Gaspar Ruiz

Chapter 7

Subscribe for ad free access & additional features for teachers. Authors: 267, Books: 3,607, Poems & Short Stories: 4,435, Forum Members: 71,154, Forum Posts: 1,238,602, Quizzes: 344

GENERAL SANTIERRA was right in his surmise. Such was the exact nature

of the assistance which Gaspar Ruiz, peasant son of peasants, received

from the Royalist family whose daughter had opened the door--of their

miserable refuge to his extreme distress. Her sombre resolution ruled

the madness of her father and the trembling bewilderment of her

mother.

She led him through the house out to a small hut of clay and reeds,

lost in the long grass of the overgrown orchard. He sank on a heap of

maize straw in a corner, and sighed profoundly.

He accepted her assistance in silence, and the many days of pain went

by. Her appearances in the hut brought him relief and became connected

with the feverish dreams of angels which visited his couch; for Gaspar

Ruiz was instructed in the mysteries of his religion, and had even

been taught to read and write a little by the priest of his village.

He waited for her with impatience, and saw her pass out of the dark

hut and disappear in the brilliant sunshine with poignant regret. He

discovered that, while he lay there feeling so very weak, he could, by

closing his eyes, evoke her face with considerable distinctness. And

this discovered faculty charmed the long solitary hours of his

convalescence. Later, when he began to regain his strength, he would

creep at dusk from his hut to the house and sit on the step of the

garden door.

In one of the rooms the mad father paced to and fro, muttering to

himself with short abrupt laughs. In the passage, sitting on a stool,

the mother sighed and moaned. The daughter, in rough threadbare

clothing, and her white haggard face half hidden by a coarse manta,

stood leaning against the lintel of the door. Gaspar Ruiz, with his

elbows propped on his knees and his head resting in his hands, talked

to the two women in an undertone.

The common misery of destitution would have made a bitter mockery of a

marked insistence on social differences. Gaspar Ruiz understood this

in his simplicity. From his captivity amongst the Royalists he could

give them news of people they knew. He described their appearance; and

when he related the story of the battle in which he was recaptured the

two women lamented the blow to their cause and the ruin of their

secret hopes.

He had no feeling either way. But he felt a great devotion for that

young girl. In his desire to appear worthy of her condescension, he

boasted a little of his bodily strength. He had nothing else to boast

of. Because of that quality his comrades treated him with as great a

deference, he explained, as though he had been a sergeant, both in

camp and in battle.

"I could always get as many as I wanted to follow me anywhere,

senorita. I ought to have been made an officer, because I can read and

write."

Behind him the silent old lady fetched a moaning sigh from time to

time; the distracted father muttered to himself, pacing the sala; and

Gaspar Ruiz would raise his eyes now and then to look at the daughter

of these people.

He would look at her with curiosity because she was alive, and also

with that feeling of familiarity and awe with which he had

contemplated in churches the inanimate and powerful statues of the

saints, whose protection is invoked in dangers and difficulties. His

difficulty was very great.

He could not remain hiding in an orchard for ever and ever. He knew

also very well that before he had gone half a day's journey in any

direction, he would be picked up by one of the cavalry patrols

scouring the country, and brought into one or another of the camps

where the patriot army destined for the liberation of Peru was

collected. There he would in the end be recognised as Gaspar Ruiz--

the deserter to the Royalists--and no doubt shot very effectually

this time. There did not seem any place in the world for the innocent

Gaspar Ruiz anywhere. And at this thought his simple soul surrendered

itself to gloom and resentment as black as night.

They had made him a soldier forcibly. He did not mind being a soldier.

And he had been a good soldier as he had been a good son, because of

his docility and his strength. But now there was no use for either.

They had taken him from his parents, and he could no longer be a

soldier--not a good soldier at any rate. Nobody would listen to his

explanations. What injustice it was! What injustice!

And in a mournful murmur he would go over the story of his capture and

recapture for the twentieth time. Then, raising his eyes to the silent

girl in the doorway, "Si, senorita," he would say with a deep sigh,

"injustice has made this poor breath in my body quite worthless to me

and to anybody else. And I do not care who robs me of it."

One evening, as he exhaled thus the plaint of his wounded soul, she

condescended to say that, if she were a man, she would consider no

life worthless which held the possibility of revenge.

She seemed to be speaking to herself. Her voice was low. He drank in

the gentle, as if dreamy sound, with a consciousness of peculiar

delight, of something warming his breast like a draught of generous

wine.

"True, senorita," he said, raising his face up to hers slowly: "there

is Estaban, who must be shown that I am not dead after all."

The mutterings of the mad father had ceased long before; the sighing

mother had withdrawn somewhere into one of the empty rooms. All was

still within as well as without, in the moonlight bright as day on the

wild orchard full of inky shadows. Gaspar Ruiz saw the dark eyes of

Do* Erminia look down at him.

"Why! He has wounded me with his sword," he protested, bewildered by

the contempt that seemed to shine livid on her pale face.

She crushed him with her glance. The power of her will to be

understood was so strong that it kindled in him the intelligence of

unexpressed things.

"What else did you expect me to do?" he cried, as if suddenly driven

to despair. "Have I the power to do more? Am I a general with an army

at my back ?--miserable sinner that I am to be despised by you at

last."

Art of Worldly Wisdom Daily

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.

Email:

Sonnet-a-Day Newsletter

Shakespeare wrote over 150 sonnets! Join our Sonnet-A-Day Newsletter and read them all, one at a time.

Email: