“It means, most likely, that the fellow with the curls that made me
think of my maiden aunt, has managed to keep his horse-face above
water.” He meant Manuel-del-Popolo. “What mischief he may do yet before
he runs his head into a noose, it’s hard to say. The old Spaniard you
brought with you thinks he has already been busy--for no good, you may
be sure.”
“You mean that’s one of the Rio schooners?” I asked quickly.
That, with all its consequent troubles forme, was what he did mean. He
said I might take his word for it that, with the winds we had had, no
craft working along the coast could be just there now unless she came
out of Rio Medio. There was a calm almost up to sunrise, and it looked
as if they had towed her out with boats before daylight.... “Seems a
rather unlikely bit of exertion for the lazy brutes; but if they are as
much afraid of that confounded Irishman as you say they are, that would
account for their energy.”
They would steal and do murder simply for the love of God, but it would
take the fear of a devil to make them do a bit of honest work--and
pulling an oar _was_ honest work, no matter why it was done. This was
the combined wisdom of Sebright and of Tomas Castro, with whom he had
been in consultation. As to the fear of the devil, O’Brien was very much
like a devil, an efficient substitute. And there was certainly somebody
or something to make them bestir themselves like this....
Before my mind arose a scene: Manuel, the night before, pulled out of
the water into a boat--raging, half-drowned, eloquent, inspired. The
contemptible beast _was_ inspired, as a politician is, a demagogue.
He could sway his fellows, as I had heard enough to know. And I felt
a slight chill on the warmth of my hope, because that bright sail,
brilliantly and furtively dodging along in our wake, must be the product
of Manuel’s inspiration, urged to perseverance by the fear of O’Brien.
The mate continued, staring knowingly at it:
“You know I am putting two and two together, like the old maids that
come to see my aunt when they want to take away a woman’s character.
The Dagos are out and no mistake. The question is, Why? You must know
whether those schooners can sail anything; but don’t forget the old
_Lion_ is pretty smart. Is it likely they’ll attempt the ship again?”
I negatived that at once. I explained to Sebright that the store of
ammunition in Rio Medio would not run to it; that the _Lugareños_ were
cowardly, divided by faction, incapable, by themselves, of combining
for any length of time, and still less of following a plan requiring
perseverance and hardihood.
“They can’t mean anything in the nature of open attack,” I affirmed.
“They may have attempted something of the sort in Nichols’ time, but it
isn’t in their nature.”
Sebright said that was practically Castro’s opinion, too--except that
Castro had emphasized his remarks by spitting all the time, “like an old
tomcat. He seems a very spiteful man, with no great love for you, Mr.
Kemp. Do you think it safe to have him about you? What are all these
grievances of his?”
Castro seemed to have spouted his bile like a volcano, and had rather
confused Sebright. He had said much about being a friend of the Spanish
lord--Carlos; and that now he had no place on earth to hide his head.
“As far as I could make out, he’s wanted in England,” said Sebright,
“for some matter of a stolen watch, years ago in Liverpool, I think. And
your cousin, the grandee, was mixed up in that, too. That sounds funny;
you didn’t tell us about that. Damme if he didn’t seem to imply that
you, too... But you have never been in Liverpool. Of course not....”
But that had not been precisely Castro’s point. He had affirmed he had
enemies in Spain; he shuddered at the idea of going to France, and now
my English fancifulness had made it impossible for him to live in Rio
Medio, where he had had the care of a good _pad-rona_.
“I suppose he means a landlady,” Sebright chuckled. “Old but good, he
says. He expected to die there in peace, a good Christian. And what’s
that about the priests getting hold of his very last bit of silver? I
must say that sounded truest of all his rigmarole. For the salvation of
his soul, I suppose?”
“No, my cousin’s soul,” I said gloomily.
“Humbugs. I only understood one word in three.”
Just then Tomas himself stalked into sight among the men forward. Coming
round the corner of the deck-house, he stopped at the galley door like
a crow outside a hut, waiting. We watched him getting a light for his
cigarette at the galley door with much dignified pantomime. The negro
cook of the _Lion_, holding out to him in the doorway a live coal in
a pair of tongs, turned his Ethiopian face and white ivories towards
a group of sailors lost in the contemplation of the proceedings.’ And,
when Castro had passed them, spurting jets of smoke, they swung about
to look after his short figure, upon whose draped blackness the sunlight
brought out reddish streaks as if bucketfuls of rusty water had been
thrown over him from hat to toe. The end of his broken plume hung
forward aggressively.
“Look how the fellow struts! Night and thunder! Hey, Don Tenebroso!
Would your worship hasten hither....” Sebright hailed jocularly.
Castro, without altering his pace, came up to us.
“What do you think of her now?” asked Sebright, pointing to the strange
sail. “She’s grown a bit plainer, now she is out of the glare.”
Castro, wrapping his chin, stood still, face to the sea. After a long
while:
“Malediction,” he pronounced slowly, and without moving his head shot a
sidelong glance at me.
“It’s clear enough how _he_ feels about our friends over there.
Malediction. Just so. Very proper. But it seems as though he had a bone
to pick with all the world,” drawled Sebright, a little sleepily.
Then, resuming his briskness, he bantered, “So you don’t want to go to
England, Mr. Castro? No friends there? _Sus. per col._, and that sort of
thing?”
Castro, contemptuous, staring straight away, nodded impatiently.
“But this gentleman you are so devoted to is going to England--to his
friends.”
Castro’s arms shook under the mantle falling all round him straight from
the neck. His whole body seemed convulsed. From his puckered dark lips
issued a fiendish and derisive squeal.
“Let his friends beware, then. _Por Dios!_ Let them beware. Let them
pray and fast, and beg the intercession of the saints. Ha! ha! ha!...”
Nothing could have been more unlike his saturnine self-centred
truculence of restraint. He impressed me; and even Sebright’s steady,
cool eyes grew perceptibly larger before this sarcastic fury. Castro
choked; the rusty, black folds encircling him shook and heaved.
Unexpectedly he thrust out in front of the cloak one yellow, dirty
little hand, side by side with the bright end of his fixed blade.
“What do I hear? To England! Going to England! Ha! Then let him hasten
there straight! Let him go straight there, I say--I, Tomas Castro!”
He lowered his tone to impress us more, and the point of the knife, as
it were an emphatic forefinger, tapped the open palm forcibly. Did we
think that a man was not already riding along the coast to Havana on
a fast mule?--the very best mule from the stables of Don Balthasar
himself--that murdered saint. The Captain-General had no such mules.
His late excellency owned a sugar estate halfway between Rio Medio and
Havana, and a relay of riding mules was kept there for quickness when
His Excellency of holy memory found occasion to write his commands to
the capital. The news of our escape would reach the _Juez_ next day at
the latest. Manuel would take care of that--unless he were drowned. But
he could swim like a fish. Malediction!
“I cried out to you to kill!” he addressed me directly; “with all my
soul I cried. And why? Because he had seen you and the senorita, too,
alas! He should have been made dumb--made dumb with your pistol, Señor,
since those two stupid English mariners were too much for an old man
like me. Manuel should have been made dumb--dumb forever, I say. What
mattered he--that gutter-born offspring of an evil _Gitana_, whom I have
seen, Señor! I, myself, have seen her in the days of my adversity in
Madrid, Señor--a red flower behind the ear, clad in rags that did not
cover all her naked skin, looking on while they fought for her with
knives in a wine-shop full of beggars and thieves. Si, senor. That’s his
mother. _Improvisador--politico--capataz_. Ha.... Dirt!”
He made a gesture of immense contempt.
“What mattered he? The coach would have returned from the cathedral, and
the Casa Riego could have been held for days--and who could have known
you were not inside. I had conversed earnestly with Cesar the
major-domo--an African, it is true, but a man of much character and
excellent sagacity. Ah, Manuel! Manuel! If I------But the devil himself
fathers the children of such mothers. I am no longer in possession of my
first vigour, and you, Señor, have all the folly of your nation....”
He bared his grizzled head to me loftily.
“... And the courage! Doubtless, that is certain. It is well. You may
want it all before long, Señor... And the courage!”
The broken plume swept the deck. For a time he blinked his creased,
brown eyelids in the sun, then pulled his hat low down over his brows,
and, wrapping himself up closely, turned away from me to look at the
sail to leeward.
“What an old, old, wrinkled, little, puffy beggar he is!” observed
Sebright, in an undertone...
“Well, and what is your worship’s opinion as to the purpose of that
schooner?”
Castro shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows?”... He released the gathered
folds of his cloak, and moved off without a look at either of us.
“There he struts, with his wings drooping like a turkey-cock gone into
deep mourning,” said Sebright. “Who knows? Ah, well, there’s no hurry to
know for a day or two. I don’t think that craft could overhaul the Lion,
if they tried ever so. They may manage to keep us in sight perhaps.”
He yawned, and left me standing motionless, thinking of Seraphina. I
longed to see her--to make sure, as if my belief in the possession of
her had been inexplicably weakened. I was going to look at the door of
her cabin. But when I got as far as the companion I had to stand aside
for Mrs. Williams, who was coming up the winding stairs.
From above I saw the gray woollen shawl thrown over her narrow
shoulders. Her parting made a broad line on her brown head. She mounted
busily, holding up a little the front of her black, plain skirt. Her
glance met mine with a pale, searching candour from below.
Overnight she had heard all my story. She had come out to the saloon
whilst I had been giving it to Williams, and after saying reassuringly,
“The young lady, I am thankful, is asleep,” she had sat with her eyes
fixed upon my lips. I had been aware of her anxious face, and of
the slight, nervous movements of her hands at certain portions of my
narrative under the blazing lamps. We met now, for the first time, in
the daylight.
Hastily, as if barring my road to Seraphina’s cabin, “Miss Riego, I
would have you know,” she said, “is in good bodily health. I have this
moment looked upon her again. The poor, superstitious young lady is on
her knees, crossing herself.”
Mrs. Williams shuddered slightly. It was plain that the sight of that
popish practice had given her a shock--almost a scare, as if she had
seen a secret and nefarious rite. I explained that Seraphina, being a
Catholic, worshipped as her lights enjoined, as we did after ours. Mrs.
Williams only sighed at this, and, making an effort, proposed that I
should walk with her a little. We began to pace the poop, she gliding
with short steps at my side, and drawing close the skimpy shawl about
her. The smooth bands of her hair put a shadow into the slight hollows
of her temples. No nun, in the chilly meekness of the habit, had ever
given me such a strong impression of poverty and renunciation.
But there was in that faded woman a warmth of sentiment. She flushed
delicately whenever caught (and one could not help catching her
continually) following her husband with eyes that had an expression of
maternal uneasiness and the captivated attention of a bride. And after
she had got over the idea that I, as a member of the male British
aristocracy, was dissolute--it was an article of faith with her--that
warmth of sentiment would bring a faint, sympathetic rosiness to her
sunken cheeks.
She said suddenly and trembling, “Oh, young sir, reflect upon these
things before it is too late. You young men, in your luxurious, worldly,
ungoverned lives...”
I shall never forget that first talk with her on the poop--her hurried,
nervous voice (for she was a timid woman, speaking from a sense of
duty), and the extravagant forms her ignorance took. With the emotions
of the past night still throbbing in my brain and heart, with the sight
of the sea and the coast, with the Rio Medio schooner hanging on our
quarter, I listened to her, and had a hard task to believe my ears.
She was so convinced that I was “dissolute,” because of my class--as an
earl’s grandson.
It is difficult to imagine how she arrived at the conviction; it must
have been from pulpit denunciations of the small Bethel on the outskirt
of Bristol. Her uncle, J. Perkins, was a great ruffian, certainly,
and Williams was dissolute enough, if one wished to call his festive
imbecilities by a hard name. But these two could, by no means, be said
to belong to the upper classes. And these two, apart from her favourite
preacher, were the only two men of whom she could be said to have more
than a visual knowledge.
She had spent her best years in domestic slavery to her bachelor uncle,
an old shipowner of savage selfishness; she had been the deplorable
mistress of his big, half-furnished house, standing in a damp garden
full of trees. The outrageous Perkins had been a sailor in his
time--mate of a privateer in the great French war, afterwards master
of a slaver, developing at last into the owner of a small fleet of West
Indiamen. Williams was his favourite captain, whom he would bring home
in the evening to drink rum and water, and smoke churchwarden pipes with
him. The niece had to sit up, too, at these dismal revels. Old Perkins
would keep her out of bed to mix the grogs, till he was ready to climb
the bare stone staircase, echoing from top to bottom with his stumbles.
However, it seems he dozed a good deal in snatches during the
evening, and this, I suppose, gave their opportunity to the pale,
spiritual-looking spinster with the patient eyes, and to the thick,
staring Williams, florid with good living, and utterly unused to the
company of women of that sort. But in what way these two unsimilar
beings had looked upon each other, what she saw in him, what he imagined
her to be like, why, how, wherefore, an understanding arose between
them, remains inexplicable. It was her romance--and it is even possible
that he was moved by an unselfish sentiment. Sebright accounted for the
matter by saying that, as to the woman, it was no wonder. Anything to
get away from a bullying old ruffian, that would use bad language in
cold blood just to horrify her--and then burst into a laugh and jeer;
but as to Captain Williams (Sebright had been with him from a boy), he
ought to have known he was quite incapable of keeping straight after all
these free-and-easy years.
He used to talk a lot, about that time, of good women, of settling down
to a respectable home, of leading a better life; but, of course,
he couldn’t. Simply couldn’t, what with old friends in Kingston and
Havana--and his habits formed--and his weakness for women who, as
Sebright put it, could not be called good. Certainly there did not seem
to have been any sordid calculation in the marriage. Williams fully
expected to lose his command; but, as it turned out, the old beast,
Perkins, was quite daunted by the loss of his niece. He found them out
in their lodgings, came to them crying--absolutely whimpering about his
white hairs, talking touchingly of his will, and promising amendment. In
the end it was arranged that Williams should keep his command; and Mrs.
Williams went back to her uncle. That was the best of it. Actually went
back to look after that lonely old rip, out of pure pity and goodness of
heart. Of course old Perkins was afraid to treat her as badly as before,
and everything was going on fairly well, till some kind friend sent
her an anonymous letter about Williams’ goings on in Jamaica. Sebright
strongly suspected the master of another regular trading ship, with whom
Williams had a difference in Kingston the voyage before last--Sebright
said--about a small matter, with long hair--not worth talking about. She
said nothing at first, and nearly worried herself into a brain-fever.
Then she confessed she had a letter--didn’t believe it--but wanted a
change, and would like to come for one voyage. Nothing could be said to
that.
The worst was, the captain was so knocked over at the idea of his little
sins coming to light, that he--Sebright--had the greatest difficulty in
preventing him from giving himself away.
“If I hadn’t been really fond of her,” Sebright concluded, “I would have
let everything go by the board. It’s too difficult. And mind, the whole
of Kingston was on the broad grin all the time we were there--but it’s
no joke. She’s a good woman, and she’s jealous. She wants to keep her
own. Never had much of her own in this world, poor thing. She can’t help
herself any more than the skipper can. Luckily, she knows no more of
life than a baby. But it’s a most cruel set out.”
Sebright had exposed the domestic situation on board the _Lion_ with a
force of insight and sympathy hardly to be expected from his years. No
doubt his attachment to the disparate couple counted for not a little.
He seemed to feel for them both a sort of exasperated affection; but
I have no doubt that in his way he was a remarkable young man with
his contrasted bringing up first at the hands of an old maiden lady;
afterwards on board ship with Williams, to whom he was indentured at the
age of fifteen, when as he casually mentioned--“a scoundrelly attorney
in Exeter had run off with most of the old girl’s money.” Indeed,
looking back, they all appear to me uncommon; even to the round-eyed
Williams, cowed simply out of respect and regard for his wife, and as
if dazed with fright at the conventional catastrophe of being found out
before he could get her safely back to Bristol. As to Mrs. Williams,
I must confess that the poor woman’s ridiculous and genuine misery,
inducing her to undertake the voyage, presented itself to me simply as a
blessing, there on the poop. She had been practically good to Seraphina,
and her talking to me mattered very little, set against that.... And
such talk!
It was like listening to an earnest, impassioned, tremulous
impertinence. She seemed to start from the assumption that I was
capable of every villainy, and devoid of honour and conscience; only
one perceived that she used the words from the force of unworldly
conviction, and without any real knowledge of their meaning, as a
precocious child uses terms borrowed from its pastors and masters.
I was greatly disconcerted at first, but I was never angry. What of it,
if, with a sort of sweet absurdity, she talked in great agitation of
the depravity of hearts, of the sin of light-mindedness, of the
self-deception which leads men astray--a confused but purposeful jumble,
in which occasional allusions to the errors of Rome, and to the want of
seriousness in the upper classes, put in a last touch of extravagance?
What of it? The time was coming when I should remember the frail,
homely, as if starved, woman, and thank heaven for her generous heart,
which was gained for us from that moment. Far from being offended, I
was drawn to her. There is a beauty in the absolute conscience of the
simple; and besides, her distrust was for me, alone. I saw that she
erected* herself not into a judge, but into a guardian, against the
dangers of our youth and our romance. She was disturbed by its origin.
There was so much of the unusual, of the unheard of in its beginning,
that she was afraid of the end. I was so inexperienced, she said, and
so was the young lady--poor motherless thing--wilful, no doubt--so
very taking--like a little child, rather. Had I comprehended all my
responsibility? (And here one of the hurried side-allusions to the
errors of Rome came in with a reminder, touching the charge of another
immortal soul beside my own.) Had I reflected?...
It seems to me that this moment was the last of my boyishness. It was as
if the contact with her earnestness had matured me with a power greater
than the power of dangers, of fear, of tragic events. She wanted to know
insistently whether I were sure of myself, whether I had examined my
feelings, and had measured my strength, and had asked for guidance.
I had done nothing of this. Not till brought face to face with her
unanswerable simplicity did I descend within myself. It seemed I had
descended so deeply that, for a time, I lost the sound of her voice. And
again I heard her.
“There’s time yet,” she was saying. “Think, young sir (she had addressed
me throughout as ‘young sir.’) My husband and I have been talking it
over most anxiously. Think well before you commit the young lady
for life. You are both so young. It looks as if we had been sent
providentially....”
What was she driving at? Did she doubt my love? It was rather horrible;
but it was too startling and too extravagant to be met with anger. We
looked at each other, and I discovered that she had been, in reality,
tremendously excited by this adventure. This was the secret of her
audacity. And I was also possessed by excitement. We stood there like
two persons meeting in a great wind. Without moving her hands, she
clasped and unclasped her fingers, looking up at me with soliciting
eyes; and her lips, firmly closed, twitched.
“I am looking for the means of explaining to you how much I love her,” I
burst out. “And if I found a way, you could not understand. What do you
know?--what can you know?...”
I said this not in scorn, but in sheer helplessness. I was at a loss
before the august magnitude of my feeling, which I saw confronting me
like an enormous presence arising from that blue sea. It was no longer
a boy-and-girl affair; no longer an adventure; it was an immense and
serious happiness, to be paid for by an infinity of sacrifice.
“I am a woman,” she said, with a fluttering dignity. “And it is because
I know how women suffer from what men say....”
Her face flushed. It flushed to the very bands of her hair. She was
rosy all over the eyes and forehead. Rosy and ascetic, with something
outraged and inexpressibly sweet in her expression. My great emotion was
between us like a mist, through which I beheld strange appearances. It
was as if an immaterial spirit had blushed before me. And suddenly I saw
tears--tears that glittered exceedingly, falling hard and round, like
pellets of glass, out of her faded eyes.
“Mrs. Williams,” I cried, “you can’t know how I love her. No one in the
world can know. When I think of her--and I think of her always--it seems
to me that one life is not enough to show my devotion. I love her like
something unchangeable and unique--altogether out of the world; because
I see the world through her. I would still love her if she had made me
miserable and unhappy.”
She exclaimed a low “Ah!” and turned her head away for a moment.
“But one cannot express these things,” I continued. “There are no words.
Words are not meant for that. I love her so that, were I to die this
moment, I verily believe my soul, refusing to leave this earth, would
remain hovering near her....”
She interrupted me with a sort of indulgent horror. “Sh! sh!” I mustn’t
talk like that. I really must not--and inconsequently she declared she
was quite willing to believe me. Her husband and herself had not slept a
wink for thinking of us. The notion of the fat, sleepy Williams, sitting
up all night to consider, owlishly, the durability of my love, cooled
my excitement. She thought they had been providentially thrown into our
way to give us an opportunity of reconsidering our decision. There were
still so many difficulties in the way.
I did not see any; her utter incomprehension began to weary me, while
she still twined her fingers, wiped her eyes by stealth, as it were, and
talked unflinchingly. She could not have made herself clearly understood
by Seraphina. Moreover, women were so helpless--so very helpless in
such matters. That is why she was speaking to me. She did not doubt my
sincerity at the present time--but there was, humanly speaking, a long
life before us--and what of afterwards? Was I sure of myself--later
on--when all was well?