Gustave Aimard
Stronghand: or, The Noble Revenge
CHAPTER VIII
THE TWO BROTHERS
After quitting the Red Room, Don Rodolfo, under the weight of the condemnation pronounced against him, with broken heart and burning head had rushed onwards, flying the paternal anger, and resolved to leave the hacienda as quickly as possible, never to return to it. His horse was still in the first yard, where he had tied it up. The young man went up to it, seized the bridle, and placed his foot in the stirrup. At the same moment a hand was laid on his shoulder – Don Rodolfo turned as if seared with a hot iron. His brother was standing before him.
A feverish redness suffused his face; his hands closed, and his eyes flashed lightning; but at once extinguishing the fire of his glance and affecting a forced calmness, he said, in a firm voice —
"What do you want brother?"
"To press your hand before your departure, Rodolfo," the young man said, with a whining voice.
Rodolfo looked at him for a moment with an expression of profound disdain, then unhooking the sword that hung at his side, he handed it to his brother.
"There, Hernando," he said, ironically, "it is only right that, since you will henceforth bear the name and honour of our family, this sword should revert to you. You desired my inheritance, and success has crowned your efforts."
"Brother," the young man stammered.
"I am not reproaching you," Don Rodolfo continued, haughtily. "Enjoy in peace those estates you have torn from me. May Heaven grant that the burden may not appear to you some day too heavy, and that the recollection of the deed you have done may not poison your last years. Henceforth we shall never meet again on this earth. Farewell!" And letting the sword he had offered his brother fall on the ground, he leaped on his horse and went off at full speed, without even giving a parting glance at those walls which had seen his birth, and from which he was now eternally banished. Don Hernando stood for a moment with hanging head and pale face, crushed by the shame and consciousness of the bad action he had not feared to commit. Already remorse was beginning to prey on him. At length, when the galloping of the horse had died away in the distance, he raised his eyes, wiped away the perspiration that inundated his face, and picked up the sword lying at his feet.
"Poor Rodolfo!" he muttered, stifling a sigh; "I am very guilty."
And he slowly returned to the hacienda. Count Don Rodolfo de Moguer kept the word he had given his brother: he never reappeared. Nothing was ever heard of him, and his intimate friends never saw him again after his journey to the hacienda, nor knew what had become of him. The next year, a few Indians who escaped from the massacre at the bridge of Calderón, when Hidalgo was defeated by the Spanish General Calleja, spread the report that Don Rodolfo, who during the whole action kept by Hidalgo's side, was killed in a desperate charge he made into the heart of the Spanish lines, in the hope of restoring the fortunes of the day; but this rumour was not confirmed. In spite of all the measures taken by the Marquis, the young man's body was not found among the dead, and his fate remained a mystery for the family.
In the meanwhile, Don Hernando, by his father's orders, had succeeded to his brother's title, and almost immediately married Doña Aurelia de la Torre Azul, originally destined for Don Rodolfo. The Marquis and Marchioness lived some few years longer. They died a few days after one another, bearing with them a poisoned sting of remorse for having banished their firstborn son from their presence.
But, inflexible up to his dying hour, the Marquis never once made a complaint, and died without mentioning his son's name. However, the Marquis's hopes were realized ere he descended to the grave, for he had the supreme consolation of seeing his family continued in his grandchildren.
At the funeral, a man was noticed in the crowd wrapped up in a wide cloak, and his features concealed by the broad brim of his hat being pulled over them. No one was able to say who this man was, although one old servant declared he had recognised Don Rodolfo. Was it really the banished son who had come for the last time to pay homage to his father and weep on his tomb? The arrival of the stranger was so unexpected, and his departure so sudden, that it was impossible to get at the truth of the statement.
Then, time passed away, important events succeeded each other, and Don Rodolfo, of whom nothing was heard, was considered dead by his family and friends, and then forgotten; and Don Hernando inherited without dispute the title and estates.
The Marquis de Moguer, in spite of the light under which we have shown him to our readers, was not a wicked man, as might be supposed; but as a younger son, with no other hope than the tonsure, devoured by ambition, and freely enjoying life, he internally rebelled against the harsh and unjust law which exiled him from the pleasures of the world, and condemned him to the solitude of the cloister. Assuredly, had his brother frankly accepted his position as firstborn, and consented to undertake its duties, Don Hernando would never have thought for a moment of defrauding him of his rights. But when he saw Don Rodolfo despise the old tradition of his race – forget what he owed to his honour as a gentleman, so far as to marry an Indian girl and make common cause with the partisans of the Revolution, he eagerly seized the opportunity chance so providentially offered him to seize the power lost by his brother, and quietly put himself in his place. He thought that, in acting thus he was not committing a bad action, but almost asserting a right by substituting himself for a man who seemed to care very little for titles and fortune.
Don Hernando, while whitewashing himself in this way, only obeyed that law of justice and injustice which God has placed in the heart of man, and which impels him, when he does any dishonourable deed, to seek excuses in order to prove to himself that he was bound to act as he had done. Still, the Marquis did not dare to confess to himself that the chance by which he profited he had helped by all his power, by envenoming by his speeches and continual insinuations his brother's actions, ruining him gradually in his father's mind, and preparing, long beforehand, the condemnation eventually uttered in the Red Room against the unfortunate Rodolfo.
And yet strange contradiction of the human heart, Don Hernando dearly loved his brother; he pitied him – he would like to hold him back on the verge of the precipice down which he thrust him, as it were. Once master of the estates and head of the family, he would have liked to find his brother again, in order to share with him this badly-acquired fortune, and gain pardon for his usurpation.
Unfortunately these reflections came too late – Don Rodolfo had disappeared without leaving a trace, and hence the Marquis was compelled to restrict himself to sterile regrets. At times, tortured with the ever-present memory of the last scene at the hacienda, he asked himself whether it would not have been better for him to have had a frank explanation with his brother, after which Don Rodolfo, whose simple tastes agreed but badly with the exigencies of a great name, would have amicably renounced in his favour the rights which his position as elder brother gave him.
But now to continue our narrative, which we have too long interrupted.
At the beginning of 1822, on a day of madness which was to be expiated by years of disaster, the definitive separation took place between Spain and Mexico, and the era of pronunciamientos set in. After the ephemeral reign of the Emperor Iturbide, Mexico reverted to a republic, or, more correctly, to a military government. Under the pressure of an army of 20,000 soldiers, which had 24,000 officers, the Presidents succeeded each other with headlong speed, burying the nation deeper and deeper in the mire, in which it is now struggling, and which will eventually swallow it up.
By pronunciamiento on pronunciamiento Mexico had reached the period when this story begins; but her wealth had been swallowed up in the tornado – her commerce was annihilated, her cities were falling in ruins, and New Spain had only retained of her old splendours fugitive recollections and piles of ruins. The Spaniards had suffered greatly during the War of Independence, as had their partisans, whose property had been burned and plundered by the revolutionists. The fatal decree of 1827, pronouncing the expulsion of the Spaniards, dealt the final and most terrible blow to their fortunes.
The Marquis de Moguer was one of the persons most affected by this measure, although, during the entire War of Independence and the different governments that succeeded each other, he had taken the greatest care not to mix himself up at all in politics, and remained neutral between all parties. This position, which it was difficult and almost impossible to maintain for any length of time, had compelled him to make concessions painful to his pride: unfortunately, his fortune consisted of land and mines, and if he left Mexico he would be a ruined man.
His friends advised him frankly to join the Mexican government, and give up his Spanish nationality. The Marquis, forced by circumstances, followed their advice; and, thanks to the credit some persons enjoyed with the President of the Republic, Don Hernando was not only not disturbed, but authorized to remain in the country, where he was naturalized as a Mexican.
But things had greatly changed with the Marquis. His immense fortune had vanished with the Spanish government. During the ten years of the War of Independence, his estates had lain fallow, and his mines, deserted by the workmen he formerly employed, had gradually become filled with water. They could not be put in working order again except by enormous and most expensive works. The situation was critical, especially for a man reared in luxury and accustomed to sow his money broadcast. He was now compelled to calculate every outlay with the utmost care, if he did not wish to see the hideous spectre of want rise implacable before him.
The pride of the Marquis was broken in this struggle against poverty; his love for his children restored his failing courage, and he bravely resolved to make head against the storm. Like the ruined gentleman who tilled the soil, with their sword by their side, as a proof of their nobility, he openly became hacendero and miner, – that is to say, he cultivated his estates on a large scale, and bred cattle and horses, while trying to pump out the water which had taken possession of his mines. Unfortunately, he was deficient in two important things for the proper execution of his plans: the necessary knowledge to assist the different operations he meditated: and, above all, money, without which nothing was possible. The Marquis was therefore compelled to engage a majordomo, and borrow on mortgage. For the first few years all went well, or appeared to do so. The majordomo, Don José Paredes, to whom we shall have occasion to refer more fully hereafter, was one of those men so valuable in haciendas, whose life is spent on horseback, whose attention nothing escapes, who thoroughly understand the cultivation of the soil, and know what it ought to produce, almost to an arroba.
But if the estates of the Marquis were beginning to regain their value under the skilful direction of the bailiff, it was not the same with the mines. Taking advantage of the convulsions in which Mexico was writhing, the independent Indians, no longer held in subjection by the fear of the powerful military organization of the Spaniards, had crossed the frontiers and regained a certain portion of their territory. They had permanently settled upon it, and would not allow white men to encroach on it. Most of the Marquis's mines being situated in the very country now occupied by the Indians, were consequently lost to him. The others, almost entirely inundated, in spite of the incessant labour bestowed on them, did not yet hold out any hopes of becoming productive again.
What Don Hernando gained on one side he lost on the other; and his position, in spite of his efforts, became worse and worse, and the abyss of debt gradually enlarged. The Marquis saw with terror the moment before him when it would be impossible for him to continue the struggle. Sad and aged by sorrow rather than years, the Marquis no longer dared to regard the future, which daily became more gloomy for him. He watched in mournful resignation the downfall of his house – the decay of his race; seeking in vain, like the man without a compass on the mighty ocean, from what point of the horizon the vessel that would save him from shipwreck would arrive.
But, alas! Days succeeded days without bringing any other change in the position of the Marquis, save greater poverty, and more nearly impending ruin. In proportion as the misfortune came nearer, the Marquis had seen his relations and friends keep aloof from him; all abandoned him, with that selfish indifference which seems a fundamental law of every organized society, when the precept, "Each man for himself," is put in practice, with all the brutal force of the vae victis.
Hence Don Hernando resided alone, with his son, at the Hacienda del Toro; for he had lost his wife several years before, and his daughter was being educated in a convent at the town of Rosario; with that noble pride which so admirably becomes men of well-tempered minds, the Marquis had accepted without a murmur the ostracism passed upon him. Far from indulging in useless recriminations with men, the majority of whom had, in other days, received obligations from him, he had made his son a partner in his labours, and, aided by him, redoubled his efforts and his courage.
Some months before the period when our story begins, ill fortune had seemed, not to grow weary of persecuting the Marquis, but desirous of granting him a truce – this is how a gleam of sunshine penetrated the gloomy atmosphere of the hacienda. One morning, a stranger, who appeared to have come a great distance, stopped at the gate, leading a mule loaded with two bales. This man, on reaching the first courtyard, threw the mule's bridle to a peon, with the simple remark, – "For Signor Don Hernando de Moguer – " and, without awaiting an answer, he started down the rocky road at a gallop and was lost in the windings of the path ere the peon had recovered from the surprise caused by the strange visit. The Marquis, at once warned, had the mule unloaded, and the bales conveyed to his study. They each contained twenty-five thousand piastres in gold, or nearly eleven thousand pounds of our money: on a folded paper was written one word – Restitution.
It was in vain that the Marquis ordered the most minute researches; the strange messenger could not be found. Don Hernando was therefore compelled to keep this large sum, which arrived so opportunely to extricate him from a difficult position, for he had a considerable payment to make on the morrow. Still, it was only on the repeated assurances of Don Ruiz and the majordomo, that the money was really his, that he consented to use it.
Cheered by this change of fortune, Don Hernando at length consented that Don Ruiz should go and fetch his sister, and bring her back to the hacienda, where her presence had been long desired; though there had been an obstacle, in the dangers of such a journey.
We will now resume our narrative, begging the reader to forgive this long digression, which was indispensable for the due comprehension of what is about to follow, and lead him to the Hacienda del Toro, a few hours before the arrival of Don Ruiz and his sister; that is to say, about three weeks since we left them at the post of San Miguel.
CHAPTER IX
A NEW CHARACTER
Although, owing to its position on the shores of the Pacific, Sonora enjoys the blessings of the sea breeze, whose moisture at intervals refreshes the heated atmosphere; still, for three hours in the afternoon, the earth incessantly heated by the torrid sunbeams produces a crushing heat. At such times the country assumes a really desolate aspect beneath the cloudless sky, which seems an immense plate of red-hot iron. The birds suddenly cease their songs, and languidly hide themselves beneath the thick foliage of the trees, which bow their proud crests towards the ground. Men and domestic animals hasten to seek shelter in the houses, raising in their hurried progress a white, impalpable, and calcined dust, which enters mouth and nostrils. For some hours Sonora is converted into a vast desert from which every appearance of life and movement has disappeared.
Everybody is asleep, or at least reclining in the most shady rooms, with closed eyes, and with the body abandoned to that species of somnolency which is neither sleeping nor waking, and which from that very fact is filled with such sweet and voluptuous reveries – inhaling at deep draughts the artificial breeze produced by artfully contrived currents of air, and in a word indulging in what is generally called in the torrid zones a siesta.
These are hours full of enjoyment, of those sweet and beneficent influence on body and mind we busy, active Englishmen are ignorant, but which people nearer the sun revel in. The Italians call this state the dolce far niente, and the Turks, that essentially sensual race, keff.
Like that city in the "Arabian Nights," the inhabitants of which the wicked enchanter suddenly changed into statues by waving his wand, life seemed suddenly arrested at the Hacienda del Toro, for the silence was so profound: peons, vaqueros, craidos, everybody in fact, were enjoying their siesta. It was about three in the afternoon; but that indistinct though significant buzz which announces the awakening of the hour that precedes the resumption of labour was audible. Two gentlemen alone had not yielded to sleep, in spite of the crushing midday heat; but seated in an elegantly furnished cuarto, they had spent the hours usually devoted to slumber in conversation. The cause for this deviation from the ordinary custom must have been most serious. The Hispano-American, and especially the Mexican, does not lightly sacrifice those hours of repose during which, according to a Spanish proverb, only dogs and Frenchmen are to be seen in the sun.
Of these two gentlemen, one, Don Hernando de Moguer, is already known to us. Years, while stooping his back, had furrowed some wrinkles on his forehead, and mingled many silver threads with his hair; but the expression of his face, with the exception of a tinge of melancholy spread over his features by lengthened misfortunes, had remained nearly the same, that is to say, gentle and timid, although clever; slightly sarcastic and eminently crafty.
As for the person with whom Don Hernando was conversing at this moment, he deserves a detailed description, physically at least, for the reader will soon be enabled to appreciate his moral character. He was a short, plump man, with a rubicund face and apoplectic look, though hardly forty years of age. Still his hair, which was almost white, his deeply wrinkled forehead, and his grey eyes buried beneath bushy whiskers, gave him a senile appearance, harmonizing but little with the sharp gesticulation and youthful manner he affected. His long, thin, violet nose was bent like a parrot's beak over a wide mouth filled with dazzling white teeth; and his prominent cheekbones, covered with blue veins, completed a strange countenance, the expression of which bore a striking likeness to that of an owl.
This species of nutcracker, with his prominent stomach and short ill-hung limbs, whose whole appearance was most disagreeable, had such a mobility of face as rendered it impossible to read his thoughts on his features, in the event of this fat man's carcase containing a thought. His cold blue eyes were ever pertinaciously fixed on the person addressing him, and did not reveal the slightest emotion; in short, this man produced at the first contact that invariable antipathy which is felt on the approach of reptiles, and which, after nearer acquaintance, is converted into disgust and contempt.
He was a certain Don Rufino Contreras, one of the richest landowners in Sonora, and a year previously had been elected senator to the Mexican Congress for the province.
At the moment when we enter the cuarto, Don Hernando, with arms folded at his back and frowning brow, is walking up and down, while Don Rufino, seated on a butaca, with his body thrown back, is following his movements with a crafty smile on his lips while striving to scratch off an invisible spot on his knee. For some minutes, the hacendero continued his walk, and then stopped before Don Rufino, who bent on him a mocking, inquiring glance.
"Then," he said, in a voice whose anxious expression he sought in vain to conceal, "you must positively have the entire sum within a week?"
"Yes," the fat man replied, still smiling.
"Why, if that is the case, did you not warn me sooner?"
"It was through delicacy, my dear sir."
"What – through delicacy?" Don Hernando repeated, with a start of surprise.
"You shall judge for yourself."
"I shall be glad to do so."
"I believe you do me the justice of allowing that I am your friend?"
"You have said you are, at least."
"I fancy I have proved it to you."
"No matter; but let us pass over that."
"Very well. Knowing that you were in a critical position at the moment, I tried to procure the sum by all possible means, as I did not wish to have recourse to you, except in the last extremity. You see, my dear Don Hernando, how delicate and truly friendly my calculations were. Unfortunately, at the present time it is very difficult to get money in, owing to the stagnation of trade produced by the new conflict which threatens to break out between the President of the Republic and the Southern States. It was therefore literally impossible for me to obtain the smallest sum. In such a perplexing position, I leave you to judge what I was obliged to do. The money I must have; you have owed it for a long time, and I applied to you – what else could I do?"
"I do not know. Still, I think you might have sent a peon to warn me, before you left Sonora."
"No, my dear sir, that is exactly what I should not do. I have not come direct to you: in pursuance of the line of conduct I laid down I hoped to collect the required sum on my road, and not be obliged to come all the way to your hacienda."
Don Hernando made no reply. He began his walk again after giving the speaker a glance which would have given him cause for thought, had he noticed it; but the latter gentleman had begun rubbing the invisible spot again with more obstinacy than before. In the meanwhile the sunbeams had become more and more oblique; the hacienda had woke up to its ordinary life; outside the shouts of the vaqueros pricking the oxen or urging on the horses could be heard mingled with the lowing and neighing of the draught cattle. Don Hernando walked up to a window, the shutters of which he threw open, and a refreshing breeze entered the cuarto. Don Rufino gave a sigh of relief and sat up in his butaca.
"Ouf," he said, with an expression of comfort, "I was very tired; not through the long ride I was compelled to make this morning, so much as through the stifling heat."
Don Hernando started at this insinuation, as if he had been stung by a serpent; he had neglected all the laws of Mexican hospitality; for Don Rufino's visit had so disagreeably surprised him, and made him forget all else before the sudden obligation of satisfying the claims of a merciless creditor. But at Don Rufino's remarks he understood how unusual his conduct must have seemed to a weary traveller, hence he rang a bell, and a peon at once came in.
"Refreshment," he said.
The peon bowed, and left the room.
"You will excuse me, Caballero," the hacendero continued, frankly, "but your visit so surprised me, that at the moment I did not think of offering the refreshment which a tired traveller requires so much. Your room is prepared, rest yourself tonight, and tomorrow we will resume our conversation, and arrive at a solution I trust mutually satisfactory."
"I hope so, my dear sir. Heaven is my witness that it is my greatest desire," Don Rufino answered, as he raised to his lips the glass of orangeade brought by the peon. "Unhappily I fear that, with the best will in the world, we cannot come to a settlement unless – "
"Unless!" Don Hernando sharply interrupted. Don Rufino quietly sipped his orangeade, placed the glass on the table, and said, as he threw himself back on the butaca, and rolled a cigarette —
"Unless you pay me in full what you owe me, which, from what you have said, appears to me to be difficult, I confess."
"Ah!" Don Hernando remarked with an air of constraint, "What makes you suppose that?"
"I beg your pardon, my dear sir, I suppose nothing: you told me just now that you were hardly pressed."
"Well, and what conclusion do you derive from that?" the hacendero asked impatiently.
"A very simple thing – that seventy thousand piastres form a rather round sum, and that however rich a man may be, he does not always have it in his hands, especially when he is pressed."
"I can make sacrifices."
"Believe me, I shall be sincerely sorry."
"But can you not wait a few days longer?"
"Impossible, I repeat: let us understand our respective positions, in order to avoid any business misunderstanding, which should always be prevented between honourable gentlemen holding a certain position. I lent you that sum, and only stipulated for small interest, I believe."
"I allow it, Señor, and thank you for it."
"It is not really worth the trouble; I was anxious to oblige you. I did so, and let us say no more about it; but remember that I made one condition which you accepted."
"Yes," Don Hernando said, with an impatient start, "and I was wrong."
"Perhaps so; but that is not the question. This condition which you accepted was to the effect that you should repay me the sum I advanced upon demand."
"Have I said the contrary?"
"Far from it; but now that I want the money, I ask you for it, and that is natural: I have in no way infringed the conditions. You ought to have expected what is happening today, and taken your precautions accordingly."
"Hence, if I ask a month to collect the money you claim?"
"I should be heartbroken, but should refuse; for I want the money, not in a month, but in a week. I can quite put myself in your position, and comprehend how disagreeable the matter must be; but unluckily so it is."
What most hurt Don Hernando was not the recall of the loan, painful as it was to him, so much as the way in which the demand was made; the show of false good nature employed by his creditor, and the insulting pity he displayed. Carried away involuntarily by the rage that filled his heart, he was about to give Don Rufino an answer which would have broken off all friendly relations between them for ever, when a great noise was heard in the hacienda, mingled with shouts of joy and the stamping of horses. Don Hernando eagerly leant out of the window, and at the expiration of a moment turned round to Don Rufino, who was sucking his cigarette with an air of beatitude.
"Here are my children, Caballero," he said; "not a word of this affair before them, I entreat."
"I know too well what I owe you, my dear Señor," the other replied, as he prepared to rise. "With your permission, however, I will withdraw, in order to allow you entire liberty for your family joy."
"No, no!" Don Hernando added, "I had better introduce you at once to my son and daughter."
"As you please, my dear sir. I shall be flattered to form the acquaintance of your charming family."
The door opened, and Don José Parades appeared. The majordomo was a half-breed of about forty years of age, tall and powerfully built, with bow legs and round shoulders that denoted his capacity as a horseman; in fact, the worthy man's life was spent in the saddle, galloping about the country. He took a side-glance at Don Rufino, bowed to his master, and lowering his usual rough tone, said —
"Señor amo, the niño and niña have arrived in good health, thanks to Our Lady of Carnerno."
"Thanks, Don José," Don Hernando replied; "let them come in. I shall be delighted to see them."
The majordomo gave a signal outside, and the two young people rushed into the room. With one bound they were in their father's arms, who for a moment pressed them to his heart; but then he pushed them away, remarking that a stranger was present. The young couple bowed respectfully.
"Señor Don Rufino," the Marquis said, "I present to you my son, Don Ruiz de Moguer, and my daughter, Doña Marianita: my children, this is Señor Don Rufino Contreras, one of my best friends."
"A title of which I am proud," Don Rufino replied, with a bow, while giving the young lady a cold searching glance, which made her look down involuntarily and blush.
"Are the apartments ready, Don José?" Don Hernando continued.
"Yes, Excellency," the majordomo said, who was contemplating the young people with a radiant face.
"If Señor Don Rufino will permit it, you can go and lie down, my children," the hacendero said. "You must be tired."
"You will also allow me to rest, Don Hernando?" the Senator then said. The hacendero bowed.
"We will resume our conversation at a more favourable moment," he continued, as he took a side-glance at Donna Marianita, who was just leaving the room with her brother. "However, my dear Señor, do not feel too anxious about my visit; for I believe I have discovered a way of arranging matters without inconveniencing you too much."
And, bowing to his knees to the Marquis, who was astounded at this conduct, which he was so far from expecting, Don Rufino left the room, smiling with an air of protection.
