Cartoner lighted his cigarette. He betrayed not the smallest feeling of curiosity. It was marvellous how he had acquired the manner of these self-contained Sons of the Peninsula.
"I will tell it."
The Englishman leant his elbow on the table, and his chin within his hand, gazing indifferently out over the marble tables of the Cafe Carmona. The men seated there interchanged glances. They knew from the fierce old face, from the free and dramatic gestures, that old Pedro Roldos was already telling his story to the stranger.
"Santa Maria!" the old man was saying. "It is not a pleasant story.
I lived at Algeciras--I and my little girl, Lorenza. Too near the Rock--too near the Rock. You know what we are there. I had a business--the contraband, of course--and sometimes I was absent for days together. But Lorenza was a favourite with the neighbours--good women who had known my wife when she was the beauty of St. Roque--just such a girl as Lorenza. And I trusted Lorenza; for we are all so. We trust and trust, and yet we know that love and money will kill honesty and truth at any moment. These two are sacred--more sacred than honesty or truth.
Diavolo! What a fool I was. I ought to have known that Lorenza was too pretty to be left alone--ignorant as she was of the ways of the world.
"Then the neighbours began to throw out hints. They spoke of the English Caballero, who was so fond of riding round the Bay, and they hinted that it was not to see our old town of Algeciras that he came.
"One night I came home after a successful journey. I had been as far as Buceita with a train of five mules--a clear run. When I opened the door Lorenza was gone. Mother of G.o.d! gone--gone without a word! I went and fetched Nino--Nino, whose father had been my partner until he was shot by the Guardia Civile one night in the mountain behind Gaucin. There was no one like Nino for mule work in the mountains or for the handling of a boat when the west wind blew across the Bay. Nino, whom I wanted for a son-in-law, having no Nino of my own. I told him. He said nothing, but followed me to the quay and we got the boat out. In half an hour I was at the office of the Chief of the Police at Gibraltar. We sat there all night, Nino and I. By ten o"clock the next morning we knew that it was not one of the English officers--nor any civilian living on the Rock.
"It may," said the Chief of Police, who seemed to know every one in his little district, "be a pa.s.sing stranger or--or a Scorpion. We do not know so much about them. We cannot penetrate to their houses." I gave him a description of Lorenza; he undertook to communicate with England and with the Spanish police. And Nino and I went back to our work. It is thus with us poor people. Our hearts break--all that is worth having goes from our lives, and the end of it is the same; we go back to our work."
The old man paused. His cigarette had gone out long ago. He relighted it and smoked fiercely in silence for some moments. Cartoner made a sign to the waiter, who, with the intelligence of his race, brought a decanter of the wine which he knew the Spaniard preferred.
During all the above relation Cartoner had never uttered a syllable.
At the more violent points he had given a sympathetic little nod of the head--nothing more.
"It was from that moment that I began to learn the difference between Englishmen and Scorpions," Pedro Roldos went on. "Up to then I had not known that it made a difference being born on the Rock or in England.
I did not know what a Scorpion was--with all the vices of England and Spain in one undersized body. I haunted the Rock. I learnt English.
All to no avail. Lorenza was gone. Nino never said anything--he merely stayed by my side--but I think that something--some fibre had broken within him while he held the sheet that first night, sailing across the Bay in a gale of wind.
"Thus--for a year. Then came a letter from Cadiz. Lorenza was there, alone with her child. Her husband had deserted her in England, and she had got back to Cadiz. We went to her, Nino and I, in our boat. We brought her back; but she was no longer Lorenza. Our grief, our love were nothing to her. She was like a woman hewn out of marble. Maria! how I hated that man! You cannot understand--you Englishmen. Though there is something in your eyes, senor, which makes me think that you too could have felt as I did.
"From Lorenza I learnt his name, and without telling her, I went across to Gibraltar. I inquired and found that he was there--there in Gibraltar. Almost within my grasp--think of that! At once I was cunning.
For we are a simple people, except when we love or hate!"
"Yes," said Cartoner, speaking for the first time. "I know."
"In an hour I knew where he lived. His father was an English groom who had set up large breeding stables in Gibraltar, and was a rich man. The son had the pretension of being a gentleman. He had been in England they told me for a year, buying stud-horses--and--and something else. He was married. Ah-ha! He had been married three years before he ever saw Lorenza, and the ceremony which had been observed in the English Church at Seville was a farce. My heart was hot within me; hot with the hatred for this man, and I sat in the Cafe Universal, which you know! Yes, you know everything. I sat there thinking of how I should kill him--slowly, taking my own time--talking to him all the while.
"What I had learnt was no more than I expected. The woman (his wife), it appeared, was the daughter of a merchant at Gibraltar. They were a whole nest of Scorpions. I went back to Algeciras, and said nothing then to Lorenza. The next night I heard by chance that he and his wife and children had taken pa.s.sage in a steamer that sailed for England in two days. Madre de Dio! he nearly slipped through our fingers. It was not a P. and O. ship: the pa.s.sengers had to take a boat from the Old Mole, which is always crowded with Algeciras boats and others. Nino and I sailed across there and waited among the small craft. We saw the woman (his wife) and the children go on board in the afternoon. In the evening he came. I had arranged it with the licensed boatmen; a few pesetas did that. Our boat was nearest the steps. In the dim light of the quay lamp he noticed nothing, but stepped over the gunwale and mentioned the name of his steamer in a quick way, which he thought was that of the English.
"Nino took the oars, and when we were round the pier head we hoisted the sail. Then I spoke.
""I am the father of Lorenza Roldos," I said, "and that man is Nino, her cortejo. We are going to kill you."
"He started up, and was about to raise a cry, when Nino whipped out his country knife. We carry them, you know."
"Yes," said Cartoner, speaking for the second time, "I know."
He was watching the old man now beneath the shadow of his hand.
""If you raise your voice," I said, "Nino will put his knife through your throat."
"I saw him glance sideways at the water.
""You would have no chance that way," I said; "I would turn the boat on you, and run you down."
"He gave a sort of gasp, and I had the happiness of hearing his teeth chatter.
""I have money," he said, in his thin, weak voice; "not here, on board."
"We said nothing, but I hauled in the sheet a little, and ran for the Europa light.
""We are going to kill you," I said quietly, without hurry.
"We landed just beyond the lighthouse, where there are no sentinels, and we made him walk up the Europa Road past the Governor"s house. Nino"s knife was within two inches of his throat all the while. I think he knew that his end was near. You know the Third Europa Advance Battery?"
"Yes," answered Cartoner.
"The cliff recedes there. There is a drop of four hundred metres, and then deep water."
"Yes, I know."
"It was there," hissed the old Spaniard, with a terrible gleam in his eyes. "We sat there on the low walk, and I spoke to him. As we came along, Nino had said to me in our dialect: "With a man like this, fear is better than pain;" and I knew that he was right.
"We did not touch him with our knives. We merely spoke to him. And then we began quietly making our arrangements. That man died a hundred times in the ten minutes wherein we ballasted him. We tied heavy stones upon his body--we filled his pockets with smaller ones. We left his arms free, but to the palm of each hand we bound a stone as large as my head.
The same to each foot.
"Then I said, "Lie down! Hands and legs straight out! It is only right that a Scorpion should die from his own rock, and taking some souvenirs with him."
"I took his arms and Nino his feet. We swung him three times, and let him fly into the darkness.
"And Lorenza never forgave us. She told me that she loved him still. One never comes to understand a woman!"
ON THE ROCKS
"For they are blest that have not much to rue-- That have not oft misheard the prompter"s cue."
The gale was apparently at its height--that is to say, it was blowing harder than it had blown all through the night. But those whose business is on the great waters know that a gale usually finishes its wrath in a few wild squalls. ""Tis getting puffy," the sailors say; ""tis nearly over."
A man hurrying through the narrow main street of Yport was thrown against the shutters of the little baker"s shop on the left-hand side, and stood there gasping for breath.
"Mon Dieu!" he muttered. "It"s a dog"s night."
And he wiped the rain from his face. The wind, which blew from a wild north-west, roared against the towering cliffs, and from east and west concentrated itself funnel-wise on the gap where Yport lies. Out seaward there was a queer, ghostly light lying on the face of the waters--the storm-light--and landsmen rarely see it. For the sea was beaten into unbroken foam. The man, who was clad in oilskins, was in the neck of the funnel. Overhead, he heard the wind roaring through the pines far up on the slope of the narrow valley--close at hand, a continuous whistle told of its pa.s.sage across the housetops. The man steadied himself with his left hand. He had but one, and he cursed the empty sleeve which flapped across his face.
"Provided," he muttered, "that I can waken that cure."
He crept on, while the gale paused to take breath, and a moment later cowered in the porch of a little yellow house. He kicked the door with his heel and then waited, with his ear to the great keyhole. Surely the cure must have been a good man to sleep in such a night. The street had naturally been deserted, for it was nearly three o"clock in the morning, and dawn could not be far off.