Читать книгу: «The Key to Yesterday», страница 9

CHAPTER XIII

The passing of the fugitive insurrectos; their mad turning at bay for one savage rally; their wavering and breaking; their disorganized stampede spurred on by a decimating fire and the bayonet’s point: these were all incidents of a sudden squall that swept violently through the narrow street, to leave it again empty and quiet. It was empty except for the grotesque shapes that stretched in all the undignified awkwardness of violent death and helplessness, feeding thin lines of red that trickled between the cobblestones. It was silent except for echoes of the stubborn fighting coming from the freer spaces of the plazas and alamedas, where the remnants of the invading force clung to their positions behind improvised barricades with the doggedness of men for whom surrender holds no element of hope or mercy.

Into the canyon-like street where the frenzy of combat had blazed up with such a sudden spurt and burned itself out so quickly, Saxon had walked around the angle of a wall, just in time to find himself precipitated into one of the fiercest incidents of the bloody forenoon.

Vegas and Miraflores had not surrendered. Everywhere, the insistent noise told that the opposing forces were still debating every block of the street, but in many outlying places, as in this calle, the revolutionists were already giving back. The attacking army had counted on launching a blow, paralyzing in its surprise, and had itself encountered surprise and partial preparedness. It had set its hope upon a hill, and the hill had failed. A prophet might already read that Vegas y Libertad was the watchword of a lost cause, and that its place in history belonged on a page to be turned down.

But the narrow street in which Saxon lay remained quiet. An occasional balcony window would open cautiously, and an occasional head would be thrust out to look up and down its length. An occasional shape on the cobbles would moan painfully, and shift its position with the return of consciousness, or grow more grotesque in the stiffness of death as the hours wore into late afternoon, but the great iron-studded street-doors of the houses remained barred, and no one ventured along the sidewalks.

Late in the day, when the city still echoed to the snapping of musketry, and deeper notes rumbled through the din, as small field-pieces were brought to bear upon opposing barricades, the thing that Saxon had undertaken to bring about occurred of its own initiative. Word reached the two leaders that the representatives of the foreign powers requested an armistice for the removal of the wounded and a conference at the American Legation, looking toward possible adjustment. Both the government and the insurrecto commanders grasped at the opportunity to let their men, exhausted with close-fighting, catch a breathing space, and to remove from the zone of fire those who lay disabled in the streets.

Then, as the firing subsided, some of the bolder civilians ventured forth in search for such acquaintances as had been caught in the streets between the impact of forces in the unwarned battle. For this hour, at least, all men were safe, and there were some with matters to arrange, who might not long enjoy immunity.

Among them was Howard Rodman, who followed up the path he fancied Saxon must have taken. Rodman was haggard and distrait. His plans were all in ruins, and, unless an amnesty were declared, he must be once more the refugee. His belief that Saxon was really Carter led him into two false conclusions. First, he inferred from this premise that Saxon’s life would be as greatly imperiled as his own, and it followed that he, being in his own words “no quitter,” must see Saxon out of the city, if the man were alive. He presumed that in the effort to reach the legation Saxon had taken, as would anyone familiar with the streets, a circuitous course which would bring him to the “Club Nacional,” from which point he could reach the house he sought over the roofs. He had no doubt that the American had failed in his mission, because, by any route, he must make his way through streets where he would encounter fighting.

Rodman’s search became feverish. There was little time to lose. The conference might be brief – and, after that, chaos! But fortune favored him. Chance led him into the right street, and he found the body. Being alone, he stood for a moment indecisive. He was too light a man to carry bodily the wounded friend who lay at his feet. He could certainly not leave the man, for his ear at the chest, his finger on the pulse, assured him that Saxon was alive. He had been struck by a falling timber from a balcony above, and the skull seemed badly hurt, probably fractured.

As Rodman stood debating the dilemma, a shadow fell across the pavement. He turned with a nervous start to recognize at his back a newcomer, palpably a foreigner and presumably a Frenchman, though his excellent English, when he spoke, was only slightly touched with accent. The stranger dropped to his knee, and made a rapid examination, as Rodman had done. It did not occur to him at the moment that the man standing near him was an acquaintance of the other who lay unconscious at their feet.

“The gentleman is evidently a non-combatant – and he is badly hurt, monsieur,” he volunteered. “We most assuredly cannot leave him here to die.”

Rodman answered with some eagerness:

“Will you help me to carry him to a place where he’ll be safe?”

“Gladly.” The Frenchman looked about. “Surely, he can be cared for near here.”

But Rodman laid a persuasive hand on the other’s arm.

“He must be taken to the water front,” he declared, earnestly. “After the conference, he would not be safe here.”

The stranger drew back, and stood for a moment twisting his dark mustache, while his eyes frowned inquiringly. He was disinclined to take part in proceedings that might have political after-effects. He had volunteered to assist an injured civilian, not a participant, or refugee. There were many such in the streets.

“This is a matter of life and death,” urged Rodman, rapidly. “This man is Mr. Robert Saxon. He had left this coast with a clean bill of health. I explain all this because I need your help. When he had made a part of his return journey, he learned by chance that the city was threatened, and that a lady who was very important to him was in danger. He hastened back. In order to reach her, he became involved, and used the insurrecto countersign. Mr. Saxon is a famous artist.” Rodman was giving the version of the story he knew the wounded man would wish to have told. He said nothing of Carter.

At the last words, the stranger started forward.

“A famous painter!” His voice was full of incredulous interest. “Monsieur, you can not by any possibility mean that this is Robert A. Saxon, the first disciple of Frederick Marston!” The man’s manner became enthused and eager. “You must know, monsieur,” he went on, “that I am Louis Hervé, myself a poor copyist of the great Marston. At one time, I had the honor to be his pupil. To me, it is a pleasure to be of any service to Mr. Saxon. What are we to do?”

“There is a small sailors’ tavern near the mole,” directed Rodman; “we must take him there. I shall find a way to have him cared for on a vessel going seaward. I have a yacht five miles away, but we can hardly reach it in time.”

“But medical attention!” demurred Monsieur Hervé. “He must have that.”

Rodman was goaded into impatience by the necessity for haste. He was in no mood for debate.

“Yes, and a trained nurse!” he retorted, hotly. “We must do the best we can. If we don’t hurry, he will need an undertaker and a coroner. Medical attention isn’t very good in Puerto Frio prisons!”

The two men lifted Saxon between them, and carried the unconscious man toward the mole.

Their task was like that of many others. They passed a sorry procession of litters, stretchers, and bodies hanging limply in the arms of bearers. No one paid the slightest attention to them, except an occasional sentry who gazed on in stolid indifference.

At the tavern kept by the Chinaman, Juan, and frequented by the roughest elements that drift against a coast such as this, Rodman exchanged greetings with many acquaintances. There were several wounded officers of the Vegas contingent, taking advantage of the armistice to have their wounds dressed and discuss affairs over a bottle of wine. Evidently, they had come here instead of to more central and less squalid places, with the same idea that had driven Rodman. They were the rats about to leave the sinking ship – if they could find a way to leave.

The tavern was an adobe building with a corrugated-iron roof and a large open patio, where a dismal fountain tinkled feebly, and one or two frayed palms stood dusty and disconsolate in the tightly trodden earth. About the walls were flamboyant portraits of saints. From a small perch in one corner, a yellow and green parrot squawked incessantly.

But it was the life about the rough tables of the area that gave the picture its color and variety. Some had been pressed into service to support the wounded. About others gathered men in tattered uniforms; men with bandaged heads and arms in slings. Occasionally, one saw an alien, a sailor whose clothes declared him to have no place in the drama of the scene. These latter were usually bolstering up their bravado with aguardiente against the sense of impending uncertainty that freighted the atmosphere.

The Frenchman, sharing with Rodman the burden of the unconscious painter, instinctively halted as the place with its wavering shadows and flickering lights met his gaze at the door. It was a picture of color and dramatic intensity. He seemed to see these varied faces, upon which sat defeat and suffering, sketched on a broad canvas, as Marston or Saxon might have sketched them.

Then, he laid Saxon down on a corner table, and stood watching his chance companion who recognized brother intriguers. Suddenly, Rodman’s eyes brightened, and he beckoned his lean hand toward two men who stood apart. Both of them had faces that were in strong contrast to the swarthy Latin-American countenances about them. One was thin and blond, the other dark and heavy. The two came across the patio together, and after a hasty glance the slender man bent at once over the prostrate figure on the table. His deft fingers and manner proclaimed him the surgeon. His uniform was nondescript; hardly more a uniform than the riding clothes worn by Saxon himself, but on his shoulders he had pinned a major’s straps. This was Dr. Cornish, of the Foreign Legion, but for the moment he was absorbed in his work and forgetful of his disastrously adopted profession of arms.

He called for water and bandages, and, while he worked, Rodman was talking with the other man. Hervé stood silently looking on. He recognized that the dark man was a ship-captain – probably commanding a tramp freighter.

“When did you come?” inquired Rodman.

“Called at this port for coal,” responded the other. “I’ve been down to Rio with flour, and I have to call at La Guayra. I sail in two hours.”

“Where do you go from Venezuela?”

“I sailed out of Havre, and I’m going back with fruit. The Doc’s had about enough. I’m goin’ to take him with me.”

For a moment, Rodman stood speculating, then he bent eagerly forward.

“Paul,” he whispered, “you know me. I’ve done you a turn or two in the past.”

The sailor nodded.

“Now, I want you to do me a turn. I want you to take this man with you. He must get out of here, and he can’t care for himself. He’ll be all right – either all right or dead – before you land on the other side. The Doc here will look after him. He’s got money. Whatever you do for him, he’ll pay handsomely. He’s a rich man.” The filibuster was talking rapidly and earnestly.

“Where do I take him?” asked the captain, with evident reluctance.

“Wherever you’re going; anywhere away from here. He’ll make it all right with you.”

The captain caught the surgeon’s eyes, and the surgeon nodded.

Rodman suddenly remembered Saxon’s story, the story of the old past that was nothing more to him than another life, and the other man upon whom he had turned his back. Possibly, there might even be efforts at locating the conspirators. He leaned over, and, though he sunk his voice low, Hervé heard him say:

“This gentleman doesn’t want to be found just now. If people ask about him, you don’t know who he is, comprende?”

“That’s no lie, either,” growled the ship-master. “I ain’t got an idea who he is. I ain’t sure I want him on my hands.”

A sudden quiet came on the place. An officer had entered the door, his face pale, and, as though with an instantaneous prescience that he bore bad tidings, the noises dropped away. The officer raised his hand, and his words fell on absolute silence as he said in Spanish:

“The conference is ended. Vegas surrenders – without terms.”

“You see!” exclaimed Rodman, excitedly. “You see, it’s the last chance! Paul, you’ve got to take him! In a half-hour, the armistice will be over. For God’s sake, man!” He ended with a gesture of appeal.

The place began to empty.

“Get him to my boat, then,” acceded the captain. “Here, you fellows, lend a hand. Come on, Doc.” The man who had a ship at anchor was in a hurry. “Don’t whisper that I’m sailing; I can’t carry all the people that want to leave this town to-night. I’ve got to slip away. Hurry up.”

A quarter of an hour later, Hervé stood at the mole with Rodman, watching the row-boat that took the other trio out to the tramp steamer, bound ultimately for France. Rodman seized his watch, and studied its face under a street-lamp with something akin to frantic anxiety.

“Where do you go, monsieur?” inquired the Frenchman.

“Go? God knows!” replied Rodman, as he gazed about in perplexity. “But I’ve got to beat it, and beat it quick.”

A moment later, he was lost in the shadows.

CHAPTER XIV

When Duska Filson had gone out into the woods that day to read Saxon’s runaway letter, she had at once decided to follow, with regal disdain of half-way methods. To her own straight-thinking mind, unhampered with petty conventional intricacies, it was all perfectly clear. The ordinary woman would have waited, perhaps in deep distress and tearful anxiety, for some news of the man she loved, because he had gone away, and it is not customary for the woman to follow her wandering lover over a quadrant of the earth’s circumference. Duska Filson was not of the type that sheds tears or remains inactive. To one man in the world, she had said, “I love you,” and to her that settled everything. He had gone to the place where his life was imperiled in the effort to bring back to her a clear record. If he were fortunate, her congratulation, direct from her own heart and lips, should be the first he heard. If he were to be plunged into misery, then above all other times she should be there. Otherwise, what was the use of loving him?

But, when the steamer was under way, crawling slowly down the world by the same route he had taken, the days between quick sunrise and sudden sunset seemed interminable.

Outwardly, she was the blithest passenger on the steamer, and daily she held a sort of salon for the few other passengers who were doomed to the heat and the weariness of such a voyage.

But, when she was alone with Steele in the evening, looking off at the moonlit sea, or in her own cabin, her brow would furrow, and her hands would clench with the tensity of her anxiety. And, when at last Puerto Frio showed across the purple water with a glow of brief sunset behind the brown shoulder of San Francisco, she stood by the rail, almost holding her breath in suspense, while the anchor chains ran out.

As soon as Steele had ensconced Mrs. Horton and Duska at the Frances y Ingles, he hurried to the American Legation for news of Saxon. When he left Duska in the hotel patio, he knew, from the anxious little smile she threw after him, that for her the jury deciding the supreme question was going out, leaving her as a defendant is left when the panel files into the room where they ballot on his fate. He rushed over to the legation with sickening fear that, when he came back, it might have to be like the juryman whose verdict is adverse.

As it happened, he caught Mr. Pendleton without delay, and before he had finished his question the envoy was looking about for his Panama hat. Mr. Pendleton wanted to do several things at once. He wanted to tell the story of Saxon’s coming and going, and he wanted to go in person, and have the party moved over to the legation, where they must be his guests while they remained in Puerto Frio. It would be several days before another steamer sailed north. They had missed by a day the vessel on which Saxon had gone. Meanwhile, there were sights in the town that might beguile the intervening time. Saxon had interested the envoy, and Saxon’s friends were welcome. Hospitality is simplified in places where faces from God’s country are things to greet with the fervor of delight.

At dinner that evening, sitting at the right of the minister, Duska heard the full narrative of Saxon’s brief stay and return home. Mr. Pendleton was at his best. There was no diplomatic formality, and the girl, under the reaction and relief of her dispelled anxiety, though still disappointed at the hapless coincidence of missing Saxon, was as gay and childlike as though she had not just emerged from an overshadowing uncertainty.

“I’m sorry that he couldn’t accept my hospitality here at the legation,” said the minister at the end of his story, with much mock solemnity, “but etiquette in diplomatic circles is quite rigid, and he had an appointment to sleep at the palace.”

“So, they jugged him!” chuckled Steele, with a grin that threatened his ears. “I always suspected he’d wind up in the Bastile.”

“He was,” corrected the girl, her chin high, though her eyes sparkled, “a guest of the President, and, as became his dignity, was supplied with a military escort.”

“He needn’t permit himself any vaunting pride about that,” Steele assured her. “It’s just difference of method. In our country, a similar honor would have been accorded with a patrol wagon and a couple of policemen.”

After dinner, Duska insisted on dispatching a cablegram which should intercept the City of Rio at some point below the Isthmus. It was not an original telegram, but, had Saxon received it, it would have delighted him immoderately. She said:

“I told you so. Sail by Orinoco.”

The following morning, there were tours of discovery, personally conducted by the young Mr. Partridge. Duska had wanted to leave the carriage at the old cathedral, and stand flat against the blank wall, but she refrained, and satisfied herself with marching up very close and regarding it with hostility. As the carriage turned into the main plaza, a regiment of infantry went by, the band marching ahead playing, with the usual blare, the national anthem. Then, as the coachman drew up his horses at the legation door, there was sudden confusion, followed by the noise of popping guns. It was the hour just preceding the noon siesta. The plaza was indolent with lounging figures, and droning in the sleeping sing-song chorus of lazy voices. At the sound, which for the moment impressed the girl like the exploding of a pack of giant crackers, a sudden stillness fell on the place, closely followed by a startled outcry of voices as the figures in the plaza broke wildly for cover, futilely attempting to shield their faces with their arms against possible bullets. Then, there came a deeper detonation, and somewhere the crumbling of an adobe wall. The first sound came just as Mrs. Horton was stepping to the sidewalk. Duska had already leaped lightly out, and stood looking on in surprise. But Mr. Partridge knew his Puerto Frio. He led them hastily through the huge street-doors, and they had no sooner passed than the porter, with many mumbled prayers to the Holy Mother, slammed the great barriers against the outside world. The final assault for Vegas y Libertad had at last begun.

Mr. Pendleton had insisted that the ladies remain at the rear of the house, but Duska, with her adventurous passion for seeing all there was to see, threatened insubordination. To her, the idea of leaving several perfectly good balconies vacant, and staying at the back of a house, when the only battle one would probably ever see was occurring in the street just outside, seemed far from sensible. But, after she had looked out for a few moments, had seen a belated fruit-vender crumple to the street, and had smelled the acrid stench of the burnt powder, she was willing to turn away.

Inasmuch as the stay of Duska and her aunt involved several days of waiting for the sailing of the next ship, Duska was somewhat surprised at hearing nothing from Saxon in the meanwhile. He had had time to reach the point to which the cablegram was addressed. She had told him she would sail by the Orinoco, since that was the first available steamer. At such a time, Saxon would certainly answer that message. She fancied he would even manage to join her steamer, either by coming down to meet it, or waiting to intercept it at the place where he had received her message. Consequently, when she reached that port and sailed again without either seeing Saxon or receiving a message from him, she was decidedly surprised, and, though she did not admit it even to herself, she was likewise alarmed.

It happened that one of her fellow passengers on the steamer Orinoco was a tall, grave gentleman, who wore his beard trimmed in the French fashion, and who in his bearing had a certain air of distinction.

On a coast vessel, it was unusual for a passenger to hold himself apart and reserved against the chance companionships of a voyage. Yet, this gentleman did so. He had been introduced by the captain as M. Hervé, had bowed and smiled, but since that he had not sought to further the acquaintanceship, or to recognize it except by a polite bow or smile when he passed one of the party on his solitary deck promenades.

Possibly, this perfunctory greeting would have been the limit and confine of their associations, had he not chanced to be standing one day near enough to Duska and Steele to overhear their conversation. The voyage was almost ended, and New York was not far off. Long ago, the lush rankness of the tropics had given way to the more temperate beauty of the higher zones, and this beauty was the beauty of early autumn.

Steele was talking of Frederick Marston, and the girl was listening with interest. As long as Saxon insisted on remaining the first disciple, she must of course be interested in his demi-god. Just now, however, Saxon’s name was not mentioned. Finally, the stranger turned, and came over with a smile.

“When I hear the name of Frederick Marston,” he said, “I am challenged to interest. Would I be asking too much if I sought to join you in your talk of him?”

The girl looked up and welcomed him with her accustomed graciousness, while Steele drew up a camp-stool, and the Frenchman seated himself.

For a while, he listened sitting there, his fingers clasped about his somewhat stout knee, and his face gravely speculative, contributing to the conversation nothing except his attention.

“You see, I am interested in Marston,” he at length began.

The girl hesitated. She had just been expressing the opinion, possibly absorbed from Saxon, that the personality of the artist was extremely disagreeable. As she glanced at M. Hervé, the thought flashed through her mind that this might possibly be Marston himself. She knew that master’s fondness for the incognito. But she dismissed the idea as highly fanciful, and even ventured frankly to repeat her criticism.

At last, Hervé replied, with great gravity:

“Mademoiselle, I had the honor to know the great Frederick Marston once. It was some years ago. He keeps himself much as a hermit might in these days, but I am sure that the portion of the story I know is not that of the vain man or of the poseur. Possibly,” he hesitated modestly, “it might interest mademoiselle?”

“I’m sure of it,” declared the girl.

“Marston,” he began, “drifted into the Paris ateliers from your country, callow, morbid, painfully young and totally inexperienced. He was a tall, gaunt boy with a beard that grew hardly as fast as his career, though finally it covered his face. Books and pictures he knew with passionate love. With life, he was unacquainted; at men, he looked distantly over the deep chasm of his bashfulness. Women he feared, and of them he knew no more than he knew of dragons.

“He was eighteen then. He was in the Salon at twenty-two, and at the height of fame at twenty-six. He is now only thirty-three. What he will be at forty, one can not surmise.”

The Frenchman gazed for a moment at the spiraling smoke from his cigarette, and halted with the uncertainty of a bard who doubts his ability to do justice to his lay.

“I find the story difficult.” He smiled with some diffidence, then continued: “Had I the art to tell it, it would be pathos. Marston was a generous fellow, beloved by those who knew him, but quarantined by his morbid reserve from wide acquaintanceship. Temperament – ah, that is a wonderful thing! It is to a man what clouds and mists are to a land! Without them, there is only arid desert – with too many, there are storm and endless rain and dreary winds. He had the storms and rain and winds in his life – but over all he had the genius! The masters knew that before they had criticized him six months. In a year, they stood abashed before him.”

“Go on, please!” prompted Duska, in a soft voice of sympathetic interest.

“He dreaded notoriety, he feared fame. He never had a photograph taken, and, when it was his turn to pose in the sketch classes, where the students alternate as models for their fellows, his nervousness was actual suffering. To be looked at meant, for him, to drop his eyes and find his hands in his way – the hands that could paint the finest pictures in Europe!”

“To understand his half-mad conduct, one must understand his half-mad genius. To most men who can command fame, the plaudits of clapping hands are as the incense of triumph. To him, there was but the art itself – the praise meant only embarrassment. His ideal was that of the English poet – a land where

 
‘ – only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame:
And no one shall work for money and no one shall work for fame.’
 

That was what he wished, and could not have in Paris.

“It was in painting only that he forgot himself, and became a disembodied magic behind a brush. When a picture called down unusual comment from critics and press, he would disappear – remain out of sight for months. No one knew where he went. Once, I remember, in my time, he stayed away almost a year.

“He knew one woman in Paris, besides the models, who were to him impersonal things. Of that one woman alone, he was not afraid. She was a pathetic sort of a girl. Her large eyes followed him with adoring hero-worship. She was the daughter of an English painter who could not paint, one Alfred St. John, who lodged in the rear of the floor above. She herself was a poet who could not write verse. To her, he talked without bashfulness, and for her he felt vast sorrow. Love! Mon dieu, no! If he had loved her, he would have fled from her in terror!

“But she loved him. Then, he fell ill. Typhoid it was, and for weeks he was in his bed, with the papers crying out each day what a disaster threatened France and the world, if he should die. And she nursed him, denying herself rest. Typhoid may be helped by a physician, but the patient owes his life to the nurse. When he recovered, his one obsessing thought was that his life really belonged to her rather than to himself. I have already said he was morbid half to the point of madness. Genius is sometimes so!

“By no means a constant absintheur, in his moods he liked to watch the opalescent gleams that flash in a glass of Pernod. One night, when he had taken more perhaps than was his custom, he returned to his lodgings, resolved to pay the debt, with an offer of marriage.

“I do not know how much was the morbidness of his own temperament, and how much was the absinthe. I know that after that it was all wormwood for them both.

“She was proud. She soon divined that he had asked her solely out of sympathy, and perhaps it was at her urging that he left Paris alone. Perhaps, it was because his fame was becoming too great to allow his remaining there longer a recluse. At all events, he went away without warning – fled precipitantly. No one was astonished. His friends only laughed. For a year they laughed, then they became a trifle uneasy. Finally, however, these fears abated. St. John, his father-in-law, admitted that he was in constant correspondence with the master, and knew where he was in hiding. He refused to divulge his secret of place. He said that Marston exacted this promise – that he wanted to hide. Then came new pictures, which St. John handled as his son-in-law’s agent. Paris delighted in them. Marston travels about now, and paints. Whether he is mildly mad, or only as mad as his exaggerated genius makes him, I have often wondered.”

“What became of the poor girl?” Duska’s voice put the question, very tenderly.

“She, also, left Paris. Whether she let her love conquer her pride and joined him, or whether she went elsewhere – also alone, no one knows but St. John, and he does not encourage questions.”

“I hope,” said the girl slowly, “she went back, and made him love her.”

Hervé caught the melting sympathy in Duska’s eyes, and his own were responsive.

“If she did,” he said with conviction, “it must have made the master happy. He gave her what he could. He did not withhold his heart from stint, but because it was so written.” He paused, then in a lighter voice went on:

“And, speaking of Marston, one finds it impossible to refrain from reciting an extraordinary adventure that has just befallen his first disciple, Mr. Saxon, who is a countryman of yours.”