"I am very troubled for you," I murmured.
She returned the pressure, her own hands trembling very much.
"If it had not been for Sarita Castelar, you two would never have
quarrelled, and--and all would have been so different." Her lips
quivered as she spoke, and her eyes were full of sadness. Her look
pained me inexpressibly. I said nothing, and after a pause she added:
"You do not think he will let you take her from him? You know him too
well for that; although you do not know him yet. What was it he would
not let me hear?"
"I would rather you heard it from him. And I must go." She had roused
my fears for Sarita.
"I thought he meditated some act of violence against you, and he is
headstrong enough to do anything--even against her."
"You can surely prevent that," I cried, quickly, in alarm. "You were
strong to save me."
The look with which she answered me lives in my memory to this hour.
Then she drew her hands from mine, and said coldly--
"I can do nothing. You have made him desperate." And with a change of
tone, after a slight pause, as though excusing her own hardness of
thought and resolve, she added: "Besides, I do not know where she is; so
I _can_ do nothing, even if I would."
With that I left her, and hurried from the house a prey to innumerable
harassing fears, the stings and darts of which sent me plunging headlong
through the streets to go I did not think where, and to do I did not
know what.
Sarita was in imminent peril from that reckless, desperate man, and I
alone had to save her. More than once I halted undecided whether to
return and take up the challenge he had thrown down, and trust to my own
strength and skill to render him powerless to harm her. And in this
bewildered state of mind I found myself at the door of my old dwelling,
half crazed by the thought that hours at least must elapse before I
could use hand or tongue for her protection, and that for all those
hours she would be absolutely at his mercy.
*CHAPTER XXX*
*SUSPENSE*
The moment I entered my rooms I perceived that they had been ransacked.
The trail of the police searchers lay over everything. In his eagerness
to regain possession of that compromising document which he feared so
acutely, Quesada had turned his agents loose in my rooms; and they had
done their work so thoroughly that the condition of the place was a
silent but most impressive tribute to their skill and his alarm. The
rooms had been searched from wall to wall; my trunks had been broken and
overhauled; drawers and cupboards had been forced, and the contents
diligently scrutinised; not a thing had been left in its proper place;
and I smiled with a feeling of grim pleasure that I had had the
forethought to put the papers in the safe hands of my friend Mayhew.
For the action of the police I cared nothing, and I stayed in the place
only long enough to get such clothes as I might need; and I threw them
into a Gladstone bag, and carried them over to Mayhew's rooms.
I had too stern a task before me in procuring Sarita's release to give
serious thought to much else. My friend was out, and I guessed I should
find him at the Hotel de l'Opera; but, having changed my clothes, I sat
down to think over matters before going in search of him.
Affairs were in all truth in an inextricable tangle, and very little
reflection convinced me that instead of unravelling them I had made them
worse by the course I had adopted with Sebastian Quesada. I had
committed the fatal blunder of driving him into a corner, and rendering
him desperate enough to resort to any of those violent methods which
Dolores had said he would certainly adopt when once his back was to the
wall.
It was easy to see now what I ought to have done. Belated wisdom is the
curse of a fool, I thought bitterly, as I realised what my clumsy
shortsighted tactlessness had achieved. What I ought to have done was
to have convinced him of my power to ruin him; have told him even of my
influence at the Palace; and have driven in upon him with irresistible
force that it was in my power to thwart the ambition and ruin the career
that were as the very breath of his nostrils to him. Having done that,
I ought to have opened the door of escape by a pledge to do nothing if
he would but give up Sarita.
Instead of this I had driven him to desperation. I had left him under
the conviction that not only could I ruin him, but that I most assuredly
should do so; and had thus given him no alternative but to set his
vigorous energies to work to retrieve so much of his position as was
possible, and to keep for himself what he prized scarcely less than his
position, and what it was already in his power to secure--the woman he
loved.
That he could keep Sarita from me, I could not doubt. He needed but to
lift a finger to have her conveyed where I might search for her in vain;
and a slight knowledge of his resourceful and implacable character was
enough to convince anyone that he would act both promptly and
resolutely. And I shuddered at the thought of the probable consequences
to her.
There was yet another distracting reflection. It was by no means
certain that, even if I could wrest her from his grip, I could obtain
clemency for Sarita herself. Her actions in this infernal Carlist
business had been those of vigorous, bitter, and dangerous intrigue
against the King; treason as subtle as it was active. She was an
acknowledged leader of the Carlists; and I might be sure that Quesada
for his own purposes had accumulated more than sufficient proofs of her
intrigues. Great as was the obligation of the King and the Queen Regent
to me, I could scarcely dare to hope they would pardon her; and hence,
if I succeeded in pulling down the strong pillars at the house of
Quesada's reputation, there was too much reason to fear that when the
building fell Sarita would be crushed in the ruins.
Moreover, there was the problem of Sarita's own sentiments. In the
revulsion of feeling which had followed Livenza's disclosures, she had
been willing to leave the country; and while I was with her, and the
influence of our mutual love could work upon her, that willingness might
have remained. But in the solitude of her imprisonment, wherever the
prison might be, she would have long hours of cold thought; and I had
seen too much of her infatuated belief that her duty demanded she should
stay and share the fate of those who had been misled by her ill-fated
plans, not to fear that that infatuation would again assert itself.
Thus, ponder and stew and plan as I would, I could see no clear course.
All things contributed to make it a personal struggle between Quesada
and myself, in which, while I held the weapons that might ruin him, he
had the means of making that ruin fatal to me so far as the only object
I cared for, Sarita's safety and well-being, was concerned.
As my head cleared from the whirl of mazing thoughts, the conclusion
that I had blundered so badly in my interview with him became plainer
and plainer, gradually hardening into the new purpose to return to him
in the possible hope of retrieving the mistake. Such a reopening of
matters would look like an admission of weakness; and so in truth it
was; but I had only one object--Sarita's safety; and that must override
all other and lesser considerations.
Going down into the street, I drove back to his house, my distaste for
the interview increasing with every yard that brought it nearer, and the
difficulties of the task looming ever greater, until I am not sure that
I was not rather glad when I was told he had left his house, and that
the hour of his return was uncertain. I did not ask for Dolores, but,
getting back into the carriage that had brought me, told the man to
drive me to the Hotel de l'Opera.
My arrival there was hailed with delight. Madame Chansette and Mayhew
were with Mrs. Curwen and Mercy, and, having heard of my arrest, all
were deep in anxious discussion of my affairs when I entered.
I gave them a very general and brief account of my doings, and instantly
a whole battery of questions was opened upon me.
"You look sadly in need of a good square meal," said Mrs. Curwen, always
practical; and she promptly ordered some supper for me. "At the present
rate of running, about another week of this will finish you," she added.
"But how did you get away?" asked Mayhew. "You were arrested, and the
whole Embassy has been hard at work expostulating, protesting,
protocolling, and Heaven knows what. There never was such a pother
raised in Madrid before."
"An order came for my release, and I walked out."
"Do you mean you were actually in prison?" asked Mercy.
"And a very filthy prison, too, I assure you. But, so far as I am
concerned, that danger is over."
"Well, thank Heaven for that. Another period of suspense of the kind
would about kill Mercy, and finish off the family," cried Mrs. Curwen.
"I'm off Spanish investments altogether. And what's going to happen
next? Of course it'll be something unusual. There's no musty
conventionality about your doings just now."
"And where is Sarita?" asked Madame Chansette.
"I wish I knew, my dear madame. She was arrested at the same time as I;
and if I knew, I could do something to help her. But that's just the
pith and kernel of my trouble. As to what will come next I have not a
much clearer idea than you, Mrs. Curwen. But something will probably
happen to-morrow."
"We may be sure of that," she returned quickly. "And when can we all go
away to some safe un-dynamity country?"
"I think I shall be able to answer that better to-morrow."
"It's all to-morrow, it seems to me. And in the meantime don't you
think you'd better go to bed somewhere? You're about fagged out."
"I am too anxious to sleep."
"And when was anxiety relieved by sitting up all night and worrying with
it? There, I've rung the bell, and you can tell the waiter to have a
room got ready instantly for you. We shall all feel easier if we know
you're in the place. I'm sure you can't do anything to-night, and by
the morning you'll have a clear head, some more plans, and enough energy
for another burst of this kind of thing."
When the waiter came I yielded, under protest, and ordered a room.
"I must have a long chat with Mayhew first," I said.
"Not to-night, if Mercy and I have any influence with Mr. Mayhew," she
returned, and Mercy agreed. Then, to my surprise, Mayhew, in a
half-shamefaced but very serious manner, said: "I think Mrs. Curwen is
right, Ferdinand."
"What, you as well, Silas?" and as I looked at him he smiled and
shrugged his shoulders.
"No one thinks of questioning Mrs. Curwen's commands," he answered.
"Oh, already? Then I'd better give in, too," and with that I went,
feeling indeed the truth of what she said--that I could do nothing that
night.
She was right, also, that I was in sore need of rest, and, despite my
anxieties and my declaration that sleep would be impossible, my head was
no sooner on the pillow than I fell into deep slumber, which lasted
until a sluggard's hour on the following morning. It was ten o'clock
before I awoke.
I found Mrs. Curwen alone, and my vexation at having been allowed to lie
so late must have shown in my face, for she said directly: "There's no
one to blame but me, Lord Glisfoyle. I would not allow you to be
called. I don't believe in my prescriptions being half taken."
"I have a great deal to do," I answered, somewhat ungraciously.
"That's no reason why you should try to do it with half your energies
sapped for want of sleep. Mr. Mayhew has been here for you and tried to
get to you; but I wouldn't let him," she said assertively.
"He is learning obedience diligently, it seems," I observed.
"He is a very good fellow, and I strained my influence with him, I can
tell you," she retorted, with a smile of some occult meaning.
"He is the prince of good fellows, and the staunchest of friends, and I
congratulate you on having such influence to strain."
"Oh, men are not difficult to manage, if properly handled."
"Some of us, that is; but I hope he has been duly attentive in my
absence," I said, casually, and with a glance.
"What was the poor man to do? He couldn't very well leave us in the
lurch, I suppose? You were away, and we'd positively no one else."
"To say nothing of his own inclinations," I added.
"To say nothing of his own inclinations," she repeated. "Mercy is not
exactly the kind of girl to scare a man away from her, I should hope."
"A supposition that might be extended to include----"
"What do you mean?" she asked quickly, as I stopped.
"Whom should I mean but"--looking at her pointedly--"Madame Chansette,
shall I say?" She laughed.
"Yes, we'll say Madame Chansette."
"And yet--well, it doesn't much matter whom we say; but at any rate he's
a thoroughly genuine fellow, and--you can fill in the rest. But, by the
way, where is Mercy?"
"She is having a French or Spanish lesson, I think; I'll tell you all
about it when you've finished your breakfast, and not a minute before.
But about Mr. Mayhew, tell me, what is he at the Embassy here? He seems
to speak as though he was a kind of mill-horse. Are there no prospects
for him? Has he no influence to push him on?"
"Yes, he has one, I think I may say two friends now who will see to
that. I'm one of the two--and I think I'm speaking to the other," I
said, quietly. "And between us we ought to do something. But he's as
proud as Lucifer, and a mere hint that we were at the back of anything
of the kind would make him kick."
"If poor A.B.C. were alive----"
"Then, my dear Mrs. Curwen, you would never have been in Madrid, and
would never have known Mayhew." She shrugged her shapely shoulders,
smiled, and then said with unusual earnestness: "And will you really let
me help you in trying to get him a step or two up the ladder?"
"I mean to have him in London, and to make the people at home understand
that he has a head on his shoulders fit for better things. Why, if
Silas only had money to back his brains, there's nothing he might not do
or be. But there, I've finished my breakfast!" I exclaimed, getting up
from the table, thinking I had said enough. "And now, where is Mercy?"
"Will you shake hands on that bargain, Lord Glisfoyle?" she asked, her
eyes bright with the thoughts I knew I had started. We shook hands
gravely, as became such a compact, and I looked straight into her eyes,
as I said in as earnest a tone as hers: "The woman who marries Silas
Mayhew will have a husband in a hundred thousand, true, honest-hearted,
straight and good right through. And now, where _is_ Mercy?" She
returned my look, coloured slightly, and some reply sprang to her lips,
but she checked it, and turning away, said: "Sebastian Quesada's sister
came here, and the two girls are closeted together, waiting for you."
"And you have kept me here all this time!" I cried.
"I was bound to see to your health."
"You are as anxious for my health, I believe, as I am for your
happiness," and with that I hurried away, leaving her blushing very
prettily.
I found Dolores looking very white and worn, and in a mood of deep
dejection. She and Mercy had been weeping together in the sympathetic
exchange of such confidence and consolation as their ignorance of each
other's tongue and mutual indifferent knowledge of the French language
would allow.
"She is in terrible trouble, Ferdinand, do try and relieve her. Her
heart is almost broken by the fearful strain of her sorrow," said Mercy,
getting up to leave as I entered.
"You do not understand things, Mercy, but I will do what I can."
"Your sister is an angel, Lord Glisfoyle," said Dolores, as the door
closed behind Mercy. "I am almost ashamed to come to you, but I could
not keep away. She has told me what I knew, of course, how good and
generous and noble you are. Cannot you do what I asked you yesterday?
I heard of your second visit to us last night, and all through the
night--such a night of agony for me--I have been feeding my soul with
the hope that you came to make some agreement."
"Where is your brother? I am truly pained to see you like this."
"It does not matter about me; nothing of that kind can matter now," she
answered in a tone deadened by sorrow. "I should not come to you for
such a paltry object as my own troubles. It is for Sebastian I am
thinking. But you don't seem to understand how I feel, how this fearful
thing has shut upon me like the closing walls of an Inquisition prison
cell, until whichever way I stretch out my hands I find ruin crushing in
upon me," and she moved her hands like one distraught with terror and
trouble.
"What can I do?" I asked, gently.
"Can't you try and see what all this has meant to me?" she asked wildly,
ignoring my question. "What I suffered when I knew that Sebastian meant
to ruin you, to involve you in this terrible Carlist business, to have
you proclaimed as Ferdinand Carbonnell, the desperate Carlist leader,
imprisoned and sent Heaven alone knew where, to suffer the fate and the
punishment which such a man would rightly suffer? What could I do but
step in to save you? You know his reluctance, the struggle we had, the
wild words he spoke of your ruining him, and then how he broke his
pledged word to me? And yet to save you meant to ruin him! Holy Mother
of God, what was I to do?" and she wrung her hands. "I could not see
you wronged in this way; and yet as my reward am I to see him dragged
down, his reputation destroyed, his position degraded, his very name a
foulness in the mouths of the populace? Is this your English sense of
honour and recompense? No, no, I don't mean that. I know you are just
and honourable. I am crazed with my trouble to speak such words to
you."
"Where is your brother?"
"I do not know. You drove him to desperation last night. He left this
house almost directly you had gone; and returned late, and was gone
again this morning before I could get word with him. He is like a
mad-man; and what he will do in his madness, who can tell?" The fears
that lay beneath her wild words were the same as had been pressing so
keenly on me, yet what to do to avert them was more than I could see.
"If you do not know where he is, what can we do?" I asked.
"Give me those compromising papers, and let me find him and prove that
the danger he fears is at an end? He will then do anything you ask.
You do not know him. He is stern, hard, implacable when opposed, but he
is not dead to feelings of generosity. An act like that would touch him
to the core, and he would do anything you asked--nay, let me know what
it is you wish, and I would pledge myself that he would do it." She
pleaded urgently and almost imploringly, but I could not yield.
"I cannot do that. Only last night he likened this struggle between us
to a duel, and you would ask me to disarm myself and throw away the only
means by which I can hope to win my way. I am sorry, deeply and
sincerely sorry, but this is impossible."
"You would see him dragged into the dirt for the rabble to spit upon!"
Her changing mood, as she was swayed first by thoughts for me and then
by those for her brother, was painful to witness.
"He did not hesitate to have me treated as a criminal, senorita; he has
set me at defiance and refused everything I asked; and I cannot put
myself and others at his mercy. But I will do this. Let him set Sarita
Castelar free, and stay this Carlist persecution, and I will give up the
documents he fears, and say nothing of what I know. More than that I
cannot offer you; and even that must depend upon the senorita being free
before I am placed in a position which compels me to take action against
him."
"What does that mean? How long will you give me? I must have time to
find him. I cannot do anything without time. You are iron to me in
your madness for this girl."
"Unfortunately I am not free to name any time." I was not. I did not
yet know what measures Mayhew had taken, and whether he had communicated
with the Palace. My summons to the King might come at any hour, and I
was compelled to hold myself free to speak all I knew with regard to
Quesada in my interview there. At the same time Dolores' acute distress
of mind, and the knowledge of what she had done for me, filled me with a
desire to help her; while personally, I was anxious to get Sarita from
Quesada's grip at the earliest possible moment, and to leave Spain.
Under pressure of these thoughts, I added: "This I can assure you, I
would far rather the matter ended as you wish, and will give you every
possible moment of time."
"I will go," she answered promptly. "I depend on you. You have given
me some hope, if not much. If I fail with Sebastian"--and she closed
her eyes and sighed in the agony of the thought--"I will let you know at
once."
"And I will do nothing without first sending word to you," I promised in
reply.
We parted then, and when she left the room I found Mayhew waiting for me
in the corridor.
*CHAPTER XXXI*
*AT THE PALACE*
"Your lady visitors call early, Ferdinand," said Mayhew, rather drily.
"Yes, rather embarrassing, isn't it? But what news have you for me?
What happened yesterday?"
"More than enough to prove that you are a person of considerable
importance, I can tell you. When I got your message by that exceedingly
sharp lad, Juan, that you were arrested, I went straight to the chief,
and within an hour a protest was in the hands of the Spanish Government,
couched in terms calculated to make them sit up, I promise you, and very
soon the whole machinery was at work to get you out. They denied all
knowledge of you, however; but I expect a good deal would have happened
to-day if you hadn't been set at liberty. I told the chief this
morning, however, that you were here, and he wants to see you. And
that's about all--unless you want the details."
"Did you send any word to the Palace?"
"No, I kept that in reserve for to-day as a broadside, and, of course, I
said nothing to anyone about the papers you left with me."
"Good; just as I should have expected from you. And now, I'm going to
tell you the whole mess, and just see what's best to be done;" and I
gave him a pretty full account of everything that had happened.
"You're right, it is a devil of a mess," was his comment when I
finished. "What do you suppose Quesada's sister can do?"
"I haven't a notion. I'm just at the end of my wits, and can't for the
life of me see what's to be done."
"There's one thing you may safely reckon on, and it isn't a pleasant
thing anyway--that that beggar is sure to have a trump card up his
sleeve that will most likely outplay your best. He's the most cunning
beggar in all Spain. He's been in heaps of tight corners before, and
wriggled out just when it seemed impossible. And he won't give in now,
you bet. I tell you what he's likely to do--he knows just as well as
lots of others, that he's the pivot of the whole Government; the one man
for instance, who, in the popular view, can wage this threatened war
with the States with some chance of success; and I wouldn't be one
little bit surprised if he trumps you with a change of front and
declares for war. You don't know as much as I do of Spanish politics,
and can't, therefore, understand the holy mess that would follow here if
the war came. He'd be the only man able to guide things; and in such a
case you might hammer at him in vain."
"But these documents, Livenza's statement, my own knowledge, Sarita
Castelar's evidence!" I cried, in protest.
"Strong enough in England, perhaps; but he'd deny everything; and do you
think anyone's going to care two pence about them if the nation is in
danger. He'd say the letters were forgeries; pop Livenza into prison,
or bribe or threaten him to change face; the lady is already safe in his
charge, and as a Carlist wouldn't be believed even if she were at
liberty; and your statement would be listened to politely, and then
disregarded as that of an enemy of Spain and a friend of America. I'm
sorry to discourage you, but you asked my advice and that is--don't
count on your weapons as he called them, and don't believe for a moment
that you can really do him any harm. He sits too firm in the saddle."
"But he told his sister that I could ruin him, and he showed the fear by
wanting to make me fight him."
"Mere play-acting, Ferdinand, nothing more. He wanted to get the papers
back quietly if he could, and the quietest and safest way would have
been to have you arrested as Carbonnell, the Carlist, and sent somewhere
into the far provinces, and probably knocked on the head by the way or
shot in mistake--the kind of mistake that does happen at times. His
sister appears to have cut that plan short, and naturally he tells her
she must get the papers back, if she could. But if she couldn't, it
didn't follow that he wasn't quite prepared to face you. Don't make the
mistake of thinking he will give up a jot or tittle of any plan he has,
whether public or private; he never has been known to yet, and even you
will never make him, strong as your case would be in any other country
and against any other man. It's part of his constitution, my dear
fellow. He's got all the energy and resource of a present day American
with all the confounded pride and stiff-necked doggedness of an Old
Castile noble. A rummy combination, but the devil to fight."
"I shan't give in," I said, firmly. "And that I take it your advice is
that I should."
Mayhew shrugged his shoulders significantly.
"I'd make it different if I could. I'm very sorry, for I can guess what
it means to you; but you've no chance;" and he shook his head,
hopelessly. "Shall we go and see the chief?"
"I shan't give in," I said again; but I am free to confess that his
counsel of despair had great effect upon me, and I went to the Embassy
in a very despondent mood.
I was closeted with the chief a considerable time, while I gave such
account of my experiences as I deemed advisable, and was questioned and
cross-questioned, and advised and congratulated in the customary
official manner, and finally counselled to return to England. A pointed
question from me drew the reply that this last advice was the result of
a request from the Spanish Government, and I did not fail to see in it
the hand of Quesada.
My answer was an evasive one, to the effect that I would go so soon as I
had wound up such private affairs as I had to conclude in Madrid.
I rejoined Mayhew, feeling both ill at ease and out of temper. A
half-day had passed, and I had done nothing toward effecting Sarita's
release; while the hours were flying, and no word came from Dolores. My
apparent helplessness in other respects increased my anxiety to hear
that she had been successful with her brother; for I was fast coming
round to Mayhew's gloomy view of the position.
Then came another complication. When we went to the Hotel de l'Opera, I
found there an urgent summons from the Palace. News of my arrest and
liberation had reached the young King, and he desired me to go to the
Palace that afternoon. I scribbled a note to Dolores Quesada, telling
her I could not wait for news from her after three o'clock--the hour
appointed for the interview, and sent Mercy with it, Mayhew accompanying
her.
The reply to this put the climax to my anxiety. It ran thus:
"Alas, my friend, I can do nothing. I have just seen Sebastian, who is
now in a quite different mood. He laughs at the thought of your doing
him any harm. 'Let him do his worst. He can but break himself on the
wheel of his own efforts;' were his words. I am distracted with
misery."