"It is about Caterina, eh?" inquired the elder man.
"Yes," replied the Mule, with a sort of gasp. If the Mule had ever been afraid in his life, it was at that moment--afraid, if you please, of a little democrat of a schoolmaster no bigger than the first-cla.s.s boys, blinking through a pair of magnifying spectacles which must have made the world look very large, if one could judge from the effect that they had upon his eyes.
The schoolmaster looked up towards the mountains, to the goats poised there upon the broken ground, seeking a scanty herbage in the crannies.
"How many beasts is it that you have--four or five?" he inquired kindly enough, after a moment, and the Mule drew a deep breath.
"Five," he replied; and added, after a minute"s deep and honest thought, "and good ones, except Cristofero Colon, the big one. He eats much, and yet, when the moment comes"--he paused and looked towards the mountains, which rose like a wall to the south, a wall that the Mule must daily climb--"when the moment comes he will sometimes refuse--especially in an east wind."
The schoolmaster smiled, thinking perhaps of that other Cristofero Colon and the east wind that blew him to immortal fame.
"And Caterina," he asked. "What does she think of it?"
"I don"t know."
The schoolmaster looked at his companion with an upward jerk of the head. It was evident that he thought him a dull fellow. But that a.s.suredly was Caterina"s affair. It was, on the other hand, distinctly the affair of Caterina"s father to remember those five beasts of the Mule"s, than which there were none better in the country-side--to recollect that the Mule himself had a good name at his trade, and was trusted by the authorities. There was no match so good in all the valley, and certainly none to compare with this dull swain in the accursed village of San Celoni. The schoolmaster never spoke of the village without a malediction. He had been planted there in his youth with a promise of promotion, and promotion had never come. For a man of education it was exile--no newspapers, no pa.s.sing travellers at the Cafe. The nearest town was twenty miles away over the Sierra Nevada, and Malaga--the paved Paradise of his rural dreams--forty rugged miles to the south. No wonder he was a democrat, this disappointed man. In a Republic, now, such as his father had schemed for in the forties, he would have succeeded. A Republic, it must be remembered, being a community in which every man is not only equal, but superior to his neighbour.
"You don"t know?"
"No," answered the Mule, with a dull look of shame at his own faint-heartedness. Moreover, he was a.s.suredly speaking an untruth. The man who fears to inquire--knows.
As a matter of fact, he had hardly spoken to Caterina. Conversation was not the Mule"s strong point. He had exchanged the usual greetings with her at the fountain on a fiesta day. He had nodded a good morning to her, gruff and curt (for the Mule had no manners), more times than he could count. And Caterina had met his slow glance with those solemn eyes of hers, and that, so to speak, had settled the Mule"s business. Just as it would have settled the business of five out of six men. For Caterina had Moorish eyes--dark and solemn and sad, which said a hundred things that Caterina had never thought of--which seemed to have some history in them that could hardly have been Caterina"s history, for she was only seventeen. Though, as to this, one cannot always be sure. Perhaps the history was all to come. Of course, the Mule knew none of these things.
He was a hard-working, open-air Andalusian, and only knew that he wanted Caterina, and, as the saying is, could not live without her. Meantime he lived on from day to day without that which he wanted, and worked--just as the reader may be doing. That, in fact, is life--to live on without something or other, and work. Than which there is one thing worse, namely, to live on and be idle.
"But--" said the schoolmaster, slowly, for Andalusian tongues are slow, if the knives are quick--"but one may suppose that you would make her a good husband."
And a sudden gruff laugh was the answer. A woman would have understood it; but Caterina had no mother. And the schoolmaster was thinking of the five beasts and the postal appointment. The muleteer"s face slowly sank back into stolidity again. The light that had flashed across it had elevated that dull physiognomy for a moment only.
"Yes," said the Mule slowly, at length.
"You can read and write?" inquired the man of education.
"Yes, but not quickly!"
"That," said the schoolmaster, "is a matter of practice. You should read the newspapers."
Which was bad advice, for the Mule was simple and might have believed what he read.
The conversation was a long one; that is to say, it lasted a long time; until, indeed, the sun had set and the mountains had faded from blue to grey, while the far-off snow peaks reared their shadowy heads into the very stars. The schoolmaster had a few more questions to ask, and the Mule answered them in monosyllables. He was tired, perhaps, after his day"s journey; for he had come the northward trip, which was always the hardest, entailing as it did a rocky climb on the sunny side of the mountains. He had nothing to say in his own favour, which is not such a serious matter as some might suspect. The world does not always take us at our own valuation, which is just as well--for the world.
Indeed, the schoolmaster only succeeded in confirming his own suspicion that this was nothing but a dull fellow, and he finally had to dismiss the Mule, who had not even the savoir faire to perceive when conversation was ended.
"Vederemos," he said, judicially, "we shall see."
And the Mule went away with that heaviness of heart which must surely follow a mean action. For he knew that in applying to Caterina"s father he had placed Caterina at a disadvantage. The schoolmaster, be it remembered, was a democrat, and such are usually autocrats in their own house. He was, moreover, a selfish man, and had long cherished the conviction that he was destined to be great. He thought that he was an orator, and that gift, which is called by those who do not possess it the gift of the gab, is the most dangerous that a man can have. There was no one in San Celoni to listen to him. And if Caterina were married and he were a free man, he could give up the school and go to Malaga, where a.s.suredly he could make a name.
So the schoolmaster told Caterina the next morning that she was to marry the Mule--that the matter was settled. The dusky roses faded from Caterina"s cheek for a moment, and her great dark eyes had a hunted look. That look had often come there of late. The priest had noticed it, and one or two old women.
"Almost as if she were in the mountains," they said, which is a local polite way of referring to those unfortunate gentlemen who, for some reason or another, do not desire to meet the Guardia Civil, and haunt the upper slopes of the Sierra Nevada, where they live, as live the beasts of the forest, seeking their meat from G.o.d, while the charitable, and, it is even whispered, the priest or the Alcalde himself, will at times lay an old coat or a loaf of bread at the roadside above the village, and never inquire who comes to take it.
The Mule himself, it is known, buys more matches than he can ever burn, so much as six boxes at a time, of those cheap sulphurous wooden matches that are made at Barcelona, and the next day will buy more. The Mule, however, is such a silent man that those who are "in the mountains" make no concealment with him, but meet him (wild, unkempt figures that appear quietly from behind a great rock) as he pa.s.ses on his journeys, and ask him if he has a match upon him. They sometimes look at the mail-bags slung across the stubborn back of Cristofero Colon with eyes that have the hunted, hungry look which Caterina has.
"There is, perhaps, money in there," they say.
"Perhaps," answers the Mule, without afterthought.
"It may be a thousand pesetas."
"Perhaps."
And the Mule, who is brave enough where Caterina is not concerned, quietly turns his back upon a man who carries a gun, and follows Cristofero Colon. It sometimes happens that he trudges his nineteen miles without meeting any one, with no companion but his mules and his dog. This last-named animal is such as may be met in Spain or even in France at any street corner--not a retriever, nor a foxhound, nor anything at all but a dog as distinguished from a cat or a goat, living a troubled and uncertain life in a world that will always cringe to a pedigree, but has no respect for nondescripts. It was on these journeys that the Mule had so much leisure for thought. For even he could think, according to his dim lights. He was only conscious, however, of an ever-increasing feeling of a sickness--a physical nausea (for he was, of course, a mere earthy-creature)--at the thought of a possible life without Caterina. And it was at the end of a grilling day that the schoolmaster beckoned to him as he pa.s.sed the school-house, and told him that it was settled--that Caterina would marry him.
"Would you like to see her? She is indoors," inquired the bearer of the tidings.
"No," answered the Mule, after a dull pause. "Not to-night. I have my mail-bags, as you see."
And he clattered on down the narrow street with a dazed look, as if the brightness of Paradise had flashed across his vision.
So it was settled. Caterina and the Mule were to be married, and there had been no love-making, the old women said. "And what," they asked, "is youth for, if there is to be no love-making?"
"And G.o.d knows they were right," said the priest who heard the remark, and who was a very old man himself.
Two days after that, the Mule met Caterina as she was going to the fountain. He said "Good morning." They both stopped, and the Mule looked into Caterina"s eyes and had nothing to say. For he saw something there which he did not understand, and which made him feel that he was no better than Cristofero Colon, sc.r.a.ping and stumbling up the narrow street with the mail-bags, in such a vile temper, by the way, that the Mule had to hurry after him.
"It is a slow business," said the schoolmaster to Sergeant Nolveda, of the Guardia Civil, who lived in San Celoni and trained one young recruit after another according to the regulations of this admirable corps. For one never meets a Guardia Civil alone, but always in company--an old head and a pair of young legs. "A slow business. He is not a lover such as I should choose were I a pretty girl like Caterina; but one can never tell with women--eh?"
Indeed, matters did not progress very quickly. The Mule appeared to take so much for granted--to take as said so much that had not been said.
Even the love-making seemed to him to have been understood, and he appeared to be quite content to go his daily journeys with the knowledge that Caterina was to be his wife. There were, of course, others in the valley who would have been glad enough to marry Caterina, but she had shown no preference for any of these swains, who knew themselves inferior, in a worldly sense, to the Mule. So the whole country-side gradually accustomed itself also to the fact that Caterina was to marry Quereno. The news even spread to the mountains. The Mule heard of it there one day when he had accomplished fourteen daily journeys to the accompaniment of this new happiness.
As he was nearing the summit of the pa.s.s he saw Pedro Casavel, who had been "in the mountains" three years, seated on a stone awaiting him.
Pedro Casavel was a superior man, who had injured another in a dispute originating in politics. His adversary was an old man, now stricken with a mortal disease. And it was said that Pedro Casavel could safely return to the village, where his father owned a good house and some land. His enemy had forgiven him, and would not prosecute. But Casavel lingered in the mountains, distrusting so Christian a spirit.
He rose as the Mule slowly approached. He carried a gun always, and was more daring than his companions in retreat. The Mule mechanically sought in his jacket pocket for a box of matches, which he knew would be a welcome gift, and held them out silently as he neared Casavel. But Casavel did not take them.
"I hear that you are to marry Caterina," he said, with a half disdainful laugh. "Is it true?"
"It is true," answered the Mule.
"If you do," cried the other, pa.s.sionately, with a bang on the stock of his gun that startled Cristofero Colon--"if you do, I will shoot you."
The Mule smiled slowly, just as he smiled when the people cried "Ai-i-ieah" as he pa.s.sed them.
"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 pa.s.s, 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 un.o.btrusively 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.