Storyteller.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 41, 6 January 1894, Page 13

Storyteller.

THE LOYE OF A SPANISH WOMAN. Every night for & "vvoglc, tins strange, dark, Spanisb-looking woman Had walked np and down the streets of Bushey, in Hertfordshire. Her hair hung down her back in big, thick, bluish coils, and her eyes were always staring straight in the face of every one she met. She terrified the children, and made the women feel mervous, and even the men began to wish that she would go away. There had not been so much excitement in that town for years. The town constable sat in the taproom one night, with his legs crossed, smoking a church-warden. He was ±alking°of the woman, and the rest who sat around were listening. “ She’s a mystery, is that ’un. I follered ’er an’ follered ’er night ’an day, an’ may I lose an eye if I can find out anything about er.^ That started a flow of incidents irom those who had been listeners. One had seen her down in the lane which leads off the turnpike to the left. “ An’ oi think she’s a bloomin’ daft creatur’,” was added. So they sat and talked until the rattling of a window-pane made them all jump ; and even when the tapman set down a mug extra heavy, they actually started and shivered. It was no wonder, then, that when a woman’s scream was heard just outside the south window, they should have jumped to their feet like men burdened with superstitious fear, and look at each other with fearful eyes. “ I’m going to see who that mought be,” said the constable, as he picked up’ his thick walking stick. “ Any of ye lads want to come?” But he might just as well have asked a row of sticks. So out he went alone. He walked around the white - washed structure, and saw nothing but shadows. He came out on the road again. The moon was up in the full and shining brightly. He looked ap toward the bridge, but no fferure broke the straight line of road. He looked down. There was something, surely. Yes, some one was down the road. He \\ as a brave old constable, was this one, and even if he had not been, that bigstick of his ought to have inspired him with some courage. He decided instantly what he would do. He went over the hedge like a man trained to such things, and half running, half crouching along, he made his way swiftly downward. As he came nearer, as he thought, to the figure, he slackened his pace somewhat" He heard a woman’s voice, then he stopped. It was a Spanish voice, round and full of passion and expression. Luckily for the constable, be had been on the Spanish Main, and could talk Spanish as well as if be had been born under the soft skies of Spain. “Ho one but me will have him,” she was saying, just as if she was talking to someone. “ Cruel, cruel, that he should leave! Oh, golden hair, I loved thee so well! Oh, false tongue, I placed too much faith in you ! But she will never have him ! Ho, no!” And then she shrieked just as the constable nad heard her when he was in the tap-room of the Three Little Men. She was walking along quite swiftly, and it was a job for the man on the other side of the hedge to keep up with her. “ ,she’s dumb crazy, sure,” lie thought; but he kept moving along, keeping' well abreast with her. I arther down a little way there was a lane. It left the road on the side the constable was. When he came to the iaue he stopped until she had gone by. The soft but brilliant moonlight filtered through the trees and cast long, uncertain shadows. As the man crouched and watched he saw the woman turn down into the lane.

She advanced a few steps, then stood perfectly still. She looked more like a magnificent beast than a

human beast. Her form was almost leopardlike, and tbe constable’s curiosity was lost in bis admiration for her physical proportions. It -was like a dream to him. Tbe crickets were chirping in the hedge, and a couple of night birds broke in with mournful whistling notes. A breeze began to rustle the tops of tbe trees. The constable was afraid almost to breathe. It was as if there had been a spell cast.

Suddenly the woman put her band to her breast. The breeze came down and played with her hair. She moved uneasily at first ; then she began to pace up and down with long, heavy strides, like a panther whose freedom is measured by square feet, and who looks out upon tbe world from behind iron bars. “ That thou should have left me,” she began, in a cooing voice. “ I loved thee so well, Robert. Yon were my star, my life. But she took you away from me.” Her hand nestled uneasily in her bosom, like a bird settling on its nest. Her mildness melted away, and as the constable looked he saw she had turned to a maniac. She pulled a long shiny knife from out of the nest of her bosom. >he held it np until the.moonbeams struck it and glanced from it. She worshipped it and called it pet names. “ Yon will find him for me,” she almost shrieked ; “ you will take his life from him. You must! you must! And she who stole him away from me will weep. Oh, that I might be there to see her kiss lips which shall never kiss again! to see her feel a heart which is dead! Dead! Do yon hear me a—dead, I sajp dead !” The wind began to sound like a requiem played by ghostly bands. The constable shivered and trembled in bis shelter of the hedge, and half wished be bad not come. It was all too fearful. Suppose she should discover him, what then ? He shuddered to think of that long, shiny knife, and took bis eyes from the woman. When lie looked up again he saw her still pacing up and down, np and down in the shadows, ivitb one white hand nestling in her bosom. He knew now what was there. A man’s cheery whistle came down the wind. The woman started, her band was pushed farther into the bosom of her dress, and as the whistle came nearer, she drew back stealthily like an animal seeking cover. She drew back step by step until the constable could have touched her with his big staff. . The whistle came clearer and louder. The tune was one of those catchy fandango airs bear'd everywhere in Spain. The woman took to whispering- and muttering, but so low that even the constable could not hear what she said. Her eyes gleamed, and she crouched as if prepared for a spring.

The whistler turned into the lane with a brisk step, and passed down under the archway of green trees. He was opposite, when the woman sprang out with a cry upon her lips. He wheeled around, drew back a pace, and looked. “I have found you, Robert,” she began, in her low, soft voice, but he saw that in her eyes which caused him to retreat a step. She laughed. Oh, such a hollow, hard laugh ! “You are not afraid of me, Robert ? You are not afraid of your Mercedes?” And she held out her left hand; but the other never left her bosom. He could not speak, and she fairly crawled towards him, still holdingout her left hand. “ We were happy in Marbella, Robert, were we not ?” she asked appealingly, like the dissembling maniac she was. “ Don’t you remember the ring you gave me, Robert ? We we going to have been married with that same ring, do you know. They say here you are going to marry the white-faced English girl. It is not true, is it ? Speak to me ; tell me it is not true. You will marry your Mercedes, will you not ? You could not deceive me so, and we could be so happy !” The eyes of of the woman lost their fixed glare. The right hand crept softly out of the bosom of the dress

and extended itself toward him. It was empty. “ They say yon are going to be married in a week, Robert; but these village gossips will talk. I’m glad I came here to you now. But, oh, how I have suffered! how I have hungered! And we will go back to Marbella, will we not, sweet P” One step nearer. She almost fawned upon him. Her hands were almost round his neck, when he seemed to pull himself together.

“ That was a great act, Mercedes.” He laughed a little, but it wasn’t a natural laugh. It was like the laugh of a man who would like to be thought brave. “ But you are a very foolish girl for coming to England. You should have stopped at home. We are both too poor, and we should be hating each other as soon as the honeymoon was over.” While he was talking, that soft white hand crept back to the bosom. It slipped in between the folds of the dress. The eyes of Mercedes took on a horrible glare. Their look stopped the man in the midst of a sentence. He held up his hands as if to ward off a blow. The constable saw that plainly enough. Out of the breast of the woman came the knife. It was like a thing of life, and it seemed to fairly dance in the moonlight. It leaped upward, then downward. There was no struggle, no scuffle, and no sound save a man’s wild shriek of “Murder!” The hand of the maniac woman drove it deep into his breast, once, twice, and then, with hands outstretched as if to grasp something, the man tumbled over on his face on the lone road. All this the constable saw, but it was so fearful, so terrible, that he could not move. His throat was so dried that any sound he might have tried to utter would have died before its birth. “ You who took him take him now. He is yours,” shrieked the woman, standing over the body like a statue. The knife was still in her hand. She drew it slowly toward her, and kissed the shiny blade. “We did it well, didn’t we ? Oh, we did it so well!” Then she flung it from her, as if she hated it. She turned sharply, and ran down the road, shrieking, “Ho one will have him now ! no one will have him ! ” Like a man coming out of a deep sleep the constable pulled himself with trembling limbs out of the shelter of the hedge. He stood in the shadows, and looked fearfully up and down the road. The crickets chirped, and the nightbirds whistled mournfully. The wind was dying away. He walked towards the thing in the road, and bent over it. He turned it on its back, and looked into the face of the dead. It was a man whom he had known —Robert McKenzie, a mining engineer, who had recently returned from Marbella, near Malaga, in Andalusia, Spain. He had come home to marry Fanny Braden.

The eyes were half open, and the face was stamped with terror. The constable gazed for a minute ; then a fright came over him, and he turned and ran down the road. He never stopped until he had reached the Three Little Men. There were half-a-dozen scared men huddled outside the door, and they crowded in when they heard the constable coming. “It’s all up wi’ the wench now, I guess,” said one of the men, as the constable came in looking like a ghost. “ Bob McKenzie’s been killed, an’ his body’s a-laying up in Tobbit’s lane, stiff and stark,” panted the constable. “ For God’s sake !*’ said the landlord. “ An’ the crazy ’un’s gone and chucked herself off the bridge, and as there wasn’t a man in the crowd as would pull her out, she’s very likely gone under.” The constable got them all together, lanterns were lighted, and they went down to the lane in a very compact and fearful body, with the constable in the lead. They found the corpse, put it upon a shutter they had brought along for the purpose, and took it back to the tap-house. By morning all Bushey knew Bob

McKenzie Lad been killed by a crazy Spanish woman, wbo had run shrieking down the turnpike in the night, and had jumped off the bridge into the river. And very early they went to look for her body. It was easy enough to hud, for it lay very close to the bank, feet upward, showing that she had jumped first into the shallow part, and then had deliberately drowned herself by holding her head under water. They brought her out, and laid her upon the bank. She was very white and beautiful, but her shoes and dress were very much worn, and there were just the faintest lines of suffering about her face. It was easy enough to tell who she was, for in her breast were papers which bore her name and address : “ Mercedes Xiques, Marbella, in Andalnsia, Spain.” They buried her in the churchyard on the hill which lays to the south of the river. Perhaps there was a bit of sympathy for her. The story came out bit by bit after it was all over, Dicky Singleton, the constable, learned it by heart, and he used to sit on a bench in front of the Three Little Men and tell what he saw. It was said that the landlord used to encourage him to sit there by serving him with free ale and an unlimited supply of tobacco. After Dicky had told what he had seen in Tobbit’s lane he would moralise a little. “ You see, as long as men’s men and women’s women there’ll always be trouble among the sexes. Here’s a young man with prospects as fine as the gold in the mines of Marbella. He has a good commission there in Spain; gets engaged to a stunning woman, with eyes that’d look through you. But he ain’t satisfied. Ho, not a bit of it; but he must up and tell her that he’s goin’ away to England for his health. He comes home here, makes up to his old sweetheart, Fanny Braden, and gets ready to marry her. Of course the Spanish woman found it out. They’re the devil for that. An’ what does she do ? Why, she comes here with a knife big enough to kill an elephant. She meets him on the long road, and —bang! He don’t have time to say a word except ‘ Murder !’ an’ he plumps down. She drowns herself, Eanny JBraden dresses in black, and there you are. How what’s the good of it all ? I say, if a man likes one girl, let him stick to her. I tell you, those Spanish women won’t stand no foolin’ with. They’re animals, sir—animals and wild beasts when they get roused.” —Harper’s Weekly.