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"Father!"

The priest, dropping on one knee, sustained the silvery head, with its
thin features already calm in death. Don Balthasar had saved my life;
and his daughter flung herself upon the body. O'Brien pressed his hands
to his temples, and remained motionless.

I saw the bishop, in his stiff cope, creep up to the group with the
motion of a tortoise. And, for a moment, his quavering voice pronouncing
the absolution was the only sound in the house.

Then a most fiendish noise broke out below. The negroes had charged, and
the _Lugarenos_, struck with terror at the unforeseen catastrophe, were
rushing helter-skelter through the gate. The screaming of the maids was
frightful. They ran up and down the galleries with their hair streaming.
O'Brien passed me by swiftly, muttering like a madman.

I, also, got down into the courtyard in time to strike some heavy blows
under the gateway; but I don't know who it was that thrust into my hands
the musket which I used as a club. The sudden burst of shrieks,
the cries of terror under the vault of the gate, yells of rage and
consternation, silenced the mob outside. The _Lugarenos_, appalled at
what had happened, shouted most pitifully. They squeaked like the vermin
they were. I brought down the clubbed musket; two went down. Of two I am
sure. The rush of flying feet swept through between the walls, bearing
me along. For a time a black stream of men eddied in the moonlight round
the bishop's coach, like a torrent breaking round a boulder. The great
heavy machine rocked, mules plunged, torches swayed.

The archway had been cleared. Outside, the slaves were forming in the
open space before the Casa, while Cesar, with a few others, laboured
to swing the heavy gates to. Hats, torn cloaks, knives strewed the
flagstones, and the dim light of the lamps, fastened high up on the
walls, fell on the faces of three men stretched out on their backs.
Another, lying huddled up in a heap, got up suddenly and rushed out.

The thought of Seraphina clinging to the lifeless body of her father
upstairs came to me; it came over me in horror, and I let the musket
fall out of my hand. A silence like the silence of despair reigned in
the house. She would hate me now. I felt as if I could walk out and give
myself up, had it not been for the sight of O'Brien.

He was leaning his shoulders against the wall in the posture of a man
suddenly overcome by a deadly disease. No one was looking at us. It came
to me that he could not have many illusions left to him now. He looked
up wearily, saw me, and, waking up at once, thrust his hands into the
pockets of his breeches. I thought of his pistol. No wild hope of love
would prevent him, now, from killing me outright. The fatal shot that
had put an end to Don Balthasar's life must have brought to him an
awakening worse than death. I made one stride, caught him by both arms
swiftly, and pinned him to the wall with all my strength. We struggled
in silence.

I found him much more vigorous than I had expected; but, at the same
time, I felt at once that I was more than a match for him. We did not
say a word. We made no noise. But, in our struggle, we got away from the
wall into the middle of the gateway I dared not let go of his arms to
take him by the throat. He only tried to jerk and wrench himself away.
Had he succeeded, it would have been death for me. We never moved our
feet from the spot, fairly in the middle of the archway but nearer to
the gate than to the _patio_. The slaves, formed outside, guarded the
bishop's coach, and I do not know that there was anybody else actually
with us under the vault of the entrance. We glared into each other's
faces, and the world seemed very still around us. I felt in me a
passion--not of hate, but of determination to be done with him; and from
his face it was impossible to guess his suffering, his despair, or his
rage.

In the midst of our straining I heard a sibilant sound. I detached my
eyes from his; his struggles redoubled, and, behind him, stealing in
towards us from the court, black on the strip of crimson cloth, I saw
Tomas Castro. He flung his cloak back. The light of the lanthorn under
the keystone of the arch glimmered feebly on the blade of his maimed
arm. He made a discreet and bloodcurdling gesture to me with the other.

How could I hold a man so that he should be stabbed from behind in my
arms? Castro was running up swiftly, his cloak opening like a pair of
sable wings. Collecting all my strength, I forced O'Brien round, and
we swung about in a flash. Now he had his back to the gate. My effort
seemed to have uprooted him. I felt him give way all over.

As soon as our position had changed, Castro checked himself, and stepped
aside into the shadow of the guardroom doorway. I don't think O'Brien
had been aware of what had been going on. His strength was overborne
by mine. I drove him backwards. His eyes blinked wildly. He bared his
teeth. He resisted, as though I had been forcing him over the brink of
perdition. His feet clung to the flagstones. I shook him till his head
rolled.

"Viper brood!" he spluttered.

"Out you go!" I hissed.

I had found nothing heroic, nothing romantic to say--nothing that would
express my desperate resolve to rid the world of his presence. All I
could do was to fling him out. The Casa Riego was all my world--a World
full of great pain, great mourning, and love. I saw him pitch headlong
under the wheels of the bishop's enormous carriage. The black coachman
who had sat aloft, unmoved through all the tumult, in his white
stockings and three-cornered hat, glanced down from his high box. And
the two parts of the gate came together with a clang of ironwork and a
heavy crash that seemed as loud as thunder under that vault.




CHAPTER SIX

Not even in memory am I willing to live over again those three days when
Father Antonio, the old major-domo, and myself would meet each other
in the galleries, in the _patio_, in the empty rooms, moving in the
stillness of the house with heavy hearts and desolate eyes, which seemed
to demand, "What is there to do?"

Of course, precautions were taken against the Lugarenos. They were
besieging the Casa from afar. They had established a sort of camp at the
end of the street, and they prowled about amongst the old, barricaded
houses in their pointed hats, in their rags and finery; women, with
food, passed constantly between the villages and the panic-stricken
town; there were groups on the beach; and one of the schooners had been
towed down the bay, and was lying, now, moored stem and stern opposite
the great gate. They did nothing whatever active against us. They lay
around and watched, as if in pursuance of a plan traced by a superior
authority. They were watching for me. But when, by some mischance, they
burnt the roof off the outbuildings that were at some distance from the
Casa, their chiefs sent up a deputation of three, with apologies.
Those men came unarmed, and, as it were, under Castro's protection,
and absolutely whimpered with regrets before Father Antonio. "Would his
reverence kindly intercede with the most noble senorita?..."

"Silence! Dare not pronounce her name!" thundered the good priest,
snatching away his hand, which they attempted to grab and kiss.

I, in the background, noted their black looks at me even as they
cringed. The man who had fired the shot, they said, had expired of his
wounds after great torments. Their other dead had been thrust out of
the gate before. A long fellow, with slanting eyebrows and a scar on his
cheek, called El Rechado, tried to inform Cesar, confidentially, that
Manuel, his friend, had been opposed to any encroachment of the Casa's
offices, only: "That Domingo------"

As soon as we discovered what was their object (their apparent object,
at any rate), they were pushed out of the gate unceremoniously,--still
protesting their love and respect--by the Riego negroes. Castro followed
them out again, after exchanging a meaning look with Father Antonio. To
live in the two camps, as it were, was a triumph of Castro's diplomacy,
of his saturnine mysteriousness. He kept us in touch with the outer
world, coming in under all sorts of pretences, mostly with messages from
the bishop, or escorting the priests that came in relays to pray by the
bodies of the two last Riegos lying in state, side by side, rigid in
black velvet and white lace ruffles, on the great bed dragged out into
the middle of the room.

Two enormous wax torches in iron stands flamed and guttered at the door;
a black cloth draped the emblazoned shields; and the wind from the sea,
blowing through the open casement, inclined all together the flames of
a hundred candles, pale in the sunlight, extremely ardent in the night.
The murmur of prayers for these souls went on incessantly; I have it in
my ears now. There would be always some figure of the household kneeling
in prayer at the door; or the old major-domo would come in to stand at
the foot, motionless for a time; or, through the open door, I would see
the cassock of Father Antonio, flung on his knees, with his forehead
resting on the edge of the bed, his hands clasped above his tonsure.

Apart from what was necessary for defence, all the life of the house
seemed stopped. Not a woman appeared; all the doors were closed; and
the numbing desolation of a great bereavement was symbolized by Don
Bal-thasar's chair in the _patio_, which had remained lying overturned
in full view of every part of the house, till I could bear the sight
no longer, and asked Cesar to have it put away. "_Si, Senor_," he said
deferentially, and a few tears ran suddenly down his withered cheeks.
The English flowers had been trampled down; an unclean hat floated on
the basin, now here, now there, frightening the goldfish from one side
to the other.

And Seraphina. It seems not fitting that I should write of her in these
days. I hardly dared let my thoughts approach her, but I had to think of
her all the time. Her sorrow was the very soul of the house.

Shortly after I had thrown O'Brien out the bishop had left, and then I
learned from Father Antonio that Seraphina had been carried away to her
own apartments in a fainting condition. The excellent man was almost
incoherent with distress and trouble of mind, and walked up and down,
his big head drooping on his capacious chest, the joints of his entwined
fingers cracking. I had met him in the gallery, as I was making my way
back to Carlos' room in anxiety and fear, and we had stepped aside into
a large saloon, seldom used, above the gateway. I shall never forget
the restless, swift pacing of that burly figure, while, feeling utterly
crushed, now the excitement was over, I leaned against a console. Three
long bands of moonlight fell, chilly bluish, into the vast room, with
its French Empire furniture stiffly arranged about the white walls.

"And that man?" he asked me at last.

"I could have killed him with my own hands," I said. "I was the
stronger. He had his pistols on him, I am certain, only I could not be a
party to an assassination...."

"Oh, my son, it would have been no sin to have exerted the strength
which God had blessed you with," he interrupted. "We are allowed to kill
venomous snakes, wild beasts; we are given our strength for that, our
intelligence...." And all the time he walked about, wringing his hands.

"Yes, your reverence," I said, feeling the most miserable and helpless
of lovers on earth; "but there was no time. If I had not thrown him out,
Castro would have stabbed him in the back in my very hands. And that
would have been------" Words failed me.

I had been obliged not only to desist myself, but to save his life from
Castro. I had been obliged! There had been no option. Murderous enemy as
he was, it seemed to me I should never have slept a wink all the rest of
my life.

"Yes, it is just, it is just. What else? Alas!" Father Antonio repeated
disconnectedly. "Those feelings implanted in your breast----I have
served my king, as you know, in my sacred calling, but in the midst of
war, which is the outcome of the wickedness natural to our fallen state.
I understand; I understand. It may be that God, in his mercy, did not
wish the death of that evil man--not yet, perhaps. Let us submit. He
may repent." He snuffled aloud. "I think of that poor child," he said
through his handkerchief. Then, pressing my arm with his vigorous
fingers, he murmured, "I fear for her reason."

It may be imagined in what state I spent the rest of that sleepless
night. At times, the thought that I was the cause of her bereavement
nearly drove me mad.

And there was the danger, too.

But what else could I have done? My whole soul had recoiled from the
horrible help Castro was bringing us at the point of his blade. No love
could demand from me such a sacrifice.

Next day Father Antonio was calmer. To my trembling inquiries he said
something consolatory as to the blessed relief of tears. When not
praying fervently in the mortuary chamber, he could be seen pacing the
gallery in a severe aloofness of meditation. In the evening he took
me by the arm, and, without a word, led me up a narrow and winding
staircase. He pushed a small door, and we stepped out on a flat part of
the roof, flooded in moonlight.

The points of land dark with the shadows of trees and broken ground
clasped the waters of the bay, with a body of shining white mists in
the centre; and, beyond, the vast level of the open sea, touched with
glitter, appeared infinitely sombre under the luminous sky.

We stood back from the parapet, and Father Antonio threw out a thick arm
at the splendid trail of the moon upon the dark water.

"This is the only way," he said.

He had a warm heart under his black robe, a simple and courageous
comprehension of life, this priest who was very much of a man; a certain
grandeur of resolution when it was a matter of what he regarded as his
principal office.

"This is the way," he repeated.

Never before had I been struck so much by the gloom, the vastness,
the emptiness of the open sea, as on that moonlight night. And Father
Antonio's deep voice went on:

"My son, since God has made use of the nobility of your heart to save
that sinner from an unshriven death------"

He paused to mutter, "Inscrutable! inscrutable!" to himself, sighed, and
then:

"Let us rejoice," he continued, with a completely unconcealed
resignation, "that you have been the chosen instrument to afford him an
opportunity to repent."

His tone changed suddenly.

"He will never repent," he said with great force. "He has sold his
soul and body to the devil, like those magicians of old of whom we have
records."

He clicked his tongue with compunction, and regretted his want of
charity. It was proper for me, however, as a man having to deal with a
world of wickedness and error, to act as though I did not believe in his
repentance.

"The hardness of the human heart is incredible; I have seen the most
appalling examples." And the priest meditated. "He is not a common
criminal, however," he added profoundly.

It was true. He was a man of illusions, ministering to passions
that uplifted him above the fear of consequences, Young as I was, I
understood that, too. There was no safety for us in Cuba while he lived.
Father Antonio nodded dismally.

"Where to go?" I asked. "Where to turn? Whom can we trust? In whom can
we repose the slightest confidence? Where can we look for hope?"

Again the _padre_ pointed to the sea. The hopeless aspect of its moonlit
and darkling calm struck me so forcibly that I did not even ask how he
proposed to get us out there. I only made a gesture of discouragement.
Outside the Casa, my life was not worth ten minutes' purchase. And how
could I risk her there? How could I propose to her to follow me to an
almost certain death? What could be the issue of such an adventure?
How could we hope to devise such secret means of getting away as would
prevent the _Lugarenos_ pursuing us? I should perish, then, and she...

Father Antonio seemed to lose his self-control suddenly.

"Yes," he cried. "The sea is a perfidious element, but what is it to
the blind malevolence of men?" He gripped my shoulder. "The risk to her
life," he cried; "the risk of drowning, of hunger, of thirst--that is
all the sea can do. I do not think of that. I love her too much. She
is my very own spiritual child; and I tell you, Senor, that the unholy
intrigue of that man endangers not her happiness, not her fortune
alone--it endangers her innocent soul itself."

A profound silence ensued. I remembered that his business was to save
souls. This old man loved that young girl whom he had watched growing
up, defenceless in her own home; he loved her with a great strength of
paternal instinct that no vow of celibacy can extinguish, and with a
heroic sense of his priestly duty. And I was not to say him nay. The
sea--so be it. It was easier to think of her dead than to think of her
immured; it was better that she should be the victim of the sea than of
evil men; that she should be lost with me than to me.

Father Antonio, with that naive sense of the poetry of the sky he
possessed, apostrophized the moon, the "gentle orb," as he called it,
which ought to be weary of looking at the miseries of the earth. His
immense shadow on the leads seemed to fling two vast fists over the
parapet, as if to strike at the enemies below, and without discussing
any specific plan we descended. It was understood that Seraphina and I
should try to escape--I won't say by sea, but to the sea. At best, to
ask the charitable help of some passing ship, at worst to go out of the
world together.

I had her confidence. I will not tell of my interview with her; but I
shall never forget my sensations of awe, as if entering a temple, the
melancholy and soothing intimacy of our meeting, the dimly lit loftiness
of the room, the vague form of La Chica in the background, and the
frail, girlish figure in black with a very pale, delicate face. Father
Antonio was the only other person present, and chided her for giving way
to grief. "It is like rebellion--like rebellion," he denounced, turning
away his head to wipe a tear hastily; and I wondered and thanked God
that I should be a comfort to that tender young girl, whose lot on earth
had been difficult, whose sorrow was great but could not overwhelm her
indomitable spirit, which held a promise of sweetness and love.

Her courage was manifest to me in the gentle and sad tones of her voice.
I made her sit in a vast armchair of tapestry, in which she looked
lost like a little child, and I took a stool at her feet. This is an
unforgettable hour in my life in which not a word of love was spoken,
which is not to be written of. The burly shadow of the priest lay
motionless from the window right across the room; the flickering flame
of a silver lamp made an unsteady white circle of light on the lofty
ceiling above her head. A clock was beating gravely somewhere in the
distant gloom, like the unperturbed heart of that silence, in which our
understanding of each other was growing, even into a strength fit to
withstand every tempest.

"Escape by the sea," I said aloud. "It would be, at least, like two
lovers leaping hand in hand off a high rock, and nothing else."

Father Antonio's bass voice spoke behind us.

"It is better to jeopardize the sinful body that returns to the dust of
which it is made than the redeemed soul, whose awful lot is eternity.
Reflect."

Seraphina hung her head, but her hand did not tremble in mine.

"My daughter," the old man continued, "you have to confide your fate to
a noble youth of elevated sentiments, and of a truly chivalrous
heart...."

"I trust him," said Seraphina.

And, as I heard her say this, it seemed really to me as if, in very
truth, my sentiments were noble and my heart chivalrous. Such is the
power of a girl's voice. The door closed on us, and I felt very humble.

But in the gallery Father Antonio leaned heavily on my shoulder.

"I shall be a lonely old man," he whispered faintly. "After all these
years! Two great nobles; the end of a great house--a child I had seen
grow up.... But I am less afraid for her now."

I shall not relate all the plans we made and rejected. Everything seemed
impossible. We knew from Castro that O'Brien had gone to Havana, either
to take the news of Don Balthasar's death himself, or else to prevent
the news spreading there too soon. Whatever his motive for leaving Rio
Medio, he had left orders that the house should be respected under the
most awful penalties, and that it should be watched so that no one left
it. The Englishman was to be killed at sight. Not a hair on anybody
else's head was to be touched.

To escape seemed impossible; then on the third day the thing came to
pass. The way was found. Castro, who served me as if Carlos' soul had
passed into my body, but looked at me with a saturnine disdain, had
arranged it all with Father Antonio.

It was the day of the burial of Carlos and Don Balthasar. That same day
Castro had heard that a ship had been seen becalmed a long way out to
sea. It was a great opportunity; and the funeral procession would give
the occasion for my escape. There was in Rio Medio, as in all Spanish
towns amongst the respectable part of the population, a confraternity
for burying the dead, "The Brothers of Pity," who, clothed in black
robes and cowls, with only two holes for the eyes, carried the dead to
their resting-place, unrecognizable and unrecognized in that pious work.
A "Brother of Pity" dress would be brought for me into Father Antonio's
room. Castro was confident as to his ability of getting a boat. It would
be a very small and dangerous one, but what would I have, if I neither
killed my enemy, nor let any one else kill him for me, he commented with
sombre sarcasm.

A truce of God had been called, and the burial was to take place in the
evening when the mortal remains of the last of the Riegos would be
laid in the vault of the cathedral of what had been known as their
own province, and had, in fact, been so for a time under a grant from
Charles V.

Early in the day I had a short interview with Seraphina. She was
resolute. Then, long before dark, I slipped into Father Antonio's room,
where I was to stay until the moment to come out and mingle with the
throng of other Brothers of Pity. Once with the bodies in the crypt of
the cathedral, I was to await Seraphina there, and, together, we should
slip through a side door on to the shore. Cesar, to throw any observer
off the scent (three _Lugarenos_ were to be admitted to see the bodies
put in their coffins), posted two of the Riego negroes with loaded
muskets on guard before the door of my empty room, as if to protect me.

Then, just as dusk fell, Father Antonio, who had been praying silently
in a corner, got up, blew his nose, sighed, and suddenly enfolded me in
his powerful arms for an instant.

"I am an old man--a poor priest," he whispered jerkily into my ear, "and
the sea is very perfidious. And yet it favours the sons of your nation.
But, remember--the child has no one but you. Spare her."

He went off; stopped. "Inscrutable! inscrutable!" he murmured, lifting
upwards his eyes. He raised his hand with a solemn slowness. "An old
man's blessing can do no harm," he said humbly. I bowed my head. My
heart was too full for speech, and the door closed. I never saw him
again, except later on in his surplice for a moment at the gate, his
great bass voice distinct in the chanting of the priests conducting the
bodies.

The _Lugarenos_ would respect the truce arranged by the bishop.

No man of them but the three had entered the Casa. Already, early in the
night, their black-haired women, with coarse faces and melancholy eyes,
were kneeling in rows under the black _mantillas_ on the stone floor of
the cathedral, praying for the repose of the soul of Seraphina's
father, of that old man who had lived among them, unapproachable, almost
invisible, and as if infinitely removed. They had venerated him, and
many of them had never set eyes on his person.

It strikes me, now, as strange and significant of a mysterious human
need, the need to look upwards towards a superiority inexpressibly
remote, the need of something to idealize in life. They had only that
and, maybe, a sort of love as idealized and as personal for the mother
of God, whom, also, they had never seen, to whom they trusted to save
them from a devil as real. And they had, moreover, a fear even more real
of O'Brien.

And, when one comes to think of it, in putting on the long spectacled
robe of a Brother of Pity, in walking before the staggering bearers
of the great coffin with a tall crucifix in my hand, in thus taking
advantage of their truce of God, I was, also, taking advantage of what
was undoubtedly their honour--a thing that handicapped them quite as
much as had mine when I found myself unable to strike down O'Brien. At
that time, I was a great deal too excited to consider this, however. I
had many things to think of, and the immense necessity of keeping a cool
head.

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