Читать книгу ODTAA - John 1878-1967 Masefield - Страница 7

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“Rosa, my daughter,” Donna Emilia said, “I have had such a strange message from Señora Artigas. Her son, Estifanio, has disappeared.”

“We passed him in the cathedral last night, mother, at about six or half-past, as we left the service.”

“He was at home after that. At nearly midnight two young men, in evening dress, called for him to say that Porfirio Rivera, his great friend, had been hurt in a duel, was dying, and had asked for him. Estifanio did not know the young men; but, of course, he went with them, and he has not returned.”

“If his friend were dying, mother, he would stay with him.”

“But the story was false, my dear. Porfirio called for Estifanio this morning; he had fought no duel, is in perfect health, and has sent no message. Estifanio has disappeared. Imagine his mother’s anxiety.”

Hi saw Rosa and Carlotta look at each other with a glance which he could not interpret. He felt that there was trouble and that he had better say something.

“We had a fellow at school,” he said, “who disappeared one summer holidays. He went out in a boat with another fellow. The boat upset, but they were picked up by a steamer. However, the steamer was carrying the mails and could not stop, so these two fellows had to go all the way to New York before they could send a message home. They’d both been buried, or at least had the burial-service read over them by that time.”

“Estifanio will turn up, in the same way, mother,” Rosa said.

“I trust so,” the old lady said. “Suddenness of death is ever a thing I pray God to spare my friends.”

“Estifanio is a great hunter,” Carlotta said. “He rides out to this ‘drag,’ do you call it? which the English have started. Are you fond of hunting, Mr. Ridden?” He thought her an angel of tact to have changed the conversation a little.

“I love riding,” he said, “but of course, my father only lets me ride the old crocks. Still, sometimes he lets me be his second horseman, and then I have had some wonderful times.”

“Rosa said that you are fond of engines.”

“Yes, I love engines.”

“So do I,” she said. “I’m racing my brother with one. He is having an irrigation canal dug by men, and I am doing a little bit of it with machines; but the nature of the ground doesn’t make it quite a fair match. What engines interest you most?”

“No particular engine,” he said, “but more the nature of engines. I’m always thinking of all sorts of little engines which everybody could have. For instance, a little engine to sweep the floor of a room, or dust walls, or clean big glass panes like the windows of shops. Then, I expect you’ll think it very silly, but don’t you think one could have a little engine on a boat?”

“Oh, the engine on a boat,” Rosa said. “Hi is a lovely character, Carlotta. He would die for me or for you at a moment’s notice; but the engine on a boat is his mad streak. Of course it’s nice to have a mad streak; it shows the oldness of your family; but there it is.”

“Why should there not be an engine on a boat?” Carlotta asked. “What sort of little engine do you mean, Mr. Ridden?”

“Oh, call him Hi, Carlotta,” Rosa said. “This is his home here, remember; call him Hi.”

“I don’t know whether he will let me,” Carlotta said.

“I’ll be frightfully proud if you will,” Hi said, and blushed scarlet, and knew that Rosa watched the blush.

“What sort of engine ... Hi?” Carlotta asked.

“Thank you,” he said, wondering whether he would ever be able to save her life and in reward be asked to call her Carlotta.

“You see,” he said, “Rosa is always ragging. She worked at this engine when she was in England. You see, we live in a part of England which is mostly rolling grass hills. We call them downs, but they are really a sort of ups. Well, we are a good long way from the Thames; too far to go for a day’s boating. Now I’m not much good at rowing, but I do love messing about in a boat. I mean, being in a boat.”

“I do, too,” Carlotta said; “there is a sort of lake at home. I go out in a boat to watch the flamingoes.”

“We’ve not got any lake, alas,” Hi said, “but there is a little sort of brook, or chalk-stream. It’s got plenty of water always, but it isn’t broad enough for oars. So what I’ve always wanted to do is to make a little engine to go in a boat. I don’t mean a steam-engine, but a hand engine, so that one could have the exercise of rowing. A man would sit on the thwart and turn a crank, or pull it to and fro, and that would turn a paddle-wheel; only I don’t want the paddle-wheel to be at the side, but either in front or let into the boat in a sort of well, so as not to take up room. They all say that it couldn’t go, but I say it must go.”

“Of course it would go,” Carlotta said.

“How could it go?” Rosa asked. “It could no more go than if you were to stand in the boat and pull the boat-rope.”

“You’ve not even got enough mechanical sense, Rosa,” Hi said, “to make you keep quiet when mechanics are being talked. If I’d had an old boat or punt to experiment on, instead of a clothes-basket covered with rick-cloth, I’d have proved that my thing would go.”

“If it would go, why hasn’t it been done? All the English are always messing about in boats.”

“My engine is not for ordinary rivers, but for the brooks at home, or even the canals, where you cannot always row, nor even paddle in comfort.”

“There wasn’t much comfort in your clothes-basket, if I remember rightly,” Rosa said.

“There isn’t much comfort in any good thing.”

“I should have thought religion,” Rosa said.

“You try it and see.”

“Manuel is very late,” Donna Emilia said. “We’re almost at an end here. Do you think that he will come, ’Lotta?”

“Yes, I think I hear him.” A horse came at a quick canter up the drive. Carlotta turned to Hi.

“After my marriage,” she said, “you must come out to stay with us, if you will. There are rivers there not unlike what I should imagine yours to be, and rolling hills of grass.”

“I would love that,” he said. He looked at her, and was at once shot through with anguish to think that she was to be married to a man not good enough for her. “He has frightened her,” he thought, “or got some hold upon her, in the way these beasts do.”

Suddenly he realised that Don Manuel was there, kissing Donna Emilia’s hand; he must have come in like a panther.

“I say,” he thought, “what a man.”

All manly strength, beauty and grace moved in that figure; but the face was the extraordinary thing; it won Hi at once, partly by its power, partly by its resemblance to the bust of the young Napoleon on the landing at the Foliats. The man turned to Hi, with eyes most strange, masterful, unbearable and bright as flames. “This is an extraordinary man,” Hi thought. “Either splendid or very queer, perhaps both.” The extraordinary man greeted him in English; then burst out with:

“Ah, I am glad to see you, Mr. Ridden. Your father sixteen years ago sent me two English hunting saddles, because I rode his stallion, what? And how is your father? And how do you like Santa Barbara? Ah, your father; I was proud of those saddles; no gift have I liked so. You shall come to me at Encinitas and ride and ride. That is the life, what?”

He took Hi’s hands in both his own, in his impulsive way, and looked into his eyes, in a way that was both frightening and winning; it entirely won Hi.

“You’re not a bit like your father,” he said, “not a little bit. Your father likes being top-dog; sometimes bully, sometimes blarney. You want to make things. I know your sort.

“Where are you staying?” he continued. “At the Santiago? That’s a vile hole, the Santiago. Yet all our visitors form their first impressions there. Whereabouts have they put you?”

“On the third floor,” Hi said, “Room 67.”

“Looking out on the back, what? Well, looking out on the front wouldn’t have been much more cheerful. The palace, the Santiago and the cathedral. I’d like to raze them all three and start afresh.

“By the way, about your Santiago. I am a night bird. I pass the back of that hotel at night at two in the morning. You can get in at the back through the cellar-grating. The negro waiters run a gambling hell there; fan-tan, what? They also do a private trade in the hotel liquor. And now forgive me everybody for being so late.”

“You are scandalously late, Manuel,” Rosa said. “You deserve no lunch.”

“I want no lunch,” he said, “but coffee and some bread. I am late, because I have been tracking a crime. Estifanio Artigas was murdered in this city last night.”

“Then it was murder?”

“We were talking of him a moment since.”

“That will be death to the poor mother; her only child.”

“There is more than this,” Carlotta said. “The murder was planned. By whom?”

“The Murder Gang of the Palace. A club of young criminals headed by Don José, the son of our Dictator, Mr. Ridden. They murdered the lad in that tunnel or passage where the windmills used to be. I have been with the murderer. Here’s a copy of his confession, made before Chacon, the notary. I’ve sent copies of it to Chavez and Hermengildo, as well as to your brother, Carlotta. Who could want food after this? Now the Whites move again; we have a cause and a case.

“This Murder Club was founded by Don José at the end of last year as a new excitement; he and eight young men are the members; all very select. They have now murdered five men; one a month is their rule, each in a different way.

“Pablo Hinestrosa was chosen to kill Estifanio. Two of the others came to help him; four were posted, to keep guard during the murder; the other two brought Estifanio to the place.

“I learned all this from Pablo’s own lips this morning.”

“Pablo Hinestrosa was always as weak as water,” Rosa said. “Cruel, too; I remember him putting worms under his rocking horse as a little child.”

“I found Pablo in the street, as I came back from my ride this morning,” Don Manuel continued. “He was crying and quaking; so I brought him to my rooms. Bit by bit, I got the story out of him.”

“One moment, Manuel,” Carlotta said; “this Hinestrosa man, who is plainly of weak intelligence, may have imagined all this.”

“Ah, no, alas,” Don Manuel said, “I have proved it to be true. One decoyed the victim to the carriage, one drove the carriage to the tunnel. Then the decoy led him into the tunnel, where Pablo killed him. Don José helped in the killing. There were the tracks and the body, everything corresponded exactly.

“You will think this next a strange thing:

“Don José is very clever as well as very vicious. He and Spallo took Pablo home after the murder, and, as they saw that he was shaken, they feared that he would betray them.

“Now Pablo feared that they feared this, so he contrived to leave them where he could hear them talking. He heard Don José say: ‘I knew that he would be sentimental. He will confess the whole thing to the first priest he can find. Shall we finish him? It would be rather a neat end to the night.’ It must have been an anxious moment for Pablo, waiting for the answer; but Spallo said, ‘Better not.... He’ll be all right after a sleep.’

“After that, Spallo and José went away, but now another strange thing happened. When they had gone (so Pablo says) the ghost of Estifanio’s father came in and sat beside him. He never spoke, but whenever Pablo tried to run from the room, this ghost slid in front of him.”

“What happened then?”

“Pablo said that he ‘burned the ghost away, with matches and texts of Scripture.’ When the ghost was gone he ran into the street; but it was worse there, he said, because Estifanio kept looking through the windows at him.

“I got a doctor to give him an opiate; now he’s asleep in Chacon’s house.”

“God give us mercy,” Donna Emilia said. “Is there to be no measure to the wickedness of this time?”

“When will General Chavez know of this?” Carlotta asked.

“Now. He’ll be in town by six. Congress meets at eight. We will arraign the palace on this question.”

“God help this unhappy land,” Donna Emilia said.

“God is helping this land,” Don Manuel said. “He gives us this sword against the Lopez gang; now we shall end them.”

“I am not so sure, Manuel,” Carlotta said. “There is much shrewdness in the men about Lopez. They would be only too glad to get rid of Don José. This case may rid the land of Don José; but I do not think that Lopez will be involved. His hands may even be strengthened.”

Manuel listened to her with much attention.

“Not as ours are strengthened,” he said. “Chavez and Bazan must stir at this. I have the confession and all the evidence. The Reds suspect nothing. We shall have a coup de théâtre in only five hours. This magazine shall explode under their feet.”

“I wonder,” Carlotta said. “General Chavez may think the time inopportune.”

“Inopportune? When the Reds are declaiming about a White conspiracy?”

“If not inopportune, he may find some other excuse for not acting.”

“He must act upon this.”

“He is a very indolent man.”

“If he will not act, we will find who will. I see three here to start with; no, four, for I am sure that Mr. Ridden will be with us.”

“Rather, if you’ll have me, sir,” Hi said.

“It will begin your stay here well, to help in the downfall of a Dictator.”

“Manuel,” Rosa said, “you are not to drag Hi into our party politics.”

“Manuel,” Carlotta said, “I think that you are going beyond the present issue, which is, to denounce the Murder Club. Lopez has sufficient readiness, and bigness, to banish, or even to prosecute, his son; and then face you in a stronger position than ever.”

“I believe that Lopez is mad,” Manuel said. “To-night, when this begins, I shall declare him to be unfit to govern.”

As he spoke, the major-domo entered with a telegram upon a salver.

“For Don Manuel,” he said.

When Don Manuel had read the telegram, he changed countenance; it was plain that he had received a blow.

“Is it ill news from Encarnacion?” Donna Emilia asked.

“Is your mother worse, Manuel?” Carlotta asked.

“Yes,” he said, “my beloved mother is dangerously ill at Encarnacion. I must go at once.”

“There will be no train to San Jacinto till noon to-morrow.”

“No,” he said, “but I can go by the mountain train at four; and ride from Melchior, it is only sixty-seven miles. If I telegraph for horses, I can be at home by dusk to-morrow night. That will save five hours.”

“You must go at once, if you are to catch the four train,” Carlotta said. “I’ll drive you to the station.”

“We will go, then,” Manuel said. “While they bring the chaise, I’ll order horses; you shall send the telegrams when I am gone.”

*******

As Don Manuel made his farewells, he took Hi’s hand in both his own hands. “My greetings to your father,” he said. “Tell him I remember the saddles. I shall expect you presently at my home.”

“You will stay with us, will you not?” Carlotta said.

“I would love to,” Hi said. “I would love it more than anything.”

They all went out of doors to see them start. Carlotta was driving two marvellous little horses, full of fire. Hi looking at her as she sat watching her horses, felt that the only possible happiness on earth would be to live and die for her; since everything about her was beautiful and came not from this world. He saw that all there thought as he thought and felt as he felt about her. “You beautiful and gracious and glorious thing,” he thought. “I wish I could die for you.”

The peones stepped from the horses’ heads, the gates opened, the horses strained to the collars and the marvellous girl was gone. Often, afterwards, he thought of that scene.

“I trust that he may find his mother alive,” Donna Emilia said.

“I must be going, too,” Hi said.

“Going! nonsense,” Rosa said. “You’ve come for the day. You’ve had neither tennis nor a swim. Come in.”

When he had come in, Rosa looked at him with malice.

“Isn’t he handsome, Hi?” she asked.

“Handsome? I should think he is,” Hi said. “He is everything and has everything.”

“No; he hasn’t everything,” Rosa said. “I know several things that he has not. But even if he had everything, he wouldn’t be good enough for her.”

Hi did not answer, for the thought of Manuel having the beautiful Carlotta went through him with a pang.

“He wouldn’t be good enough for her; would he?” Rosa repeated.

“I hope so.”

“No, you don’t,” Rosa said. “You know that he wouldn’t. Confess, Hi, he wouldn’t.”

Hi looked at her with a look of pain.

“Isn’t she wonderful?” she said.

“I understand your being fond of her.”

“Fond of her? People aren’t fond of her. They worship her and would die for her. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I would,” he said, after a pause. “You know I would. And you would, too.”

“I told you not to,” Rosa said. “I gave you fair warning. You’d better put her out of your mind. Besides,” she added with malice, “he’s frightfully jealous.”

“He’ll have some cause, I should say.”

“Well, come on into the garden. I’ll play you tennis.”

“No, be square, Rosa. You don’t really want me. I must clear out.”

“I’ll tell you when to clear out,” she said. “But stay a little. Carlotta will be back in half an hour. Stay to see her. It will be the last time you’ll see her before she marries.”

“I thought you said that they wouldn’t be married till Easter.”

“Not now,” she said. “She’ll go to him by the noon train to-morrow; you will see. I shall have to go with her. She’ll be married by the Bishop to-morrow midnight, so that the mother may see the son married. Then she’ll be with that man all her life.”

“She chose him, out of all the men in the world,” he said. “And I don’t wonder; he’s a fine fellow.”

“A fine fellow? Only a few years ago he was the friend of this Don José of the Murder Gang.”

“I don’t know about that,” Hi said. “He’s a fine fellow now; and she thinks so.”

“She thinks so now, but in a week, in a month ... with that man all the time.”

“Here’s Pablo, with a message for you,” Hi said.

“There is someone to see you, Señorita,” Pablo said, “Tomás Chacon, the notary from Santa Barbara.”

“Strange,” Rosa said to Hi. “This is the notary whom Manuel left in charge of the murderer. If you will stay by these roses, to watch the humming birds for a moment, I will speak to him.”

*******

He watched the humming birds for ten minutes, while Rosa spoke with the man. He did not think of the humming birds; the love of Carlotta was eating him up, in an agony that was yet sweet.

I did but see her passing by,

But I shall love her till I die.

“She will be married to-morrow midnight,” he thought, “and he will have her till she dies. If she could be chained to a rock by a dragon we could prove who loves her best.”

*******

When the visitor had gone, Rosa returned to him. “I knew that there would be trouble,” she said. “Chacon has let the murderer escape. The Reds are warned now and all Manuel’s plan will miscarry. He’ll be furious.”

“How did he let him escape?”

“Somebody betrayed it, and the Reds rescued him. I’ve sent Chacon to tell General Chavez; but nothing will be done now that Manuel is away: Chavez is an idler.

“Of course,” she added, “he may act because Manuel is away. These soldiers and politicians are as jealous of each other as prime donne.”

“Surely,” Hi said, “this isn’t a matter for politicians, but for the police? Surely the police will take the murderer?”

“The police?” she said. “Why, Hi, they’re married men, with families, most of them. Do you think they’d risk their pensions by arresting a Red on a White warrant? They’re not philanthropists.”

“What are they, then?”

“Paid partisans.”

“Golly.”

“Well may you say golly. However, that is a little thing, compared with this marriage. I’m used to the police. I’m not used to the thought of that man with ...”

She had paused at the little fountain, where she gazed down into the basin and let the fingers of one hand open and close in the water.

“But I’m not going to talk in this beastly way,” she said. “Forget what I said, will you?

“Of course, Hi, you’ll come here whenever you like. Mother told me to tell you that a place will be here for you at lunch on every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday; when you can come, we’ll be glad, and when you can’t you needn’t write or send word. You needn’t think it’s decent of us. We’re only too glad. You were all lovely to me at your home, and your father simply saved us from beggary. Besides, it will be a charity to two lorn females.”

“Thank you,” Hi said, “you’re a jolly good friend.”

“There’s my hand on that,” she said. “And when you’re settled out here, we can always put you up. Now would you care to swim? We have a bathing pond here. It was made in the days of our glory, but, being made, it is easy to keep up.”

She led the way through a gap in a rose-hedge to a terrace of white marble, in the midst of which was a swimming pool, full of clear water.

“There you are,” she said, “if ever you want a swim. A plunge now would do us both good; but before we plunge, shall we just walk back to the house, to see if Carlotta has returned?”

“Yes, certainly,” Hi said; “but I haven’t heard her horses.”

“Nor I,” she said. “But she ought to be back. She is the swimmer amongst us. She does all things well, but she swims like a sea-bird.”

They found that Carlotta had not returned.

“She ought to be back by this time,” Rosa said. “But in this country trains are sometimes late in starting, as you will find. Let us walk to the gates, to see if she be on the road.”

They saw no one on the road, save three men with a handcart who were coming slowly from the direction of the city and pausing at intervals to paste handbills on walls and palings. They paused to paste a bill upon a ruinous wall opposite the Piranhas’ gate; Rosa and Hi watched them.

“Bill-stickers,” Hi said. “I did not know that you had them here.”

“Oh, yes,” Rosa said. “We are civilised here; bills, drains and only one wife, just like Europe. But we keep them for great occasions like bull-fights, these bills, I mean.”

“Bull-fights,” Hi said. “Do you still have them?”

“This is the season for them; probably this is an announcement of them.”

“I’d love to see a bull-fight; it must be frightfully exciting. Do let us wait to see what it is.”

The bill-sticker, with a few deft thrusts of his brush, set the poster in its place. It was a yellow poster, printed in blunt black type with a tall red heading:

“Proclamation of the Government.”

“It is only a pronunciamento,” Rosa said; “not bulls after all. Can you read it from here? I cannot see anything without my glasses.”

“Something about religion, as far as I can make it out,” Hi said. “Dios is God, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what it is, then; all about religion.”

“There are rather a lot of Dioses,” Hi said after a pause; “but then I suppose it’s Lent.”

“Yes,” Rosa said, a little snappily. “In my Church it is the season for Dioses.”

Donna Emilia met them on their way back through the house to the pond. “Carlotta not yet back?” she said. “She has probably driven to one of the stores. Come in, then, to drink maté. Tea here is never good, Highworth; we drink maté amargo, a bitter drink; not unlike your camomile tea, they tell me; we think it refreshing.”

Hi did not find it refreshing, but drank one little silver pipkin for the experience and a second for politeness.