"LET US KISS AND PART."
As I unbarred the door that gave directly from the miserable
living-room of the house to the outside he came in, the snow upon the
shoulders of the cape he wore--some flakes even upon his face.
"You are alive! Escaped!" I whispered, recognising that this was no
phantom of my brain, but the man himself. "Safe! Thank God!"
"Where is she?" he asked, pausing for no greeting, giving me none. "My
child! Is _she_ safe? Or--have I come too late?"
"She is here--safe. It is not too late."
His eyes roamed round the room; then, not seeing her, he continued:
"Where? I must see her--once."
"_Once?_"
"For the last time. After that we shall never meet again. The shadow
of my life, my past, must fall on her no more. Yet--once--I must see
her. Lead me to where she is."
"She has been ill, delirious--is crushed by all that has
happened--by----"
"All that she has learnt," he interrupted, his voice deep and
solemn--broken, too. "Yet I must see her."
"She is asleep above."
For answer to this he made simply a sign, yet one I understood very
well--a sign that I should delay no longer.
"Come," I said, "come." And together we went up the narrow stairs to
the room she occupied--stole up them, as though in fear of waking her.
Pushing the door open gently, we saw by the rays of the _veilleuse_,
which I had ordered to be placed in the room, that she was sleeping;
observed also that our entry did not disturb her; also it was easy to
perceive that she was dreaming. Sometimes, as we standing there gazed
down, the long, dark lashes that drooped upon her cheeks quivered;
from beneath them there stole some tears; once, too, the rosy lips
parted, and a sigh came from between them.
"My child, my child!" Gramont whispered to himself, "child of her whom
I loved better than my life--that we should meet at last, only to part
forever!"
And from his own eyes the tears rolled down--from his! He stooped and
bent over her; his face approached hers; his lips touched that white
brow, over which the short-cut hair curled in such glorious
dishevelment, while he murmured:
"Unclose those eyelids once, look for the last time on me." Then he
half-turned his head away, as though to prevent his own tears from
falling on and awakening her.
Was he a sorcerer, I wondered, even as I watched--a sorcerer, as well
as other things unnamable? Had he the power over his own child to thus
reach her mind and brain, even though both were sunk in a deep,
feverish sleep? In truth, it appeared so.
For, even as he spoke, those eyelids did unclose, the dark, dreamy
eyes gazed up into his, while, slowly, the full, white, rounded arms
encircled his neck, and their lips met, and from him I heard the
whispered words:
"Farewell, farewell, forever. Oh, my child, my child!"
Yet--and I thanked God for it then, as ever since I have thanked Him
again and again!--he had turned away ere the answering whisper came
from her lips, had not heard the words that fell from them--the words:
"Mervan, Mervan, my beloved!"
Thanked God he had not known how, in her sleep, she deemed those
kisses mine, and dreamed of me alone.
* * * * * * * * *
"'Twas went on the storm increased, the snow no longer came in flakes
against the window of the room below, in which we sat, but, instead,
lay thick and heavy in masses on the sill without--was driven, too,
against the window by the fierce, tempestuous wind that howled down
from the mountains above, and rocked the miserable inn.
"There is no going on to-night," Gramont said, coming in out of the
storm after having gone forth to attend to the horse that had brought
him from Lugo, and having bestowed it in the stables, where were the
animals on which Juana and I had also ridden. "No going on to-night."
Then, changing the subject abruptly, he said: "Where is that man?"
Not pretending to doubt as to whom he made allusion, I said:
"The Alcáide?"
"Ay, the Alcáide."
Whereon I told him of all that had happened since my arrival with the
mute, and of his immediate departure further on into Portugal.
"You should have slain him," he said, "the instant you had disarmed
him. You loved Juana and she you--she told me so when she divulged his
scheme to me in the prison--you should never have let him go free with
life."
"I _had_ disarmed him. I could not slay a weaponless, defenceless
man."
"One slays a snake--awake or sleeping. He merited death."
"Yet to him, in a manner, we all owe our lives. Juana--I--you."
"Owe our lives! Owe our lives to him! To one who trafficked with my
girl's honour as against her father's freedom; a man who betrayed his
trust to his own country as a means whereby to gratify his own evil
desires! And for you--for me--what do we owe him? The chance of my
escape came from another's hand than his."
"From another's! You could have escaped even without that vile compact
made between--God help us--Juana and him?"
"Ay--listen. You stood by my side in the court when they tried us; you
heard a voice in that court; saw the man who called out in loud tones
to the man, Morales. You saw him, observed, maybe, that he bore about
him the signs of a sailor."
As he spoke there came to me a recollection of something more than
this--a recollection of where I had seen that man again, of how it was
he who crouched behind the fallen masses of blasted rock in the
passage beneath the bed of the river through which I had passed to
freedom; also, I remembered the great gold rings in his ears, and the
glistening of one upon the guarding of his cloak as he shrank back
into the darkness.
"I remember him," I said, "very well--also, I saw him again, on the
night that mute led me forth, helped me to escape."
"'Tis so. That man saved me, was bent on saving me from the moment he
saw my face in the court. He is a Biscayan--yet we had met in other
lands; once I had saved his life--from Eaton. He--that doubly damned
traitor--that monster of sin--had taken him prisoner in a pink he
owned, yet had not captured her without a hard fight, in which this
man, Nuñez Picado, nearly slew him. Then, this was Eaton's revenge: He
bound him and set him afloat in a dismantled ketch he had by him, that
to which Picado was bound being a barrel of gunpowder. And in that
barrel was one end of a slow match, the other end alight and trailing
the length of the ketch's deck."
"My God!"
"So slow a match that it would take hours ere it reached the powder,
hours in which the doomed wretch would suffer ten thousand-fold the
tortures of the damned. Yet one thing Eaton forgot--forgot that those
hours of long drawn-out horror to his victim were also hours in which
succour might come. And it was so. I passed that craft drifting slowly
to and fro off Porto Rico. In the blaze of the noontide I saw a
brighter, redder light than the sparkle of sun on counter and
brass--when I stepped on board the ketch there was not a foot of the
slow-match left--not an hour longer of life left to the man. Only, the
bitterness of death was over for him then--he was a raving maniac, and
so remained for months."
"He has at last repaid you in full."
"Ay! In full. He knew the secret way into the ramparts; all was
concocted, all arranged for our escapes."
"For yours and hers?"
"For hers and mine. Had it not been that you had to be saved
also--that the freedom which Juana had obtained from Morales for me
must be transferred to you, since I needed it not, she would never
have been allowed to go forth with him. I or Picado would have slain
him in the prison and escaped with her."
"I begin to understand."
"'Twas best, however, to let her go forth unknowing--at least it
removed him away from what had to be done--made it certain that he
could not impede your escape. The rest was easy. I persuaded the mute
that 'twas you, not I, whom it was intended to save, that 'twas for
you her letter was meant, that it was I who was doomed."
"And Eaton? Eaton?" I asked.
"Eaton has paid the forfeit of his treachery," he said. "It has
rebounded on his own head. The _braséro_ thirsted for its victim--the
populace for its holiday. They have had it. Trust Nuñez Picado for
that."
He said no more, neither then nor later, and never yet have I learnt
how that vilest of men was the substitute for those whom he had hoped
and endeavoured to send to the flames. Yet, also, never have I doubted
that it was done, since certain it is that from that time he has never
again crossed my path.
"The storm increases," Gramont said, as he strode to the window and
peered out into the darksome night. "Yet--yet--I must go on at
daybreak. I--I have that which needs take me on."
"Stay here with us," I cried, "stay here. Juana will be my wife at the
first moment chance offers. Stay."
"Nay," he said. "Nay. She and I must never meet again. That is the
expiation of my life which I have set myself--I will go through with
it. In that last kiss above, I took my farewell of her forever in this
world."
"What will you do?" I asked through my now fast-falling tears, tears
that none needed to be ashamed of; tears that none, listening to his
heart-broken words as they dropped slowly from his lips, could have
forborne to shed. "What is your life to be?"
"God only knows," he replied; "yet one of penitence, of prayers for
forgiveness so long as that life lasts. Thereby--thereby--I shall be
fitter for the end. I am almost old now; it may not be far off."
Silence came upon us after that--a silence broken only by the howl of
the wind outside the lonely house, by the thud of snow falling now and
again from the roof and eaves--blown off by the fury of the tempest.
But broken by scarcely aught else, unless 'twas a sigh that
occasionally, and all unwittingly, as I thought, escaped from that
poor sinner's overcharged breast. Yet, for the rest, nothing; no sound
from that room above, where Juana lay sleeping; nothing but sometimes
the expiring logs falling together with a gentle clash in the grate.
Then suddenly, as I almost dozed on one side of those logs, he being
on the other, I heard him speaking to me, his voice deep, sonorous and
low--perhaps he feared it might reach her above!--yet clear and
distinct.
"Evil," he said, "as my existence has been, misjudge me not. None
started on life's path meaning better than I. God help me! none
drifted into worse extremes. Will you hear my story--such as 'tis meet
you should know--you who love my child?"
I bowed my head; I whispered, "Yes." Once, because I pitied him, I
gently touched his hand with mine.
"I was a sailor," he went on, his dark eyes gleaming tenderly at that
small offering of my sympathy, "bred up to the sea, the only child of
a poor Protestant woman. Later--when Louis the king first fell under
the thrall of the wanton, De Maintenon, my mother died of starvation,
ruined by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, ruined ere that
revocation by the shadow it cast before it on all of our faith. Think
you that what was doing in the Indies by the Spaniards made me love
the followers of the Romish church more?"
He paused a moment--again he went on:
"In the Indies to which I had wandered, I met with men who had sworn
to extirpate, if might be, every Spaniard, every one of those who in
their time swore that there was to be no peace beyond the line. That
was their oath--we helped them to keep it, made it our watchword, too.
All of us, Morgan, Pointis, Avery, Lolonois, your other countryman,
Stede Bonnet, a hundred others, all of different lands, yet all of one
complexion--hatred against Spain. And there was no peace beyond the
line. You are a soldier, may be one for years, yet you will never know
blood run as blood ran then. You may rack cities, even Louis' own
capital, you will never know what sharing booty means as we knew it.
Ere I was thirty I possessed a hundred thousand gold pistoles, ere
another year had passed I owned nothing but the sword by my side, the
deck I trod."
"Yet," I said, "when you were lost--disappeared--you left your child a
fortune--which Eaton stole."
"I did more," he answered. "I left her that--but--I left her another
which Eaton could not steal. She has it now; it is, it must be safe.
Do you know your wife brings you a great dowry?"
I started--I had never thought of this!--yet, ere I could say aught,
he went on again.
"I pass over much. I come to twenty years ago. Eaton was my
lieutenant; we were about to besiege Maracaibo, a gallant company
three hundred strong. Well, let me hurry--see, the daylight is coming.
I must away--Maracaibo fell, our plunder was great. Also, we had many
prisoners. Amongst them one, a girl, young and beautiful; God! she was
an angel!"
"Juana's mother that was to be," I whispered, feeling sure.
"Hear me. She was my prize--there were others, but I heeded them not,
had eyes only for her. Her ransom was fixed at five thousand pistoles,
because she was the niece of the wealthiest man of all, to be paid ere
we sailed three days later. And I prayed that they might never be
forthcoming, that I might bear her away with me, teach her to love me
as I loved her."
"And they were not paid?" I asked breathlessly.
"We did not sail in three days' time; the money of the place had been
sent away inland on our approach; also one-half our body were all mad
with drink ashore. 'Twas more nigh three weeks ere we were ready to
depart."
"And the lady?"
"Her uncle had died meanwhile of a fever--yet--yet--the ransom was
forthcoming. She was affianced to a planter; he came on board my ship,
and with him he brought the gold."
"Ah!"
"My oath bound me to take it--had I refused, my brethren had the
right--since we had laws regulating all things amongst us--to remove
me from my command. I had to see him count the gold out on the cabin
table, to tell her she was free to go."
"And she went?" I asked again, almost breathless.