Chapter III: Part ONE (3)

“Ah, Captain Cary,” he said, “the boatmen told me that you had not gone aboard. I hoped to catch you here as you went off. By the way, here is some mail for the _Pathfinder_. There is this priest, a Father Garsinton, from the mining district, who came in, just as the office closed, to beg a passage to Santa Barbara.”

“Indeed.”

“He has a letter from one of our clients, one of our most important clients.”

“Do I understand that he wants to come in the _Pathfinder_?”

“Well; he comes from one of our very best clients, Captain Cary, so if you could manage to strain a point. . . . He is a priest, used to every kind of hardship; you could put him in the coal-hole, anywhere, it would make no difference to him, he would give no trouble. I don’t suppose he’s very rich, but of course he would pay his passage. You see, Captain Cary, it is a very special case. He is a poor man. He has only a month’s leave of absence. He wants to reach Santa Barbara to settle the affairs of his mother, who has died there. He has missed the _Alvarado_. He is an Englishman and his poor sister is in Santa Barbara all alone.”

Captain Cary bit his glove, and showed a poor mouth.

“I suppose we’ll have to take him,” he growled to Sard; “I hate priests: they always take snuff. But I’ll have no nonsense about fish on Fridays.”

Mr. Brentano led up and introduced Father Garsinton. Sard noticed the priest particularly. He was a big bull of a man, with immense chest and shoulders, a short, thick neck, a compact, forceful head and little glittering eyes. There was something magnificent in his bearing. He was of about the middle age, near that time in life when muscle goes to flesh, but still on the sinewy side of it. At a first glance, his face, which was fresh-coloured, looked wholesome, hearty and healthy; but at a second glance Sard felt that there was something wanting. There was a greyish puffiness under the eyes, and something unnatural, or at least unusual, about the eyes themselves. The man’s face was unusual, the man was unusual, he was an odd-looking man, with enormous bodily strength to make his oddness felt. Sard, who had not seen any such Englishman before, realised that a man so odd would choose a way of life followed by few Englishmen. Father Garsinton wore new blacks; he was smart, for a priest from a mining camp; his cloth smelt new; his voice, as he thanked Captain Cary, was soft and gracious, but his eye was sidelong as he spoke, taking stock of Sard.

“Mr. Harker,” Captain Cary said, “will you be away, then to make those enquiries, and then follow us on board?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you should hear of those people, don’t let them entangle you into delaying. There’s a norther coming and I cannot wait for you. I would not like you to lose your passage.”

“I’ll not lose my passage, sir.”

“I see the tug’s down the quay there, with steam up. Now, Mr. Garsinton, have you any gear to go aboard?”

“Yes, Captain Cary, a small trunk and that packing-case.”

“That packing-case? That sort of deckhouse by the bollard? It looks like a pantechnicon van. What is in it?”

“Two sets of Las Palomas crockery for my sister, with the necessary packing.”

“You’ll have to pay me freight on it. It will take a yard-tackle to get it over the side. Now we must get a boatman and a couple of Carib boys to get it aboard for us.”

Sard in his caleche was by this time turning about to go to the hotel. He paid particular attention to the packing-case, which shone there in new white wood beside the bollard. He thought that it looked big for two sets of crockery, but supposed that the stuff was dunnaged against the sea. He drove to the hotel.

At the hotel, the woman in charge remembered the name of Kingsborough.

“Yes,” she said, “a lady and her brother, rather more than three weeks ago; they were here for two nights, on the first floor, in Rooms B and D. Let me see. February the 20th and 21st, it was. They came in on the _Palenque_ from San Agostino. They were going to stop somewhere here, he said. He came in for letters a day or two after they left the hotel.”

Sard thanked her, turned to the 20th February and saw the names:

Hilary Kingsborough } Br. subjects, in trans.
Margarita Kingsborough }

written by the man in what is called a Civil Service hand. “Here they are,” he said. “Do you happen to know where they went when they left?”

The woman turned up a register. “No,” she said. “They breakfasted here on the 22nd, and then left the hotel. I’m not here in the mornings, but he said they were going to stop here for a little. They were taking a furnished flat, the upstairs maid thought.”

“Do you happen to know what he is doing here?”

“Writing something for some examination, so someone said. He was a very young gentleman.”

“What was she like?”

“A very nice lady.”

“Could your colleague, who saw them go, tell me where they went, when they left here? I want to give them a message.”

“The other clerk won’t be here till midnight,” the woman said. “Perhaps you could come back, then?”

He drove on to the Club, much pleased to be on the track of these Kingsboroughs. There was something odd about the names of Hilary and Margarita. “‘A very young gentleman,’” he repeated, “and ‘a very nice lady.’ And there, as it happens, is their enemy.”

There, on the pavement before a café on the water-front, was Mr. Wiskey dancing a Hottentot breakdown to his friends. Mr. Wiskey’s hands were behind his back, jutting out his coat-tails; his head was bowed forward because of his boil; he was singing as he danced:

“O, I’m a lady,
A Hottentot lady,
A one-time-piecee lubly gal O.”

His friends kept time for him as he danced by clacking spoons on their front teeth.

Sard wondered how it had come about that a very nice lady and a very young gentleman had roused the employer of such a crew to take extreme measures against them. He reckoned that it would be quite impossible for him to find these Kingsboroughs and then visit Los Xicales. “The thing has always mocked me,” he said, “perhaps all things do, if you think too much of them.”

He entered the Club just as the clocks struck five.

“Why, for the love of Mike,” the Club porter said, “if it ain’t Mr. Harker! Why, sir, how are you? Maybe you’ll not remember me, but I was in the crowd with you in the _Venturer_ one trip, ’way back.”

Sard saw before him a young man of about twenty-five with a smile which brought him back to memory. It was Richard Shullocker, a young American who had been stranded as a lad by the death of his parents during an epidemic in one of the fever ports. He had shipped himself aboard the _Venturer_ as an ordinary seaman, so as to reach a windward port from which he could sail for Boston. In spite of his age, he had done very well. He had been known on board as the Big Smiled Kid, for his smile stretched from ear to ear and never ceased in any trouble or any weather. Now here he was, prosperous and ambitious, a Club porter in Las Palomas.

“Why, Richard Shullocker,” Sard said. “So you are here. I’ve often wondered what became of you. You’re looking well.”

“Yes, sir. This place suits me. But I’m through here this month. I’ve figured out this hotel and club business. I’m going to start business in New York City on my own account. And I suppose you are Captain Harker now?”

“No, just mate; with Captain Cary still. And now I want you to help me. Do you know of any man in this Club, a courtesy member probably, of the name of Kingsborough?”

“Why, sure, Mr. Harker. A young fellow, Mr. Hilary Kingsborough. If that’s the man, he was in here for his mail only half an hour ago. He’s been here about three weeks. He’s staying at a place up the coast, General Martinez’ place, Los Xicales.”

“Los Xicales,” Sard said, startled. “That house near the beach?”

“Yes. Colonel Mackenzie hired it for him; the police colonel. He’s staying there with his sister, who is sure one lovely woman; but they’re going from here to-morrow, down to Ytá-Ytá.”

“Where do they come from?”

“England, I guess. He writes up these old Spanish buildings and his sister draws them. She’s just plum lovely.”

“I want to get out to them, to give them a warning. I believe that they’re threatened by a gang of rough-necks. I’m sailing at six and have very little time. While I go out to them (I know the way to Los Xicales), will you go to the Palace of Justice and ask Colonel Mackenzie to have a patrol along there to-night?”

“Sure, Mr. Harker, I’ll go right now. But how are you going to Los Xicales? Not in that shay, I guess, if you’re in any hurry. You’d best take my bicycle if you’re hurrying. Say, George, rouse up the bicycle for Mr. Harker.”

While the negro went into the basement for the bicycle, Sard said that the crowd on Las Palomas beach seemed tougher than formerly.

“That is so,” Richard said. “These rum-runners have made it a tough joint. They run rum in and they run guns out. That mush-nosed maggot, Don José, is doing it all, to rouse up trouble in Santa Barbara.”

“Don José, that scum, against the Dictator?”

“He ain’t called a scum here in Las Palomas, Mr. Harker. This rum-running has made him a very rich man and his stock is away up in G. You’ll find that Don José will have another try for Santa Barbara before long.”

“I’m bound for Santa Barbara,” Sard said. “Would Mr. Kingsborough be mixed up with, or against, the Don José gang?”

“I guess not,” Richard said. “One can’t ever tell. He wouldn’t be _with_ him, that’s sure: Mr. Kingsborough’s a gentleman. But here’s your bicycle, and if you’re sailing at six, I guess you’ll have to roll your tail like the Arab or you’ll not make it. Don’t you heed your caleche, I’ll square your driver.”

“One other thing,” Sard said. “Do you know a priest, a Father Garsinton? A lone rogue bull of a man?”

“No, sir: he don’t come bullin’ around here any.”

“Well, thank you for your help,” Sard said. He swung the bicycle round and rode off, thinking that he would have to sprint to be on board by six.

“So,” he thought, “I lied. The dreams are true. Here I am, led to this house, and by what strange ways. She will be there then, stopping with the Kingsboroughs. Could she be this Miss Kingsborough? But that cannot be, of course; Juanita de la Torre cannot well become Margarita Kingsborough. But let that wait. The dreams are true. She will be there somehow.”

He rode through the market-place over a mess of corn-sheath and trodden pumpkin, and away through the North gate to the savannah. Outside the walls there were a few houses, then a few market gardens, then the rolling sage-green savannah to the forest. The road was not macadam but dirt-track, with soft going, after the first mile. The houses ceased with the macadam, then came nothing but a ruined hut or two, and from time to time a stone cross, with a tin mug of holy water, a bunch of tinsel flowers, and an inscription, begging all who passed to pray for the soul of such an one, who had been killed there. Most of these many dead had been killed by Indians in the three dreadful raids of Capa Roja, when Sard had been a little child. Seven stone crosses together marked where Capa Roja had with his own hands martyred “seven most Christian virgins” as recently as 1872. Indian trouble had not ceased there until 1876.

Passing these, Sard rode on up a rise into the wild, mainly upon grass. Las Palomas had shrunk away from this northern tract, perhaps because of these old Indian killings; the savannah was as it had been before the white man had landed, an expanse of grass which seemed always alive from the wind. On a rise, the forest hove in sight, stretching across Sard’s track from the sea to the mountains. Clumps of forest stood out in the savannah like bull-bisons in advance of the herd: the sun was in their tops in a way which told Sard that he had not a moment to lose. “Still,” he said to himself, “I am going to Los Xicales, to her. Time will not matter beyond a certain point.”

Out of the forest a peon in a scarlet serape came loping on a pinto pony. He came with a jingle of plate, for horse, man and trappings were hung with discs and dangles beaten out of broad silver Mexican dollars. He rode, like a part of his horse, with matchless grace and swagger. He had a xicale flower in his hat, which he wore sideways, so as not to crush the yellow cigarettes behind one of his ears. He was probably an estancia peon, but he had the manners of a Master of the Horse to a Queen. “Xicales,” Sard thought, “you have come from there. Con Dios, caballero.”

The peon gravely saluted as he loped by, thinking that without doubt the English were mad, but that without doubt such was God’s will.

Almost immediately after the xicale flower had passed, the track, which had been trending inland (for the advantage of the rise in the Indian time) swerved seaward sharply, so that Sard as he rode had a glimpse of the sailing ship anchorage, and a part of Jib and Foresail Quay where the tug still lay at her berth. “There, Sard Harker,” he said to himself, “that has been your art hitherto and now you are a master of it. How much longer are you going to use your life in box-hauling another man’s yards around? Not long after you find ‘her,’ I know, and perhaps you will find ‘her’ this hour.”

The forest glowed in its tops across his path: myriads of its birds came in to roost. “I shall have to sprint all I know,” Sard thought, “if I am to reach Los Xicales and be back on board before we sail.”

Behind him, from out in the anchorage, but very clear in the quiet of the evening, came a cheer, followed by the chorus of men singing.

“There it is,” he said; “they are heaving in already. It must be half-past five already. I must set my stunsails or be done for.”

The glow became intenser upon the trees as he drew nearer to them, then, quite suddenly, he shot out of the glow into the gloom of the forest, which struck cold as well as gloom. On his left were pine trees all sighing together, on his right were Turkey oaks all hoary and evil with Spanish moss. They looked like evil Mr. Wiskeys grown bigger. They seemed to thrust out their heads and to wag their beards and to be wicked to the core. Through the crowds of these trees, Sard followed the track, in sound of the beating of the sea, till he dismounted at the lodge beside the gates. Wired to the side of the lodge was a white wooden roofing shingle marked in pale blue letters with the words “Los Xicales.” It had a look of having no one there, of being to let. As Sard looked at it, he felt an oppression in the air, as though all the life had gone out of it. “Here’s the norther,” he said; “and as it is coming on so slowly, it is going to be bad.”

Sard propped his bicycle against the gates and hammered on the lodge-door with his knife-handle.

Nobody answered. The door, which stood slightly ajar, let out a smell of stale tortilla. Sard could see little pale ants wandering on the floor within. He hammered again and again and called. Presently a slatternly-young negress, in a blue cotton gown patched with sacking, came up among the pine trees, and grinned at Sard like an idiot.

“O Jesu,” she said, “O Jesu!”

“Can I go to the house? Is anybody there?”

“The gates are always locked.”

“Yes, but I want to go to the house.”

“Tehee.”

“May I go to the house, to see Mr. Kingsborough?”

“O Jesu.”

“I am going to the house. See that no one steals this bicycle, or you’ll be a sick negress, mucha, mucha.”

He crossed the fence by the gap (the fence was indeed mainly gap) and set off down the weed-blinded drive under pines which had been tapped and were now either dead or dying. The effect was dismal in that muggy air, but Sard’s heart beat high with the expectation of adventure. Beyond all doubt, this was the house of his dream, the dreams were true, and he was going to meet her the very thought of whom made all that inner life of which no one had any suspicion. The turn in the drive brought him within sight of the house. He stood still, at the turning, to take stock of it. Then he went boldly up the steps and rang the bell.

An old white-haired negro, with charming manners, admitted and announced him. In a moment he returned, to say that Mr. Kingsborough would see him, at once, if he would follow. Sard followed, along the hall, which was paved, for the coolness, and grass-matted for ease in walking. The hall was bare of furniture save for an old Spanish chest, painted with the life of St. Dominic, which stood under a window, with its legs in glass jars (against the ants). Like all men accustomed to take bearings, Sard fixed the details of it. It was a long hall running along the length of the house, with doors opening off it, and a staircase at the western end. The old negro major-domo opened a door a few paces from this staircase, and announced him:

“Señor Don Harker.”

Sard went in and instinctively put back a hand to close the door. He felt the door as the negro closed it; he was amazed at its weight: it was black maruca wood from the house of some conquistador.

The room to which he entered was a long room at the southern corner of the house. The wall to his right, as he entered, contained a French window opening upon the verandah. A woman stood at the door of the French window, half in the verandah. He could not see her face, since it was turned from him, but there was something about her that made his heart stand still. She spoke as he closed the door:

“I will water the xicales, Hilary,” she said, “and come back when you are alone.” Her voice rang in his brain like a memory: she closed the glass door behind her, and passed by the verandah steps into the garden out of sight.

Sard turned to his left. A young man had risen from a chair to greet him. Sard looked at him eagerly for some trait or feature that would be like the face he sought, but the face was new to him: it was the face of a smiling young man, fond of fun and ease, perhaps twenty-five years old. Sard envied him the fun and ease, but felt that the lad was a child, compared with himself, who had dealt with the sea for ten years.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Harker?” the young man said.

Sard told what he had heard at the ringside and described the two men. The young man listened attentively and showed no sign of fear, but seemed puzzled.

“I know nobody like those two men,” he said; “and as for anyone called B., or Sagrado B., in Santa Barbara, I know no one of that name nor in that place. We have never been near Santa Barbara.”

“Nor met either the Dictator or Don José?”

“Never. I know nothing of either, except the gossip that one hears.”

“The danger threatened your sister more than yourself, Mr. Kingsborough. I gathered from what was said that this man in Santa Barbara had a grudge against your sister, perhaps of some years’ standing.”

“I think that’s out of the question.”

“There is no other Miss Kingsborough here, or any Spanish lady?”

“Spanish lady? No, nor other Miss Kingsborough.”

“They meant your sister, then.”

“Yes, but that is impossible. Of course, I am very much obliged to you for coming to warn me. It was very good of you. Do you think that we are in danger?”

“They were a bad two, mixed up with others worse; and we have a saying, ‘It’s better to be sure than sorry.’”

“Well; thanks. Only, I must say that I do not understand it.”

“I see, sir,” Sard said, “that you do not take it very seriously. Well, perhaps it is best not to cross rivers till you reach the water.”

“Threatened men live long.”

“Not in seaport towns,” Sard answered.

“Well,” Hilary said, smiling, “what do you think we ought to do?”

“I have passed word to the police to stand by,” Sard said. “But you know how much that is worth, among these Occidentales. I would say this, Mr. Kingsborough: take your sister in to the hotel in town, the Santiago, until you leave Las Palomas. I understand that that will be to-morrow.”

“You really think that the danger is as great as that?”

“I don’t know the danger,” Sard said, “only the risk. That is what I should do, if it were myself and a sister of mine.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harker. Will you smoke?”

“Thank you, I don’t smoke.”

“Will you drink something?”

“I don’t drink.”

“I think you said, Mr. Harker, that you belonged to a ship here?”

“Yes, sir, the _Pathfinder_, sailing now for Santa Barbara. And I must go aboard now or lose my passage. So I will say good-bye, Mr. Kingsborough. I hope to hear some day that nothing has come of all this.”

“Is your ship a steamer, did you say?”

“The ship in the sailing ship berths there, about to sail.”

“Well, a pleasant voyage to you. And thank you again for coming to warn me. I’ll see you to the gate.”

Outside, the sun had westered so that the light was off the house. The oppression in the air, added to the gloom of the evening, made the place menacing.

At the angle of the house, the woman was watering the xicales. She wore white gardening gauntlets and a sun hat. Sard felt his heart leap up with expectation. He took a step towards her.

“This way, Mr. Harker,” Hilary said, correcting him. “That way leads to the garden.”

The woman had turned from them; he did not see her face; she disappeared round the angle of the house.

“Excuse me,” Sard said. “But is there no Spanish lady here?”

“Spanish lady?” Hilary asked. “You asked me that before. No. You may mean Tia Eusebia: she’s coloured.”

“You’ll speak to your sister about this warning,” Sard said. “And tell her everything that I have told you.”

Hilary answered coldly that naturally he would. The thought came to Sard with the pain of a blow that the dreams were all lies, and that once again he had failed to find her.

“Is anything the matter, Mr. Harker?” Hilary asked.

“A little queer,” Sard said. “Don’t come any further. I’ll let myself out. I must hurry. But tell me . . . Are you Spanish?”

“No,” Hilary answered, looking at him oddly, “I’m English.”

“Right, then. Good-bye. And I hope all will go well.”

“Good-bye and thanks.”

Sard hurried away, trying to pull himself together. He knew that Hilary thought him mad or drunk. Hilary watched him as far as the gates: then waved a hand and turned back to the house. “Odd beggar,” Hilary thought, “a very odd beggar. I didn’t half like the looks of him. He seemed to me to be as mad as a hatter. And asking me if I am Spanish. And whether I kept a Spanish lady!”

At the gates Sard stopped, saying to himself that he must go back and warn the woman. “That boy does not believe,” he said; “he thinks me daft; and she is in danger. And beside all that, I must speak to her. I must ask her if she be that one; for I believe she is: I believe she must be. And yet she cannot be Juanita: the name and everything else is changed. Her brother thought me mad when I asked if he were Spanish. Yet she was like enough to her: and then there was my dream. Changed or not, I must know, one way or the other; and besides, she must be warned. She is older and wiser than this boy and she must be warned of the danger.”

He knew very well that if he went back, he would meet a Hilary convinced of his madness and not speak to Miss Kingsborough, yet he half turned. As he did so there came from the anchorage far behind him, yet very clearly, a beating of the _Pathfinder’s_ bells as though for a fire. In an instant’s hush after the stopping of the bells there was a shout, which he heard but could not distinguish, followed by three roaring cheers. He knew what it was. The _Pathfinder_, being about to sail, was cheering all the ships in port. The cheering was followed by a carillon of bells and a thunder of cheering as both anchorages made reply.

“There it is,” Sard muttered, “I have twenty minutes before they man the windlass. I’m due on the fo’c’sle-head to see the anchor grow. I’ll do it yet.”

He might have done it, no doubt, but when he reached the iron gates, his bicycle was gone.