The Filibusters, Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

that sardonic humour of his when he has time to think it out coolly later.”

“But if he brings others with him.”

“Then they have my pity beforehand. Birch and I will have to er handle them so that they do not interfere.”

“There is a bar here on the inside,” said I, “running into a socket in the wall which will keep the door shut once we get our man in the room.”

“I’d seen it,” said Carew. “Now, Delicia, please.”

She stepped towards him, laid both hands on his arm, and looked up in his face. ” There seems a horrible risk about everything,” she said, “but I will do my best. Whatever happens, please know that I am grateful, and do not—do not—” the words seemed to stick in her throat.

“Get into the kettle,” Carew suggested. “No we won’t, either Birch or myself. You can trust us for that, Delicia. Now away with you and wheedle Jupe into the room alone. You’ve got plenty of cleverness; you can do it if you try.”

She shuddered a little, and then with an effort she pulled herself together again and went towards the door. I opened it for her. The corridor seemed to be empty, though there were plenty of men chattering out of sight at the further end. She walked quickly away towards the voices, and I went back into the room.

“It’s just a chance she may bring it off,” said Carew, moodily.

“A slim ghost of a chance,” said I.

“There’s not another woman in the world would have so much. But if it does come off, we’ve got to be ready. Look here, Birch, I’ll shut the door if we can get Jupe inside, and slip the bar in place. You must get your arms round the man and hold him tight. You can do that?”

“Oh, I can do that right enough as far as physical ability goes, but the question is, do I intend to? It seems I am going to help you to marry Briggs’s promised wife. That’s what I can’t quite make up my mind about.”

“Now, for the Lord’s sake, don’t let’s have any more of this nonsense now,” he said irritably. “Hang it, man, respect the truce. We’ve got a beggarly chance of saving our lives and of serving Delicia at one and the same time. Have you got a better plan? No, you haven’t. Then, for heaven’s sake, shut your mouth and use your wit to help mine. Afterwards if we do get clear of this mantra]) forty things may happen. You may shoot me, Briggsmay shoot me, other people may do it; but, any way, if I live I shall be President of Sacaronduca, in which case Briggs by his own contract with Delicia would be out of the running. Whereas if I get knocked on the head there she’ll be a widow as she was before, and the situation’s unaltered. You’re serving Briggs by keeping her out of that beast Maxillo’s fingers, and you can salve your conscience with that.”

We dropped the talk then, and tramped about in the dusk of the room waiting tediously. I formed a thousand theories as to how Donna Delicia could fail in her negotiations. I could by no means see how Jupe would be foolish enough to trust himself within our reach. And always at the back of my thoughts loomed the sugar boilers, with fires lit beneath, and water seething and bubbling inside, and ugh, it makes my flesh creep to remember that time even now.

At last we heard Delicia’s voice again, and then Father Jupe. My heart almost stood still as I listened. Yes, they were coming down the corridor towards us; two pairs of footfalls, both quiet and soft; no others. I strained my ears; I could swear there were no others.

Father Jupe said something, I forget what, though I know it was droll, and Donna Delicia filled the corridor with laughter, merry, light, delicious laughter. Heavens, fancy being able to laugh like that then! What nerves that woman had got.

They came into the room, and Jupe said he was glad his gentle arguments had prevailed. ” I am sure, seflores,” said Father Jupe, “that you and all the world will congratulate my brother on securing so charming—” and there he stopped.

He saw Carew moving towards the bar of the door, and in an instant he bristled with suspicion. I saw his hand dive towards a pocket of his cassock which sagged down with the outline of a revolver, but I was too quick for him. I threw my arms round him, and squeezed all the wind out of his body with the first hug.

Carew made fast the door and came up in front of him. “Now, Father Jupe,” he said, “I need scarcely tell you that if you sing out, whatever happens to us, we shall have plenty of time to take the change out of you before they can break down that excellent door from the outside and disturb us. You quite understand?”

Jupe nodded.

“There’s something in the pocket of your cassock which spoils the hang of the cloth, and doesn’t do your tailor justice. Permit me? A thousand thanks. By Jove, my own revolver and cartridges. Jupe, you are a real benefactor. I recommend the pattern of this gun to your future notice; a four-fifty, you see; never try the smaller bores: they won’t always stop a man.”

Father Jupe took all this philosophically which was wise of him, seeing that he could not resist; and by degrees got back his wind which was wiser still, in view of possible emergencies.

Carew went on: ” Having induced you to visit us, amigo, I want you next to give me a little professional assistance. There seems so much marriage in the air that Donna Delicia and I propose having a wedding of our own presided over by you, Jupe.”

The priest set his lips tight like a man prepared to accept the consequences of his words. ” No,” he said, ” I will take no part in this sin.”

“Sin be hanged,” said Carew. ” We are both of age, and both know our own minds. Listen, Jupe: I publish the banns of marriage between William Howard Motte Carew, bachelor, and Delie Alicia Spinoza, widow, both at present of this parish. If any of you know any just cause or impediment mark that, Jupe; JUST cause why these two persons should not be snugly married out of harm’s way, ye are now to declare it.”

“You are heretics for one thing,” said the priest coldly.

“I beg your pardon, father. We are both members of the church which you adorn.”

Father Jupe winced. ” But still I shall not marry you,” he said, ” so you may shoot me if you choose, and get it over.”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Carew. ” We are now in the Tolpec Mountains, and it may come to your memory that as we rode here from the plains below, you brightened the way by tales of how the inhabitants of this district dealt with captives who proved obdurate. I regret, amigo, that our apparatus is so scanty, and we cannot reproduce all their playful eccentricities; but we have this ” he kicked the brazero with its glowing charcoal into the middle of the floor; and picked up the red-hot iron bar, and brought his savage face close to the priest “and we’re minded to pay you back in your own currency, you torturing brute.”

“I saved you from Manuel,” said the priest sullenly.

“I know you did, and we owe you nothing there. You only did it for your own purposes. But I’m not going to argue with you further; either you do what I want, or you take the consequences. If you refuse, you shall take an hour to die, and rue every second of it.”

“Let me think,” said the priest huskily.

“I’m not going to let you gain time,” Carew retorted. He lifted the iron bar till I myself could feel the heat of it; and it must have scorched Jupe’s face. ” Hold him tight, Birch, and don’t let him squeal; we’ve heard a lot about boiling and burning in this infernal country, and now we shall see for ourselves how it affects a man. I’m going to burn his eyes out as a commencement.”

The man could have faced a shot, but he shied at torture, and I don’t blame him. He nearly wrenched himself free from my arms when the red-hot iron came near his face, and ” I give in,” he cried: ” I’ll marry you. Oh, for God’s sake, Carew, take that cursed thing away.”

Carew stood back. ” Very well,” he said, ” but don’t make such a noise about it, or you’ll wake the place. And mind, don’t you go back on your promise, Jupe, or try and burke the service, or we’ll mark you yet.”

“I know when I am beaten, se�or.”

“Do you?” said Carew.

“And you may put your weapons away. I have given you my word.”

“I don’t value your word at a cracked nickel. Birch, you stand behind this man, and if he tries any pranks, bottle him. Don’t kill, you understand: break his arm. No, don’t do that either: follow the custom of the country: slice his ears off.”

But from this point onwards I think the priest gave Sir William Carew a lesson in dignity. He motioned to Donna Delicia, who up to this had been sitting on one of the “quatres” with face hidden in her hands, and in a quietly reverent voice asked her and Carew to take their places before him. He might be a place-seeker, a semisavage politician, a brigand and a hypocrite when the mood suited him; but under it all he was the priest still, duly consecrated, and duly empowered; and as I stood grimly in my place behind him, I was more than half ashamed of the butcher’s work which had been threatened in order to bring about the climax.

It was a queer scene, come to think of it. Here was the richest, most beautiful, most famous woman in the country, celebrating her marriage not with pomp and circumstance in the national cathedral as might have been expected, but under conditions separated only by a hair’s breadth from bloody tragedy. The chapel was an unconsecrated chamber in a most unhallowed house; for illumination there was the silver moonlight from the window which fell on the heads and shoulders of all the earnest group, and the faint crimson glow from the brazero on the unseen floor beneath; and instead of sweet clouds of incense, there were acid charcoal fumes to touch up the remembrance.

The old sardonic manner had gone from the celebrant. His very face had changed. Here was the ecclesiastic, and nothing more, and either he was a consummate actor (which I do not care to believe) or else he was a man of deep convictions and did not care to tamper with the holiness of the sacrament. The affair had been forced on him, bitterly against his will; but once the human part of him had been defeated, his spiritual half took the matter up and carried through the ceremony with an impressiveness which showed how deeply he felt its deep and holy significance.

He made them man and wife according to the ritual of his church, bestowed his benediction as a priest of that church, and for ever set Donna Delicia beyond the reach of his brother Maxillo, so long as Sir William Carew should live.

But how long had Carew to live? That was the question which worried me. As that weird marriage service was drawing to its end, someone came to the door of the chamber and called for Father