The Adventurers. Gustave Aimard
daughter! my daughter! of whom this man has bereaved me! and whom, in spite of all my researches, he has hitherto concealed in some inviolable asylum! My daughter! he must restore her to me; it is my will!" she added with inexpressible energy. "He shall, even if I had to deliver him up again to the executioners from whom I have ravished their prey! These wounds are nothing; loss of blood and terror are the sole causes of this insensibility. But time passes – my absence may be noticed. Why should I hesitate longer? Let me at once know what I have to hope from him. Perhaps he will allow himself to be softened by my tears and prayers. What, he! he to whom all human feeling is unknown! Better for me to implore the most implacable Indian! He will laugh at my grief, he will reply by sarcasms to my cries of despair; – oh! woe, woe be to him if he do so!"
She looked earnestly at the wounded man, who was still motionless, for another instant, and then, adding resolutely, "I will try," she drew from her bosom a small crystal phial, curiously cut, and raising the head of the unknown, made him inhale the contents. This was followed by a moment of intense expectation; the woman watching with an anxious eye the convulsive movements which are the precursors of the return to life, as they agitated the body of the wounded man. At length, with a deep sigh, he opened his eyes.
"Where am I?" he murmured in a faint voice, then sank back, and closed his eyes again.
"In safety," the woman replied.
The sound of the voice produced upon the wounded man the effect of an electric shock. He raised himself quickly, and looking around him with a mixture of disgust, terror, and anger, asked in a hollow voice, —
"Who spoke?"
"I!" the woman replied haughtily, placing herself before him.
"Ah!" he said with a gesture of disgust, and sinking back upon the bed; "you again! ever you!"
"Yes, I! still I, Don Tadeo! I, whose will, in spite of your disdain and your hatred, has never faltered! I, in short, whose assistance you have always obstinately refused, and who have saved you, in spite of yourself."
"Oh! that is an easy matter for you, madam; are you not on the best possible terms with my executioners?"
At this reply the woman could not repress a movement of anger; a sudden redness flitted across her face.
"No insults, Don Tadeo de Leon!" she said, stamping her foot; "I have saved you! I am a woman, and you are under my roof!"
"That is true," he replied, rising and bowing to her with ironical respect; "I had forgotten that, madam; I am in your house. Have the goodness, then, to direct me the way out, that I may be gone as quickly as possible."
"Do not be in such haste, Don Tadeo – you have not yet sufficiently recovered your strength. Within a few steps, you perhaps would fall again, to be raised up by the agents of the power which, this time, I swear to you, would not let you escape."
"And who told you, madam, that I should not prefer being retaken and executed a second time, to the chance of remaining longer in your presence?"
There was a moment of silence, during which the two interlocutors observed each other attentively. The woman was the first to speak.
"Listen to me, Don Tadeo," she said. "In spite of all your efforts, destiny, or, speaking more correctly, woman's genius, which nothing can resist, has brought us together once again. If you live, if you have received only slight wounds, it is because I lavished my gold upon the soldiers charged with your execution; I wished to force you to that explanation which I have so long demanded of you, which you so often have refused me, but which you can now no longer avoid. Submit, then, with a good grace. We will afterwards separate, if not good friends, at least indifferent, never to meet again. Though I do not wish to establish any claim upon your gratitude, you certainly owe your life to me; were it for that service alone, you are bound to hear me."
"What! madam," Don Tadeo replied, proudly, "do you think that I consider what you have done was rendering me a service? By what right have you saved my life? You know me but ill if you fancied I should allow myself to be softened by your tears. No, no, I have been too long your dupe and your slave to do so. Heaven be praised! I know you well now; and the Linda, the mistress of General Bustamente, the tyrant of my country, the executioner of my brothers and myself, has nothing to expect from me! All that you can say, all that you can do, will be to no purpose. Spare yourself, then, I advise you, the trouble of pretending a gentleness which neither accords with your character nor your mode of life. I madly loved you, a young, pure, and prudent girl, in the cabin of the worthy guaso, your father, whose death was caused by your scandalous life; you were then called Maria. At that period, would I not have sacrificed my life and my happiness for you? – you know I would. Many times have I given you proofs of that boundless love; but the Linda, the shameless courtezan, the Linda, the woman branded on the brow like Cain with the seal of infamy, the miserable creature – I know her not. Away, madam! – away! There can be nothing in common between you and me."
And with a gesture of proud authority he waved her from him.
The woman had listened to him with flashing eyes and heaving bosom, trembling with rage and shame. Drops of perspiration stood upon her face, which glowed with a feverish redness. When he had finished, she seized his arm, pressed it with her utmost strength, and placed her face close to his.
"Have you said all?" she muttered from between her teeth. "Have you heaped insults enough upon me? Have you cast sufficient mire in my face? Have you nothing more to add?"
"Nothing, madam," he replied, in a tone of cool contempt. "You can, when you please, summon your assassins – I am ready to receive them."
And throwing himself upon the bed, he waited with an air of the most insolent indifference.
CHAPTER VII
HUSBAND AND WIFE
Doña Maria, notwithstanding the fresh and bitter insult she had just received from Don Tadeo, did not yet renounce the hope of softening him. When she recalled to her mind the early years, already so distant, of her love for Don Tadeo, his devotion to her smallest caprices, when she could bring him trembling and prostrate to her feet by a glance or a smile, and the entire abnegation he had made of his will, in order to live for her and by her; notwithstanding all that had since taken place between them, she could not persuade herself that the violent and deeply-seated passion he had entertained for her, the species of worship he had vowed to her, could have entirely disappeared without leaving some slight traces behind. Her pride revolted at the idea of having lost all her empire over the lofty nature which she so long had moulded at her pleasure like soft wax, under the burning impression of wild caprices. She fancied that, like most other men, Don Tadeo, deeply wounded in his pride, loved her still without being willing to admit it, and that the virulent reproaches he had addressed to her, were flashes of that ill-extinguished fire which still smouldered in his heart, and whose flame she should succeed in reviving.
Unfortunately Doña Maria had never given herself the trouble to study the man she had married, and whom her beauty had so long held in subjection. Don Tadeo had been nothing in her eyes but an attentive, submissive slave, and, under the apparent weakness of the loving man, she had not discovered the powerful energy which formed the foundation of his character. And yet the history itself of their love had been a proof of that energy, and of a will which nothing could control. Doña Maria, then fifteen years of age, dwelt with her father in a hacienda, in the neighbourhood of Santiago. Deprived of her mother, who had died in giving her birth, she was brought up under the care of an old aunt, an incorruptible Argus, who allowed no lover to come near her niece. The young girl, ignorant as all girls brought up in the country are, but whose warm aspirations led her to desire to know the world, and to launch into that whirlwind of pleasures the sound of which died without an echo in her ears, waited impatiently the arrival of the man who should introduce her to these delights, of which, although unknown, she had formed seducing ideas. Don Tadeo had only been the guide charged with initiating her into the pleasures for which she thirsted. She had never loved him; she had only said to herself, on seeing him and learning he was of a noble family, "That is the man I have been looking for."
This hideous and selfish calculation is made by more girls than we may fancy. Don Tadeo was handsome.