MIDNIGHT AND DAWN
‘I have set my life upon a cast
And I will stand the hazard of the die.’
‘EXCELLENCY,’ reported a man who entered the room at this moment, ‘they
are bringing carts of fuel through the Calle de la Ciudad to set against
the door and burn it.’
‘To set against which door, my honest friend?’
‘The great door on the Plaza, Excellency; the other is an old door of
iron.’
‘And they cannot burn it or break it open?’
‘No, Excellency. And, besides, there are loopholes in the thickness of
the wall at the side.’
The General smiled on this man as being after his own heart.
‘One may not shoot to-night, my friend. I have already given the order.’
‘But one may prick them with the sword, Excellency?’ suggested the
trooper, with a sort of suppressed enthusiasm.
The General shrugged his shoulders, wisely tolerant.
‘Oh yes,’ he answered, ‘I suppose one may prick them with the sword.’
Conyngham, who had been standing half in and half out of the open window,
listening to this conversation, now came forward.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that I can clear the Plaza from time to time if you
give me twenty men. We can thus gain time.’
‘Street-fighting,’ answered the General gravely. ‘Do you know anything
of it? It is nasty work.’
‘I know something of it. One has to shout very loud. I studied it—at
Dublin University.’
‘To be sure—I forgot.’
Julia and Estella watched and listened. Their lot had been cast in the
paths of war, and since childhood they had remembered naught else. But
neither had yet been so near to the work, nor had they seen and heard men
talk and plan with a certain grim humour—a curt and deliberate scorn of
haste or excitement—as these men spoke and planned now. Conyngham and
Concepçion Vara were altered by these circumstances—there was a light in
their eyes which women rarely see, but the General was the same little
man of peace and of a high domestic virtue, who seemed embarrassed by a
sword which was obviously too big for him. Yet in all their voices there
rang alike a queer note of exultation. For man is a fighting animal, and
from St. Paul down to the humblest little five-foot-one recruit, would
find life a dull affair were there no strife in it.
‘Yes,’ said the General, after a moment’s reflection, ‘that is a good
idea, and will gain time. But let them first bring their fuel and set it
up. Every moment is a gain.’
At this instant some humorist in the crowd threw a stone in at the open
window. The old priest picked up the missile and examined it curiously.
‘It is fortunate,’ he said, ‘that the stones are fixed in Toledo. In
Xeres they are loose, and are always in the air. I wonder if I can hit a
citizen.’ And he threw the stone back.
‘Close the shutters,’ said the General. ‘Let us avoid arousing
ill-feeling.’
The priest drew the jalousies together, but did not quite shut them.
Vincente stood and looked out through the aperture at the moonlit square
and the dark shadows moving there.
‘I wish they would shout,’ he said. ‘It is unnatural. They are like
children. When there is noise there is little mischief.’
Then he remained silent for some minutes, watching intently. All in the
room noted his every movement. At length he turned on his heel.
‘Go, my friend,’ he said to Conyngham. ‘Form your men in the Calle de la
Ciudad, and charge round in line. Do not place yourself too much in
advance of your men, or you will be killed, and remember—the point!
Resist the temptation to cut—the point is best.’
He patted Conyngham on the arm affectionately, as if he were sending him
to bed with a good wish, and accompanied him to the door.
‘I knew,’ he said, returning to the window and rubbing his hands
together, ‘that that was a good man the first moment I saw him.’
He glanced at Estella, and then, turning, opened another window, setting
the shutters ajar so as to make a second point of observation.
‘My poor child,’ he whispered, as she went to the window and looked out,
‘it is an ill-fortune to have to do with men whose trade this is.’
Estella smiled—a little whitely—and said nothing. The moon was now
shining from an almost cloudless sky. The few fleecy remains of the
storm sailing towards the east only added brightness to the night. It
was almost possible to see the faces of the men moving in the square
below, and to read their expressions. The majority stood in a group in
the centre of the Plaza, while a daring few, reckoning on the Spanish
aversion to firearms, ran forward from time to time and set a bundle of
wood or straw against the door beneath the balcony.
Some, who appeared to be the leaders, looked up constantly and curiously
at the windows, wondering if any resistance would be made. Had they
known that General Vincente was in that silent house they would probably
have gone home to bed, and the crowd would have dispersed like smoke.
Suddenly there arose a roar to the right hand of the square where the
Calle de la Ciudad was situated, and Conyngham appeared for a moment
alone, running towards the group, with the moonlight flashing on his
sword. At his heels an instant later a single line of men swung round
the corner and charged across the square.
‘Dear, dear,’ muttered the General; ‘too quick, my friend, too quick!’
For Conyngham was already among the crowd, which broke and surged back
towards the Cathedral. He paused for a moment to draw his sword out of a
dark form that lay upon the ground, as a cricketer draws a stump. He
had, at all events, remembered the point. The troopers swept across the
square like a broom, sending the people as dust before them, and leaving
the clean, moonlit square behind. They also left behind one or two
shadows, lying stark upon the around. One of these got upon its knees
and crawled painfully away, all one-sided, like a beetle that has been
trodden underfoot. Those watching from the windows saw with a gasp of
horror that part of him—part of an arm—had been left behind, and a sigh
of relief went up when he stopped crawling and lay quite still.
The troopers were now retreating slowly towards the Calle de la Ciudad.
‘Be careful, Conyngham,’ shouted the General from the balcony. ‘They
will return.’
And as he spoke a rattling fire was opened upon them from the far corner
of the square, where the crowd had taken refuge in the opening of the
Calle del Arco. Immediately, the people, having noted that the troopers
were few in number, charged down upon them. The men fought in line,
retreating step by step, their swords gleaming in the moonlight.
Estella, hearing footsteps in the room behind her, turned in time to see
her father disappearing through the doorway. Concepçion Vara, coatless,
as he loved to work, his white shirtsleeves fluttering as his arm swung,
had now joined the troopers, and was fighting by Conyngham’s side.
Estella and Julia were out on the balcony now, leaning over and
forgetting all but the breathless interest of battle. Concha stood
beside them, muttering and cursing like any soldier.
They saw Vincente appear at the corner of the Calle de la Ciudad and
throw away his scabbard as he ran.
‘Now, my children!’ he cried in a voice that Estella had never heard
before, which rang out across the square, and was answered by a yell that
was nothing but a cry of sheer delight. The crowd swayed back as if
before a gust of wind, and the General, following it, seemed to clear a
space for himself as a reaper clears away the standing corn before him.
It was, however, only for a moment. The crowd surged back, those in
front against their will, and on to the glittering steel—those behind
shouting encouragement.
‘Name of God!’ shouted Concha, and was gone. They saw him a minute later
appear in the square, having thrown aside his cassock. He made a strange
lean figure of a man with his knee-breeches and dingy purple stockings,
his grey flannel shirt, and the moonlight shining on his tonsured head.
He fought without skill, and heedless of danger, swinging a great sword
that he had picked up from the hand of a fallen trooper, and each blow
that he got home killed its victim. The metal of the man had suddenly
shown itself after years of suppression. This, as Vincente had
laughingly said, was no priest, but a soldier. Concepçion, in the thick
of it, using the knife now with a deadly skill, looked over his shoulder
and laughed.
Suddenly the crowd swayed. The faint sound of a distant bugle came to
the ears of all.
‘It is nothing,’ shouted Concha, in English. ‘It is nothing. It is I
who sent the bugler round.’
And his great sword whistled into a man’s brain. In another moment the
square was empty, for the politicians who came to murder a woman had had
enough steel. The sound of the bugle, intimating, as they supposed, the
arrival of troops, completed the work of demoralisation which the
recognition of General Vincente had begun.
The little party—the few defenders of the Casa del Ayuntamiento—were left
in some confusion in the Plaza, and Estella saw with a sudden cold fear
that Conyngham and Concha were on their knees in the midst of a little
group of hesitating men. It was Concha who rose first and held up his
hand to the watchers on the balcony, bidding them stay where they were.
Then Conyngham rose to his feet slowly, as one bearing a burden. Estella
looked down in a sort of dream, and saw her lover carrying her father
towards the house, her mind only half comprehending, in that
semi-dreamlike reception of sudden calamity which is one of Heaven’s
deepest mercies.
It was Concepçion who came into the room first, his white shirt dyed with
blood in great patches like the colour on a piebald horse. A cut in his
cheek was slowly dripping. He went straight to a sofa covered in
gorgeous yellow satin, and set the cushions in order.
‘Señorita,’ he said, and spread out his hands. The tears were in his
eyes, ‘Half of Spain,’ he added, ‘would rather that it had been the
Queen—and the world is poorer.’
A moment later Concha came into the room dragging on his cassock.
‘My child, we are in God’s hand,’ he said, with a break in his gruff
voice.
And then came the heavy step of one carrying sorrow.
Conyngham laid his burden on the sofa. General Vincente was holding his
handkerchief to his side, and his eyes, which had a thoughtful look, saw
only Estella’s face.
‘I have sent for a doctor,’ said Conyngham. ‘Your father is wounded.’
‘Yes,’ said Vincente immediately; ‘but I am in no pain, my dear child.
There is no reason, surely, for us to distress ourselves.’
He looked round and smiled.
‘And this good Conyngham,’ he added, ‘carried me like a child.’
Julia was on her knees at the foot of the sofa, her face hidden in her
hands.
‘My dear Julia,’ he said, ‘why this distress?’
‘Because all of this is my doing,’ she answered, lifting her drawn and
terror-stricken face.
‘No, no!’ said Vincente, with a characteristic pleasantry. ‘You take too
much upon yourself. All these things are written down for us beforehand.
We only add the punctuation—delaying a little or hurrying a little.’
They looked at him silently, and assuredly none could mistake the shadows
that were gathering on his face. Estella, who was holding his hand,
knelt on the floor by his side, quiet and strong, offering silently that
sympathy which is woman’s greatest gift.
Concepçion, who perhaps knew more of this matter than any present, looked
at Concha and shook his head. The priest was buttoning his cassock, and
began to seek something in his pocket.
‘Your breviary?’ whispered Concepçion; ‘I saw it lying out there—among
the dead.’
‘It is a comfort to have one’s duty clearly defined,’ said the General
suddenly, in a clear voice. He was evidently addressing Conyngham. ‘One
of the advantages of a military life. We have done our best, and this
time we have succeeded. But—it is only deferred. It will come at
length, and Spain will be a republic. It is a failing cause—because, at
the head of it, is a bad woman.’
Conyngham nodded, but no one spoke. No one seemed capable of following
his thoughts. Already he seemed to look at them as from a distance, as
if he had started on a journey and was looking back. During this silence
there came a great clatter in the streets, and a sharp voice cried
‘Halt!’ The General turned his eyes towards the window.
‘The cavalry,’ said Conyngham, ‘from Madrid.’
‘I did not expect—them,’ said Vincente slowly, ‘before the dawn.’
The sound of the horses’ feet and the clatter of arms died away as the
troop passed on towards the Calle de la Ciudad, and the quiet of night
was again unbroken.
Then Concha, getting down on to his knees, began reciting from memory the
office—which, alas! he knew too well.
When it was finished, and the gruff voice died away, Vincente opened his
eyes.
‘Every man to his trade,’ he said, with a little laugh.
Then suddenly he made a grimace.
‘A twinge of pain,’ he said deprecatingly, as if apologising for giving
them the sorrow of seeing it. ‘It will pass—before the dawn.’
Presently he opened his eyes again and smiled at Estella, before he moved
with a tired sigh and turned his face towards that Dawn which knows no
eventide.