LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 702, 19 September 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

BLUE BLOOD AND BED. Chapter 111. ( Continued .) ‘ When she heard these cruel words, poor Beatriz burst into tears. Moncada, heedless of her grief, proceeded : ‘“Your lover will be here to-night. AV ell, if I dare to say to him, Don Guzman, if you do not marry my daughter you are a perfidious man. He will reply to me, no doubt, Moncada, you are a low-born fellow, and I could not think of defiling my pure blood, my sangre azel, by mingling it with yours. Then, if I remind him that I have freed him from his creditors, and that I have suffered him to deceive me intentionally with promises and undertakings that he will never make good, for the purpose of trying if his sense of honor would induce him to repair the injury which his mad love has inflicted on thy reputation, why, he will, belike, tell me that all the gold locked up in my coffers would be but a poor price for so high a connection ; that it is surely not his fault if you have been a silly credulous girl to take seriously the trifling attentions which he was so condescending as to pay you ; and that I, engrossed in the covetousness of my own thoughts, have made a very inconsiderate calculation quite above the standard of his moral elevation. And so it happens, daughter, that I, who was once a poor man but by force of my own honest industry and perseverance through many long years of privation and toil, am now, gracias a Dios, an opulent citizen, yet so far am I from having gained for myself thereby the favor and respect of mankind, that I have, on the contrary, brought on myself only their dislike and envy. While, on the other hand, this wild, thoughtless young gallant this scamp who has squandered the patrimony of his ancestors—he, forsooth, is not a whit the less thought of by the world, and his reputation is not sullied by all his dissolutness and imprudence. Oh ! no. The career of honor is open to him. He is a cahallcro mug hanrada y sin mancha, God wot! And nobody will dare to censure him because he may have reduced twenty honest families to wretchedness. AVhile I, who give a comfortable livelihood to I know not how many honest folks in various parts of the kingdom, I, por Dios! am despised and looked down upon by those hidalgos -I, who could buy and sell a score of them.’

‘Old Moncada had gradually worked himself up into a state of excitement quite unusual with him, and had, in the contemplation of his own social grievances, quite forgotten the sorrows of his daughter, and indeed her very presence. Meanwhile the poor girl, as her father was thus dilating upon his wrongs, and stringing together those doleful items of his account with the world, was weeping silently and indulging in her own reflections. She might have felt —and probably the thought entered into her mind—that if traders like her father were at that period held in such mean estimation, the principal cause of it was perhaps to be found in the unsufi'erable coarseness of their manners, and their utter neglect of those habits and forms which confer a certain polish and hnnhoinviie upon the character in their sordid avarice, which deprived them of so many rational and civilising pleasures, and which led them to indulge themselves in filth and slovenliness—in fine, in the absolute want of that true merchant-like spirit which caused a useful and honorable profession to degenerate into an art of cozening and extortion.

‘ At length the night came, and with it Don Guzman. Thanks to the state of his purse, he was true to his promise on this occasion, and repaired at the appointed time to the abode of Moncada. He found the old in an with his daughter awaiting him. When he entered the apartment I have already described, the wily trader bolted the door without being perceived while Don Guzman was making his greetings to Beatriz, and the three were left to themselves without the

[danger of interruption. What passed precisely during the hours than Don Guzman ! remained I am not able to detail. I don’t think there was much, singing; so far as the voice of Beatriz was heard at all, it was in tones of sorrow. Between the men there j was a good deal of talking—loud and violent at times, and at others in accents of remonstrance and entreaty. Moncada was on his own ground now, with his debtor facing him. Don Guzman was not now before the fagade of San Felipe, surrounded by his gay and insolent companions ; but alone—save a poor weeping girl by his side —with a remorseless creditor who threatened him with ruin. What a host of conflicting passions was that night struggling in the breasts of these three persons, each contending for the mastery, and each by turns triumphant. Pride, avarice, ambition, scorn, hope, fear, sorrow, love. And so the night wore on; and when it was past midnight Don Guzman at last left the house, and with hurried steps and moody air, traversed the lonely streets till he reached his home. Two days afterwards, before the first grey light of the morning, a travelling carriage stood before the gate of his palacio; Don Guzman stepped hurriedly in, wrapped up in a travelling dress; his faithful camarero mounted outside; the postilion cracked his loug whip over his horses’ ears, and away they dashed at full speed, and soon left the city of Madrid behind them.

‘ From that day forth Don Guzman was seen no more in the city of Madrid. The loungers of San Felipe lost one of their sprightliest companions; the Teatro Principe missed its acutest critic; and one young hidalgo of the sangre azul had disappeared from the aristocratic reunions. “ Quan lejos de ojo, tan lejos de corazon,” as our Spanish proverb has it—“ Out .of sight out of mind,” has you say in England. He was spoken of for a week, remembered for a fortnight, and then forgotten for ever. • Don Guzman was gone ; but whither, or why, no one seemed to know ; but ail agreed that his departure was as mysterious as it was sudden. For a week, as I said, he was talked about, and with some curiosity, too, and interest amongst his companions. Those most intimate with him, who knew the state of his exchequer, and his connections, monetary and amatory, with old Moncada and Beatriz, looked knowingly, and intimated their belief that the hidalgo, by a masterly movement, had outwitted the merchant and abandoned the daughter, and that the one had lost his money and the other her heart to no purpose. And, indeed, there seemed to be good reason for coming to that conclusion. The old trader was, if possible, more rude and unmannerly than ever. There whs evidently something amiss with him. It was observed that he dismissed first one of his apprentices, and then the other ; that he lent no more money, and called in what was due to him, and that by degrees his shelves and tables were emptied of goods, and his tienda of customers. And Beatriz —no one ever saw her now in plaza or calle ; but sometimes of an evening her fine voice would be heard at the half-opened casement of her own lonely chamber, singing to the sound of her vihuela some melancholy love ditty, that told too plainly that her heart and her thoughts were far away with one who had left her behind him. One day, some months after that memorable night, those who traversed the Gallo Mayor observed that the tienda of Moncada remained closed. It was soon discoveied that the house was vacant. The old man and his dam had disappeared, but the cause and manner of their disappearance was a mystery to all who took the trouble to think about such people as a tradesman and his daughter. They might have drowned themselves in the river for aught any one knew or cared. Indeed, there was a rumor that somebody had seen them both one evening hurrying towards the Manzanares. But what matter ? Quien sabe ? So there was an end of them ; and they, too, after a little time, were forgotten.’ Chapter IV. FOUND. Don Baltasar paused, rolled up another cigarito in pep cl de kilo, lit it slowly, and began smoking, musingly. I was unwilling for a moment to interrupt his thoughts. £ A sad sort of business,’ I said at last. * I suppose the old man and his daughter were really drowned, or perhaps they fled to some distant land to hide their disappointment and shame ? ’ ‘Perhaps they did,’ was the curt reply. ‘ Quien sabe ? ’ ‘ And Don Guzman; surely retribution was in store for him ? ’

* Perhaps it was. Sabe Dios, and again my friend relapsed into silence. After a few minutes, as if awaking from a fit of abstraction, he suddenly asked, — ‘ Senor Slingsby, were you ever in Sicily ?’ ‘ That I was, Don Baltasar,’ I replied. * And in Palermo, probably V ‘Of course. Who would go to Sicily without seeing its capital ?’ ‘Ah! that’s quite true. Well, all my earliest memories are connected with that picturesque city and its charming environ?. Do you remember the Concha d’Oro V ‘ Who could ever forget that rich and most lovely piece of scenery that has once traversed it ?’ I replied. ‘ I remember, as it were but yesterday, as I journeyed towards Palermo, and caught the first sight of its spires and domes, how that beautiful region, like a golden shell, sloped down gently from all sides to the water’s margin, where the city lay in slumber?’ ‘Ah ! Dios. Yes, dear Senor, and the hues of gold and emerald that clothed that that valley—the rich orange trees, the erreen palms, the olives, the acacias, and the fig trees—never shall I forget them.’ ‘ But what brings them to your memory just now, Don Baltasar ?’ ‘ You shall know presently. Just give me my own way. Well, in one of those charming country palacios that are scattered through the Concha d’Oro, there sat in the balcony, one evening in September, a young man, and at his side was a lady, dark-eyed and dark-tressed. She touched a guitar with the hand of a proficient, and she sang a Spanish melody with a voice that rang out sweet and clear upon the evening air. The gentleman looked at her with languid admiration as he leaned indolently against the lattice and smoked his cigar, Ihey were strangers. Nobody knew who they were, or whence they came. The gentleman had arrived some three months previously and had. taken the place; then he went away for his family somewhere, and shortly reappeared with his wife, a very pretty young woman, and an old major domo, with a very round back and high shoulders. He went by the name of Montano, The gentleman was called Don Guzman, and his wife ’ (To he continued.)