Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories Part 5

"I knew him in his own country--in America; and then in Cuba--"

Miss Cheyne ceased stirring her coffee suddenly, as if she had come against some object in the cup. A keen observer might have guessed that she had become interested at that moment in this idle tale.

"Ah! You know Cuba?" she said, indifferently interrogative.

"If I know Cuba?" he laughed, and spread out his hands in mute appeal to the G.o.ds. "If I know Cuba! When Cuba is an independent republic, Senorita--when the history of all this trouble comes to be written, you will find two names mentioned in its pages. The one name is Antonio.

When you are an old woman, Senorita, you can tell your children--or perhaps your grandchildren, if the good G.o.d is kind to you--that you once knew Antonio, and took a cup of coffee with him. But you must not say it now--never--never. And the other name is Mateo. You can tell your children, Senorita, when your hair is white, that you once spoke to a man who was a friend to this Mateo."

He finished with his gay laugh, as if he were fully alive to his own fine conceit, and begged indulgence.

"He has been here--sitting where you sit now," he continued, with impressive gravity. "He came to me: 'Antonio,' he said, 'There are five thousand men out there who want you.' 'Amigo,' replied I, 'there is one woman here who does the same'--and I bowed, and Mateo went away without me. I thought he had gone back there to conduct affairs--to fight in his careless way, with his tongue in his cheek, as it were. He did all with his tongue in his cheek--that queer Mateo. And then came a message from Barcelona, saying that he wanted me. Name of a dog, I went--for his letter was unmistakable. He had, it appeared, had an accident. I found him with his arm in a sling. He had been cared for in the house of an Englishwoman--so much he told--but I guessed more. This Englishwoman--well, he said so little about her, that I could only conclude one thing. You know, Senorita--when a man will not talk of a woman--well, it a.s.suredly means something. But there was, it appears, another man--this man, I grind my teeth to tell you of it--he was a priest. One Bernaldez, whom we had both known in Cuba. He had, it appears, come over to Spain in ordinary dress; for he was too well known to travel as Bernaldez, the priest. He was a fine man--so much I will say for him. The Englishwoman was, no doubt, beautiful. Bernaldez met her. She did not know that he was a priest."

Antonio paused, shrugged his shoulders and spread out his arms.

"The devil did the rest, Senorita. And she? Did she care for him?

Ah--one never knows with women."

"Perhaps they do not always know themselves," suggested Miss Cheyne, without meeting her companion's eyes.

"Perhaps that is so, Senorita. At all events, Mateo went to these two, when they were together. Mateo was always quick and very calm. He faced Bernaldez, and he told the woman. Then he left them. And I found him in Barcelona, two days afterwards, living at the Hotel of the Four Nations, like one in his sleep. 'If Bernaldez wants me,' he said, 'he knows where to find me.' And the next day Bernaldez came to us, where we sat in front of the Cafe of the Liceo on the Rambla. 'Mateo,' he said, 'you will have to fight me.' And Mateo nodded his head. 'With the revolver.'

Mateo looked up with his dry smile. 'I will take you at that game,'

he said, 'for nuts'--in the American fashion, Senorita--one of their strange sad jokes. Then Bernaldez sat down--his eyes were hollow; he spoke like one who has been down to the bottom of misery. 'I know a place,' he said, 'that will suit our purpose. It is among the mountains, on the borders of Andorra. You take the train from Barcelona to Berga, the diligencia from Berga to Organa. Between Organa and La Seo de Urgel is a bridge called La Puente del Diabolo. I will meet you at this bridge on foot on Thursday morning at nine o'clock. We can walk up into the mountains together. I shall bring a small travelling clock with me. We shall stand it on the ground between us, and when it strikes, we fire.'"

Antonio had, in the heat of his narrative, leant forward across the table. With quick gestures he described the whole scene, so that Miss Cheyne could see it as it had pa.s.sed before his eyes.

"There is a madness, Senorita," he went on, "which shows itself by a thirst for blood. I looked at Bernaldez. He was sane enough, but I think the man's heart was broken. 'It is well,' said Mateo; 'I am your man--at the Puente del Diabolo at nine o'clock on Thursday morning.' And mind you, Senorita, these were not Italians or Greeks--they were a Spaniard and an American--men who mean what they say, whether it be pleasant or the reverse."

Miss Cheyne was interested enough now. She sat, leaning one arm on the table, and her chin in the palm of her hand. She held her lip with her teeth, and watched the man's quick expressive face.

"We were there at nine o'clock," he went on, "that Mateo, with his arm in a sling. We had pa.s.sed the night at the hotel of the Libertad at Organa, where we both slept well enough. What will you?--when one is no longer young, the pulse is slow. The morning mist had descended the mountain side, the air was cold. There at the Puente, leaning against the wall, cloaked and quiet--was Bernaldez. 'Ah!' he said to me, 'you have come, too?' 'Yes, Amigo,' I answered, 'but I do not give the word for two friends to let go at each other. Your little clock can do that.'

He nodded and said nothing. Senorita, I was sorry for the man. Who was I that I should judge? You remember, you, who read your Bible, the writing on the ground? Bernaldez led the way, and we climbed up into the mountains in the morning mist. Somewhere above us there was a little waterfall singing its eternal song. In the cloud, where we could not see him, a curlew hung on his heavy wings, and gave forth his low warning whistle. 'Have a care--have a care,' he seemed to cry. Presently Bernaldez stopped, and looked around him. It was a desolate place. 'This will do,' he said. 'And he who drops may be left here. The other may turn on his heel, say "A Dios," and go in safety. 'Yes,' answered Mateo.

'This will do as well as any other place.' Bernaldez looked at him, with a laugh. 'Ah,' he said, 'you think that you are sure to kill me--but I shall, at all events, have a shot for my money. Who knows? I may kill you.' 'That is quite possible,' answered Mateo. Bernaldez threw back his cloak. He carried the little travelling clock in one hand--a gilt thing made in Paris. 'We will stand it here,' he said, 'on a rock between us.' We were in a little hollow far up the mountain side, and the mist wrapped us round like a cloak. I know these mountains, Senorita, for it was here that the fiercest of the fighting in the last Carlist War took place. There are many dead up there even now, who have never been found.

I also was in that trouble--ah, no, I was not always an innkeeper!"

"Go on with your story," said Miss Cheyne, curtly, and closed her teeth over her lower lip again.

"We stood there, then, and watched Bernaldez take the clock from its case. He held it to his ear to make sure that it was going. It seemed to me that it ticked as loud up there as a clock ticks in a room at night.

Bernaldez set forward the hands till they stood at five minutes to eleven. 'The eleventh hour,' said Mateo, with his dry laugh. Bernaldez set the clock down again. He took off his hat and threw it down to mark the ground. 'Ten paces,' he said, and, turning on his heel, counted aloud. I looked half-instinctively at his bared head. The tonsure was still visible to any who sought it; for it was but half-grown over.

Mateo counted his steps and then turned. The clock gave a little tick, as such clocks do, four minutes before they strike. It seemed to me to hurry its pace as we three stood listening in that silence. We could hear the whisper of the clouds as they hurried through the mountains.

The clock gave another click, and the two men raised their pistols of a similar pattern. The little gong rang out, and immediately after two shots, one following the other. Bernaldez had fired first. Mateo--a man with a reputation to care for--took a moment longer for his aim. I heard Bernaldez's bullet sing past his ear like a mosquito. Bernaldez fell forward--thus, on his arm--and the clock had not ceased striking when we stood over him; and Mateo had held the pistol in his left hand."

The narrator finished abruptly with a quick gesture. All through his story he had added a vividness to his description by quick movements of the hand and head, by his flashing eyes, his southern fire, so that his hearer could see the scene as he had seen it; could feel the stillness of the mountains; could hear the whisper of the clouds; could see the two men facing each other in the mist. With a gesture he showed her how Bernaldez lay, on his face on the wet stones, with a half-concealed tonsure, turned towards heaven in mute appeal, awaiting the last great hearing of his case in that Court where there is no appeal.

"And there we left him, Senorita," added Antonio, shortly.

He rose, walked away from her to the edge of the great slope, and stood looking down into the valley that lay shimmering below him. After a time he came back slowly. In his simplicity he was not ashamed of dimmed eyes.

"I tell you this, Senorita," he said with a laugh, "because you are an Englishwoman, and because this Mateo was my friend. He is an American.

His name is Whittaker--Matthew S. Whittaker. And this afternoon I was reminded of him; I know not why. Perhaps it was something that I said myself, or some gesture that I made, which I had caught from him. If one thinks much about a person, one may catch his gestures or his manner: is it not so? And then you reminded me of him a second time. That was strange."

"Yes," said Miss Cheyne, thoughtfully; "that was strange."

"He went to Cuba again at once, Senorita; that was a year ago. And I have never heard from him. If, as the peasants say, the mind of a friend has wings, perhaps Mateo's mind has flown on to tell me that he is coming. He said he would come back."

"Why was he coming back?" asked Miss Cheyne.

"I do not know, Senorita."

Miss Cheyne had risen, and was making ready to depart. Her gloves and riding-whip lay on the table. The afternoon was far spent, and already the shadows were lengthening on the mountain-side. She paid the trifling account, Antonio taking the money with such a deep bow that the smallness of the coin was quite atoned for. He brought her horse from the stable.

"The horse and the Senorita are both tired," he said, with his pleasant laugh. And, indeed, Miss Cheyne looked suddenly weary. "It is not right that you should go by the mountain path," he added. "It is so easy to lose the way. Besides, a lady alone--it is not done in Spain."

"No; but in England women are learning to take care of themselves,"

laughed Miss Cheyne.

She placed her foot within his curved hands, and he lifted her to the saddle. All her movements were easy and independent. It seemed that she only stated a fact, and the man shook his head forebodingly. He belonged to a country which in some ways is a century behind England and America.

She nodded a farewell, and turned the horse's head towards the mountain path.

"I shall find my way," she said. "Never fear."

"Only by good fortune," he answered, with a shake of the head.

The sun had almost set when she reached Palma. At the hotel her lawyer, who had made the voyage from Barcelona with her, awaited her with impatience, while her maid leant idly from the window. In the evening she went abroad again, alone, in her independent way. She walked slowly on the Cathedral terrace, where priests lingered, and a few soldiers from the neighbouring barracks smoked a leisurely cigarette. All turned at intervals, and looked in the same direction--namely, towards the west, where the daylight yet lingered in the sky. The moon, huge and yellow, was rising over the mountains, above Manacor, at the eastern end of the island. One by one the idlers dropped away, moving with leisurely steps towards the town. In very idleness Miss Cheyne followed them. She knew that they were going to the harbour in antic.i.p.ation of the arrival of the Barcelona steamer. She was on the pier with the others, when the boat came alongside. The pa.s.sengers trooped off, waving salutations to their friends. One among them, a small-made, frail man, detached himself from the crowd, and made his way towards Miss Cheyne, as if this meeting had been prearranged--and who shall say that it was not?--by the dim decrees of Fate.

IN A CROOKED WAY

"And let the counsel of thine own heart stand."

It was almost dark, and the Walkham River is much overhung in the parts that lie between Horrabridge and the old brickworks.

In the bed of the river a man stumbled heavily along, trusting more to his knowledge of the river than to his eyesight. He was fishing dexterously with flies that were almost white--flies which seemed to suit admirably the taste of those small brown trout which never have the sense to leave alone the fare provided for their larger white brethren.

Suddenly he hooked a larger fish, and, not daring to step back beneath the overhanging oak, he proceeded to tire his fish out in the deep water. In ten minutes he brought it to the landing-net, and as he turned to open his creel his heart leapt in his breast. A man was standing in the water not two feet behind him.

"Holloa," he gasped.

"I won't insult you by telling you not to be frightened," said the voice of a gentleman. There was no mistaking it. The speaker stood quite still, with the water bubbling round his legs. He was hatless, and his hair was cut quite short.

A thought flashed across the fisherman's slow brain. Like the rest of his craft, he was slower of mind than of hand.

"Yes," said the other, divining his thoughts, "I'm from Dartmoor. You probably heard of my escape two days ago."

"Yes," replied the other, quietly, while he wound in his line. "I heard of it."

"And where do they say I am?"