We were four in the _patio_. And the _patio_ was magnificent, with a
terrace of marble running round its four sides, and in the middle a
fountain splashing in a marble basin. I will not swear to the marble;
for I was a boy of ten at the time, and that is a long while ago.
But I describe as I recollect. It was a magnificent _patio_, at all
events, and the house was a palace. And who the owner might be, Felipe
perhaps knew. But he was not one to tell, and the rest of us neither
knew nor cared.
The two women lay stretched on the terrace, with their heads close
together and resting against the house wall. And I sat beside them
gnawing a bone. The sun shone over the low eastern wall upon the
fountain and upon Felipe perched upon the rim of the basin, with his
lame leg stuck out straight and his mouth working as he fastened a
nail in the end of his beggar's crutch.
I cannot tell you the hour exactly, but it was early morning, and the
date the twenty-fourth of February, 1671. I learnt this later. We in
the _patio_ did not bother ourselves about the date, for the world had
come to an end, and we were the last four left in it. For three weeks
we had been playing hide-and-seek with the death that had caught and
swallowed everyone else; and for the moment it was quite enough for
the women to sleep, for me to gnaw my bone in the shade, and for
Felipe to fasten the loose nail in his crutch. Many windows opened on
the _patio_. Through the nearest, by turning my head a little, I could
see into a noble room lined with pictures and heaped with furniture
and torn hangings. All of it was ours, or might be, for the trouble of
stepping inside and taking possession. But the bone (I had killed a
dog for it) was a juicy one, and I felt no inclination to stir. There
was the risk, too, of infection--of the plague.
"Hullo!" cried Felipe, slipping on his shoe, with the heel of which he
had been hammering. "You awake?"
I put Felipe last of us in order, for he was an old fool. Yet I must
say that we owed our lives to him. Why he took so much trouble and
spent so much ingenuity in saving them is not to be guessed: for the
whole city of Panama comprehended no two lives more worthless than old
Doña Teresa's (as we called her) and mine: and as for the Carmelite,
Sister Marta, who had joined our adventures two days before, she, poor
soul, would have thanked him for putting a knife into her and ending
her shame.
But Felipe, though a fool, had a fine sense of irony. And so for
three weeks Doña Teresa and I--and for forty-eight hours Sister Marta
too--had been lurking and doubling, squatting in cellars crawling on
roofs, breaking cover at night to snatch our food, all under Felipe's
generalship. And he had carried us through. Perhaps he had a soft
corner in his heart for old Teresa. He and she were just of an age,
the two most careless-hearted outcasts in Panama; and knew each
other's peccadilloes to a hair. I went with Teresa. Heaven knows in
what gutter she had first picked me up, but for professional ends I
was her starving grandchild, and now reaped the advantages of that
dishonouring fiction.
"How can a gentleman sleep for your thrice-accursed hammering?" was my
answer to Felipe Fill-the-Bag.
"The city is very still this morning," he observed, sniffing the air,
which was laden still with the scent of burnt cedar-wood. "The English
dogs will have turned their backs on us for good. I heard their bugles
at daybreak; since then, nothing."
"These are fair quarters, for a change."
He grinned. "They seem to suit the lady, your grandmother. She has not
groaned for three hours. I infer that her illustrious sciatica is no
longer troubling her."
Our chatter awoke the Carmelite. She opened her eyes, unclasped her
hand, which had been locked round one of the old hag's, and sat up
blinking, with a smile which died away very pitiably.
"Good morning, Señorita," said I.
She bent over Teresa, but suddenly drew back with a little "Ah!" and
stared, holding her breath.
"What is the matter?"
She was on her knees, now; and putting out a hand, touched Teresa's
skinny neck with the tips of two fingers.
"What is the matter?" echoed Felipe, coming forward from the fountain.
"She is dead!" said I, dropping the hand which I had lifted.
"Jesu--" began the Carmelite, and stopped: and we stared at one
another, all three.
With her eyes wide and fastened on mine, Sister Marta felt for the
crucifix and rope of beads which usually hung from her waist. It was
gone: but her hands fumbled for quite a minute before the loss came
home to her brain. And then she removed her face from us and bent
her forehead to the pavement. She made no sound, but I saw her feet
writhing.
"Come, come," said Felipe, and found no more to say.
I can guess now a little of what was passing through her unhappy mind.
Women are women and understand one another. And Teresa, unclean and
abandoned old hulk though she was, had stood by this girl when she
came to us flying out of the wrack like a lost ship. "Dear, dear,
dear"--I remembered scraps of her talk--"the good Lord is debonair,
and knows all about these things. He isn't like a man, as you might
say": and again, "Why bless you, He's not going to condemn you for a
matter that I could explain in five minutes. 'If it comes to that,' I
should say--and I've often noticed that a real gentleman likes you all
the better for speaking up--'If it comes to that, Lord, why did
You put such bloody-minded pirates into the world?' Now to my
thinking"--and I remember her rolling a leaf of tobacco as she said
it--"it's a great improvement to the mind to have been through the
battle, whether you have won or lost; and that's why, when on earth,
He chose the likes of us for company."
This philosophy was not the sort to convince a religious girl: but I
believe it comforted her. Women are women, as I said; and when the
ship goes down a rotten plank is better than none. So the Carmelite
had dropped asleep last night with her hand locked round Teresa's: and
so it happened to Teresa this morning to be lamented, and sincerely
lamented, by one of the devout. It was almost an edifying end; and the
prospect of it, a few days ago, would have tickled her hugely.
"But what did she die of?" I asked Felipe, when we had in delicacy
withdrawn to the fountain, leaving the Carmelite alone with her grief.
He opened his mouth and pointed a finger at it.
"But only last evening I offered to share my bone with her: and she
told me to keep it for myself."
"Your Excellency does not reason so well as usual," said Felipe,
without a smile on his face. "The illustrious defunct had a great
affection for her grandchild, which caused her to overlook the
ambiguity of the relationship--and other things."
"But do you mean to say--"
"She was a personage of great force of character, and of some virtues
which escaped recognition, being unusual. I pray," said he, lifting
the rim of his rusty hat, "that her soul may find the last peace!
I had the honour to follow her career almost from the beginning. I
remember her even as a damsel of a very rare beauty: but even then as
I say, her virtues were unusual, and less easily detected than her
failings. I, for example, who supposed myself to know her thoroughly,
missed reckoning upon her courage, or I had spent last night in
seeking food. I am a fool and a pig."
"And consequently, while we slept--"
"Excuse me, I have not slept."
"You have been keeping watch?"
"Not for the buccaneers, my Lord. They left before daybreak. But the
dogs of the city are starving, even as we: and like us they have taken
to hunting in company. Now this is a handsome courtyard, but the gate
does not happen to be too secure."