by Otto Penzler
Rough handling and the keen winds of the upper sierra are not wholesome for a fever-shaken frame, but Gevil-Hay occupied himself with himself until he was brought into the presence of Don Q.
Late in the afternoon a halt was called, the prisoner was blindfolded and led through the scrub; then the wind blew more sharply in his face and Gevil-Hay knew that he trod on wiry grass, which in turn changed to a surface of bare echoing rock. Passing out of this tunnel he was secured by having his hands tied, and, when his eyes were uncovered, he found himself in a small enclosed valley with sheer precipitous sides. The ground was furred with coarse grass, but there were thickets of flowering shrubs on the higher ledges and a backing of wind-blown pines.
A couple of men hurried him up a winding pathway cut out of the cliff-face to the mouth of a cave, fronting which was a little natural terrace.
There they found Don Q., sitting in the sunshine, with a wide hat of felt drawn over his brows. Gevil-Hay saw nothing vulture-like but one lean hand like a delicate yellow claw that held the cloak about his neck.
“To whom have I the pleasure to address myself?” asked the brigand, with extreme and unexpected politeness.
Gevil-Hay’s hands being loosed, he fixed his single eye-glass and glanced round the glen before he replied.
“Perhaps you will be good enough to give me some idea of your career, and we can go into the question of the ransom at the end of it,” resumed Don Q. in his courteous manner, as the other finished speaking.
Gevil-Hay answered briefly in good Spanish, for an Indian civilian is supposed to start in life equipped with a knowledge of every language under the sun.
“Ah, then you have retired—well, been forced to retire—but with a pension? Yes!”
“Yes.”
Don Q., like all other foreigners, entertained extravagant ideas as to the lavishness of the English Government. Perhaps by comparison it is lavish.
“How much?” he asked.
“£300 a year.”
“Ah,” the brigand hesitated while he made a mental calculation. “Your ransom, señor——” He stopped; he understood how to make a judicious use of suspense.
In the pause a shot re-echoed through the ravine, followed by a sound of loud, sudden brawling immediately below.
The Spaniard snatched off his hat and peered out over the end of the terrace. His cloak lay about him like a vulture’s tumbled plumage, as he turned his face over his shoulder to listen with outstretched neck.
Then for the first time Gevil-Hay saw his face clearly, the livid, wrinkled eyelids, the white wedge-shaped bald head narrowing down to the hooked nose, the lean neck, the cruel aspect, all the distinctive features of the quebranta-huesos transmuted into human likeness.
A few sharp sibilant words hissed down the cliff, and the two swarthy quarrellers below fell apart with a simultaneous upward look of apprehension.
“Your punishment waits, my children,” said the chief gently. “Go!”
The ruffians slunk away. They were curiously cowed and by a word. It was an object lesson to Gevil-Hay, and perhaps the brigand watched him covertly to see how he would take it. But the prisoner’s calm face gave no sign.
“Señor,” said Don Q., “you are a poor man you say, and you are lucky in that I believe you. I will name but a moderate sum, and after this conversation there will be no more about it. We will omit the subject while you remain my guest.” The soft speech grew softer.
“There is no need to give my position a false name,” answered Gevil-Hay; “I am your prisoner. Misfortune introduced us.”
Above all things created, a man who defied him was abhorrent to the brigand, but now he saw one who looked him in the eyes without either fear or curiosity. Gevil-Hay interested him, but rather as a frog interests a vivisector.
“On one thing I pride myself, señor,” he said presently. “When I speak, the thing which I say is unalterable. I am about to tell you the amount of your ransom. I will contrive to send down your message.”
“You will have to give me time if you wish to get the money,” said the other. “I have only my pension, and I must see if they will commute that.”
“Your Government will pay,” asserted Don Q. suavely. “They will not lose so valuable a servant.”
“Do you care for a worn-out coat?” asked Gevil-Hay with a mirthless laugh. “Besides, I came here in spite of warnings that the roads were unsafe. I must bear the consequences.”
Don Q.’s wrinkled eyelids quivered.
“Shall we say twenty thousand dollars?” he asked, as if deferring to his prisoner’s opinion.
“You have said it, and that’s the end,” returned Gevil-Hay; “though,” he added, “I don’t think you are ever likely to see it. They will commute my pension on the scale of the probable duration of my life, and that will give no satisfactory average, I am afraid. I hope you may get fifteen thousand dollars. I doubt if you will get more.”
“I trust for your sake I may get twenty thousand,” replied the Spaniard, “otherwise a disappointment might lead to consequences—regrettable consequences.”
He shook his head and blinked as he withdrew into the cave.
Meanwhile Gevil-Hay wrote out his appeal and a request to Ingham, the consul at the seaport under the mountains, that he would urge the matter forward. Then he sat and drearily watched the evening wind in the pines above the gorge, and wished vainly that he could do anything—anything but watch and wait.
It is a bad moment when a man believes his days of action are past, while his brain works strong and resolute as ever! He longed to beat the brigand at his own game, for he fancied he was a man worth beating.
In the gloom, when the fire was lit outside the cave, Don Q. returned. He took the sealed letter that Gevil-Hay held ready for dispatch.
“And now, señor, I regard you as my guest,” said he; “and in all things but one you may command me. I assure you I will do my best to play the host well and to make your stay among us pleasant to you. I have your parole, señor?”
Gevil-Hay hesitated. The fever had laid its hand upon him, he shivered as he stood in the breeze, and the joints of his knees were unloosed with a creeping weakness. Not so many years ago the world seemed at his feet; he had striven hard for his position and won it—won more than that. He had tasted much of life’s sweetness and the joy of power and growing success, yet to-day——
“Yes,” he answered.
As the days went on Gevil-Hay found he had a good deal in common with the chief, who proved himself an attentive host. There was something kindred between the two men, and yet Gevil-Hay was alternately attracted and repelled.
Yielding to the charm of Don Q.’s fine courtesy he was led on to talk of many things, and he talked well, while the chilly thin-framed hearer, crouching in his cloak over the fire, listened with interest to a later view of the great world than lay within his own remembrance. Also the Englishman had been a wanderer in far countries; he was a man who spoke with authority, who understood the craft of administration and high affairs, so that he could converse on the level of actual knowledge and experience with one who held himself to be also a ruler and a lawgiver to no contemptible portion of mankind.
To Gevil-Hay Don Q. was a study. He watched him as a snake might be watched by an imaginative rabbit. He was always following the livid-lidded eyes, always speculating on the thoughts which worked in that ill-balanced brain. For Don Q. was a Spaniard of the Spaniards, having the qualities of his race in excess. He was quite fearless, proud to distraction, unsurpassed in the kindly courtesy of a nation of aristocrats, and cruel beyond belief. As this character developed itself, Gevil-Hay, like many another man who has thought himself tired of life, clung to his chances of escape as they hourly grew less before his eyes. For one thing was apparent—Don Q.’s peculiarities did not lean to the side of mercy.
A couple of days after his arrival in the glen he asked the brigand chief what had been done with the two young brawlers who had drawn kn
ives upon each other under the terrace.
Don Q. removed his cigarette to answer.
“They will annoy you no more, señor,” he said, with the anxiety of hospitality, “no more.”
“What? Have you sent them away to some of your out-lying detachments?” asked Gevil-Hay, for he had learned by this time that the robbers were posted at many points in the mountains.
Don Q. laughed, a venomous sibilant laugh.
“They are gone—yes, with other carrion—the vultures alone know where!”
The chief was in one of his black moods of intense and brooding melancholy. They were common with him, but this was the first which Gevil-Hay had seen.
It suddenly struck him that some leaven of insanity might lurk behind the fierce, bird-like aspect. No wonder his followers obeyed him at the run. His generosity and his vengeance were out of all proportion to the deserving.
“Some day,” said Gevil-Hay abruptly, “they will resent—this kind of thing. There are many ways; they might betray you, and then——”
Don Q. gave him a poisonous glance.
“I have made provision for that also; but no, señor, when I die, it shall be in my own manner and of my own will,” and he relapsed again into musing.
It was then that Gevil-Hay found himself wishing his ransom might arrive in full, and wishing it with fervour. In a few minutes Don Q. spoke again.
“If you own a dog, he may love you; but a pack of wolves are kept in order with the lash. These,” he waved his hand towards the gleaming camp fires in the hollow, “are wolves. Also many men desire to join us—many more than I care to take. So you perceive, señor, I can afford to lose a few who offend me.”
He rose as he spoke, and, going back into the cave, brought forth his guitar.
“After all, what is life, that we should prize it so?” he asked, as his thin fingers touched the strings. “I live up here, feared and obeyed to satiety. Sometimes I have the honour of a gentleman’s companionship, as I now have the honour of yours, señor. At other times I grow weary of life, and my restlessness drives me down the mountains; but—at all times I love the music of Spain.”
Gevil-Hay looked askance at the guitar. Music was not one of the things for which he could declare any special fancy.
Don Q. placed his open palm across the twanging notes.
“If it displeases you,” he said apologetically.
Gevil-Hay hastened to assure him to the contrary. And, indeed, if the listener had had the power of appreciation, he must have been touched and charmed, for Don Q.’s was a master hand. He lingered over mournful Andalusian melodies, and even sang in his strange sibilant voice long sad songs of old Spain and forgotten deeds and men.
Chapter II
So the days wore on, but one evening there was a new development.
Gevil-Hay, secured only by his parole, was allowed to wander at large about the glen, and on this occasion, after an ugly climb, he arrived at the head of a deep and narrow cleft in the higher rocks along the bottom of which a faint track was visible. As he stood and surveyed it with an involuntary thought of escape, he heard his name spoken. Of course it was some hidden sentinel, but he was surprised when the man repeated his call, in the same low voice, for Don Q.’s men were usually sullen. In their eyes a prisoner had but two uses. First he was saleable; second, if unsaleable, it was amusing to see him die.
“What do you want?” asked Gevil-Hay after a little hesitation.
“The thing I say must be forever between us two alone. You can help us, we can help you. That is the reason of my speaking. No, señor, stay where you are. If you promise, I will show you my face.”
“I promise nothing.”
“Ah, that is because you have not yet heard! Is it not true that my lord of the sierra is taking from you all your riches?”
“Yes.”
“And you, like the rest of us, would do something to save them? Is not that also so?”
“It may be.”
“Then do it. It is but a little thing, and in the doing should taste sweet. You will not betray me?”
“As I have not seen you I cannot.”
“But you will not?”
“No.”
“Then take it, señor. Here, look up towards the lentisco.”
In the warm gloom of the lentisco shrub something cold and ominous passed from hand to hand, and Gevil-Hay’s fingers closed on the butt of a revolver.
“You mean me to kill him?” he said slowly.
A laugh was the answer, and words followed the laugh.
“Yes, for you have opportunity. Then you shall go free, for we hate him.”
“And you?”
There was another laugh.
“A pardon and the blood-money between us. Now go.”
And it cannot be denied that in the soft southern dusk Charles Gerald Gevil-Hay was horribly tempted. He stood there in the silence and wrestled with the temptation. Arguments came to him freely. By firing that shot he would be serving his kind as well as himself. Tormented with thoughts he slid back into the glen and walked across the short, hard grass towards the terrace. He passed by the fires round which the men were gambling. Lean columns of smoke rose slowly into the higher air, strange cries filled the glen, for the sequestradores played high, and each voice rose and fell with its possessor’s luck.
He mounted the sloping path to the terrace. Don Q., unsuspecting, was within the cave reading letters beside a cheap lamp. How easy—— Gevil-Hay stood outside in the herb-scented darkness and watched him. On the one side, the prisoner could look forward to a life of comfort at the least; and who could tell what else the future held? On the other hand, a hideous beggary in smoky, fish-scented lodgings, an existence worse than death! And in the night the man’s honour wrestled with the man’s temptations of expediency.
Presently he went in. Don Q. scowled at him and threw him an English newspaper. It was fourteen days old, and not one which Gevil-Hay was wont to buy when at home; but in the whirl of his thoughts he fled to it as to a refuge. He was about to open it, holding it at arm’s length for the purpose, when his glance lit upon a notice in the obituary column.
“Hertford.—On March 10th, suddenly, at Frane Hall, Franebridge, George Chigwell Aberstone Hertford, eldest son of the late——”
He folded the paper with mathematical precision and read two columns of advertisements without seeing a word of what he read.
So George Hertford was dead at last! And Helen—free.
Don Q. looked furtively at him under the shadow of his wide hat, and saw that El Palido, as the men called him, was sitting there more white and more statuesque than ever. His eyes were blank and set. By his tense attitude Don Q. knew that some struggle was going on within the Englishman’s mind, and his own face filled with an ominous light as he glanced at one of his letters.
“Señor,” he said aloud, in a changed voice, “news of your ransom has come. Eighteen thousand dollars. I said twenty thousand.”
Gevil-Hay started slightly, controlled himself, and said unconcernedly—
“And so?”
“And so, señor, I am prepared to stand by my side of the bargain,” replied the chief with a poisonous politeness. “At the rising of the moon nine-tenths of you shall go free from the head of our glen!”
There was a silence, broken only by the noises in the camp.
Free? Gevil-Hay’s thoughts were racing through his brain. Yes, free, and—Helen was free! Her husband dead. Then he took in the force of Don Q.’s words, and, rising, stood up and leaned against the rocky wall.
“Am I to be grateful?” he asked frigidly.
Don Q. smiled with a suave acquiescence.
“And because your conversation has interested me, señor, you shall have the privilege of choosing which tenth of yourself you will leave behind.”
“In fact, not content with making me a beggar you will take from me all chance of regaining my losses?”
Don Q. bowed again and spoke with
exceeding gentleness.
“It comes to that. I am very much afraid it comes to that,” he said. “It is terribly unfortunate, I admit, but I do not see how it can be avoided. But you are a comparatively heavy man, señor; I think I should advise you to leave a limb behind you. One can yet live without a limb.”
The brigand’s callousness startled Gevil-Hay, well as he fancied he knew him. And in the breast of the slow-moving, phlegmatic man the temptation arose again with accumulated strength. A loaded revolver was under his hand, practical impunity waited upon the deed, and beyond that life—and Helen! What stood between him and all this? Why, a scruple, a scruple that should not hold good for a moment against such counteracting motives. It occurred to him with much force that the thin, bald-browed, malignant despot opposite would be much more wholesome of contemplation were his lips closed forever.
But he had passed his word, given his parole, and a man occasionally finds his honour an inconvenient possession.
Had it been a question of another man’s life or person, Gevil-Hay would have had no hesitation in sending Don Q. to his appointed place. Moreover, he would have been delighted of the excuse for sending him there. As it was he held his hand.
In another hour he would be given over to the band for mutilation, and his talk in the dark with the sentinel, joined to his failure in making use of the opportunity offered him, would assuredly not lighten the manner of paying the penalty.
Through it all the bandit sat and watched him with blinking eyelids in the lamplight. Don Q.’s sight seemed not very good, but it served to show him what he wanted to see. He had broken down the indifference of Gevil-Hay.
But Gevil-Hay had not held himself well in hand during so many years of his life for nothing. He conquered now in the grimmest fight he had ever fought. But his soul rose at the man before him.
“I should certainly advise you to leave a limb,” repeated Don Q. at last.
“You villain! You unutterable villain!”
Don Q.’s hand fell to his knife as he sprang to his feet and faced his captive.
“The one fact for which I am really sorry at this moment,” went on Gevil-Hay, “is that I should have allowed such a thing as you to associate with me on equal terms! If I had guessed to what genus you belonged I would never have talked with you or remained near you except I had been held there by force! Now you know what I think of you, and I assure you, although I can guess the price I shall have to pay for the pleasure of saying so, it is cheap!”
