Romance Part 39

Before my mind arose a scene: Manuel, the night before, pulled out of the water into a boat--raging, half-drowned, eloquent, inspired. The contemptible beast _was_ inspired, as a politician is, a demagogue.

He could sway his fellows, as I had heard enough to know. And I felt a slight chill on the warmth of my hope, because that bright sail, brilliantly and furtively dodging along in our wake, must be the product of Manuel's inspiration, urged to perseverance by the fear of O'Brien.

The mate continued, staring knowingly at it:

"You know I am putting two and two together, like the old maids that come to see my aunt when they want to take away a woman's character.

The Dagos are out and no mistake. The question is, Why? You must know whether those schooners can sail anything; but don't forget the old _Lion_ is pretty smart. Is it likely they'll attempt the ship again?"

I negatived that at once. I explained to Sebright that the store of ammunition in Rio Medio would not run to it; that the _Lugarenos_ were cowardly, divided by faction, incapable, by themselves, of combining for any length of time, and still less of following a plan requiring perseverance and hardihood.

"They can't mean anything in the nature of open attack," I affirmed.

"They may have attempted something of the sort in Nichols' time, but it isn't in their nature."

Sebright said that was practically Castro's opinion, too--except that Castro had emphasized his remarks by spitting all the time, "like an old tomcat. He seems a very spiteful man, with no great love for you, Mr.

Kemp. Do you think it safe to have him about you? What are all these grievances of his?"

Castro seemed to have spouted his bile like a volcano, and had rather confused Sebright. He had said much about being a friend of the Spanish lord--Carlos; and that now he had no place on earth to hide his head.

"As far as I could make out, he's wanted in England," said Sebright, "for some matter of a stolen watch, years ago in Liverpool, I think. And your cousin, the grandee, was mixed up in that, too. That sounds funny; you didn't tell us about that. Damme if he didn't seem to imply that you, too... But you have never been in Liverpool. Of course not...."

But that had not been precisely Castro's point. He had affirmed he had enemies in Spain; he shuddered at the idea of going to France, and now my English fancifulness had made it impossible for him to live in Rio Medio, where he had had the care of a good _pad-rona_.

"I suppose he means a landlady," Sebright chuckled. "Old but good, he says. He expected to die there in peace, a good Christian. And what's that about the priests getting hold of his very last bit of silver? I must say that sounded truest of all his rigmarole. For the salvation of his soul, I suppose?"

"No, my cousin's soul," I said gloomily.

"Humbugs. I only understood one word in three."

Just then Tomas himself stalked into sight among the men forward. Coming round the corner of the deck-house, he stopped at the galley door like a crow outside a hut, waiting. We watched him getting a light for his cigarette at the galley door with much dignified pantomime. The negro cook of the _Lion_, holding out to him in the doorway a live coal in a pair of tongs, turned his Ethiopian face and white ivories towards a group of sailors lost in the contemplation of the proceedings.' And, when Castro had pa.s.sed them, spurting jets of smoke, they swung about to look after his short figure, upon whose draped blackness the sunlight brought out reddish streaks as if bucketfuls of rusty water had been thrown over him from hat to toe. The end of his broken plume hung forward aggressively.

"Look how the fellow struts! Night and thunder! Hey, Don Tenebroso!

Would your worship hasten hither...." Sebright hailed jocularly.

Castro, without altering his pace, came up to us.

"What do you think of her now?" asked Sebright, pointing to the strange sail. "She's grown a bit plainer, now she is out of the glare."

Castro, wrapping his chin, stood still, face to the sea. After a long while:

"Malediction," he p.r.o.nounced slowly, and without moving his head shot a sidelong glance at me.

"It's clear enough how _he_ feels about our friends over there.

Malediction. Just so. Very proper. But it seems as though he had a bone to pick with all the world," drawled Sebright, a little sleepily.

Then, resuming his briskness, he bantered, "So you don't want to go to England, Mr. Castro? No friends there? _Sus. per col._, and that sort of thing?"

Castro, contemptuous, staring straight away, nodded impatiently.

"But this gentleman you are so devoted to is going to England--to his friends."

Castro's arms shook under the mantle falling all round him straight from the neck. His whole body seemed convulsed. From his puckered dark lips issued a fiendish and derisive squeal.

"Let his friends beware, then. _Por Dios!_ Let them beware. Let them pray and fast, and beg the intercession of the saints. Ha! ha! ha!..."

Nothing could have been more unlike his saturnine self-centred truculence of restraint. He impressed me; and even Sebright's steady, cool eyes grew perceptibly larger before this sarcastic fury. Castro choked; the rusty, black folds encircling him shook and heaved.

Unexpectedly he thrust out in front of the cloak one yellow, dirty little hand, side by side with the bright end of his fixed blade.

"What do I hear? To England! Going to England! Ha! Then let him hasten there straight! Let him go straight there, I say--I, Tomas Castro!"

He lowered his tone to impress us more, and the point of the knife, as it were an emphatic forefinger, tapped the open palm forcibly. Did we think that a man was not already riding along the coast to Havana on a fast mule?--the very best mule from the stables of Don Balthasar himself--that murdered saint. The Captain-General had no such mules.

His late excellency owned a sugar estate halfway between Rio Medio and Havana, and a relay of riding mules was kept there for quickness when His Excellency of holy memory found occasion to write his commands to the capital. The news of our escape would reach the _Juez_ next day at the latest. Manuel would take care of that--unless he were drowned. But he could swim like a fish. Malediction!

"I cried out to you to kill!" he addressed me directly; "with all my soul I cried. And why? Because he had seen you and the senorita, too, alas! He should have been made dumb--made dumb with your pistol, Senor, since those two stupid English mariners were too much for an old man like me. Manuel should have been made dumb--dumb forever, I say. What mattered he--that gutter-born offspring of an evil _Gitana_, whom I have seen, Senor! I, myself, have seen her in the days of my adversity in Madrid, Senor--a red flower behind the ear, clad in rags that did not cover all her naked skin, looking on while they fought for her with knives in a wine-shop full of beggars and thieves. Si, senor. That's his mother. _Improvisador--politico--capataz_. Ha.... Dirt!"

He made a gesture of immense contempt.

"What mattered he? The coach would have returned from the cathedral, and the Casa Riego could have been held for days--and who could have known you were not inside. I had conversed earnestly with Cesar the major-domo--an African, it is true, but a man of much character and excellent sagacity. Ah, Manuel! Manuel! If I------But the devil himself fathers the children of such mothers. I am no longer in possession of my first vigour, and you, Senor, have all the folly of your nation...."

He bared his grizzled head to me loftily.

"... And the courage! Doubtless, that is certain. It is well. You may want it all before long, Senor... And the courage!"

The broken plume swept the deck. For a time he blinked his creased, brown eyelids in the sun, then pulled his hat low down over his brows, and, wrapping himself up closely, turned away from me to look at the sail to leeward.

"What an old, old, wrinkled, little, puffy beggar he is!" observed Sebright, in an undertone...

"Well, and what is your worship's opinion as to the purpose of that schooner?"

Castro shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows?"... He released the gathered folds of his cloak, and moved off without a look at either of us.

"There he struts, with his wings drooping like a turkey-c.o.c.k gone into deep mourning," said Sebright. "Who knows? Ah, well, there's no hurry to know for a day or two. I don't think that craft could overhaul the Lion, if they tried ever so. They may manage to keep us in sight perhaps."

He yawned, and left me standing motionless, thinking of Seraphina. I longed to see her--to make sure, as if my belief in the possession of her had been inexplicably weakened. I was going to look at the door of her cabin. But when I got as far as the companion I had to stand aside for Mrs. Williams, who was coming up the winding stairs.

From above I saw the gray woollen shawl thrown over her narrow shoulders. Her parting made a broad line on her brown head. She mounted busily, holding up a little the front of her black, plain skirt. Her glance met mine with a pale, searching candour from below.

Overnight she had heard all my story. She had come out to the saloon whilst I had been giving it to Williams, and after saying rea.s.suringly, "The young lady, I am thankful, is asleep," she had sat with her eyes fixed upon my lips. I had been aware of her anxious face, and of the slight, nervous movements of her hands at certain portions of my narrative under the blazing lamps. We met now, for the first time, in the daylight.

Hastily, as if barring my road to Seraphina's cabin, "Miss Riego, I would have you know," she said, "is in good bodily health. I have this moment looked upon her again. The poor, superst.i.tious young lady is on her knees, crossing herself."

Mrs. Williams shuddered slightly. It was plain that the sight of that popish practice had given her a shock--almost a scare, as if she had seen a secret and nefarious rite. I explained that Seraphina, being a Catholic, worshipped as her lights enjoined, as we did after ours. Mrs.

Williams only sighed at this, and, making an effort, proposed that I should walk with her a little. We began to pace the p.o.o.p, she gliding with short steps at my side, and drawing close the skimpy shawl about her. The smooth bands of her hair put a shadow into the slight hollows of her temples. No nun, in the chilly meekness of the habit, had ever given me such a strong impression of poverty and renunciation.

But there was in that faded woman a warmth of sentiment. She flushed delicately whenever caught (and one could not help catching her continually) following her husband with eyes that had an expression of maternal uneasiness and the captivated attention of a bride. And after she had got over the idea that I, as a member of the male British aristocracy, was dissolute--it was an article of faith with her--that warmth of sentiment would bring a faint, sympathetic rosiness to her sunken cheeks.

She said suddenly and trembling, "Oh, young sir, reflect upon these things before it is too late. You young men, in your luxurious, worldly, ungoverned lives..."

I shall never forget that first talk with her on the p.o.o.p--her hurried, nervous voice (for she was a timid woman, speaking from a sense of duty), and the extravagant forms her ignorance took. With the emotions of the past night still throbbing in my brain and heart, with the sight of the sea and the coast, with the Rio Medio schooner hanging on our quarter, I listened to her, and had a hard task to believe my ears.

She was so convinced that I was "dissolute," because of my cla.s.s--as an earl's grandson.

It is difficult to imagine how she arrived at the conviction; it must have been from pulpit denunciations of the small Bethel on the outskirt of Bristol. Her uncle, J. Perkins, was a great ruffian, certainly, and Williams was dissolute enough, if one wished to call his festive imbecilities by a hard name. But these two could, by no means, be said to belong to the upper cla.s.ses. And these two, apart from her favourite preacher, were the only two men of whom she could be said to have more than a visual knowledge.