Miralda

“ Imagine a formal introduction to Miralda! ‘Mademoiselle Dominguez. Mr. Donnington,’ and those eyes of hers wide with astonishment, and her lips struggling to suppress her laughter! I really think I must let him do it, just to see her face at the moment. Anyway, I shall see her to-morrow night. Ye gods! It’s over four months since I fell before her beauty as intuitively as a pagan falls before the shrine of the little tin god he worships. I hope no one has got in the way meanwhile; if there is any one—well, I’ll do my best to give him a bad time. I’m not here for my health, as the Yanks say ”

“ There was Vasco. I could not see at once what to do in regard to him. But Miralda and I could discuss his future with the viscontesse. Probably the best thing would be for him to throw up his commission and join us. He had been a fool and must pay for his folly.
There was also Barosa. If Sampayo had spoken the truth about his love for Miralda, he would be mad with Inez for letting her go. It was all for the best, therefore, that he was not in the house. I might have found much more difficulty in getting Miralda away.
Yet he could not have prevented me. The weapon I held was too strong. ”

“ I returned her look and framed my answer carefully. “I have been very careful to let every one know that—every one else.”
She bit her lips and frowned, the concern in her eyes deepened, and with a half-suppressed sigh she turned away and began to fan herself slowly again. I think she understood my meaning, but before she could reply Miralda came up on Major Sampayo’s arm. As she saw them approaching, the viscontesse started and glanced quickly and nervously at me with a look I could not read. ”

“ However, her long excited tirade gave me time to think things out; and when at last she ended with an appeal to me to write what Barosa required, I had decided how to reply.
“You ask me to have these men set at liberty, contesse; but if I were to do so, what object would be gained, as everything has been discovered?”
“They are our friends and we must save them. Their ruin will not help you.”
“Miralda is my friend, and I must save her.”
“But you will not help her by destroying them.”
“Why is Miralda kept a prisoner here?”
“She is not a prisoner, Mr. Donnington.” ”

“ Miralda is naturally anxious to reassure her mother as soon as possible.”
“I do not wish to do so, thank you; but we shall have a minute or two while Miralda gets ready. And I wish to have a word with you privately, Mr. Donnington, after what you told me.”
“I shall be ready in a minute,” said Miralda with a smile as she went away.
“What are you going to do, Mr. Donnington?” asked Inez. “There can, of course, be only one meaning to your statement—that you were on the Rampallo last night. Are you going to betray us?” She was greatly agitated and made little attempt to conceal it. ”

“ Donnington, for having stooped to listen to this slander. You have my word for it that I will not do it again.”
As I took her hand, Inez coughed suggestively.
Miralda understood and turned quickly from me. “There is a limit to what I will endure even from you, [142] Inez. You have reached it now;” and Inez, being a person of discretion, held her tongue.
I left them, asking Miralda to make my excuses to her mother, and returned to my rooms in a glow of pleasure at the proof of Miralda’s confidence in me, and her zeal in risking even a breach with Inez on my account. ”

“ I said lightly to Miralda. “May I take you to your partner, madame?” I asked, offering my arm to the Contesse.
Instead of accepting it she said to Miralda. “If you see Vasco tell him I’ll give him another waltz [52] for this. I am going to sit this out with Mr. Donnington—that is, of course, if he is willing.”
“I’ll tell him, Inez,” replied Miralda over her shoulder as she walked away.
Inez was silent until they were out of hearing, and then she said very meaningly: “What an excellent actor you are, Mr. Donnington.” ”

“ I had feared that there might prove to be some other obstacle far [127] more difficult to overcome. But the instant I sent Sampayo flying for life from the vengeance of the Corsican, Prelot, this barrier would cease to have terrors for either Miralda or her weak-kneed brother. It would be best, however, to learn what this crime was before dealing with Sampayo.
It must be serious, for Vasco was absolutely helpless; so much so that Miralda had forbidden him to speak to me. But that must have been before our explanation on the Stella. Would she still forbid him? ”

“ I began to get a grip of the situation now.
“And Vasco? Can I see him?”
“He is on duty this morning. He is better. What are you going to do?” she asked as I rose.
“To find Miralda.”
“Pray God you may be successful. You will let me know?”
With a promise to do so, I left her. I had very little doubt that I should find Miralda with Inez. She had been taken away from her home as the result of that attempt at flight; and Barosa had used Inez for the purpose. The thing must have been planned before the failure of the previous night’s scheme was known ”

“ But all I was going to suggest was that you should come for another outing with me and perhaps get your sister to join you.”
“Oh, I’ll do that any time—but not to-morrow, or—or the next day. Any other time. I know Miralda would go—at least—if——” and he stopped.
“Well, we’ll fix a day soon,” I said, and let him go.
Evidently something serious was to take place on the morrow. What could it be? Was it something I ought to know for Miralda’s sake? Clearly the sooner I could get her away the better.
Later in the evening Burroughs told me a curious incident. ”

“ There is a place for such a woman as you in the world and good work waiting to be done by you. You promise to come to me?”
She could not speak. The tears, which no persecution, nor the horrors of the past night, nor even the almost certain prospect of the lash itself had been able to draw from her, were standing thick in her eyes as I left her and hurried to my rooms.
I decided to go to Volheno as soon as I had changed into some decent clothes, and secure a pardon for Miralda in return for a full statement of what I knew, and then obtain his assistance in searching for her. ”

“ Donnington——”
“I can say no more. And now Miralda should be back.”
“I am agitated and had actually forgotten her. I will go and see what is keeping her;” and she went away.
[261] I was now very impatient to be out of the house. I had gained all I had striven for so desperately; and there was really no solid reason why I should turn informer. If this abduction scheme was not discovered by the Government, no suspicion in any future plot would fall upon Miralda. ”

“ The unfeeling words and the tone in which they were uttered, stung me like the knots of a whip lash. I gave my arm to the viscontesse and took her below and installed her comfortably on a sofa in the saloon.
“Miralda loves a rough sea, Mr. Donnington,” she said, as she pointed to the wraps for me to take on deck. “Don’t stay with me; I am going to take an old woman’s privilege and have a nap.” ”

“ There’s heaps of room on the Stella for us all.”
“I mean with regard to Miralda, Mr. Donnington,” [80] she said, dropping her light tone and fixing those queer eyes of hers on me.
“I hope to give both the viscontesse and her daughter a pleasant day’s outing. You don’t consider that a very deadly plan, I hope.” ”

“ Was it those confounded politics again? One of the little wheels within the big one which was to have its part to play when the whole machinery of plot and conspiracy was set in motion.
Fools can be useful at times.
What part had this one to play?
It was nothing to me—and yet it might be much. He was Miralda’s brother; and nothing which concerned her could be indifferent to me.
[59] CHAPTER VI
DR. BAROSA AS I made my way through the crowded rooms with the object of finding the viscontesse and making sure of an invitation to her house, I saw Miralda and Sampayo sitting together. ”

“ She gave me a last bright glance of encouragement, her heart in her eyes, and then burying her face in her hands she cried despairingly: “You do not care, you do not care. You will ruin us all in your madness;” and as if overwhelmed by her emotions, she rushed out of the room.
[289] CHAPTER XXX
JEALOUSY THE interview with Miralda left me in better spirits than I had been at any moment since my imprisonment. She had confirmed my own view that my life was safe so long as I refused to release Gompez and his companions, and had assured me that she herself was in no serious or immediate danger. ”

“ She was an orphan of seventeen, and kept a cigar store, which her beauty and grace made very popular with the young men of Havana. Miralda, like all proper heroines of fiction or fairy stories, was good as well as beautiful, and although many of the young bloods sighed for her, her glance fell with favor only on a handsome but, of course, poor and deserving young man, of the name of Pedro Mantenez. Pedro was a boatman, which is a most romantic and fitting occupation for an impoverished but righteous hero. ”

“ One alone, perhaps, held a place nearer her heart than all others. This was Don Pedro Mantanez, a young boatman employed in the harbour near the Morro Castle. Pedro was of good white parentage, though one would not have judged so from the colour of his skin, which, from long exposure to the sun and the weather, had turned a pale coffee colour. Pedro loved Miralda fondly, and she was by no means indifferent to the handsome Creole. ”

“ My thoughts flew to Miralda, and with a shudder of fear I pictured her in the midst of such a scene of abomination and desolate misery.
Death was a million times preferable to existence in such a hell of life as this!
[309] CHAPTER XXXII
A HUNDRED LASHES I WAS not without apprehension that, as soon as the drunkards and rowdies woke up, there would be some renewal of the night’s disturbances, with trouble to follow for the women and for us who had kept watch over them.
But the anticipation was unfounded. The men were too ill to make trouble. ”

“ I replied.
“People look so silly when they are ill;” and with an unpleasant laugh she crossed to the side.
When the wind came and the Stella began to roll, Inez hurried away, followed directly by Vasco.
The viscontesse had been very quiet all the time, and although the motion of the yacht did not appear to upset her, she said she would rather lie down and asked Miralda to go with her.
“Don’t be unreasonable, mother,” was the reply. “I am enjoying every moment of it. You don’t want to shut me up in a stuffy cabin. But take my hat with you, and bring me a wrap of some sort, and my cloak.” ”

“ I love you, Vincen, love you!—That is all!”
The river-banks, the close-pruned willows hoary,
Green grass and ambient air, hearing this story,
Were full of glee. But the poor basket-weaver,
“Princess, that thou who art so fair and clever,
Shouldst have a tongue given to wicked lying!
Why, it confounds me! It is stupefying!
“What! thou in love with me? Mirèio,
My poor life is yet happy. Do not go
And make a jest thereof! I might believe
Just for one moment, and thereafter grieve
My soul to death. Ah, no! my pretty maid,
Laugh no more at me in this wise!” he said. ”

“ Upon its udders, but doth only lick
Moss from the base of the precipitous peak
Of Baux,—I’d perish in the quarries there,
Or bring thee down the goat with golden hair!
“So much, that, if thou saidst, ‘I want a star,’
There is no stream so wild, no sea so far,
But I would cross; no headsman, steel or fire,
That could withhold me. Yea, I would climb higher
Than peaks that kiss the sky, that star to wrest;
And Sunday thou shouldst wear it on thy breast!
“O my Mirèio! Ever as I gaze,
Thy beauty fills me with a deep amaze. ”

“ And “Have you seen Mirèio?” is their cry.
While Ramoun and his wife by the fireside
Are sitting, lost in grief, and swollen-eyed,
And at their hearts the bitterness of death.
“Doubtless,” they said, “her reason wandereth.
Oh, what a mad and wretched maid it is!
Oh, what a heavy, cruel downfall this!
“Oh, dire disgrace! Our beauty and our hope
So with the last of trampers to elope!
Fled with a gypsy! And who shall discover
The secret hole of this kidnapping lover,
Where he the shameless one concealèd hath?”
And, as they spake, they knit their brows in wrath. ”

“ Oh, stay! Life’s in thine eyes.
Ah, if thou couldst do something,” the lad cries,
“For him,—the poor old basket-weaver there,—
My father, worn with toil!” In her despair,
Mirèio bathes the wound, while some bring lint,
And some run to the hills for healing mint.
Then the maid’s mother spake: “Let four men rally,
And to the Fairies’ Cavern, in the valley
They call Enfer, bear up this wounded man.
The deadlier the hurt, the sooner can
The old witch heal. Scale first the cliffs of Baux,
And circling vultures the cave’s mouth will show.” ”

“ Was borne aloft Mirèio’s faltering prayer:—
“O holy Maries, who can cheer
The sorrow-laden,
Lend, I beseech, a pitying ear
To one poor maiden!
“And when you see my cruel care
And misery,
Then look in mercy down the air,
And side with me!
“I am so young, dear Saints above,
And there’s a youth—
My handsome Vincen—whom I love
With utter truth!
“I love him as the wayward stream
Its wanderings;
As loves the new-fledged bird, I deem,
To try its wings. ”