Читать книгу The Ghost Breaker - Charles Goddard - Страница 6
IV
ОглавлениеAN OATH OF ALLEGIANCE
The bathroom door opened slowly, with the slightest perceptible knock.
"May I come in?" was the low and meek inquiry.
"You may, and then you may go out as soon as possible," was the resolute response.
Warren's countenance was smiling again, and the smile was infectious. So curious had been this burglarizing method of escape, so unusual the imperturbable girl who had assisted him against all conventional expectations, that the horror of the last half-hour was partially dissipated. When a man meets a great crisis of his life and overcomes it, there is a queer relaxation of strained nerves—with a woman the result would be hysteria; with a man of Warren Jarvis' type it was a self-surprising amiability and calmness.
"Would you mind bolting the door again? He might return. And thank you very much for delaying the death sentence—now I can explain."
The girl glided to the door and tested the lock. It was secure, and she turned about to return that infectious smile of the eyes, albeit grudgingly.
Warren, finally realizing that he was weak from strain, and aching in every muscle from the ordeal of the past twenty-four hours, looked appealing at the comfortable armchair.
"May I sit down for just a minute?" he pleaded. "I have not slept since the night before last. I have not rested for a fortnight."
The girl nodded. He relaxed, and dropped into a blessed position of comfort. He buried his face in his hands—how many times had he struck this same attitude since the bitter days at Meadow Green, without realizing the repetition!
For two minutes or an hour he sat there—he knew not which. His companion, with sudden renewal of consciousness of the déshabille of her dressing-gown, retreated to the corner of the brass bed. She sat down, to scrutinize the better this strange intruder. The moonlight which fell in pale green bars across the Bokhara beneath her slippered feet; the melodramatic situation which had brought them together; the unmistakable gentility of this compelling intruder of her maidenly domain; the curious collapse of his aggressiveness—all these things united to cast a sympathetic spell over her. She was foolish—to the extreme of placing herself in a ridiculous situation! She was culpable—in protecting a self-confessed butcher! She was weak—in yielding to girlish sentiment by permitting this man to shatter the conventionalities—she who had been accustomed, throughout her twenty years of adulation and awe-inspiring respect, to a servile respect from every man, woman, and child! And, worst of all to an essentially feminine mind, she had allowed this presumptuous, calculating stranger to override her better judgment, to subjugate her resistance, without a visible tribute to the charms which had stirred the masculine souls of a continent!
And yet, in spite of—perhaps, because of—all these illogical, provoking, equilibrium-shattering irritants—she sat there, patiently, eagerly awaiting an explanation. Consistency, thy name is not Maidenhood!
Suddenly he looked at her.
"Do you know what a feud is?" was the curious prologue.
Her answer was apt and surprising.
"Feud? Spain is the garden of feuds."
"So is Kentucky. That's where I'm from. You're Spanish, then?"
"Yes!"
"Then you'll understand and sympathize. … Those shots you heard ended a feud which has lived through three or four generations. They brought me back to earth, to life, to a realization of things about me, after the most horrible nightmare through which I've ever passed. I know my own name now—and I had almost forgotten it since I went back home—so short a time, so many centuries ago!"
Then Warren Jarvis told her the story; his eyes were half closed, and with his fingers clasped and intertwined beneath his square-chiseled chin he recounted the steps of the recent event with the monotone of one who chants a mechanically memorized tale. She understood at last.
"But what did he do when you went to his room in the hotel?"
"Just what I expected—in fact, what I prayed for! As the door opened he fired his revolver—and I carry the witness inside this crimson handkerchief. I had my own weapon in my coat pocket … it's a trick I learned in Central American revolutions. I fired from my waist, burned a hole in my overcoat—and burned a hole in the heart of that murderous hound."
Suddenly he sprang to his feet and walked to the window, just as he had done back in Meadow Green so short a time before.
"Dad, dear old dad! I know you're satisfied. I let him take the first chance, and it was his last."
He was silent. The girl twisted the dressing-gown in her slender, nervous fingers. She waited for him to speak. He turned about, and dropped his hands, palm outward, as he quietly ended it all with the question: "Now, can you understand why the law would not give me justice?"
"Is he dead—are you sure?"
"I didn't wait—I came … to … visit you. Now are you going to drive me out? … You don't know what it is to fight single-handed against fearful odds. That's how I planned to spend my summer. To fight the endless fight alone. … "
She leaned forward eagerly as she answered: "Oh, yes, I do! I know what it means. … I, too, have been fighting against fearful odds!"
Jarvis looked at her sharply.
"There is no man to fight for you?"
"No man who dares."
"Oh, God! If there had only been a woman left for me to fight for! … But with my mother gone it was simply a hopeless, desperate determination to square the score at any cost, and then cry 'Quits!' and care nothing."
She drew back, studying the outline of his agile body, as he stood silhouetted against the moonlight.
"And are you alone?"
"Alone."
"And if you're caught," there was a curious eagerness in her low voice, "it means payment with your life?"
"Yes!"
"Suppose that I decided to help you—to do more than I have done?"
Jarvis discarded his fatalism, as he caught at this loophole.
"What do you mean?"
"You have no fear of death? You are not afraid of ghosts?"
"Ghosts? Don't joke with me. I am an American."
"Yes—ghosts—they are not confined to America, or China, or Africa. I mean Spanish ghosts."
Jarvis' laugh was almost bitter, as he responded with a tense earnestness:
"After to-night I am not afraid of the living or the dead. What are you thinking about?"
After a hesitation, poignant in its baffling anxiety, she rose and walked toward him, absolutely forgetful of their curious meeting and their lack of a common ground of interest.
"If you escape from here, it will be because I helped you. We might say, I saved your life—if what you tell me is true and if I do it from a selfish motive entirely, I am justified. I have work for you … hard, dangerous work, and as I am frank, it may mean your life in the end. It's a chance, and you have nothing to lose."
"And if I agree?"
"You will begin by taking the ancient feudal oath of my country."
"Isn't my word enough? I'm a Kentuckian, you know."
"But I insist."
Jarvis smiled indulgently.
"Very well—I'll swear the blackest oath you can utter." His eyes twinkled. "Let's hear it all now."
The girl drew back her shoulders haughtily. It was apparent that she took this curious idea more seriously than the prelude would suggest.
"What is your name?"
"Jarvis."
"All of it?"
"Warren Jarvis."
She raised her hands, to the Kentuckian's surprise.
"Kneel then, Warren of Jarvis! … No, not that way—on one knee only!"
"I beg your pardon." Jarvis began to feel ridiculous, in spite of himself. But there were reasons for humoring this curious beauty. The footsteps were still audible in the hall.
"Now repeat this oath: I, Warren of Jarvis" (he followed word for word), "Señor of all the domains, fiefs, keeps, and marches of Warren of Kentucky … "
"Whew!" and he stifled a laugh as he echoed the words.
The girl continued: "Do convey to Maria Theresa, of Aragon, all my worldly titles and possessions … "
"Sounds like I were marrying her—I beg your pardon. 'Do convey to Maria Theresa, of Aragon, all my worldly titles and possessions!'"
The shade of a smile played over his features.
The girl caught his hand in hers, placed her left in both of his, and then continued: "And receive them back as vassal and retainer and to faithfully fight in my lady's cause, according to the feudal laws of Castile and Aragon!"
—"and to faithfully fight in my lady's cause"
As he finished the repetition, she added: "Arise, vassal!"
With the spirit of the ceremony, he jestingly caught her hand and kissed it, as he arose. She drew back sharply.
"That is part of the ceremony, but I meant to omit it."
Warren Jarvis laughed provokingly.
"That seemed to me the only sensible part of it—again I beg your pardon. But who on earth is this Maria Theresa of Aragon person whose hired man I have become?"
The girl drew herself up with a hauteur which could never have been imitated upon the stage. Her dark eyes glinted coldly as she replied: "I—I am her Serene Highness—Maria Theresa—Princess of Aragon!"
Jarvis looked at her, waiting for the cue to the joke. She was serious. It was all so unreal, so ridiculous—and yet back there on the floor of the room down the corridor lay Jim Marcum. This mad, sad, heart-rending, adventure must have driven him to insanity. He rubbed his brow, looked out of the window, heard the unromantic honk-honk of a piratical night-owl taxicab on the street so far below. He steadied his mental equilibrium, and looked again at the self-possessed young woman, whose regal manner was as convincing as all the other details were unconvincing. On the table lay a fortune in jewels and rings and a necklace. He had not noticed them before. He remembered the Spanish conversation which he had heard through the bathroom door. He realized from the size and elegance of the rooms that this must indeed be a regal suite in the great hotel.
And the girl's steady look never wavered.
American humor, in the presence of royalty, came to his aid in this staggering blow to his credence.
"Good-night! You a Princess … and I've been ordering you around with a gun! Great Scott … what next?"
