Not cheap,” she answered gravely, and then we changed the subject. So far as I recollect, we returned to the discussion of doctors and their trade, and before long I had the opportunity of airing my special hobby at that time--the study of native drugs. Miss Watson was deeply interested--at least, she made me think so, and before we parted I had promised to send round to her “diggings,” as she called them, a bottle of a perfectly harmless narcotic which I had made up for the use of persons suffering from sea-sickness or toothache. I use it still, and have some always by me on service in a bottle labelled “Bertha,” for there is, after all, something in a name.

I went home to my quarters rather thoughtful that night; for Bertha Watson's plan of campaign was Austin Graham's plan of campaign, and I knew that Graham was not the man to divulge so much as a hint of this secret. I know now that if a woman loves a man she knows much that he never tells her, but I was ignorant of this and many other matters at the time when I made Bertha's acquaintance.

The days dragged on and we seemed to be no nearer solving the Rajah's difficulties. There were at that time no native newspapers, and bazaar gossip, which is, by the way, surer and speedier than the most enlightened press, made up for the want. Bazaar gossip held much the same opinion as Bertha Watson--namely, that we were only a demonstration in force. This opinion gained ground daily, and began like a hardy weed to throw out tendrils in the shape of details. We were afraid of the claimant to the throne, it seemed. We had quarrelled with the Rajah, and would not risk a defeat on his account.

Austin Graham came and went. I sometimes found mysterious natives waiting for him in our quarters. One of these natives spoke Hindustanee with a faint Scotch accent, and laughed when I told him so.

“I'm all right in the dialects though,” he said, in Glasgow English, and asked for a cigarette. We sat and talked for half an hour awaiting Graham's arrival, but he never told me who he was.

One night, about midnight, I was aroused by Le Mesurier-Groselin, who was in full fighting kit and had a queer light in his eyes which was new to me, though heaven and the Horse Guards know that I have seen it often enough since.

“Get up--Sawbones!” said Le Mesurier-Groselin. “You'll be wanted at any rate, but now I want you badly. We're just off to smoke the old Khan out, and something has gone wrong with Graham. For God's sake, man, hurry up! It will be a pretty fight, and I would not miss it for worlds.”

I looked at Le Mesurier-Groselin as I hauled on my clothes. He had eight thousand a year, an Elizabethan manor in England, and the certainty of a baronetcy; but the thought of these things never brought to his eyes the light that was there now.

“What is wrong with Graham?”

“I don't know--wish I did. Can't move him. Seems quite stupid or dead drunk,” answered Le Mesurier-Groselin, handing me my belt.

We hurried upstairs to the room occupied by Austin Graham, and there found him lying on the bed with his eyes almost, but not quite, shut.

“Where was he to-night--dining with you at mess?” I asked, raising one heavy lid with my finger.

“No, he dined with the Watsons.”

“When did you last see him?”

“About ten o'clock at my quarters. He was coming here to change in time for the assembly at eleven forty-five--the column is just marching. I came here to hurry him up and found him like this. The whole attack is his planning. It would have been the making of him. He was to have led the ladders. Gad! what a chance the man had--and look at the poor devil now!”

I was examining Austin Graham with a thumping heart, for a queer suspicion was in my mind. Presently I ran downstairs and uncorked the bottle which I now label “Bertha.” The smell was identical, and I went upstairs again.

“Help me to get him into his boots and tunic,” I said.

And Le Mesurier-Groselin and I huddled the man's fighting clothes on to him by the light of a flickering candle. Le Mesurier-Groselin was a big man, and my trade had taught me a certain skill in the handling of the dead. We soon had Austin Graham in full uniform sitting up in my arms, with the helmet crammed on his head at an unseemly angle. He was perfectly insensible, but his heart went well.

“Now help me to get him on to his horse,” I said.

Le Mesurier-Groselin dropped his eye-glass for the first and last time on record, and looked at me with a surprised eye and a solemn one.

“I'll obey orders,” he said. “But I take it that you are very drunk or else mad.”

We carried him downstairs and I climbed into Graham's saddle. Le Mesurier-Groselin lifted Graham, who must have weighed fourteen stone, into the saddle in front of me, and I rode twenty miles that night with him there. He recovered consciousness an hour before we reached the Khan's stronghold, and, as I expected, awoke, as if from sleep, refreshed and ready for any exertion. We had no time for explanations.

“You were drugged,” I said, “by some native spy, who must have got wind of the intended attack to-night. I knew that the stuff would have to run its course, so I did not physic you, but brought you along with the column.”

I am glad to say he believed me.

Some one found me a restless field-artillery horse which was giving the gunners a lot of trouble, and I rode back to Oadpur alone--not having any business at the front. As I approached the old Gate House, the flutter of a white dress caught my eye. It was almost dawn, and a pink haze hung over the paddy-fields. The world had that appearance of peace and cleanliness which is left by the passage of an Indian night. My rooms were on the ground-floor, and it seemed to me that, at the sound of my horse's feet, some one had come out of them to pass up the stone stairs that led to Graham's quarters. As I slipped out of the saddle the sound of a distant cannon broke the silence of the night, and my horse, despite his forty miles accomplished in little more than five hours, pricked up his ears. I tied him up, and instead of going to my own rooms went upstairs.

Miss Watson was standing in the first room I entered. The quick tropic dawn had come, and I saw the face of a woman who had not slept.

“Major Graham's servant told me that he was ill. I have--a--a right to know how he is, and where he is,” she said with her imperturbable self-possession.

“Graham is at the front,” I answered, and the sound of the cannon, dull and distant, finished the sentence for me.

Bertha Watson bit her lip to hide its quivering, and looked at me, breathing hard.

“We have rung up the curtain,” I added, remembering our talk in the verandah of the Residency.

“How did he get there?”

“Across my saddle in a state of insensibility, which passed off, as I expected it would, an hour before the time fixed for the storming of the fortifications. Some one drugged him in order that he might not take part in this action. Some one who feared him--or for him. Le Mesurier-Groselin called me to him, and only we three know of it. I am the only medical man connected with the affair, and I can certify that it was a native drug that was used, and that therefore a native must have done this thing. Probably a native spy, Miss Watson, who, finding out the proposed surprise too late to warn the rebels, attempted to disorganize the force by this means. Do you understand?”

She looked at me with all her keen wits in her eyes.

“No one would ever dream that another had done it--say some one who was attached to Graham, and who, in a panic, gave way to temptation and did him a great wrong, while saving him from danger.”

I stood aside as I spoke and motioned her towards the door, for the place would soon be astir.

“My!” she exclaimed. “And I reckoned you were a fool--behind that single eye-glass. It is not you that is the fool, doctor.”

Then suddenly she turned at the head of the stairs and whispered hoarsely--

“And if he is killed?”

“That is what he is paid for, Miss Watson. We can only wait and hope that he isn't.”

Austin Graham was not killed, but came back with, as the Brigadier said, the Victoria Cross up his sleeve. I happened to be near Bertha Watson when they met, and there was that in her eyes when they encountered his which was a revelation to me and makes me realize even now what a lonely man I am.

TOMASO'S FORTUNE

“You talk of poor men, Senora--then you talk of me. See, I have nothing but the wits that are under my hat.”

And Felipe Fortis spread himself out on the trellis-bordered bench of the little Venta that stands at the junction of the Valdemosa Road and the new road from Miramar to Palma in the island of Majorca.

Felipe was, of course, known to be a young man of present position and future prospects, or he would not have said such a thing. It was supposed, indeed, by some, to be a great condescension that he should stop at the little Venta of the Break of Day and take his half of wine on market-days. And, of course, there were women who eagerly sought the woman in it, and said that Felipe drank the widow Navarro's sour wine to the bright eyes of the widow's daughter.

“No such luck for her,” said Rosa's cousins and aunts, who were dotted all up the slopes of the valley on either side in their little stone cottages; right up from the river to the Val d'Erraha--that sunny valley of repose which lies far above the capital of Majorca, far above the hum of life and sound of the restless sea.

Felipe, who was a good-looking young fellow, threw his hat down on the bench beside him. He had fair hair and a white skin--both, he understood, much admired by the dark-eyed daughters of the Baleares. He shook his finger with a playful condescension at the widow Navarro, with whom he was always kind enough to exchange a few light pleasantries. And she, womanlike, suited her fire to the calibre of the foe, for she was an innkeeper.

“That is all--the wits that are under my hat,” he repeated.

And Rosa, who was standing in the deep shadow of the doorway, muttered to herself--

“Then you are indeed a poor man.”

Felipe glanced towards her, and wondered whether the sun was shining satisfactorily through the trellis on his fair hair.

Rosa looked at him with inscrutable eyes--deep as velvet, grave and meditative. She was slight and girlish, with dull blue-black hair, and a face that might have been faithfully cut on a cameo. It was the colour of a sun-burnt peach, and usually wore that air of gentle pride which the Moors seem to have left behind them in those lands through which they passed, to the people upon whom they have impressed an indelible mark. But when she smiled, which was not often, her lips tilted suddenly at the corners in a way to make an old man young and a young man mad.

Tomaso of the Mill, who sat on the low wall across the road in the shadow of a great fig-tree, was watching with steady eyes. Tomaso was always watching Rosa. He had watched for years. She had grown up under that steady eye. And now, staring into the deep shadow of the cottage interior, he thought that he saw Rosa smile upon Felipe. And Felipe, of course, concluded that she was smiling at him. They all did that. And only Rosa knew the words she had whispered respecting the gallant Felipe.

Tomaso of the Mill was a poor man if you like, and usually considered a dull one to boot. He only had the mill half-way up the hill to the Val d'Erraha--a mill to which no grist came now that there was steam communication between Palma and Barcelona, and it paid better to ship the produce of the island to the mainland, buying in return the adulterated produce of the Barcelona mills. Tomaso's father had been a prosperous man almost to the day of his death, but times had moved on, leaving Tomaso and his mill behind. And there is no man who watches the times move past him with a prouder silence than a Spaniard. The mill hardly brought in ten pesetas a month now, and that was from friends--poor men like himself who were yet gentlemen, and found some carefully worded reason why they preferred home-milled flour. Tomaso, moreover, was deadly simple: there is nothing more fatal than simplicity in these days. It never occurred to him to sell his mill, or let it fall in ruins and go elsewhere for work. His world had always been bounded on the south by the Val d'Erraha, on the north by the Valdemosa road, on the west by the sea, and on the east by Rosa. He had never suffered from absolute hunger, and nothing but absolute hunger will make a Spaniard leave his home. So Tomaso of the Mill remained at the mill, and, like his forefathers, only repaired the sluices and conduit when the water-supply was no longer heavy enough to drive the creaking wheel.

Since the death of his mother he had lived alone, cooking his own food, washing his own clothes, and no man in the valley wore a whiter shirt. As to the food, perhaps there was not too much of it, or it may have been badly cooked; for Tomaso had a lean and hungry look, and his tanned cheek had diagonal lines drawn from the cheek-bone to the corner of the clean-shaven mouth. The lips were firm, the chin was long. It was a solemn face that looked out from beneath the shadow of the great fig-tree. And--there was no mistaking it--it was the face of that which the world calls a gentleman.

Felipe turned towards him in his good-natured grand way, and invited him by a jerk of the head to come and partake of his half-bottle of Majorcan wine. There was a great gulf between these two men, for Tomaso wore no jacket and Felipe was never seen without one. Tomaso therefore accepted the invitation with a grave courtesy. Felipe knew his manners also. He poured a few drops into his own glass, for fear the cork should have left a grain of dust, and then filled his guest's little thick tumbler to the brim. They touched glasses gravely and drank, Felipe making a swinging gesture towards Rosa in the dark doorway before raising the glass to his lips.

“And affairs at the mill?” inquired Felipe, with a movement of the hand demanding pardon if the subject should be painful.

“The wheel is still,” replied Tomaso, with that grand air of indifference with which Spain must eventually go to the wall. He slowly unrolled and re-rolled a cheap cigarette, and sat down on the bench opposite to Felipe.

Felipe looked at him with that bright and good-natured smile which was known to be so deadly. He spread out his arms in a gesture of lofty indifference.

“What will you?” he asked, with a laugh. “It will come--your fortune.”

And Tomaso smiled gravely. He was quite convinced also, in his simple way, that his fortune would come; for it had been predicted by a gipsy from Granada at the Trinity Fair on the little crowded market-place at Palma. The prediction had caught the popular fancy. Tomaso's poverty, it must be remembered, was a proverb all over the island. “As poor as Tomaso of the Mill,” the people said; it being understood that a church mouse failed to suggest such destitution. Moreover, the gipsy foretold that Tomaso should make his own fortune with his own two hands, which added to the joke, for no one in Majorca is guilty of such manual energy as will lead to more than a sufficiency.

“Now, I say,” continued Felipe, turning to the widow with that unconscious way of discussing some one who happens to be present which is only understood in Southern worlds. “Now, I say that when it comes, it will have something to do with horses. See how he sits in the saddle!”

And Felipe sketched perfection with a little gesture of his brown hand, which was generous of Felipe; for Tomaso was (by one of those strange chances which lead the Spaniards to say that God gives nuts to those who have no teeth) a born horseman, and sat in the saddle like a god--one straight line from heel to shoulder.

Tomaso had risen from the bench and walked slowly across the road to his former seat on the low wall. He was a shy and rather modest man, and felt, perhaps, that there was a suggestion of condescension in Felipe's attitude. If Felipe had come here to pay his addresses to Rosa, he, Tomaso, was not the man to put difficulties in the way. For he was one of those rare men who, in loving, place themselves in the background. He loved Rosa, in a word, better than he loved himself. And in the solitude of his life at the mill he had worked out a grim problem in his own mind. He had weighed himself carefully in the balance, nothing extenuating. He had taken as precise a measure of Felipe Fortis with his present position and his future prospects. And, of course, the only solution was that Rosa would do well to marry Felipe. So Tomaso withdrew to the outer side of the road and the shade of the fig-tree, while Felipe talked gaily with Rosa's mother, and Rosa looked on from the doorway with deep, dark eyes that said nothing at all. For Felipe was wooing the daughter through the mother, as men have often done before him; and the widow smiled on Felipe's suit. The whole business, it appeared, was to be conducted in a sane and gentlemanly way, over a half of the widow's wine, with clinking glasses and a grave politeness. And, of course, Felipe had it all his own way. The question of rivalry did not so much as suggest itself to him, so he could the more easily be kind to the quiet man with the steady eyes who withdrew with such tact when he had finished his wine.

Of course, there was Tomaso's fortune to take into consideration. No one seemed to think of doubting that the prediction must eventually come true, but it was hardly likely to be verified in time to convert Tomaso into a serious rival to Felipe Fortis. There were assuredly no fortunes to be made out of the half-ruined mill. The trade had left that for ever. There was no money in the whole valley, and Tomaso did not seem disposed to go and seek it elsewhere. He passed his time between the mill and the low wall opposite the Venta of the Break of Day, of which the stones beneath the fig-tree were polished with his constant use of them. He usually came down from the mill, which is a mile above the Venta, as any one may prove who seeks the Valley of Repose to-day, by the new road recently cut on the hillside by a spasmodically active Town Council--the road from Miramar to Palma.

It had been at one time supposed that Tomaso's fortune would come to him through this new road, for the construction of which a portion of the land attached to the mill must be purchased. But it was a very small portion, and the purchase-money a ridiculous little sum, which was immediately swallowed up in repairs to the creaking wheel. The road-makers, however, turned aside the stream below the mill, and conducted it to a chasm in the rock, where it fell a great height to a tunnel beneath the road. And half the valley said they could not sleep for the sound of it, and the other half said they liked it. And Rosa, whose bedroom window was nearer to it than any other in the valley, said nothing at all.

Sitting beneath the fig-tree, Tomaso looked up suddenly towards the mill. He was so much accustomed to the roar of his own mill-stream that his ears never heeded it, and heard through it softer and more distant sounds. He heard something now--the regular beat of trotting horses on the road far above his home. He looked up towards the heights, though, of course, he could see nothing through the pines, which are thickly planted here and almost as large as the pines of Vizzavona, in the island of Corsica. He listened to the sound with that quiet interest which comes to those who live in constant sunshine, and is in itself nearly akin to indifference.

“What is it?” asked the widow, noting his attitude.

“It is a carriage on the new road--some traveller from Miramar.”

Travellers from Miramar were few and far between. None had as yet made use of the new road. This was, therefore, a matter of considerable interest to the four persons idling away the afternoon at the Venta of the Break of Day.

“The horses will as likely as not take fright at the new waterfall made by these mules of road-makers,” said Tomaso, rising slowly and throwing away the end of his cigarette.

He took his stand in the middle of the road, looking uphill with a gleam of interest in his eyes. He knew horses so well that his opinion arrested the attention of his hearers. Tomaso had always said that the diversion of his mill-stream would be dangerous to the traffic on the new road. But it was nobody's business to consult Tomaso.

He stood in the middle of the road, contemplatively biting his lower lip--a lean, lithe man, who had lived a clean and simple life--and never dreamt that this might be his fortune trotting down the new Miramar road towards him.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, curtly.

The steady pace was suddenly broken, and at the same moment the hollow roar of the wheels told that the carriage was passing over the little tunnel through which the stream escaped to the valley below. Then came the clatter of frightened horses and the broken cry of one behind them. Felipe leapt to his feet and stood irresolute. The widow gave a little cry of fear, and Rosa came out into the sunlight. There the three stood, rigid, watching Tomaso contemplatively biting his lip in the middle of the sun-lit road.

In a moment the suspense was over--the worst was realized. A carriage swung round the corner a quarter of a mile higher up the road, with two horses stretched at a frantic gallop, and the driver had no reins in his hand; for his reins had broken, and the loose ends fluttered on either side. He was stooping forward, with his right hand at the screw-brake between his legs, and in his left hand he swung his heavy whip. He was a brave man, at all events, for he kept his nerve and tried to guide the horses with his whip. There was just a bare chance that he might reach the Venta, but below it--not a hundred yards below it--the road turned sharply to the right, and everything failing to take that sharp turn would leap into space and the rocky bed of the river five hundred feet below.

The man gave a shout as he came round the corner, and to his credit it was always remembered that his gesture waved Tomaso aside. But Tomaso stood in the middle of the road, and his steady eyes suddenly blazed with a fierce excitement. His lips were apart. He was breathless, and Rosa found herself with her two hands at her throat, watching him.

The carriage seemed to bear right down upon him, but he must have stepped aside, for it passed on and left the road clear. Tomaso was somewhat in the dust, in the confusion of tossing heads and flying reins. Then his white shirt appeared against the black of the horses' manes.

“Name of God!” cried Felipe; “he is on top!”

And Felipe Fortis forgot his fine clothes and superior manners. He was out on the road in an instant, running as he never ran before, and shouting a hundred Catalonian oaths which cannot be transcribed here, even in Catalonian.

It was difficult to see what happened during these moments which were just those instants of time in which one man does well and another badly. But Rosa and her mother saw at length that Tomaso was apparently half standing on the pole between the two horses. He was swinging and jerking from side to side, but all the while he was gathering the scattered reins in his hands. Then suddenly he threw himself back, and the horses' heads went up as if they were being strangled. They jerked and tugged in vain. Tomaso's arms were like steel. Already the pace was slackening--the gallop was broken. And a minute later the carriage was at a standstill in the ditch.

Already the driver was on the ground explaining excitedly to Tomaso how it had happened, and Tomaso was smiling gravely as he wiped some blood from his hand. It was Felipe who, arriving at this moment, thought of opening the carriage-door. There was a pause while Felipe looked into the carriage, and Rosa and her mother ran towards him. Rosa helped Felipe to assist an old man to alight. He was a very fat man, with grey and flaccid cheeks, with shiny black hair and a good deal of gold chain and ring about him. He seemed only half-conscious of the assistance proffered to him, and walked slowly across the road to the shade of the trees. Here he sat down on the low wall, with his elbows on his knees, his two hands to his head, and looked thoughtfully at the ground between his feet. It was precisely the attitude of one who has had a purler at football. And the others looked on in the waiting silence which usually characterizes such moments.

“The gentleman is not hurt?” suggested Felipe, who was always affable and ready with his tongue.

But the gentleman was not prepared to confirm this optimistic view of the case. He simply sat staring at the ground between his feet. At length he lifted his head and looked Felipe slowly up and down.

“Who stopped the horses?” he asked. “A man in a white shirt.”

“It was Tomaso of the Mill,” answered the widow, who would have spoken sooner if she had had her breath. “He washes his own,” she added, anxious to say a good word for a neighbour.

Tomaso should, of course, have come forward and bowed. But Tomaso's manners were not of a showy description. He was helping the driver to repair the reins, and paused at this moment to remove the perspiration from his forehead with two fingers, which he subsequently wiped on the seam of his trousers.

“He!” cried the fat man sitting on the wall.

One could see that he was a business man; for he had the curt manner of the counting-house.

“He, Tomaso!” added the widow Navarro, in a shrill voice.

And Tomaso came slowly forward.

“Your name?” said the man of business.

“Tomaso.”

“Tomaso what?”

“Tomaso of the Mill.” And his face fell a little when the fat man produced a pocket-book and wrote the name down with a shaking hand. The action rather savoured of the police and the law, and Tomaso did not like it.

The stout man leant forward with his chin in the palm of his hand and reflected for some moments. He was singularly reflective, and seemed to be making a mental calculation.

“See here,” he said at length, looking at Tomaso with quick business-like eyes. He was beginning to recover his colour now. “See here, I am not going to give you money--between gentlemen, eh! such things are not done. You have saved my life. Good! You are a brave man, and you risked your neck for a perfect stranger! I happen to be a rich man, and my life is of some value. I came from Barcelona to Majorca on business--business with a good profit. If I had gone over there”--he paused, and jerked his thumb towards the blue and hazy space that lay below them--“the transaction would have fallen through. You have enabled me, by your prompt action, to return to Palma this evening and sign the papers connected with this affair. Good! You are therefore entitled to a commission on the profit that I shall make. I have reckoned it out. It amounts to ten thousand pesetas--a modest fortune, eh?”

Tomaso nodded his head. He had always known that it would come. The widow Navarro threw up her eyes, and in a whisper called the attention of her own special black-letter saint to this business. Rosa was glancing surreptitiously at Felipe, who, to do him justice, was smiling on the old man with much appreciation.

“You see what I am,” continued the man of business, tapping his exuberant waistcoat; “I am fat and I am sixty-seven. When I return to Palma, I shall notify to a lawyer that I leave to you, 'Tomaso of the Mill,' ten thousand pesetas, to be paid as soon after my death as possible. At Barcelona I shall put the matter into legal form with my own notary there.”

He rose from his seat on the wall and held out his thick white hand, which Tomaso took, and they shook hands gravely.

“As between gentlemen, eh?” said he; “as between gentlemen.”

Then he walked slowly to the other side of the road, where the driver was engaged in drawing his carriage out of the ditch.

“I will enter your malediction of a carriage,” he said, “but you must lead the horses to the bottom of the hill.”

The carriage went slowly on its way, while the others, after watching it turn the corner, returned to the Venta. In the twinkling of an eye Tomaso's fortune had come. And he had won it with his own hands, precisely as the gipsy from Granada had predicted. The tale, moreover, is true, and any one can verify it who will take the trouble to go to Palma de Mallorca, where half a dozen independent witnesses heard the prediction made at a stall in the crowded and narrow market-place nearly six months before the new Miramar road was completed.