Part 33 (1/2)
Now there was n.o.body in Spain knowing enough or caring enough of or for Ian Rullock to entertain the idea of parting with gold pieces in order to save his life. Don Fernando might be glad to see him live, but certainly had not the gold pieces! Moreover, it presently leaked fantastically out that the bandits expected a large ransom. He began to suspect a mistake in ident.i.ty. That a.s.sumption, increasing in weight, became certainty. They looked him all around, they compared notes, they regarded the fine cloak, the refreshed steed. ”English, senor, English?”
”Scots. You do not understand that? Cousin to English.”
”English. We had word of your traveling--with plenty of gold.”
”It is a world of mistakes. I travel, but I have no gold.”
”It is a usual lack of memory of the truth. We find it often. You are traveling with escort--with another of your nation, your brother, we suppose. There are servants. You are rich. For some great freak you leave all in the town down there and ride on alone. Foreigners often act like madmen. Perhaps you meant to return to the town. Perhaps to wait for them in the inn below the pa.s.s. You have not gold in your purse because there is bountiful gold just behind you. Why hurt the beautiful truth? Sancho and Pedro here were in the inn-yard last night.”
Sancho's hoa.r.s.e voice emerged from the generality. ”It was dusk, but we saw you plainly enough, we are sure, senor! In your fine cloak, speaking English, discussing with a big tall man who rode in with you and sat down to supper with you and was of your rank and evidently, we think, your brother or close kinsman!”
The chief nodded. ”It is to him that we apply for your ransom. You, senor, shall write the letter, and Sancho and Pedro shall carry it down. It will be placed, without danger to us, in your brother's hand.
We have our ways.... Then, in turn, your brother shall ride forth, with a single companion, from the town, and in a clear s.p.a.ce that we shall indicate, put the ransom beneath a certain rock, turning his horse at once and returning the way he came. If the gold is put there, as much as we ask, and according to our conditions, you shall go free as a bird, senor, though perhaps with as little luggage as a bird. If we do not receive the ransom--why, then, the life of a bird is a little thing! We shall put you to death.”
Ian combated the profound mistake. What was the use? They did not expect him to speak truth, but they were convinced that they had the truth themselves. At last it came, on his part, to a t.i.tanic whimsicalness of a.s.sent. At least, a.s.senting, he would not die in the immediate hour! Stubbornly refuse to do their bidding, and his thread of life would be cut here and now.
”All events grow to seem unintelligible masks! So why quarrel with one mask more? Pen, ink, and paper?”
All were produced.
”I must write in English?”
”That is understood, senor. Now this--and this--is what you are to write in English.”
The captive made a correct guess that not more than one or two of the captors could read Spanish, and none at all English.
”Nevertheless, senor,” said the chief, ”you will know that if the gold is not put in that place and after that fas.h.i.+on that I tell you, we shall let you die, and that not easily! So we think that you will not make English mistakes any more than Spanish ones.”
Ian nodded. He wrote the letter. Sancho put it in his bosom and with Pedro disappeared from the dark ravine. The situation relaxed.
”You shall eat, drink, sleep, and be entirely comfortable, senor, until they return. If they bring the gold you shall pursue your road at your pleasure even with a piece for yourself, for we are nothing if not generous! If they do not bring it, why, then, of course--!”
Ian had long been bedfellow of wild adventure. He thought that he knew the mood in which it was best met. The mood represented the grist of much subtle effort, comparing, adjustment, and readjustment. He cultivated it now. The banditti admired courage, coolness, and good humor. They had provision of food and wine, the sun still shone warm.
The robber hold was set amid dark, gipsy beauty.
The sun went down, the moon came up. Ian, lying upon s.h.a.ggy skins, knew well that to-morrow night--the night after at most--he might not see the sun descend, the moon arise. What then?
Alexander Jardine, sailing from Scotland, came to Lisbon a month after Ian Rullock. He knew the name of the s.h.i.+p that had carried the fugitive, and fortune had it that she was yet in this port, waiting for her return lading. He found the captain, learned that Ian had trans.h.i.+pped north to Vigo. He followed. At Vigo he picked up a further trace and began again to follow. He followed across Spain on the long road to France. He had money, horses, servants when he needed them, skill in travel, a tireless, great frame, a consuming purpose. He made mistakes in roads and rectified them; followed false clues, then turned squarely from them and obtained another leading. He squandered upon the great task of d.o.g.g.i.ng Ian, facing Ian, showing Ian, again and again showing Ian, the wrong that had been done, patience, wealth of kinds, a discovering and prophetic imagination. He traveled until at last here was the earth, climbing, climbing, and before him the forested slopes, the mountain walls, the great part.i.tion between Spain and France. An eagle would fly over it, and another eagle would follow him, for a nest had been robbed and a friends.h.i.+p destroyed!
As the mountains enlarged he fell in with an Englishman of rank, a n.o.bleman given to the study of literature and peoples, amateur on the way to connoisseurs.h.i.+p, and now traveling in Spain. He journeyed _en prince_ with his secretary and his physician, servants and pack-horses, and, in addition, for at least this part of Spain, an armed escort furnished by the authorities, at his proper cost, against just those banditti dangers that haunted this strip of the globe. This n.o.ble found in the laird of Glenfernie a chance-met gentleman worth cultivating and detaining at his side as long as might be. They had been together three or four days when at eve they came to the largest inn of a town set at a short distance from the mountain pa.s.s through which ran their further road. Here, at dusk, they dismounted in the inn-yard, about them a staring, commenting crowd. Presently they went to supper together. The Englishman meant to tarry a while in this town to observe certain antiquities. He might stay a week. He urged that his companion of the last few days stay as well. But the laird of Glenfernie could not.
”I have an errand, you see. I am to find something. I must go on.”
”Two days, then. You say yourself that your horses need rest.”
”They do.... I will stay two days.”
But when morning came the secretary and the physician alone appeared at table. The n.o.bleman lay abed with a touch of fever. The physician reported that the trouble was slight--fatigue and a chill taken. A couple of days' repose and his lords.h.i.+p would be himself again.
Glenfernie walked through the town. Returning to the inn, he found that the Englishman had asked for him. For an hour or two he talked or listened, sitting by the n.o.bleman's bed. Leaving him at last, he went below to the inn's great room, half open to the courtyard and all the come and go of the place. It was late afternoon. He sat by a table placed before the window, and the river seemed to flow by him, and now he looked at it from a rocky island, and now he looked elsewhere. The room grew ruddy from the setting sun. An inn servant entered and busied himself about the place. After him came an aged woman, half gipsy, it seemed. She approached the seat by the window. Her worn mantle, her wide sleeve, seemed to touch the deep stone sill. She was gone like a moth. Glenfernie's eye discovered a folded paper lying in the window. It had not been there five minutes earlier. Now it lay before him like a sudden outgrowth from the stone. He put out a hand and took it up. The woman was gone, the serving-man was gone. Outside flowed the river. Alexander unfolded the paper. It was addressed to _Senor n.o.body_. It lay upon his knee, and it was Ian's hand. His lips moved, his vision blurred. Then came steadiness and he read.