Justifiable as his reasoning was, plausible as it may seem, yet he would have done better to have trusted the instinct that was in conflict with it. Though the same blood ran in her veins as in those of Colonel Bishop, yet hers was free of the vices that tainted her uncle’s, for these vices were not natural to that blood; they were, in his case, acquired. Her father, Tom Bishop — that same Colonel Bishop’s brother — had been a kindly, chivalrous, gentle soul, who, broken-hearted by the early death of a young wife, had abandoned the Old World and sought an anodyne for his grief in the New. He had come out to the Antilles, bringing with him his little daughter, then five years of age, and had given himself up to the life of a planter. He had prospered from the first, as men sometimes will who care nothing for prosperity. Prospering, he had bethought him of his younger brother, a soldier at home reputed somewhat wild. He had advised him to come out to Barbados; and the advice, which at another season William Bishop might have scorned, reached him at a moment when his wildness was beginning to bear such fruit that a change of climate was desirable. William came, and was admitted by his generous brother to a partnership in the prosperous plantation. Some six years later, when Arabella was fifteen, her father died, leaving her in her uncle’s guardianship. It was perhaps his one mistake. But the goodness of his own nature coloured his views of other men; moreover, himself, he had conducted the education of his daughter, giving her an independence of character upon which perhaps he counted unduly. As things were, there was little love between uncle and niece. But she was dutiful to him, and he was circumspect in his behaviour before her. All his life, and for all his wildness, he had gone in a certain awe of his brother, whose worth he had the wit to recognize; and now it was almost as if some of that awe was transferred to his brother’s child, who was also, in a sense, his partner, although she took no active part in the business of the plantations.
Peter Blood judged her — as we are all too prone to judge — upon insufficient knowledge.
He was very soon to have cause to correct that judgment. One day towards the end of May, when the heat was beginning to grow oppressive, there crawled into Carlisle Bay a wounded, battered English ship, the Pride of Devon, her freeboard scarred and broken, her coach a gaping wreck, her mizzen so shot away that only a jagged stump remained to tell the place where it had stood. She had been in action off Martinique with two Spanish treasure ships, and although her captain swore that the Spaniards had beset him without provocation, it is difficult to avoid a suspicion that the encounter had been brought about quite otherwise. One of the Spaniards had fled from the combat, and if the Pride of Devon had not given chase it was probably because she was by then in no case to do so. The other had been sunk, but not before the English ship had transferred to her own hold a good deal of the treasure aboard the Spaniard. It was, in fact, one of those piratical affrays which were a perpetual source of trouble between the courts of St. James’s and the Escurial, complaints emanating now from one and now from the other side.
Steed, however, after the fashion of most Colonial governors, was willing enough to dull his wits to the extent of accepting the English seaman’s story, disregarding any evidence that might belie it. He shared the hatred so richly deserved by arrogant, overbearing Spain that was common to men of every other nation from the Bahamas to the Main. Therefore he gave the Pride of Devon the shelter she sought in his harbour and every facility to careen and carry out repairs.
But before it came to this, they fetched from her hold over a score of English seamen as battered and broken as the ship herself, and together with these some half-dozen Spaniards in like case, the only survivors of a boarding party from the Spanish galleon that had invaded the English ship and found itself unable to retreat. These wounded men were conveyed to a long shed on the wharf, and the medical skill of Bridgetown was summoned to their aid. Peter Blood was ordered to bear a hand in this work, and partly because he spoke Castilian — and he spoke it as fluently as his own native tongue — partly because of his inferior condition as a slave, he was given the Spaniards for his patients.
Now Blood had no cause to love Spaniards. His two years in a Spanish prison and his subsequent campaigning in the Spanish Netherlands had shown him a side of the Spanish character which he had found anything but admirable. Nevertheless he performed his doctor’s duties zealously and painstakingly, if emotionlessly, and even with a certain superficial friendliness towards each of his patients. These were so surprised at having their wounds healed instead of being summarily hanged that they manifested a docility very unusual in their kind. They were shunned, however, by all those charitably disposed inhabitants of Bridgetown who flocked to the improvised hospital with gifts of fruit and flowers and delicacies for the injured English seamen. Indeed, had the wishes of some of these inhabitants been regarded, the Spaniards would have been left to die like vermin, and of this Peter Blood had an example almost at the very outset.
With the assistance of one of the negroes sent to the shed for the purpose, he was in the act of setting a broken leg, when a deep, gruff voice, that he had come to know and dislike as he had never disliked the voice of living man, abruptly challenged him.
“What are you doing there?”
Blood did not look up from his task. There was not the need. He knew the voice, as I have said.
“I am setting a broken leg,” he answered, without pausing in his labours.
“I can see that, fool.” A bulky body interposed between Peter Blood and the window. The half-naked man on the straw rolled his black eyes to stare up fearfully out of a clay-coloured face at this intruder. A knowledge of English was unnecessary to inform him that here came an enemy. The harsh, minatory note of that voice sufficiently expressed the fact. “I can see that, fool; just as I can see what the rascal is. Who gave you leave to set Spanish legs?”
“I am a doctor, Colonel Bishop. The man is wounded. It is not for me to discriminate. I keep to my trade.”
“Do you, by God! If you’d done that, you wouldn’t now be here.”
“On the contrary, it is because I did it that I am here.”
“Aye, I know that’s your lying tale.” The Colonel sneered; and then, observing Blood to continue his work unmoved, he grew really angry. “Will you cease that, and attend to me when I am speaking?”
Peter Blood paused, but only for an instant. “The man is in pain,” he said shortly, and resumed his work.
“In pain, is he? I hope he is, the damned piratical dog. But will you heed me, you insubordinate knave?”
The Colonel delivered himself in a roar, infuriated by what he conceived to be defiance, and defiance expressing itself in the most unruffled disregard of himself. His long bamboo cane was raised to strike. Peter Blood’s blue eyes caught the flash of it, and he spoke quickly to arrest the blow.
“Not insubordinate, sir, whatever I may be. I am acting upon the express orders of Governor Steed.”
The Colonel checked, his great face empurpling. His mouth fell open.
“Governor Steed!” he echoed. Then he lowered his cane, swung round, and without another word to Blood rolled away towards the other end of the shed where the Governor was standing at the moment.
Peter Blood chuckled. But his triumph was dictated less by humanitarian considerations than by the reflection that he had baulked his brutal owner.
The Spaniard, realizing that in this altercation, whatever its nature, the doctor had stood his friend, ventured in a muted voice to ask him what had happened. But the doctor shook his head in silence, and pursued his work. His ears were straining to catch the words now passing between Steed and Bishop. The Colonel was blustering and storming, the great bulk of him towering above the wizened little overdressed figure of the Governor. But the little fop was not to be browbeaten. His excellency was conscious that he had behind him the force of public opinion to support him. Some there might be, but they were not many, who held such ruthless views as Colonel Bishop. His excellency asserted his authority. It wa
s by his orders that Blood had devoted himself to the wounded Spaniards, and his orders were to be carried out. There was no more to be said.
Colonel Bishop was of another opinion. In his view there was a great deal to be said. He said it, with great circumstance, loudly, vehemently, obscenely — for he could be fluently obscene when moved to anger.
“You talk like a Spaniard, Colonel,” said the Governor, and thus dealt the Colonel’s pride a wound that was to smart resentfully for many a week. At the moment it struck him silent, and sent him stamping out of the shed in a rage for which he could find no words.
It was two days later when the ladies of Bridgetown, the wives and daughters of her planters and merchants, paid their first visit of charity to the wharf, bringing their gifts to the wounded seamen.
Again Peter Blood was there, ministering to the sufferers in his care, moving among those unfortunate Spaniards whom no one heeded. All the charity, all the gifts were for the members of the crew of the Pride of Devon. And this Peter Blood accounted natural enough. But rising suddenly from the re-dressing of a wound, a task in which he had been absorbed for some moments, he saw to his surprise that one lady, detached from the general throng, was placing some plantains and a bundle of succulent sugar cane on the cloak that served one of his patients for a coverlet. She was elegantly dressed in lavender silk and was followed by a half-naked negro carrying a basket.
Peter Blood, stripped of his coat, the sleeves of his coarse shirt rolled to the elbow, and holding a bloody rag in his hand, stood at gaze a moment. The lady, turning now to confront him, her lips parting in a smile of recognition, was Arabella Bishop.
“The man’s a Spaniard,” said he, in the tone of one who corrects a misapprehension, and also tinged never so faintly by something of the derision that was in his soul.
The smile with which she had been greeting him withered on her lips. She frowned and stared at him a moment, with increasing haughtiness.
“So I perceive. But he’s a human being none the less,” said she.
That answer, and its implied rebuke, took him by surprise.
“Your uncle, the Colonel, is of a different opinion,” said he, when he had recovered. “He regards them as vermin to be left to languish and die of their festering wounds.”
She caught the irony now more plainly in his voice. She continued to stare at him.
“Why do you tell me this?”
“To warn you that you may be incurring the Colonel’s displeasure. If he had had his way, I should never have been allowed to dress their wounds.”
“And you thought, of course, that I must be of my uncle’s mind?” There was a crispness about her voice, an ominous challenging sparkle in her hazel eyes.
“I’d not willingly be rude to a lady even in my thoughts,” said he. “But that you should bestow gifts on them, considering that if your uncle came to hear of it....” He paused, leaving the sentence unfinished. “Ah, well — there it is!” he concluded.
But the lady was not satisfied at all.
“First you impute to me inhumanity, and then cowardice. Faith! For a man who would not willingly be rude to a lady even in his thoughts, it’s none so bad.” Her boyish laugh trilled out, but the note of it jarred his ears this time.
He saw her now, it seemed to him, for the first time, and saw how he had misjudged her.
“Sure, now, how was I to guess that... that Colonel Bishop could have an angel for his niece?” said he recklessly, for he was reckless as men often are in sudden penitence.
“You wouldn’t, of course. I shouldn’t think you often guess aright.” Having withered him with that and her glance, she turned to her negro and the basket that he carried. From this she lifted now the fruits and delicacies with which it was laden, and piled them in such heaps upon the beds of the six Spaniards that by the time she had so served the last of them her basket was empty, and there was nothing left for her own fellow-countrymen. These, indeed, stood in no need of her bounty — as she no doubt observed — since they were being plentifully supplied by others.
Having thus emptied her basket, she called her negro, and without another word or so much as another glance at Peter Blood, swept out of the place with her head high and chin thrust forward.
Peter watched her departure. Then he fetched a sigh.
It startled him to discover that the thought that he had incurred her anger gave him concern. It could not have been so yesterday. It became so only since he had been vouchsafed this revelation of her true nature. “Bad cess to it now, it serves me right. It seems I know nothing at all of human nature. But how the devil was I to guess that a family that can breed a devil like Colonel Bishop should also breed a saint like this?”
CHAPTER VI. PLANS OF ESCAPE
After that Arabella Bishop went daily to the shed on the wharf with gifts of fruit, and later of money and of wearing apparel for the Spanish prisoners. But she contrived so to time her visits that Peter Blood never again met her there. Also his own visits were growing shorter in a measure as his patients healed. That they all throve and returned to health under his care, whilst fully one third of the wounded in the care of Whacker and Bronson — the two other surgeons — died of their wounds, served to increase the reputation in which this rebel-convict stood in Bridgetown. It may have been no more than the fortune of war. But the townsfolk did not choose so to regard it. It led to a further dwindling of the practices of his free colleagues and a further increase of his own labours and his owner’s profit. Whacker and Bronson laid their heads together to devise a scheme by which this intolerable state of things should be brought to an end. But that is to anticipate.
One day, whether by accident or design, Peter Blood came striding down the wharf a full half-hour earlier than usual, and so met Miss Bishop just issuing from the shed. He doffed his hat and stood aside to give her passage. She took it, chin in the air, and eyes which disdained to look anywhere where the sight of him was possible.
“Miss Arabella,” said he, on a coaxing, pleading note.
She grew conscious of his presence, and looked him over with an air that was faintly, mockingly searching.
“La!” said she. “It’s the delicate-minded gentleman!”
Peter groaned. “Am I so hopelessly beyond forgiveness? I ask it very humbly.”
“What condescension!”
“It is cruel to mock me,” said he, and adopted mock-humility. “After all, I am but a slave. And you might be ill one of these days.”
“What, then?”
“It would be humiliating to send for me if you treat me like an enemy.”
“You are not the only doctor in Bridgetown.”
“But I am the least dangerous.”
She grew suddenly suspicious of him, aware that he was permitting himself to rally her, and in a measure she had already yielded to it. She stiffened, and looked him over again.
“You make too free, I think,” she rebuked him.
“A doctor’s privilege.”
“I am not your patient. Please to remember it in future.” And on that, unquestionably angry, she departed.
“Now is she a vixen or am I a fool, or is it both?” he asked the blue vault of heaven, and then went into the shed.
It was to be a morning of excitements. As he was leaving an hour or so later, Whacker, the younger of the other two physicians, joined him — an unprecedented condescension this, for hitherto neither of them had addressed him beyond an occasional and surly “good-day!”
“If you are for Colonel Bishop’s, I’ll walk with you a little way, Doctor Blood,” said he. He was a short, broad man of five-and-forty with pendulous cheeks and hard blue eyes.
Peter Blood was startled. But he dissembled it.
“I am for Government House,” said he.
“Ah! To be sure! The Governor’s lady.” And he laughed; or perhaps he sneered. Peter Blood was not quite certain. “She encroaches a deal upon your time, I hear. Youth and good looks, Doctor Blood! Youth and g
ood looks! They are inestimable advantages in our profession as in others — particularly where the ladies are concerned.”
Peter stared at him. “If you mean what you seem to mean, you had better say it to Governor Steed. It may amuse him.”
“You surely misapprehend me.”
“I hope so.”
“You’re so very hot, now!” The doctor linked his arm through Peter’s. “I protest I desire to be your friend — to serve you. Now, listen.” Instinctively his voice grew lower. “This slavery in which you find yourself must be singularly irksome to a man of parts such as yourself.”
“What intuitions!” cried sardonic Mr. Blood. But the doctor took him literally.
“I am no fool, my dear doctor. I know a man when I see one, and often I can tell his thoughts.”
“If you can tell me mine, you’ll persuade me of it,” said Mr. Blood.
Dr. Whacker drew still closer to him as they stepped along the wharf. He lowered his voice to a still more confidential tone. His hard blue eyes peered up into the swart, sardonic face of his companion, who was a head taller than himself.
“How often have I not seen you staring out over the sea, your soul in your eyes! Don’t I know what you are thinking? If you could escape from this hell of slavery, you could exercise the profession of which you are an ornament as a free man with pleasure and profit to yourself. The world is large. There are many nations besides England where a man of your parts would be warmly welcomed. There are many colonies besides these English ones.” Lower still came the voice until it was no more than a whisper. Yet there was no one within earshot. “It is none so far now to the Dutch settlement of Curacao. At this time of the year the voyage may safely be undertaken in a light craft. And Curacao need be no more than a stepping-stone to the great world, which would lie open to you once you were delivered from this bondage.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 380
