At this last thought tears started to the poor man’s eyes. He halted the ass to calm himself. He dried his eyes, gave a deep sigh, took out his smoking set, bit and rolled a cigarette of black tobacco. Then he grasped his flint, tinder, and steel, and, after striking a few times, succeeded in lighting it.
At that moment he heard sounds of steps in the direction of the road nearly three hundred yards away. “What a fool I am!” he muttered. “Suppose the watch were out in search of me and I had happened to strike a light!” He covered the light and dismounted and hid behind the ass. But the ass evidently took another view of the situation and gave off a bray of satisfaction. “Ah, drat you!” cried Tio Lucas, trying to close the beast’s mouth with his bare hands. “We’re lost!” he told himself. The proverb well says: “The worst curse of all is to deal with brute beasts!” With this thought he remounted, urged the ass into motion, and galloped off in the opposite direction from that from which the answering bray had sounded.
Strangely enough, the unknown who was riding the other ass must have been just as alarmed as Tio Lucas himself. Or so one might think, since this person, whoever it was, also withdrew from the roadway, doubtless fearing that Tio Lucas was an Alguacil in the Corregidor’s service, and scuttled off over the arable land on the other side.
The Miller rode on his way muttering and grumbling: “What a night! What a world! What a turn my life has taken during the past hour! Alguacils out on pimps’ errands! Alcaldes conspiring against my honour, asses braying at the wrong moment, and here, here inside me a miserable heart that has dared to doubt the noblest woman that ever God created! Dear God! Grant that I soon reach home and find my Frasquita waiting!”
On and on went Tio Lucas across sown fields and copses – till at length, at something near eleven o’clock, he arrived without mishap at the mill.
“But what’s this?” He ground his teeth. The door of the mill stood open!
20
Doubt and Certainty
It was open… and, on setting out that night, he had heard his wife shut, latch, and bolt it. And so no one but she could have opened it. But how? When? Why? Had she been taken in by some trick? Overawed by an official order? Or had she indeed opened it of her own free will in connivance with the Corregidor?
He wondered what next would meet his eye. What awaited him inside the house? Had Frasquita run away? Had someone run off with her? Was she dead? Or in the arms of his enemy? “The Corregidor felt sure I couldn’t possibly be back till morning,” he muttered gloomily. “The village Alcalde’s orders were to keep me there in irons if need be.” Was all this known to Frasquita? Was she in the plot? Or had she been the victim of a ruse, of violence, of an outrage?
All these torturing reflections passed through his mind in the short time it took to cross the little courtyard of the climbing vine.
The door of the house too was open. The first room – as is the way in country houses – was the kitchen. But the kitchen was empty. A huge fire was burning in the grate – the grate which he had left quenched and cold, and which never used to be fired till well into December! And, to crown everything, from one of the hooks on the dresser hung a lit lantern…
What did it all mean? And how could all these signs of company and life be reconciled with the deathly silence reigning through the house?
What had become of his wife?
At that very moment Tio Lucas’s eye lighted on some garments hanging over the backs of two or three chairs placed around the fire. He stared fixedly at these, then he gave a groan so deep that it stuck in his throat and died into an inarticulate choking sob.
Poor man, he thought he was suffocating and raised his hands to his throat. Livid, convulsed, with staring eyes he regarded that array of clothing, struck with such horror as a condemned criminal feels on being confronted with the grave freshly dug for him. For what he saw there were the crimson cape, the three-cornered hat, the dove-grey coat and undercoat, the black silk breeches, the white stockings, the buckled shoes, the cane, rapier, and gloves of the accursed Corregidor… What he gazed upon there meant for him the culmination of ignominy, the end of honour, the ruin of all his life’s hopes.
The formidable blunderbuss still lay in the same corner where Frasquita had let it fall two hours before. Tio Lucas leapt upon it tigerishly and clutched it to his chest. He probed the barrel with the ramrod and saw that it was loaded. He looked at the gunflint and saw that it was in its proper place. He turned then to the stairs leading to the room in which for so many years he had slept with Frasquita, and muttered in a low tone: “That’s where they are!” He advanced a step in that direction, but the next second paused to look all round and make sure no one was watching. “Not a soul!” he whispered. “Save God Himself… and He – it is His will!”
Strengthened thus in his purpose, he was about to take another step forwards when his wandering eye lit upon a folded paper lying on the table. Seeing, lunging at it, and clutching it up with both hands were the work of a moment. The paper was the letter of appointment of Frasquita’s nephew, signed by Don Eugenio de Zuniga y Ponce de Leon!
“This was the price for which she sold herself!” Lucas thought, thrusting the paper into his mouth to stifle his cries and feed his fury. “I always feared she loved her own kindred better than me. Ah! We had no children – that’s the cause of it all!” And the poor man was within an ace of bursting into tears once more.
Then his anger boiled up anew and he made a fiendish gesture which plainly said: “Upstairs with you, man! Upstairs!”
He started climbing the stairs, one hand touching the stair boards, the other gripping the blunderbuss, with that shameful paper held between his teeth. As if to bear out his natural suspicions, on coming in sight of the bedroom door – which was closed – he saw a few rays of light between the joints of the boards and through the keyhole.
“This is where they are!” he said again. And he stopped for a second perhaps to digest this new draught of bitterness. Then he went on up the stairs, climbing till he reached the bedroom door. From inside the room not a sound could be heard. “Suppose there’s nobody there!” hope timidly suggested.
Just then – unlucky man! – he heard someone cough inside the room. The asthmatic cough of the Corregidor! There was no longer room for doubt! Not a straw remained for the lost man to clutch at!
Lucas grinned in the darkness – grinned horribly. It made his face gleam for a moment in the shadows like a lightning flash. What are all the flames that sinners feel in Hell to the fire that sears at times the heart of a living man?
Yet Lucas – of such rare substance was his nature – began to feel calm again as soon as he heard his enemy cough.
Reality wounds less keenly than doubt. As he himself had declared to Frasquita, immediately he lost that inmost faith which was the main prop on which all his life rested, he began to change into a different man.
As with Shakespeare’s Moor of Venice – with whom in describing his character we have already compared him – disillusionment was killing almost with one thrust all the love inside him, transfiguring at one swoop the very nature of his soul and causing him to view the world as a region new and unfamiliar in which he had but newly arrived. The only difference was that Tio Lucas had a temperament less tragic, less austere and more self-centred than Othello’s.
A strange thing, but one peculiar to such situations! Doubt – or perhaps hope, which in this case is the same thing – still came back to torture him for a moment…
“What if I am mistaken!” he thought. “What if it were Frasquita coughing!”
Under the weight of his misfortune he was forgetting that he had seen the Corregidor’s clothes beside the fire, that he had found the mill door open, that he had read the proof of his infamy…
He stopped and looked through the keyhole, trembling with uncertainty and distress.
The angle of vision was o
nly wide enough to include a narrow segment of the room – all around the bedhead… Yet right in that small segment could be seen one end of the pillows and on the pillows the Corregidor’s head!
Once more a devilish grin contracted the Miller’s face. An onlooker might have thought he was happy again. “I have got to the truth at last! Now let us think,” he muttered, calmly straightening himself. And he went down the stairs again as cautiously as he had come up them.
“The matter is a delicate one – I must give it proper thought. I’ve time and enough for everything!” he whispered to himself as he descended. Reaching the kitchen, he sat down in the middle of the room and buried his forehead in his hands. He stayed thus a long time – then he was roused from his thought by feeling a light blow on one foot. It was the blunderbuss that had slid down from his knees. He took it for a sign.
“No! I say, No!” he said fiercely, taking aim with the weapon at some imaginary target. “You won’t do for me! Everyone would be sorry for them – and they’d hang me! A Corregidor is involved – no less! To kill a Corregidor is still a most heinous offence in Spain. They’d say I killed him from groundless jealousy and then stripped him and put him in my bed… They’d say too that I killed my wife from mere suspicion! And they’d hang me! They’d surely hang me! Yet I should show myself of poor spirit and wit if at the close of my life I were to be pitied! They’d all laugh at me! They’d say my misfortunes were only to be expected – I being a hunchback and she so beautiful. No! What I must have is revenge, and after my revenge I must gloat, curl my lip, laugh; – yes, laugh out loud, laugh at everyone so that no one shall ever make fun of this hooped back of mine which I have contrived to make almost a thing of envy, but which would look grotesque enough on a gallows!”
In this vein Tio Lucas proceeded, perhaps not fully alive to where it was leading, and, now quite obsessed, picked up the pistol and began to pace about with arms clasped behind him and head lowered as if looking on the floor, on the earth, where lay the ruins of his life, for a way to avenge himself; as if intent on embodying his vengeance in some low and ludicrous jest at the expense of his wife and the Corregidor. This he did instead of seeking relief in justice, in a duel, or in forgiveness, in pious resignation, as, in his shoes, any other man would have done – any man, that is, of a temper less rebellious than his to any prompting of nature, humanity, and his own better feelings.
Suddenly his eyes stopped at the Corregidor’s garments. Soon his pacing stopped too. Then by degrees there came over his face a look of pleasure, a merriment, an exultation which defied analysis. He began to laugh, to laugh immoderately in great gusts of laughter, but soundlessly so that they should not hear him upstairs. He shook all over like an epileptic and at the end was obliged to sink into a chair till the convulsion of bitter enjoyment passed.
As soon as he recovered he started to pull off his clothes with feverish haste. He put them all on the same chairs where the Corregidor’s clothes were lying. Then he put on all that gentleman’s garments from the buckled shoes to the three-cornered hat. He fastened on the rapier, flung the scarlet cape around his shoulders, and, taking up the cane and gloves, went out of the mill and turned in the direction of the city, swaying just like the Corregidor and repeating from time to time words which summarized all that was in his mind: “The Corregidor’s own lady – she too could tempt a man!”
21
On Guard, My Fine Gentleman!
We leave tio lucas for the present and pass to events at the mill between the time that Señora Frasquita was left alone there and the time when her husband came face to face with such an unfamiliar and shattering situation.
An hour had passed since Tio Lucas had gone off with Tonuelo. His anxious wife, who had made up her mind to sit up for her husband and was knitting in her bedroom upstairs, all at once heard pitiful cries close outside the house from the direction of the millstream.
“Help! Help! I’m drowning! Frasquita!” It was a man’s voice raised with a dreadful note of desperation.
“Suppose it’s Lucas!” Frasquita thought, filled, naturally, with terrible anxiety.
In the bedroom was a little door – the one Weasel had mentioned – which opened right over the middle of the millstream. Frasquita hastily threw this open, not recognizing the appealing voice, and came face to face with the Corregidor just as he was scrambling out, dripping all over, from the racing waters.
“God forgive me! God forgive me!” stammered the old villain. “I thought I was drowning!”
“How’s this? You! What does this mean? How dare you? What do you want here at this hour?” cried Frasquita, more indignant than afraid, though instinctively she backed away.
“Hush! Hush, woman!” hissed the Corregidor, painfully hauling himself up into the room after her. “I’ll tell you the whole story. I’ve been within an ace of drowning. The water swept me away like a feather! Just look at the state I’m in!”
“You’ll have to leave this house! You must go!” Frasquita cried in a high voice. “I don’t want your explanations. I understand everything only too well! Suppose you were drowning? Did I ask you to come? Ah! What a monstrous thing! It was for this then that you had my husband called away!”
“Woman! Woman! Listen to me!”
“I won’t listen! Be off this instant, my Lord Corregidor! Off with you, or I won’t answer for your life!”
“What do you say?”
“It’s exactly as you heard! My husband may not be here but I know how to take care of myself! Off with you where you came from – if you don’t want me to push you back in the water with my own hands!”
“My dear! My dear! Don’t shout like that – I’m not deaf!” said the old rake. “I’ve a good reason for coming at this time. I come to release Tio Lucas who was arrested by mistake by some country Alcalde. But, first of all, I must ask you to dry these clothes of mine. I’m drenched to the bone!”
“Be off, I tell you!”
“Hush, you silly woman! Don’t you realize? – Look, here I bring your nephew’s appointment. Light the light and we’ll talk. Now! While my clothes are drying I’ll bed down in this room.”
“Indeed! You say you came here for my sake? You say that such-and-such was why you had my Lucas arrested? And you bring your letter of appointment and everything? Merciful heaven! What on earth does this old fright take me for?”
“Frasquita! I am the Corregidor!”
“I wouldn’t care if you were the King! It means nothing to me! I am my husband’s wife and mistress of my house! Do you think I’m afraid of any Corregidor? I can go to Madrid or the ends of the earth to get redress against the insolent old man who drags his high office in the dirt like this! Or – what is more to the point – tomorrow I can throw on my mantilla and go and see her Ladyship your wife!”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” cried the Corregidor, losing patience, or changing his tactics. “You’ll do nothing of the sort! I’ll shoot you if you persist in shutting your ears to reason…”
“Shoot me!” repeated Frasquita in a curiously low voice.
“Yes, shoot you… And, even if you did what you propose it wouldn’t do me the least harm. I happen to have dropped the hint in the city that I would be out tonight after malefactors… Don’t be foolish then. Be nice to me!… I adore you!”
“My Lord Corregidor, did you say ‘shoot me’?” Frasquita asked again and again, holding her arms behind her and thrusting her body forwards as if about to fling herself on the enemy.
“Yes, if you don’t give over I’ll shoot you, and so make an end of your threats – and your accursed beauty too…” A sudden tremor of fear shook the Corregidor and he pulled out a pair of pocket pistols.
“So then! Pistols too! And in the other pocket my nephew’s appointment!” Frasquita looked him up and down. “Then, sir, the choice is made. Wait a moment – I’ll light a light.” She made rapi
dly for the stairs and descended them in three bounds.
The Corregidor took up the light and followed her anxious that she should not escape; but he was obliged to take the stairs more slowly. So he reached the kitchen below just in time to run full tilt into Frasquita on her way back.
“So! You said you were going to shoot me, eh?” said the dauntless woman, taking a step back. “Well then, on guard, my fine gentleman! I’m ready for you!” And she thrust under his nose the formidable blunderbuss that has already figured in the story.
“Stop, wretched woman! What are you going to do?” the Corregidor cried, terror-stricken. “My talk of shooting was only a joke! Look – the pistols are not loaded. On the other hand, what I said about the appointment was true… Here you are… Take it! A little present from me… It’s yours. No return is looked for – none, absolutely none!” Trembling he laid the document down on the table.
“Good!” said Frasquita. “Tomorrow it will do to light the fire for cooking my husband’s breakfast. I don’t want anything from you at all. If my nephew ever does leave Estella it will be to come and stamp on the wicked hand that wrote his name on that disgraceful paper! There! I’ve had my say. Now get out of my house! Take yourself off! Away with you! At once!… I feel my temper rising!”
The Three-Cornered Hat Page 6