The Isle of Seven Moons/Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV
UNDER THE TARPAULIN
"No, Monsieur, you have been our guest—pleeze"
Linda, standing before the doorway leading into the tap room of the Café of Many Tongues, seized his open hand with both her own, closing his fingers on the franc notes. Then she patted the back of his clenched fist, a little coquettishly yet very gently, and pushed it away as if the matter were quite settled.
"But, Mademoiselle, you have done so much!" And in turn he seized her hands, trying to force the notes into the unwilling fingers.
"Pleeze, Monsieur, I ask you again not to hurt me—here."
Her hand sought her heart, not at all in affectation but in the natural way of her race. The corners of her mouth trembled. The soft brown eyes, which seemed as if they must have been stolen from some Madonna's portrait, that is when the more earthly provocativeness had fled, trembled, too. Farewells were such ultimate things to one of her temperament—and they were indeed likely to be final in this out of the way corner of the world, especially in the casual Café of Many Tongues.
The courtyard at this early hour was quite deserted. She withdrew into the triangle of shade under the ancient roof. The line of demarcation between light and shadow was cleanly cut by the sharp rays of the sun. As she passed within the shelter, the faint mirage of silken floss on her cheeks vanished. They became deep olive, dark crimson-flushed, once more. She was a lovely thing, leaning back against the grey stone of the doorway. But under the bandage that still bound his delicately moulded forehead, the eyes of the stranger, darker and more sombre than her liquid own, were not melted by her beauty. They were looking far out over the harbour and beyond even that.
But hers were travelling over the aristocratic outline of the features and the slender figure, very strong under the suppleness. The suit of white had been carefully mended and pressed by her own hands. Fate had been very hard on him—she thought—it had been very hard on both of them.
His eyes strayed back again from the shimmering waters and quickened to sympathy at her plea.
"Very well, Mademoiselle—I will settle with your father."
She looked at the figure bent over the wine-casks within. She was sure he had heard, but she shrugged her shoulder scornfully. Her arm barred further progress through the doorway.
The inn-keeper deposited his measure on the stone pavements, wiping his hands, partly from necessity, rather more from obsequiousness, on the greasy apron which covered the thread-bare khaki trousers and the faded red sash girding his middle. He was very lean, and dried up like a parched cicada in a burning August, but the abnormally long, clawlike hands were sinewy-corded and strong. That gesture of the hands on the apron, and the subservient bow, so entirely out of key with the proud poise of the woman standing with her graceful arm across the entrance, confirmed the Frenchman's suspicions of a probable step-fatherhood instead of a nearer relationship.
"The illustrious Señor will be leaving tonight," the innkeeper ventured with an illy-assumed graciousness, that clawlike hand instinctively stretching out from the apron.
"Yes, I go tonight. Pierre will come for my little luggage. Your daughter, who has been most kind, has refused, but here is my reckoning."
Again Linda pushed away the hand with the notes.
"Father—not from him. I tell you—he is our guest. You know what evil comes to those who are misers with their hospitality."
She turned towards the younger man.
"The good padre in the big church up yonder says to give of our best to strangers, even so we serve angels, not knowing."
The wistful smile tingled with little thrills of coquetry.
"Perhaps you are one of them, Monsieur. Who knows?"
"No, Linda, only the evil one of misfortune travels with me."
Her smile faded when she saw the sympathy in his look—and—nothing more.
The expression on the innkeeper's face changed, too. The smile which had a flavour like his thinnest sourest wines and looked like the diacritical mark that indicates the soft vowel, dropped abruptly to an unpromising downward curve.
He retired inside, the unnecessary clatter of drinking-vessels, the scrunching of shifted table-legs, and his muttered imprecations, betraying his anger. By the seven twists in the devil's tail—he had been tricked, but he would get even! A few red welts across her soft body and she would sing another tune! Then he would waylay their guest—bah!—and then those beautiful franc-notes would be smoothed out and placed lovingly with their bed-fellows, in that hole in the wall of which she did not know.
With a vengeful toe, Linda crushed the hairy tarantella that crawled across the fissures of the courtyard, as if ending by proxy the evil life of her guardian, or whoever he was that ruled over her fate. She was very careful, however, of the tiny lizard that paused on the knife-edge of the shadow to blink his bright eyes at the sun.
"So you go tonight."
"Yes, Mademoiselle."
"And I will not see you again—for ever so long—maybe never!"
"I will come again, some day, when my fortunes change—to thank you—and repay."
"It is not that, Monsieur, but I will be ver' lonely."
She paused. In the deserted courtyard the only sounds were the angry bustle of her father and the soft lapping of the water of the harbour against the grey walls.
"How can you go—without the little map, which was stolen by that wicked man with the scar in his face—who almost killed you?" she shuddered.
"I can find the place, Linda."
"You may be lost—drowned. The sea is not always kind, mon cher."
"Even so, it would not end much. But it is only a voyage of forty leagues! I will see you, before I go."
He passed through the ancient, crazily leaning gateway, and started up the street, when he heard a woman's scream, and hurried back.
The sullenness of the innkeeper had given way to violent wrath. One clawlike hand was clutched in her luxuriant hair, the other held the heavy leg of a broken stool, and this was falling again and again with a dull thud on the girl's body.
It was strange what strength those slender fingers of the Frenchman possessed. They twisted the dried-up, grasshopper figure of Linda's tormentor into a praying heap on the floor, then threw the offending bank-notes on the pavement beside him.
"Remember, Juan Ferrando, my ears can hear a very long way and if you ever so much as crook one of those evil talons of yours at the girl—I'll return!"
Then he strode out of the café and on up the street, pausing here and there under the striped awnings of the bazaars that lined the malodorous street. It took many impatient and long-drawn-out bargainings with the cunning-eyed, brown-skinned merchants before the necessary purchases for the voyage were completed, and twilight fell before he turned northward again.
The night breeze stirred the fronds of the palm above the street wall of the Café of Many Tongues; the jasmine scented the heavy tepid air, and glasses clinked lazily, but Linda was not to be seen circling among the clusters of rosily-twinkling cigarettes.
He ascended the flight of stairs, and knocked at the door of the room where she had cared for him. There was no answer.
In the dark passageway behind him, he heard an almost noiseless footfall and turned to greet her as he thought, but instead of her soft fingers a knife descended, slashing his sleeve about the wrist. Again the swift agility and strength of the Frenchman were surprising, and the innkeeper's gnarled body crashed down the stairway, his head banging on the stone edge of each step as he rolled to the bottom, to the very feet of the sailor, Pierre.
The latter turned to bind and gag him, but there was no necessity for this. One clawlike hand opened and closed spasmodically twice—then fell. The head with its surly grin frozen on the thin lips, lay very still in the dark puddle.
"Quick, Pierre—this way!"
The two entered the narrow room, gathered up his luggage, crowding it into a sailor's sack, as the jabbering voices over the huddled body at the foot of the stairs gathered in volume.
Even then the stranger risked a precious half-minute in scribbling a note of farewell to Linda, which he placed before the sorrowful crucifix on the wall, opposite her bed.
It was only fourteen feet from the window to the alley and, throwing the sack before them, they achieved it in turn. As they passed around the corner of the wall, very cautiously, the brim of a high-crowned panama, a swarthy forehead, and a pair of glittering eyes, looked over the window-ledge from which they had just leaped.
Curving in and out to avoid the worm-like snarls of naked bodies, on they ran. Once Pierre's heavy foot crunched the emaciated foreleg of some crouching cur, whose yelp of pain awoke a chorus of sympathetic howls, starting the sluggish sleepers to their feet, and causing the pursuers streaming from the gate-way of the inn, to pause and cross themselves shudderingly.
A half-mile south, they left the squalid street, curving down a lane at whose foot lay a wharf, with a launch moored alongside.
"It has not changed at all, the place," said Pierre's employer as the engine started sparking, and a rod of water showed clear between their stern and the wharf, "Everyone leaves the Café of Many Tongues quicklyéor not at all."
They glided over the sailless roadstead, past the funny little fort, dignified now into a lovely picturesqueness by the rising moon, and slipped out of the harbour. With the moon, the wind and waves freshened, and the prow rose and fell, not breasting the rollers gracefully as the gulls and all sailing craft, but sharply, with a resounding slap under her nose.
Forward, the tarpaulin moved.
"What's that, Pierre?"
"Muskrats, Monsieur."
Again a heaving of the canvas, which no rodent's body could have caused. The seaman crossed himself.
"It is alive!"
Suddenly the top of the canvas rounded as though it concealed a head, and towered over the cockpit to the height a human form would have reached.
And now Pierre's whole body was shaking faster than the vibrating engine, so that he could scarcely outline the cross on his frightened heart.
"Saints deliver us! It is a spirit—the man we have killed!"
The tarpaulin parted. It was no evil face. The wavering tresses were covered with moonlit spray.
"Linda!"
"Even I, Monsieur!"
"But, Mademoiselle, you cannot go"
"Why not—the old man he beat me. Would you have me go back to die? If I go back I will surely die, for if he do not, I will kill myself."
"He will not hurt you any more, my child."
"What—you have killed him?"
"Yes—there was no other way"
"Gracias?"
The cry was a little savage for one whose heart was so tender to those she loved, but then she rapidly uttered a prayer, and a moment later she rose from her knees.
"There is no one who cares for me—back there, dear one."
"But you do not know where we are going, Linda."
"Yes, to the island, which, you tell me, is so like Heaven and yet as dangerous as the evil place—but I do not care"
She laughed as lightheartedly as the waves slapping against their fragile cockleshell, but there was reverence in her voice as she repeated:
"Whither thou goest, I will go. Thy people"
"They are all gone, Linda!"
"Then let me be thy people."
"It is not right."
"As you will—I love you—as a sister I will go with you—until"
Not daring to finish the sentence she paused, then crept back to where he stood and, taking one hand from the spoke, she pressed it against her cheek.
"Beloved," was all she said, and he, not knowing what else to do, stroked her hair, still glistening with the white and gold pattern of the spray and moon. He stroked the dark head tenderly, as he might a sister's—as she had said, she who would have given her life for him.
Then away from the moonpath, straight into the heart of the darker west, they voyaged.