Gaspar Ruiz | Page 8

when darkness came, shaking off the
dead, whose weight had oppressed him, he crawled away over the plain
on his hands and knees. After drinking deeply, like a wounded beast, at
a shallow stream, he assumed an upright posture, and staggered on
light-headed and aimless, as if lost amongst the stars of the clear night.
A small house seemed to rise out of the ground before him. He
stumbled into the porch and struck at the door with his fist. There was
not a gleam of light. Gaspar Ruiz might have thought that the
inhabitants had fled from it, as from many others in the neighbourhood,
had it not been for the shouts of abuse that answered his thumping. In
his feverish and enfeebled state the angry screaming seemed to him part
of a hallucination belonging to the weird dreamlike feeling of his
unexpected condemnation to death, of the thirst suffered, of the volleys
fired at him within fifteen paces, of his head being cut off at a blow.
"Open the door!" he cried. "Open in the name of God!"
An infuriated voice from within jeered at him: "Come in, come in. This
house belongs to you. All this land belongs to you. Come and take it."
"For the love of God," Gaspar Ruiz murmured.
"Does not all the land belong to you patriots?" the voice on the other
side of the door screamed on. "Are you not a patriot?"
Gaspar Ruiz did not know. "I am a wounded man," he said
apathetically.
All became still inside. Gaspar Ruiz lost the hope of being admitted,
and lay down under the porch just outside the door. He was utterly
careless of what was going to happen to him. All his consciousness
seemed to be concentrated in his neck, where he felt a severe pain. His

indifference as to his fate was genuine.
The day was breaking when he awoke from a feverish doze; the door at
which he had knocked in the dark stood wide open now, and a girl,
steadying herself with her outspread arms, leaned over the threshold.
Lying on his back, he stared up at her. Her face was pale and her eyes
were very dark; her hair hung down black as ebony against her white
cheeks; her lips were full and red. Beyond her he saw another head
with long grey hair, and a thin old face with a pair of anxiously clasped
hands under the chin.

VI
"I KNEW those people by sight," General Santierra would tell his
guests at the dining-table. "I mean the people with whom Gaspar Ruiz
found shelter. The father was an old Spaniard, a man of property,
ruined by the revolution. His estates, his house in town, his money,
everything he had in the world had been confiscated by proclamation,
for he was a bitter foe of our independence. From a position of great
dignity and influence on the Viceroy's Council he became of less
importance than his own negro slaves made free by our glorious
revolution. He had not even the means to flee the country, as other
Spaniards had managed to do. It may be that, wandering ruined and
houseless, and burdened with nothing but his life, which was left to him
by the clemency of the Provisional Government, he had simply walked
under that broken roof of old tiles. It was a lonely spot. There did not
seem to be even a dog belonging to the place. But though the roof had
holes, as if a cannonball or two had dropped through it, the wooden
shutters were thick and tight-closed all the time.
"My way took me frequently along the path in front of that miserable
rancho. I rode from the fort to the town almost every evening, to sigh at
the window of a lady I was in love with, then. When one is young, you
understand . . . . She was a good patriot, you may be sure. Caballeros,
credit me or not, political feeling ran so high in those days that I do not
believe I could have been fascinated by the charms of a woman of
Royalist opinions. . . ."
Murmurs of amused incredulity all round the table interrupted the
General; and while they lasted he stroked his white beard gravely.
"Senores," he protested, "a Royalist was a monster to our overwrought

feelings. I am telling you this in order not to be suspected of the
slightest tenderness towards that old Royalist's daughter. Moreover, as
you know, my affections were engaged elsewhere. But I could not help
noticing her on rare occasions when with the front door open she stood
in the porch.
"You must know that this old Royalist was as crazy as a man can be.
His political misfortunes, his total