Seraphina and I moved towards the door sadly, as if under the oppression
of a memory, as people go back from the side of a grave to the cares of
life. No exultation possessed me. Nothing had happened. It had been a
sick man’s whim.
“Señorita,” I said low, with my hand on the wrought bronze of the
door-handle, “Don Carlos might have died in full trust of my devotion to
you--without this.”
“I know it,” she answered, hanging her head.
“It was his wish,” I said. “And I deferred.”
“It was his wish,” she repeated.
“Remember he had asked you for no promise.”
“Yes, it is you only he has asked. You have remembered it very well,
Señor. And you--you ask for nothing.”
“No,” I said; “neither from your heart nor from your conscience--nor
from your gratitude. Gratitude from you! As if it were not I that
owe you gratitude for having condescended to stand with your hand in
mine--if only for a moment--if only to bring peace to a dying man; for
giving me the felicity, the illusion of this wonderful instant, that,
all my life, I shall remember as those who are suddenly stricken blind
remember the great glory of the sun. I shall live with it, I shall
cherish it in my heart to my dying day; and I promise never to mention
it to you again.”
Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes remained downcast, her head
drooped as if in extreme attention.
“I asked for no promise,” she murmured coldly.
My heart was heavy. “Thank you for that proof of your confidence,” I
said. “I am yours without any promises. Wholly yours. But what can I
offer? What help? What refuge? What protection? What can I do? I can
only die for you. Ah, but this was cruel of Carlos, when he knew that I
had nothing else but my poor life to give.”
“I accept that,” she said unexpectedly. “Señorita, it is generous of you
to accept so worthless a gift--a life I value not at all save for one
unique memory which I owe to you.”
I knew she was looking at me while I swung open the door with a low bow.
I did not trust myself to look at her. An unreasonable disenchantment,
like the awakening from a happy dream, oppressed me. I felt an almost
angry desire to seize her in my arms--to go back to my dream. If I had
looked at her then, I believed I could not have controlled myself.
She passed out; and when I looked up there was O’Brien booted and
spurred, but otherwise in his lawyer’s black, inclining his dapper
figure profoundly before her in the dim gallery. She had stopped short.
The two maids, huddled together behind her, stared with terrified eyes.
The flames of their candles vacillated very much.
I closed the door quietly. Carlos was done with the earth. This had
become my affair; and the necessity of coming to an immediate decision
almost deprived me of my power of thinking. The necessity had arisen too
swiftly; the arrival of that man acted like the sudden apparition of
a phantom. It had been expected, however; only, from the moment we
had turned away from Carlos’ bedside, we had thought of nothing but
ourselves; we had dwelt alone in our emotions, as if there had been no
inhabitant of flesh and blood on the earth but we two. Our danger had
been present, no doubt, in our minds, because we drew it in with every
breath. It was the indispensable condition of our contact, of our words,
of our thoughts; it was the atmosphere of our feelings; a something
as all-pervading and impalpable as the air we drew into our lungs. And
suddenly this danger, this breath of our life, had taken this material
form. It was material and expected, and yet it had the effect of an evil
spectre, inasmuch as one did not know where and how it was vulnerable,
what precisely it would do, how one should defend one’s self.
His bow was courtly; his gravity was all in his bearing, which was quiet
and confident: the manner of a capable man, the sort of man the great
of this earth find invaluable and are inclined to trust. His full-shaven
face had a good-natured, almost a good-humored expression, which I have
come to think must have depended on the cast of his features, on the
setting of his eyes--on some peculiarity not under his control, or else
he could not have preserved it so well. On certain occasions, as this
one, for instance, it affected me as a refinement of cynicism; and,
generally, it was startling, like the assumption of a mask inappropriate
to the action and the speeches of the part.
He had journeyed in his customary manner overland from Havana, arriving
unexpectedly at night, as he had often done before; only this time he
had found the little door, cut out in one of the sides of the big gate,
bolted fast. It was his knocking I had heard, as I hurried after the
priest. The major-domo, who had been called up to let him in, told me
afterwards that the senor intendente had put no question whatever to him
as to this, and had gone on, as usual, towards his own room. Nobody knew
what was going on in Carlos’ chamber, but, of course, he came upon the
two girls at the door. He said nothing to them either, only just stopped
there and waited, leaning with one elbow on the balustrade with his
good-tempered, gray eyes fixed on the door. He had fully expected to see
Seraphina come out presently, but I think he did not count on seeing
me as well. When he straightened himself up after the bow, we two were
standing side by side.
I had stepped quickly towards her, asking myself what he would do. He
did not seem to be armed; neither had I any weapon about me. Would he
fly at my throat? I was the bigger, and the younger man. I wished he
would. But he found a way of making me feel all his other advantages.
He did not recognize my existence. He appeared not to see me at all. He
seemed not to be aware of Seraphina’s startled immobility, of my firm
attitude; but turning his good-humoured face towards the two girls, who
appeared ready to sink through the floor before his gaze, he shook his
fore-finger at them slightly.
This was all. He was not menacing; he was almost playful; and this
gesture, marvellous in its economy of effort, disclosed all the might
and insolence of his power. It had the unerring efficacy of an act of
instinct. It was instinct. He could not know how he dismayed us by
that shake of the finger. The tall girl dropped her candlestick with
a clatter, and fled along the gallery like a shadow. La Chica cowered
under the wall. The light of her candle just touched dimly the form of
a negro boy, waiting passively in the background with O’Brien’s
saddle-bags over his shoulder.
“You see,” said Seraphina to me, in a swift, desolate murmur. “They are
all like this--all, all.”
Without a change of countenance, without emphasis, he said to her in
French:
“_Votre père dort sans doute, Señorita_.”
And she intrepidly replied, “You know very well, Señor Intendente, that
nothing can make him open his eyes.”
“So it seems,” he muttered between his teeth, stooping to pick up the
dropped candlestick. It was lying at my feet. I could have taken him
at a disadvantage, then; I could have felled him with one blow, thrown
myself upon his back. Thus may an athletic prisoner set upon a jailer
coming into his cell, if there were not the prison, the locks, the bars,
the heavy gates! the walls, all the apparatus of captivity, and the
superior weight of the idea chaining down the will, if not the courage.
It might have been his knowledge of this, or his absolute disdain of
me. The unconcerned manner in which he busied himself--his head within
striking distance of my fist--in lighting the extinguished candle from
the trembling Chica’s humiliated me beyond expression. He had some
difficulty with that, till he said to her just audibly, “Calm thyself,
niña,” and she became rigid in her appearance of excessive terror.
He turned then towards Seraphina, candlestick in hand, courteously
saying in Spanish:
“May I be allowed to help light you to your door, since that silly
Juanita--I think it was Juanita--has taken leave of her senses? She is
not fit to remain in your service--any more than this one here.”
With a gasp of desolation, La Chica began to sob limply against the
wall. I made one step forward; and, holding the candle well up, as
though for the purpose of examining my face carefully, he never looked
my way, while he and Seraphina were exchanging a few phrases in French
which I did not understand well enough to fellow.
He was politely interrogatory, it seemed to me. The natural,
good-humoured expression never left his face, as though he had a fund of
inexhaustible patience for dealing with the unaccountable trifles of a
woman’s conduct. Seraphina’s shawl had slipped off her head. La Chica
sidled towards her, sobbing a deep sob now and then, without any sign of
tears; and with their scattered hair, their bare arms, the disorder of
their attire, they looked like two women discovered in a secret flight
for life. Only the mistress stood her ground firmly; her voice was
decided; there was resolution in the way one little white hand clutched
the black lace on her bosom. Only once she seemed to hesitate in her
replies. Then, after a pause he gave her for reflection, he appeared
to repeat his question. She glanced at me apprehensively, as I thought,
before she confirmed the previous answer by a slow inclination of her
head.
Had he allowed himself to make a provoking movement, a dubious gesture
of any sort, I would have flung myself upon him at once; but the
nonchalant manner in which he looked away, while he extended to me his
hand with the candlestick, amazed me. I simply took it from him. He
stepped back, with a ceremonious bow for Seraphina. La Chica ran up
close to her elbow. I heard her voice saying sadly, “You need fear
nothing for yourself, child”; and they moved away slowly. I remained
facing O’Brien, with a vague notion of protecting their retreat.
This time it was I who was holding the light before his face. It was
calm and colourless; his eyes were fixed on the ground reflectively,
with the appearance of profound and quiet absorption. But suddenly I
perceived the convulsive clutch of his hand on the skirt of his coat. It
was as if accidentally I had looked inside the man--upon the strength of
his illusions, on his desire, on his passion. Now he will fly at me,
I thought, with a tremendously convincing certitude. Now------All my
muscles, stiffening, answered the appeal of that thought of battle.
He said, “Won’t you give me that light?”
And I understood he demanded a surrender.
“I would see you die first where you stand,” was my answer.
This object in my hand had become endowed with moral
meaning--significant, like a symbol--only to be torn from me with my
life.
He lifted his head; the light twinkled in his eyes. “Oh, _I_ won’t die,”
he said, with that bizarre suggestion of humour in his face, in his
subdued voice. “But it is a small thing; and you are young; it may be
yet worth your while to try and please me--this time.”
Before I could answer, Seraphina, from some little distance, called out
hurriedly:
“Don Juan, your arm.”
Her voice, sounding a little unsteady, made me forget O’Brien, and,
turning my back on him, I ran up to her. She needed my support; and
before us La Chica tottered and stumbled along with the lights, moaning:
“_Madré de Dios!_ What will become of us now! Oh, what will become of us
now!”
“You know what he had asked me to let him do,” Seraphina talked rapidly.
“I made answer, ‘No; give the light to my cousin.’ Then he said, ‘Do you
really wish it, Señorita? I am the older friend.’ I repeated, ‘Give the
light to my cousin, Señor.’ He, then, cruelly, ‘For the young man’s own
sake, reflect, Señorita.’ And he waited before he asked me again, ‘Shall
I surrender it to him?’ I felt death upon my heart, and all my fear for
you--there.” She touched her beautiful throat with a swift movement of
a hand that disappeared at once under the lace. “And because I could
not speak, I------Don Juan, you have just offered me your life--I------
_Misericordia!_ What else was possible? I made with my head the sign
‘Yes.’”
In the stress, hurry, and rapture encompassing my immense gratitude,
I pressed her hand to my side familiarly, as if we had been two lovers
walking in a lane on a serene evening.
“If you had not made that sign, it would have been worse than death--in
my heart,” I said. “He had allied me, too, to renounce my trust, my
light.”
We walked on slowly, accompanied in our sudden silence by the plash of
the fountain at the bottom of the great square of darkness on our left,
and by the piteous moans of La Chica.
“That is what he meant,” said the enchanting voice by my side. “And you
refused. That is your valour.”
“From no selfish motives,” I said, troubled, as if all the great
incertitude of my mind had been awakened by the sound that brought so
much delight to my heart. “My valour is nothing.”
“It has given me a new courage,” she said.
“You did not want more,” I said earnestly.
“Ah! I was very much alone. It is difficult to------”
She hesitated.
“To live alone,” I finished.
“More so to die,” she whispered, with a new note of timidity. “It is
frightful. Be cautious, Don Juan, for the love of God, because I could
not------”
We stopped. La Chica, silent, as if exhausted, drooped lamentably,
with her shoulder against the wall, by Seraphina’s door; and the pure
crystalline sound of the fountain below, enveloping the parting pause,
seemed to wind its coldness round my heart.
“Poor Don Carlos!” she said. “I had a great affection for him. I was
afraid they would want me to marry him. He loved your sister.”
“He never told her,” I murmured. “I wonder if she ever guessed.”
“He was poor, homeless, ill already, in a foreign land.”
“We all loved him at home,” I said.
“He never asked her,” she breathed out. “And, perhaps--but he never
asked her.”
“I have no more force,” sighed La Chica, suddenly, and sank down at the
foot of the wall, putting the candlesticks on the floor.
“You have been very good to him,” I said; “only he need not have
demanded this from you. Of course, I understood perfectly.... I hope you
understand, too, that I------”
“Señor, my cousin,” she flashed out suddenly, “do you think that I would
have consented only from my affection for him?”
“Señorita,” I cried, “I am poor, homeless, in a foreign land. How can I
believe? How can I dare to dream?--unless your own voice------”
“Then you are permitted to ask. Ask, Don Juan.”
I dropped on one knee, and, suddenly extending her arm, she pressed her
hand to my lips. Lighted up from below, the picturesque aspect of her
figure took on something of a transcendental grace; the unusual upward
shadows invested her beauty with a new mystery of fascination. A minute
passed. I could hear her rapid breathing above, and I stood up before
her, holding both her hands.
“How very few days have we been together,” she whispered. “Juan, I am
ashamed.”
“I did not count the days. I have known you always. I have dreamed of
you since I can remember--for days, for months, a year, all my life.”
The crash of a heavy door flung to, exploded, filling the galleries all
round the _patio_ with the sonorous reminder of our peril.
“Ah! We had forgotten.”
I heard her voice, and felt her form in my arms. Her lips at my ear
pronounced:
“Remember, Juan. Two lives, but one death only.”
And she was gone so quickly that it was as though she had passed through
the wood of the massive panels.
La Chica crouched on her knees. The lights on the floor burned before
her empty stare, and with her bare shoulders the tone of old ivory
emerging from the white linen, with wisps of raven hair hanging down her
cheeks, the abandonment of her whole person embodied every outward mark
and line of desolation.
“What do you fear from him?” I asked.
She looked up; moved nearer to me on her knees. “I have a lover
outside.”
She seized her hair wildly, drew it across her face, tried to stuff
handfuls of it into her mouth, as if to stop herself from shrieking.
“He shook his finger at me,” she moaned.
Her terror, as incomprehensible as the emotion of an animal, was gaining
upon me. I said sternly:
“What can he do, then?”
“I don’t know.”
She did not know. She was like me. She feared for her love. Like myself!
Was there anything in the way of our undoing which it was not in his
power to achieve?
“Try to be faithful to your mistress,” I said, “and all may be well
yet.”
She made no answer, but staggered to her feet, and went away blindly
through the door, which opened just wide enough to let her through.
There were clouds on the sky. The _patio_, in its blackness, was like
the rectangular mouth of a bottomless pit. I picked up the candlesticks,
and lighted myself to my room, walking upon air, upon tempestuous air,
in a feeling of insecurity and exultation.
The lights of my candelabrum had gone out. I stood the two candlesticks
on a table, and the shadows of the room, uplifted above the two flames
as high as the ceiling, filled the corners heavily like gathered
draperies, descended to the foot of the four walls in the shape of a
military tent, in which warlike objects vaguely gleamed: a trophy of
ancient arquebuses and conquering swords, arranged with bows, spears,
the stick and stone weapons of an extinct race, a war collar of shells
or pebbles, a round wicker-work shield in a halo of arrows, with a
matchlock piece on each side--of the sort that had to be served by two
men.
I had left the door of my room open on purpose, so that he should know
I was back there, and ready for him. I took down a long straight blade,
like a rapier, with a basket hilt. It was a cumbrous weapon, and with a
blunt edge; still, it had a point, and I was ready to thrust and parry
against the world. I called upon my foes. No enemy appeared, and by
the light of two candles, with a sword in my hand, I lost myself in the
foreshadowings of the future.
It was positive and uncertain. I wandered in it like a soul outside the
gates of paradise, with an anticipation of bliss, and the pain of my
exclusion. There was only one man in the way. I was certain he had been
watching us across the blackness of the _patio_. He must have seen the
dimly-lit dumb show of our parting at Sera-phina’s door. I hoped he had
understood, and that my shadow, bearing the two lights, had struck him
as triumphant and undismayed, walking upon air. I strained my ears. I
had heard....
Somebody was coming towards me along the silent galleries. It was he;
I knew it. He was coming nearer and nearer. In the profound, tomb-like
stillness of the great house, I had heard the sound of his footsteps on
the tessellated pavement from afar. Now he had turned the corner, and
the calm, strolling pace of his approach was enough to strike awe into
an adversary’s heart. It never hesitated, not once; never hurried; never
slowed till it stopped. He stood in the doorway.
I suppose, in that big room, by the light of two candles, I must have
presented an impressive picture of a menacing youth all in black, with
a tense face, and holding a naked, long rapier in his hand. At any rate,
he stood still, eyeing me from the doorway, the picture of a dapper
Spanish lawyer in a lofty frame; all in black, also, with a fair head
and a well-turned leg advanced in a black silk stocking. He had taken
off his riding boots. For the rest, I had never seen him dressed
otherwise. There was no weapon in his hand, or at his side.
I lowered the point, and, seeing he remained on the doorstep, as if not
willing to trust himself within, I said disdainfully:
“You don’t suppose I would murder a defenceless man.”
“Am I defenceless?” He had a slight lift of the eyebrows. “That is news,
indeed. It is you who are supposing. I have been a very certain man for
this many a year.”
“How can you know how an English gentleman would feel and act? I am
neither a murderer nor yet an intriguer.”
He walked right in rapidly, and, getting round to the other side of the
table, drew a small pistol out of his breeches pocket.
“You see--I am not trusting too much to your English generosity.”
He laid the pistol negligently on the table. I had turned about on my
heels. As we stood, by lunging between the two candlesticks, I should
have been able to run him through the body before he could cry out.