Part 28 (1/2)

Cartaret was glad that the darkness hid his flushed cheek as he answered:

”I have recently heard of that contingency.”

”It never occurs,” said Eskurola quickly, ”because the Basque always chooses not to permit himself to be saved. It is a traditional law among us as strong as that against the disgrace of suicide.”

Their feet were sounding over a bridge: the bridge, as Cartaret reflected, to the castle's moat. Through the light of the torches, the great gray walls of the pile climbed above him and disappeared into the night. A studded door, with mighty heaving of bolts, swung open before them, and they pa.s.sed through into a vaulted gateway. The pine-knots cast dancing shadows on the stones.

Into what medieval world was he being admitted? Did Vitoria indeed inhabit it? And if she did, what difficulties and dangers must he overcome before ever he could take her thence?

Don Ricardo was speaking.

”I welcome you to my poor home,” he said.

Cartaret's heart beat high. He was ready for any difficulty, for any danger....

With a solemn boom the great gate swung shut behind him. He felt that it had shut out the Twentieth Century.

CHAPTER XIV

SOMETHING OR OTHER ABOUT TRADITIONS

... Since we must part, down right With happy day; burdens well borne are light.

--Donne: _Eleg. XIII_.

Cartaret was lighted by his host himself to a bedroom high up in the castle and deep within it--a bedroom big enough and dreary enough to hold all the ghosts of Spain. An old man-servant brought him a supper calculated to stay the hunger of a s.h.i.+pwrecked merchant-crew. He lay down in a great four-poster bed both canopied and curtained, and, in spite of his weariness, he tossed for hours, wondering whether Vitoria was also somewhere within those grim walls and what course he was to pursue in regard to her.

The same uncertainty gripped him when breakfast was brought to his bedside in the early morning. Was this, after all, Vitoria's home; and if it was, had she returned to it? Supposing an affirmative answer to these questions, what was he to say to her brother? So far, thank Heaven, Don Ricardo, though he had once or twice looked queerly at the American, had been too polite to make awkward inquiries, but such inquiries were so natural that they were bound soon to be made; and Cartaret could not remain forever an unexplained and self-invited guest in the castle of his almost involuntary host. The guest recalled all that he had heard of the national and family pride and traditions of the Eskurolas, and only his native hopefulness sustained him.

He found his own way down twisting stairs and into a vast court-yard across which servants were pa.s.sing. The great gate was open, and he stepped through it toward the battlemented terrace that he saw beyond.

His first shock was there. The bridge that he had crossed the night before was indeed a drawbridge and did indeed span the castle-moat, but the bridge was unrailed and that moat was a terrible thing. It was no pit of twenty or thirty feet dug by the hand of man. The terrace to which the castle clung was separated from that to which climbed the steep approach by a natural chasm of at least twelve yards across, with sheer sides, like those of a glacial creva.s.se, shooting downwards into black invisibility and echoing upward the thunderous rush of unseen waters.

Leaning on the weather-worn wall that climbed along the edge of this precipice and guarded a broad promenade between it and the castle, Cartaret looked with a new sensation at the marvelous scene about him.

Behind rose the frowning castle, a maze of parapets and towers, built against that naked, snow-capped, chalcedonous peak. In front, falling away through a hundred gradations of green, a riot of luxuriant vegetation, lay the now apparently uninhabited country through which he had ridden, and beyond this, circling it like the teeth of the celestial dragon that the Chinese believe is to swallow the sun, rose row on row of bare mountains, ridges and pinnacles blue and gray.

A hand fell on Cartaret's shoulder. He turned to find Don Ricardo standing beside him. The giant gave every appearance of having been up and about for hours, and, despite his bulk, he had approached his guest unheard.

”I trust that you, sir, have slept well in my poor house.”

Cartaret replied that he had slept like a top.

”And that you could eat of the little breakfast which my servants provided?”

”I made a wonderful breakfast,” said Cartaret.

”It is good, sir. If you can bear with my house, it is yours for so long as you care to honor it with your presence.”

Cartaret knew that this must be only an exaggerated fas.h.i.+on of speech, but he chose to take it literally.