“Such talk means nothing.”
“Bravely said. But this is not talk. You’ve gone too fast. I am giving
you a chance to turn back.”
“Not an inch,” I said fiercely. “Neither in thought, in deed; not even
in semblance.”
He seemed as though he wanted to swallow a bone in his throat.
“Believe me, there is more in life than you think. There is at your age,
more than...” he had a strange contortion of the body, as though in a
sudden access of internal pain; that humorous smile, that abode in the
form of his lips, changed into a ghastly, forced grin... “than one love
in a life--more than one woman.”
I believe he tried to leer at me, because his voice was absolutely dying
in his throat. My indignation was boundless. I cried out with the fire
of deathless conviction:
“It is not true. You know it is not true.”
He was speechless for a time; then, shaking and stammering with that
inward rage that seemed to heave like molten lava in his breast, without
ever coming to the surface of his face:
“What! Is it I, then, who have to go back? For--for you---a boy--come
from devil knows where--an English, beggarly.... For a girl’s whim....
I--a man.”
He calmed down. “No; you are mad. You are dreaming. You don’t know. You
can’t--you! You don’t know what a man is; you with your calf-love a day
old. How dare you look at me who have breathed for years in the very
air? You fool--you little, wretched fool! For years sleeping, and
waking, and working....”
“And intriguing,” I broke in, “and plotting, and deceiving--for years.”
This calmed him altogether. “I am a man; you are but a boy; or else I
would not have to tell you that your love”--he choked at the word--“is
to mine like--like--”
His eyes fell on a cut-glass water-ewer, and, with a convulsive sweep
of his arm, he sent it flying far away from the table. It fell heavily,
shattering itself with the unringing thud of a piece of ice. “Like
this.” He remained for some time with his eyes fixed on the table, and
when he looked up at me it was with a sort of amused incredulity. His
tone was not resentful. He spoke in a business-like manner, a little
contemptuously. I had only Don Carlos to thank for the position in which
I found myself. What the “poor devil over there” expected from me, he,
O’Brien, would not inquire. It was a ridiculous boy-and-girl affair. If
those two--meaning Carlos and Seraphina--had not been so mighty clever,
I should have been safe now in Jamaica jail, on a charge of treasonable
practices. He seemed to find the idea funny. Well, anyhow, he had meant
no worse by me than my own dear countrymen. When he, O’Brien, had found
how absurdly he had been hoodwinked by Don Carlos--the poor devil--and
misled by Ramon--he would make him smart for it, yet--all he had
intended to do was to lodge me in Havana jail. On his word of honour...
“Me in jail!” I cried angrily. “You--you would dare! On what charge? You
could not....”
“You don’t know what Pat O’Brien can do in Cuba.”
The little country solicitor came out in a flash from under the Spanish
lawyer. Then he frowned slightly at me. “You being an Englishman, I
would have had you taken up on a charge of stealing.”
Blood rushed to my face. I lost control over myself. “Mr. O’Brien,” I
said, “I dare say you could have trumped up anything against me. You are
a very great scoundrel.”
“Why? Because I don’t lie about my motives, as you all do? I would wish
you to know that I would scorn to lie either to myself or to you.”
I touched the haft of the sword on the table. It was lying with the
point his way.
“I had been thinking,” said I, in great heat, “to propose to you that we
should fight it out between us two, man to man, rebel and traitor as you
have been.”
“The devil you have!” he muttered.
“But really you are too much of a Picaroon. I think the gallows should
be your end.”
I gave rein to my exasperation, because I felt myself hopelessly in his
power. What he was driving at, I could not tell. I had an intolerable
sense of being as much at his mercy as though I had been lying bound
hand and foot on the floor. It gave me pleasure to tell him what
I thought. And, perhaps, I was not quite candid, either. Suppose I
provoked him enough to fire his pistol at me. He had been fingering the
butt, absently, as we talked. He might have missed me, and then.... Or
he might have shot me dead. But surely there was some justice in Cuba.
It was clear enough that he did not wish to kill me himself. Well, this
was a desperate strait; to force him to do something he did not wish to
do, even at the cost of my own life, was the only step left open to
me to thwart his purpose; the only thing I could do just then for the
furtherance of my mission to save Seraphina from his intrigues. I was
oppressed by the misery of it all. As to killing him as he stood--if I
could do it by being very quick with the old rapier--my bringing up, my
ideas, my very being, recoiled from it. I had never taken a life. I was
very young. I was not used to scenes of violence; and to begin like this
in cold blood! Not only my conscience, but my very courage faltered.
Truth to tell, I was afraid; not for myself--I had the courage to
die; but I was afraid of the act. It was the unknown for me--for my
nerve--for my conscience. And then the Spanish gallows! That, too,
revolted me. To kill him, and then kill myself.... No, I must live. “Two
lives, one death,” she had said..... For a second or two my brain reeled
with horror; I was certainly losing my self-possession. His voice broke
upon that nightmare.
“It may be your lot, yet,” it said. I burst into a nervous laugh. For a
moment I could not stop myself.
“I won’t murder you,” I cried.
To this he said astonishingly, “Will you go to Mexico?”
It sounded like a joke. He was very serious. “I shall send one of the
schooners there on a little affair of mine. I can make use of you. I
give you this chance.” It was as though he had thrown a bucketful of
water over me. I had an inward shiver, and became quite cool. It was his
turn now to let himself go.
It was a matter of delivering certain papers to the Spanish commandant
in Tamaulipas. There would be some employment found for me with the
Royal troops. I was a relation of the Riegos. And there came upon his
voice a strange ardour; a swiftness into his utterance. He walked away
from the table; came back, and gazed into my face in a marked, expectant
manner. He was not prompted by any love for me, he said, and gave an
uncertain laugh.
My wits had returned to me wholly; and as he repeated “No love for
you--no love for you,” I had the intuition that what influenced him was
his love for Seraphina. I saw it. I read it in the workings of his
face. His eyes retained his good-humoured twinkle. He did not attach
any importance to a boy-and-girl affair; not at all--pah! The lady,
naturally young, warmhearted, full of kindness. I mustn’t think.... Ha,
ha! A man of his age, of course, understood.... No importance at all.
He walked away from the table trying to snap his fingers, and, suddenly,
he reeled; he reeled, as though he had been overcome by the poison of
his jealousy--as though a thought had stabbed him to the heart. There
was an instant when the sight of that man moved me more than anything
I had seen of passionate suffering before (and that was nothing), or
since. He longed to kill me--I felt it in the very air of the room; and
he loved her too much to dare. He laughed at me across the table. I had
ridiculously misunderstood a very proper and natural kindness of a girl
with not much worldly experience. He had known her from the earliest
childhood.
“Take my word for it,” he stammered.
It seemed to me that there were tears in his eyes. A stiff smile was
parting his lips. He took up the pistol, and evidently not knowing
anything about it, looked with an air of curiosity into the barrel.
It was time to think of making my career. That’s what I ought to
be thinking of at my age. “At your age--at your age,” he repeated
aimlessly. I was an Englishman. He hated me--and it was easy to believe
this, though he neither glared nor grimaced. He smiled.
He smiled continuously and rather pitifully. But his devotion to
a--a--person who.... His devotion was great enough to overcome even
that, even that. Did I understand? I owed it to the lady’s regard,
which, for the rest, I had misunderstood--stupidly misunderstood.
“Well, at your age it’s excusable!” he mumbled. “A career that...”
“I see,” I said slowly. Young as I was, it was impossible to mistake
his motives. Only a man of mature years, and really possessed by a great
passion--by a passion that had grown slowly, till it was exactly as big
as his soul--could have acted like this--with that profound simplicity,
with such resignation, with such horrible moderation--But I wanted
to find out more. “And when would you want me to go?” I asked, with
a dissimulation of which I would not have suspected myself capable a
moment before. I was maturing in the fire of love, of danger; in the
lurid light of life piercing through my youthful innocence.
“Ah,” he said, banging the pistol on to the table hurriedly. “At once.
To-night. Now.”
“Without seeing anybody?”
“Without seeing... Oh, of course. In your own interest.”
He was very quiet now. “I thought you looked intelligent enough,” he
said, appearing suddenly very tired. “I am glad you see your position.
You shall go far in the Royal service, on the faith of Pat O’Brien,
English as you are. I will make it my own business for the sake of--the
Riego family. There is only one little condition.”
He pulled out of his pocket a piece of paper, a pen, a travelling
inkstand. He looked the lawyer to the life; the Spanish family lawyer
grafted on an Irish attorney.
“You can’t see anybody. But you ought to write. Dona Seraphina naturally
would be interested. A cousin and... I shall explain to Don Balthasar,
of course.... I will dictate: ‘Out of regard for your future, and the
desire for active life, of your own will, you accept eagerly Señor
O’Brien’s proposition.’ She’ll understand.”
“Oh, yes, she’ll understand,” I said.
“Yes. And that you will write of your safe arrival in Tamaulipas. You
must promise to write. Your word...”
“By heavens, Señor O’Brien!” I burst out with inexpressible scorn,
“I thought you meant your villains to cut my throat on the passage. I
should have deserved no better fate.”
He started. I shook with rage. A change had come upon both of us as
sudden as if we had been awakened by a violent noise. For a time we did
not speak a word. One look at me was enough for him. He passed his hand
over his forehead.
“What devil’s in you, boy?” he said. “I seem to make nothing but
mistakes.”
He went to the loophole window, and, advancing his head, cried out:
“The schooner does not sail to-night.”
He had some of his cut-throats posted under the window. I could not make
out the reply he got; but after a while he said distinctly, so as to be
heard below:
“I give up that spy to you.” Then he came back, put the pistol in his
pocket, and said to me, “Fool! I’ll make you long for death yet.”
“You’ve given yourself away pretty well,” I said. “Some day I shall
unmask you. It will be my revenge on you for daring to propose to
me....”
“What?” he interrupted, over his shoulder. “You? Not you--and I’ll tell
you why. It’s because dead men tell no tales.”
He passed through the door--a back view of a dapper Spanish lawyer,
all in black, in a lofty frame. The calm, strolling footsteps went away
along the gallery. He turned the corner. The tapping of his heels echoed
in the _patio_, into whose blackness filtered the first suggestion of
the dawn.