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




He was said to regard his intendente O'Brien as the apple of his eye,
and had used his influence to get him made one of the judges of the
Marine Court. The old Don himself probably knew nothing about the
pirates. The inlet had been used by buccaneers ever since the days of
Columbus; but they were below his serious consideration, even if he had
ever seen them, which Tomas Castro doubted.

There was no doubting the sincerity of his tone.

"Oh, you thought _I_ was a pirate!" he muttered. "For a day--yes--to
oblige a Riego, my friend--yes! Moreover, I hate that familiar of the
priests, that soft-spoken Juez, intendente, intriguer--that O'Brien. A
sufferer for the faith! _Que picardia!_ Have I, too, not suffered for
the faith? I am the trusted humble friend of the Riegos. But, perhaps,
you think Don Balthasar is himself a pirate! He who has in his veins the
blood of the Cid Campeador; whose ancestors have owned half this island
since the days of Christopher himself. . . ."

"Has he nothing whatever to do with it?" I asked. "After all, it goes on
in his own town."

"Oh, you English," he muttered; "you are all mad! Would one of your
great nobles be a pirate? Perhaps they would--God knows. Alas, alas!" he
suddenly broke off, "when I think that my Carlos shall leave his bones
in this ungodly place. . . ."

I gave up questioning Tomas Castro; he was too much for me.

We entered the grim palace by the shore through an imposing archway, and
mounted a broad staircase. In a lofty room, giving off the upper gallery
round the central court of the Casa Riego, Carlos lay in a great bed.
I stood before him, having pushed aside Tomas Castro, who had been
cautiously scratching the great brilliant mahogany panels with a dirty
finger-nail.

"Damnation, Carlos!" I said. "This is the third of your treacheries.
What do you want with me?"

You might well have imagined he was a descendant of the Cid Campeador,
only to look at him lying there without a quiver of a feature, his face
stainlessly white, a little bluish in extreme lack of blood, with all
the nobility of death upon it, like an alabaster effigy of an old knight
in a cathedral. On the red-velvet hangings of the bed was an immense
coat-of-arms, worked in silk and surrounded by a collar, with the golden
sheep hanging from the ring. The shield was patched in with an immense
number of quarterings--lions rampant, leopards courant, fleurs de lis,
castles, eagles, hands, and arms. His eyes opened slowly, and his face
assumed an easy, languorous smile of immense pleasure.

"Ah, Juan," he said, "_se bienvenido_, be welcome, be welcome."

Castro caught me roughly by the shoulder, and gazed at me with blazing,
yellow eyes.

"You should not speak roughly to him," he said. "English beast! He is
dying."

"No, I won't speak roughly to him," I answered. "I see."

I did see. At first I had been suspicious; it might have been put on
to mollify me. But one could not put on that blueness of tinge, that
extra--nearly final--touch of the chisel to the lines round the nose,
that air of restfulness that nothing any more could very much disturb.
There was no doubt that Carlos was dying.

"Treacheries--no. You had to come," he said suddenly. "I need you. I am
glad, dear Juan." He waved a thin long hand a little towards mine. "You
shall not long be angry. It had to be done--you must forgive the means."

His air was so gay, so uncomplaining, that it was hard to believe it
came from him.

"You could not have acted worse if you had owed me a grudge, Carlos," I
said. "I want an explanation. But I don't want to kill you. . . ."

"Oh, no, oh, no," he said; "in a minute I will tell."

He dropped a gold ball into a silver basin that was by the bedside,
and it sounded like a great bell. A nun in a sort of coif that took the
lines of a buffalo's horns glided to him with a gold cup, from which he
drank, raising himself a little. Then the religious went out with Tomas
Castro, who gave me a last ferocious glower from his yellow eyes. Carlos
smiled.

"They try to make my going easy," he said. "_Vamos!_ The pillow is
smooth for him who is well loved." He shut his eyes. Suddenly he said,
"Why do you, alone, hate me, John Kemp? What have I done?"

"God knows I don't hate you, Carlos," I answered.

"You have always mistrusted me," he said. "And yet I am, perhaps, nearer
to you than many of your countrymen, and I have always wished you well,
and you have always hated and mistrusted me. From the very first you
mistrusted me. Why?"

It was useless denying it; he had the extraordinary incredulity of his
kind. I remembered how I had idolized him as a boy at home.

"Your brother-in-law, my cousin Rooksby, was the very first to believe
that I was a pirate. I, a vulgar pirate! I, Carlos Riego! Did he not
believe it--and you?" He glanced a little ironically, and lifted a thin
white finger towards the great coat-of-arms. "That sort of thing," he
said, "_amigo mio_, does not allow one to pick pockets." He suddenly
turned a little to one side, and fixed me with his clear eyes. "My
friend," he said, "if I told you that Rooksby and your greatest Kent
earls carried smugglers' tubs, you would say I was an ignorant fool.
Yet they, too, are magistrates. The only use I have ever made of these
ruffians was to-day, to bring you here. It was a necessity. That O'Brien
had gone on to take you when you arrived. You would never have come
alive out of Havana. I was saving your life. Once there, you could never
have escaped from that man."

I saw suddenly that this might be the truth. There had been something
friendly in Tomas Castro's desire not to compromise me before the people
on board the ship. Obviously he had been acting a part, with a visible
contempt for the pilfering that he could not prevent. He _had_ been sent
merely to bring me to Rio Medio.

"I never disliked you," I protested. "I do not understand what you mean.
All I know is, that you have used me ill--outrageously ill. You have
saved my life now, you say. That may be true; but why did you ever make
me meet with that man O'Brien?"

"And even for that you should not hate me," he said, shaking his head on
the silk pillows. "I never wished you anything but well, Juan, because
you were honest and young, of noble blood, good to look upon; you had
done me and my friend good service, to your own peril, when my own
cousin had deserted me. And I loved you for the sake of another. I loved
your sister. We have a proverb: 'A man is always good to the eyes in
which the sister hath found favour.'"

I looked at him in amazement. "You loved Veronica!" I said. "But
Veronica is nothing at all. There was the Senorita."

He smiled wearily. "Ah, the Senorita; she is very well; a man could love
her, too. But we do not command love, my friend."

I interrupted him. "I want to know why you brought me here. Why did you
ask me to come here when we were on board the _Thames?_"

He answered sadly, "Ah, then! Because I loved your sister, and you
reminded me always of her. But that is all over now--done with for
good.... I have to address myself to dying as it becomes one of my
race to die." He smiled at me. "One must die in peace to die like a
Christian. Life has treated me rather scurvily, only the gentleman must
not repine like a poor man of low birth. I would like to do a good turn
to the friend who is the brother of his sister, to the girl-cousin whom
I do not love with love, but whom I understand with affection--to the
great inheritance that is not for my wasted hands."

I looked out of the open door of the room. There was the absolutely
quiet inner court of the palace, a colonnade of tall square pillars,
in the centre the little thread of a fountain. Round the fountain were
tangled bushes of flowers--enormous geraniums, enormous hollyhocks, a
riot of orange marigolds.

"How like our flowers at home!" I said mechanically.

"I brought the seeds from there--from your sister's garden," he said.

I felt horribly hipped. "But all these things tell me nothing," I said,
with an attempt towards briskness.

"I have to husband my voice." He closed his eyes.

There is no saying that I did not believe him; I did, every word. I had
simply been influenced by Rooks-by's suspicions. I had made an ass of
myself over that business on board the _Thames_. The passage of Carles
and his faithful Tomas had been arranged for by some agent of O'Brien in
London, who was in communication with Ramon and Rio Medio. The same man
had engaged Nichols, that Nova Scotian mate, an unscrupulous sailor,
for O'Brien's service. He was to leave the ship in Kingston, and report
himself to Ramon, who furnished him with the means to go to Cuba. That
man, seeing me intimate with two persons going to Rio Medio, had got it
into his head that I was going there, too. And, very naturally, he did
not want an Englishman for a witness of his doings.

But Rooksby's behaviour, his veiled accusations, his innuendoes against
Carlos, had influenced me more than anything else. I remembered a
hundred little things now that I knew that Carlos loved Veronica. I
understood Rooksby's jealous impatience, Veronica's friendly glances at
Carlos, the fact that Rooksby had proposed to Veronica on the very day
that Carlos had come again into the neighbourhood with the runners after
him. I saw very well that there was no more connection between the
Casa Riego and the rascality of Rio Medio than there was between
Ralph himself and old drunken Rangsley on Hythe beach. There was less,
perhaps.

"Ah, you have had a sad life, my Carlos," I said, after a long time.

He opened his eyes, and smiled his brave smile. "Ah, as to that," he
said, "one kept on. One has to husband one's voice, though, and not
waste it over lamentations. I have to tell you--ah, yes...." He paused
and fixed his eyes upon me. "Figure to yourself that this house, this
town, an immense part of this island, much even yet in Castile itself,
much gold, many slaves, a great name--a very great name--are what I
shall leave behind me. Now think that there is a very noble old man, one
who has been very great in the world, who shall die very soon; then all
these things shall go to a young girl. That old man is very old, is a
little foolish with age; that young girl knows very little of the world,
and is very passionate, very proud, very helpless.

"Add, now, to that a great menace--a very dangerous, crafty, subtle
personage, who has the ear of that old man; whose aim it is to become
the possessor of that young girl and of that vast wealth. The old man
is much subject to the other. Old men are like that, especially the very
great. They have many things to think of; it is necessary that they
rely on somebody. I am, in fact, speaking of my uncle and the man called
O'Brien. You have seen him." Carlos spoke in a voice hardly above a
whisper, but he stuck to his task with indomitable courage. "If I die
and leave him here, he will have my uncle to himself. He is a terrible
man. Where would all that great fortune go? For the re-establishing of
the true faith in Ireland? _Quien sabe?_ Into the hands of O'Brien, at
any rate. And the daughter, too--a young girl--she would be in the hands
of O'Brien, too. If I could expect to live, it might be different. That
is the greatest distress of all." He swallowed painfully, and put his
frail hand on to the white ruffle at his neck. "I was in great trouble
to find how to thwart this O'Brien. My uncle went to Kingston because
he was persuaded it was his place to see that the execution of those
unhappy men was conducted with due humanity. O'Brien came with us as his
secretary. I was in the greatest horror of mind. I prayed for guidance.
Then my eyes fell upon you, who were pressed against our very carriage
wheels. It was like an answer to my prayers." Carlos suddenly reached
out and caught my hand.

I thought he was wandering, and I was immensely sorry for him. He looked
at me so wistfully with his immense eyes. He continued to press my hand.

"But when I saw you," he went on, after a time, "it had come into my
head, 'That is the man who is sent in answer to my prayers.' I knew it,
I say. If you could have my cousin and my lands, I thought, it would be
like my having your sister--not quite, but good enough for a man who is
to die in a short while, and leave no trace but a marble tomb. Ah, one
desires very much to leave a mark under God's blessed sun, and to
be able to know a little how things will go after one is dead.... I
arranged the matter very quickly in my mind. There was the difficulty of
O'Brien. If I had said, 'Here is the man who is to marry my cousin,' he
would have had you or me murdered; he would stop at nothing. So I said
to him very quietly, 'Look here, Senor Secretary, that is the man you
have need of to replace your Nichols--a devil to fight; but I think
he will not consent without a little persuasion. Decoy him, then, to
Ramon's, and do your persuading.' O'Brien was very glad, because he
thought that at last I was coming to take an interest in his schemes,
and because it was bringing humiliation to an Englishman. And Sera-phina
was glad, because I had often spoken of you with enthusiasm, as very
fearless and very honourable. Then I made that man Ramon decoy you,
thinking that the matter would be left to me."

That was what Carlos had expected. But O'Brien, talking with Ramon, had
heard me described as an extreme Separationist so positively that he had
thought it safe to open himself fully. He must have counted, also, on my
youth, my stupidity, or my want of principle. Finding out his mistake,
he very soon made up his mind how to act; and Carlos, fearing that worse
might befall me, had let him.

But when the young girl had helped me to escape, Carlos, who understood
fully the very great risks I ran in going to Havana in the ship that
picked me up, had made use of O'Brien's own picaroons to save me from
him. That was the story.

Towards the end his breath came fast and short; there was a flush on his
face; his eyes gazed imploringly at me.

"You will stay here, now, till I die, and then--I want you to
protect.------" He fell back on the pillows.





PART THIRD -- CASA RIEGO




CHAPTER ONE

All this is in my mind now, softened by distance, by the tenderness of
things remembered--the wonderful dawn of life, with all the mystery and
promise of the young day breaking amongst heavy thunder-clouds. At the
time I was overwhelmed--I can't express it otherwise. I felt like a
man thrown out to sink or swim, trying to keep his head above water. Of
course, I did not suspect Carlos now; I was ashamed of ever having
done so. I had long ago forgiven him his methods. "In a great need,
you must," he had said, looking at me anxiously, "recur to desperate
remedies." And he was going to die. I had made no answer, and only hung
my head--not in resentment, but in doubt of my strength to bear the
burden of the great trust that this man whom I loved for his gayety, his
recklessness and romance, was going to leave in my inexperienced hands.

He had talked till, at last exhausted, he sank back gently on the
pillows of the enormous bed emblazoned like a monument. I went out,
following a gray-headed negro, and the nun glided in, and stood at the
foot with her white hands folded patiently.

"Senor!" I heard her mutter reproachfully to the invalid.

"Do not scold a poor sinner, Dona Maria," he addressed her feebly, with
valiant jocularity. "The days are not many now."

The strangeness and tremendousness of what was happening came over me
very strongly whilst, in a large chamber with barred loopholes, I was
throwing off the rags in which I had entered this house. The night had
come already, and I was putting on some of Carlos' clothes by the many
flames of candles burning in a tall bronze candelabrum, whose three legs
figured the paws of a lion. And never, since I had gone on the road to
wait for the smugglers, and been choked by the Bow Street runners, had
I remembered so well the house in which I was born. It was as if, till
then, I had never felt the need to look back. But now, like something
romantic and glamorous, there came before me Veronica's sweet, dim
face, my mother's severe and resolute countenance. I had need of all her
resoluteness now. And I remembered the figure of my father in the big
chair by the ingle, powerless and lost in his search for rhymes. He
might have understood the romance of my situation.

It grew upon me as I thought. Don Balthasar, I understood, was apprised
of my arrival. As in a dream, I followed the old negro, who had
returned to the door of my room. It grew upon me in the silence of this
colonnaded court. We walked along the upper gallery; his cane tapped
before me on the tessellated pavement; below, the water splashed in the
marble basins; glass lanthorns hung glimmering between the pillars and,
in wrought silver frames, lighted the broad white staircase. Under the
inner curve of the vaulted gateway a black-faced man on guard, with
a bell-mouthed gun, rose from a stool at our passing. I thought I saw
Castro's peaked hat and large cloak flit in the gloom into which fell
the light from the small doorway of a sort of guardroom near the closed
gate. We continued along the arcaded walk; a double curtain was drawn to
right and left before me, while my guide stepped aside.

In a vast white apartment three black figures stood about a central
glitter of crystal and silver. At once the aged, slightly mechanical
voice of Don Balthasar rose thinly, putting himself and his house at my
disposition.

The formality of movements, of voices, governed and checked the
unbounded emotions of my wonder. The two ladies sank, with a rustle of
starch and stiff silks, in answer to my profound bow. I had just enough
control over myself to accomplish that, but mentally I was out of
breath; and when I felt the slight, trembling touch of Don Balthasar's
hand resting on my inclined head, it was as if I had suddenly become
aware for a moment of the earth's motion. The hand was gone; his face
was averted, and a corpulent priest, all straight and black below his
rosy round face, had stepped forward to say a Latin grace in solemn
tones that wheezed a little. As soon as he had done he withdrew with a
circular bow to the ladies, to Don Balthasar, who inclined his silvery
head. His lifeless voice propounded:

"Our excellent Father Antonio, in his devotion, dines by the bedside
of our beloved Carlos." He sighed. The heavy carvings of his chair
rose upright at his back; he sat with his head leaning forward over his
silver plate. A heavy silence fell. Death hovered over that table--and
also, as it were, the breath of past ages. The multitude of lights, the
polished floor of costly wood, the bare whiteness of walls wainscotted
with marble, the vastness of the room, the imposing forms of furniture,
carved heavily in ebony, impressed me with a sense of secular and
austere magnificence. For centuries there had always been a Riego living
in this fortress-like palace, ruling this portion of the New World with
the whole majesty of his race. And I thought of the long, loop-holed,
buttressed walls that this abode of noble adventurers presented
foursquare to the night outside, standing there by the seashore like a
tomb of warlike glories. They built their houses thus, centuries ago,
when the bands of buccaneers, indomitable and atrocious, had haunted
their conquest with a reminder of mortality and weakness.

It was a tremendous thing for me, this dinner. The portly duenna on my
left had a round eye and an irritated, parrot-like profile, crowned by
a high comb, a head shaded by black lace. I dared hardly lift my eyes
to the dark and radiant presence facing me across a table furniture that
was like a display of treasure.

But I did look. She was the girl of the lizard, the girl of the dagger,
and, in the solemnity of the silence, she was like a fabulous apparition
from a half-forgotten tale. I watched covertly the youthful grace of her
features. The curve of her cheek filled me with delight. From time to
time she shook the heavy clusters of her curls, and I was amazed, as
though I had never before seen a woman's hair. Each parting of her lips
was a distinct anticipation of a great felicity; when she said a few
words to me, I felt an inward trembling. They were indifferent words.

Had she forgotten she was the girl with the dagger? And the old Don?
What did that old man know? What did he think? What did he mean by that
touch of a blessing on my head? Did _he_ know how I had come to his
house? But every turn of her head troubled my thoughts. The movements of
her hands made me forget myself. The gravity of her eyes above the smile
of her lips suggested ideas of adoration.

We were served noiselessly. A battalion of young lusty negroes, in blue
jackets laced with silver, walked about barefooted under the command of
the old major-domo. He, alone, had white silk stockings, and shoes with
silver buckles; his wide-skirted maroon velvet coat, with gold on the
collar and cuffs, hung low about his thin shanks; and, with a long ebony
staff in his hand, he directed the service from behind Don Balthasar's
chair. At times he bent towards his master's ear. Don Balthasar answered
with a murmur: and those two faces brought close together, one like a
noble ivory carving, the other black with the mute pathos of the African
faces, seemed to commune in a fellowship of age, of things far off,
remembered, lived through together. There was something mysterious and
touching in this violent contrast, toned down by the near approach to
the tomb--the brotherhood of master and slave.

At a given moment an enormous iron key was brought in on a silver
salver, and, bending over the chair, the gray-headed negro laid it by
Don Balthasar's plate.

"Don Carlos' orders," he muttered.

The old Don seemed to wake up; a little colour mounted to his cheeks.

"There was a time, young _caballero_, when the gates of Casa Riego stood
open night and day to the griefs and poverty of the people, like the
doors of a church--and as respected. But now it seems . . ."

He mumbled a little peevishly, but seemed to recollect himself. "The
safety of his guest is like the breath of life to a Castilian," he
ended, with a benignant but attentive look at me.

He rose, and we passed out through the double lines of the servants
ranged from table to door. By the splash of the fountain, on a little
round table between two chairs, stood a many-branched candlestick.
The duenna sat down opposite Don Balthasar. A multitude of stars was
suspended over the breathless peace of the court.

"Senorita," I began, mustering all my courage, and all my Spanish, "I do
not know------"

She was walking by my side with upright carriage and a nonchalant step,
and shut her fan smartly.

"Don Carlos himself had given me the dagger," she said rapidly.

The fan flew open; a touch of the wind fanning her person came faintly
upon my cheek with a suggestion of delicate perfume.

She noticed my confusion, and said, "Let us walk to the end, Senor."

The old man and the duenna had cards in their hands now. The intimate
tone of her words ravished me into the seventh heaven.

"Ah," she said, when we were out of ear-shot, "I have the spirit of my
house; but I am only a weak girl. We have taken this resolution because
of your _hidal-guidad_, because you are our kinsman, because you are
English. _Ay de mi!_ Would I had been a man. My father needs a son in
his great, great age. Poor father! Poor Don Carlos!"

There was the catch of a sob in the shadow of the end gallery. We turned
back, and the undulation of her walk seemed to throw me into a state of
exaltation.

"On the word of an Englishman------" I began.

The fan touched my arm. The eyes of the duenna glittered over the cards.

"This woman belongs to that man, too," muttered Seraphina. "And yet she
used to be faithful--almost a mother. _Misericordia!_ Senor, there is no
one in this unhappy place that he has not bought, corrupted, frightened,
or bent to his will--to his madness of hate against England. Of our poor
he has made a rabble. The bishop himself is afraid."

Such was the beginning of our first conversation in this court
suggesting the cloistered peace of a convent. We strolled to and fro;
she dropped her eyelids, and the agitation of her mind, pictured in the
almost fierce swiftness of her utterance, made a wonderful contrast to
the leisurely rhythm of her movements, marked by the slow beating of
the fan. The retirement of her father from the world after her mother's
death had made a great solitude round his declining years. Yes, that
sorrow, and the base intrigues of that man--a fugitive, a hanger-on
of her mother's family--recommended to Don Balthasar's grace by her
mother's favour. Yes! He had, before she died, thrown his baneful
influence even upon that saintly spirit, by the piety of his practices
and these sufferings for his faith he always paraded. His faith! Oh,
hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite! His only faith was hate--the hate of
England. He would sacrifice everything to it. He would despoil and ruin
his greatest benefactors, this fatal man!

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