The Spanish Cavalier: A Story of Seville

The Spanish Cavalier: A Story of Seville

CHAPTER I.

THE COUNTING-HOUSE

He has not made his appearance in the office to-day!" exclaimed Mr. Passmore, the working partner in an ironware manufactory in Seville. "If this Señor Don Alcala de Aguilera think it beneath his dignity to keep faith with his employer, and stick to his business, I'll find some one else who will. The high and mighty caballero may smoke his cigar, or take his siesta, like the rest of his lazy nation; I'll not disturb him, though his nap should last till the Moors come again!" Mr. Passmore rubbed his heated face with his spotted handkerchief as he concluded his speech, for the fiery sun of Andalusia had not yet sunk, and the small office-room attached to his manufactory glowed like one of his own furnaces.

"De Aguilera may have been kept away by illness, sir," suggested Lucius Lepine, a young English clerk in the employ of the manufacturer. "He appeared to be far from well yesterday, when translating the letters from Madrid."

"And a pretty hash he made of the business," exclaimed Mr. Passmore in a tone of irritation, yet unable to refrain from laughing. "The don's thoughts must have been wandering to the Plaza de Toros,1 or he would scarcely have made out that Tasco and Co. sent our firm an order for twenty dozen bulls instead of knife-blades."

"De Aguilera is not wont to make such blunders," said Lucius, who had sympathy for his fellow-clerk, partly arising from a belief that their circumstances were somewhat the same – that the proud Spaniard had been, like himself, driven by necessity to work under one who, by birth and education, belonged to a sphere much lower than their own. "I thought," continued Lepine, "that De Aguilera looked very ill."

"Ill! yes, he always looks ill – as if he fed, or rather starved, on chestnuts and raisins," interrupted Mr. Passmore, "and had never tasted a slice of good roast beef in the course of his life! I guess there's many a one of the whining beggars that beset one in the Calle de los Sierpes, that fares better than the caballero Don Aguilera. And yet, forsooth, the señor must keep his horse (a lean one, to be sure), and carry himself with a lofty air, as if he were, at the least, Secretary of State to Queen Isabella! I do believe that his worthiness never made his appearance to-day, because I offended his dignity yesterday by calling him simply 'Aguilera,' without all the fine additions to a name already too long, which Spaniards wear as their mules do tassels and fringes, I suppose, to make one forget the length of their ears!" Mr. Passmore rubbed his hands in evident enjoyment of his own joke, and laughed his peculiar, explosive laugh, which reminded his hearers of the snort of a hippopotamus rapidly repeated. Lucius was not inclined to appreciate or join in his mirth.

"By-the-by, Lepine," said the manufacturer abruptly, "would you like to go to the bull-fight to-morrow? for if so, I'll treat you to a seat, as I'm going myself. As these affairs always come off on a Sunday, there will be no business time lost."

Had the offer been an acceptable one, the coarse air of patronage with which it was made would have prevented the young Englishman from feeling grateful for an invitation so proffered. But Lepine's views of keeping the day of rest were by no means in harmony with the sickening horrors of the Plaza de Toros, and he rather coldly replied, "I thank you; but I have no wish to witness a bull-fight."

"Nor I, nor I; but just for once in a way, one must do at Rome as the Romans do," observed Mr. Passmore, as he fastened the clasp of the large ledger-book in which he had been making some entries at the end of the week. "Barbarous spectacle it is, disgraceful to any civilized people, but quite in harmony with Spanish character. A century or two ago," (Mr. Passmore was less accurate in his chronology than in his accounts,) "these people had their autos-da-fé,2 in 1868 they must have their bull-fights; fire or blood, fire or blood, the only means of rousing them up from their lazy lethargy, and keeping them wide awake for a couple of hours!" Peter Passmore, himself a sharp trader and active man of business, regarded idleness as one of the greatest of sins.

"Bull-fighting causes a waste of human life," began Lucius; but his employer cut him short.

"I don't think much of that," observed Passmore. "If a fellow choose to run the chance of getting a horn between his ribs, I'd let him have his fancy; if he's killed, there's but one fool less in the world. Ho, ho, ho! But it's a disgraceful waste of horse-flesh. Not but that the Spaniards, to do them justice, manage the thing in an economical way. They send blindfold into the circus poor brutes only fit to be made into dogs' meat, and the bull does the job of the knacker, that's all!"

An expression of disgust crossed the frank features of Lucius Lepine. He was impatient to leave the counting-house; but as to him belonged the duty of shutting up the place, he was unable to quit it till his employer should please to depart. Mr. Passmore was in a conversational mood; and while his short, thick fingers slowly tied up some bundles of papers, he went on talking, regardless either of the oppressive heat of the room or the impatient looks of his hearer.

"Spain will never be much of a country," said Passmore, "until her people learn to do their own business, manufacture their own wares, lay down their own lines, instead of making over everything that is useful to strangers. The dons leave others to cut up their meat for them, and think it condescension enough if they open their mouths to eat it! Ho, ho, ho! Idleness is the bane of this land."

"And superstition," added Lucius Lepine.

"Ay, superstition, as you justly observe. The country is eaten up by a swarm of lazy monks and friars, who tell their beads instead of tilling their ground, and who make every other day a saint's day, to give the laity an excuse for being as idle as they are. If I'd the rule here," continued Mr. Passmore, "I'd make a clean sweep of them all; turn the convents into parish unions, and clap into them all the beggars. What Spain wants to make it a fine land, as fine a country as any in Europe, is a better government, a more vigilant police, brisker trade, and – "

As the manufacturer paused, as if at a loss for words with which to wind up his oration, Lucius suggested – "a purer religion."

"Ah, there's one of your Exeter Hall notions," cried Peter Passmore, tossing down on the table the packet which he had just fastened up with a bit of red tape; "you young hot-brains are always ready to air your romantic ideas on subjects which you don't understand." Let it be observed, in passing, that young Lepine seldom uttered a dozen consecutive words on any subject whatever in the presence of his employer; but the manufacturer, probably from liking to monopolize the talking, was wont to accuse of loquacity every one with whom he conversed. "But hark'ee, young man," continued the principal of the firm, in a tone rather more dictatorial than usual, "I'd advise you, whilst you remain in Seville, to lock up your fanatical notions as tight as you would your cash-box. The Plaza is not Piccadilly, nor Isabella our good Queen Victoria. The Inquisition may not be actually catching and squeezing victims to death, as in the old times; but, as Joe Millar would say, 'The snake is scotched, not killed.' The priests, lazy as they are, will be sharp enough, in both senses of the word, if any one meddle with their profits. Don't you be playing the Don Quixote against what you are pleased to call superstition. It is not only in the Plaza de Toros that a fool may wave a red rag, go full tilt against an enemy too hard for him, and find himself caught on the horns of a dilemma. You may get yourself into grief," continued the oracular Passmore; "and I've no mind to spend time or money in fishing my clerk out of prison, if he manage to stumble into one unawares. That's no part of the bargain between us; so I give you fair warning, my lad." Taking up his hat as he ended his oration, Peter Passmore quitted the place.

Lepine saw the stout figure of his employer disappear through the doorway, and gave a sigh of relief. It was during conversations like the preceding that the young English gentleman most keenly realized the trials of his position. He was isolated from his family and friends in a foreign land, and forced to endure the companionship of a low-minded man, who regarded money-making as the great aim and end of existence. Lucius was obliged to listen with a decent appearance of respect to the advice which Passmore proffered with an assumption of superior wisdom, which was in itself offensive. It was somewhat hard for a youth, who had been one of the cleverest scholars at Rugby, to receive instruction on all kinds of subjects from a man who had never construed a line in Horace or opened a page of Cæsar.

"But what could the eldest of a family of nine do, without money, without interest, but take advantage of the first opening that presented itself to him?" mused Lepine, as, able to leave the office-room at last, he locked the heavy door behind him, and went forth into the street. "I knew that to accept the clerkship was like plunging into a river in December, and that he who would make his way thus must throw off, as a swimmer does his clothes, all consideration of personal inclination and family pride before making the plunge. But what matters it!" – thus flowed on the current of thought – "I am thankful to have the means of swimming, thankful to be no drag on a widowed mother – nay, to be able already to hold out a helping hand to the young ones. Anything is better than standing idly on the brink of the icy stream, waiting till some boat should chance to appear and ferry me across. The struggle is strengthening, the cold is bracing, and the feeling of independence is worth all that I have given up for awhile. Yes, my northern constitution may bear it; but the strain comes much harder, I fear, on poor Alcala de Aguilera. He has doubtless been brought up from childhood to regard labour as degradation, and clerk-work under a despised foreigner as but a degree better than the galleys. He has not the buoyancy of spirit with which I am blessed, and the cold which is bracing to an Englishman may bring deadly chill to a Spaniard. I must find out De Aguilera's house, and ascertain the cause of his absence to-day. Though there may be no foundation for that extraordinary report which I heard this morning, and which I cannot believe to be true, I shall not rest easy until I learn its falsehood from himself. I trust that the cavalier's Spanish courtesy will forgive my intrusion, if intrusion it be. I long to penetrate through the reserve which De Aguilera wraps around him like his mantero, and speak to him freely as man to man, in a place where we can be secure from perpetual interruptions, and unfettered by the trammels of business. The address given me was the Calle de San José, in the suburb of Triana, somewhere at the other side of the river. As I am now pretty well up in my Spanish, I think that I shall have no great difficulty in finding my way."

CHAPTER II.

A SAUNTER THROUGH SEVILLE

Lucius Lepine was the son of an officer of the royal navy. The youth had been eagerly and successfully pursuing a course of education in one of the public schools of England, when the sudden death of his father had deprived him of the means of completing it, and of leaving Rugby, as he had hoped to do, at the head of the school. The widowed mother of Lucius was left to support, on very slender means, a numerous family, of which he was the first-born. The youth's ambition had been to enter one of the universities, with a desire – as yet mentioned to no one – of preparing himself for the ministry of the Church. He now saw that the desire must be suppressed, the ambition relinquished. Lepine's first earthly object must be to become, not a burden, but a stay to his mother. Lucius had for some time exerted himself unsuccessfully to discover some means of earning independence, when a situation was offered to him in the firm of Messrs. Passmore and Perkins, which conducted an ironware factory in Seville. A boyish fancy, which had induced Lucius to acquire the Spanish language that he might read Don Quixote in the original, great intelligence, and a talent for keeping accounts, made the admiral's son peculiarly qualified to fill such a situation with credit to himself and advantage to his employers. Mr. Passmore's terms were liberal: he was at least good as a paymaster, whatever he might be as a man. Lucius did not hesitate long ere accepting the offer made to him. He took the "plunge" so bravely, and apparently cheerfully, that none, save perhaps his mother, guessed with what an inward shudder of repugnance it was made.

When thus separated from his family and all the companions of his youth, Lucius, who was of a genial temperament, looked around him for friends in what was to him a land of exile. He had had no letters of introduction, and the society of Mr. Passmore, the working head of the firm, and of a few merchants and manufacturers occasionally met with at his table, by no means satisfied the yearning of the young man's heart for intercourse with congenial spirits. The only person in Seville towards whom Lucius felt drawn by a feeling of sympathy was the stately young Spaniard, De Aguilera, – who had, like himself, been induced by liberal offers to accept a situation in the firm of Messrs. Passmore and Perkins. The aristocratic bearing of Don Alcala de Aguilera, his refined manners, his lofty courtesy, gave to him an interest in the mind of Lucius – an interest made up of mingled admiration, curiosity, and pity. The Spanish clerk, compared to his English employer, appeared to Lucius like a polished Toledo blade compared to a kitchen utensil. Lucius was occasionally reminded by the mien of his companion of other qualities of the rapier besides its exquisite polish. Insult, or what he deemed such, would make the Spaniard's dark eyes flash with an expression which told that his pride was not subdued, and that his anger might be dangerous. It was perhaps well that Mr. Passmore's inability to speak Spanish with anything approaching to fluency made him generally employ Lepine as the channel of communication between himself and De Aguilera. Many a dictatorial command or coarse reproof, uttered by Passmore, came softened from the lips of the English gentleman, – words which, if repeated in the tone in which they had first been spoken, would have made the haughty Spaniard lay his hand on his stiletto.

"Inglesito!" (Englishman!) muttered a gitána (gipsy), looking after Lucius as, after courteously inquiring his way, he passed down one of the narrow winding lanes which give to a great part of Seville the character of a labyrinth. It would have needed no gipsy skill to have detected the nationality of the stranger, even had the gitána but seen him with his back turned towards her. The quick, firm step of Lepine could not be mistaken for the step of a Spaniard. But the woman had seen the face, bronzed, indeed, by the southern sun, yet of complexion naturally fair; the bright gray eye; the auburn hair, clustering at the temples, and shading the upper lip. Lucius might have been singled out as an Englishman amongst crowds of the cigar-puffing idlers who were enjoying their dolce far niente at the corner of every street. And at that hour of gorgeous sunset, under the most brilliant of skies, there was indeed in Seville a luxury in mere existence which might form some excuse for the indolence of its people. As Lucius emerged from a lane into one of the open plazas, he was strongly sensible of the charm which enwraps the queen-city of Andalusia.

Bathed in golden glory rose the Alcazar, that splendid monument of Moorish art which has been compared to a palace of fairies, with its gorgeous colouring, its profusion of ornament, its gilded arches and marble columns. At some distance, in strong relief against the sky, appeared the glorious Cathedral, a rival in beauty, but a contrast in style, being the most magnificent Gothic building to be found in all Spain. The square tower of the Saracenic Giralda – grand relic of the past when the Moors bore sway in Andalusia, but now used as belfry to the Cathedral – glowed rosy red in the beams. Lucius paused for several minutes to admire the exquisite beauty of the buildings around him, – that beauty which to a poetic mind is heightened by the charm of antiquity, the colouring of romance. The Englishman seemed to have left every care behind him in the counting-house in the Calle San Francisco, – cares can be readily thrown aside at the age of nineteen.

The eye was not the only sense that drank in delight. The air was fragrant with the perfume from orange-trees, and musical with the peal of bells from the summit of the Giralda, blending softly with the nearer sound of a Spanish song, sung in rich tones to the accompaniment of a guitar.

"What a glorious city is this Seville!" said Lucius to himself as he went on his way. "There is not an object on which the eye rests in which an artist would not find a subject for a sketch. What a picture might be made of yonder donnas, with their mantillas and graceful lace veils, as, accompanied by their duenna, they ascend the steps of that magnificent church! No women are lovelier than those of Seville, – long may they keep their graceful costume! How picturesque is yon group of gipsies by the fountain – the man in his striped mantle of many hues leaning over the back of his ass, as he talks to the dark-eyed girl with scarlet blossoms wreathed in her raven-black hair! The very beggars wear their rags with grace! And what thoughts of the past crowd upon the mind in this old city of the Moors! Yes, what thoughts of the past!" repeated Lucius to himself, while a sterner expression marked his features; for he had now reached a spot associated with memories of the Inquisition, which had held its headquarters at Seville. Again Lucius paused, but it was not now to admire, and it was before the mind's eye that a picture of thrilling interest arose.

"Do I indeed stand on the very spot where, a few centuries ago, thousands of martyrs yielded their bodies to the flames, their souls to their God?"3 mused Lepine. "Was it here that – clad in their yellow san-benitos,4 and surrounded by curious crowds to whom their pangs were a pastime, and fanatical priests to whom their torments were a triumph – men and tender women endured the most painful of deaths! Yes; this pure balmy air was once polluted with the smoke from human sacrifices – this sunshine darkened with the clouds rising from stakes to which living victims were bound! What deeds of heroism – what unblenching courage – what unshaken faith displayed in the hour of nature's agony, have made this spot holy ground! Here – a spectacle to angels and to men – martyrs showed what the sons of Spain could dare and her daughters endure! Are the idle, self-indulgent inhabitants of Seville in the nineteenth century descendants or representatives of heroes who counted not their lives dear to them, but who, having embraced evangelical truth, grasped it firmly even unto death? Or can it be that martyrs have suffered in vain – that the light which they kindled is quenched for ever in Spain? Is the cry, 'How long, Lord, how long?' never to meet an answer as regards this benighted though beautiful land? I cannot believe it;" and Lucius resumed his rapid walk. "The seed sown amidst tears and blood must spring up one day, and ripen to a harvest of light! Happy – thrice happy – the reapers! Spaniards will show themselves worthy of their martyrs, and no longer appear to the world as a degenerate race, indifferent to their highest interests, or cold in the holiest cause. But what right have I to upbraid them either with indifference or coldness? Here am I, proud of the name of Englishman, thankful for having been brought up in the clearness of gospel light. I have been for a year in Seville, and I have never so much as shown to a Spaniard the New Testament in his own language, which I carry now on my person. Nay, the only man in this country for whom I have a feeling of friendship – the man whom I meet almost every day of my life – he knows nothing of the faith which I hold, save that he probably deems me a heretic, simply because I was reared in England. Of Alcala's inner life, his views, his hopes, I, his friend, am as ignorant as if we had never met till to-day! I cannot tell – I have never inquired – whether De Aguilera be a bigoted son of that Church which is drunken with the blood of the saints, or whether, like many of his countrymen, he has adopted sceptical views, the pendulum swinging from superstition into infidelity – from believing that which is false, into denying that which is true.

"And the Spaniard may now be on the eve of meeting a violent death – of having the martyr's agonies without the martyr's crown! I have been made uneasy by the bare rumour of the danger to which his person may be exposed. How little have I thought of the perils which surround the soul of one brought up under the dark shadow of Romish error! I must see De Aguilera, and speak to my friend as I have not ventured to speak before. God help me to break through a reserve which I have often suspected to be cowardly, but which I now feel to be criminal!"

CHAPTER III.

FADED SPLENDOUR

Is this a prison or a palace?" was the mental inquiry of Lucius, as, after again asking his way to the house of Don Alcala de Aguilera, he reached the stately building, which was one of the numerous relics which the Moors have left behind them in Seville. The high, dead, fortress-like wall, suggested the former term; a glimpse through the open archway of the dwelling, the latter. From this archway a vestibule led into an inner court, from which it was divided by an ornamental grating; this grating also being open at the time, nothing impeded the view into the marble-paved patio beyond. This patio, or court, was surrounded by clustering columns of the most graceful proportions; while in the centre of it orange-trees and broad-leaved bananas, the oleander and the myrtle, bordered a fountain of exquisite design. The vestibule itself was paved with Moorish tiles, of hue the most brilliant; and the exterior of the archway was gracefully sculptured. The first impression made by a glance through the opening was, that a scene of Oriental beauty and splendour lay beyond it. Had Lucius had time for closer observation, he must have noticed also marks of poverty and decay. Every here and there a bright tile in the passage, and marble square in the patio, had been broken or displaced – the carving on the fountain had in many places been injured, and no water fell into its basin; but the plants in the little central garden looked fresh and green in the softened light, as if tended by a woman's hand. The aspect of the place, so unlike that of any mansion in a northern clime, was calculated to raise admiration and excite curiosity in the mind of a stranger, and waken a desire to explore the interior, and make acquaintance with the dwellers in so picturesque and romantic a home.

The appearance of the one whom Lucius saw at the entrance, however, contrasted with the stately elegance of the mansion of which she was an inmate. Chaffering with an itinerant vendor of fish stood an old woman, wrinkled and bent. From her coarse dress, arms bare to the elbow, and the strong scent of garlic which hung about her, the dame might rather have been deemed a denizen of one of the low purlieus of Seville, than the servant of an aristocrat. The old crone, who used much gesticulation in speaking, was so eager about her bargaining that she did not notice the approach of Lucius Lepine. The colloquy between her and the hawker had probably lasted for some time, as both parties looked heated and angry.

"Five cuartos a piece! why, I would not give twenty for the whole lot of them; they're not fresh – not fit to set before the señora!" were the first words heard by Lucius as he came up to the archway.

"I tell you again, they were alive and swimming this morning," interrupted the man.

"Don't you think I know good fish when I see them?" cried the shrill-voiced dame. "I who have been for nigh sixty years in the service of the illustrious caballero Don Pedro de Aguilera, his son, and his grandson besides!"