Romance Part 25

"You've given yourself away pretty well," I said. "Some day I shall unmask you. It will be my revenge on you for daring to propose to me...."

"What?" he interrupted, over his shoulder. "You? Not you--and I'll tell you why. It's because dead men tell no tales."

He pa.s.sed through the door--a back view of a dapper Spanish lawyer, all in black, in a lofty frame. The calm, strolling footsteps went away along the gallery. He turned the corner. The tapping of his heels echoed in the _patio_, into whose blackness filtered the first suggestion of the dawn.

CHAPTER FIVE

I remember walking about the room, and thinking to myself, "This is bad, this is very bad; what shall I do now?" A sort of mad meditation that in this meaningless way became so tense as positively to frighten me. Then it occurred to me that I could do nothing whatever at present, and I was soothed by this sense of powerless-ness, which, one would think, ought to have driven me to distraction. I went to sleep ultimately, just as a man sentenced to death goes to sleep, lulled in a sort of ghastly way by the finality of his doom. Even when I awoke it kept me steady, in a way.

I washed, dressed, walked, ate, said "Good-morning, Cesar," to the old major-domo I met in the gallery; exchanged grins with the negro boys under the gateway, and watched the mules being ridden out barebacked by other nearly naked negro boys into the sea, with great splashing of water and a noise of voices. A small knot of men, unmistakably __Lugarenos__, stood on the beach, also, watching the mules, and exchanging loud jocular shouts with the blacks. Rio Medio, the dead, forsaken, and desecrated city, was lying, as bare as a skeleton, on the sands. They were yellow; the bay was very blue, the wooded hills very green.

After the mules had been ridden uproariously back to the stables, wet and capering, and shaking their long ears, all the life of the land seemed to take refuge in this vivid colouring. As I looked at it from the outer balcony above the great gate, the small group of __Lugarenos__ turned about to look at the Casa Riego.

They recognized me, no doubt, and one of them flourished, threateningly, an arm from under his cloak. I retreated indoors.

This was the only menacing sign, absolutely the only sign that marked this day. It was a day of pause. Seraphina did not leave her apartments; Don Balthasar did not show himself; Father Antonio, hurrying towards the sick room, greeted me with only a wave of the hand. I was not admitted to see Carlos; the nun came to the door, shook her head at me, and closed it gently in my face. Castro, sitting on the floor not very far away, seemed unaware of me in so marked a manner that it inspired me with the idea of not taking the slightest notice of him. Now and then the figure of a maid in white linen and bright petticoat flitted in the upper gallery, and once I fancied I saw the black, rigid carriage of the duenna disappearing behind a pillar.

Senor O'Brien, old Cesar whispered, without looking at me, was extremely occupied in the _Cancilleria_. His midday meal was served him there.

I had mine all alone, and then the sunny, heat-laden stillness of siesta-time fell upon the Castilian dignity of the house.

I sank into a kind of reposeful belief in the work of accident.

Something would happen. I did not know how soon and how atrociously my belief was to be justified. I exercised my ingenuity in the most approved lover-fashion--in devising means how to get secret speech with Seraphina. The confounded silly maids fled from my most distant appearance, as though I had the pest. I was wondering whether I should not go simply and audaciously and knock at her door, when I fancied I heard a scratching at mine. It was a very stealthy sound, quite capable of awakening my dormant emotions.

I went to the door and listened. Then, opening it the merest crack, I saw the inexplicable emptiness of the gallery. Castro, on his hands and knees, startled me by whispering at my feet:

"Stand aside, Senor."

He entered my room on all-fours, and waited till I got the door closed before he stood up.

"Even he may sleep sometimes," he said. "And the bal.u.s.trade has hidden me."

To see this little saturnine bandit, who generally stalked about haughtily, as if the whole Casa belonged to him by right of fidelity, crawl into my room like this was inexpressibly startling. He shook the folds of his cloak, and dropped his hat on the floor.

"Still, it is better so. The very women of the house are not safe," he said. "Senor, I have no mind to be delivered to the English for hanging.

But I have not been admitted to see Don Carlos, and, therefore, I must make my report to you. These are Don Carlos' orders. 'Serve him, Castro, when I am dead, as if my soul had pa.s.sed into his body.'"

He nodded sadly. "_Si!_ But Don Carlos is a friend to me and you--you."

He shook his head, and drew me away from the door. "Two __Lugarenos__,"

he said, "Manuel and another one, did go last night, as directed by the friar"--he supposed--"to meet the _Juez_ in the bush outside Rio Medio."

I had guessed that much, and told him of Manuel's behaviour under my window. How did they know my chamber?

"Bad, bad," muttered Castro. "La Chica told her lover, no doubt." He hissed, and stamped his foot.

She was pretty, but flighty. The lover was a silly boy of decent, Christian parents, who was always hanging about in the low villages. No matter.

What he could not understand was why some boats should have been held in readiness till nearly the morning to tow a schooner outside. Manuel came along at dawn, and dismissed the crews. They had separated, making a great noise on the beach, and yelling, "Death to the _Inglez!_"

I cleared up that point for him. He told me that O'Brien had the duenna called to his room that morning. Nothing had been heard outside, but the woman came out staggering, with her hand on the wall. He had terrified her. G.o.d knows what he had said to her. The widow--as Castro called her--had a son, an _escrivano_ in one of the Courts of Justice. No doubt it was that.

"There it is, Senor," murmured Castro, scowling all round, as if every wall of the room was an enemy. "He holds all the people in his hand in some way. Even I must be cautious, though I am a humble, trusted friend of the Casa!"

"What harm could he do you?" I asked.

"He is civil to me. _Amigo Castro_ here, and _Amigo Castro_ there. Bah!

The devil, alone, is his friend! He could deliver me to justice, and get my life sworn away. He could------_Quien sabe?_ What need he care what he does--a man that can get absolution from the archbishop himself if he likes."

He meditated. "No! there is only one remedy for him." He tiptoed to my ear. "The knife!"

He made a pa.s.s in the air with his blade, and I remembered vividly the c.o.c.kroach he had impaled with such accuracy on board the _Thames_. His baneful glance reminded me of his murderous capering in the steerage, when he had thought that the only remedy for _me_ was the knife.

He went to the loop-hole, and pa.s.sed the steel thoughtfully on the stone edge. I had not moved.

"The knife; but what would you have? Before, when I talked of this to Don Carlos, he only laughed at me. That was his way in matters of importance. Now they will not let me come in to him. He is too near G.o.d--and the Senorita--why, she is too near the saints for all the great n.o.bility of her spirit. But, _que dia-bleria_, when I--in my devotion--opened my mouth to her I saw some of that spirit in her eyes...."

There was a slight irony in his voice. "No! Me--Castro! to be told that an English Senora would have dismissed me forever from her presence for such a hint. 'Your Excellency,' I said, 'deign, then, to find it good that I should avoid giving offence to that man. It is not my desire to run my neck into the iron collar.'"

He looked at me fixedly, as if expecting me to make a sign, then shrugged his shoulders.

"_Bueno_. You see this? Then look to it yourself, Senor. You are to me even as Don Carlos--all except for the love. No English body is big enough to receive his soul. No friend will be left that would risk his very honour of a n.o.ble for a man like Tomas Castro. Let me warn you not to leave the Casa, even if a shining angel stood outside the gate and called you by name. The gate is barred, now, night and day. I have dropped a hint to Cesar, and that old African knows more than the Senor would suppose. I cannot tell how soon I may have the opportunity to talk to you again."

He peeped through the crack of the door, then slipped out, suddenly falling at once on his hands and knees, so as to be hidden by the stone bal.u.s.trade from anybody in the _patio_. He, too, did not think himself safe.

Early in the evening I descended into the court, and Father Antonio, walking up and down the _patio_ with his eyes on his breviary, muttered to me:

"Sit on this chair," and went on without stopping.

I took a chair near the marble rim of the basin with its border of English flowers, its splashing thread of water. The goldfishes that had been lying motionless, with their heads pointing different ways, glided into a bunch to the fall of my shadow, waiting for crumbs of bread.

Father Antonio, his head down, and the open breviary under his nose, brushed my foot with the skirt of his ca.s.sock.

"Have you any plan?"

When he came back, walking very slowly, I said, "None."

At this next turn I p.r.o.nounced rapidly, "I should like to see Carlos."

He frowned over the edge of the book. I understood that he refused to let me in. And, after all, why should I disturb that dying man? The news about him was that he felt stronger that day. But he was preparing for eternity. Father Antonio's business was to save souls. I felt horribly crushed and alone. The priest asked, hardly moving his lips: "What do you trust to?"

I had the time to meditate my reply. "Tell Carlos I think of escape by sea."

He made a little sign of a.s.sent, turned off towards the staircase, and went back to the sick room.

"The folly of it," I thought. How could I think of it? Escape where? I dared not even show myself outside the Casa. My safety within depended on old Cesar more than on anybody else. He had the key of the gate, and the gate was practically the only thing between me and a miserable death at the hands of the first ruffian I met outside. And with the thought I seemed to stifle in that _patio_ open to the sky.

That gate seemed to cut off the breath of life from me. I was there, as if in a trap. Should I--I asked myself--try to enlighten Don Balthasar?