I remember walking about the room, and thinking to myself, “This is bad,
this is very bad; what shall I do now?” A sort of mad meditation that in
this meaningless way became so tense as positively to frighten me. Then
it occurred to me that I could do nothing whatever at present, and I was
soothed by this sense of powerless-ness, which, one would think, ought
to have driven me to distraction. I went to sleep ultimately, just as a
man sentenced to death goes to sleep, lulled in a sort of ghastly way by
the finality of his doom. Even when I awoke it kept me steady, in a way.
I washed, dressed, walked, ate, said “Good-morning, Cesar,” to the old
major-domo I met in the gallery; exchanged grins with the negro boys
under the gateway, and watched the mules being ridden out barebacked
by other nearly naked negro boys into the sea, with great splashing
of water and a noise of voices. A small knot of men, unmistakably
__Lugareños__, stood on the beach, also, watching the mules, and
exchanging loud jocular shouts with the blacks. Rio Medio, the dead,
forsaken, and desecrated city, was lying, as bare as a skeleton, on the
sands. They were yellow; the bay was very blue, the wooded hills very
green.
After the mules had been ridden uproariously back to the stables, wet
and capering, and shaking their long ears, all the life of the land
seemed to take refuge in this vivid colouring. As I looked at it from
the outer balcony above the great gate, the small group of __Lugareños__
turned about to look at the Casa Riego.
They recognized me, no doubt, and one of them flourished, threateningly,
an arm from under his cloak. I retreated indoors.
This was the only menacing sign, absolutely the only sign that marked
this day. It was a day of pause. Seraphina did not leave her apartments;
Don Balthasar did not show himself; Father Antonio, hurrying towards the
sick room, greeted me with only a wave of the hand. I was not admitted
to see Carlos; the nun came to the door, shook her head at me, and
closed it gently in my face. Castro, sitting on the floor not very far
away, seemed unaware of me in so marked a manner that it inspired me
with the idea of not taking the slightest notice of him. Now and then
the figure of a maid in white linen and bright petticoat flitted in the
upper gallery, and once I fancied I saw the black, rigid carriage of the
duenna disappearing behind a pillar.
Señor O’Brien, old Cesar whispered, without looking at me, was extremely
occupied in the _Cancillería_. His midday meal was served him there.
I had mine all alone, and then the sunny, heat-laden stillness of
siesta-time fell upon the Castilian dignity of the house.
I sank into a kind of reposeful belief in the work of accident.
Something would happen. I did not know how soon and how atrociously
my belief was to be justified. I exercised my ingenuity in the most
approved lover-fashion--in devising means how to get secret speech
with Seraphina. The confounded silly maids fled from my most distant
appearance, as though I had the pest. I was wondering whether I should
not go simply and audaciously and knock at her door, when I fancied I
heard a scratching at mine. It was a very stealthy sound, quite capable
of awakening my dormant emotions.
I went to the door and listened. Then, opening it the merest crack, I
saw the inexplicable emptiness of the gallery. Castro, on his hands and
knees, startled me by whispering at my feet:
“Stand aside, Señor.”
He entered my room on all-fours, and waited till I got the door closed
before he stood up.
“Even he may sleep sometimes,” he said. “And the balustrade has hidden
me.”
To see this little saturnine bandit, who generally stalked about
haughtily, as if the whole Casa belonged to him by right of fidelity,
crawl into my room like this was inexpressibly startling. He shook the
folds of his cloak, and dropped his hat on the floor.
“Still, it is better so. The very women of the house are not safe,” he
said. “Señor, I have no mind to be delivered to the English for hanging.
But I have not been admitted to see Don Carlos, and, therefore, I must
make my report to you. These are Don Carlos’ orders. ‘Serve him, Castro,
when I am dead, as if my soul had passed into his body.’”
He nodded sadly. “_Si!_ But Don Carlos is a friend to me and you--you.”
He shook his head, and drew me away from the door. “Two __Lugareños__,”
he said, “Manuel and another one, did go last night, as directed by the
friar”--he supposed--“to meet the _Juez_ in the bush outside Rio Medio.”
I had guessed that much, and told him of Manuel’s behaviour under my
window. How did they know my chamber?
“Bad, bad,” muttered Castro. “La Chica told her lover, no doubt.” He
hissed, and stamped his foot.
She was pretty, but flighty. The lover was a silly boy of decent,
Christian parents, who was always hanging about in the low villages. No
matter.
What he could not understand was why some boats should have been held in
readiness till nearly the morning to tow a schooner outside. Manuel came
along at dawn, and dismissed the crews. They had separated, making a
great noise on the beach, and yelling, “Death to the _Inglez!_”
I cleared up that point for him. He told me that O’Brien had the duenna
called to his room that morning. Nothing had been heard outside, but the
woman came out staggering, with her hand on the wall. He had terrified
her. God knows what he had said to her. The widow--as Castro called
her--had a son, an _escrivano_ in one of the Courts of Justice. No doubt
it was that.
“There it is, Señor,” murmured Castro, scowling all round, as if every
wall of the room was an enemy. “He holds all the people in his hand in
some way. Even I must be cautious, though I am a humble, trusted friend
of the Casa!”
“What harm could he do you?” I asked.
“He is civil to me. _Amigo Castro_ here, and _Amigo Castro_ there. Bah!
The devil, alone, is his friend! He could deliver me to justice, and get
my life sworn away. He could------_Quien sabe?_ What need he care what
he does--a man that can get absolution from the archbishop himself if he
likes.”
He meditated. “No! there is only one remedy for him.” He tiptoed to my
ear. “The knife!”
He made a pass in the air with his blade, and I remembered vividly the
cockroach he had impaled with such accuracy on board the _Thames_. His
baneful glance reminded me of his murderous capering in the steerage,
when he had thought that the only remedy for _me_ was the knife.
He went to the loop-hole, and passed the steel thoughtfully on the stone
edge. I had not moved.
“The knife; but what would you have? Before, when I talked of this
to Don Carlos, he only laughed at me. That was his way in matters of
importance. Now they will not let me come in to him. He is too near
God--and the Señorita--why, she is too near the saints for all the
great nobility of her spirit. But, _que dia-bleria_, when I--in my
devotion--opened my mouth to her I saw some of that spirit in her
eyes....”
There was a slight irony in his voice. “No! Me--Castro! to be told that
an English Señora would have dismissed me forever from her presence for
such a hint. ‘Your Excellency,’ I said, ‘deign, then, to find it good
that I should avoid giving offence to that man. It is not my desire to
run my neck into the iron collar.’”
He looked at me fixedly, as if expecting me to make a sign, then
shrugged his shoulders.
“_Bueno_. You see this? Then look to it yourself, Señor. You are to
me even as Don Carlos--all except for the love. No English body is big
enough to receive his soul. No friend will be left that would risk his
very honour of a noble for a man like Tomas Castro. Let me warn you not
to leave the Casa, even if a shining angel stood outside the gate and
called you by name. The gate is barred, now, night and day. I have
dropped a hint to Cesar, and that old African knows more than the Señor
would suppose. I cannot tell how soon I may have the opportunity to talk
to you again.”
He peeped through the crack of the door, then slipped out, suddenly
falling at once on his hands and knees, so as to be hidden by the stone
balustrade from anybody in the _patio_. He, too, did not think himself
safe.
Early in the evening I descended into the court, and Father Antonio,
walking up and down the _patio_ with his eyes on his breviary, muttered
to me:
“Sit on this chair,” and went on without stopping.
I took a chair near the marble rim of the basin with its border of
English flowers, its splashing thread of water. The goldfishes that had
been lying motionless, with their heads pointing different ways, glided
into a bunch to the fall of my shadow, waiting for crumbs of bread.
Father Antonio, his head down, and the open breviary under his nose,
brushed my foot with the skirt of his cassock.
“Have you any plan?”
When he came back, walking very slowly, I said, “None.”
At this next turn I pronounced rapidly, “I should like to see Carlos.”
He frowned over the edge of the book. I understood that he refused to
let me in. And, after all, why should I disturb that dying man? The news
about him was that he felt stronger that day. But he was preparing for
eternity. Father Antonio’s business was to save souls. I felt horribly
crushed and alone. The priest asked, hardly moving his lips: “What do
you trust to?”
I had the time to meditate my reply. “Tell Carlos I think of escape by
sea.”
He made a little sign of assent, turned off towards the staircase, and
went back to the sick room.
“The folly of it,” I thought. How could I think of it? Escape where? I
dared not even show myself outside the Casa. My safety within depended
on old Cesar more than on anybody else. He had the key of the gate, and
the gate was practically the only thing between me and a miserable death
at the hands of the first ruffian I met outside. And with the thought I
seemed to stifle in that _patio_ open to the sky.
That gate seemed to cut off the breath of life from me. I was there, as
if in a trap. Should I--I asked myself--try to enlighten Don Balthasar?
Why not? He would understand me. I would tell him that in his own town,
as he always called Rio Medio, there lurked assassination for his guest.
That would move him if anything could.
He was then walking with O’Brien after dinner, as he had walked with me
on the day of my arrival. Only Seraphina had not appeared, and we three
men had sat out the silent meal alone.
They stopped as I approached, and Don Balthasar listened to me
benignantly. “Ah, yes, yes! Times have changed.” But there was no reason
for alarm. There were some undesirable persons. Had they not arrived
lately? He turned to O’Brien, who stood by, in readiness to resume
the walk, and answered, “Yes, quite lately. Very undesirable,” in a
matter-of-fact tone. The excellent Don Patricio would take measures
to have them removed, the old man soothed me. But it was not really
dangerous for any one to go out. Again he addressed O’Brien, who only
smiled gently, as much as to say, “What an absurdity!” I must not
forget, continued the old man, the veneration for the very name of Riego
that still, thank Heaven, survived in these godless and revolutionary
times in the Riegos’ own town. He straightened his back a little,
looking at me with dignity, and then glanced at the other, who inclined
his head affirmatively. The utter and complete hopelessness of the
position appalled me for a moment. The old man had not put foot outside
his door for years, not even to go to church. Father Antonio said
Mass for him every day in the little chapel next the dining room.
When O’Brien--for his own purposes, and the better to conceal his own
connection with the Rio Medio piracies--had persuaded him to go to
Jamaica officially, he had been rowed in state to the ship waiting
outside. For many years now it had been impossible to enlighten him as
to the true condition of affairs. He listened to people’s talk as though
it had been children’s prattle. I have related how he received Carlos’
denunciations. If one insisted, he would draw himself up in displeasure.
But in his decay he had preserved a great dignity, a grave firmness that
intimidated me a little.
I did not, of course, insist that evening, and, after giving me
my dismissal in a gesture of blessing, he resumed his engrossing
conversation with O’Brien. It related to the services commemorating his
wife’s death, those services that, once every twelve months, draped in
black all the churches in Havana. A hundred masses, no less, had to
be said that day; a distribution of alms had to be made. O’Brien was
charged with all the arrangements, and I caught, as they crept past me
up and down the _patio_, snatches of phrases relating to this mournful
function, when all the capital was invited to pray for the soul of the
illustrious lady. The priest of the church of San Antonio had said this
and that; the grand vicar of the diocese had made difficulties about
something; however, by the archbishop’s special grace, no less than
three altars would be draped in the cathedral.
I saw Don Balthasar smile with an ineffable satisfaction; he thanked
O’Brien for his zeal, and seemed to lean more familiarly on his arm. His
voice trembled with eagerness. “And now, my excellent Don Patricio, as
to the number of candles....”
I stood for a while as if rooted to the spot, overwhelmed by my
insignificance. O’Brien never once looked my way. Then, hanging my head,
I went slowly up the white staircase towards my room.
Cesar, going his rounds along the gallery, shuffled his silk-clad shanks
smartly between two young negroes balancing lanthorns suspended on
the shafts of their halberds. That little group had a mediaeval and
outlandish aspect. Cesar carried a bunch of keys in one hand, his staff
of office in the other. He stood aside, in his maroon velvet and gold
lace, holding the three-cornered hat under his arm, bowing his gray,
woolly head--the most venerable and deferential of majordomos. His
attendants, backing against the wall, grounded their halberds heavily at
my approach.
He stepped out to intercept me, and, with great discretion, “Señor, a
word,” he said in his subdued voice. “A moment ago I have been called
within the door of our senorita’s apartments. She has given me this for
your worship, together with many compliments. It is a seal. The Señor
will understand.”