Last of the Incas: A Romance of the Pampas

"Certainly; for are you not one of our best friends? we have no secrets from you. Don Sylvio d'Arenal is about to marry my daughter; the match has been arranged for a very long time."

Don Torribio turned pale; a mist passed before his eyes, he felt a deadly agony in his heart, and thought he was going to die. Doña Concha curiously followed his secret thoughts upon his face; but, feeling that all eyes were fixed upon him, the young man made a superhuman effort, and said to the young lady in a soft voice, and without any apparent emotion —

"May you be as happy, señorita, as I wish you. The first wish, people say, is efficacious, so accept mine."

"I thank you, sir," Doña Concha answered, deceived by Don Torribio's accent.

"As for you, Señor d'Arenal, your happiness will make many men jealous; for you are taking away the most precious pearl in the rich casket of the Argentine republic."

"I will strive, señor, to be worthy of her; for I love her so dearly."

"They love one another so dearly," the father said with cruel simplicity.

The young lovers exchanged a glance full of hope and happiness. Neither Don Valentine's last remark, nor the look of the betrothed couple, was left unnoticed by Don Torribio, who though not letting anything be seen, received this double dagger thrust, and concealed his grief beneath a smile.

"By Jove, neighbour," the father continued, "you will be present at the festival of betrothal, and give up your evening to us."

"Impossible, señor; important business calls me to my estancia, and, to my great regret, I must leave you."

"Still, if my daughter joined with me – "

"If I," Don Sylvio said, "dared – "

"You quite confound me; but, on my honour, I must be gone. The sacrifice I make at this moment is the more painful to me," he added, with a sardonic smile, "because happiness generally flies so fast that it is impossible to catch it up, and it is folly to neglect the opportunity."

"I fear no misfortune now," said Doña Concha, looking at Don Sylvio.

Carvajal gave her a look full of indefinable meaning, and replied with a shake of the head.

"I trust you are saying the truth, señorita, but there is a French proverb."

"What is it?"

"'Twixt cup and the lip there's many a slip.'"

"Oh, the ugly proverb!" Conchita exclaimed, in some embarrassment, "but I am not a French woman, and hence have nothing to fear."

"That is true."

And Don Torribio, without adding a word, bowed, and left the room.

"Well, my friend," the estanciero said, "what do you think of that man?"

"He has a look deep as an abyss, and his words are bitter; I know not why, but I feel sure he hates me."

"I hate him too," said Concha, with a shudder.

"Perhaps he loved you, Conchita, for is it possible to see and not love you?"

"Who assures you that he is not meditating a crime?"

"This time, señorita, you are going too far; he is a gentleman."

"¿Quién sabe?" she replied, remembering Don Torribio's words, which had already caused her a shudder.

CHAPTER X.

THE VIRGIN FOREST

On leaving the estancia of San Julian, Don Torribio Carvajal was a prey to one of those cold, concentrated passions, which slowly collect in the mind, and at length burst out with terrible force. His spurs lacerated the sides of his horse, which snorted with pain, and doubled its furious speed.

Where was Don Torribio Carvajal going in this way? He did not know himself. He saw nothing, heard nothing. He revolved sinister plans in his brain, and leaped torrents and ravines without troubling himself about his horse. The feeling of hatred was alone at work within him. Nothing refreshed his burning forehead, his temples beat as if about to burst, and a nervous tremor agitated his whole body. This state of over-excitement lasted some hours, during which his horse devoured space. At length the noble steed, utterly exhausted, stopped on its trembling knees, and fell on the sand.

Don Torribio rose and looked wildly around him. He had required this rude shock to restore a little order to his ideas, and recall him to reality. An hour more of such agony and he would have become a raving lunatic, or have died of an apoplectic fit.

Night had set in, thick darkness covered the landscape, and a mournful silence prevailed in the desert where chance had carried him.

"Where am I?" he said, as he tried to discover his whereabouts.

But the moon, concealed by clouds, shed no light; the wind blew violently; the branches of the trees clashed together, and in the depths of the desert the howling of the wild beasts began to mingle the deep notes of their voices with the hoarse mewlings of the wild cats.

Don Torribio's eyes sought in vain to pierce the obscurity. He went up to his horse, which was lying on the ground and panting heavily; moved with pity for the companion of his adventurous journeys, he bent over it, placed in his waist belt the pistols that were in the holsters, and unfastening a gourd of rum hanging from his saddlebow, began washing the eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth of the poor beast, whose sides quivered, and which this seemed to restore to life. Half an hour passed in this way; the horse, somewhat refreshed, had got on its legs, and with the instinct that distinguishes the race had discovered a spring close by where it quenched its thirst.

"All is not lost yet," Don Torribio muttered, "and perhaps I shall soon succeed in getting out of this place, for my friends are waiting for me, and I must join them."

But a deep roar broke forth a short distance away, repeated almost immediately from four different quarters. The horse's hair stood on end with terror. Even Don Torribio trembled.

"Malediction!" he exclaimed, "I am at a watering place of the cougars."

At this moment he saw, about ten paces from him, two eyes that shone like live coals, and looked at him with strange fixedness.

Don Torribio was a man of tried courage, audacious, and even rash on occasions; but alone in the gloomy solitude in the midst of the black night, surrounded by ferocious beasts, he felt fear assail himself against his will; he breathed with difficulty; his teeth were clenched, an icy perspiration poured down his whole person, and he was on the point of abandoning himself to his fate. This sudden discouragement disappeared before a powerful will, and Don Torribio, sustained by the instinct of self-preservation, and that hope which springs eternal in the human breast, prepared for an unequal struggle.

The horse burst into a snort of terror, and ran off.

"All the better," its rider thought, "perhaps it will escape."

A frightful concert of howls and roars broke out on all sides at the sound of the horse's flight and huge shadows bounded along past Don Torribio. A violent blast swept the sky, and the moon lit up the desert with its mournful, sickly rays.

Not far off the Rio Negro ran between two scarped banks, and Don Torribio saw all round him the compact masses of a virgin forest, an inextricable chaos of rocks piled up pell-mell, and of fissures out of which clumps of trees grew. Here and there creepers were intertwined describing the wildest curves, and only stopped their ramifications at the river. The soil, composed of sand and that detritus which abounds in American forests, gave way beneath the foot.

Don Torribio now discovered where he was He was more than fifteen leagues from any habitation, on the outskirts of an immense forest, the only one in Patagonia which no ranger had as yet been bold enough to explore, such horror and mystery did its gloomy depths appear to reveal. Near the forest a limpid stream burst through the rocks, whose banks were trampled by numerous traces of the claws of wild beasts. This stream served them, in fact, as a watering place, when they left their dens after sunset, and went in search of food and drink. As a living testimony of this supposition, two magnificent cougars, male and female, were standing on the bank, and watching with anxious eyes the sporting of their cubs.

"Hum," said Don Torribio, "these are dangerous neighbours."

And he mechanically turned his eyes away. A panther, stretched out on a rock in the position of a watchful cat, fixed its inflamed eyes upon him. Torribio, who was well armed according to the American fashion, had a rifle of wondrous accuracy, which he had leant against a rock close to him.

"Good," he said, "it will be a tough fight at any rate."