Читать книгу The Four Corners of the World - A. E. W. Mason - Страница 16

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I was not free until five that afternoon. But I was in the Calle Madrid before the quarter after five had struck. Again Olivia herself admitted me. She led the way to her father's study at the back of the house. Though I had hurried to the house, I followed her slowly into the study.

"You are still alone?" I asked.

"An old woman--we once befriended her--will come in secretly for an hour in the morning."

"Secretly?"

"She dare not do otherwise."

I was silent. There was a refinement about Juan Ballester's persecution which was simply devilish. He would not molest her, he left her apparently free. But he kept her in a great, empty house in the middle of the town, without servants, without power to leave, without--oh, much more than I had any idea of at the time. He marooned her in the midst of a great town even as Richard the Third did with Jane Shore in the old play. But, though I did not know, I noticed that she had changed since the morning. She had come out from her interview with Juan Ballester holding her head high. Now she stood in front of me twisting her hands, a creature of fear.

"You must escape," I said.

Her great eyes looked anxiously at me from a wan face.

"I must," she said. "Yes, I must." Then came a pause, and with a break in her voice she continued. "He warned me not to try. He said that it would not be pleasant for me if I were caught trying."

"A mere threat," I said contemptuously, "like the prisons." But I did not believe my own words, and my blood ran cold. It would be easy to implicate Olivia in the treachery of her father. And the police in Maldivia are not very gentle in their handling of their prisoners, women or men. Still, that risk must be run.

"The Ariadne--an English mail-steamer--calls at Las Cuevas in a fortnight," I said. "We must smuggle you out on her."

Olivia stared at me in consternation. She stood like one transfixed.

"A fortnight!" she said. Then she sat down in a chair clasping her hands together. "A fortnight!" she whispered to herself, and as I listened to her, and watched her eyes glancing this way and that like an animal trapped in a cage, it was borne in on me that since this morning some new thing had happened to frighten the very soul of her. I begged her to tell it me.

"No," she said, rising to her feet. "No doubt I can wait for a fortnight."

"That's right, Olivia," I said. "I will arrange a plan. Meanwhile, where can I hear from you and you from me? It will not do for us to meet too often. Have you friends who will be staunch?"

"I wonder," she said slowly. "Enrique Gimeno and his wife, perhaps."

"We will not strain their friendship very much. But we can meet at their house. You can leave a letter for me there, perhaps, and I one for you."

Enrique Gimeno was a Spanish merchant and a gentleman. So far, I felt sure, we could trust him. There was one other man in Santa Paula on whom I could rely, the agent of the steamship company to which the Ariadne belonged. I rang him up on the telephone that afternoon and arranged a meeting after dark in a back room of that very inferior hotel in the lower town where for some weeks I had lived upon credit. The agent, a solid man with business interests of his own in Maldivia, listened to my story without a word of interruption. Then he said:

"There are four things I can do for you, and no more. In the first place, I can receive here the lady's luggage in small parcels and put it together for her. In the second, I can guarantee that the Ariadne shall not put into Las Cuevas until dusk, and shall leave the same night. In the third, I will have every bale of cargo already loaded into her before the passenger train comes alongside from Santa Paula. And in the fourth, I will arrange that the Ariadne shall put to sea the moment the last of her passengers has crossed the gangway. The rest you must do for yourself."

"Thank you," said I. "That's a great deal."

But the confidence was all in my voice and none of it at all in my heart. I went back to Juan Ballester and tried persuasion with him.

"I have seen Olivia Calavera this afternoon," I said to him.

"I know," said he calmly.

I had personally no longer any fear that he might dismiss me. I would, I think, have thrown up my job myself, but that I seemed to have a better chance of helping the girl by staying on.

"You will never win her," I continued, "your Excellency, by your way of wooing."

"Oh, and why not?" he asked.

"She thinks you a brute," I said frankly.

Juan Ballester reflected.

"I don't much mind her thinking that," he answered slowly.

"She hates you," I went on.

"And I don't seriously object to her thinking that," he replied.

"She despises you," I said in despair.

"Ah!" said Ballester, with a change of voice. "I should object to her doing that. But then it isn't true."

I gave up efforts to persuade him. After all, the brute knew something about women.

I was thrown back upon the first plan. Olivia must escape from the country on the Ariadne. How to smuggle her unnoticed out of her empty house, down to Las Cuevas, and on board the steamer? That was the problem; but though I lay awake over it o' nights, and pondered it as I sat at my writing-table, the days crept on and brought me no nearer to a solution.

Meanwhile, the world was going very ill with Olivia. Santa Paula, fresh from its war, was aflame with patriotism. The story of Santiago Calavera's treachery had gone abroad--Juan Ballester had seen to that--and since his daughter had been his secretary, she too was tarnished. Her friends, with the exception of Enrique Gimeno, closed their doors upon her. If she ventured abroad, she was insulted in the street, and at night a lamp in a window of her house would bring a stone crashing through the pane. Whenever I saw her, I noticed with an aching heart the tension under which she laboured. Her face grew thin, the tone had gone from her voice, the lustre from her eyes, the very gloss from her hair. Sometimes it seemed to me that she must drop into Ballester's net. I raged vainly over the problem, and the more because I knew that Ballester would reap prestige instead of shame if she did. The conventions were heavy on women in Maldivia, but they were not the outward signs of any spiritual grace in the population. On the contrary, they were evidence that the spiritual grace was lacking. If Olivia found her way in the end to the Benandalla farm, Ballester would be thought to have combined pleasure with the business of revenge in a subtle and enviable way. The thought made me mad. I could have knocked the heads together of the diminutive soldiers at the sides of the President's doorway whenever I went in and out. And then, when I was at my wits' end, a trivial incident suddenly showed me a way out.

I passed down the Calle Madrid one night, and the sight of the big, dark house, with here and there a broken window, brought before my mind so poignant a picture of the girl sitting in some back room alone and in misery, and contrasted that picture so vividly with another made familiar to me by many an evening in Santa Paula--that of a girl shining exquisite beyond her peers in the radiance and the clean strength of her youth--that upon returning to my room I took the receiver from the telephone with no other thought than to talk to her for a few moments and encourage her to keep a good heart. I gave the number of her house to the Exchange, and the answer came promptly back:

"The line is out of order."

I might have known that it would be. Olivia was to be marooned in her great town-house as effectively as though she had been set down in a lone island of the coral seas. I hung up the receiver again, and as I hung it up suddenly I saw part of the way clear. I suppose that I had used that telephone a hundred times during the past week. It had stood all day at my elbow. Yet not until to-night had it reminded me of that little matter of the Opera House--one of those matters in which dealings with Ballester had left their mark. I had the answer to a part of the problem which troubled me. I saw a way to smuggle Olivia from Santa Paula on board the Ariadne. The more I thought upon it, the clearer grew that possibility. There still remained the question: How to get Olivia unnoticed from her house in the middle of a busy, narrow street on the night when the Ariadne was to sail. The difficulties there brought me to a stop. And I was still revolving the problem in my mind when the private bell rang from Ballester's room. I went to see what he wanted; and I had not been five minutes in his presence before, with a leaping heart, I realised that this question was being answered too.

Juan had of late been troubled. But not at all about Olivia. As far as she was concerned, he ate his meals, went about his business, and slept o' nights like any good man who has not a girl in torment upon his conscience. But he was troubled about a rumour which was spreading through the town.

"You have heard of it?" he asked of me. "It is said that I am proposing to run away secretly from Maldivia."

I nodded.

"I have laughed at it, of course."

"Yes," said he, with his face in a frown. "But the rumour grows. I doubt if laughter is enough"; and then he banged his fist violently upon the table and cried: "I suppose Santiago Calavera is at the bottom of it!"

Santiago had become something of an obsession to the President. I think he excused to himself his brutality towards Olivia by imagining everywhere Don Santiago's machinations. As a fact, the rumour was spontaneous in Santa Paula. It was generally suspected that the President had annexed the war indemnity and any other portions of the revenue which he could without too open a scandal. He was a bachelor. The whole of Santa Paula put itself in his place. What else should he do but retire secretly and expeditiously to some country where he could enjoy the fruits of his industry in peace and security? Calavera had nothing whatever to do with the story. But I did not contradict Ballester, and he continued:

"It is said that I have taken my passage in the Ariadne."

I started, but he was not looking at me.

"I must lay hold upon this rumour," he said, "and strangle it. I have thought of a way. I will give a party here on the evening of the day the Ariadne calls at Las Cuevas. I will spend a great deal of money on that party. It will be plain that I have no thought of sailing on the Ariadne. I hope it will be plain that I have no thought of sailing at all. For I think everyone in Santa Paula," he added with a grim laugh, "knows me well enough to feel sure that I should not spend a great deal of money on a party if I meant to run away from the place afterwards."

Considering Santa Paula impartially, I found the reasoning to be sound. Juan Ballester was not a generous man. He took, but he did not give.

"This is what I propose," he said, and he handed me a paper on which he had jotted down his arrangements. He had his heart set on his Republic, that I knew. But I knew too that it must have been a fearful wrench for him to decide upon the lavish expenditure of this entertainment. There was to be dancing in the ballroom, a conjuror where the Cabinet met--that seemed to be a happy touch--supper in a marquee, fairy lights and fireworks in the garden, and buffets everywhere.

"You yourself will see after the invitations," he said, with a grin.

"Certainly, your Excellency," I answered. They would come within the definition of opportunities.

"But here," he continued, "is a list of those who must be asked"; and it was not until I had the list in my hand that I began to see that here I might find an answer to my question. I looked quickly down the names.

"Yes, she's there," said Juan Ballester; and there she was, as plain as a pikestaff--Olivia Calavera. I was not surprised. Ballester never troubled about such trifles as consistency. He wanted her, so he invited her. Nevertheless, I could have danced a pas seul. For though Olivia could hardly slip out of her own house in any guise without detection since she had no visitors, she would have a good chance of escaping from the throng of guests at the President's party. I left Juan Ballester with a greatly lightened heart. I looked at my watch. It was not yet eleven. Full of my idea, nothing would serve me but I must this moment set it in motion. I went downstairs into the Square. Though the night was hot, I had slipped on an overcoat to conceal the noticeable breastplate of a white shirt, and I walked quickly for half a mile until I came opposite to a high and neglected building, a place of darkness and rough shutters. This was the Opera House. Beside the Opera House was a little dwelling. I rang the bell, and the door was opened by a tall, lean gentleman in a frock-coat. For the third time that night good luck had stood my friend.

"Mr. Henry P. Crowninshield," I said, "the world-famous impresario, I believe?"

"And you, Mr. Carlyon, are the President's private secretary?" he said coldly.

"Not to-night," said I.

With a grunt Mr. Crowninshield led the way into his parlour and stood with his finger-tips resting on the table and his long body bent over it. Mr. Crowninshield came from New York City, and I did not beat about the bush with him. I told him exactly the story of Olivia and Juan Ballester.

"She is in great trouble," I concluded. "There is something which I do not understand. But it comes to this. She must escape. The railways are watched, so is her house. There is only one way of escape--and that is on the seventeenth, the night when the Ariadne calls at Las Cuevas and the President gives his party."

Mr. Crowninshield nodded, and his long body slid with a sort of fluid motion into a chair.

"Go on, sir," he said; "I am interested."

"And I encouraged," said I. "Let us follow the Señorita's proceedings on the night of the seventeenth. She goes dressed in her best to the President's party. She is on view to the last possible moment. She then slips quietly out into the garden. In the garden wall there is a private door, of which I have a key. I let her out by that door. Outside that door there is a closed, inconspicuous carriage waiting for her. She slips into that carriage--and that is where you come in."

"How?" asked Mr. Crowninshield.

"Inside the carriage she finds a disguise--dress, wig, everything complete--a disguise easy to slip on over her ball-gown and sufficient to baffle a detective half a yard away."

"You shall have it, sir! My heart bleeds for that young lady!" cried Mr. Crowninshield, and he grasped my hand in the noblest fashion. He had been a baritone in his day. "Besides," and he descended swiftly to the mere level of a human being, "I have a score against Master Juan, and I should like to get a little of my own back."

That was precisely the point of view upon which I had counted. Throughout his first term of office Juan Ballester had hired a box at the Opera. Needless to say, he had never paid for it, and Mr. Crowninshield unwisely pressed for payment. When requests failed, Mr. Crowninshield went to threats. He threatened the Law, the American Eagle, and the whole of the United States Navy. Ballester's reply had been short, sharp, and decisive. The State telephone system was being overhauled. Juan Ballester moved the Exchange to a building on the other side of the Opera House, and then summarily closed the Opera House on the ground that the music prevented the operators from hearing the calls. It was not astonishing that Mr. Crowninshield was eager to help Olivia Calavera. He lit a candle and led me through his private door across the empty theatre, ghostly with its sheeted benches, to the wardrobe-room. We chose a nun's dress, long enough to hide Olivia's gown, and a coif which would conceal her hair and overshadow her face.

"In that her own father wouldn't know her. It will be dark; the Quay is ill-lighted, she has only to shuffle like an old woman; she will go third-class, of course, in the train. Who is to see her off?"

"No one," I answered. "I dread that half-hour in the train for her without a friend at her side. The Quay will be watched, too. She must run the gauntlet alone. Luckily there will be a crowd of harvesters returning to Spain. Luckily, also, she has courage. But it will be the worst of her trials. My absence would be noticed. I can't go."

"No, but I can!" cried Mr. Crowninshield. "An old padre seeing off an old nun to her new mission--eh? Juan will be gritting his teeth in the morning because I am an American citizen."

Mr. Crowninshield was aflame with his project. He took a stick and tottered about the room in the most comical fashion. "I will bring the carriage myself to the garden door," said he. "I will be inside of it. My property man--he comes from Poughkeepsie--shall be the driver. I will dress the young lady as we drive slowly to the station, and Sister Pepita and the Padre Antonio will direct their feeble steps to the darkest corner of the worst-lit carriage in the train."

I thanked him with all my heart. It had seemed to me terrible that Olivia should have to make her way alone on board the steamer. Now she would have someone to enhearten and befriend her. I met Olivia once at the house of Enrique Gimeno, and made her acquainted with the scheme, and on the night of the sixteenth the steamship agent rang me up on the telephone.

"The Ariadne will arrive at nine to-morrow night. The passengers will leave Santa Paula at half-past ten. Good luck!"

I went to the window and looked out over the garden. The marquee was erected, the fairy lights strung upon the trees, a set piece with the portrait of Juan Ballester and a Latin motto--semper fidelis--raised its monstrous joinery against the moon. Twenty-four hours more and, if all went well, Olivia would be out upon the high seas, on her way to Trinidad. Surely all must go well. I went over in my mind every detail of our preparations. I recognised only one chance of failure--the chance that Mr. Crowninshield in his exuberance might over-act his part. But I was wrong. It was, after all, Olivia who brought our fine scheme to grief.