“Why did you make me meet him? He may be a judge of your Marine Court,
but he’s nothing but a scoundrelly bog-trotter.”
Carlos said a little haughtily, “You must not denounce him. You should
not leave this place if I feared you would try thus to bring dishonour
on this gray head, and involve this young girl in a public scandal.” His
manner became soft. “For the honour of the house you shall say nothing.
And you shall come with us. I need you.”
I was full of mistrust now. If he did countenance this unlawful
enterprise, whose headquarters were in Rio Medio, he was not the man
for me. Though it was big enough to be made, by the papers at home,
of political importance, it was, after all, neither more nor less
than piracy. The idea of my turning a sort of Irish traitor was so
extravagantly outrageous that now I could smile at the imbecility of
that fellow O’Brien. As to turning into a sea-thief for lucre--my blood
boiled.
No. There was something else there. Something deep; something dangerous;
some intrigue, that I could not conceive even the first notion of. But
that Carlos wanted anxiously to make use of me for some purpose was
clear. I was mystified to the point of forgetting how heavily I was
compromised even in Jamaica, though it was worth remembering, because
at that time an indictment for rebellion--under the Black Act--was no
joking matter. I might be sent home under arrest; and even then, there
was my affair with the runners.
“It is coming to pay a visit,” he was saying persuasively, “while your
affair here blows over, my Juan--and--and--making my last hours easy,
perhaps.”
I looked at him; he was worn to a shadow--a shadow with dark wistful
eyes. “I don’t understand you,” I faltered.
The old man stirred, opened his lids, and put a gold vinaigrette to his
nostrils.
“Of course I shall not denounce O’Brien,” I said. “I, too, respect the
honour of your house.”
“You are even better than I thought you. And if I entreat you, for the
love of your mother--of your sister? Juan, it is not for myself, it
is------”
The young girl was pouring some drops from a green phial into a silver
goblet; she passed close to us, and handed it to her father, who had
leant a little forward in his chair. Every movement of hers affected me
with an intimate joy; it was as if I had been waiting to see just that
carriage of the neck, just that proud glance from the eyes, just that
droop of eyelashes upon the cheeks, for years and years.
“No, I shall hold my tongue, and that’s enough,” I said.
At that moment the old Don sat up and cleared his throat. Carlos
sprang towards him with an infinite grace of tender obsequiousness. He
mentioned my name and the relationship, then rehearsed the innumerable
titles of his uncle, ending “and patron of the Bishopric of Pinar del
Rio.”
I stood stiffly in front of the old man. He bowed his head at intervals,
holding the silver cup carefully whilst his chair rocked a little. When
Carlos’ mellow voice had finished the rehearsing of the sonorous styles,
I mumbled something about “transcendent honour.”
He stopped me with a little, deferentially peremptory gesture of one
hand, and began to speak, smiling with a contraction of the lips and a
trembling of the head. His voice was very low, and quavered slightly,
but every syllable was enunciated with the same beauty of clearness that
there was in his features, in his hands, in his ancient gestures.
“The honour is to me,” he said, “and the pleasure. I behold my kinsman,
who, with great heroism, I am told, rescued my dearly loved nephew from
great dangers; it is an honour to me to be able to give him thanks. My
beloved and lamented sister contracted a union with an English hidalgo,
through whose house your own very honourable family is allied to my own;
it is a pleasure to me to meet after many years with one who has seen
the places where her later life was passed.”
He paused, and breathed with some difficulty, as if the speech had
exhausted him. Afterwards he began to ask me questions about Rooksby’s
aunt--the lamented sister of his speech. He had loved her greatly, he
said. I knew next to nothing about her, and his fine smile and courtly,
aged, deferential manners made me very nervous. I felt as if I had been
taken to pay a ceremonial visit to a supreme pontiff in his dotage. He
spoke about Horton Priory with some animation for a little while, and
then faltered, and forgot what he was speaking of. Suddenly he said:
“But where is O’Brien? Did he write to the Governor here? I should like
you to know the Señor O’Brien. He is a spiritual man.”
I forbore to say that I had already seen O’Brien, and the old man sank
into complete silence. It was beginning to grow dark, and the noise of
suppressed voices came from the open trap-door. Nobody said anything.
I felt a sort of uneasiness; I could by no means understand the
connection between the old Don and what had gone before, and I did not,
in a purely conventional sense, know how long I ought to stop. The sky
through the barred windows had grown pallid.
The old Don said suddenly, “You must visit my poor town of Rio Medio,”
but he gave no specific invitation and said nothing more.
Afterwards he asked, rather querulously, “But where is O’Brien? He must
write those letters for me.”
The young girl said, “He has preceded us to the ship; he will write
there.”
She had gone back to her seat. Don Balthasar shrugged his shoulders to
his ears, and moved his hands from his knees.
“Without doubt, he knows best,” he said, “but he should ask me.”
It grew darker still; the old Don seemed to have fallen asleep again.
Save for the gleam of the silver buckle of his hat, he had disappeared
into the gloom of the place. I remembered my engagement to dine with
Williams on board the _Lion_, and I rose to my feet. There did not seem
to be any chance of my talking to the young girl. She was once more
leaning nonchalantly over the lizard, and her hair drooped right across
her face like clusters of grapes. There was a gleam on a little piece
of white forehead, and all around and about her there were shadows
deepening. Carlos came concernedly towards me as I looked at the door.
“But you must not go yet,” he said a little suavely; “I have many things
to say. Tell me----”
His manner heightened my uneasiness to a fear. The expression of his
eyes changed, and they became fixed over my shoulder, while on his lips
the words “You must come, you must come,” trembled, hardly audible. I
could only shake my head. At once he stepped back as if resigning.
He was giving me up--and it occurred to me that if the danger of his
seduction was over, there remained the danger of arrest just outside the
door.
Some one behind me said peremptorily, “It is time,” and there was a
flickering diminution of the light. I had a faint instantaneous view of
the old Don dozing, with his head back--of the tall windows, cut up into
squares by the black bars. Something hairily coarse ran harshly down
my face; I grew blind; my mouth, my eyes, my nostrils were filled with
dust; my breath shut in upon me became a flood of warm air. I had no
time to resist. I kicked my legs convulsively; my elbows were drawn
tight against my sides. Someone grunted under my weight; then I was
carried--down, along, up, down again; my feet were knocking along a
wall, and the top of my head rubbed occasionally against what must have
been the roof of a low stone passage, issuing from under the back room
of Ramon’s store. Finally, I was dropped upon something that felt like
a heap of wood-shavings. My surprise, rage, and horror had been so great
that, after the first stifled cry, I had made no sound. I heard the
footsteps of several men going away.