“Limping and footsore already come my cursed rabble—there you are,
white-livered Tuscan sheep! The bark of a dog will scare them; they
would fear a thousand bogies in the dark. It is certain I must wait
for them, and bivouac somewhere here in the plains.”
Indeed, the first of them came on as he spoke—a weary, stumbling body
of laggards, trailing feet and muskets.
“Halte-là!” he thundered; and the men came to a loose-kneed stand,
while the corporals went round prodding and cursing them into a form
of discipline. De Regnac grumbled—
“Are we to have this cold grace to our loves? God’s name! my heart
cries out for fire—fire within and without. These monks!”
“Shall I slip before, and sound them? You may trust me, for a Spanish
girl, who has learned how to coax her confessor.”
“Ha! _You!_” He held her, biting his great lips. “What are you good
for but deceit, rogue! No, no; we will go together.”
He called his staff about him, and they went forward in a body.
Presently, topping a longish slope, they saw, sprung out of the plain
before them, a huddled grey building, glooming monstrous in the dusk.
Its barred windows stared blindly; twin towers held the portico
between them, as it were the lunette of a vast guillotine; a solitary
lamp hung motionless in the entrance. Far away across the flats a
light or two twinkled over ruined Figueras, like marsh-candles over a
swamp. The place seemed lifeless desolation embodied—Death’s own
monument in a desert. Gaiety in its atmosphere shivered into silence.
But at length a captain rallied, with a laugh.
“Peste!” he cried; “a churchyard refuge! Let us see if the dead walk!”
He battered with his sword-hilt on the great door. It swung open, in
staggering response, and revealed a solitary figure. Cowled, spectral,
gigantic—holding, motionless, a torch that wept fire—the shape stood
without a word. It was muffled from crown to heel in coarse frieze;
the eyelets in its woollen vizor were like holes scorched through by
the burning gaze behind—the very rims of them appeared to smoulder.
Laville, the captain, broke into an agitated laugh.
“Mordieu, my friend, are the dead so lifeless?”
“What do you seek?”
The voice boomed, low and muffled, from the folds.
“Rest and food,” answered Laville. “We are weary and famished. For the
rest, we ask no question, and invite none.”
“So they come in peace,” said the figure, “all are welcome here.”
The Colonel pushed to the front, carrying his burden.
“We come in peace,” he said—“strangers and travellers. We pay our
way, and the better where our way is smoothed. Take that message to
your Prior.”
The figure withdrew, and returned in a little.
“The answer is, Ye are welcome. For those who are officers, a repast
will be served within an hour in the refectory; for the rest, what
entertainment we can compass shall be provided in the outhouses. A
room is placed at the disposal of your commander.”
“It is well,” said de Regnac. “Now say, We invite your Prior to the
feast himself provides, and his hand shall be first in the dish, and
his lip to the cup; else, from our gallantry, do we go supperless.”
Once more the figure withdrew and returned.
“He accepts. You are to fear no outrage at his hands.”
The Colonel exclaimed cynically, “Fie, fie! I protest you wrong our
manners!”—and, giving some orders _sub voce_ for the precautionary
disposal of his men, entered with his staff. They were ushered into a
stone-cold hall, set deep in the heart of the building—a great
windowless crypt, it seemed, whose glooms no warmth but that of tapers
had ever penetrated. It was bare of all furniture save benches and a
long trestle-table, and a few sacred pictures on the walls. While the
rest waited there, de Regnac was invited to his quarters—a cell
quarried still deeper into that hill of brick. No sound in all the
place was audible to them as they went. He pushed Pepino before him.
“This is my servant,” he said. “He will attend me, by your leave.”
The girl made no least demur. She went even jocundly, turning now and
again to him with her tongue in her cheek. He, for his part, was in a
rapture of slyness; but he kept a reserve of precaution. They were
escorted by the giant down a single dim corridor, into a decent
habitable cell, fitted with chairs, a little stove, and a prie-Dieu;
but the bed was abominably rocky. De Regnac made a wry face at it for
his companion’s secret delectation.
The ghostly monk, intimating that he would await outside the señor
commandante’s toilet, that he might re-escort his charge to the
refectory, closed the door upon the two. De Regnac cursed his
officiousness, groaning; but Pepino reassured his impatience with a
hundred drolleries. However, when the Colonel came out presently, he
came out alone; and, moreover, turned the key in the door and pocketed
it.
“Merely a prudential measure,” he explained to his guide. “These
gaillards are not to be trusted in strange houses. I will convey him
his supper by and by with my own hands.”
The figure neither answered nor seemed to hear. De Regnac, joining a
rollicking company, dismissed him from his mind.
And alone in the cell stood mad Pepino.
But not for long. A trap opened in the floor, and from it sprouted,
like a monstrous fungus, the head and shoulders of the giant monk.
Massively, sombrely he arose, until the whole of his great bulk was
emerged and standing in a burning scrutiny of the prisoner. A minute
passed. Then, “Whence comest thou, Pepa Manoele? With whom, and for
what purpose?” said the voice behind the folds.
His question seemed to snap in an instant the garrotte about her
brain. She flung herself on her knees before him with a lamentable
cry—
“They have killed my Luc, brother—my Luc, who took me from your wards
of mercy, sins and all. They have killed my sweet singing cricket, my
merry, merry cricket, that had no guile in all its roguish heart. They
put their heel upon him in the path—what are songs to them!—and left
my summer desolate. If I weep one moment, I know that blood will scald
my cheeks and drain my heart, and I shall die before I act. O,
brother! keep back my tears a little. Show me what to do!”
She clutched in agony at his robe.
“Come,” he said; “the way is clear.”
* * * * *
The feast was served to the tick of the hour by lay brothers, another
blank-envisaged form directing them. The tables smoked with cheer, and
de Regnac rubbed his hands. There were the joints of fat kid and the
flagons of old Malaga—salmis of quail, too; truffled sausages;
herrings with mustard sauce, things of strong flavour meet for
warriors. The steam itself was an invitation—the smell, the sparkle.
Only one thing lacked—the Prior’s grace. De Regnac, bestial always,
but most like a tiger in the view of unattainable meats, crowded the
interval with maledictions and curses. His courtesy stopped anywhere
on the threshold of his appetites. Baulked of his banquet, he would be
ready to make a holocaust of the whole hospital. Yet he dared not be
the first to put his fingers in the dish.
“Where is our host?” he growled. “Doth he fear the test—or death—a
coward faint with indecision?”
Even with the word, he found him at his elbow—an old, dry pipe of a
man, wheezing thin air. The father’s face under its dropping cowl (no
doubt his lungs were too crazy for the vizor) showed stark with rime;
his forehead was streaked with it; his eyes were half-thawed pools. He
spoke. Hoarse and feeble, his voice seemed to crow from the attics of
a ruined tenement, high up among the winds.
“Fall to, soldiers, fall to! There is no grace like honest appetite.
Fall to! And they tell me ye have travelled far to claim our
hospitality. Fall to!”
De Regnac smacked his shoulder boisterously, so that he staggered.
“Not till you have blessed our meal for us, old father.”
The Prior raised his trembling hands. The other caught at them.
“Not that way. We ask the taster’s grace. It was a bargain.”
“Be seated, señor,” said the old man, with dignity. “I do not forget
my obligations.”
He went round, bent and stiffly, taking a shred from each dish, a
sippet dipped in the gravy.
“Bella premunt hostilia,” he expostulated. “Intestine wars invade our
breast. What a task for our old digestion!”
His roguery pleased and reassured his company. They attacked the
viands with a will. He never ceased to encourage them, going about the
board with garrulous cheer.
“And ye come over the hills?” said he. “A hungry journey and a
dangerous. It was the mountains, and the spirits of the mountains,
that were alone invincible when the Moorish dogs overran all
Spain—all but the mountains. The heathen crests were lowered
there—rolled back in a bloody foam. Dear God! I’m old.”
“Not so ancient, father,” cried de Regnac, “but that good liquor will
revitalize you. There remains the wine.”
“Ah me!” sighed the Prior; “must I?”
They swore him to the toast by every bond of honour. Their throats
were ragged with drought.
“Well, well,” he said. “I’ll first dismiss these witnesses to their
father’s shame. I’ll be no Noah to my children.”
He drove the servitors, with feeble playfulness, into the passage;
pursued them a pace or two. In a moment he was back alone, his cowl
pulled about his face.
“Give me the draught,” he said hoarsely, “nor look ye upon the old
man’s abasement. I am soon to answer for my frailties.”
Cheering and bantering, they mixed him a cup from every flagon, and
put it into his hand, which gripped it through the cloth. He turned
his back on them, and took the liquor down by slow degrees, chuckling
and gasping and protesting. Then, still coughing, he handed the cup,
backwards, to the nearest.
“Bumpers, all!” roared de Regnac. “We toast old Noah for our king of
hosts!”
Even as he drank, as they all drank, thirsty and uproarious, the great
door of the refectory clanged to, and the Prior spun with a scream to
the floor. De Regnac’s cup fell from his hand; a dead silence
succeeded.
Suddenly the Colonel was on his feet, ghastly and terrible.
“Something foul!” he whispered; “something foul!”
Staggering, he swerved out, and drove with all his weight against the
door. It had been locked and bolted upon them. Not a massive panel
creaked. They were entombed!
Hush!
Solemn, low, mystic, arose without the chaunt of voices in unison—the
prayers for one sick unto death: “Receive, O Lord, the sacrifice we
offer for thy servant, who is near the end of her life.”
With a scream, de Regnac threw himself towards the body on the floor,
and lifted it with huge strength in his arms. As he did so, the cowl
fell away, and revealed the face of Pepino. The shadow of death was
already fallen on it; but she spoke, and with a smile.
“When he pursued them, I was waiting and took his place. Curse him
not. He observed the letter. ’Twas I poisoned the wine. Take back thy
wages, dog! O, I go to find my Luc—if thou darest follow me!”
He roared out—a spasm took his throat. He tried to crush her in his
arms. They relaxed in the effort. Howling, he dropped her, and fell
beside in a heap.
Then, from out a mortal paralysis, arose sobbing and wailing at the
table. Some seized salt, some the wet mustard from the fish, and
swallowed it by handfuls. Others ran hither and thither aimlessly,
screeching, blaspheming, beating the walls, the obdurate door. There
was a regimental doctor among them; he was the first dead. None found
help or hope in that ghastly trap. The venom had been swift, gripping,
ineradicable. Within half an hour it was all a silent company, and the
Miserere long had ceased.
Somewhere in a book I read of a tale like this, which was headed
“Patriotic Fanaticism.” Those were certainly the deadly days of
retaliation; but in this case Love, as always, was the principal
fanatic.