“What’s that?”
“Say nothing till it’s found out; then lie for their lives; and it was their lives, poor creatures on the Zambesi!” She was silent a moment, her determined little face hard — set upon some unforgotten horror. “Once we get away, I shall be surprised if it’s found out till morning,” concluded Eva, without a word as to what I was to do with her; neither, indeed, had I myself given that question a moment’s consideration.
“Then let’s make a dash for it now!” was all I said or thought.
“No; they can’t come yet, and Jose is strong and brutal, and I have heard how ill you are. That you should have come to me notwithstanding—” and she broke off with her little hands lying so gratefully on my shoulders, that I know not how I refrained from catching her then and there to my heart. Instead, I laughed and said that my illness was a pure and deliberate sharp, and my presence there its direct result. And such was the virtue in my beloved’s voice, the magic of her eyes, the healing of her touch, that I was scarce conscious of deceit, but felt a whole man once more as we two stood together in the moonlight.
In a trance I stood there gazing into her brave young eyes. In a trance I suffered her to lead me by the hand through the rank, dense rhododendrons. And still entranced I crouched by her side near the further side, with only unkempt grass-plot and a weedy path between us and that ponderous door, wide open still, and replaced by a section of the lighted hail within. On this we fixed our attention with mingled dread and impatience, those contending elements of suspense; but the black was slow to reappear; and my eyes stole home to my sweet girl’s face, with its glory of moonlit curls, and the eager, resolute, embittered look that put the world back two whole months, and Eva Denison upon the Lady Jermyn’s poop, in the ship’s last hours. But it was not her look alone; she had on her cloak, as the night before, but with me (God bless her!) she found no need to clasp herself in its folds; and underneath she wore the very dress in which she had sung at our last concert, and been rescued in the gig. It looked as though she had worn it ever since. The roses were crushed and soiled, the tulle all torn, and tarnished some strings of beads that had been gold: a tatter of Chantilly lace hung by a thread: it is another of the relics that I have unearthed in the writing of this narrative.
“I thought men never noticed dresses?” my love said suddenly, a pleased light in her eyes (I thought) in spite of all. “Do you really remember it?”
“I remember every one of them,” I said indignantly; and so I did.
“You will wonder why I wear it,” said Eva, quickly. “It was the first that came that terrible night. They have given me many since. But I won’t wear one of them — not one!”
How her eyes flashed! I forgot all about Jose.
“I suppose you know why they hadn’t room for you in the gig?” she went on.
“No, I don’t know, and I don’t care. They had room for you,” said I; “that’s all I care about.” And to think she could not see I loved her!
“But do you mean to say you don’t know that these — murderers — set fire to the ship?”
“No — yes! I heard you say so last night.”
“And you don’t want to know what for?”
Out of politeness I protested that I did; but, as I live, all I wanted to know just then was whether my love loved me — whether she ever could — whether such happiness was possible under heaven!
“You remember all that mystery about the cargo?” she continued eagerly, her pretty lips so divinely parted!
“It turned out to be gunpowder,” said I, still thinking only of her.
“No — gold!”
“But it was gunpowder,” I insisted; for it was my incorrigible passion for accuracy which had led up to half our arguments on the voyage; but this time Eva let me off.
“It was also gold: twelve thousand ounces from the diggings. That was the real mystery. Do you mean to say you never guessed?”
“No, by Jove I didn’t!” said I. She had diverted my interest at last. I asked her if she had known on board.
“Not until the last moment. I found out during the fire. Do you remember when we said good-by? I was nearly telling you then.”
Did I remember! The very letter of that last interview was cut deep in my heart; not a sleepless night had I passed without rehearsing it word for word and look for look; and sometimes, when sorrow had spent itself, and the heart could bleed no more, vain grief had given place to vainer speculation, and I had cudgelled my wakeful brains for the meaning of the new and subtle horror which I had read in my darling’s eyes at the last. Now I understood; and the one explanation brought such a tribe in its train, that even the perilous ecstasy of the present moment was temporarily forgotten in the horrible past.
“Now I know why they wouldn’t have me in the gig!” I cried softly.
“She carried four heavy men’s weight in gold.”
“When on earth did they get it aboard?”
“In provision boxes at the last; but they had been filling the boxes for weeks.”
“Why, I saw them doing it!” I cried. “But what about the gig? Who picked you up?”
She was watching that open door once more, and she answered with notable indifference, “Mr. Rattray.”
“So that’s the connection!” said I; and I think its very simplicity was what surprised me most.
“Yes; he was waiting for us at Ascension.”
“Then it was all arranged?”
“Every detail.”
“And this young blackguard is as bad as any of them!”
“Worse,” said she, with bitter brevity. Nor had I ever seen her look so hard but once, and that was the night before in the old justice hall, when she told Rattray her opinion of him to his face. She had now the same angry flush, the same set mouth and scornful voice; and I took it finally into my head that she was unjust to the poor devil, villain though he was. With all his villainy I declined to believe him as bad as the others. I told her so in as many words. And in a moment we were arguing as though we were back on the Lady Jermyn with nothing else to do.
“You may admire wholesale murderers and thieves,” said Eva. “I do not.”
“Nor I. My point is simply that this one is not as bad as the rest. I believe he was really glad for my sake when he discovered that I knew nothing of the villainy. Come now, has he ever offered you any personal violence?”
“Me? Mr. Rattray? I should hope not, indeed!”
“Has he never saved you from any?”
“I — I don’t know.”
“Then I do. When you left them last night there was some talk of bringing you back by force. You can guess who suggested that — and who set his face against it and got his way. You would think the better of Rattray had you heard what passed.”
“Should I?” she asked half eagerly, as she looked quickly round at me; and suddenly I saw her eyes fill. “Oh, why will you speak about him?” she burst out. “Why must you defend him, unless it’s to go against me, as you always did and always will! I never knew anybody like you — never! I want you to take me away from these wretches, and all you do is to defend them!”
“Not all,” said I, clasping her hand warmly in mine. “Not all — not all! I will take you away from them, never fear; in another hour God grant you may be out of their reach for ever!”
“But where are we to go?” she whispered wildly. “What are you to do with me? All my friends think me dead, and if they knew I was not it would all come out.”
“So it shall,” said I; “the sooner the better; if I’d had my way it would all be out already.”
I see her yet, my passionate darling, as she turned upon me, whiter than the full white moon.
“Mr. Cole,” said she, “you must give me your sacred promise that so far as you are concerned, it shall never come out at all!”
“This monstrous conspiracy? This cold blooded massacre?”
And I crouched aghast.
“Yes; it could do
no good; and, at any rate, unless you promise I remain where I am.”
“In their hands?”
“Decidedly — to warn them in time. Leave them I would, but betray them — never!”
What could I say? What choice had I in the face of an alternative so headstrong and so unreasonable? To rescue Eva from these miscreants I would have let every malefactor in the country go unscathed: yet the condition was a hard one; and, as I hesitated, my love went on her knees to me, there in the moonlight among the rhododendrons.
“Promise — promise — or you will kill me!” she gasped. “They may deserve it richly, but I would rather be torn in little pieces than — than have them — hanged!”
“It is too good for most of them.”
“Promise!”
“To hold my tongue about them all?”
“Yes — promise!”
“Promise!”
“When a hundred lives were sacrificed—”
“Promise!”
“I can’t,” I said. “It’s wrong.”
“Then good-by!” she cried, starting to her feet.
“No — no—” and I caught her hand.
“Well, then?”
“I — promise.”
CHAPTER XV. FIRST BLOOD
So I bound myself to a guilty secrecy for Eva’s sake, to save her from these wretches, or if you will, to win her for myself. Nor did it strike me as very strange, after a moment’s reflection, that she should intercede thus earnestly for a band headed by her own mother’s widower, prime scoundrel of them all though she knew him to be. The only surprise was that she had not interceded in his name; that I should have forgotten, and she should have allowed me to forget, the very existence of so indisputable a claim upon her loyalty. This, however, made it a little difficult to understand the hysterical gratitude with which my unwilling promise was received. Poor darling! she was beside herself with sheer relief. She wept as I had never seen her weep before. She seized and even kissed my hands, as one who neither knew nor cared what she did, surprising me so much by her emotion that this expression of it passed unheeded. I was the best friend she had ever had. I was her one good friend in all the world; she would trust herself to me; and if I would but take her to the convent where she had been brought up, she would pray for me there until her death, but that would not be very long.
All of which confused me utterly; it seemed an inexplicable breakdown in one who had shown such nerve and courage hitherto, and so hearty a loathing for that damnable Santos. So completely had her presence of mind forsaken her that she looked no longer where she had been gazing hitherto. And thus it was that neither of us saw Jose until we heard him calling, “Senhora Evah! Senhora Evah!” with some rapid sentences in Portuguese.
“Now is our time,” I whispered, crouching lower and clasping a small hand gone suddenly cold. “Think of nothing now but getting out of this. I’ll keep my word once we are out; and here’s the toy that’s going to get us out.” And I produced my Deane and Adams with no small relish.
A little trustful pressure was my answer and my reward; meanwhile the black was singing out lustily in evident suspicion and alarm.
“He says they are coming back,” whispered Eva; “but that’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because if they were he couldn’t see them, and if he heard them he would be frightened of their hearing him. But here he comes!”
A shuffling quick step on the path; a running grumble of unmistakable threats; a shambling moonlit figure seen in glimpses through the leaves, very near us for an instant, then hidden by the shrubbery as he passed within a few yards of our hiding-place. A diminuendo of the shuffling steps; then a cursing, frightened savage at one end of the rhododendrons, and we two stealing out at the other, hand in hand, and bent quite double, into the long neglected grass.
“Can you run for it?” I whispered.
“Yes, but not too fast, for fear we trip.’
“Come on, then!”
The lighted open doorway grew greater at every stride.
“He hasn’t seen us yet—”
“No, I hear him threatening me still.”
“Now he has, though!”
A wild whoop proclaimed the fact, and upright we tore at top speed through the last ten yards of grass, while the black rushed down one of the side paths, gaining audibly on us over the better ground. But our start had saved us, and we flew up the steps as his feet ceased to clatter on the path; he had plunged into the grass to cut off the corner.
“Thank God!” cried Eva. “Now shut it quick.”
The great door swung home with a mighty clatter, and Eva seized the key in both hands.
“I can’t turn it!”
To lose a second was to take a life, and unconsciously I was sticking at that, perhaps from no higher instinct than distrust of my aim. Our pursuer, however, was on the steps when I clapped my free hand on top of those little white straining ones, and by a timely effort bent both them and the key round together; the ward shot home as Jose hurled himself against the door. Eva bolted it. But the thud was not repeated, and I gathered myself together between the door and the nearest window, for by now I saw there was but one thing for us. The nigger must be disabled, if I could manage such a nicety; if not, the devil take his own.
Well, I was not one tick too soon for him. My pistol was not cocked before the crash came that I was counting on, and with it a shower of small glass driving across the six-foot sill and tinkling on the flags. Next came a black and bloody face, at which I could not fire. I had to wait till I saw his legs, when I promptly shattered one of them at disgracefully short range. The report was as deafening as one upon the stage; the hall filled with white smoke, and remained hideous with the bellowing of my victim. I searched him without a qualm, but threats of annihilation instead, and found him unarmed but for that very knife which Rattray had induced me to hand over to him in town. I had a grim satisfaction in depriving him of this, and but small compunction in turning my back upon his pain.
“Come,” I said to poor Eva, “don’t pity him, though I daresay he’s the most pitiable of the lot; show me the way through, and I’ll follow with this lamp.”
One was burning on the old oak table. I carried it along a narrow passage, through a great low kitchen where I bumped my head against the black oak beams; and I held it on high at a door almost as massive as the one which we had succeeded in shutting in the nigger’s face.
“I was afraid of it!” cried Eva, with a sudden sob.
“What is it?”
“They’ve taken away the key!”
Yes, the keen air came through an empty keyhole; and my lamp, held close, not only showed that the door was locked, but that the lock was one with which an unskilled hand might tamper for hours without result. I dealt it a hearty kick by way of a test. The heavy timber did not budge; there was no play at all at either lock or hinges; nor did I see how I could spend one of my four remaining bullets upon the former, with any chance of a return.
“Is this the only other door?”
“Then it must be a window.”
“All the back ones are barred.”
“Securely?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ve no choice in the matter.”
And I led the way back to the hall, where the poor black devil lay blubbering in his blood. In the kitchen I found the bottle of wine (Rattray’s best port, that they were trying to make her take for her health) with which Eva had bribed him, and I gave it to him before laying hands on a couple of chairs.
“What are you going to do?”’
“Go out the way we came.”
“But the wall?”
“Pile up these chairs, and as many more as we may need, if we can’t open the gate.”
But Eva was not paying attention any longer, either to me or to Jose; his white teeth were showing in a grin for all his pain; her eyes were fixed in horror on the floor.
“They’ve come back,”
she gasped. “The underground passage! Hark — hark!”
There was a muffled rush of feet beneath our own, then a dull but very distinguishable clatter on some invisible stair.
“Underground passage!” I exclaimed, and in my sheer disgust I forgot what was due to my darling. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me of it before?”
“There was so much to tell you! It leads to the sea. Oh, what shall we do? You must hide — upstairs — anywhere!” cried Eva, wildly. “Leave them to me — leave them to me.”
“I like that,” said I; and I did; but I detested myself for the tears my words had drawn, and I prepared to die for them.
“They’ll kill you, Mr. Cole!”
“It would serve me right; but we’ll see about it.”
And I stood with my revolver very ready in my right hand, while with the other I caught poor Eva to my side, even as a door flew open, and Rattray himself burst upon us, a lantern in his hand, and the perspiration shining on his handsome face in its light.
I can see him now as he stood dumfounded on the threshold of the hall; and yet, at the time, my eyes sped past him into the room beyond.
It was the one I have described as being lined with books; there was a long rent in this lining, where the books had opened with a door, through which Captain Harris, Joaquin Santos, and Jane Braithwaite followed Rattray in quick succession, the men all with lanterns, the woman scarlet and dishevelled even for her. It was over the squire’s shoulders I saw their faces; he kept them from passing him in the doorway by a free use of his elbows; and when I looked at him again, his black eyes were blazing from a face white with passion, and they were fixed upon me.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 163
