enjoyment, "but I'll grant it. You shall have a clean shirt--yes,
Andrew--and soap and a razor--and go wherever you wish. For a price,
of course," he added, tracing his pattern.
Andrew had straightened up at the first of his words. Now his
shoulders sagged again.
"There would be," he said, flatly, "No."
"You haven't heard my terms yet," said the Doctor. "I ask very
little. Only a lapse of memory." He looked at Andrew but Andrew did
not reply.
"I do not even ask you to go on with your projected marriage." He
continued, "A son-in-law," his thumb crept along a tiny silver
scroll, "whose brother is--disaffected--whose father--will be
bankrupt--would hardly fit with my plans. All I ask is--seven days
forgotten. Completely. Your word on it. Then you're free."
"Why?" said Andrew, bluntly. "Why not hang me out of hand at once?"
"Oh--call it a whim--a vagary," said the Doctor with masked eyes,
"I've always rather loved fools--after my own fashion. And
then--I'll be frank enough--trying you in Augustine would be such a
tedious business--I could carry it through--don't mistake me--but
there might be embarrassing questions. I'd rather have your word."
"Suppose I broke my word?"
"To be frank," said the Doctor, "I do not care very greatly what you
do--out of the Floridas. Till then--you would sign a--confession--I
have drawn up. You could have it back--in time."
"Confession of what?" said Andrew.
"Oh--not too much," said the Doctor, pursing his lips. "Disloyalty,
chiefly--an attempt on my daughter's honor, perhaps--just enough to
discredit you. I assure you I should use it with the greatest
reluctance," and, strangely enough, Andrew thought that he spoke the
truth.
"Sebastian and Caterina?" he said.
The Doctor pondered. "You can have the girl," he said finally. "I
should regret it, but after all--Mrs. Gentian deserves consideration.
The man, no. I must keep discipline. But I might merely send him to
St. Augustine prison, then."
"What happens to him otherwise?" said Andrew, breathing.
"The currycomb," said the Doctor in a wisp of voice. "A distressing
end."
Andrew looked at him.
"I should really advise against it," said the Doctor very softly,
with his forefinger alert. "You could not possibly reach me in time.
Besides, there are always the soldiers."
Andrew drew a long breath.
"And--I--?" he said.
"Oh, you would merely hang," said the Doctor, recovering his
cheerfulness. "Merely hang. You're young to hang, Andrew."
Andrew passed his hand over his eyes, trying to think. He could save
Sebastian's life, Caterina's, his own. Sebastian was patient and
clever--even in the dungeons of St. Augustine he might find some way
of escape. Then they would all be saved. The other way was death.
He could refuse for himself, and die, but he would not have to die in
torment as Sebastian must.
For an instant he saw himself free, at the rail of a ship, with
Caterina at his side. Her hand was lightly on his, she was telling
him he had done well, her eyes were gentle. Cool as the fronds of
lilies floating on a hushed and evening pool, her fingers touched
his, and met, and somewhere, Sebastian was smiling at them both from
his dungeon...
His mind revolted from the mirage, smarting with shame and
self-disgust. Dr. Gentian was very adroit. He had put this thing so
subtly that he, Andrew, could not only save himself but Caterina for
himself and fool his mind into thinking he had acted nobly. No one
could accuse him if he did this--Sebastian would not--his own spirit
might for a while but it would grow sleepy--a year from now, this
present would be forgotten, buried under a drifting red-and-yellow
heap of leaf-brittle days like the skeleton of a rat, to crumble into
earth and water and sun. And Sebastian would be still in his
dungeon--but perhaps Caterina and he could buy him out somehow if he
had not died ...
The stone. The bar. The escape.
But it seemed impossible that they should really escape. Dr. Gentian
was too strong. He had been in prison himself--he would not have
left them there, together, unchained, without providing against any
escape. All the time that they had been gnawing in the dark he had
been outside the window, listening, smiling, till he could no longer
contain the mirth in his belly and went slowly back to laugh at them
aloud with the devils that lived in the chimney of his study. Yes,
he must have been doing that.
There was no use trying to bargain with him over Mr. Cave's projected
plan of revolt. He knew of that, too, undoubtedly--and if, by some
miracle, he did not, it offered the one slim chance that, in the
confusion of such an event, they might escape indeed.
Was he overrating Dr. Gentian's powers? Perhaps. But as he stared
at him now, with heavy eyes, he saw him as a man no longer, not even
a Cæsar, but something inhuman, with the transient powers of the
inhuman over human stuff. An undying figure that walked from the
East, with a cloud of flies above it, and a gilt pomander in its hand.
"Aren't you ever afraid of hell?" he found himself saying, queerly,
with a catch in his voice. "I should think you'd be afraid of hell."
The smile on Dr. Gentian's face became a rictus cut in ivory, the
muscles of the jaw stood out.
"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it," he quoted in a slow, dry
voice., "'Think'st thou that I'--did you ever read Marlowe, Andrew?
The style is very impure--bombastic, even--he cannot compare with
Pope--but there are things in his Faustus which--"
He stopped. His mouth relaxed. But while he spoke, there had been
something in his face that Andrew had never expected to see there--a
turn of the mouth--a shape behind the eyes--something ruined and very
lonely--a statue defaced--a barren bough in the gale.
It passed. "Well?" said the easy voice.
Andrew looked at the floor. He was twenty-two. When you were
twenty-two, Death was something far-off that happened to other
people. It needn't happen to him for a long time.
What if the Minorcans were oppressed? They weren't actually slaves.
They got along. Some people, maybe, had to be oppressed. It wasn't
his quarrel.
Then he saw them, young and old, women and children, the dead on the
voyage, the dead in the first months of fever, the priest swinging in
his robes, the sallow boy, screaming, under the currycomb. But it
wasn't his quarrel.
There were two doors open. One meant life, and a clean shirt, and
Caterina's hand on his hand, by the rail of a ship, at night, while
the moon climbed up in heaven like a silver woman. The other was
death for all of them. He shut his eyes and chose death.
"No, I won't," he said, in a voice he was surprised to find so even.
Dr. Gentian sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "Dying is so wasteful.
You can have twenty-four hours to think it over, Andrew. I will see
you again tomorrow, when they are up. Think it over. Sergeant," he
called and struck on a bell. "I hate to hang you, Andrew--it will be
a great nuisance. I had a parrot once that amused me. I had to
wring its neck. It is much the same. You may take the prisoner back
now, Sergeant, if you will."
6.
"He gave me twenty-four hours," Andrew ended. He looked at his
friend.
"It is more than enough," said Sebastian. "We shall escape in
twelve."
Before the certitude of his tone the image of Dr. Gentian that
towered in Andrew's mind like a genie rising from a bottle in a blue,
magic fume, diminished gradually. He became what he was, a man of
great parts, whose knowledge of his own abilities had swollen with
power till it festered, and so spoiled a tyrant instead of making a
king. Seen so, he was no longer terrific or even hateful, only
beggared, as all men are beggared in one way or another who seek from
life a passion more intense than the body can bear. He was a king in
check--a torch inverted--a fire that wasted itself against a column
of salt--and as Andrew began to perceive this, slowly and delicately
as the slow lifting of a slab of bronze from his breast, the fear of
death passed from him and left him composed. It would return,
undoubtedly, but for this moment, brief as the flight of a bird
between tree and tree, it had gone. He could smell the mignonette in
his mother's garden. Dr. Gentian could kill them both, but that was
all he could do.
"What are you going to do, Sebastian, when we are free?" he said
casually, out of a strange peace.
"Tell the governor to free my people," said Sebastian. The cool
stone of peace had touched at his lips as well, he spoke with the
simplicity of a ghost. "When they are free--" he shrugged. "Who
knows? Life is long--there are many things to do before the priest
comes with his oil. If I had money I should like to buy a
fishing-boat--my father was a fisherman. I should like to marry,
too, and have a son. It is good to have a son to help you draw in
the nets. And you, my friend?"
"I shall go North," said Andrew. "Perhaps to help the ass you spoke
of kick off his rider--yes." It was the first time he had definitely
put the thought at the back of his mind into words. He was
astonished to find how rational it sounded. "After all--as long as
they've called me a traitor--" he said, musingly. He wondered if
that were really what he would do. It was difficult to see himself
with a ragamuffin musket, presenting it at Lion and Unicorn.
Sebastian nodded. "I thought so," he said. "There are three things
one cannot run away from--war, love and death." His voice held that
indolent fatalism that has so often deceived the North by its languid
pride. "Sometime I should like to go back to Minorca," he confessed.
His eyes glittered. "This is a good country, here, but it is not
Fererias."
"Tell me about your island," said Andrew, childishly. He settled
himself in a corner to listen.
"You'd laugh at it, if you went there," said Sebastian. "It is small
and harsh and poor. But the people are friendly there. My uncle
lives in Mahon, if he has not died--he is a very friendly and
hospitable person. My aunt has copper pans in her kitchen," he
continued, with some pride. "They tease her about being rich--she is
not--they came from her father who was a copper-smith--but few of us
have copper vessels, even in the town--" His voice droned on,
lulling Andrew into the content of a sleepy child. It was now almost
entirely dark in their cell, though outside the sun had not yet set.
There would be hours still before they would be safe in cutting
through the rest of the bar, but now Andrew did not care how many
there were. The fear of death no longer ran about with the rats in
the darkness and he was quite happy listening to the slow story of
certain doings in the family of a foreign copper-smith which could
not possibly interest any person of gentility.
7.
Dr. Gentian laid his book down with a sigh, and glanced at his watch.
He rose, and stood for a moment, observing how surely and skilfully
the petal of a flower grew in rose-colored silk upon gauze, under the
deft, shining strokes of his wife's embroidery needle.
"That must tire your eyes, my dear--especially at night," he said,
with solicitude.
"I am never tired." She did not turn her head to answer. "Are you
going now?"
"Yes, my dear. I am going now. You need not wait up for me. I
shall not be back till late."
She made a knot in the silk. "You never believe me," she said.
"Even if I told you, you were walking into a pitfall--you wouldn't
believe me."
He smiled, "I should merely think your natural concern for my safety
had overbalanced your excellent reason," he said.
"No doubt," she said wearily, her face still averted. "Well--you can
go, then. I shan't wait up."
"It matters to you still," he said, consideringly. "That seems
strange."
"Strange enough." Her eyes were fixed on her work. "You'd be a
clever man, Hilary, if you left well enough alone."
"A clever man never leaves well enough alone," he said and smiled.
The silk thread broke in her fingers. "You're blind," she said.
"Blind and deaf. There's a shadow on your back tonight. But you're
deaf and blind. You only think of playing cat and mouse with that
boy."
"One must have games." The Doctor's tone was amused. "And cat and
mouse is an excellent game, for the cat."
"You'd better watch your daughter." She turned her face now and
looked at him.
"My dear!"
"I've told you. She and her lackey. They've been too quiet these
last days. Oh, well--go your road. But my Greeks talk to me.
There's a rat in the wall of this house, Hilary--a rat in the wall--"
Her voice ceased. Her fingers busied themselves re-threading the
needle.
"I think you have the gift, tonight," he said quietly, regarding her.
"See for me, my dear."
His hand fell on her shoulder, light as a butterfly. She put it off.
"No," she said in a dry, thin voice. "You're wrong. I haven't had
the sight for years. If I had it tonight, would I use it? No."
"Not for me?" His mouth had honey in it.
"No." Her fingers were moving again, she seemed to have no mind for
anything but her silk. "Not for you."
He sighed. "Be consoled," he said. "I shan't live for ever.
Indeed, sometimes I wonder that I have been able to live this long."
"It would be like you to die first," she agreed, remorselessly. A
flash passed over her face. "I'd save you from that," she said, with
a prick of her needle.
He chuckled a little. "I believe you. I believe you, indeed. But
if something should--cripple me, for instance--just enough--eh?"
She drew in a deep breath. "Some time," she said, huskily. "Soon or
late. The candle's not burnt to the wick yet. I can wait for it."
"Really, sometimes, one would think you believed in the fates, my
dear. If one didn't know you."
"I believe in waiting," she said, nodding her head. "Yes, I believe
in waiting."
His fingers twitched, momentarily. "I wish you'd see for me," he
said.
She made no reply. He hesitated for a moment, oddly indecisive.
Then he looked at his watch again and turned toward the door.
"Good night, my dear."
The second petal of the flower was half-completed, the needle
stitched on, the face was averted anew. "Good night," said the dry,
colorless voice. Dr. Gentian passed out of the room. With his hand
on the latch of the front door he hesitated for a second time and
threw a glance back up the stairs. Then he shook his head
impatiently, opened the door and went out.
As soon as his footsteps had died away, Mrs. Gentian rose. Very
softly indeed, she climbed the stairs to the upper corridor and
paused, listening, outside the door of her daughter's room. She
scratched on the panel twice, gently--no sound replied. "Sparta,"
she called in a low, sharp voice, waited, repeated the call. The
name fell into darkness and was absorbed, no echo mocked it even.
Mrs. Gentian laughed under her breath and opened the door of the
room. The light of her candle showed it empty, the bed undisturbed.
She nodded, as if in assent to an unspoken query and stood in the
doorway for a moment, erect as an effigy, not seeming to notice that
when her candle guttered it shook flecks of hot wax on her dress.
Then she shut the door and went softly down the stairs again,
returning to her chair and her needlework. Her face seemed at once
resolved and satisfied, and, for a time, the pattern of her
embroidery had never grown more swiftly. Then, after a while, the
pace of her fingers slackened and stopped. The embroidery still lay
in her lap, but she worked at it no longer, though she remained
sitting in the chair, with folded hands and that curious expression
on her face, her head bent a little forward, as if she were listening
for the wind to bring her a piece of long-expected news.
Meanwhile, Dr. Gentian was walking briskly down the road to the
guardhouse. He carried a light cane in one hand and was humming to
himself and now and then cutting little flourishes in the air with
his cane. The moon was up enough for him to pick his way along the
well known path without hesitation, while his mind turned over one
thing and another in its usual active fashion. His wife's words had
stirred him more than he cared to admit and, not for the first time,
he felt, with some annoyance, that there was some quality in her
which even he could only master by snatches, unless she willed to
have it so.
She was the only person he had ever met who did not sooner or later
betray himself or herself by talking too much. He had taught her
that trick of reticence, likely enough--but now it seemed to him,
uneasily, that the pupil was beginning to outstrip her master. It
must not be so--yet what could he do to change it? He could not deal
with her as he dealt with others--from their first meeting he had
thought of her as the living symbol of his luck and the broadening of
that vein of superstition which was his weakness, during these later
years, had only increased the feeling. The fierce passion that had
first united them was long extinguished, but her words still carried
a certain weight of omen for him, and at times he came closer being
afraid of her than he ever had been of any merely human being.
He smiled a little, recalling certain events. What a sharp, wild,
dazzling creature she had been in her first youth--not fair in
Sparta's fashion, not fair at all in the way he consciously admired,
but with a fire in her like the fire at the heart of his emerald.
Wooing her had been like wooing a tiger-cub--his mind still bore the
scars of it, for all its balance, as his body bore the thin, seamed
scar of the knife she had struck him with, long ago, when she thought
he looked too often at that dark little Cypriote. For an instant his
body felt young, and he saw, from a tossing boat, a torch flaring at
the mouth of a cave and a girl's intense and eager face in the red
gush of light.
She would not strike him with a knife again. That had been in the
days of their passion, and they and his youth were over. Her love
had taken a deal of killing, certainly. He felt that to be
unfortunate, honestly enough, for unnecessary ugliness always
offended him. But it would have been the same with any other
man--she was not the sort that lived easily. In any event, she hated
him now, but it did not matter, for, in spite of her hate, he had a
unique sort of confidence in her. The struggle between them would
only end with life, but in the pauses of it they understood each
other.
He smiled--it would seem a queer way of living to that boy in the
guardhouse. One had to give up youth to taste the full flavor of
hazard--youth lacked the steadiness of hand. For himself, the
constant experiment of sharing meat and drink, year-in, year-out,
with a creature whose heart still held the savage so barely kept in
check by mere adroitness of eye and hand, was life and a good one.
Some day, no doubt, the eye would fail or the hand lose cunning, and
he would be torn. Well, let it be so, he had had his game.
Meanwhile, there were other diversions, such as that he purposed for
this evening. He would think of that now, and taste it in
expectation. But when he tried to do so, his wife's words beat in
his ears, and he came to a halt for a moment, leaning a little on his
cane. After all, it was possible to alter his plans. He had given
too much time to young Beard these last months--too little to the
plantation. Cave, too, he had been careless recently with Cave--he
suspected Cave and the lesser animals in general of getting a little
out of hand. Perhaps it might be well to--then he shook his head.
His project for to-night was too well matured--tomorrow would be time
enough for Cave and the others. He cut a weed down with his cane and
went on, but, though a stranger would have thought his bearing
composed enough, he was not entirely at ease.
Now it seemed to him that he could hear movement far off in the woods
at his left. He stopped again and listened. Something was abroad in
the woods, undoubtedly, but the sound was too indistinct for him to
make it out clearly. A shadow darted between two trees near the
road--a man with a bag on his back--he opened his mouth to call at
it--no, it was only a trick of the eye. As for the distant sound,
now quieted, it might be a couple of strayed deer or a band of
half-tame Indians on a rice-stealing expedition--the latter most
probably. The Indians had been growing bold, lately--he must see to
that, too. Again, he was almost on the point of turning back to the
coquina-house. Then he looked at his watch once more--it was later
than he had supposed--the tiny fact decided him. He marched on,
swinging his cane--the moon had a bright face to-night--the features
of the man in it were distinct. He thought of the old story and
smiled. The moon, as a post of observation, would have its
advantages.
He turned a corner--there were guardhouse and storehouses below him,
their roofs wintry with moonlight. The quiet familiarity of the
scene blew the last of his uneasiness away--he had never felt more
sure of himself or his luck. A few paces away from the guardhouse
door he was challenged in a low voice by a sentry, held a
conversation in whispers for a minute, and then went in.
The minutes passed, the still, glittering face rose higher in the sky
till the night was perfect. It cast a long straggling shadow over
the barred window of Andrew's cell and a bright pool on the floor of
Sparta Gentian's empty chamber. In the deep woods that gave upon the
St. Augustine road it barely pierced enough to touch with occasional
silver the faces and bodies of men and women who came slipping
silently between the trees, one by one, like deer trooping together,
till the road was full of them. They came from the direction of the
colony, burdened with packs or children--there seemed no end to their
number--they greeted each other in hushed voices--soon the first of
them were filtering away down the road.
In the colony itself the silver dagger fell upon a different sort of
surreptitious stir, and a clotting together of shadowy shapes on the
skirts of the Italian quarter. Dr. Gentian had wished better than he
knew when he had wished for a post of observation upon the cold peaks
of the moon, and it was unfortunate for him that his wish could not
have been granted. As it was he sat in the guardhouse, tapping his
snuffbox and recapitulating the heads of a certain discourse he
intended to deliver shortly, ignorant that events already in train
were to render that discourse quite unnecessary.
Mrs. Gentian, however, was soon to be better informed. Her rigid
attitude of the listener had not altered for the last half hour, she
sat in her chair like a sculpture, her hands were marble. Only her
eyes discovered life in them, deep in the pupils, contained, patient
and somehow dreadful in its certitude, like the life in the eyes of a
spirit caught in a cleft stone. She was waiting for a sound, and
already the last moments of her vigil were upon her. A mile away,
even as one shape among the clotted shapes at the edge of the Italian
huts began to issue orders to the others, a Greek boy watched from a
shadow and then crawled off, to break into a run for the
coquina-house as soon as he was well away from the huts.
PART FOUR:
The Fire on the Beach
The file grated for an instant and then bit air. Andrew gave a tug
at the bar and nearly fell over backward as it came out in his hand.
He stared at it incredulously. The end of their work had come.
"We're through, Sebastian," he whispered, "Sebastian, Sebastian, give
me a hand with the stone!"
The stone was stubborn, but at last they managed to pry it free.
Then they stood and gazed at the gap for a second of triumph.
It only lasted a second. Even while they gazed at it they knew,
dreadfully, that they had miscalculated. The hole was just too
small. Both tried it, hopefully, defiantly, hopelessly.
"Cut through another bar," said Andrew, finally, when they knew they
were beaten, "Cut through another bar." The thought of starting in
at the beginning again appalled him so that he could not trust
himself to say any more. This last stroke, at the very edge of
deliverance, was the worst of all. He had thought himself free of
Fear--he had been a child shaking a rattle. Fear had only crept away
for a moment to make its return more deadly--now it settled into his
back like a huge, soft animal whose claws were iron needles. He
could feel the cold, salt sweat of it on his forehead and hands.
"Anyhow, it will give us two weapons instead of one," muttered
Sebastian with bitter philosophy as he worked in a contained fury of
haste. Andrew could have hated him for saying that, if there had
been time. But there was no time for either hate or thought or
self-pity--there was only time for fear and the continuous, muffled
grate of the file.