21
On Guard, My Fine Gentleman!

We leave tio lucas for the present and pass to events at the mill between the time that Señora Frasquita was left alone there and the time when her husband came face to face with such an unfamiliar and shattering situation.

An hour had passed since Tio Lucas had gone off with Tonuelo. His anxious wife, who had made up her mind to sit up for her husband and was knitting in her bedroom upstairs, all at once heard pitiful cries close outside the house from the direction of the millstream.

“Help! Help! I’m drowning! Frasquita!” It was a man’s voice raised with a dreadful note of desperation.

“Suppose it’s Lucas!” Frasquita thought, filled, naturally, with terrible anxiety.

In the bedroom was a little door – the one Weasel had mentioned – which opened right over the middle of the millstream. Frasquita hastily threw this open, not recognizing the appealing voice, and came face to face with the Corregidor just as he was scrambling out, dripping all over, from the racing waters.

“God forgive me! God forgive me!” stammered the old villain. “I thought I was drowning!”

“How’s this? You! What does this mean? How dare you? What do you want here at this hour?” cried Frasquita, more indignant than afraid, though instinctively she backed away.

“Hush! Hush, woman!” hissed the Corregidor, painfully hauling himself up into the room after her. “I’ll tell you the whole story. I’ve been within an ace of drowning. The water swept me away like a feather! Just look at the state I’m in!”

“You’ll have to leave this house! You must go!” Frasquita cried in a high voice. “I don’t want your explanations. I understand everything only too well! Suppose you were drowning? Did I ask you to come? Ah! What a monstrous thing! It was for this then that you had my husband called away!”

“Woman! Woman! Listen to me!”

“I won’t listen! Be off this instant, my Lord Corregidor! Off with you, or I won’t answer for your life!”

“What do you say?”

“It’s exactly as you heard! My husband may not be here but I know how to take care of myself! Off with you where you came from – if you don’t want me to push you back in the water with my own hands!”

“My dear! My dear! Don’t shout like that – I’m not deaf!” said the old rake. “I’ve a good reason for coming at this time. I come to release Tio Lucas who was arrested by mistake by some country Alcalde. But, first of all, I must ask you to dry these clothes of mine. I’m drenched to the bone!”

“Be off, I tell you!”

“Hush, you silly woman! Don’t you realize? – Look, here I bring your nephew’s appointment. Light the light and we’ll talk. Now! While my clothes are drying I’ll bed down in this room.”

“Indeed! You say you came here for my sake? You say that such-and-such was why you had my Lucas arrested? And you bring your letter of appointment and everything? Merciful heaven! What on earth does this old fright take me for?”

“Frasquita! I am the Corregidor!”

“I wouldn’t care if you were the King! It means nothing to me! I am my husband’s wife and mistress of my house! Do you think I’m afraid of any Corregidor? I can go to Madrid or the ends of the earth to get redress against the insolent old man who drags his high office in the dirt like this! Or – what is more to the point – tomorrow I can throw on my mantilla and go and see her Ladyship your wife!”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” cried the Corregidor, losing patience, or changing his tactics. “You’ll do nothing of the sort! I’ll shoot you if you persist in shutting your ears to reason…”

“Shoot me!” repeated Frasquita in a curiously low voice.

“Yes, shoot you… And, even if you did what you propose it wouldn’t do me the least harm. I happen to have dropped the hint in the city that I would be out tonight after malefactors… Don’t be foolish then. Be nice to me!… I adore you!”

“My Lord Corregidor, did you say ‘shoot me’?” Frasquita asked again and again, holding her arms behind her and thrusting her body forwards as if about to fling herself on the enemy.

“Yes, if you don’t give over I’ll shoot you, and so make an end of your threats – and your accursed beauty too…” A sudden tremor of fear shook the Corregidor and he pulled out a pair of pocket pistols.

“So then! Pistols too! And in the other pocket my nephew’s appointment!” Frasquita looked him up and down. “Then, sir, the choice is made. Wait a moment – I’ll light a light.” She made rapidly for the stairs and descended them in three bounds.

The Corregidor took up the light and followed her anxious that she should not escape; but he was obliged to take the stairs more slowly. So he reached the kitchen below just in time to run full tilt into Frasquita on her way back.

“So! You said you were going to shoot me, eh?” said the dauntless woman, taking a step back. “Well then, on guard, my fine gentleman! I’m ready for you!” And she thrust under his nose the formidable blunderbuss that has already figured in the story.

“Stop, wretched woman! What are you going to do?” the Corregidor cried, terror-stricken. “My talk of shooting was only a joke! Look – the pistols are not loaded. On the other hand, what I said about the appointment was true… Here you are… Take it! A little present from me… It’s yours. No return is looked for – none, absolutely none!” Trembling he laid the document down on the table.

“Good!” said Frasquita. “Tomorrow it will do to light the fire for cooking my husband’s breakfast. I don’t want anything from you at all. If my nephew ever does leave Estella it will be to come and stamp on the wicked hand that wrote his name on that disgraceful paper! There! I’ve had my say. Now get out of my house! Take yourself off! Away with you! At once!… I feel my temper rising!”

The Corregidor did not answer. He had turned a livid, bluish colour. His eyes turned up, and a fit of feverish trembling shook him all over. Then his teeth began chattering and he fell to the ground, seized with a frightful convulsion. The shock of the millstream, the drenched clothes, the violent scene in the bedroom, his terror of the blunderbuss which Frasquita was pointing at him, had drained away his last strength.

“I’m dying!” he muttered hoarsely. “Call Weasel!… Call Weasel! He’s close by – in the ravine. I mustn’t die… not in this house!” He stopped, exhausted, his eyes closed, and he lay like one dead.

“And he will die, too!” Frasquita suddenly realized. “Lord! This is as bad as can be! What shall I do with this man in my house? What would people say if he died here? What would Lucas say? What excuse could I make as I opened the door to him myself? No! I can’t stay here with him. I must find my husband! What if I give people something to talk about? That’s better than losing my good name!”

Her mind made up, she dropped the blunderbuss, went out into the yard, took out the remaining ass, saddled it somehow or other, opened the great gate of the yard, mounted in one leap for all her largeness of body, and rode off by the ravine.

“Weasel! Weasel!” she called as she came near it.

“Here I am!” At last the Alguacil answered, showing himself from behind a hedge. “Is that Señora Frasquita?”

“Yes, it is. Go to the mill and look after your master – he’s dying!”

“What’s that you say? A likely tale!”

“I’m speaking the truth, Weasel!”

“And you, by the saints! Where are you off to at this hour?”

“I?… Hands off, rascal! I’m off to the city for a doctor.” With this Frasquita urged on the ass with a dig of her heel and aimed a passing kick at Weasel. She did not take the road to the city, as she had said, but made towards the neighbouring village.

Weasel took no stock of this circumstance. He strode back with long strides to the mill, and as he went muttered to himself: “Go for a doctor, eh? The wretched woman might well do that!… What an unlucky man he is, though! A fine time to fall ill! Heaven gives him a titbit and he can’t get his teeth into it!”