Kitabı oku: «Across the Salt Seas», sayfa 15

CHAPTER XXVII.
"LIAR, I WILL KILL YOU!"

He had been left behind-and I was here! He whose escape had been arranged for was still a prisoner-I, whose doom had been fixed, was free.

What did it mean? What mystery had taken place?

One glance toward the fonda fifty yards away was sufficient to show that mystery there was-as unintelligible to another as to Juana. And more than mystery! – that my presence here was as hateful as unexpected, to one person at least. To Morales, the Alcáide!

For even as my love recovered sufficiently to be able to stand without my assistance, though still leaning heavily upon me, I-looking toward that fonda-saw Morales issuing rapidly from it, his sword carried in his left hand, his right hand plucking the blade from the scabbard. And-more ominous still of what his intentions were, as well as of his fury! – as he ran toward us he flung the now empty sheath away from him and rushed forward, the bare blade gleaming.

Then as he reached the spot where we both stood together, the mute behind us-while, even as I too plucked the sword the poor creature had furnished me with from its scabbard and stood upon my guard, I saw that his stolid face expressed not only fear but something else-astonishment! – Morales shouted, his words tumbling pell mell over each other so much as to be difficult of understanding.

"Wretches! Traitor! Traitress! 'Tis thus I am deceived-hoodwinked! Tricked and ruined so that your lover may be restored to your false arms. So be it-thus, also, I avenge myself," and-horror! – he made a pass at Juana as she stood by my side. He was a Spaniard-and his love had turned to hate and gall!

Yet ere the shriek she uttered had ceased to ring on the wintry morning air, the deadly thrust that was aimed full at her breast was parried by my own blade; putting her behind me with my left hand, I struck full at him, resolved that ere another five minutes were over his own life should pay for that craven attempt; struck full at his own breast, missing it only by an inch, yet driving him back from me.

Back, step by step, yet knowing even as I did so that' it was no odds on me in this encounter, that here was a swordsman who would dispute every thrust of mine; that it would be lucky if his long blade did not thread my ribs ere my own weapon found his heart.

It behooved me to be careful, I knew. Already, in the first moment, he had settled down to fighting carefully and cautiously; already one devilish Italian thrust was given-he must have crossed the Alps, I thought, to learn it! – that almost took me unawares; that, had my parry not been quick, would have brought his quillon hurtling at my breast, with the blade through me. Yet, it had failed! and with the failure the chance was gone.

"I know your thrust," I whispered, maybe hissed, at him; "'twill serve no more."

But even as I said these words it came to me that I should not win this fight, that he was the better man-my master-at the game-that I was lost. And as I thought this I saw-while we shifted ground a little on the sodden snow-the mute standing gazing earnestly, almost fascinated, upon us; I saw some people at the door of the fonda-a man and a woman-regarding us with horror-stricken glances-I saw Juana on her knees, perhaps praying! It might be so, since her head was buried in her hands!

And if he won, if he slew me, even wounded and disabled me, she was lost, too; with me out of the way, with her father dead or still a prisoner, nothing could save her. Her last hope would be gone.

That spurred me, egged me on, put a fierce and fresh determination in my heart, since I had not lost my courage, but only my confidence. That, and one other thing; for I saw upon the melting snow beneath our feet, even as we trod it into water, a tinge of crimson; I saw a few drops lie spotting it-and I knew that that blood was not mine. Therefore, I had touched him, had only missed his life by a hair's breadth; next time it might not be drops-might be the heart's blood of him who had sought that of my loved one!

Still, I could not do it, could not thrust through and through him. Every drive, every assault, was parried easily. Once, when I lunged so near him that I heard his silk waistcoat rip, he laughed a low, mocking laugh as he thrust my blade aside with a turn of his iron wrist; I could not even, as I tried, take him in the sword arm and so disable him.

Also, I knew what was in his mind, specially since, for some few moments, he had ceased to thrust back at me. He was bent on tiring me out. Then-then-his opportunity would have come, would be at hand.

"Disable him! Disable him!" Why did those words haunt my brain, ring through it again and again; seem to deaden even the scraping hiss of steel against steel. "Disable him!" What memory was arising in that brain of some one, something, long forgotten? A second later, even as I felt my point bring pressed lower and lower by his own blade, knew a lunge was coming-parried it as it came-safely once more, thank God! – I remembered, knew what that memory meant.

Recalled a little, hunchbacked Italian escrimeur who used to haunt a fence school at the back of the Exchange in the Strand; a man whose knowledge of attack was poor in the extreme, yet who could earn a beggar's wage by teaching some marvellous methods of disarming an adversary. And I had flung him a crown more than once to be taught his tricks!

Now those crowns should bear interest!

I changed my tactics, lunged no more; our blades became silent; they ceased to hiss like drops of water falling on live coals or hot iron; almost they lay motionless together, mine over his, yet I feeling through blade and hilt the strength of that black, hairy wrist which held the other weapon. Also, I think he felt the strength of mine; once his eye shifted, though had the moment been any other the shift would have been unnoticeable.

That was my time! Swift as lightning, I, remembering the dwarf's lessons of long ago-why did I remember also the little sniggering chuckle he used to utter as he taught them? – drew back my sword an inch, then thrust, then back again with a sharp wrench, and, lo! Morales' sword was flying through the air three feet above his head-he was weaponless! My own was drawn back a second later, another moment I should have avenged his assassin's thrust at Juana-yet I could not do it. For he, recognising he was doomed, stood there before me, his arms folded over his breast, his eyes confronting mine.

"Curse you!" he said, "you have won. Well-kill me. At once."

No need for me to say that could not be. In the moment that I twisted his weapon out of his wrist I had meant to slay him, had drawn back my own weapon to thrust it through chest and lungs and back, and stretch him dead at my feet-yet now I spared him.

Villain as he was-scoundrel who would traffic with a broken-hearted woman for her honour and her soul as a set-off against her father's safety, and, in doing so, also betray the country he served-I could not slay a defenceless man.

His sword had fallen at my feet; one of them was upon it. I motioned to him now to return to the fonda-to begone.

"You have missed your quarry," I said; "'twill never fall to your lure again. Away!"

Yet, still standing there before us-for now Juana had once more flown to my side, and was sobbing bitterly, her wild, passionate words expressing partly her thanks to God for my double safety, and partly her bewailings that her father had gone to his fate-he had something to say, could not depart without a malediction.

"Curse you both!" he exclaimed once more. "Curse you! Had I known of your trick you should all have burnt and grilled on the braséro ere this-ay, even you, wanton! – ere I had let you fool me so."

Then he turned away as though to go back to the fonda, yet returned again, and, striding back to where the mute stood motionless, his expression one of absolute vacancy-as though, in truth, he was only now become dumb from utter surprise-he struck at him full in the face with his clenched fist.

"Dolt, idiot, hound!" he said. "Was it to aid in such treachery against me as this that I saved you from the Inquisition? God! that I had left them to take your useless life! Dumb fool!"

I, standing there, with Juana still clinging to my neck, as she had done since the duel was over, saw the man stagger back and wipe the blood from his lips; saw, too, his hands clench firmly; saw him take one step forward, as though he meant to throw himself upon Morales; then stop suddenly, and do nothing. Perhaps even now, after this foul blow, he remembered that he had been saved from death once by him who struck that blow.

But a moment later he approached the Alcáide, though now humbly, and like a beaten slave who sues for pardon, and entreats that no further punishment shall be dealt out to him, and, an instant after, began, with fingers and hands and many strange motions, to tell his master something-something in a dumb language that was, still, not the deaf and dumb language in common use, and which I myself chanced to know, yet one that none could doubt both of these men were in the habit of conversing in.

He was telling some strange tale, I saw and understood by one glance at my late opponent's face; neither could any doubt that who gazed upon it!

At first that face expressed amazement, incredulity-all the emotions that are to be observed on the countenance of one who listens to some story which he either cannot believe, or thinks issues, at best, from a maniac. Yet gradually, too, there came over the face of Morales another look-the look of one who does believe at last, in spite of himself; also there dawned on it a hideous, gloating expression, such as might befit a fiend who listens to the tortured cries of a victim.

What did it mean? What tale was that stricken creature telling him by those symbols, which none but he understood? What? What?

A moment later we knew-if Morales did not lie to us.

The mute had ceased his narrative, his hands made no further signs, and, slowly, he stepped back again to where the horses we had travelled on stood together, the reins of one tied to the other-and Morales turned to us, his features still convulsed with that horrible expression of gloating.

"I have wronged you," he said, raising his forefinger and pointing it at Juana, who shuddered and clasped me closer even as he did so; "and you," glancing at me. "The treachery was not yours, but another's; unless-unless" – and he paused as though seeking for words-"unless it should be termed otherwise. Say, not treachery, but-sublime sacrifice."

"What!" from both her lips and mine. "What!"

"Your father," he said, "had his chance" – and again that forefinger was pointed at her-"this poor fool, my servant, went to set him free; the horse was waiting for him-only, instead, it has borne you to safety" – and now he glanced at me-"also there was his sword for him-that by your side."

"My God! My God!" I heard Juana whisper on my breast.

"Only he-this buccaneer-would not accept it, not take it. He, stained deep with crime as he was, his name an accursed one through all the Indies-men spit upon the ground there, they say, with loathing when they hear it mentioned, even now-could bear all things but one. Shall I tell you what that one thing is?" and he glanced again at Juana, a very hell of hate in his look.

But she could only moan upon my bosom and murmur: "My father! Oh, my father!"

"He could not bear," Morales went on, "that his child should be what he knew she had become by now-my friend-"

"Liar!" I cried. "I will kill you for this."

"Could not bear that she should bring deeper disgrace than even he had done upon your tainted names. Therefore he refused to come; therefore he preferred the flames to which he has gone" – a wild, piercing scream broke from Juana as he said those words-"and-so-so-that there should be nothing rise up to prevent him from going to his death, so that he should put away from himself all chance of salvation from that death and earn his oblivion from disgrace, he persuaded this fool that a mistake had been made-that 'twas you, not he, who was to be saved, allowed to escape."

"You lie," I said again. "You lie. Some part of this story is true, some false, Gramont never believed that she would give herself to you; knew that she meant to slay herself the instant she was assured of his safety. Spanish dog, you lie, and I will have your life for it."

"It is true," he said hoarsely, "as true as that an hour after you left Lugo he was led out and burnt at the braséro-the braséro that was prepared for you. Now," and once more he addressed Juana, "you have your lover back again-be happy in the possession; in the knowledge that his life is saved by the loss of your father's. Be happy in that."

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE DEAD MAN'S EYES-THE DEAD MAN'S HANDS

Was Juana dying, I asked myself that night-dying of misery and of all that she had gone through? God, He only knew-soon I should know, too.

Ere I had carried her to the fonda, Morales had disappeared, his afflicted follower with him-ere we reached the miserable room, in which she had passed the two nights that had elapsed since she had come here with him who had bartered for the sacrifice of her honour against her father's safety, I heard the trample of horses' hoofs, I saw from the inn window both those men ride swiftly away, their road being that which led on into Portugal.

It was not possible that I should follow him and exact vengeance for all that he had done or attempted to do against her, force him once more to an encounter, disarm him again-and, when he was thus disarmed, spare him no further. Not possible, because, henceforth, my place was by her side. I must never leave her again in life-leave her who had come to this through her love of me, her determination to follow me through danger after danger, reckless of what might befall.

She lay now upon her bed, feverish and sometimes incoherent, yet, at others, sane and in her right mind, and it was at one of such moments as these that I, sitting by her side, heard her whisper:

"Mervan, where is that man-Morales?"

"He is gone, dear heart; he will trouble you no more. And-and-remember we are free. As soon as you are restored we can leave here-there is nothing to stop us now. My journey through Spain and France can never be recommenced-we must make for England by sea somehow. Then, when I have placed you in safety, I must find my way across to Flanders."

For a while she lay silent after I had said this; lay there, her lustrous eyes open, and with the fever heightening and intensifying, if such were possible, her marvellous beauty. For now the carmine of her cheeks and lips was-although fever's ensign! – even more strikingly lovely than before; this woman on whom I gazed so fondly was beyond all compare the most beautiful creature on which my eyes had ever rested. As I had thought at first, so, doubly, I thought now.

Presently she moaned a little, not from bodily pain, but agony of mind, as I learnt shortly-then she said:

"Mervan, why do you stay by my side-why not go at once back to your own land? Leave me?"

"Juana!" I exclaimed, deeming that I had mistaken her state, and that, in truth, she was beside herself. Then added, stupidly and in a dazed manner: "Leave you!"

"Ay. Why stay by me? You have heard, know all, whose child-to my eternal shame! – I am. The child of that bloodstained man, Gramont. Ay," she said, again, "he, that other, Morales, spoke true. There is no name in all the Indies remembered with such hate and loathing as his. And I-I-am his child. Go-leave me to die here."

"Juana," I said, "can you hear me, understand what I am saying-going to say to you? Is your brain clear enough to comprehend my words? Speak-answer me."

For reply she turned those eyes on me; beneath the dark dishevelled curls I saw their clear glance-I knew that all I should say would be plain to her.

"Listen to my words," I continued therefore. "Listen-and believe; never doubt more. Juana, I love you with my whole heart and soul-before all and everything else this world holds for me. I love you. I love you. I love you," and as I spoke I bent forward and pressed my lips to her hot burning ones. "And you tell me to leave you, because, forsooth! you are his child. Oh! my sweet, my sweet, if you were the child of one five thousand times worse than he has been, ay! even though Satan claimed you for his own, I would love you till my last breath, would never quit your side. Juana, we are each other's forever now."

"No! No! No!"

"Yes, I say," I cried almost fiercely. "Yes. We are each other's alone. You are mine, mine, mine. I have no other thought, no other hope in all this world but you. If-if-our faith were the same I would send for a priest now who should make us one; there should be no further moment elapse in all the moments of eternity before you were my wife."

I felt the long slim hand tighten on mine for an instant, then release it a moment later; but she said no more for a time. Yet the look on her face was one of happiness extreme. After a while, however, she spoke again.

"The admiral knew," she whispered. "He had found out my secret."

For a moment I could not recall what she referred to-the incidents which had happened in such quick succession since we had quitted the fleet had almost obliterated from my memory the recollection of all that had taken place prior to that time. Yet now I remembered, and-remembering-there came back to me Sir George Rooke's strange diffidence after she had seized his hand and pressed it to her heart. Also, I recalled the deference with which he had treated her whom I thought then to be no more than a handsome, elegant youth, as well as my feeling of surprise at that deference.

And still, as I reflected over this, there was one other thing in connection with him which also came back to me; his words, to wit, that there were even worse things than shot or steel or death to cloud a brave man's career-that many a soldier had gone down before worse than these. And I knew now against what he had intended to warn me-against the woman now lying here sore stricken, the woman whom I loved and worshipped, the one who had been to me as faithful as a dog.

"So be it," I said to myself, "so be it. If I am to become bankrupt and shipwrecked through my love for her, I must be. Henceforth she is all in all to me, and there is nothing else in my life. Yet, up to now, the admiral's warning has been but little realised-I owe no ruin to her, but, rather, salvation."

For I could not but recall that 'twas through her that any loophole of escape had come to me in the prison of Lugo; to her unhappy father that I owed, if Morales had spoken true, the absolute escape itself.

Even as I sat there meditating thus she moaned again: "My father. My lost, doomed father," and once more I heard her whisper: "His child! His child! The saints pity me!"

And now I set myself to place that lost father before her in a far different light than that in which she regarded him-to make her believe that, when almost all in the Indies who had their account with the sea had in their time been much as he had been, his crimes were not so black as they appeared to her; to also paint in glowing colours that sublime sacrifice-Morales had termed it truthfully! – which he had made in remaining behind whilst I escaped, in dying while opening to me the path to life and freedom.

"Juana, my sweet," I said, speaking low, yet as sympathetically as I could to her, "Juana, you deem his sin greater than it is. Also, remember, 'tis almost certain Morales lies when he said he died because-because-of your flight with him. For, remember-what the vagabond forgot in his rage and hate! – remember, he knew of your resolve, your determination to pretend to give yourself to him in exchange for his safety."

As I said these words I saw her eyes glisten, saw her head turned more toward me on the pillow-in her face the expression of one to whose mind comes back the recollection of a forgotten fact, a truth.

"Diôs!" she whispered, "it was so. He knew of my intention. 'Tis true; Morales lied. Yet," she went on a moment later, "yet that cannot cleanse him from his past sins, purge his soul from the crimes with which 'tis stained."

"Crimes!" I re-echoed, "Crimes! Think, recall, my beloved, what those crimes were. Those of buccaneer, 'tis true, yet not so bad but that all like him were not deemed too sunken in sin to be refused pardon by Spain, by France, even by my own land. Those pardons were sent out to the Indies shortly before he was thought to be lost-had he returned to France, then he would have held a position of honour under Louis."

"How?" she asked-and now I noticed that in her face there seemed to be a look of dawning hope, a look too, as though with that newborn hope there was a return of strength accompanied by an absence of such utter despair as had broken her down. "How know you that?"

"I was there in the court when he was tried," I said, "I heard his words-and none who heard them could doubt their truth, no more than they could his fierce denouncement of that unutterable villain, Eaton. Juana," I said, endeavouring to speak as impressively as was in my power, to thrust home more decisively the growing conviction to her heart that Gramont was not the devil he had been painted, "you must teach yourself to think less ill of your father than report has made him. And-and remember, he could have escaped an he would; it was, as that man said, a sublime sacrifice when he went to his doom."

"But why?" she asked, "why?" Though even as she did so, I saw, I knew, that in her heart there was the hope and wish to find something that might whiten his memory for her.

"Why," I repeated, bending near to her, speaking as deeply and earnestly as I could; above all, the softened feeling I was endeavouring to bring about in her heart toward that lost, dead father must be made to grow, until at last she should regard his memory with pity if naught else. "Why, because as I do believe, as I believe before God, he knew we loved each other, Juana-"

"Ah, Mervan!"

"Because his life was already far spent, because ours were in their spring; because, it may be, he knew that with him gone and me escaped in his place there was the hope of many happy years before you-with me-of years always together, of our being ever by each other's side until the end. Juana, my beloved, my love, think not of him as one beyond pardon and redemption, but rather as one who purified forever the errors of his life by the deep tenderness and sacrifice of his end."

I had won.

As I concluded she raised herself from the pillows on which she lay, the long shapely arms met round my neck, the dark curly head sank to my shoulder; soon nothing broke the silence of the room but her sobs. Yet ever and again she whispered through her tears: "My father, my unhappy father. May God forgive me if I have judged you too harshly."

Soon after that I left her sleeping peacefully and with, as it seemed to me, much of her fever gone-yet even as she slept I, sitting watching by her side, saw still the tears trickle forth from beneath the long eyelashes that fringed her cheeks, and knew that in her sleep she was dreaming of him.

But again I told myself that I had won; that henceforth the memory of her father's erring life would not stand between her and me, between our love.

The peasant who kept the miserable inn, and whose curiosity as to all that had taken place recently-the arrival of Juana and Morales, the duel, and then the rapid departure of him and the mute, while I remained behind in his place-was scarcely appeased by my curt and stern information that the lady above was shortly to become my wife, told me that there was no suitable sleeping place for me other than the public room. The other señor, he said, had had to make shift with that, since the one spare room which the señora occupied was the only one available in the house. He supposed, he added gruffly, that I, too, could do the same thing. There was a bench-and he pointed as he spoke to a rough wooden thing which did not promise much ease or rest-on which the other señor had slept; also a deep chair, in which one might repose easily before the fire. Would that do? Yes, I answered, either would do very well. I was fatigued, and could sleep anywhere. All I asked was that I should be left alone.

This was done, though ere the man and his wife departed to their quarters for the night the latter took occasion to make a remark to me. The lady, she observed, if she might make so bold as to say it, seemed to be of an undecided frame of mind. When she and the other señor arrived she had understood that he was the person to whom she was about to be married. It was strange, she thought, that the lady should elope over the border with one señor, to be married to another. However, she added, it was no affair of hers.

"It is no affair of yours," I said sternly once more. "Leave me alone and interfere not in our affairs. Your bill," I continued, "will be paid; that is sufficient." Whereon she said that was all that was required, and so, at last, I was left to myself.

Left to myself to sit in the great chair before the fire and muse on all that had lately occurred to make my journey toward Flanders a failure; to muse still more deeply on the love that had come to me unsought, unthought of; the love that, when I had at last accomplished my task and rejoined Marlborough, would, I hoped, crown my life.

Yet, as the snow beat against the window, for once more it was a rough night and the wind howled here as it had howled the night before, across in Spain-while as before the flakes falling on the rude panes seemed to my mind to resemble ghostly finger-tips that touched the glass and then were drawn off it back into the darkness without-I thought also of the now dead and destroyed man, the buccaneer who, all blood-guilty as he was, had yet gone to a doom that he might have escaped from.

And my thought prevented sleep, even though I had not now slept for many, many hours-my terrible reflections unstrung me-it seemed almost as if the spirit of that dead man had followed me, was outside the rough wooden door; as if, amidst those falling and swift-vanishing snowflakes on the glass, I saw his eyes glaring out of the blackness into the room. And soon I became over-wrought, the gentle beat of the snow became the tap of a hand summoning me to open and admit his spectral form-an awful fantasy took possession of me!

Was, I asked myself-as furtively I turned my eyes to those solemn, silent flakes that fell upon the window pane, rested there a moment gleaming white, then vanished into nothingness-was the lost soul of that man hovering outside the door or that window-the soul that but a few hours ago had quitted his body?

If I looked again at the casement should I see, as though behind some dark veil, the eyes of Gramont glaring into the room; see those flakes of snow take more tangible form-the form of a dead man's fingers scratching at the panes, tearing at them to attract my attention?

Distraught-maddened by the terror of my thoughts, fearful of myself, of the silence that reigned through the house, I sprang to my feet-I was mad! – I must go out into the gloom and blackness of the night-

God! – what was that?

There was a tapping at the door-a footstep-next a tap at the window. The hands were there; I saw the fingers-the snow falling round them-on them. I saw, too, the eyes of Gramont peering in at me.

"What is it?" I cried hoarsely. "What? What?"

Then through the roar of the tempest without, through the shriek of the wind, above the loud hum of the torrent, I heard-or was I mad and dreaming that I heard? – the words:

"Open. To me-her father."