Carrying the cloak, he hastened back to the gallows. There he cautiously selected from the surplus stock of cord a length of some twelve feet, at either end of which he formed a loop. So, mounting the ladder, over the hook he hitched this cord by one end, and then, swinging himself clear, slid down the rope until he could pass both his feet into the lower hank.
‘Voila!’ said he. ‘Come up and tie me to the other with some little pieces round the waist and knees and neck.’
She obeyed, weeping. Her love and her duty were to this wonder of manhood, however dreadful his counsel. Presently, trussed to his liking, he bade her fetch the brigand’s cloak and button it over all.
‘Now,’ said he, ‘one last sacramental kiss; and, so descending and placing the ladder and all as before, thou shalt take standing-room in the pit for this veritable dance of death.’
A moment – and he was hanging there, to all appearance a corpse. The short rope at his neck had been so disposed and knotted – the collar of the domino serving – as to make him look, indeed, as if he strained at the tether’s end. He had dragged his long hair over his eyes; his head lolled to one side; his tongue protruded. For the rest, the cloak hid all, even to his feet.
The goatherd snivelled.
‘Ah, holy saints, he is dead!’
The head came erect, grinning.
‘Eugenio!’ she cried; ‘O, my God! Thou wilt be discovered – thou wilt slip and strangle! Ah, the crows – body of my body, the crows!’
‘Imbecile! have I not my hands? See, I kiss one to thee. Now the sun sinks, and my ghostly vigil will be short. Pray heaven only they alight not on that in the bush. Nariguita, little heroine, this is my last word. Go hide thyself in the bushes above, and watch what a Frenchman, the most sensitive of mortals, will suffer to serve his Emperor.’
It was an era, indeed, of sublime lusts and barbaric virtues, when men must mount upon stepping-stones, not of their dead selves, but of their slaughtered enemies, to higher things. Anita, like Ducos, was a child of her generation. To her mind the heroic purpose of this deed overpowered its pungency. She kissed her lover’s feet; secured the safe disposition of the cloak about them; then turned and fled into hiding.
At dusk, with the sound of footsteps coming up the pass, the crows dispersed. Eugene, for all his self-sufficiency, had sweated over their persistence. A single more gluttonous swoop might at any moment, in blinding him, have laid him open to a general attack before help could reach him from the eyrie whence unwearying love watched his every movement. Now, common instance of the providence which waits on daring, the sudden lift and scatter of the swarm left his hearing sensible to the tinkling of a bridle, which came rhythmical from the track below. Immediately he fell, with all his soul, into the pose of death.
The cadence of the steely warning so little altered, the footsteps stole in so muffled and so deadly, that, peering presently through slit eyelids for the advent of the troop, it twitched his strung nerves to see a sinister congress already drawn soundless about the gibbet on which he hung. Perhaps for the first time in this stagnant atmosphere he realised the peril he had invited. But still the gambler’s providence befriended him.
They were all women but two – the victim, a sullen, whiskered Yanguesian, strapped cuttingly to a mule, and a paunchy shovel-hatted Carmelite, who hugged a crucifix between his roomy sleeves.
Ducos had heard of these banded vengeresses. Now, he was Frenchman enough to appreciate in full the significance of their attitude, as they clustered beneath him in the dusk, a veiled and voiceless huddle of phantoms. ‘How,’ he thought, peeping through the dropped curtain of his hair, ‘will the adorables do it?’ He had an hysterical inclination to laugh, and at that moment the monk, with a sudden decision to action, brushed against him and set him slowly twirling until his face was averted from the show.
Immediately thereon – as he interpreted sounds – the mule was led under the gallows. He heard the ladder placed in position, heard a strenuous shuffling as of concentrated movement. What he failed to hear (at present) was any cry or protest from the victim. The beam above creaked, a bridle tinkled, a lighter drop of hoofs receded. A pregnant pause ensued, broken only by a slight noise, like rustling or vibrating – and then, in an instant, by a voice, chuckling, hateful – the voice of the priest.
‘What! to hang there without a word, Carlos? Wouldst thou go, and never ask what is become of that very treasure thou soldst thy soul to betray? The devil has rounded on thee, Carlos; for after all it is thou that art lost, and not the treasure. That is all put away – shout it in the ears of thy neighbours up there – it is all put away, Carlos, safe in the salt mines of the Little Hump. Cry it to the whole world now. Thou mayst if thou canst. In the salt mines of the Little Hump. Dost hear? Ah, then, we must make thee answer.’
With his words, the pit was all at once in shrill hubbub, noise indescribable and dreadful, the shrieking of harpies bidden to their prey. It rose demoniac – a very Walpurgis.
‘No, no,’ thought Ducos, gulping under his collar. He was almost unnerved for the moment. ‘It is unlawful – they have no right to!’
He was twisting again, for all his mad will to prevent it. He would not look, and yet he looked. The monk, possessed, was thrashing the torn and twitching rubbish with his crucifix. The others, their fingers busy with the bodkins they had plucked from their mantillas, had retreated for the moment to a little distance.
Suddenly the Carmelite, as if in an uncontrollable frenzy, dropped his weapon, and scuttling to the mule, where it stood near at hand, tore a great horse pistol from its holster among the trappings, and pointed it at the insensible body.
‘Scum of all devils!’ he bellowed. ‘In fire descend to fire that lasts eternal!’
He pulled the trigger. There was a flash and shattering explosion. A blazing hornet stung Ducos in the leg. He may have started and shrieked. Any cry or motion of his must have passed unnoticed in the screaming panic evoked of the crash. He clung on with his hands and dared to raise his head. The mouth of the pass was dusk with flying skirts. Upon the sands beneath him, the body of the priest, a shapeless bulk, was slowly subsiding and settling, one fat fist of it yet gripping the stock of a pistol which, overgorged, had burst as it was discharged.
The reek of the little tragedy had hardly dissipated before Ducos found himself. The sentiment of revolt, deriving from his helpless position, had been indeed but momentary. To feel his own accessibility to torture, painted torture to him as an inhuman lust. With the means to resist, or escape, at will, he might have sat long in ambush watching it; even condoning it as an extravagant posture of art.
With a heart full of such exultation over the success of his trick that for the moment he forgot the pain of his wound, he hurriedly unpicked the knots of the shorter cords about him, and, jumping to the ground, waited until the shadow of a little depressed figure came slinking across the sand towards him.
‘Eugenio!’ it whispered; ‘what has happened? O! art thou hurt?’
She ran into his arms, sobbing.
‘I am hurt,’ said Ducos. ‘Quick, child! unstrap this from my arm and bind it about my calf. Didst hear? But it was magnificent! Two birds with a single stone. The piastres in pickle for us. Didst see, moreover? Holy Emperor! it was laughable. I would sacrifice a decoration to be witness of the meeting of those two overhead. It should be the Yanguesian for my money, for he has at least his teeth left. Look how he shows them, bursting with rage! Quick, quick, quick! we must be up and away, before any of those others think of returning.’
‘And if one should,’ she said, ‘and mark the empty beam?’
‘What does it matter, nevertheless! I must be off tonight, after thou hast answered me one single question.’
‘Off? Eugenio! O! not without me?’
‘God, little girl! In this race I must not be hampered by so much as a thought. But I will return for thee – never fear.’
He still sat in his domino. She knelt at his feet, s
tanching the flow from the wound the pistol had made in his leg. At his words she looked up breathlessly into his face; then away, to hide her swimming eyes. In the act she slunk down, making herself small in the sand.
‘Eugenio! My God! we are watched!’
He turned about quickly.
‘Whence?’
‘From the mouth of the pass,’ she whispered.
‘I can see nothing,’ he said. ‘Hurry, nevertheless! What a time thou art! There, it is enough of thy bungling fingers. Help me to my feet and out of this place. Come!’ he ended, angrily.
He had an ado to climb the easy slope. By the time they were entered amongst the rocks and bushes above, it was black dusk.
‘Whither wouldst thou, dearest?’ whispered the goatherd.
He had known well enough a moment ago – to some point, in fact, whence she could indicate to him the direction of the Little Hump, where the treasure lay; afterwards, to the very hill-top where some hours earlier they had forgathered. But he would not or could not explain this. Some monstrous blight of gloom had seized his brain at a swoop. He thought it must be one of the crows, and he stumbled along, raving in his heart. If she offered to help him now, he would tear his arm furiously from her touch. She wondered, poor stricken thing, haunting him with tragic eyes. Then at last her misery and desolation found voice—
‘What have I done? I will not ask again to go with thee, if that is it. It was only one little foolish cry of terror, most dear – that they should suspect, and seize, and torture me. But, indeed, should they do it, thou canst trust me to be silent.’
He stopped, swaying, and regarded her demoniacally. His face was a livid and malignant blot in the thickening dusk. To torture her? What torture could equal his at this moment? She sought merely to move him by an affectation of self-renunciation. That, of course, called at once for extreme punishment. He must bite and strangle her to death.
He moved noiselessly upon her. She stood spell-bound before him. All at once something seemed to strike him on the head, and, without uttering a sound, he fell forward into the bush.
Ducos opened his eyes to the vision of so preternaturally melancholy a face, that he was shaken with weak laughter over the whimsicality of his own imagination. But, in a very little, unwont to dreaming as he was, the realisation that he was looking upon no apparition, but a grotesque of fact, silenced and absorbed him.
Presently he was moved to examine his circumstances. He was lying on a heap of grass mats in a tiny house built of boards. Above him was a square of leaf-embroidered sky cut out of a cane roof; to his left, his eyes, focusing with a queer stiffness, looked through an open doorway down precipices of swimming cloud. That was because he lay in an eyrie on the hillside. And then at once, into his white field of vision, floated the dismal long face, surmounted by an ancient cocked-hat, slouched and buttonless, and issuing like an august Aunt Sally’s from the neck of a cloak as black and dropping as a pall.
The figure crossed the opening outside, and wheeled, with the wind in its wings. In the act, its eyes, staring and protuberant, fixed themselves on those of the Frenchman. Immediately, with a little stately gesture expressive of relief and welcome, it entered the hut.
‘By the mercy of God!’ exclaimed the stranger in his own tongue.
Then he added in English: ‘The Inglese recovers to himself?’
Ducos smiled, nodding his head; then answered confidently, feeling his way: ‘A little, sir, I tank you. Thees along night. Ah! it appear all one pain.’
The other nodded solemnly in his turn—
‘A long night indeed, in which the sunksink tree very time.’
‘Comment!’ broke out the aide-de-camp hoarsely, and instantly realised his mistake.
‘Ah! devil take the French!’ said he explanatorily. ‘I been in their camp so long that to catch their lingo. But I spik l’Espagnol, señor. It shall be good to us to converse there.’
The other bowed impenetrably. His habit of a profound and melancholy aloofness might have served for mask to any temper of mind but that which, in real fact, it environed – a reason, that is to say, more lost than bedevilled under the long tyranny of oppression.
‘I have been ill, I am to understand?’ said Ducos, on his guard.
‘For three days and nights, señor. My goatherd came to tell me how a wounded English officer was lying on the hills. Between us we conveyed you hither.’
‘Ah, Dios! I remember. I had endeavoured to carry muskets into Saragossa by the river. I was hit in the leg; I was captured; I escaped. For two days I wandered, señor, famished and desperate. At last in these mountains I fell as by a stroke from heaven.’
‘It was the foul blood clot, señor. It balked your circulation. There was the brazen splinter in the wound, which I removed, and God restored you. What fangs are theirs, these reptiles! In a few days you will be well.’
‘Thanks to what ministering angel?’
‘I am known as Don Manoel di Cangrejo, señor, the most shattered, as he was once the most prosperous of men. May God curse the French! May God’ (his wild, mournful face twitched with strong emotion) ‘reward and bless these brave allies of a people more wronged than any the world has yet known!’
‘Noble Englishman,’ said he by and by, ‘thou hast nothing at present but to lie here and accept the grateful devotion of a heart to which none but the inhuman denies humanity.’
Ducos looked his thanks.
‘If I might rest here a little,’ he said; ‘if I might be spared—’
The other bowed, with a grave understanding.
‘None save ourselves, and the winds and trees, señor. I will nurse thee as if thou wert mine own child.’
He was as good as his word. Ducos, pluming himself on his perspicacity, accepting the inevitable with philosophy, lent himself during the interval, while feigning a prolonged weakness, to recovery. That was his, to all practical purposes, within a couple of days, during which time he never set eyes on Anita, but only on Anita’s master. Don Manoel would often come and sit by his bed of mats; would even sometimes retail to him, as to a trusted ally, scraps of local information. Thus was he posted, to his immense gratification, in the topical after-history of his own exploit at the gallows.
‘It is said,’ whispered Cangrejo awfully, ‘that one of the dead, resenting so vile a neighbour, impressed a goatherd into his service, and, being assisted from the beam, walked away. Truly it is an age of portents.’
On the third morning, coming early with his bowl of goat’s milk and his offering of fruits, he must apologise, with a sweet and lofty courtesy, for the necessity he was under of absenting himself all day.
‘There is trouble,’ he said – ‘as when is there not? I am called to secret council, señor. But the boy Ambrosio has my orders to be ever at hand shouldst thou need him.’
Ducos’s heart leapt. But he was careful to deprecate this generous attention, and to cry Adios! with the most perfect assumption of composure.
He was lying on his elbow by and by, eagerly listening, when the doorway was blocked by a shadow. The next instant Anita had sprung to and was kneeling beside him.
‘Heart of my heart, have I done well? Thou art sound and whole? O, speak to me, speak to me, that I may hear thy voice and gather its forgiveness!’
For what? She was sobbing and fondling him in a very lust of entreaty.
‘Thou hast done well,’ he said. ‘So, we were seen indeed, Anita?’
‘Yes,’ she wept, holding his face to her bosom. ‘And, O! I agonise for thee to be up and away, Eugenio, for I fear.’
‘Hush! I am strong. Help me to my legs, child. So! Now, come with me outside, and point out, if thou canst, where lies the Little Hump.’
She was his devoted crutch at once. They stood in the sunlight, looking down upon the hills which fell from beneath their feet – a world of tossed and petrified rapids. At their backs, on a shallow plateau under eaves of rock, Cangrejo’s eyrie clung to the mountain-side.
> ‘There,’ said the goatherd, indicating with her finger, ‘that mound above the valley – that little hill, fat-necked like a great mushroom, which sprouts from its basin among the trees?’
‘Wait! mine eyes are dazzled.’
‘Ah, poor sick eyes! Look, then! Dost thou not see the white worm of the Pampeluna road – below yonder, looping through the bushes?’
‘I see it – yes, yes.’
‘Now, follow upwards from the big coil, where the pine tree leans to the south, seeming a ladder between road and mound.’
‘Stay – I have it.’
‘Behold the Little Hump, the salt mine of St Ildefonso, and once, they say, an island in the midst of a lake, which burst its banks and poured forth and was gone. And now thou knowest, Eugenio?’
He did not answer. He was intently fixing in his memory the position of the hill. She waited on his mood, not daring to risk his anger a second time, with a pathetic anxiety. Presently he heaved out a sigh, and turned on her, smiling.
‘It is well,’ he said. ‘Now conduct me to the spot where we met three days ago.’
It was surprisingly near at hand. A labyrinthine descent – by way of aloe-homed rocks, with sandy bents and tufts of harsh juniper between – of a hundred yards or so, and they were on the stony plateau which he remembered. There, to one side, was the coppice of chestnuts and locust trees. To the other, the road by which he had climbed went down with a run – such as he himself was on thorns to emulate into the valleys trending to Saragossa. His eyes gleamed. He seated himself down on a boulder, controlling his impatience only by a violent effort.
‘Anita,’ he said, drilling out his speech with slow emphasis, ‘thou must leave me here alone awhile. I would think – I would think and plan, my heart. Go, wait on thy goats above, and I will return to thee presently.’
She sighed, and crept away obedient. O, forlorn, most forlorn soul of love, which, counting mistrust treason, knows itself a traitor! Yet Anita obeyed, and with no thought to eavesdrop, because she was in love with loyalty.
The Black Reaper Page 11