Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories Part 13

"It may seem out of the way to you," I said, without looking up from my book. "But it does not do so to the people who live here."

"D--d slow lot, I call them," he muttered. He lighted a cigar and stood looking at me for some time and then he went away.

It was about this time that Carl von Mendebach fought his first student duel, and he was kind enough to ask me to be his surgeon. It was, of course, no quarrel of his own, but a point of honour between two clubs; and Carl was selected to represent his "corps." He was delighted, and the little slit in his cheek which resulted from the encounter gave him infinite satisfaction. I had been elected to the "corps" too, and wore my cap and colours with considerable pride. But, being an Englishman, I was never asked to fight. I did not then, and I do not now, put forward any opinion on student duelling. My opinion would make no difference, and there is much to be said on both sides.

It was a hard winter, and I know few colder places than Gottingen. An ice fete was organized by the University. I believe Carl and I were among the most energetic of the organizers. I wish I had never had anything to do with it.

I remember to this day the pleasure of skating with Lisa's warmly gloved little hands in my own--her small furred form touching me lightly each time we swung over to the left on the outside edge. I saw Andrew Smallie once or twice. Once he winked at me, knowingly, as I pa.s.sed him with Lisa--and I hated him for it. That man almost spoilt Gottingen for me.

Britons are no friends of mine out of their own country. They never get over the fallacy that everywhere except London is an out-of-the-way place where nothing matters.

As the evening wore on, some of the revellers became noisy in a harmless German way. They began to sing part songs with a skill which is not heard out of the Fatherland. Parties of young men and maidens joined hands and swung round the lake in waltz time to the strain of the regimental band.

Lisa was tired, so she sought a seat with the General, leaving Carl and me to practise complicated figures. They found a seat close to us--a seat somewhat removed from the lamps. In the dusk it was difficult to distinguish between the townspeople and the gentlefolk.

We were absorbed in our attempts when I heard a voice I knew--and hated.

"Here, you, little girl in the fur jacket--come and have a turn with me," it was saying in loud, rasping, intoxicated tones.

I turned sharply. Smallie was standing in front of Lisa with a leer in his eyes. She was looking up at him--puzzled, frightened--not understanding English. The General was obesely dumfounded.

"Come along--my dear," Andrew Smallie went on. He reached out his hand, and, grasping her wrist, tried to drag her towards him.

Then I went for him. I am, as I have confessed, a small man. But if a man on skates goes for another, he gathers a certain impetus. I gave it to him with my left, and Andrew Smallie slid along the ice after he had fallen.

The General hustled Lisa away, muttering oaths beneath his great white moustache.

When Andrew Smallie picked himself up, Carl von Mendebach was standing over him.

"Tell him," said Carl in German, "that that was my sister."

I told Smallie.

Then Carl von Mendebach slowly drew off his fur glove and boxed Smallie heavily on the ear so that he rolled over sideways.

"Golossa-a-l," muttered Von Mendebach, as we went away hurriedly together.

The next morning Carl sent an English-speaking student with a challenge to Andrew Smallie. I wrote a note to my compatriot, telling him that although it was not our habit in England, he would do well to accept the challenge or to leave Gottingen at once. Carl stood over me while I wrote the letter.

"Tell him," he said, "where he can procure fencing lessons."

I gave Smallie the name of the best fencing-master in Gottingen. Then we called for beer and awaited the return of our messenger. The student came back looking grave and pale.

"He accepts," he said. "But--"

"Well!" we both exclaimed.

"He names pistols."

"What?" I cried. Carl laughed suddenly. We had never thought of such a thing. Duelling with pistols is forbidden. It is never dreamt of among German students.

"Ah--all right!" said Carl. "If he wishes it."

I at once wrote a note to Smallie, telling him that the thing was impossible. My messenger was sent back without an answer. I wrote, offering to fight Carl myself with the usual light sword or the sabre, in his name and for him. To this I received no answer. I went round to his rooms and was refused admittance.

The next morning at five--before it was light--Carl and I started off on foot for a little forest down by the river. At six o'clock Andrew Smallie arrived. He was accompanied by an Einjahriger--a German who had lived in England before he came home to serve his year in the army.

We did not know much about it. Carl laughed as I put him in position.

The fresh pink of his cheek--like the complexion of a healthy girl--never faded for a moment.

"When I've done with him," cried Smallie, "I'll fight you."

We placed our men. The German soldier gave the word. Carl von Mendebach went down heavily.

He was still smiling--with a strange surprise on his simple face.

"Little man," he said, "he has. .h.i.t me."

He lay quite still while I quickly loosened his coat. Then suddenly his breath caught.

"Golossa-a-l!" he muttered. His eyes glazed. He was dead.

I looked up and saw Smallie walking quickly away alone. The Einjahriger was kneeling beside me.

I have never seen or heard of Andrew Smallie since. I am a grey-haired man now. I have had work to do in every war of my day. I have been wounded--I walk very lame. But I still hope to see Andrew Smallie--perhaps in a country where I can hold him to his threat; if it is only for the remembrance of five minutes that I had with Lisa when I went back to Gottingen that cold winter morning.

THE MULE

"Si je vis, c'est bien; si je meurs, c'est bien."

"Ai-i-ieah," the people cried, as Juan Quereno pa.s.sed--the cry of the muleteers, in fact. And this was considered an excellent joke. It had been a joke in the country-side for nearly twenty years; one of perhaps half a dozen, for the uneducated mind is slow to comprehend, and slower to forget. Some one had nicknamed Juan Quereno the "Mule" when he was at school, and Spain, like Italy and parts of Provence, is a country where men have two names--the baptismal, and the so-called. Indeed, the custom is so universal, that official records must needs take cognizance of it, and grave Government papers are made out in the name of so-and-so, "named the monkey."

There were, after all, worse by-names in the village than the Mule, which is, as many know, a willing enough beast if taken the right way.

If taken in the wrong--well, one must not take him in the wrong way, and there is an end of it! A mule will suddenly stop because, it would appear, he has something on his mind and desires to think it out then and there. And the man who raises a stick is, of course, a fool. Any one knows that. There is nothing for it but to stand and watch his ears, which are a little set back, and cry, "Ai-i-ieah," patiently and respectfully, until the spirit moves him to go on. And then the mule will move on, slowly at first, without enthusiasm, a quality which, by the way, is, of all the animals, only to be found in the horse and the dog.

The quick-witted who had dealings with Quereno knew, therefore, by his name what manner of man this was, and dealt with him accordingly. Juan Quereno was himself a muleteer, and in even such a humble capacity as scrambling behind a beast of burden over a rocky range of mountains and through a stream or two, a man may make for himself a small reputation in his small world. Juan Quereno was, namely, a Government muleteer, and carried the mails over nineteen chaotic miles of rock and river. When the mails were delayed owing, it was officially announced, to heavy snow or rain in the mountains, the delay never occurred on Quereno's etapa.

For nine years, winter and summer, storm and s.h.i.+ne, he got his mails through, backwards and forwards, sleeping one night at San Celoni, the next at Puente de Rey. Such was Juan Quereno, "a stupid enough fellow,"

the democratic schoolmaster of San Celoni said, with a shrug of his shoulders and a wave of the cigarette which he always carried half-smoked and unlighted in his fingers.

The schoolmaster was, nevertheless, pleasant enough when the Mule, clean-shaven and shy, with a shrinking look in his steady, black eyes, asked one evening if he could speak to him alone.

"But yes--amigo!" he replied; "but yes." And he drew aside on the bench that stands at the schoolhouse door. "Sit down."

The Mule sat down, leant heavily against the wall, and thrust out first one heavy foot and then the other. Then he sat forward with his elbows on his knees, and looked at his dusty boots. His face was tanned a deep brown--a stolid face--not indicative of much intelligence perhaps, not spiritual, but not bad on the other hand, which is something in a world that abounds in bad faces. He glanced sideways at the schoolmaster, and moistened his lips with his tongue, openly, after the manner of the people.