The Complete Novels of Mark Twain and the Complete Biography of Mark Twain (363 page)

“The amphitheatre was packed, from the bull-ring to the highest row—twelve thousand people in one circling mass, one slanting, solid mass—royalties, nobles, clergy, ladies, gentlemen, state officials, generals, admirals, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, thieves, merchants, brokers, cooks, housemaids, scullery-maids, doubtful women, dudes, gamblers, beggars, loafers, tramps, American ladies, gentlemen, preachers, English ladies, gentlemen, preachers, German ditto, French ditto, and so on and so on, all the world represented: Spaniards to admire and praise, foreigners to enjoy and go home and find fault—there they were, one solid, sloping, circling sweep of rippling and flashing color under the downpour of the summer sun—just a garden, a gaudy, gorgeous flower-garden!  Children munching oranges, six thousand fans fluttering and glimmering, everybody happy, everybody chatting gayly with their intimates, lovely girl-faces smiling recognition and salutation to other lovely girl-faces, gray old ladies and gentlemen dealing in the like exchanges with each other—ah, such a picture of cheery contentment and glad anticipation! not a mean spirit, nor a sordid soul, nor a sad heart there—ah, Thorndike, I wish I could see it again.

“Suddenly, the martial note of a bugle cleaves the hum and murmur—clear the ring!

“They clear it.  The great gate is flung open, and the procession marches in, splendidly costumed and glittering: the marshals of the day, then the picadores on horseback, then the matadores on foot, each surrounded by his quadrille of
chulos
.  They march to the box of the city fathers, and formally salute.  The key is thrown, the bull-gate is unlocked.  Another bugle blast—the gate flies open, the bull plunges in, furious, trembling, blinking in the blinding light, and stands there, a magnificent creature, centre of those multitudinous and admiring eyes, brave, ready for battle, his attitude a challenge.  He sees his enemy: horsemen sitting motionless, with long spears in rest, upon blindfolded broken-down nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and sacrifice, then the carrion-heap.

“The bull makes a rush, with murder in his eye, but a picador meets him with a spear-thrust in the shoulder.  He flinches with the pain, and the picador skips out of danger.  A burst of applause for the picador, hisses for the bull.  Some shout ‘Cow!’ at the bull, and call him offensive names.  But he is not listening to them, he is there for business; he is not minding the cloak-bearers that come fluttering around to confuse him; he chases this way, he chases that way, and hither and yon, scattering the nimble banderillos in every direction like a spray, and receiving their maddening darts in his neck as they dodge and fly—oh, but it’s a lively spectacle, and brings down the house!  Ah, you should hear the thundering roar that goes up when the game is at its wildest and brilliant things are done!

“Oh, that first bull, that day, was great!  From the moment the spirit of war rose to flood-tide in him and he got down to his work, he began to do wonders.  He tore his way through his persecutors, flinging one of them clear over the parapet; he bowled a horse and his rider down, and plunged straight for the next, got home with his horns, wounding both horse and man; on again, here and there and this way and that; and one after another he tore the bowels out of two horses so that they gushed to the ground, and ripped a third one so badly that although they rushed him to cover and shoved his bowels back and stuffed the rents with tow and rode him against the bull again, he couldn’t make the trip; he tried to gallop, under the spur, but soon reeled and tottered and fell, all in a heap.  For a while, that bull-ring was the most thrilling and glorious and inspiring sight that ever was seen.  The bull absolutely cleared it, and stood there alone! monarch of the place.  The people went mad for pride in him, and joy and delight, and you couldn’t hear yourself think, for the roar and boom and crash of applause.”

“Antonio, it carries me clear out of myself just to hear you tell it; it must have been perfectly splendid.  If I live, I’ll see a bull-fight yet before I die.  Did they kill him?”

“Oh yes; that is what the bull is for.  They tired him out, and got him at last.  He kept rushing the matador, who always slipped smartly and gracefully aside in time, waiting for a sure chance; and at last it came; the bull made a deadly plunge for him—was avoided neatly, and as he sped by, the long sword glided silently into him, between left shoulder and spine—in and in, to the hilt.  He crumpled down, dying.”

“Ah, Antonio, it
is
the noblest sport that ever was.  I would give a year of my life to see it.  Is the bull always killed?”

“Yes.  Sometimes a bull is timid, finding himself in so strange a place, and he stands trembling, or tries to retreat.  Then everybody despises him for his cowardice and wants him punished and made ridiculous; so they hough him from behind, and it is the funniest thing in the world to see him hobbling around on his severed legs; the whole vast house goes into hurricanes of laughter over it; I have laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks to see it.  When he has furnished all the sport he can, he is not any longer useful, and is killed.”

“Well, it is perfectly grand, Antonio, perfectly beautiful.  Burning a nigger don’t begin.”

“Sage-Brush, you have been listening?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it strange?”

“Well, no, Mongrel, I don’t know that it is.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I’ve seen a good many human beings in my time.  They are created as they are; they cannot help it.  They are only brutal because that is their make; brutes would be brutal if it was
their
make.”

“To me, Sage-Brush, man is most strange and unaccountable.  Why should he treat dumb animals that way when they are not doing any harm?”

“Man is not always like that, Mongrel; he is kind enough when he is not excited by religion.”

“Is the bull-fight a religious service?”

“I think so.  I have heard so.  It is held on Sunday.”

(
A reflective pause, lasting some moments
.)  Then:

“When we die, Sage-Brush, do we go to heaven and dwell with man?”

“My father thought not.  He believed we do not have to go there unless we deserve it.”

It was a prodigious trip, but delightful, of course, through the Rockies and the Black Hills and the mighty sweep of the Great Plains to civilization and the Missouri border—where the railroading began and the delightfulness ended.  But no one is the worse for the journey; certainly not Cathy, nor Dorcas, nor Soldier Boy; and as for me, I am not complaining.

Spain is all that Cathy had pictured it—and more, she says.  She is in a fury of delight, the maddest little animal that ever was, and all for joy.  She thinks she remembers Spain, but that is not very likely, I suppose.  The two—Mercedes and Cathy—devour each other.  It is a rapture of love, and beautiful to see.  It is Spanish; that describes it.  Will this be a short visit?

No.  It will be permanent.  Cathy has elected to abide with Spain and her aunt.  Dorcas says she (Dorcas) foresaw that this would happen; and also says that she wanted it to happen, and says the child’s own country is the right place for her, and that she ought not to have been sent to me, I ought to have gone to her.  I thought it insane to take Soldier Boy to Spain, but it was well that I yielded to Cathy’s pleadings; if he had been left behind, half of her heart would have remained with him, and she would not have been contented.  As it is, everything has fallen out for the best, and we are all satisfied and comfortable.  It may be that Dorcas and I will see America again some day; but also it is a case of maybe not.

We left the post in the early morning.  It was an affecting time.  The women cried over Cathy, so did even those stern warriors, the Rocky Mountain Rangers; Shekels was there, and the Cid, and Sardanapalus, and Potter, and Mongrel, and Sour-Mash, Famine, and Pestilence, and Cathy kissed them all and wept; details of the several arms of the garrison were present to represent the rest, and say good-bye and God bless you for all the soldiery; and there was a special squad from the Seventh, with the oldest veteran at its head, to speed the Seventh’s Child with grand honors and impressive ceremonies; and the veteran had a touching speech by heart, and put up his hand in salute and tried to say it, but his lips trembled and his voice broke, but Cathy bent down from the saddle and kissed him on the mouth and turned his defeat to victory, and a cheer went up.

The next act closed the ceremonies, and was a moving surprise.  It may be that you have discovered, before this, that the rigors of military law and custom melt insensibly away and disappear when a soldier or a regiment or the garrison wants to do something that will please Cathy.  The bands conceived the idea of stirring her soldierly heart with a farewell which would remain in her memory always, beautiful and unfading, and bring back the past and its love for her whenever she should think of it; so they got their project placed before General Burnaby, my successor, who is Cathy’s newest slave, and in spite of poverty of precedents they got his permission.  The bands knew the child’s favorite military airs.  By this hint you know what is coming, but Cathy didn’t.  She was asked to sound the “reveille,” which she did.

[REVEILLE]

With the last note the bands burst out with a crash: and woke the mountains with the “Star-Spangled Banner” in a way to make a body’s heart swell and thump and his hair rise!  It was enough to break a person all up, to see Cathy’s radiant face shining out through her gladness and tears.  By request she blew the “assembly,” now. . . .

[THE ASSEMBLY]

. . . Then the bands thundered in, with “Rally round the flag, boys, rally once again!”  Next, she blew another call (“to the Standard”) . . .

[TO THE STANDARD]

. . . and the bands responded with “When we were marching through Georgia.”  Straightway she sounded “boots and saddles,” that thrilling and most expediting call. . . .

[BOOTS AND SADDLES]

and the bands could hardly hold in for the final note; then they turned their whole strength loose on “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,” and everybody’s excitement rose to blood-heat.

Now an impressive pause—then the bugle sang “TAPS”—translatable, this time, into “Good-bye, and God keep us all!” for taps is the soldier’s nightly release from duty, and farewell: plaintive, sweet, pathetic, for the morning is never sure, for him; always it is possible that he is hearing it for the last time. . . .

[TAPS]

. . . Then the bands turned their instruments towards Cathy and burst in with that rollicking frenzy of a tune, “Oh, we’ll all get blind drunk when Johnny comes marching home—yes, we’ll all get blind drunk when Johnny comes marching home!” and followed it instantly with “Dixie,” that antidote for melancholy, merriest and gladdest of all military music on any side of the ocean—and that was the end.  And so—farewell!

I wish you could have been there to see it all, hear it all, and feel it: and get yourself blown away with the hurricane huzza that swept the place as a finish.

When we rode away, our main body had already been on the road an hour or two—I speak of our camp equipage; but we didn’t move off alone: when Cathy blew the “advance” the Rangers cantered out in column of fours, and gave us escort, and were joined by White Cloud and Thunder-Bird in all their gaudy bravery, and by Buffalo Bill and four subordinate scouts.  Three miles away, in the Plains, the Lieutenant-General halted, sat her horse like a military statue, the bugle at her lips, and put the Rangers through the evolutions for half an hour; and finally, when she blew the “charge,” she led it herself.  “Not for the last time,” she said, and got a cheer, and we said good-bye all around, and faced eastward and rode away.

Postscript.  A Day Later
.  Soldier Boy was stolen last night.  Cathy is almost beside herself, and we cannot comfort her.  Mercedes and I are not much alarmed about the horse, although this part of Spain is in something of a turmoil, politically, at present, and there is a good deal of lawlessness.  In ordinary times the thief and the horse would soon be captured.  We shall have them before long, I think.

It is five months.  Or is it six?  My troubles have clouded my memory.  I have been all over this land, from end to end, and now I am back again since day before yesterday, to that city which we passed through, that last day of our long journey, and which is near her country home.  I am a tottering ruin and my eyes are dim, but I recognized it.  If she could see me she would know me and sound my call.  I wish I could hear it once more; it would revive me, it would bring back her face and the mountains and the free life, and I would come—if I were dying I would come!  She would not know
me
, looking as I do, but she would know me by my star.  But she will never see me, for they do not let me out of this shabby stable—a foul and miserable place, with most two wrecks like myself for company.