she swayed for an instant. "Ah, Dios," she said, under her breath.
Andrew offered her his shoulder, but she put him aside and walked
slowly over to the other end of the room. There was a little shrine
there--a cheap, plaster image of the Virgin. Her robes had been
gaudily colored in staring blues and reds but they were mildewed now
and the colors were faint and gentle. A tiny wick burned in a small
cup of rancid oil at her feet. Caterina sank to her knees.
"_Madre de Dios_--Mary Virgin--Tower of Ivory--House of Gold--" she
began, in Mahonese, in a soft, lulling voice. Andrew watched her
perplexedly from the bed. The scene touched him with pity and grief,
but it was something he could not understand. He would have been
glad enough to kneel beside Caterina himself and pray, if he had
thought it would bring her any comfort, but there was something in
the absorption of her eyes, as she gazed at the tawdry little doll
with a tarnished crown, that made her incomprehensible. It belonged,
with the flower of the Spanish bayonet, to an earth that was not
his--an earth in which he would always be a stranger. And yet, as
the mutter of the prayer went on, he knew that he did not wish to be
a stranger to that alien, enchanted ground.
When Caterina had finished, and crossed herself, with head bowed, she
came back to him.
"Yes. I will come," she said. Their eyes met--for an instant he
seemed to see behind hers, into her heart. There was a message
there, clear and pure as if air had written it on a tablet of
mountain-snow, but a message he could not read, for it was written in
her language, and to him the characters of that language were
mysterious as marks carved upon a druid stone. He stared for an
instant, vainly--hoping for a Pentecost that did not descend. Then
the veil fell between them again.
They crept down the stairs together, hand in hand, like children
afraid of the dark. When they got to the long corridor, she turned
to go down it but he held her back. "No. Not that way," he said.
He felt suddenly as if he could not bear to stumble past the door
with the white flower, even to get his other pistol and his father's
letters. He was in a torment of impatience to leave the coquina
house behind him forever. There must be arms in Dr. Gentian's
study--besides, there was less chance of arousing the house if they
went through there.
He smiled. The high chamber with the gold stars in its ceiling which
had seen his imaginary Eden crumble to ash should be the instrument
of their deliverance from this house of pain. He led the way slowly
to the hidden stair.
When they had reached the panel behind the moon, an instinct of
precaution made him slide it back and look. So, for the second time
that day, an odd vision was vouchsafed him.
Dr. Gentian stood in front of the fireplace, warming his hands. He
must have been but newly come from the road, for his muddy boots were
set in a corner to dry and his riding-coat, stretched out on a chair
before the fire, was streaked and spattered. He himself, however,
was as neat and trim as ever. He had changed his muddied coat for a
loose dressing-gown and his boots for soft Moorish slippers, worked
with gold thread and turned up in stiff petals at the toes. On his
head was a turban of yellow silk, such as many gentlemen who had
served in the Indies affected, and he rubbed his hands over and over
each other like a fly cleaning its wings, as he talked to himself in
a low, quick voice and smiled at the fire.
Andrew could feel the Minorcan girl's whole body shudder against his
for an instant and then grow still. "The gold cap!" she whispered in
the voice of a beaten ghost, "He has on the gold cap. We shall never
get free of him now."
"Nonsense," said Andrew, though he too was oddly affected by the
sight of that spruce, quaint figure crowned with an inverted
tulip-flower, smiling dimly and talking under its breath to a burning
log. "We'll take the other stairs." He shut the panel and started
to go back. But a few steps away from the upper door, he stopped and
listened. There were footsteps in the corridor, a light step and a
heavy one, going to and fro like the pace of sentries on guard.
"They are looking for me already," said the Minorcan girl, slowly,
with a calm despair.
Andrew hesitated, feeling the lips of a velvet trap close slowly upon
them both in the narrow darkness. Then he made up his mind. Better
face Cæsar in his study than chance what might be in the upper
corridor. His mind stuck on the thought that the house had orders
not to disturb the Doctor when he wished quiet and that there was
deadening in the walls of the high-ceiled chamber. His hand slid to
the butt of his pistol--he had never killed a man--what was it like
when you killed a man? He saw Cæsar sprawled in front of the fire
with blood on his neck--a little flame stole out shyly from a log and
licked at the yellow turban. He shivered. Fool, he was wasting
time. "We'll risk it," he said hoarsely, and went sneaking down the
stairs again.
At their foot, he paused. The Minorcan girl was on the step behind
him--he could hear the flutter of her breath. Beyond, in the study,
was another sound--Dr. Gentian's voice, plainer now.
At first Andrew thought some one else must have come into the
room--the Doctor's tones were the tones of a man talking intimately
to a familiar friend. He put his eye to a crack in the door. He
could see little, but no other form than the Doctor's crossed the
range of his vision. Then he realized that though the Doctor's voice
questioned and affirmed and at times even pleaded, as if the friend
he addressed were a superior in rank, there was never any reply.
The voice went on and on. "I saw Baron Funck in London," it said.
"He took me into a room full of silver candlesticks and swore he
would show me a secret, but the only secret he showed me was a
juggler's trick. Then there was Hauptzehn in Dresden--he had Lully's
book but he did not have the key. The Rose-Cross is nothing--they
pretend to make diamonds but they do not know the writing on the wall
of the tabernacle or the tears of the Golden King. In India I have
seen the man climb the rope and the flower rise from the dust and go
back again--I have seen the basket thrust through with swords--but I
wish more than that. Am I not an Initiate? Have I not heard the
goat cry in the dark and scattered the herb in the fire? I cannot
seek elsewhere again--I have grown too old." The voice had a note of
chant, now. "There is something buried at the roots of the
mountains--why can I not put my hand on it? Bacon had the knowledge
they say--am I so much less wise? I will not fool myself with
crystals and black wafers--these things are folly, but there is
something left--something beyond the speculum--behind the glass. I
will give my soul for it, I tell you--I will give my soul for it."
Now the tones were those of a merchant driving a canny bargain. "I
can give you a thousand souls. You are foolish not to bargain with
me. Come out of the fire, Baphomet--Baphomet--Baphomet--" the voice
reached a shriek of supplication, "Come out of the fire, Baphomet,
and buy my souls!"
Through his crack, Andrew saw the yellow turban waver and droop in
fatigue like a crocus beaten by the wind. Now. He flung open the
door and stepped into the room with his pistol clutched tight in
sweating fingers.
The shock of his abrupt appearance, to a gentleman who so obviously
expected other visitors, must have been painful in the extreme, but
Dr. Gentian bore it with admirable equanimity. He put his hand to
his mouth once, slowly, while his face altered. Then he came forward
to Andrew, smiling, with hand outstretched, as if the pistol
presented at his heart had no more importance than a sprig of
rosemary.
"Ah, Andrew," he said cheerfully, "I had hardly hoped to see you
before the morning. Come over by the fire, lad, and warm
yourself--the house is chilly with the rain."
"Keep your distance," said Andrew hoarsely, "Keep your distance, you
miracle of hell, or I'll shoot your heart out."
Dr. Gentian's hand dropped to his side. He looked puzzled and
distressed.
"Why lad," he said gently, "Are you still so fevered?" He smiled
sympathetically, "Or did my playacting just now fright--how much did
you hear of it?" he said in a swift breath.
"Enough," said Andrew wretchedly. "Keep your distance, Dr.
Gentian--I have no wish to murder you, but I leave your house
tonight."
"I forbid it," said Dr. Gentian, promptly, "As your physician, if not
as Sparta's father." He came a little nearer. "Let me look at your
eyes, lad--yes, they're bright." He shook his head. "Far too
bright--and your pulse is beating like a hammer I'll warrant, and
your skin--oh, I know the signs! It would be madness for you to ride
in this rain--" with each phrase he approached a trifle, delicately,
on slippered feet.
"Let me feel your pulse a moment, lad," he said now, stretching out
his hand again. Andrew beat it down with a gesture.
"Stop," he said, "I know you. The lot of you. You've plucked me
like a pigeon between you--you and your whory daughter and your wife
that hangs up servant girls by the thumbs. You torturers. Come out,
Caterina," he said, without turning his head.
The door in the wall opened, the Minorcan girl stepped into the room.
Dr. Gentian gazed at her for a moment. A tiny drop of blood gathered
on one of her wrists and fell. Andrew, looking at the Doctor,
thought he seemed more like a Cæsar than ever, with the color out of
his cheeks, but this time he knew the face. It was no Julian or
Augustan coin--it came of a later mintage--the silver was
debased--the lids of the eyes grown heavy. Caligula at the Games
staring down at a bloody sand, where something moved and
cried--Tiberius killing flies like so many black slaves at the window
of his villa above the cold, star-amethyst of the sea...
The Minorcan girl shut the door slowly behind her. She held out her
bloody wrists. She did not speak.
"So," said Dr. Gentian, sucking his breath in. Then, without
warning, he sprang for the side of the fireplace and pulled at the
bell-cord furiously. The hammer of Andrew's pistol fell. The fire
sparked in the flint but that was all. He remembered looking at the
pistol, years ago, and thinking it should be reprimed.
"Oh, Christ," said Andrew, with a sob, and leaped forward, throwing
the pistol aside. He heard the Minorcan girl cry out. Then a flare
like the sudden flare and extinction of a puff of red fire lit the
base of his brain for a moment and was succeeded by sparkling
darkness.
When he roused, his head felt huge, and as if it would split apart
like a cut orange at the slightest movement. He was propped in a
corner with his hands bound behind his back and Mr. Cave was standing
over him with a gorged, pleased look on his face.
"He has a skull," said Mr. Cave, turning away from him to the Doctor,
who seemed engaged in washing his hands in a little basin, "I
couldn't use my right hand, but even so--by God, all the time you
were bandaging him, I thought you were wasting lint." Andrew noticed
now that Mr. Cave carried his right arm in a sling. Dully, he
wondered why.
"You were admirably prompt, Mr. Cave," said the Doctor, aloofly,
drying his hands, "I must thank you. I confess, I have seldom known
you so prompt before."
Mr. Cave's face grew sullen. "We were looking for the Minorcan
piece," he said, "I thought she might have come down your stair. I
heard you pull at the bell as I got to the door."
"A fortunate coincidence," said Dr. Gentian reflectively. "And
yet--in future, Mr. Cave--unless by my invitation--"
"I wouldn't have used your damn staircase to-night," said Mr. Cave,
flushing, "But I thought--as long as she'd broken away--"
"Quite right," purred the merry Doctor. "You are always right, Mr.
Cave."
"What have you done with her?" said Andrew, thickly. His senses were
returning, he felt on the point of vomiting from the warm, luke,
jellyish taste of blood in his mouth.
The Doctor eyed him with his head cocked on one side, like a bird.
"Do not vex your mind unduly, Andrew," he said, "Your trollop has
gone back to her room. She will doubtless undergo a little
discipline in the morning, but that is all. I shall not even put her
back in the fields."
"May God damn your soul in hell," said Andrew, retching, "If I could
only get loose--"
"You would merely do yourself an injury," said Dr. Gentian briskly.
He turned. "You sent for the soldiers, Mr. Cave?'
"Yes, sir," Mr. Cave grinned. "They'll have work to do for once."
"Ah, yes," said the Doctor, "By the way--" He picked up an object
from the table, daintily and came over to Andrew, holding it at
fingers' length. "Do you recognize this, my boy?"
Andrew stared at the object. It was the knife he had given
Sebastian, but now there were rusty stains along the blade.
"Yes. It's my knife," he said. He was about to add that it had not
been his for three months, but did not because each word he uttered
was a stab in his head.
"Thank you," said the Doctor, "That is very satisfactory. You see,
Andrew, your Minorcan friend, Zafortezas, happened to stab poor Mr.
Cave in the arm with that knife a few hours ago. A flesh-wound only,
fortunately. Your knife. Curious. And the same evening, you, for
some inexplicable reason, attempt to murder me with a pistol. It
begins to look like a plot, Andrew--it begins to look like a
plot"--and he shook his head sorrowfully, while his eyes danced with
little points of light.
"You--" said Andrew, raging impotently.
"Yes, Andrew. A plot to take my plantation from me. Ah, Andrew,
Andrew, I wouldn't have believed it of you," he said.
Andrew was silent, feeling unmanly tears of weak fury prick at his
eyes. Then he thought of something.
"I appeal to the governor," he said.
"Inadvisable," said Dr. Gentian. "The governor may not be my
friend--but I doubt if he would give much weight to any appeal from a
Northern rebel."
"Rebel?" said Andrew, dizzily.
"Rebel. Oh, I forgot--you have not had your mail. Well, you may
take it to jail with you, and read it there. Yes, Andrew--the
Northern Colonies are in revolt. There's been blood spilt--" He
tossed a packet of letters into Andrew's lap. "Most
interesting--especially the one from your brother. He seems to be
deeply involved in the rebellion. Your father is greatly concerned."
Andrew was struck dumb. So it had come at last. He saw his brother
Lucius firing at a man in a red coat--his father sitting at his desk
in the home on Wall Street with a newspaper crumpled before him and
his eyes looking into a darkness--and felt, for a bitter moment, that
he himself was the most futile person alive.
"When did it happen?' he said.
"In April," Dr. Gentian smiled, "At a place called Lexington--and
Concord--near Boston, aren't they? They say the colonials ran like
hares."
"You lie," said Andrew, with an intensity that surprised him, "They
wouldn't run before a parcel of lobsterbacks."
"No?" said Dr. Gentian. He smiled again. "You will note, Mr. Cave,
that our friend has just insulted the entire British army _in toto_."
"I'll note it," said Mr. Cave, greedily, "I'll remember it."
A knock came at the door.
"There, sir," said Mr. Cave, "There are our lobsterbacks now."
He opened the door. Three soldiers headed by a corporal marched into
the room and grounded arms. Andrew thought tiredly that they looked
like disgruntled footmen in their draggled uniforms. The corporal's
face was still puffy with sleep. By some trick of mind he remembered
his first tour of inspection when they had passed the tiny guardhouse
near the wharves and Dr. Gentian had jested about his military
forces. There were only eight men at the post--where were the other
five? It seemed inappropriate that they should not join in this
nightmare joke of arresting him as a murderer and a rebel.
The corporal was a decent fellow--he had often given him tobacco.
But tonight his face was as stiff and wooden as a face carved on the
bowl of a pipe. It betrayed not the slightest sign that he had ever
seen Andrew before. All soldiers were like that--they came out of a
giant toy-box and turned into flat pieces of painted wood whenever
someone spoke to them with a frog in his throat. He looked at the
corporal's feet accusingly--they should be glued into a little green
stand. Also, it was thoughtless of Dr. Gentian to leave his soldiers
out in the rain. They would have to be repainted, tomorrow,
clumsily, with sticky stuff that came off on your tongue when you
licked the brush. Presently he would get up and push the corporal in
the chest--then the corporal would totter on his stand and fall in
one piece against the nearest private, and all three of them would
clatter to the floor with a woodeny sound, because they were only
toys, and this was a dream. Dr. Gentian was saying something.
"Put him in the cell with the Minorcan," he was saying. "They are
both concerned in the attempt to assassinate Mr. Cave and myself and
capture the colony. In addition, this young man is strongly
suspected of being in league with the rebellion in the Northern
Colonies. Seditious newspapers have been found in his room and his
brother is a prime-mover in the revolt. He will be transferred to
St. Augustine later, for trial. The charge is treason and attempted
murder. Very well, corporal. Take charge of the prisoner."
"Get him up on his feet," said the corporal in a voice of board, "Can
he walk? All right--bring him along between you."
They passed by the great main staircase on their way to the door, and
Andrew, turning his head caught a glimpse of Sparta Gentian. She was
standing half up the stairway, leaning on the rail, the shawl with
the vivid flowers on it wrapped around her. Their eyes met for an
instant. As she looked at him a slow smile widened on her mouth and
her eyes began to burn. Then she leaned forward deliberately and
spat at him from the stair.
"Damn the woman--she's spit on my coat," grumbled the private on
Andrew's right as they went out of the door.
"Less talk there, you," said the corporal ahead. "Shut your mouth
and pretend you're a duck--it's raining like bloody hell."
2.
There was darkness and the smell of damp stone and rotten
mold--things ran about in the darkness on light, innumerable feet.
The air was the air of a cellar that has been built underneath a
well. For a moment Andrew was oddly reminded of the dairy-house on
the country place that bordered the Boston road--cool even in
lion-colored August with the coolness of slabs of stone buried deep
in the ground. He was a tanned little boy in knee-breeches with
flushed cheeks and damp hair, standing before a gleaming pan on a
table and stretching out a stealthy finger through the pleasant gloom
to dabble its tip in the risen cream, thick and yellow as
daffodil-petals clotted together. Through the deep, barred window
Summer came and the smell of it, the smell of heat and harvest and
grain bursting out of the ear. Then he remembered. The little boy
and the cool dairy belonged to another life which some stranger had
lived in a void. This was the pit of oppression and he would lie in
it like a truss of discarded hay till they took him out to hang him
to an orange-tree in the bright morning, while Spanish ladies looked
out from behind black fans from the jutting balconies of old houses
in St. Augustine, and a curly-haired drummer-boy rattled out a dead
march and then, for an instant, silenced his drum.
He moved forward unsteadily, in the darkness. "Sebastian?" he called
querulously, "Sebastian?"
There was a stir in a corner.
"I am here, my friend," said a disembodied voice.
"Have they hurt you much, Sebastian?"
"The knife slipped," said the voice in answer. "He was too quick.
The knife slipped in my hand." Then it was silent and the running
things resumed their activities.
Andrew felt his way over to the corner. His outstretched hand
touched a shoulder that winced beneath the touch.
"Have they hurt you much?" he said again.
"No," said Sebastian very bitterly. Andrew's eyes were growing
accustomed to the blackness--now he saw the blur of a face. "I am
well enough. But the knife was dedicated--it should not have slipped
when I struck."
"I fired at him point-blank," said Andrew sitting down in a puddle.
"But the priming was wet. Then they hit me over the head."
"You should have had a silver bullet," said Sebastian. "People like
that are not killed with steel or lead."
"I will have a silver bullet next time," said Andrew, and fell
silent. The two friends sat together in the dark for some time
without saying anything more. Both were gazing into the shadow that
encompassed them and Andrew's hand lay lightly on Sebastian's
shoulder. There seemed little need of speech between them at the
moment--each knew well enough what the other felt and thought. When
Andrew had first entered this mildewed night, he had been curious to
hear Sebastian's story and eager to tell his own. Now he felt as if
both had been told and judged and found unimportant. There were only
three things left of any importance, an ache in the skull, a darkness
before the eyes, and the quick sound of scuttling feet in the other
corners of the room.
After a while, however, Andrew spoke.
"Do you think there'll be a next time, Sebastian?" he said, heavily.
"Who knows?" said Sebastian, "We are always between God's
fingers--now no less than ever."
At any other time the words would have struck Andrew as insufferably
bigoted and submissive. Now they seemed to him what they were, a
calm statement of fact. To Sebastian God was a visible and tangible
presence--therefore He was here, in this pit, no more so and no less
than He was everywhere. He was with the soldiers in the guardroom,
also, as they drank out of empty cups and cut at toy food that stuck
to its plate. He was with Dr. Gentian in his study when devils
hatched in the fire. No sin could avert that scrutiny, no blasphemy
or righteousness deter its penetration by the width of a hair. When
the time came for judgment, they should all be judged--meanwhile it
behooved them to act according to their lights, for, within their
limits of flesh, they were free to do good or evil. God had bound
them all with a light, indivisible cord--when He wished, He could
gather them up and count them like the buttons on Peggy's button
string. In the meantime, He might never lift a finger to avert a
present anguish--for so are martyrs left without justification.
Andrew wished that he could think of God like that, but he could not.
To him God was something vague to pray to, for happiness or against
the approach of pain--something which might be there, God was a
cushioned pew and a prayer-book and a clergyman in robes as opposed
to a hard pew and a long hymn and a preacher in a black Geneva gown.
He had never thought much about God except as a superior kind of
Archbishop of Canterbury who sat on a cloud and looked at Papists
sternly. But Sebastian was a Papist--and Sebastian had taken God in
his mouth--and God was with him now. It was very strange and just a
little unfair.
"They say I'm a traitor," he said idly, "They say the Northern
colonies have revolted and there was a fight between our men and the
soldiers--and my brother was in it, so I must be a traitor, too."
"When the ass is spurred too hard it tries to kick off its rider,"
said Sebastian, who had proverbs in his blood, "Are you for the rider
or the ass?"
"I don't know," said Andrew, puzzled, "My house is divided. I should
have thought more about it before. I know my father must be for the
King."
"Then you must be for the King," said Sebastian, with Latin respect
for paternal authority, "It is ugly when a cause divides son and
father--even a good cause.
"I don't know," said Andrew again, "It doesn't seem real yet." Again
he saw the dim picture of his brother aiming a musket at a
toy-soldier corporal--the picture was fantastic--it could not have
occurred. "I can't believe they're really fighting," he added, "I
can't. The ministry has passed some bad laws, of course--but Hancock
and Adams--who'd ever fight for them?"
"Once men have started to fight, they forget what set them on,"
Sebastian said, "It is like a game of ball--the ball is nothing--the
thing is to throw the ball so it counts for your side. Those who
watch the game see better than the players. Only, in war, you cannot
stand off and watch the game."