Carmen Part 5

"I looked up. There was Carmen in front of me.

"'Well, _mi payllo_, are you still angry with me?' she said. 'I must care for you in spite of myself, for since you left me I don't know what has been the matter with me. Look you, it is I who ask you to come to the _Calle del Candilejo_, now!'

"So we made it up: but Carmen's temper was like the weather in our country. The storm is never so close, in our mountains, as when the sun is at its brightest. She had promised to meet me again at Dorotea's, but she didn't come.

"And Dorotea began telling me again that she had gone off to Portugal about some gipsy business.

"As experience had already taught me how much of that I was to believe, I went about looking for Carmen wherever I thought she might be, and twenty times in every day I walked through the _Calle del Candilejo_.

One evening I was with Dorotea, whom I had almost tamed by giving her a gla.s.s of anisette now and then, when Carmen walked in, followed by a young man, a lieutenant in our regiment.

"'Get away at once,' she said to me in Basque. I stood there, dumfounded, my heart full of rage.

"'What are you doing here?' said the lieutenant to me. 'Take yourself off--get out of this.'

"I couldn't move a step. I felt paralyzed. The officer grew angry, and seeing I did not go out, and had not even taken off my forage cap, he caught me by the collar and shook me roughly. I don't know what I said to him. He drew his sword, and I unsheathed mine. The old woman caught hold of my arm, and the lieutenant gave me a wound on the forehead, of which I still bear the scar. I made a step backward, and with one jerk of my elbow I threw old Dorotea down. Then, as the lieutenant still pressed me, I turned the point of my sword against his body and he ran upon it. Then Carmen put out the lamp and told Dorotea, in her own language, to take to flight. I fled into the street myself, and began running along, I knew not whither. It seemed to me that some one was following me. When I came to myself I discovered that Carmen had never left me.

"'Great stupid of a canary-bird!' she said, 'you never make anything but blunders. And, indeed, you know I told you I should bring you bad luck.

But come, there's a cure for everything when you have a Fleming from Rome* for your love. Begin by rolling this handkerchief round your head, and throw me over that belt of yours. Wait for me in this alley--I'll be back in two minutes.

* _Flamenco de Roma_, a slang term for the gipsies. Roma does not stand for the Eternal City, but for the nation of the _romi_, or the married folk--a name applied by the gipsies to themselves. The first gipsies seen in Spain probably came from the Low Countries, hence their name of _Flemings_.

"She disappeared, and soon came back bringing me a striped cloak which she had gone to fetch, I knew not whence. She made me take off my uniform, and put on the cloak over my s.h.i.+rt. Thus dressed, and with the wound on my head bound round with the handkerchief, I was tolerably like a Valencian peasant, many of whom come to Seville to sell a drink they make out of '_chufas_.'* Then she took me to a house very much like Dorotea's, at the bottom of a little lane. Here she and another gipsy woman washed and dressed my wounds, better than any army surgeon could have done, gave me something, I know not what, to drink, and finally made me lie down on a mattress, on which I went to sleep.

* A bulbous root, out of which rather a pleasant beverage is manufactured.

"Probably the woman had mixed one of the soporific drugs of which they know the secret in my drink, for I did not wake up till very late the next day. I was rather feverish, and had a violent headache. It was some time before the memory of the terrible scene in which I had taken part on the previous night came back to me. After having dressed my wound, Carmen and her friend, squatting on their heels beside my mattress, exchanged a few words of '_chipe calli_,' which appeared to me to be something in the nature of a medical consultation. Then they both of them a.s.sured me that I should soon be cured, but that I must get out of Seville at the earliest possible moment, for that, if I was caught there, I should most undoubtedly be shot.

"'My boy,' said Carmen to me, 'you'll have to do something. Now that the king won't give you either rice or haddock* you'll have to think of earning your livelihood. You're too stupid for stealing _a pastesas_.**

But you are brave and active. If you have the pluck, take yourself off to the coast and turn smuggler. Haven't I promised to get you hanged?

That's better than being shot, and besides, if you set about it properly, you'll live like a prince as long as the _minons_*** and the coast-guard don't lay their hands on your collar.'

* The ordinary food of a Spanish soldier.

** _Ustilar a pastesas_, to steal cleverly, to purloin without violence.

*** A sort of volunteer corps.

"In this attractive guise did this fiend of a girl describe the new career she was suggesting to me,--the only one, indeed, remaining, now I had incurred the penalty of death. Shall I confess it, sir? She persuaded me without much difficulty. This wild and dangerous life, it seemed to me, would bind her and me more closely together. In future, I thought, I should be able to make sure of her love.

"I had often heard talk of certain smugglers who travelled about Andalusia, each riding a good horse, with his mistress behind him and his blunderbuss in his fist. Already I saw myself trotting up and down the world, with a pretty gipsy behind me. When I mentioned that notion to her, she laughed till she had to hold her sides, and vowed there was nothing in the world so delightful as a night spent camping in the open air, when each _rom_ retired with his _romi_ beneath their little tent, made of three hoops with a blanket thrown across them.

"'If I take to the mountains,' said I to her, 'I shall be sure of you.

There'll be no lieutenant there to go shares with me.'

"'Ha! ha! you're jealous!' she retorted, 'so much the worse for you. How can you be such a fool as that? Don't you see I must love you, because I have never asked you for money?'

"When she said that sort to thing I could have strangled her.

"To shorten the story, sir, Carmen procured me civilian clothes, disguised in which I got out of Seville without being recognised. I went to Jerez, with a letter from Pastia to a dealer in anisette whose house was the smugglers' meeting-place. I was introduced to them, and their leader, surnamed _El Dancaire_, enrolled me in his gang. We started for Gaucin, where I found Carmen, who had told me she would meet me there.

In all these expeditions she acted as spy for our gang, and she was the best that ever was seen. She had now just returned from Gibraltar, and had already arranged with the captain of a s.h.i.+p for a cargo of English goods which we were to receive on the coast. We went to meet it near Estepona. We hid part in the mountains, and laden with the rest, we proceeded to Ronda. Carmen had gone there before us. It was she again who warned us when we had better enter the town. This first journey, and several subsequent ones, turned out well. I found the smuggler's life pleasanter than a soldier's: I could give presents to Carmen, I had money, and I had a mistress. I felt little or no remorse, for, as the gipsies say, 'The happy man never longs to scratch his itch.' We were made welcome everywhere, my comrades treated me well, and even showed me a certain respect. The reason of this was that I had killed my man, and that some of them had no exploit of that description on their conscience. But what I valued most in my new life was that I often saw Carmen. She showed me more affection than ever; nevertheless, she would never admit, before my comrades, that she was my mistress, and she had even made me swear all sorts of oaths that I would not say anything about her to them. I was so weak in that creature's hands, that I obeyed all her whims. And besides, this was the first time she had revealed herself as possessing any of the reserve of a well-conducted woman, and I was simple enough to believe she had really cast off her former habits.

"Our gang, which consisted of eight or ten men, was hardly ever together except at decisive moments, and we were usually scattered by twos and threes about the towns and villages. Each one of us pretended to have some trade. One was a tinker, another was a groom; I was supposed to peddle haberdashery, but I hardly ever showed myself in large places, on account of my unlucky business at Seville. One day, or rather one night, we were to meet below Veger. _El Dancaire_ and I got there before the others.

"'We shall soon have a new comrade,' said he. 'Carmen has just managed one of her best tricks. She has contrived the escape of her _rom_, who was in the _presidio_ at Tarifa.'

"I was already beginning to understand the gipsy language, which nearly all my comrades spoke, and this word _rom_ startled me.

"What! her husband? Is she married, then?' said I to the captain.

"'Yes!' he replied, 'married to Garcia _el Tuerto_*--as cunning a gipsy as she is herself. The poor fellow has been at the galleys. Carmen has wheedled the surgeon of the _presidio_ to such good purpose that she has managed to get her _rom_ out of prison. Faith! that girl's worth her weight in gold. For two years she has been trying to contrive his escape, but she could do nothing until the authorities took it into their heads to change the surgeon. She soon managed to come to an understanding with this new one.'

* One-eyed man.

"You may imagine how pleasant this news was for me. I soon saw Garcia _el Tuerto_. He was the very ugliest brute that was ever nursed in gipsydom. His skin was black, his soul was blacker, and he was altogether the most thorough-paced ruffian I ever came across in my life. Carmen arrived with him, and when she called him her _rom_ in my presence, you should have seen the eyes she made at me, and the faces she pulled whenever Garcia turned his head away.

"I was disgusted, and never spoke a word to her all night. The next morning we had made up our packs, and had already started, when we became aware that we had a dozen hors.e.m.e.n on our heels. The braggart Andalusians, who had been boasting they would murder every one who came near them, cut a pitiful figure at once. There was a general rout. _El Dancaire_, Garcia, a good-looking fellow from Ecija, who was called _El Remendado_, and Carmen herself, kept their wits about them. The rest forsook the mules and took to the gorges, where the horses could not follow them. There was no hope of saving the mules, so we hastily unstrapped the best part of our booty, and taking it on our shoulders, we tried to escape through the rocks down the steepest of the slopes. We threw our packs down in front of us and followed them as best we could, slipping along on our heels. Meanwhile the enemy fired at us. It was the first time I had ever heard bullets whistling around me and I didn't mind it very much. When there's a woman looking on, there's no particular merit in snapping one's fingers at death. We all escaped except the poor _Remendado_, who received a bullet wound in the loins. I threw away my pack and tried to lift him up.

"'Idiot!' shouted Garcia, 'what do we want with offal! Finish him off, and don't lose the cotton stockings!'

"'Drop him!' cried Carmen.

"I was so exhausted that I was obliged to lay him down for a moment under a rock. Garcia came up, and fired his blunderbuss full into his face. 'He'd be a clever fellow who recognised him now!' said he, as he looked at the face, cut to pieces by a dozen slugs.

"There, sir; that's the delightful sort of life I've led! That night we found ourselves in a thicket, worn out with fatigue, with nothing to eat, and ruined by the loss of our mules. What do you think that devil Garcia did? He pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket and began playing games with _El Dancaire_ by the light of a fire they kindled.

Meanwhile I was lying down, staring at the stars, thinking of _El Remendado_, and telling myself I would just as lief be in his place.

Carmen was squatting down near me, and every now and then she would rattle her castanets and hum a tune. Then, drawing close to me, as if she would have whispered in my ear, she kissed me two or three times over almost against my will.

"'You are a devil,' said I to her.

"'Yes,' she replied.

"After a few hours' rest, she departed to Gaucin, and the next morning a little goatherd brought us some food. We stayed there all that day, and in the evening we moved close to Gaucin. We were expecting news from Carmen, but none came. After daylight broke we saw a muleteer attending a well-dressed woman with a parasol, and a little girl who seemed to be her servant. Said Garcia, 'There go two mules and two women whom St.

Nicholas has sent us. I would rather have had four mules, but no matter.

I'll do the best I can with these.'

"He took his blunderbuss, and went down the pathway, hiding himself among the brushwood.

"We followed him, _El Dancaire_ and I keeping a little way behind. As soon as the woman saw us, instead of being frightened--and our dress would have been enough to frighten any one--she burst into a fit of loud laughter. 'Ah! the _lillipendi_! They take me for an _erani_!'*

* "The idiots, they take me for a smart lady!"

"It was Carmen, but so well disguised that if she had spoken any other language I should never have recognised her. She sprang off her mule, and talked some time in an undertone with _El Dancaire_ and Garcia. Then she said to me:

"'Canary-bird, we shall meet again before you're hanged. I'm off to Gibraltar on gipsy business--you'll soon have news of me.'

"We parted, after she had told us of a place where we should find shelter for some days. That girl was the providence of our gang. We soon received some money sent by her, and a piece of news which was still more useful to us--to the effect that on a certain day two English lords would travel from Gibraltar to Granada by a road she mentioned. This was a word to the wise. They had plenty of good guineas. Garcia would have killed them, but _El Dancaire_ and I objected. All we took from them, besides their s.h.i.+rts, which we greatly needed, was their money and their watches.

"Sir, a man may turn rogue in sheer thoughtlessness. You lose your head over a pretty girl, you fight another man about her, there is a catastrophe, you have to take to the mountains, and you turn from a smuggler into a robber before you have time to think about it. After this matter of the English lords, we concluded that the neighbourhood of Gibraltar would not be healthy for us, and we plunged into the _Sierra de Ronda_. You once mentioned Jose-Maria to me. Well, it was there I made acquaintance with him. He always took his mistress with him on his expeditions. She was a pretty girl, quiet, modest, well-mannered, you never heard a vulgar word from her, and she was quite devoted to him.