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J >> Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer >> Romance




"Do not look behind you. Do not look," Castro screeched.

The first downward steps were terrible, but as soon as our heads had
sunk below the level of the plain it was better, for we had turned about
to the rock, moving sideways, cautiously, one step at a time, as
if inspecting its fractured roughness for traces of a mysterious
inscription. Castro, with one end of the twisted cloak in his hand,
went first; I held the other; and between us, Seraphina, the rope at her
back, imitated our movements, with her loosened hair flying high in
the wind, and her pale, rigid head as if deaf to the crashes. I saw
the drawn stillness of her face, her dilated eyes staring within three
inches of the strata. The strain on our prudence was tremendous. The
knowledge of the precipice behind must have affected me. Explain it as
you will, several times during that descent I felt my brain slip away
from my control, and suggest a desire to fling myself over backwards.
The twigs of the bushes, growing a little below the outer edge of the
path, swished at my calves. Castro stopped. The cornice ended as a
broken stairway hangs upon nothing. A tall, narrow arch stood back in
the rock, with a sill three feet high at least. Castro clambered over;
his head and torso, when he turned about, were lighted up blindingly
between the inner walls at every flash. Seeing me lay hold of Seraphina,
he yelled:

"Senor, mind! It's death if you stagger back."

I lifted her up, and put her over like a child; and, no sooner in
myself, felt my strength leave all my limbs as water runs out of an
overturned vessel. I could not have lifted up a child's doll then.
Directly, with a wild little laugh, she said to me:

"Juan--I shall never dare come out."

I hugged her silently to my breast.

Castro went ahead. It was a narrow passage; our elbows touched the sides
all the way. He struck at his flint regularly, sparks streamed down from
his hand; we felt a freshness, a sense of space, as though we had come
into another world. His voice directed us to turn to the left, then
cried in the dark, "Stand still." A blue gleam darted after us, and
retired without having done anything against the tenebrous body of
gloom, and the thunder rolled far in, unobstructed, in leisurely,
organ-like peals, as if through an amazingly vast emptiness of a temple.
But where was Castro? We heard snappings, rustlings, mutters; sparks
streamed, now here, now there. We dared not move. There might have been
steep ridges--deep holes in that cavern. And suddenly we discovered him
on all-fours, puffing out his cheeks above a small flame kindled in a
heap of dry sticks and leaves.

It was an abode of darkness, enormous, without sonority. Feeble currents
of air, passing on our faces, gave us a feeling of being in the open air
on a night more black than any known night had been before. One's voice
lost itself in there without resonance, as if on a plain; the smoke of
our blaze drove aslant, scintillating with red sparks, and went trailing
afar, as if under the clouds of a starless sky. Ultimately, it must have
escaped through some imperceptible crevices in the roof of rock. In
one place, only, the light of the fire illuminated a small part of the
rugged wall, where the shadows of our bodies would surge up, repeating
our movements, and suddenly be gone from our sight. Everywhere else,
pressing upon the reflection of the flames, the blind darkness of the
vault might have extended away for miles and miles.

Castro thought it probable. He made me observe the incline of the floor.
It sloped down deep and far. For miles, no doubt. Nobody could tell;
no one had seen the end of it. This cavern had been known of old.
This brushwood, these dead leaves, that would make a couch for her
Excellency, had been stored for years--perhaps by men who had died
long ago. Look at the dry rot. These large piles of branches were found
stacked up when he first beheld this place. _Caramba!_ What toil! What
fatigue! Let us thank the saints, however.

Nevertheless, he shook his head at the strangeness of it. His cloak,
spread out wide, was drying in the light, while he busied himself with
his hat, turning it before the blaze in both hands, tenderly; and his
tight little figure, lit up in front from head to foot, steamed from
every limb. His round, plump shoulders and gray-shock head smoked
quietly at the top. Suddenly, the fine mesh of wrinkles on his face ran
together, shrinking like a torn cobweb; a spasmodic sound, quite new to
me, was heard. He had laughed.

The warmth of the fire had penetrated our chilled bodies with a feeling
of comfort and repose. Williams' flask was empty; and this was a new
Castro, mellowed, discoursive, almost genial. It was obvious to me that,
had it not been for him, we two, lost and wandering in the storm, should
have died from exposure and exhaustion--from some accident, perhaps.
On the other hand I had indubitably saved his life, and he had already
thanked me in high-flown language; very grave, but exaggerating the
horrors of his danger, as a woman might have done for the better
expression of gratitude. He had been greatly shocked. Spaniards, as a
race, have never, for all their conquests, been on intimate terms with
the sea. As individuals I have often observed in them, especially in the
lower classes, a sort of dread, a dislike of salt water, mingled with
contempt and fear.

Castro, lifting up his right arm, protested that I had given a proof
of very noble devotion in rushing back for an old man into that black
water. Ough! He shuddered. He had given himself up--_por Dios!_ He
hinted that, at his age, he could not have cared much for life; but
then, drowning in the sea was a death abhorrent to an old Christian. You
died brutally--without absolution, and unable, even, to think of your
sins. He had had his mouth filled with horrid, bitter sand, too. Tfui!
He gave me a thousand thanks. But these English were wonderful in their
way.... Ah! _Caramba!_ They were....

A large protuberance of the rocky floor had been roughly chipped into
the semblance of a seat, God only knows by what hands and in what
forgotten age. Seraphina's inclined pose, her torn dress, the wet
tresses lying over her shoulders, her homeless aspect, made me think of
a beautiful and miserable gipsy girl drying her hair before a fire. A
little foot advanced, gleamed white on the instep in front of the ruddy
glare; her clasped fingers nursed one raised knee; and, shivering no
longer, her head drooping in still profile, she listened to us, frowning
thoughtfully upon the flames.

In the guise of a beggar-maid, and fair, like a fugitive princess of
romance, she sat concealed in the very heart of her dominions. This
cavern belonged to her, as Castro remarked, and the bay of the sea, and
the earth above our heads, the rolling upland, herds of cattle, fields
of sugar-cane--even as far as the forest away there; the forest itself,
too. And there were on that estate, alone, over two hundred Africans,
he was able to tell us. He boasted of the wealth of the Riegos. Her
Excellency, probably, did not know such details. Two hundred--certainly.
The estate of Don Vincente Salazar was on the other side of the river.
Don Vincente was at present suffering the indignity of a prison for
a small matter of a quarrel with another _caballero_--who had died
lately--and all, he understood, through the intrigues of the prior of
a certain convent; the uncle, they said, of the dead _caballero_. Bah!
There was something to get. These fat friars were like the lean wolves
of Russia--hungry for everything they could see. Never enough, _Cuerpo
de Bios!_ Never enough! Like their good friend who helped them in their
iniquities, the Juez O'Brien, who had been getting rich for years on the
sublime generosity of her Excellency's blessed father. In the greatness
of his nobility, Don Balthasar of holy memory had every right to be
obstinate.... _Basta!_ He would speak no more; only there is a saying in
Castile that fools and obstinate people make lawyers rich....

"_Vuestra Senoria_," he cried, checking himself, slapping his breast
penitently, "deign to forgive me. I have been greatly exalted by the
familiarity of the two last men of your house--allowed to speak freely
because of my fidelity.... Alas! Alas!"

Seraphina, on the other side of the fire, made a vague gesture, and took
her chin in her hand without looking at him.

"Patience," he mumbled to himself very audibly. "He is rich, this
picaro, O'Brien. But there is, also, a proverb--that no riches shall
avail in the day of vengeance."

Noticing that we had begun to whisper together, he threw himself before
the fire, and was silent.

"Promise me one thing, Juan," murmured Seraphina.

I was kneeling by the side of her seat.

"By all that's holy," I cried, "I shall force him to come out and fight
fair--and kill him as an English gentleman may."

"Not that! Not that!" she interrupted me. She did not mean me to do
that. It was what she feared. It would be delivering myself into that
man's hands. Did I think what that meant? It would be delivering her,
too, into that man's power. She would not survive it. And if I desired
her to live on, I must keep out of O'Brien's clutches.

"In my thoughts I have bound my life to yours, Juan, so fast that the
stroke which cuts yours, cuts mine, too. No death can separate us."

"No," I said.

And she took my head in her hands, and looked into my eyes.

"No more mourning," she whispered rapidly. "No more. I am too young to
have a lover's grave in my life--and too proud to submit...."

"Never," I protested ardently. "That couldn't be."

"Therefore look to it, Juan, that you do not sacrifice your life which
is mine, either to your love--or--or--to revenge." She bowed her head;
the falling hair concealed her face. "For it would be in vain."

"The cloak is perfectly dry now, Senorita," said Castro, reclining on
his elbow on the edge of the darkness.

We two stepped out towards the entrance, leaving her on her knees,
in silent prayer, with her hands clasped on her forehead, and leaning
against the rugged wall of rock. Outside, the earth, enveloped in fire
and uproar, seemed to have been given over to the fury of a devil.

Yes. She was right. O'Brien was a formidable and deadly enemy. I wished
ourselves on board the _Lion_ chaperoned by Mrs. Williams, and in the
middle of the Atlantic. Nothing could make us really safe from his
hatred but the vastness of the ocean. Meantime we had a shelter, for
that night, at least, in this cavern that seemed big enough to contain,
in its black gloom of a burial vault, all the dust and passions and
hates of a nation....

Afterwards Castro and I sat murmuring by the diminished fire. He had
much to say about the history of this cave. There was a tradition that
the ancient buccaneers had held their revels in it. The stone on which
the senorita had been sitting was supposed to have been the throne of
their chief. A ferocious band they were, without the fear of God or
devil--mostly English. The Rio Medio picaroons had used this cavern,
occasionally, up to a year or so ago. But there were always ugly affairs
with the people on the estate--the _vaqueros_. In his younger days Don
Balthasar, having whole leagues of grass land here, had introduced a
herd of cattle; then, as the Africans are useless for that work, he
had ordered some peons from Mexico to be brought over with their
families--ignorant men, who hardly knew how to make the sign of the
cross. The quarrels had been about the cattle, which the _Lugarenos_
killed for meat. The peons rode over them, and there were many wounds
on both sides. Then, the last time a Rio Medio schooner was lying here
(after looting a ship outside), there was some gambling going on (they
played round this very stone), and Manuel--(_Si, Senor_, this same
Manuel the singer--_Bestia!_)--in a dispute over the stakes, killed a
peon, striking him unexpectedly with a knife in the throat. No vengeance
was taken for this, because the _Lugarenos_ sailed away at once; but the
widow made a great noise, and some rumours came to the ears of Don
Balthasar himself--for he, Castro, had been honoured with a mission to
visit the estate. That was even the first occasion of Manuel's hate for
him--Castro. And, as usual, the Intendente after all settled the matter
as he liked, and nothing was done to Manuel. Don Balthasar was old, and,
besides, too great a noble to be troubled with the doings of such
vermin.... And Castro began to yawn.

At daybreak--he explained--he would start for the _hacienda_ early, and
return with mules for Seraphina and myself. The buildings of the estate
were nearly three leagues away. All this tract of the country on the
side of the sea was very deserted, the sugar-cane fields worked by the
slaves lying inland, beyond the habitations. Here, near the coast,
there were only the herds of cattle ranging the _savannas_ and the peons
looking after them, but even they sometimes did not come in sight of the
sea for weeks together. He had no fear of being seen by anybody on his
journey; we, also, could start without fear in daylight, as soon as he
brought the mules. For the rest, he would make proper arrangements for
secrecy with the husband of Seraphina's nurse--Enrico, he called him: a
silent Galician; a graybeard worthy of confidence.

One of his first cares had been to grub out of his soaked clothes
a handful of tobacco, and now he turned over the little drying heap
critically. He hunted up a fragment of maize leaf somewhere upon his
bosom. His face brightened. "_Bueno_," he muttered, very pleased.

"Senor--good-night," he said, more humanized than I had supposed
possible; or was it only that I was getting to know him better? "And
thanks. There's that in life which even an old tired man.... Here I,
Castro... old and sad, Senor. Yes, Senor--nothing of mine in all the
world--and yet.... But what a death! Ouch! the brute water... _Caramba!_
Altogether improper for a man who has escaped from a great many battles
and the winter of Russia.... The snow, Senor...."

He drowsed, garrulous, with the blackened end of his cigarette hanging
from his lower lip, swayed sideways--and let himself go over gently,
pillowing his head on the stump of his arm. The thin, viperish blade,
stuck upwards from under his temple, gleamed red before the sinking
fire.

I raised a handful of flaring twigs to look at Sera-phina. A terrible
night raged over the land; the inner arch of the opening growled,
winking bluishly time after time, and, like an enchanted princess
enveloped in a beggar's cloak, she was lying profoundly asleep in the
heart of her dominions.




CHAPTER EIGHT

The first thing I noted, on opening my eyes, was that Castro had
gone already; I was annoyed. He might have called me. However, we had
arranged everything the evening before. The broad day, penetrating
through the passage, diffused a semicircle of twilight over the
flooring. It extended as far as the emplacement of the fire, black and
cold now with a gray heap of ashes in the middle. Farther away in the
darkness, beyond the reach of light, Seraphina on her bed of leaves did
not stir. But what was that hat doing there? Castro's hat. It asserted
its existence more than it ever did on the head of its master; black and
rusty, like a battered cone of iron, reposing on a wide flange near the
ashes. Then he was not gone. He would not start to walk three leagues,
bare-headed. He would appear presently; and I waited, vexed at the loss
of time. But he did not appear. "Castro," I cried in an undertone. The
leaves rustled; Seraphina sat up.

We were pleased to be with each other in an inexpugnable retreat, to
hear our voices untinged by anxiety; and, going to the outer end of the
short passage, we breathed with joy the pure air. The tops of the bushes
below glittered with drops of rain, the sky was clear, and the sun, to
us invisible, struck full upon the face of the rock on the other side
of the ravine. A great bird soared, all was light and silence, and we
forgot Castro for a time. I threw my legs over the sill, and sitting on
the stone surveyed the cornice. The bright day robbed the ravine of half
its horrors. The path was rather broad, though there was a frightful
sheer drop of ninety feet at least. Two men could have walked abreast on
that ledge, and with a hand-rail one would have thought nothing of it.
The most dangerous part yet was at the entrance, where it ended in a
rounded projection not quite so wide as the rest. I bantered Seraphina
as to going out. She said she was ready. She would shut her eyes, and
take hold of my hand. Englishmen, she had heard, were good at climbing.
Their heads were steady. Then we became silent. There were no signs
of Castro. Where could he have gone? What could he be doing? It was
unimaginable.

I grew nervous with anxiety at last, and begged Seraphina to go in.
She obeyed without a word, and I remained just within the entrance,
watching. I had no means to tell the time, but it seemed to me that an
hour or two passed. Hadn't we better, I thought, start at once on foot
for the _hacienda?_ I did not know the way, but by descending the ravine
again to the sea, and walking along the bank of the little river, I was
sure to reach it. The objection to this was that we should miss Castro.
Hang Castro! And yet there was something mysterious and threatening in
his absence. Could he--could he have stepped out for some reason in the
dark, perhaps, and tumbled off the cornice? I had seen no traces of a
slip--there would be none on the rock; the twigs of the growth below the
edge would spring back, of course. But why should he fall? The footing
was good--however, a sudden attack of vertigo.... I tried to look at it
from every side. He was not a somnambulist, as far as I knew. And there
was nothing to eat--I felt hungry already--or drink. The want of water
would drive us out very soon to the spring bubbling out at the head
of the ravine, a mile in the open. Then why not go at once, drink, and
return to our lair as quickly as possible?

But I did not like to think of her going up and down the cornice. I
remembered that we had a flask, and went in hastily to look for it.
First, I looked near the hat; then, Seraphina and I, bent double with
our eyes on the ground examined every square inch of twilight; we even
wandered a long way into the darkness, feeling about with our hands.
It was useless! I called out to her, and then we desisted, and coming
together, wondered what might have become of the thing. He had taken
it--that was clear.

But if, as one might suppose, he had taken it away to get some water
for us, he ought to have been back long before. I was beginning to feel
rather alarmed, and I tried to consider what we had better do. It was
necessary to learn, first, what had become of him. Staring out of the
opening, in my perplexity, I saw, on the other side of the ravine, the
lower part of a man from his waist to his feet.

By crouching down at once, I brought his head into view. This was not
Castro. He wore a black sombrero, and on his shoulder carried a gun. He
turned his back on the ravine, and began to walk straight away, sinking
from my sight till only his hat and shoulders remained visible. He
lifted his arm then--straight up--evidently as a signal, and waited.
Presently another head and shoulders joined him, and they glided across
my line of sight together. But I had recognized their bandit-like aspect
with infinite consternation. _Lu-garenos!_

I caught Seraphina's hand. My first thought was that we should have to
steal out of the cavern with the first coming of darkness. Castro must
be lying low in hiding somewhere above. The thing was plain. We must try
to make our way to the _hacienda_ under the cover of the night, unseen
by those two men. Evidently they were emissaries sent from Rio Medio to
watch this part of the coast against our possible landing. I was to
be hunted down, it seems: and I reproached myself bitterly with the
hardships I was bringing upon her continually. Thinking of the fatigues
she had undergone--(I did not think of dangers--that was another
thing--the romance of dying together like all the lovers in the
tradition of the world)--I shook with rage and exasperation. The firm
pressure of her hands calmed me. She was content. But what if they took
it into their heads to come into the cavern?

The emptiness of the blue sky above the sheer yellow rock opposite was
frightful. It was a mere strip, stretched like a luminous bandage over
our eyes. They were, perhaps, even now on their way round the head of
the ravine. I had no weapon except the butt of my pistol. The charges
had been spoilt by the salt water, of course, and I had been tempted to
fling it out of my belt, but for the thought of obtaining some powder
somewhere. And those men I had seen were armed. At once we abandoned the
neighbourhood of the entrance, plunging straight away into the profound
obscurity of the cave. The rocky ground under our feet had a gentle
slope, then dipped so sharply as to surprise us; and the entrance,
diminishing at our backs, shone at last no larger than the entrance of
a mouse-hole. We made a few steps more, gropingly. The bead of
light disappeared altogether when we sat down, and we remained there
hand-in-hand and silent, like two frightened children placed at the
centre of the earth. There was not a sound, not a gleam. Sera-phina bore
the crushing strain of this perfect and black stillness in an almost
heroic immobility; but, as to me, it seemed to lie upon my limbs, to
embarrass my breathing like a numbness full of dread; and to shake that
feeling off I jumped up repeatedly to look at that luminous bead, that
point of light no bigger than a pearl in the infinity of darkness. And
once, just as I was looking, it shut and opened at me slowly, like the
deliberate drooping and rising of the lid upon a white eyeball.

Somebody had come in.

We watched side by side. Only one. Would he go out? The point of
light, like a white star setting in a coal-black firmament, remained
uneclipsed. Whoever had entered was in no haste to leave. Moreover, we
had no means of telling what another obscuring of the light might mean;
a departure or another arrival. There were two men about, as we knew;
and it was even possible that they had entered together in one wink
of the light, treading close upon each other's heels. We both felt the
sudden great desire to know for certain. But, especially, we needed to
find out if perchance this was not Castro who had returned. We could
not afford to lose his assistance. And should he conclude, we were
out--should he risk himself outside again, in order to find us and be
discovered himself, and thus lost to us when we felt him so necessary?
And the doubt came. If this man was Castro, why didn't he penetrate
further, and shout our names? He ought to have been intelligent enough
to guess.... And it was this doubt that, making suspense intolerable,
put us in motion.

We circled widely in that subterranean darkness, which, unlike the
darkest night on the surface of the earth, had no suggestion of shape,
no horizon, and seemed to have no more limit than the darkness of
infinite space. On this floor of solid rock we moved with noiseless
steps, like a pair of timid phantoms. The spot of light grew in size,
developed a shape--stretching from a pearly bead to a silvery thread;
and, approaching from the side, we scanned from afar the circumscribed
region of twilight about the opening. There was a man in it. We
contemplated for a time his rounded back, his drooping head. It was
gray. The man was Castro. He sat rocking himself sorrowfully over
the ashes. He was mourning for us. We were touched by this silent
faithfulness of grief.

He started when I put my hand on his shoulder, looked up, then, instead
of giving any signs of joy, dropped his head again.

"You managed to avoid them, Castro?" I said.

"Senor, behold. Here I am. I, Castro."

His tone was gloomy, and after sitting still for a while under our gaze,
he slapped his forehead violently. He was in his tantrums, I judged,
and, as usual, angry with me--the cause of every misfortune. He was
upset and annoyed beyond reason, as I thought, by this new difficulty.
It meant delay--a certain measure of that sort of danger of which we had
thought ourselves free for a time--night travelling for Seraphina. But
I had an idea to save her this. We did not all want to go. Castro could
start, alone, for the _hacienda_ after dark, and bring, besides the
mules, half a dozen peons with him for an escort. There was nothing
really to get so upset about. The danger would have been if he had let
himself be caught. But he had not. As to his temper, I knew my man;
he had been amiable too long. But by this time we were so sure of
his truculent devotion that Seraphina spoke gently to him, saying how
anxious we had been--how glad we were to see him safe with us....
He would not be conciliated easily, it seemed, and let out only a
blood-curdling dismal groan. Without looking at her, he tried hastily
to make a cigarette. He was very clever at it generally, rolling it
with one hand on his knee somehow; but this time all his limbs seemed
to shake, he lost several pinches of tobacco, dropped the piece of maize
leaf. Seraphina, stooping over his shoulder, took it up, twisted the
thing swiftly. "Take, _amigo_," she said.

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