It was not _Tremolino’s_ fault that the syndicate depended so much on the
wit and wisdom and the information of Doña Rita. She had taken a little
furnished house on the Prado for the good of the cause—_Por el Rey_! She
was always taking little houses for somebody’s good, for the sick or the
sorry, for broken-down artists, cleaned-out gamblers, temporarily unlucky
speculators—_vieux amis_—old friends, as she used to explain
apologetically, with a shrug of her fine shoulders.
Whether Don Carlos was one of the “old friends,” too, it’s hard to say.
More unlikely things have been heard of in smoking-rooms. All I know is
that one evening, entering incautiously the salon of the little house
just after the news of a considerable Carlist success had reached the
faithful, I was seized round the neck and waist and whirled recklessly
three times round the room, to the crash of upsetting furniture and the
humming of a valse tune in a warm contralto voice.
When released from the dizzy embrace, I sat down on the carpet—suddenly,
without affectation. In this unpretentious attitude I became aware that
J. M. K. B. had followed me into the room, elegant, fatal, correct and
severe in a white tie and large shirt-front. In answer to his politely
sinister, prolonged glance of inquiry, I overheard Doña Rita murmuring,
with some confusion and annoyance, “_Vous êtes bête mon cher_. _Voyons_!
_Ça n’a aucune conséquence_.” Well content in this case to be of no
particular consequence, I had already about me the elements of some
worldly sense.
Rearranging my collar, which, truth to say, ought to have been a round
one above a short jacket, but was not, I observed felicitously that I had
come to say good-bye, being ready to go off to sea that very night with
the _Tremolino_. Our hostess, slightly panting yet, and just a shade
dishevelled, turned tartly upon J. M. K. B., desiring to know when _he_
would be ready to go off by the _Tremolino_, or in any other way, in
order to join the royal headquarters. Did he intend, she asked
ironically, to wait for the very eve of the entry into Madrid? Thus by a
judicious exercise of tact and asperity we re-established the atmospheric
equilibrium of the room long before I left them a little before midnight,
now tenderly reconciled, to walk down to the harbour and hail the
_Tremolino_ by the usual soft whistle from the edge of the quay. It was
our signal, invariably heard by the ever-watchful Dominic, the _padrone_.
He would raise a lantern silently to light my steps along the narrow,
springy plank of our primitive gangway. “And so we are going off,” he
would murmur directly my foot touched the deck. I was the harbinger of
sudden departures, but there was nothing in the world sudden enough to
take Dominic unawares. His thick black moustaches, curled every morning
with hot tongs by the barber at the corner of the quay, seemed to hide a
perpetual smile. But nobody, I believe, had ever seen the true shape of
his lips. From the slow, imperturbable gravity of that broad-chested man
you would think he had never smiled in his life. In his eyes lurked a
look of perfectly remorseless irony, as though he had been provided with
an extremely experienced soul; and the slightest distension of his
nostrils would give to his bronzed face a look of extraordinary boldness.
This was the only play of feature of which he seemed capable, being a
Southerner of a concentrated, deliberate type. His ebony hair curled
slightly on the temples. He may have been forty years old, and he was a
great voyager on the inland sea.
Astute and ruthless, he could have rivalled in resource the unfortunate
son of Laertes and Anticlea. If he did not pit his craft and audacity
against the very gods, it is only because the Olympian gods are dead.
Certainly no woman could frighten him. A one-eyed giant would not have
had the ghost of a chance against Dominic Cervoni, of Corsica, not
Ithaca; and no king, son of kings, but of very respectable
family—authentic Caporali, he affirmed. But that is as it may be. The
Caporali families date back to the twelfth century.
For want of more exalted adversaries Dominic turned his audacity fertile
in impious stratagems against the powers of the earth, as represented by
the institution of Custom-houses and every mortal belonging
thereto—scribes, officers, and guardacostas afloat and ashore. He was
the very man for us, this modern and unlawful wanderer with his own
legend of loves, dangers, and bloodshed. He told us bits of it sometimes
in measured, ironic tones. He spoke Catalonian, the Italian of Corsica
and the French of Provençe with the same easy naturalness. Dressed in
shore-togs, a white starched shirt, black jacket, and round hat, as I
took him once to see Doña Rita, he was extremely presentable. He could
make himself interesting by a tactful and rugged reserve set off by a
grim, almost imperceptible, playfulness of tone and manner.
He had the physical assurance of strong-hearted men. After half an
hour’s interview in the dining-room, during which they got in touch with
each other in an amazing way, Rita told us in her best _grande dame_
manner: “_Mais il esi parfait_, _cet homme_.” He was perfect. On board
the _Tremolino_, wrapped up in a black _caban_, the picturesque cloak of
Mediterranean seamen, with those massive moustaches and his remorseless
eyes set off by the shadow of the deep hood, he looked piratical and
monkish and darkly initiated into the most awful mysteries of the sea.