Chapter V (3)

“Approaching and entering, I saw some writhed and tortured guts of machinery, relics of its old vital organs, fallen, withered, from its ribs. The floor, clammy to the tread, was littered with tumbled masonry; the sheet iron of the roof was shattered in a hundred places under the merciless bombardment of the weather; and, here and there, a scale of this was corroded so thin that it fluttered and buzzed in the draught like a ventilator. Bats of grimy cobweb hung from the beams; and the dead breath of all the dead place was acrid with cold soot.

“It was all ugly and sordid enough, in truth, and I had no reason to be exacting in my inspection of it. Turning, in a vaulting silence, I was about to make my way out, when my attention was drawn to the black opening of what looked like a shed or annex to the main factory. Something, some shaft or plant, revealing itself from the dim obscurity of this place, attracted my curiosity. I walked thither, and, with all due precaution because of the littered ground, entered. I was some moments in adapting my vision to the gloom, and then I discovered that I was in the mill well-house. It was a little dead-locked chamber, its details only partly decipherable in the reflected light which came in by the doorway. The well itself was sunk in the very middle of the floor, and the projecting wall of it rose scarce higher than my knees. The windlass, pivoted in a massive yoke, crossed the twilight at a height a little above my own; and I could easily understand, by the apparent diameter of its barrel, that the well was of a considerable depth.

“Now, as my eyes grew a little accustomed to the obscurity, I could see how a tooth of fire had cut even into this fastness. For the rope, which was fully reeled up upon the windlass, was scorched to one side, as though some exploded fragment of wood or brickwork had alighted there. It was an insignificant fact in itself, but my chance observation of it has its importance in the context; as has also the fact that the bight of the rope (from which the bucket had been removed) hung down a yard or so below the big drum.

“You have always considered me a sapient, or at least a rational creature, have you not? Well, listen to this. Bending over to plumb with my eyes the depth of the pit (an absurdity, to begin with, in that vortex of gloom), I caught with my left hand (wisdom number two) at the hanging end of rope in order to steady myself. On the instant the barrel made one swift revolution, and stuck. The movement, however, had thrown me forward and down, so that my head and shoulders, hanging over, and actually into, the well, pulled me, without possibility of recovery, from my centre of gravity. With a convulsive wrench of my body, I succeeded in bringing my right hand to the support of my left. I was then secure of the rope; but the violence of the act dragged my feet and knees from their last desperate hold, and my legs came whipping helpless over the well-rim. The weight of them in falling near jerked me from my clutch—a bad shock, to begin with. But a worse was in store for me. For I perceived, in the next instant, that the rusty, long-disused windlass was beginning slowly to revolve, _and was letting me down into the abyss_.

“I broke out in a sweat, I confess—a mere diaphoresis of nature; a sort of lubricant to the jammed mechanism of the nerves. I don’t think we are justified in attributing my first sensations to fear. I was exalted, rather—promoted to the analysis of a very exquisite, scarce mortal, problem. My will, as I hung by a hair over the abysm, was called upon to vindicate itself under an utmost stress of apprehension. I felt, ridiculous as it may appear, as if the surrounding dark were peopled with an invisible auditory, waiting, curious, to test the value of my philosophy.

“Here, then, were the practical problems I had to combat. The windlass, as I have said, revolved slowly, but it revolved persistently. If I would remain with my head above the well-rim—which, I freely admit, I had an unphilosophic desire to do—I must swarm as persistently up the rope. That was an eerie and airy sort of treadmill. To climb, and climb, and always climb, paying out the cord beneath me, that I might remain in one place! It was to repudiate gravitation, which I spurned from beneath my feet into the depths. But when, momentarily exhausted, I ventured to pause, some nightmare revolt against the sense of sinking which seized me, would always send me struggling and wriggling, like a drowning body, up to the surface again. Fortunately, I was slightly built and active; yet I knew that wind and muscle were bound sometime to give out in this swarming competition against death. I measured their chances against the length of the rope. There was a desperate coil yet unwound. Moreover, in proportion as I grew the feebler, grew the need for my greater activity. For there were already signs that the great groaning windlass was casting its rust of ages, and was beginning to turn quicker in its sockets. If it had only stuck, paused one minute in its eternal round, I might have set myself oscillating, gradually and cautiously, until I was able to seize with one hand, then another, upon the brick rim, which was otherwise beyond my reach. But now, did I cease climbing for an instant and attempt a frantic clutch at it, down I sank like a clock weight, my fingers trailed a yard in cold slime, and there I was at my mad swarming once more—the madder that I must now make up for lost ground.

“At last, faint with fatigue, I was driven to face an alternative resource, very disagreeable from the first in prospect. This was no less than to resign temporarily my possession of the upper, and sink to the under world; in other words, to let myself go with the rope, and, when it was all reeled out, to climb it again. To this course there were two objections: one, that I knew nothing of the depth of the water beneath me, or of how soon I should come to it; the other, that I was grown physically incapable of any further great effort in the way of climbing. My reluctance to forgo the useless solace of the upper twilight I dismiss as sentimental. But to drop into that sooty pit, and then, perhaps, to find myself unable to reascend it! to feel a gradual paralysis of heart and muscle committing me to a lingering and quite unspeakable death—that was an unnerving thought indeed!

“Nevertheless, I had actually resolved upon the venture, and was on the point of ceasing all effort, and permitting myself to sink, when—I thought of the burnt place in the rope.

“Do you grasp what that sudden thought meant to me? Death, sir, in any case; death, if, with benumbed and aching hands and blistered knees, I continued to work my air-mill; death, no earlier and no later, no less and no more certainly, if I ceased of the useless struggle and went down into the depths. So soon as the strain of my hanging should tell direct upon that scorched strand, that strand must part.

“Then, I think, I knew fear—fear as demoralizing, perhaps, as it may be, short of the will-surrender. And, indeed, I’m not sure but that the will which survives fear may not be a worse last condition than fear itself, which, when exquisite, becomes oblivion. Consciousness _in extremis_ has never seemed to me the desirable thing which some hold it.

“Still, if I suffered for retaining my will power, there is no doubt that its loss, on the flash of that deadly reflection, would have meant an immediate syncope of nerve and an instant downfall; whereas—well, anyhow, here I am.

“I was fast draining of all capacity for further effort. I climbed painfully, spasmodically; but still I climbed, half hoping I should die of the toil of it before I fell. Ever and again I would glance faintly up at the snarling, slowly-revolving barrel above me, and mark how death, as figured in that scorched strand, was approaching me nearer at every turn. It was only a few coils away, when suddenly I set to doing what, goodness knows, I should have done earlier. I screamed—screamed until the dead marrow must have crawled in the very bones of the place.

“Nothing human answered—not a voice, not the sound of a footfall. Only the echoes laughed and chattered like monkeys up in the broken roof of the factory. For the rest, my too-late outburst had but served to sap what little energy yet remained to me.

“The end was come. Looking up, I saw the burnt strand reeling round, a couple of turns away, to the test; and, with a final gulp of horror, I threw up the sponge, and sank.

“I had not descended a yard or two, when my feet touched something.”

The Regius Professor paused dramatically.

“O, go on!” I snapped.

“That something,” he said, “yielded a little—settled—and there all at once was I, standing as firmly as if I were in a pulpit.

“For the moment, I assure you, I was so benumbed, physically and mentally, that I was conscious of nothing in myself but a small weak impatience at finding the awful ecstasy of my descent checked. Then reason returned, like blood to the veins of a person half drowned; and I had never before realized that reason could make a man ache so.

“With the cessation of my strain upon it, the windlass had ceased to revolve. Now, with a sudden desperation, I was tugging at the rope once more—pulling it down hand over hand. At the fifth haul there came a little quick report, and I staggered and near fell. The rope had snapped; and the upper slack of it came whipping down upon my shoulders.

“I rose, dimly aware of what had happened. I was standing on the piled-up fathoms of rope which I had paid out beneath me. Above, though still beyond my effective winning, glimmered the moon-like disk of light which was the well mouth. I dared not, uncertain of the nature of my tenure, risk a spring for it. But, very cautiously, I found the end of the rope that had come away, made a bend in it well clear of the injured part, and, after many vain attempts, slung it clean over the yoke above, coaxed down the slack, spliced it to the other, and so made myself a fixed ladder to climb by. Up this, after a short interval for rest, I swarmed, set myself swinging, grasped the brick rim, first with one hand, then with both, and in another instant had flung myself upon the ground prostrate, and for the moment quite prostrated. Then presently I got up, struck some matches, and investigated.”

The Regius Professor stopped, laughing a little over the memory.

“_Do_ go on!” I said.

“Why,” he responded, chuckling, “generations of school children had been pitching litter into that well, until it was filled up to within a couple yards of the top—just that. The rope, heaping up under me, did the rest. It was a testimony to the limited resources of the valley. What the little natives of to-day do with their odd time, goodness knows. But it was comical, wasn’t it?”

“O, most!” said I. “And particularly from the point of view of the children’s return to you for your dislike of them.”

“Well, as to that,” said the Regius Professor, rather shamefacedly, “I wasn’t beyond acknowledging a certain indebtedness.”

“Acknowledging? How?”

“Why, I happened to have in my knapsack one of my pamphlets on the Reef-building Serpulæ; so I went back to the school, and gave it to the mistress to include in her curriculum.”

ARCADES AMBO

Miguel and Nicanor were the Damon and Phintias of Lima. Their devotion to one another, in a city of gamblers—who are not, as a rule, very wont to sentimental and disinterested friendships—was a standing pleasantry. The children of rich Peruvian neighbours, they had grown up together, passed their school-days together (at an English Catholic seminary), and were at last, in the dawn of their young manhood, to make the “grand tour” in each other’s company, preparatory to their entering upon the serious business of life, which was to pile wealth on wealth in their respective fathers’ offices.

In the meanwhile, awaiting a prosaic destiny, they continued inseparable—a proverb for clean though passionate affection.

The strange thing was that, in the matters of temperament and physique, they appeared to have nothing in common. Nicanor, the younger by a few months, was a little dark, curly-haired creature, bright-eyed as a mouse. He was, in fact, almost a dwarf, and with all the wit, excitability, and vivaciousness which one is inclined to associate with elfishness. At the same time he was perfectly formed—a man in miniature, a little sheath crammed with a big dagger.

Miguel, on the other hand, was large and placid, a smooth, slumberous faun of a youth, smiling and good-natured. He never said anything fine; he never did anything noteworthy; he was not so much admirable as lovable.

The two started, well-equipped in every way, on their tour. The flocks of buzzards, which are the scavengers of Lima, flapped them good-bye with approval. They were too sweetening an element to be popular with the birds.

Miguel and Nicanor travelled overland to Cayenne, in French Guiana, where they took boat for Marseilles, whence they were to proceed to the capital. The circular tour of the world, for all who would make it comprehensively, dates from Paris and ends there. They sailed in a fine vessel, and made many charming acquaintances on board.

Among these was Mademoiselle Suzanne, called also de la Vénerie, which one might interpret into Suzanne of the chase, or Suzanne of the kennel, according to one’s point of view. She had nothing in common with Diana, at least, unless it were a very seductive personality. She was a fashionable Parisian actress, travelling for her health, or perhaps for the health of Paris—much in the manner of the London gentleman, who was encountered touring alone on the Continent because his wife had been ordered change of air.

Suzanne, as a matter of course, fell in love with Miguel first, for his white teeth and sleepy comeliness; and then with Nicanor, for his impudent bright spirit. That was the beginning and end of the trouble.

One moonlight night, in mid-Atlantic, Miguel and Nicanor came together on deck. The funnel of the steamer belched an enormous smoke, which seemed to reach all the way back to Cayenne.

“I hate it,” said Nicanor; “don’t you? It is like a huge cable paid out and paid out, while we drift further from home. If they would only stop a little, keeping it at the stretch, while we swarmed back by it, and left the ship to go on without us!”

Miguel laughed; then sighed.

“Dear Nicanor,” he said; “I will have nothing more to do with her, if it will make you happy.”

“I was thinking of _your_ happiness, Miguel,” said Nicanor. “If I could only be certain that it would not be affected by what I have to tell you!”

“What have you to tell me, old Nicanor?”

“You must not be mistaken, Miguel. Your having nothing more to do with her would not lay the shadow of our separation, which the prospect of my union with her raises between us—though it would certainly comfort me a little on your behalf.”

“I did not mean that at all, Nicanor. I meant that, for your sake, I would even renounce my right to her hand.”

“That would be an easy renunciation, dear Miguel. I honour your affection; but I confess I expect more from it than a show of yielding, for its particular sake, what, in fact, is not yours to yield.”

Miguel had been leaning over the taffrail, looking at the white wraiths of water which coiled and beckoned from the prow. Now he came upright, and spoke in his soft slow voice, which was always like that of one just stretching awake out of slumber—

“I cannot take quite that view, Nicanor, though I should like to. But I do so hate a misunderstanding, at all times; and when it is with you——!”

His tones grew sweet and full—

“O, Nicanor! let this strange new shadow between us be dispelled, at once and for ever. I love Mademoiselle Suzanne, Nicanor.”

“I love Mademoiselle Suzanne, Miguel.”

“Very well. Then I yield her to you.”

“O, pardon me, Miguel! but that is just the point. I wanted to save you the pain—the sense of self-renunciation; but your blindness confounds me. More people know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows. Your infatuation for Mademoiselle Suzanne is very plain to very many. What is plain only to yourself is that Mademoiselle Suzanne returns your devotion. You are not, indeed, justified in that belief.”

“Why not?”

“She has confessed her regard, in the first place, for me.”

“But she has also confessed to me that I have won the leading place in her affections.”

“That is absurd, Miguel. She is the soul of ingenuousness.”

“Perhaps, Nicanor—we are only boys, after all—she is a practised coquette.”

“You must not say that, Miguel, if you want me to remain your friend. You, perhaps, attach too much importance to your looks as an irresistible asset in matters of the heart.”

“Now I shall certainly quarrel with you.”

“You are mistaken, I think. Mind, to women of intellect, is the compelling lure.”

“It remains to be proved.”

“You are determined to put it to the test, then? Good-bye, Miguel.”

“This is not a real breach between us? O, Nicanor!”

“We must come to a definite understanding. Until we do, further confidence between us is impossible.”

He strutted away, perking his angry head, and whistling.

But Suzanne had accomplished the amiable débacle for which she had been intriguing. She had, paradoxically, separated the inseparables. It was a little triumph, perhaps; a very easy game to one of her experience—hardly worth the candle, in fact; but it was the best the boat had to offer. It remained only to solace the tedium of what was left of the voyage by playing on the broken strings of that friendship.

It was Nicanor who suffered most under the torture. He had always been rather accustomed to hear himself applauded for his wit—a funny little acrid possession which was touched with a precocious knowledge of the world. Now, to know himself made the butt of a maturer social irony lowered his little cockerel crest most dismally. As for good-natured Miguel, it was his way to join, rather than resent, the laugh against himself; and his persistent moral health under the infliction only added to the other’s mind-corrosion. In a very little the two were at daggers-drawn.

The “affair” made a laughable distraction for many of the listless and mischievous among the passengers. They contributed their little fans to the flame, and exchanged private bets upon the probable consequences. But Suzanne, indifferent to all interests but her own, worked her oracles serenely, and affected a wide-eyed unconsciousness of the amorous imbroglio which her arts had brought about. First one, then the other of the rivals would she beguile with her pensive kindnesses, and, according to her mood or the accident of circumstances, reassure in hope. And the task grew simpler as it advanced, inasmuch as the silence which came to fall between Miguel and Nicanor precluded the wholesome revelations which an interchange of confidences might have inspired.

At last the decisive moment arrived when Suzanne’s more intimate worldlings were to be gratified with her solution of the riddle. It was to end, in fact, in a Palais Royal farce; and they were to be invited to witness the “curtain.”

A few hours before reaching port she drew Miguel to a private interview.

“Ah, my friend!” she said, her slender fingers knotted, her large eyes wistful with tears, “I become distracted in the near necessity for decision. Pity me in so momentous a pass. What am I to do?”

“Mademoiselle,” said poor Miguel, his chest heaving, “it is resolved already. We are to journey together to Paris, where the bliss of my life is to be piously consummated.”

“Yes,” she said; “but the publicity—the scandal! Men are sure to attribute the worst motives to our comradeship, and that I could not endure.”

“Then we will make an appointment to meet privately—somewhere whence we can escape without the knowledge of a soul.”

“It is what had occurred to me. Hush! There is a little accommodating place—the Café de Paris, on the Boulevard des Dames, near the harbour. Do you know it? No—I forgot the world is all to open for you. But it is quite easy to find. Be there at eight o’clock to-morrow morning. I will await you. In the meantime, not a hint, not a whisper of our intention to anyone. Now go, go!”

He left her, rapturous but, once without her radiance, struck his breast and sighed, “Ah, heart, heart! thou traitor to thy brother!”

And at that moment Suzanne was catching sight of the jealous Nicanor, angrily and ostentatiously ignoring her. She called to him piteously, timidly, and he came, after a struggle with himself, stepping like a bantam.

“Is it not my friend that you meant, mademoiselle? I will summon him back. Your heart melts to him at the last moment.”

“Cruel!” she said. “You saw us together? I would not have had a witness to the humiliation of that gentle soul—least of all his brother and happier rival.”

“His——! Ah, mademoiselle, I entreat you, do not torture me!”

“Are you so sensitive? Alas! I have much for which to blame myself! Perhaps I have coquetted too long with my happiness; but how many women realize their feelings for the first time in the shock of imminent loss! We do not know our hearts until they ache, Nicanor.”

“Poor Miguel—poor fellow!”

“You love him best of all, I think. Well, go! I have no more to say.”

“Suzanne!”

“No, do not speak to me. To have so bared my breast to this repulse! O, I am shamed beyond words!”

“But do you not understand my heartfelt pity for his loss, when measured by my own ecstatic gain?”

“Well?”

“Suzanne! I cannot believe it true.”

“I feel so bewildered also. What are we to do?”

“You spoke once of a journey to Paris together.”

“You and I? Think of the jests, the comments on the part of our shipmates! We are not to bear a slurred reputation with us. I should die of shame.”

“What if we were to meet somewhere, unknown to anybody, by appointment, and slip away before the world awoke?”

“Yes, that would do; but where?”

“Can’t you suggest?”

“I know of a little Café de Paris. It is on the Boulevard des Dames, near the harbour. Say we meet there, at eight o’clock to-morrow morning, in time to catch the early mail?”

“O, yes, yes!”

“Hush! We have been long enough together. Do not forget; be silent as the grave.”

“Brains triumph!” thought Nicanor, as he went. “Alas, my poor, sweet, simple-minded comrade!”

De la Vénerie carried betimes quite a select little company with her to the rendezvous. They were all choking with fun and expectation.

“The dear _ingénus_!” said Captain Robillard. “It will be exquisite to see the fur fly. But precocity must have its lesson.”

They had their rolls and coffee in a closet adjoining the common room. There was a window overlooking the street.

“Hist!” whispered the tiny Comte de Bellenglise. “Here they come!”

Nicanor was the first to arrive. He was very spruce and cock-a-hoop. His big brown eyes were like fever-spots in his little body. He questioned, airily enough, the proprietor, who had been well prompted to answer him.

“No, monsieur; there is no lady at this hour. An appointment? Alas! such is always the least considered of their many engagements.”

As he spoke, Miguel came in. The two eyed one another blankly after the first shock. At length Nicanor spoke: the door between the closet and the café opened a little.

“You have discovered, then? Go away, my poor friend. This is, indeed, the worst occasion for our reconciliation.”

“I did not come to seek you, Nicanor. I came to meet Mademoiselle Suzanne alone, by appointment.”

“And I, too, Miguel. I fear you must have overheard and misconstrued her meaning. It was I she invited to this place.”

“No, Nicanor; it was I.”

“She has not come, at least. We must decide, at once and for ever, before she comes.”

“I know what you mean, Nicanor. This, indeed, is the only end to a madness. Have you your pistol? I have mine.”

“And I have mine, Miguel. You will kill me, as you are the good shot. I don’t know why I ever carried one, except to entice you to show your skill at breaking the floating bottles. But that was before the trouble.”

“Dear Nicanor!”

“But let it be _à l’outrance_. I want either to kill you or to be killed.”

“If she were only out of the way, you would love me again.”

“Amen to that, dear Miguel!”

“Yet we are to fight?”

“To the death, my brother, my comrade! Such is the madness of passion.”

The paralyzed landlord found breath for the first time to intervene.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen! for God’s sake! consider my reputation!”

Miguel, starting away, and leaving Nicanor with his back to the closet, produced and pointed his weapon at the trembling creature. These South Americans were a strange compound of sweetness and ferocity.

“If you interfere,” he said, “I will shoot you instead. Now, Nicanor, we fire at discretion, one shot to each.”

The bang of Nicanor’s pistol shattered the emptiness. Miguel was down on the floor. Nicanor cast away his reeking weapon, and, running to his friend, raised his body in his arms. The door of the closet opened, and Suzanne, radiant and gloating, stood in the entry. “That was a good shot, Nicanor,” said Miguel, smiling weakly. “You are better at men than bottles.”

“Miguel! Miguel! you have your pistol undischarged. Faint as you are, you cannot miss me at this range.”

“Stand away, then, Nicanor.”

Nicanor stood up, tearing his coat apart.

“Here, here! to my heart, dearest!”

Miguel, supporting himself on his left hand, raised his pistol swiftly, and shot Mademoiselle Suzanne through the breast. Then he fell back to the floor.

“That is the short way to it, Nicanor. Confess, after all, I am the better shot. Now we are reunited for ever.”

Suzanne had not a word to say to that compact. She lay in a heap, like the sweetest of dressmaker’s dummies overturned.

The landlord raised a terrible outcry.

“Messieurs! I am ruined, unless you witness to the truth of this catastrophe!”

“I, for one, will witness,” said de Bellenglise, very white. “Mademoiselle, it is plain to the humorist, has only reaped what she sowed. But I do not envy M. Nicanor his survival.”

Heaven, however, did, it appeared, from the fact of its claiming him to the most austere of its foundations, La Trappe, in Normandy, where men whom the law exonerates may suffer, voluntarily, a lifelong penal servitude.

And, in the meanwhile, Miguel could await his friend wholehearted, for he had certainly taken the direct way of sending Mademoiselle Suzanne to a place where her future interference between them was not to be dreaded.

OUR LADY OF REFUGE

When Luc Caron and his mate, whom, officially, he called Pepino, plodded with their raree-show into the sub-Pyrenean village of San Lorenzo, their hearts grew light with a sense of a haven reached after long stress of weather. Caron sounded his bird-call, made of boxwood, and Pepino drummed on his tabor, which was gay with fluttering ribbons, and merrily they cried together:

“Hullo, gentles and simples! hullo, children of the lesser and the larger growth—patriots all! Come, peep into the box of enchantment! For a quarter-real one may possess the world. See here the anti-Christ in his closet at Fontainebleau, burning brimstone to the powers of evil! See the brave English ships, ‘Impérieuse’ and ‘Cambrian,’ dogging the coast from Rosas to Barcelona, lest so little as a whiff of sulphur get through! Crowd not up, my children—there is time for all; the glasses will not break nor dim; they have already withstood ten thousand ‘eye-blows,’ and are but diamonds the keener. Come and see the ships—so realistic, one may hear the sound of guns, the wind in the rigging—and all for a paltry quarter-real!”

Their invitation excited no laughter, and but a qualified interest, among the loafing village ancients and sullen-faced women who appeared to be the sole responsible inhabitants of the place. A few turned their heads; a dog barked; that was all. Not though Caron and Pepino had come wearifully all the way from Rousillon, over the passes of the mountains, and down once more towards the plains of Figueras, that they might feel the atmosphere of home, and claim its sympathetic perquisites, was present depression to be forgotten at the call of a couple of antics. Twelve miles away was not there the fort of San Fernando, and the cursed French garrison, which had possessed it by treachery, beleagured in their ill-gotten holding by a force of two thousand Spaniards, which included all the available manhood of San Lorenzo? There would be warrant for gaiety, indeed, should news come of a bloody holocaust of those defenders; but that it did not, and in the meanwhile, blown from another quarter, flew ugly rumours of a large force of French detached somewhere from the north, and hastening to the relief of their comrades. True, a fool must live by his folly as a wise man by his wisdom; but then there was a quality of selection in all things. As becoming as a jack-pudding at a funeral was Caron in San Lorenzo at this deadly pass. Not so much as a child ventured to approach the peep-show.

The two looked at one another. They were faint and loose-lipped with travel.

“Courage, little Pepa!” said Caron. “There is no wit-sharpener like adversity. The hungry mouse has the keenest scent.”

It was odd, in the face of his caressing diminutive, that he held himself ostentatiously the smaller of the pair. He seemed to love to show the other’s stature fine and full by comparison. Pepino, in fact, was rather tall, with a faun-like roundness in his thighs and soft olive face. He was dressed, too, the more showily, the yellow handkerchief knotted under his hat being of silk, and his breeches, down the seams of which little bells tinkled, of green velvet. Caron, for his part, shrewd and lean and leather-faced, was content with a high-peaked hat and an old cloak of faded mulberry. His wit and merriment were his bright assets.

Pepino, for all his weariness, chuckled richly.

“Sweet and inexhaustible! I could feed all day on thy love. Yet, I think, for my stomach’s sake, I would rather be less gifted than the mouse. What is the use to be able to smell meat through glass when the window is shut?”

“Wait! There are other ways to the larder than by the door. In the meanwhile, we will go on. There are two ends to San Lorenzo, the upper and lower: we will try the lower. North and south sit with their backs to one another, like peevish sisters. What the one snubs the other may favour.”

He swung the box by its strap to his shoulder, closed the tripod, and, using it for a staff, trudged on dustily with his comrade. Half way down the village, a man for the first time accosted them. He was young, vehement, authoritative—the segundo jefe, or sub-prefect of San Lorenzo.

“Wait!” he said, halting the pair. “I know you, Caron. You should be de Charogne—a French carrion-crow. What do you here, spying for your masters?”

“Señor,” said the showman, “you are mistaken. I am of your people.”

“Since when? I know you, I say.”

“Many know me, caballero, in these parts, and nothing against me but my nationality. Now that is changed.”

“Since when? I repeat it.”

“Since the Emperor tore my brother from his plough in Rousillon to serve his colours, and our father was left to die of starvation. We are but now on our way back from closing the old man’s eyes, and at the foot of the hills we recovered our chattels, which we had hid there, on our journey north, for security. I speak of myself and my little comrade, Pepino, who is truly of this province, señor, having been born in Gerona, where he made stockings.”

The sub-prefect looked at Pepino attentively, for the first time, and his dark eyes kindled.

“And wore them, by the same token,” he murmured.

He swept off his hat, mockingly courteous.

“Buenos dias, señora!” he said.

Caron jumped.

“Ah, mercy, caballero!” he cried. “Can you, indeed, distinguish so easily? Do not give us away.”

“Tell me all about it,” said the sub-prefect. “Truly this is no time for masquerading in San Lorenzo.”

“But it was the most obvious of precautions to begin with,” pleaded Caron. “Over the mountains is not safety for a woman; and since——”

“And since, you are in San Lorenzo,” said the other.

“It is true, señor. Pepa shall re-sex herself to-night. Yet it is only a few hours since we found our expedient justified.”

“How was that?”

“Why, in the hills, on our way back, we came plump upon a French picket, and——”

He leapt, to the sudden start and curse the other gave.

“What have I said, señor?”

“Dolt, traitor!” thundered the sub-prefect. “French! and so near! and this is the first you speak of it! I understand—they come from Perpignan—they are Reille’s advance guard, and they march to relieve Figueras. O! to hold me here with thy cursed ape’s chatter, while——”

He sprang away, shouting as he went, “To arms! to arms! Who’ll follow me to strike a blow for Spain! The French are in our vineyards!” The whole village turned and followed him as he ran.

Caron, in great depression, led Pepino into a place of shade and privacy.

“I am an ass, little one,” he said. “You shall ride _me_ for the future. And _this_ is home!”

She threw her arms about his neck, with a tired spring of tears.

“But I am a woman again, dear praise to Mary!” she cried, “and can love you once more in my own way.”

This befell in 1808, when the ferment which Napoleon had started in Spain was already in fine working. The French garrison in Figueras—one of those strongholds which he had occupied at first from the friendliest motives, and afterwards refused to evacuate—being small and hard beset by a numerous body of somatenes from the mountains, had burned the town, and afterwards retired into the neighbouring fort of San Fernando, where they lay awaiting succour with anxious trepidation. And they had reason for their concern, since a little might decide their fate—short shrift, and the knife or gallows, not to speak of the more probable eventuality of torture. For those were the days of savage reprisals; and of the two forces the Spaniards were the less nice in matters of humanity. They killed by the Mass, and had the Juntas and Inquisition to exonerate them.

But Figueras was an important point, strategically; for which reason the Emperor—who generally in questions of political economy held lives cheaper than salt—had despatched an express to General Reille, who commanded the reserves at Perpignan, on the north side of the mountains, ordering him to proceed by forced marches to the relief of the garrison, as a step preliminary to the assault and capture of Gerona. And it was an advance body of this force which Luc and his companion had encountered bivouacking in the hills.

It was not a considerable body as the two gauged it, for Colonel de Regnac’s troops—raw Tuscan recruits, and possessed with a panic terror of the enemy—were showing a very laggard spirit in the venture, and no emulation whatever of their officers’ eagerness to encounter. In fact, Colonel de Regnac, with his regimental staff, some twenty all told, and few beside, had run ahead of his column by the measure of a mile or two, and was sitting down to rest and curse, below his breath, in a hollow of the hills, when the two captured vagabonds were brought before him.

There had been no light but the starlight, no voice but the downpouring of a mountain stream until the sentry had leaped upon them. Chatter and fire were alike prohibited things in those rocky ante-rooms of hate and treachery.

“Who are you?” had demanded the Colonel of Caron.

“A son of France, monsieur.”

“Whither do you go?”

“To attend the deathbed of my old father in Rousillon,” had answered Luc, lying readily.

The Colonel had arisen, and scanned his imperturbable face keenly.

“His name?”

Luc had told him truthfully—also his father’s circumstances and misfortunes.

The officer had grunted: “Well, he pays the toll to glory. Whence, then, do you come?”

“From Figueras.”

“Ha! They have news of us there?”

“On the contrary, monsieur; your coming will surprise them greatly.”

“It is well; let it be well. Go in peace.”

A little later the sentry, confiding to one who was relieving him, was overheard to say: “Ventre de biche! I would have made sure first that those two rascals went _up_ the hill!”

He was brought before the Colonel.

“My son, what did you say?”

The sentry, scenting promotion for his perspicacity, repeated his remark, adding that, if he were right in his suspicions of the vagabonds’ _descent towards San Lorenzo_, there would be trouble on the morrow.

He was soundly welted with a strap for his foresight, and thereafter degraded—to his intense astonishment, for a private was not supposed to volunteer counsel. But his prediction was so far vindicated that, in the course of the following morning, a well-aimed shot, succeeded by a very fusillade, vicious but harmless, from the encompassing rocks, laid low a member of the staff, and sent the rest scattering for shelter. They were, at the time, going leisurely to enable the main body to come up with them; but this stroke of treachery acted upon men and officers like a goad. Re-forming, they deployed under cover, and charged the guerrillas’ position—only to find it abandoned. Pursuit was useless in that welter of ridges; they buckled to, and doubled down the last slopes of the mountain into San Lorenzo.

“_If_ I could only encounter that Monsieur Caron!” said the Colonel sweetly.

And, lo! under the wall of a churchyard they came plump upon the very gentleman, sitting down to rest with his comrade Pepino.

It seemed a providence. The village, for all else, appeared deserted, depopulated.

Luc scrambled to his feet, with his face, lean and mobile, twitching under its tan. The Colonel, seated on his horse, eyed him pleasantly, and nodded.

He was hardly good to look at by day, this Colonel. It seemed somehow more deadly to play with him than it had seemed under the starlight. He had all the features of man exaggerated but his eyes, which were small and infamous—great teeth, great brows, great bones, and a moustache like a sea-lion’s. He could have taken Faith, Hope, and Charity together in his arms, and crushed them into pulp against his enormous chest. Only the lusts of sex and ambition were in any ways his masters. But, for a wonder, his voice was soft.

“Son of France,” he said, “thou hast mistaken the road to Rousillon.”

Luc, startled out of his readiness, had no word of reply. Pepino crouched, whimpering, unnoticed as yet.

“What is that beside him?” asked the Colonel.

A soldier hoisted up the peep-show, set it on its legs, and looked in.

“Blank treason, Colonel,” said he. “Here is the Emperor himself spitting fire.”

“It is symbolical of Jove,” said Caron.

“Foul imps attend him!”

“They are his Mercuries.”

“No more words!” said the Colonel. “String the rascal up!”

That was the common emergency exit in the then theatres of war. It had taken the place of the “little window” through which former traitors to their country had been invited to look.

Pepino leapt to his feet, with a sudden scream.

“No, no! He is Caron, the wit, the showman, dear to all hearts!”

Colonel Regnac’s great neck seemed to swell like a ruttish wolf’s. His little eyes shot red with laughter. He had as keen a scent as the sub-prefect for a woman.

“Good!” he said; “he shall make us a show.”

“Señor, for the love of God! He spoke the truth. His father is dead.”

“He will be in a dutiful haste to rejoin him.”

“Señor, be merciful! You are of a gallant race.”

“That is certain,” said de Regnac. “You, for your part, are acquitted, my child. I take you personally under my protection.”

“Good-bye, comrade!” cried Caron sadly. “We have gone the long road together, and I am the first to reach home. Follow me when you will. I shall wait for you.”

“Fie!” said the Colonel. “That is no sentiment for a renegade. Heaven is the goal of this innocence, whom I save from your corruption.”

They hung him from the branch of a chestnut tree, and lingered out his poor dying spasms. Pepino, after one burst of agony, stood apathetic until the scene was over. Then, with a shudder, correlative with the last of the dangling body’s, she seemed to come awake.

“Well,” she said, “there goes a good fellow; but it is true he was a renegade.”

The Colonel was delighted.

“They have always a spurious attraction,” he said, “to the sex that is in sympathy with naughtiness in any form. But consider: false to one is false to all, and this was a bad form of treachery—though,” he added gallantly, “he certainly had his extreme temptation.”

“The French killed his father,” she said indifferently.

“The French,” he answered, “kill, of choice, with nothing but kindness. You, though a Spaniard, my pet, shall have ample proof if you will.”

“I am to come with you?”

“God’s name! There is to be no enforcement.”

“Well, you have left me little choice. Already here they had looked upon us with suspicion, and, if I remained alone, would doubtless kill me. I do not want to die—not yet. What must be must. The king is dead, live the king!”

He was enchanted with her vivacity. He took her up before him on his saddle, and chuckled listening to the feverish chatter with which she seemed to beguile herself from memory.

“These jays have no yesterday,” he thought; and said aloud, “You are not Pepino? Now tell me.”

“No, I am Pepa,” she said. “I am only a man in seeming. Alack! I think a man would not forget so easily.”

“Some men,” he answered, and his hand tightened a little upon her. “Trust me, that dead rogue is already forgathering with his succuba.”

By and by he asked her: “How far to Figueras?”

“Twelve miles from where we started,” she answered.

A thought struck him, and he smiled wickedly.

“You will always bear in mind,” he said, “that the moment I become suspicious that you are directing us wide, or, worse, into a guet-apens, I shall snap off your little head at the neck, and roll it back to San Lorenzo.”

“Have no fear,” she said quietly; “we are in the straight road for the town—or what used to be one.”

“And no shelter by the way? I run ahead of my rascals, as you see. We must halt while they overtake us. Besides”—he leered horribly—“there is the question of the night.”

“I know of no shelter,” she said, “but Our Lady of Refuge.”

“An opportune title, at least. What is it?”

“It is a hospital for the fallen—for such as the good Brotherhoods of Madrid send for rest and restoration to the sanctuary of the quiet pastures. The monks of Misericorde are the Brothers’ deputies there—sad, holy men, who hide their faces from the world. The house stands solitary on the plain; we shall see it in a little. They will give you shelter, though you are their country’s enemies. They make no distinctions.”

De Regnac pulled at his moustache, frowning, pondering.

“Where these monks forgather are fat kids and old Malaga—a tempting alternative to the munching of cold biscuit under the stars. But—_sacré chien!_ one may always take in more with the gravy than ever fell from the spit. What, then!”

He jerked his feet peevishly in the stirrups, and growled—

“Limping and footsore already come my cursed rabble—there you are, white-livered Tuscan sheep! The bark of a dog will scare them; they would fear a thousand bogies in the dark. It is certain I must wait for them, and bivouac somewhere here in the plains.”

Indeed, the first of them came on as he spoke—a weary, stumbling body of laggards, trailing feet and muskets.

“Halte-là!” he thundered; and the men came to a loose-kneed stand, while the corporals went round prodding and cursing them into a form of discipline. De Regnac grumbled—

“Are we to have this cold grace to our loves? God’s name! my heart cries out for fire—fire within and without. These monks!”

“Shall I slip before, and sound them? You may trust me, for a Spanish girl, who has learned how to coax her confessor.”

“Ha! _You!_” He held her, biting his great lips. “What are you good for but deceit, rogue! No, no; we will go together.”

He called his staff about him, and they went forward in a body. Presently, topping a longish slope, they saw, sprung out of the plain before them, a huddled grey building, glooming monstrous in the dusk. Its barred windows stared blindly; twin towers held the portico between them, as it were the lunette of a vast guillotine; a solitary lamp hung motionless in the entrance. Far away across the flats a light or two twinkled over ruined Figueras, like marsh-candles over a swamp. The place seemed lifeless desolation embodied—Death’s own monument in a desert. Gaiety in its atmosphere shivered into silence.

But at length a captain rallied, with a laugh.

“Peste!” he cried; “a churchyard refuge! Let us see if the dead walk!”

He battered with his sword-hilt on the great door. It swung open, in staggering response, and revealed a solitary figure. Cowled, spectral, gigantic—holding, motionless, a torch that wept fire—the shape stood without a word. It was muffled from crown to heel in coarse frieze; the eyelets in its woollen vizor were like holes scorched through by the burning gaze behind—the very rims of them appeared to smoulder. Laville, the captain, broke into an agitated laugh.

“Mordieu, my friend, are the dead so lifeless?”

“What do you seek?”

The voice boomed, low and muffled, from the folds.

“Rest and food,” answered Laville. “We are weary and famished. For the rest, we ask no question, and invite none.”

“So they come in peace,” said the figure, “all are welcome here.”

The Colonel pushed to the front, carrying his burden.

“We come in peace,” he said—“strangers and travellers. We pay our way, and the better where our way is smoothed. Take that message to your Prior.”

The figure withdrew, and returned in a little.

“The answer is, Ye are welcome. For those who are officers, a repast will be served within an hour in the refectory; for the rest, what entertainment we can compass shall be provided in the outhouses. A room is placed at the disposal of your commander.”

“It is well,” said de Regnac. “Now say, We invite your Prior to the feast himself provides, and his hand shall be first in the dish, and his lip to the cup; else, from our gallantry, do we go supperless.”

Once more the figure withdrew and returned.

“He accepts. You are to fear no outrage at his hands.”

The Colonel exclaimed cynically, “Fie, fie! I protest you wrong our manners!”—and, giving some orders _sub voce_ for the precautionary disposal of his men, entered with his staff. They were ushered into a stone-cold hall, set deep in the heart of the building—a great windowless crypt, it seemed, whose glooms no warmth but that of tapers had ever penetrated. It was bare of all furniture save benches and a long trestle-table, and a few sacred pictures on the walls. While the rest waited there, de Regnac was invited to his quarters—a cell quarried still deeper into that hill of brick. No sound in all the place was audible to them as they went. He pushed Pepino before him.

“This is my servant,” he said. “He will attend me, by your leave.”

The girl made no least demur. She went even jocundly, turning now and again to him with her tongue in her cheek. He, for his part, was in a rapture of slyness; but he kept a reserve of precaution. They were escorted by the giant down a single dim corridor, into a decent habitable cell, fitted with chairs, a little stove, and a prie-Dieu; but the bed was abominably rocky. De Regnac made a wry face at it for his companion’s secret delectation.

The ghostly monk, intimating that he would await outside the señor commandante’s toilet, that he might re-escort his charge to the refectory, closed the door upon the two. De Regnac cursed his officiousness, groaning; but Pepino reassured his impatience with a hundred drolleries. However, when the Colonel came out presently, he came out alone; and, moreover, turned the key in the door and pocketed it.

“Merely a prudential measure,” he explained to his guide. “These gaillards are not to be trusted in strange houses. I will convey him his supper by and by with my own hands.”

The figure neither answered nor seemed to hear. De Regnac, joining a rollicking company, dismissed him from his mind.

And alone in the cell stood mad Pepino.

But not for long. A trap opened in the floor, and from it sprouted, like a monstrous fungus, the head and shoulders of the giant monk. Massively, sombrely he arose, until the whole of his great bulk was emerged and standing in a burning scrutiny of the prisoner. A minute passed. Then, “Whence comest thou, Pepa Manoele? With whom, and for what purpose?” said the voice behind the folds.

His question seemed to snap in an instant the garrotte about her brain. She flung herself on her knees before him with a lamentable cry—

“They have killed my Luc, brother—my Luc, who took me from your wards of mercy, sins and all. They have killed my sweet singing cricket, my merry, merry cricket, that had no guile in all its roguish heart. They put their heel upon him in the path—what are songs to them!—and left my summer desolate. If I weep one moment, I know that blood will scald my cheeks and drain my heart, and I shall die before I act. O, brother! keep back my tears a little. Show me what to do!”

She clutched in agony at his robe.

“Come,” he said; “the way is clear.”

* * * * *

The feast was served to the tick of the hour by lay brothers, another blank-envisaged form directing them. The tables smoked with cheer, and de Regnac rubbed his hands. There were the joints of fat kid and the flagons of old Malaga—salmis of quail, too; truffled sausages; herrings with mustard sauce, things of strong flavour meet for warriors. The steam itself was an invitation—the smell, the sparkle. Only one thing lacked—the Prior’s grace. De Regnac, bestial always, but most like a tiger in the view of unattainable meats, crowded the interval with maledictions and curses. His courtesy stopped anywhere on the threshold of his appetites. Baulked of his banquet, he would be ready to make a holocaust of the whole hospital. Yet he dared not be the first to put his fingers in the dish.

“Where is our host?” he growled. “Doth he fear the test—or death—a coward faint with indecision?”

Even with the word, he found him at his elbow—an old, dry pipe of a man, wheezing thin air. The father’s face under its dropping cowl (no doubt his lungs were too crazy for the vizor) showed stark with rime; his forehead was streaked with it; his eyes were half-thawed pools. He spoke. Hoarse and feeble, his voice seemed to crow from the attics of a ruined tenement, high up among the winds.

“Fall to, soldiers, fall to! There is no grace like honest appetite. Fall to! And they tell me ye have travelled far to claim our hospitality. Fall to!”

De Regnac smacked his shoulder boisterously, so that he staggered.

“Not till you have blessed our meal for us, old father.”

The Prior raised his trembling hands. The other caught at them.

“Not that way. We ask the taster’s grace. It was a bargain.”