“That’s all over,” he said, “and now we go back for more work, more toil, more trouble, more exertion with hands and feet, for hours and hours. And all the time the head turned over the shoulder, too.”
We were climbing a precipitous path sufficiently dangerous in the dark, Dominic, more familiar with it, going first and I scrambling close behind in order that I might grab at his cloak if I chanced to slip or miss my footing. I remonstrated against this arrangement as we stopped to rest. I had no doubt I would grab at his cloak if I felt myself falling. I couldn’t help doing that. But I would probably only drag him down with me.
With one hand grasping a shadowy bush above his head he growled that all this was possible, but that it was all in the bargain, and urged me onwards.
When we got on to the level that man whose even breathing no exertion, no danger, no fear or anger could disturb, remarked as we strode side by side:
“I will say this for us, that we are carrying out all this deadly foolishness as conscientiously as though the eyes of the Señora were on us all the time. And as to risk, I suppose we take more than she would approve of, I fancy, if she ever gave a moment’s thought to us out here. Now, for instance, in the next half hour, we may come any moment on three carabineers who would let off their pieces without asking questions. Even your way of flinging money about cannot make safety for men set on defying a whole big country for the sake of—what is it exactly?—the blue eyes, or the white arms of the Señora.”
He kept his voice equably low. It was a lonely spot and but for a vague shape of a dwarf tree here and there we had only the flying clouds for company. Very far off a tiny light twinkled a little way up the seaward shoulder of an invisible mountain. Dominic moved on.
“Fancy yourself lying here, on this wild spot, with a leg smashed by a shot or perhaps with a bullet in your side. It might happen. A star might fall. I have watched stars falling in scores on clear nights in the Atlantic. And it was nothing. The flash of a pinch of gunpowder in your face may be a bigger matter. Yet somehow it’s pleasant as we stumble in the dark to think of our Señora in that long room with a shiny floor and all that lot of glass at the end, sitting on that divan, you call it, covered with carpets as if expecting a king indeed. And very still . . .”
He remembered her—whose image could not be dismissed.
I laid my hand on his shoulder.
“That light on the mountain side flickers exceedingly, Dominic. Are we in the path?”
He addressed me then in French, which was between us the language of more formal moments.
“Prenez mon bras, monsieur. Take a firm hold, or I will have you stumbling again and falling into one of those beastly holes, with a good chance to crack your head. And there is no need to take offence. For, speaking with all respect, why should you, and I with you, be here on this lonely spot, barking our shins in the dark on the way to a confounded flickering light where there will be no other supper but a piece of a stale sausage and a draught of leathery wine out of a stinking skin. Pah!”
I had good hold of his arm. Suddenly he dropped the formal French and pronounced in his inflexible voice:
“For a pair of white arms, Señor. Bueno.”
He could understand.
CHAPTER III
On our return from that expedition we came gliding into the old harbour so late that Dominic and I, making for the café kept by Madame Léonore, found it empty of customers, except for two rather sinister fellows playing cards together at a corner table near the door. The first thing done by Madame Léonore was to put her hands on Dominic’s shoulders and look at arm’s length into the eyes of that man of audacious deeds and wild stratagems who smiled straight at her from under his heavy and, at that time, uncurled moustaches.
Indeed we didn’t present a neat appearance, our faces unshaven, with the traces of dried salt sprays on our smarting skins and the sleeplessness of full forty hours filming our eyes. At least it was so with me who saw as through a mist Madame Léonore moving with her mature nonchalant grace, setting before us wine and glasses with a faint swish of her ample black skirt. Under the elaborate structure of black hair her jet-black eyes sparkled like good-humoured stars and even I could see that she was tremendously excited at having this lawless wanderer Dominic within her reach and as it were in her power. Presently she sat down by us, touched lightly Dominic’s curly head silvered on the temples (she couldn’t really help it), gazed at me for a while with a quizzical smile, observed that I looked very tired, and asked Dominic whether for all that I was likely to sleep soundly to-night.
“I don’t know,” said Dominic, “He’s young. And there is always the chance of dreams.”
“What do you men dream of in those little barques of yours tossing for months on the water?”
“Mostly of nothing,” said Dominic. “But it has happened to me to dream of furious fights.”
“And of furious loves, too, no doubt,” she caught him up in a mocking voice.
“No, that’s for the waking hours,” Dominic drawled, basking sleepily with his head between his hands in her ardent gaze. “The waking hours are longer.”
“They must be, at sea,” she said, never taking her eyes off him. “But I suppose you do talk of your loves sometimes.”
“You may be sure, Madame Léonore,” I interjected, noticing the hoarseness of my voice, “that you at any rate are talked about a lot at sea.”
“I am not so sure of that now. There is that strange lady from the Prado that you took him to see, Signorino. She went to his head like a glass of wine into a tender youngster’s. He is such a child, and I suppose that I am another. Shame to confess it, the other morning I got a friend to look after the café for a couple of hours, wrapped up my head, and walked out there to the other end of the town. . . . Look at these two sitting up! And I thought they were so sleepy and tired, the poor fellows!”
She kept our curiosity in suspense for a moment.
“Well, I have seen your marvel, Dominic,” she continued in a calm voice. “She came flying out of the gate on horseback and it would have been all I would have seen of her if—and this is for you, Signorino—if she hadn’t pulled up in the main alley to wait for a very good-looking cavalier. He had his moustaches so, and his teeth were very white when he smiled at her. But his eyes are too deep in his head for my taste. I didn’t like it. It reminded me of a certain very severe priest who used to come to our village when I was young; younger even than your marvel, Dominic.”
“It was no priest in disguise, Madame Léonore,” I said, amused by her expression of disgust. “That’s an American.”
“Ah! Un Americano! Well, never mind him. It was her that I went to see.”
“What! Walked to the other end of the town to see Doña Rita!” Dominic addressed her in a low bantering tone. “Why, you were always telling me you couldn’t walk further than the end of the quay to save your life—or even mine, you said.”
“Well, I did; and I walked back again and between the two walks I had a good look. And you may be sure—that will surprise you both—that on the way back—oh, Santa Madre, wasn’t it a long way, too—I wasn’t thinking of any man at sea or on shore in that connection.”
“No. And you were not thinking of yourself, either, I suppose,” I said. Speaking was a matter of great effort for me, whether I was too tired or too sleepy, I can’t tell. “No, you were not thinking of yourself. You were thinking of a woman, though.”
“Si. As much a woman as any of us that ever breathed in the world. Yes, of her! Of that very one! You see, we women are not like you men, indifferent to each other unless by some exception. Men say we are always against one another but that’s only men’s conceit. What can she be to me? I am not afraid of the big child here,” and she tapped Dominic’s forearm on which he rested his head with a fascinated stare. “With us two it is for life and death, and I am rather pleased that there is something yet in him that can catch fire on occasion. I would have thought less of him if he hadn’t been able to get out of hand a little, for something really fine. As for you, Signorino,” she turned on me with an unexpected and sarcastic sally, “I am not in love with you yet.” She changed her tone from sarcasm to a soft and even dreamy note. “A head like a gem,” went on that woman born in some by-street of Rome, and a plaything for years of God knows what obscure fates. “Yes, Dominic! Antica. I haven’t been haunted by a face since—since I was sixteen years old. It was the face of a young cavalier in the street. He was on horseback, too. He never looked at me, I never saw him again, and I loved him for—for days and days and days. That was the sort of face he had. And her face is of the same sort. She had a man’s hat, too, on her head. So high!”