Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (409 page)

‘I declare,’ I cried, clasping my brow, ‘I do not understand one syllable.’

‘Not?’ he said in Spanish.  ‘Great, great, are the powers of Hoodoo!  Her very mind is changed!  But, O chief priestess, why have you suffered yourself to be shut into this cage? why did you not call your slaves at once to your defence?  Do you not see that all has been prepared to murder you? at a spark, this flimsy house will go in flames; and alas! who shall then be the chief priestess? and what shall be the profit of the miracle?’

‘Heavens!’ cried I, ‘can I not see Sir George?  I must, I must, come by speech of him.  Oh, bring me to Sir George!’  And, my terror fairly mastering my courage, I fell upon my knees and began to pray to all the saints.

‘Lordy!’ cried the negro, ‘here they come!’  And his black head was instantly withdrawn from the window.

‘I never heard such nonsense in my life,’ exclaimed a voice.

‘Why, so we all say, Sir George,’ replied the voice of Mr. Kentish.  ‘But put yourself in our place.  The niggers were near two to one.  And upon my word, if you’ll excuse me, sir, considering the notion they have taken in their heads, I regard it as precious fortunate for all of us that the mistake occurred.’

‘This is no question of fortune, sir,’ returned Sir George.  ‘It is a question of my orders, and you may take my word for it, Kentish, either Harland, or yourself, or Parker — or, by George, all three of you! — shall swing for this affair.  These are my sentiments.  Give me the key and be off.’

Immediately after, the key turned in the lock; and there appeared upon the threshold a gentleman, between forty and fifty, with a very open countenance, and of a stout and personable figure.

‘My dear young lady,’ said he, ‘who the devil may you be?’

I told him all my story in one rush of words.  He heard me, from the first, with an amazement you can scarcely picture, but when I came to the death of the Señora Mendizabal in the tornado, he fairly leaped into the air.

‘My dear child,’ he cried, clasping me in his arms, ‘excuse a man who might be your father!  This is the best news I ever had since I was born; for that hag of a mulatto was no less a person than my wife.’  He sat down upon a tar-barrel, as if unmanned by joy.  ‘Dear me,’ said he, ‘I declare this tempts me to believe in Providence.  And what,’ he added, ‘can I do for you?’

‘Sir George,’ said I, ‘I am already rich: all that I ask is your protection.’

‘Understand one thing,’ he said, with great energy.  ‘I will never marry.’

‘I had not ventured to propose it,’ I exclaimed, unable to restrain my mirth; ‘I only seek to be conveyed to England, the natural home of the escaped slave.’

‘Well,’ returned Sir George, ‘frankly I owe you something for this exhilarating news; besides, your father was of use to me.  Now, I have made a small competence in business — a jewel mine, a sort of naval agency, et cætera, and I am on the point of breaking up my company, and retiring to my place in Devonshire to pass a plain old age, unmarried.  One good turn deserves another: if you swear to hold your tongue about this island, these little bonfire arrangements, and the whole episode of my unfortunate marriage, why, I’ll carry you home aboard the
Nemorosa
.’  I eagerly accepted his conditions.

‘One thing more,’ said he.  ‘My late wife was some sort of a sorceress among the blacks; and they are all persuaded she has come alive again in your agreeable person.  Now, you will have the goodness to keep up that fancy, if you please; and to swear to them, on the authority of Hoodoo or whatever his name may be, that I am from this moment quite a sacred character.’

‘I swear it,’ said I, ‘by my father’s memory; and that is a vow that I will never break.’

‘I have considerably better hold on you than any oath,’ returned Sir George, with a chuckle; ‘for you are not only an escaped slave, but have, by your own account, a considerable amount of stolen property.’

I was struck dumb; I saw it was too true; in a glance, I recognised that these jewels were no longer mine; with similar quickness, I decided they should be restored, ay, if it cost me the liberty that I had just regained.  Forgetful of all else, forgetful of Sir George, who sat and watched me with a smile, I drew out Mr. Caulder’s pocket-book and turned to the page on which the dying man had scrawled his testament.  How shall I describe the agony of happiness and remorse with which I read it! for my victim had not only set me free, but bequeathed to me the bag of jewels.

My plain tale draws towards a close.  Sir George and I, in my character of his rejuvenated wife, displayed ourselves arm-in-arm among the negroes, and were cheered and followed to the place of embarkation.  There, Sir George, turning about, made a speech to his old companions, in which he thanked and bade them farewell with a very manly spirit; and towards the end of which he fell on some expressions which I still remember.  ‘If any of you gentry lose your money,’ he said, ‘take care you do not come to me; for in the first place, I shall do my best to have you murdered; and if that fails, I hand you over to the law.  Blackmail won’t do for me.  I’ll rather risk all upon a cast, than be pulled to pieces by degrees.  I’ll rather be found out and hang, than give a doit to one man-jack of you.’  That same night we got under way and crossed to the port of New Orleans, whence, as a sacred trust, I sent the pocket-book to Mr. Caulder’s son.  In a week’s time, the men were all paid off; new hands were shipped; and the
Nemorosa
weighed her anchor for Old England.

A more delightful voyage it were hard to fancy.  Sir George, of course, was not a conscientious man; but he had an unaffected gaiety of character that naturally endeared him to the young; and it was interesting to hear him lay out his projects for the future, when he should be returned to Parliament, and place at the service of the nation his experience of marine affairs.  I asked him, if his notion of piracy upon a private yacht were not original.  But he told me, no.  ‘A yacht, Miss Valdevia,’ he observed, ‘is a chartered nuisance.  Who smuggles?  Who robs the salmon rivers of the West of Scotland?  Who cruelly beats the keepers if they dare to intervene?  The crews and the proprietors of yachts.  All I have done is to extend the line a trifle, and if you ask me for my unbiassed opinion, I do not suppose that I am in the least alone.’

In short, we were the best of friends, and lived like father and daughter; though I still withheld from him, of course, that respect which is only due to moral excellence.

We were still some days’ sail from England, when Sir George obtained, from an outward-bound ship, a packet of newspapers; and from that fatal hour my misfortunes recommenced.  He sat, the same evening, in the cabin, reading the news, and making savoury comments on the decline of England and the poor condition of the navy, when I suddenly observed him to change countenance.

‘Hullo!’ said he, ‘this is bad; this is deuced bad, Miss Valdevia.  You would not listen to sound sense, you would send that pocket-book to that man Caulder’s son.’

‘Sir George,’ said I, ‘it was my duty.’

‘You are prettily paid for it, at least,’ says he; ‘and much as I regret it, I, for one, am done with you.  This fellow Caulder demands your extradition.’

‘But a slave,’ I returned, ‘is safe in England.’

‘Yes, by George!’ replied the baronet; ‘but it’s not a slave, Miss Valdevia, it’s a thief that he demands.  He has quietly destroyed the will; and now accuses you of robbing your father’s bankrupt estate of jewels to the value of a hundred thousand pounds.’

I was so much overcome by indignation at this hateful charge and concern for my unhappy fate that the genial baronet made haste to put me more at ease.

‘Do not be cast down,’ said he.  ‘Of course, I wash my hands of you myself.  A man in my position — baronet, old family, and all that — cannot possibly be too particular about the company he keeps.  But I am a deuced good-humoured old boy, let me tell you, when not ruffled; and I will do the best I can to put you right.  I will lend you a trifle of ready money, give you the address of an excellent lawyer in London, and find a way to set you on shore unsuspected.’

He was in every particular as good as his word.  Four days later, the
Nemorosa
sounded her way, under the cloak of a dark night, into a certain haven of the coast of England; and a boat, rowing with muffled oars, set me ashore upon the beach within a stone’s throw of a railway station.  Thither, guided by Sir George’s directions, I groped a devious way; and finding a bench upon the platform, sat me down, wrapped in a man’s fur great-coat, to await the coming of the day.  It was still dark when a light was struck behind one of the windows of the building; nor had the east begun to kindle to the warmer colours of the dawn, before a porter carrying a lantern, issued from the door and found himself face to face with the unfortunate Teresa.  He looked all about him; in the grey twilight of the dawn, the haven was seen to lie deserted, and the yacht had long since disappeared.

‘Who are you?’ he cried.

‘I am a traveller,’ said I.

‘And where do you come from?’ he asked.

‘I am going by the first train to London,’ I replied.

In such manner, like a ghost or a new creation, was Teresa with her bag of jewels landed on the shores of England; in this silent fashion, without history or name, she took her place among the millions of a new country.

Since then, I have lived by the expedients of my lawyer, lying concealed in quiet lodgings, dogged by the spies of Cuba, and not knowing at what hour my liberty and honour may be lost.

THE BROWN BOX
(
Concluded
)

The effect of this tale on the mind of Harry Desborough was instant and convincing.  The Fair Cuban had been already the loveliest, she now became, in his eyes, the most romantic, the most innocent, and the most unhappy of her sex.  He was bereft of words to utter what he felt: what pity, what admiration, what youthful envy of a career so vivid and adventurous.  ‘O madam!’ he began; and finding no language adequate to that apostrophe, caught up her hand and wrung it in his own.  ‘Count upon me,’ he added, with bewildered fervour; and getting somehow or other out of the apartment and from the circle of that radiant sorceress, he found himself in the strange out-of-doors, beholding dull houses, wondering at dull passers-by, a fallen angel.  She had smiled upon him as he left, and with how significant, how beautiful a smile!  The memory lingered in his heart; and when he found his way to a certain restaurant where music was performed, flutes (as it were of Paradise) accompanied his meal.  The strings went to the melody of that parting smile; they paraphrased and glossed it in the sense that he desired; and for the first time in his plain and somewhat dreary life, he perceived himself to have a taste for music.

The next day, and the next, his meditations moved to that delectable air.  Now he saw her, and was favoured; now saw her not at all; now saw her and was put by.  The fall of her foot upon the stair entranced him; the books that he sought out and read were books on Cuba, and spoke of her indirectly; nay, and in the very landlady’s parlour, he found one that told of precisely such a hurricane, and, down to the smallest detail, confirmed (had confirmation been required) the truth of her recital.  Presently he began to fall into that prettiest mood of a young love, in which the lover scorns himself for his presumption.  Who was he, the dull one, the commonplace unemployed, the man without adventure, the impure, the untruthful, to aspire to such a creature made of fire and air, and hallowed and adorned by such incomparable passages of life?  What should he do, to be more worthy? by what devotion, call down the notice of these eyes to so terrene a being as himself?

He betook himself, thereupon, to the rural privacy of the square, where, being a lad of a kind heart, he had made himself a circle of acquaintances among its shy frequenters, the half-domestic cats and the visitors that hung before the windows of the Children’s Hospital.  There he walked, considering the depth of his demerit and the height of the adored one’s super-excellence; now lighting upon earth to say a pleasant word to the brother of some infant invalid; now, with a great heave of breath, remembering the queen of women, and the sunshine of his life.

What was he to do?  Teresa, he had observed, was in the habit of leaving the house towards afternoon: she might, perchance, run danger from some Cuban emissary, when the presence of a friend might turn the balance in her favour: how, then, if he should follow her?  To offer his company would seem like an intrusion; to dog her openly were a manifest impertinence; he saw himself reduced to a more stealthy part, which, though in some ways distasteful to his mind, he did not doubt that he could practise with the skill of a detective.

The next day he proceeded to put his plan in action.  At the corner of Tottenham Court Road, however, the Señorita suddenly turned back, and met him face to face, with every mark of pleasure and surprise.

‘Ah, Señor, I am sometimes fortunate!’ she cried.  ‘I was looking for a messenger;’ and with the sweetest of smiles, she despatched him to the East End of London, to an address which he was unable to find.  This was a bitter pill to the knight-errant; but when he returned at night, worn out with fruitless wandering and dismayed by his
fiasco
, the lady received him with a friendly gaiety, protesting that all was for the best, since she had changed her mind and long since repented of her message.

Next day he resumed his labours, glowing with pity and courage, and determined to protect Teresa with his life.  But a painful shock awaited him.  In the narrow and silent Hanway Street, she turned suddenly about and addressed him with a manner and a light in her eyes that were new to the young man’s experience.

‘Do I understand that you follow me, Señor?’ she cried.  ‘Are these the manners of the English gentleman?’

Harry confounded himself in the most abject apologies and prayers to be forgiven, vowed to offend no more, and was at length dismissed, crestfallen and heavy of heart.  The check was final; he gave up that road to service; and began once more to hang about the square or on the terrace, filled with remorse and love, admirable and idiotic, a fit object for the scorn and envy of older men.  In these idle hours, while he was courting fortune for a sight of the beloved, it fell out naturally that he should observe the manners and appearance of such as came about the house.  One person alone was the occasional visitor of the young lady: a man of considerable stature, and distinguished only by the doubtful ornament of a chin-beard in the style of an American deacon.  Something in his appearance grated upon Harry; this distaste grew upon him in the course of days; and when at length he mustered courage to inquire of the Fair Cuban who this was, he was yet more dismayed by her reply.