“remember that I will pay for both as long as I’m alive.”
Mr. Waycock considered him with just the flicker of a smile.
“Very good, then, Mr. Waycock,” Sard added, “I’ll come in the morning at
nine.” He went out into the street. “Captain Cary dead,” he muttered,
“the _Pathfinder_ gone and Miss Kingsborough found. Well, that ends
that.”
He found himself at the bronze of the Bajel Verde on the beach. He
gripped it with his hand, suddenly overwhelmed with grief. His captain,
the old extra-master:
“John Craig Cary, of the ship _Petrella_,
Thunder-ship and stand-front-under fella,”
was now a new hand, at sea in death, with perhaps no one to teach him
the ropes. The _Pathfinder_, who had found so many paths, where no paths
showed, would now find no more. She would be jammed on the reef in the
glare, while the rollers would surge over her, climbing her stern,
rising, rising, rising, then thundering down, blue, then green, then
blinding, all day long, all night long, till she broke.
“I’ve had enough of the sea,” he said. “It takes a man like Cary to
master the sea. Then the day after he goes, the sea smashes all that
ever he made, as though it had never been.”
Everything there reminded him of Captain Cary. The bronze on which his
hand lay marked the very place where the Heroic Six had made their stand
at the Green Boat. He had seen them there. He had been with Captain Cary
in the cross-trees of the _Venturer_, watching the Heroic Six hiding,
creeping out and firing until their cartridges were all gone. He
remembered Captain Cary stamping and cursing when the boat patrols put
out.
“There, boy,” he had said, “now they will be destroyed. Their retreat’s
cut off. But fly down on deck, boy, and pitch the coils of the buntlines
over the sides, so that, if any of them does reach the ship, he’ll be
able to get on board.”
He had done this and in the dusk of that bloody day one of those
buntline ends had caught a strange fish, Don Manuel himself, now the
Dictator.
“Yes,” Sard thought, “it was Captain Cary who saved Don Manuel and by
doing that he made this port the Athens of the West.”
Two hundred yards further along the new front towards the city was a
strong shelter made of white Otorin marble. Something was displayed
within it upon a bronze pedestal. Sard went in to see what it was,
because it seemed to be a ship. It proved to be a big model barque
flying the house flag of Wrattson & Willis: Sard recognised her
instantly as the _Venturer_. On each side of the supporting bronze was a
medallion portrait of Captain Cary, with an inscription in Spanish,
which Sard translated thus:
“In eternal gratitude
To Captain John Craig Cary
And the officers and company
of the English Barque Venturer,
For their nobleness to the ruined in the Noche Triste.”
Under the inscription was a list of the _Venturer’s_ company, divided
into watches, just as it had been in that long ago time. The list ended
with the boys of his own watch: “Adam Bolter, Charles Crayford, Edward
Grant, Chisholm Harker.” Under his own name were two lines of verse:
“They gave their safety, shelter, friendship, bread,
To me who had a price upon my head.”
Sard was overwhelmed. “So,” he thought, “here is Captain Cary’s
monument. I wonder if he knew of it; he never mentioned it. I hope that
he knew of it. He must have known of it.”
The model had been made in England by skilled craftsmen working under
someone who had known the _Venturer_ intimately. Little special matters,
such as the make of the truss of the fore-yard, the lead of the braces,
the design stencilled on the deckhouse, the use of brass pins in the
poop fiferails, all showed that one of the old _Venturers_ had been
engaged in the work. “Flackwell, the bo’sun, helped in this,” he
thought, “there is Flackwell’s gadget of the broom-rack in the bo’sun’s
locker.”
By this time the sun was behind the Sierra; the ships were dim against
the bay and men were hoisting the riding lights. Sard could hear the
blocks creak as they swayed them up. He went along the water-front to
the end, and then climbed the great white marble staircase, between the
lines of orange trees, to the Plaza of the Martyrdoms. He had never
ceased to be amazed and exalted by the beauty of the new work. That
stair, ten years before, had been palm-stems pinned into the earth like
the rungs of a ladder. Now it was all Otorin stone, white and exquisite,
with marvellous busts of the martyrs at intervals along the balustrades:
Carlotta, Jane Jennings, Pascual Mestas, Celedonio Vigil, Agapito
Chavez, Luciano Sisneros, Inocencio Chacon; then Carlotta and Jane
Jennings again, with those five of the Heroic Six who had been killed in
the bay. The faces leaned from among the dark green of the orange trees.
In the groves behind them there were fountains.
He reached the Plaza at the top of the stairs. There at least the Houses
of the Last Sighs were as they had been. They looked dingy and evil in
that place of brightness: they looked as if they would not have any life
of their own until all the lights were turned out. They were inhabited
still, for a little smoke came from one of the chimneys. Sard wondered
that anybody should live still in them; but he had heard that they were
let at cheap rates, being supposed to be haunted, and that they were to
stand thus, unpainted, till the last of the Don Lopez faction, Don José
and one Rafael, had been shot there like their victims.
There were three houses together, a big one in the centre, flanked on
each side by a smaller. On the wall of each of the smaller houses, at
breast-height, were the chippings of bullets, under the legend, painted
in white,
Hic ceciderunt.
He did not need to be told that, for he had seen the prisoners dragged
thither to be shot after Don Manuel’s defeat. He had seen two or three
hundred men shot there by the Lopez faction. He had watched it all from
the _Venturer’s_ cross-trees: batch after batch, volley after volley:
not men only, but many women, and some children. He had seen the
accursed Reds drag their victims out of houses. It had not been the
suppression of a rising, but a massacre of all whose virtue shamed them.
Hic ceciderunt.
He could not see the words without a prayer, that those who had fallen
there had found peace, and that those who had killed them there might
find justice.
There was another white temple-like structure in the Plaza, a round roof
upon columns of marble, which sheltered musicians. In a European city it
would have been a “kiosk” or a “bandstand”; here it was a lovely work of
art, which took away the breath by its grace and fitness. Some musicians
were moving away from the shelter, having finished their playing: the
crowd which had been loitering or lounging about the music was now
breaking up. Most of it was setting towards a theatre which stood under
bright lights on the southern side of the Plaza. Sard went with the
crowd, with a feeling which he had never known before, that to be with
many people, in bright light, is a satisfaction, an excitement, a
consolation.
Outside the theatre doors were the bills of the play, which gave yet
another shock to Sard.
“Theatre Jane Jennings.
Numancia,
by Cervantes.
Tafoya. Archuleta. Vizcarra.”
Theatre of Jane Jennings, playing a poetical tragedy by Cervantes. Why,
when he had come there in the _Venturer_ Jane Jennings was alive there,
a byword, a most notorious bawd, the talk of all the fo’c’sles in port,
infamous herself and the cause of infamy in others. Adam Bolter had been
to her house and had talked and drunk with her. “A big, fat,
black-haired woman, with a hooky nose: she was always either swearing or
singing lullabies.” Now for her heroic defiance a simple people had made
her a heroine, a national heroine. All that was evil in her had dropped
from her, like rags or lice, leaving only something noble. He felt the
nobleness. She had had her throat cut there in front of those dingy
houses rather than do a dirty thing. Now her memory was kept alive in
that place, as one whose fineness alone counted; the rest was rightly
forgotten. She had come from Bermondsey and had been a bawd; now there
were marble busts of her and a theatre named after her in a capital
city.
He paid tribute to her memory by entering her theatre. He heard Tafoya,
Archuleta, Vizcarra and their companions speak the verse of that great
soldier-of-fortune. But he could not heed the tragedy.
His mind was full of what he had heard in Mr. Waycock’s office.
“What does it all amount to?” he kept asking himself. “I met a girl,
many years ago, who altered my life for me: all my time has been a dream
of her. Then in my dream, hearing those men at the fight, I went to warn
some strangers; for they were strangers, name and nation different from
hers. I warned them. I might just as well have held my tongue and gone
on board; they did not profit by my warning. Now the girl who did not
take my warning is safe and sound with her friends, while my friend is
dead, my ship is on the Snappers a total loss, and I myself am alive
only by miracle.
“What does it all mean? Some power, with foreknowledge and other
knowledge, wanted me out of the _Pathfinder_ and got me and kept me out
of her by the only means which could have done it. With me away, the
Captain dies and the ship is lost; then I am allowed to rejoin the
ship’s company. Why should I have been wanted away, save for evil, since
nothing but evil came of my going? The _Pathfinder_ was doomed, so the
man who could have saved her was taken out of her. That ass Pompey and
the foodger Dorney were left to play hell with her and well they seem to
have played it.
“I was lured out of the ship by the appeal to the softest thing in me.
By stooping to the lure, I have made a pretty mess of things: the ship
lost . . .
“It all comes from my love for that girl. Even if it be madness, or
folly, or delusion, all that love has been very real, it is my intensest
thing: and the intense things cannot lie: they are the only true things.
Jane Jennings’ intense defiance was the true woman speaking: all the
rest was only mistake.”
The tragedy came to an end with the blowing of a trumpet for the great
who had died. Sard moved out with the company into the Plaza, which was
now lively with the city’s amusement. He went to a little table in front
of a café, and dined there, listening to selections from Gluck’s
“Iphigenia.” He faced the music; the Houses of the Last Sighs lay to his
left.
When he sat down at his table, before the waiter took his order, a man
in uniform appeared with a pencil and a printed form. Sard’s name,
nationality, ship, duty, station, lodging and other particulars were
asked and noted. “Such is the law,” the man said. “In every eating-house
and hotel in Santa Barbara. It prevents unpleasantness.”
Sitting there in the light, among the crowd, listening to the music, was
a pure pleasure to one who so few days before had been starving in the
Sierra. Sard could not feel that “unpleasantness” was near that happy
place: all seemed so happy. Long after his dinner was at an end he sat
there sipping coffee. His waiter, a big brawny Spaniard with a
good-humoured cynical face, pointed out the Houses of the Last Sighs.
“It was there, Señor, that they shot the martyrs on the Day of the
Troubles. See, Señor, the bullet-marks. Never will those houses be
cleaned, or painted, or rebuilt, till the vengeance has been paid; thus
has our Dictator vowed. When the debt is paid, they shall go; until then
. . . thus.”
Sard knew more about the martyrdoms than the waiter, but in politeness
he edged his chair aside, so that he could see the houses. The two outer
houses were closed, with dark green jalousied shutters over every
window. The central house, the largest of the three, had no shutters,
but the windows were blinded and blank. The big windows of the ground
floor were also shaded by the green, iron turtle-back of a verandah.
“The houses are dead,” he said.
“No, Señor,” the waiter said, “they are inhabited. A poor sort of people
live in them. See, there, a padre enters.”
The houses were about forty yards away, under brilliant electric light.
Sard saw a big, muscular priest walk with the air of a king up the steps
of the central house. He turned at the door to survey the Plaza below
him. Even at that distance his attitude and gesture gave the idea of
domination. He seemed to dilate there. He looked like a lion conscious
of supremacy. His pose seemed to say, “You canaille exist and die and
rot, but I am above these things.”
There was something familiar in the man’s presence, strange as it was.
That pride and power of bearing seemed familiar to Sard: he felt that he
had seen it before. As the priest entered the house, Sard thought that
he reminded him of Father Garsinton, who had begged a passage in the
_Pathfinder_.
“He was like that Father Garsinton,” he thought. “And it is
strange. . . . Sailors would say that it was the sky-pilot who brought
her on the Snappers. I did not hear about Garsinton at the office.
Waycock never mentioned him, though of course he would not concern
Waycock in any way.”
“Tiene,” he said to the waiter, “that priest who entered, do you know
his name?”
“No, Señor; nor himself. A poor sort of people live in those houses.
Without the priest they would be poor indeed. ‘They have but birth and
death,’ as we say; with a priest, these will suffice a man.”
“Do you know of any people called Garsinton in that house?”
“I know no one there, Señor.”
“After all,” Sard thought to himself, “it can hardly be Garsinton. He
will be coming here in the _Recalde_ with the rest on a Consul’s order.
He can hardly be here yet. Even if it were Garsinton, his story of the
wreck would probably be worthless. I suppose Pompey or Dorney will lose
his ticket over this wreck, but the fault will be with myself and my
dreams.”
He ordered more coffee. He talked to the waiter about events in Santa
Barbara. The man said, as Waycock had said, that there was a little
rum-smuggling from the western coast, in that immensely remote part
known as “beyond Caliente.” He said that “things” were settled now in
Santa Barbara. “Revolution, Señor,” he said, “what is it? A grand name
for bad manners. What overcomes all revolution? Art. And art Don Manuel
brings here. Regard the cathedral . . . the western front not faultless,
but what spirit . . . . Then, too, the opera. I, a poor man, have my
fill of opera, I sing in opera . . . in certain choruses. . . . All this
Don Manuel makes possible. Great things are shared by all here; this
gives security.”
Sard presently rose, thinking that he would take a turn about the Plaza
and then to bed. It seemed to him that to work in a city like that,
where great things were shared by all, would be happier than working
against the sea, which shares nothing, permits little and surely takes
all in the end. “I must make a new start somewhere,” he said, “on a new
foundation since the old has come to grief. Since the old ends here, the
new had better begin here.”
Though it was easy to say that the old had ended, his mind was full of
Juanita de la Torre, as he crossed the Plaza to the jut of land called
Cachopos. On this jut, completely covering it, was the nunnery of Santa
Alba, whose votaries kept the Cachopos Lighthouse. Sard had heard of
these nuns. He walked to the end of the Plaza to see where they lived.
He could see little more than the body of their church, the walls of the
conventual buildings and the pharos with its slowly revolving beam of
light. Twice in each minute, the beam as it came round fell for five
seconds upon the unfinished spire, tower and pinnacles of the cathedral,
making them glow as though they were living creatures.
Sard watched its coming and going for some minutes. He had grateful
thoughts of the women who kept that light. He turned slowly back into
the Plaza, feeling utterly alone. He found that the café where he had
dined was closed. The tables and chairs had been stacked away together
at the edge of the pavement; his waiter had gone. Sard took a seat at
another café nearer to the Houses of the Last Sighs; he ordered coffee
and sat there watching the people. All were going home now, for the
amusements were done: it was almost midnight. Among the last to pass
across the Plaza near Sard was a little old figure of a woman, who
carried a mandoline case and music. Something about her seemed familiar
to Sard. Her name and state came back to him in a flash: he rose and
bowed, saying:
“Señorita Suarez.”
She came nearer to him, looked at him hard, but could not recognise him.
She was sixty-five. She wore black and yellow lace upon her head; her
face was yellow as gold, wrinkled as shrunk cloth; her hair was iron
grey, done in ringlets, her nose was like a hawk’s beak and her eyes
like coals.
“Señorita Suarez,” Sard went on, “I was in the _Venturer_, years ago, in
the Days of the Troubles. You were on board for some days, with other
ladies of The Blancos.”
“Ah, yes,” she said, “sad, sad days in the _Venturer_. You have seen
that we remember?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“And you remember me? I cannot remember you.”
“How should you?” Sard said. “I was but a boy then, and, unlike you, did
not make lovely music.”
“Ah, yes,” she said, smiling, “always I make music.”
“Señorita,” he said, “for the sake of old times, will you let me offer
you refreshment?”
“That, no,” she said: then, in English, “No thanky.”
The talk did not seem successful, so Sard said:
“We were lucky in the _Venturer_. We saved Don Manuel for a great
future.” The old woman drew back as though he had insulted her or
wounded her to the quick.
“For a great future?” she said, swelling like a cat about to spring.
“For a great future? I trust, yes, for a very great future; for an
execution so great that all this city, this bay, the mountains and the
islands of the sea shall be black with people come to watch it. Let him
live, Lord, to taste the greatness of that future, the Lord-with-us, the
padre Pipi. You, sailor, dog of the tides, who caused us the
contamination of his presence, and cursed this city with his life, speak
not to Jenny Suarez of dons and futures, he, the accursed, the accursed,
whose footsteps press blood out of the stones.” She spat towards Sard in
the vehemence of her hate (she did not do it well) and went shaking,
muttering and clicking past him, and so away down the great marble
stairs.
“I suppose she was a Red,” Sard thought, “become a Red since Don Manuel
became Dictator. I thought that perhaps Waycock lied about the
Dictator’s popularity.”
When the waiter brought him his coffee, he asked whether Don Manuel were
much loved.
“Very much, Señor.”
“Since when, and why have they named him padre Pipi?”
The waiter looked round in alarm.
“This Plaza is Blanco, Señor,” he said.
“What of it?”
“Perhaps, Señor, you know little of affairs here. Let me then warn you,
as a native, never to make use of that name. It is a Red name, Red as
the grid of hell, where I yet shall see those Red accursed roasting. We
of the Whites call him the Grande. And truly he is Grande. He is the
Lion of the Faith, Grandissimo. Yet even that name, in certain parts,
among certain people, it is not prudent to speak aloud.”
“It is very true,” Sard answered. “Truly a man digs his grave with his
teeth, but assuredly he cuts his throat with his tongue.”
“Assuredly.”
“Viva Don Manuel,” Sard said, “to the great race the great ruler.”
“Amen, indeed, Señor.”
“When will you close?” Sard asked.
“At one in the morning, Señor; lo, now the day passes.”
One of the bells of Santa Barbara very sweetly chimed for the hour.
Instantly, from all over the city, other bells began either to strike or
to chime till the air was trembling with sweetness of sound which melted
into the midnight and made it deeper. Some of the ships in the bay made
eight bells: a clock in the House of the Dying Sighs struck: it was
midnight. Now while the deepness of a tenor bell was toning, there came,
from Cachopos, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, the exquisite song of
the nuns of Santa Alba at their midnight office. Sard was spellbound.
All the night had ceased to be of men and folly: it had become suddenly
a thing of stars and flowers and of the joy of the soul in her God.
The coming of the midnight seemed to be a signal that the life of the
town should stop. It seemed to bring everybody home, so that in a few
minutes the Plaza was almost empty and so quiet that one could tell the
passing feet: the small, belated woman hurrying: the guardians in
couples slowly patrolling, pausing to try if doors were locked.
Then, from one of the streets leading to the Plaza from the northward,
there came the singing of drunkards. Sard hoped at first, from the noise
that was made, that the drunkards were foreigners; but they were two
English reefers, both sillily drunk, followed by a third, who, being
sober and much younger than the others, was trying to pilot the
drunkards down to the landing-stage. They were trying to sing some
fragment of grand opera which they had heard that night: they made a
bestial row, “between the bull and the cat.”
Sard eyed them to see who and what they were: the two drunkards were
from a small barque in the bay: the sober boy, to his amazement, was
Huskisson, a first-voyager from the _Pathfinder_. Huskisson, a
_Pathfinder_, running the midnight with these two night-owls, within an
hour or two of landing, and not ten days from Captain Cary’s death. Sard
stiffened and waited.
The drunkards bowed low to Sard, laughed, lurched across to the door of
the centre house of the Last Sighs, and banged upon it with their fists.
They shouted a song as they banged.
“Beautiful Rosey-posey,
Ever I think of thee,
I love sweet Rosey-posey
And sweet Rosey-posey loves me.”
One of them called to the waiter to bring them some vinos; the other, a
short, squat, sub-nosed lad, whose name was Crockums, did not like the
waiter.
_Crockums_: You darned mañana Dago, fetch the vinos, intende, or I’ll
smash your papish chops. You want to forget, you ain’t in no Vatican,
now, nor yet in any rancheria. Come on, Paggy, and pitch this feller
over the bubb-banisters.
_Paggy_: No; he’s not a genelum; never fight with a feller’s not a
genelum; never fight with a genelum’s not (singing) “A captain in the
how-d’ye-do brigade. How de do? How de do? I’m a captain in the
how-d’ye-do brigade.”
Here Huskisson, who had not yet recognised Sard, but was terrified of
arrest for disorder, interrupted:
“Look here, you fellows, don’t make this row; we’ll have the civil
guards on us in a minute.”
_Crockums_: Make this row?
_Paggy_: Who’s making any row?
_Crockums_: We’re not making any row, you young pup; go and lap milk in
a tea-joint.
_Paggy_: He talks like my female aunt.
_Crockums_: I’ve torn a man’s trousers off for less; dammy, the sea’s
that refined nowadays it’s chronic.
Here the waiter appeared with the three little tin cups of Santa Barbara
claret.
_Crockums_: He shan’t have any vinos now, because he told us not to make
this row.
_Paggy_: All the more for us.
_Crockums_: Drink hearty, Paggy.
_Paggy_: Salue.
The two of them drank each one vino; then shared the third.
_Paggy_: Hold your tumbler, Crockums.
_Crockums_: Go easy.
_Paggy_: It’s only this red vino.
_Crockums_: You’re giving me more than my share.
_Paggy_: They give one the purser’s gill here: two thimbles and a thumb.
_Crockums_: Here’s how.
_Paggy_: Here’s health, wealth and unity.
As soon as they had swallowed the wine they put down the cups, breathed
deeply, turned, rushed at the central door, beat upon it with all their
strength singing “O come let’s kick the door in,” to the tune of Adeste,
Fideles. At the second stanza they changed the words to “Let’s fling the
table through the doorway,” seized one of the tables and prepared to do
as the song bade. The waiter interfered with “Ho, Señores, that, no. The
tables, no. The song, yes, but not to break the tables.”
_Crockums_: What do you want, steward?
_Paggy_: He wants to be paid for his vinos.
_Crockums_: How much for your vinos? Combien de money?
_The waiter_: Tres pesetas.
_Crockums_: Tres pese . . . ? tres pesetas?
_The waiter_: Si quiere usted.
_Crockums_: Who the hell are you calling a keeairy usted? Hold my coat,
Paggy. I’ll have this blighter’s blood.
Here Huskisson interfered again, saying that the waiter had only said,
“If you please.”