Romance

neither glared nor grimaced. He smiled.

He smiled continuously and rather pitifully. But his devotion to a—a—person who.... His devotion was great enough to overcome even that, even that. Did I understand? I owed it to the lady's regard, which, for the rest, I had misunderstood—stupidly misunderstood.

'Well, at your age it's excusable!' he mumbled. 'A career that...'

'I see,' I said slowly. Young as I was, it was impossible to mistake his motives. Only a man of mature years, and really possessed by a great passion—by a passion that had grown slowly, till it was exactly as big as his soul— could have acted like this—with that profound simplicity, with such resignation, with such horrible moderation—But I wanted to find out more. 'And when would you want me to go?' I asked, with a dissimulation of which I would not have suspected myself capable a moment before. I was maturing in the fire of love, of danger; in the lurid light of life piercing through my youthful innocence.

'Ah,' he said, banging the pistol on to the table hurriedly. 'At once. To-night. Now.'

'Without seeing anybody?'

'Without seeing... Oh, of course. In your own interest.'

He was very quiet now. 'I thought you looked intelligent enough,' he said, appearing suddenly very tired. 'I am glad you see your position. You shall go far in the Royal service, on the faith of Pat O'Brien, English as you are. I will make it my own business for the sake of—the Riego family. There is only one little condition.'

He pulled out of his pocket a piece of paper, a pen, a travelling inkstand. He looked the lawyer to the life; the Spanish family lawyer grafted on an Irish attorney.

'You can't see anybody. But you ought to write. Dona Seraphina naturally would be interested. A cousin and... I shall explain to Don Balthasar, of course.... I will dictate: 'Out of regard for your future, and the desire for active life, of your own will, you accept eagerly Senor O'Brien's proposition.' She'll understand.'

'Oh, yes, she'll understand,' I said.

'Yes. And that you will write of your safe arrival in Tamaulipas. You must promise to write. Your word...'

'By heavens, Senor O'Brien!' I burst out with inexpressible scorn, 'I thought you meant your villains to cut my throat on the passage. I should have deserved no better fate.'

He started. I shook with rage. A change had come upon both of us as sudden as if we had been awakened by a violent noise. For a time we did not speak a word. One look at me was enough for him. He passed his hand over his forehead.

'What devil's in you, boy?' he said. 'I seem to make nothing but mistakes.'

He went to the loophole window, and, advancing his head, cried out:

'The schooner does not sail to-night.'

He had some of his cut-throats posted under the window. I could not make out the reply he got; but after a while he said distinctly, so as to be heard below:

'I give up that spy to you.' Then he came back, put the pistol in his pocket, and said to me, 'Fool! I'll make you long for death yet.'

'You've given yourself away pretty well,' I said. 'Some day I shall unmask you. It will be my revenge on you for daring to propose to me....'

'What?' he interrupted, over his shoulder. 'You? Not you—and I'll tell you why. It's because dead men tell no tales.'

He passed through the door—a back view of a dapper Spanish lawyer, all in black, in a lofty frame. The calm, strolling footsteps went away along the gallery. He turned the corner. The tapping of his heels echoed in the patio, into whose blackness filtered the first suggestion of the dawn.

CHAPTER FIVE

I remember walking about the room, and thinking to myself, 'This is bad, this is very bad; what shall I do now?' A sort of mad meditation that in this meaningless way became so tense as positively to frighten me. Then it occurred to me that I could do nothing whatever at present, and I was soothed by this sense of powerless-ness, which, one would think, ought to have driven me to distraction. I went to sleep ultimately, just as a man sentenced to death goes to sleep, lulled in a sort of ghastly way by the finality of his doom. Even when I awoke it kept me steady, in a way. I washed, dressed, walked, ate, said 'Good-morning, Cesar,' to the old major-domo I met in the gallery; exchanged grins with the negro boys under the gateway, and watched the mules being ridden out barebacked by other nearly naked negro boys into the sea, with great splashing of water and a noise of voices. A small knot of men, unmistakably __Lugarenos__, stood on the beach, also, watching the mules, and exchanging loud jocular shouts with the blacks. Rio Medio, the dead, forsaken, and desecrated city, was lying, as bare as a skeleton, on the sands. They were yellow; the bay was very blue, the wooded hills very green.

After the mules had been ridden uproariously back to the stables, wet and capering, and shaking their long ears, all the life of the land seemed to take refuge in this vivid colouring. As I looked at it from the outer balcony above the great gate, the small group of __Lugarenos__ turned about to look at the Casa Riego.

They recognized me, no doubt, and one of them flourished, threateningly, an arm from under his cloak. I retreated indoors.

This was the only menacing sign, absolutely the only sign that marked this day. It was a day of pause. Seraphina did not leave her apartments; Don Balthasar did not show himself; Father Antonio, hurrying towards the sick room, greeted me with only a wave of the hand. I was not admitted to see Carlos; the nun came to the door, shook her head at me, and closed it gently in my face. Castro, sitting on the floor not very far away, seemed unaware of me in so marked a manner that it inspired me with the idea of not taking the slightest notice of him. Now and then the figure of a maid in white linen and bright petticoat flitted in the upper gallery, and once I fancied I saw the black, rigid carriage of the duenna disappearing behind a pillar.

Senor O'Brien, old Cesar whispered, without looking at me, was extremely occupied in the Cancilleria. His midday meal was served him there. I had mine all alone, and then the sunny, heat-laden stillness of siesta-time fell upon the Castilian dignity of the house.

I sank into a kind of reposeful belief in the work of accident. Something would happen. I did not know how soon