The Filibusters by Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne (book club suggestions TXT) 📖

THAT strange marriage service came solemnly to an end, and Father Jupe put back the tattered missal in the pocket of his cassock. ” Lady Carew,” I said from my post behind him, ” may I be the first to give you your new name and to wish you much happiness?”

Her pale face flushed to a sudden pink. She had taken the step irrevocably now, and married a man whom twenty minutes before she had never thought of except as an acquaintance; and even for her lively ideas it must have been somewhat of a shock. But she thanked me for my congratulations very prettily and collectedly; and asked me what was to be done next. ” It is you that I am thinking of, gentlemen,” she said. ” For myself I shall be quite safe here ^now; you need have no fear on that score. At least I shall be safe so long as my as Sir William keeps away from harm.”

“Delicia,” said Carew, ” you make my life seem quite valuable. You may trust me to take eminent care of it.” In the moonlight from the window I saw his face was full of smiles, and it struck me that he was rather more elated than the circumstances warranted. I don’t think anyone would have cared to have insured either his life or mine for anything short of cent, per cent, just then.

However, if he was pleased with results so far, he was by no means a man to let his exultation interfere with his care for the future. He nodded across at Jupe, and thanked him for marrying them; ” and,” said he, ” if circumstances permit, I’ll see that you have your personal fee when the time comes. You spoke about a wish to be archbishop of Dolores. When I am made President I’ll manage that the see shall be left vacant for your acceptance. You are a very capable man, Jupe, and you know which side your bread’s buttered. Once you’re archbishop you’ll be far too sensible to plot against the man who put you there.”

“I should take none of your favours,” said the priest sullenly.

“Haven’t I bid high enough? Shall you make it a point that I approach Rome to get a hat for you? Do you think you’d make a good cardinal, Father Jupe?”

The priest writhed. ” I have married you under compulsion,” said he. ” You may want me to perform another office of the holy church before long.”

“Extreme unction,” said Carew. ” I think not.

But that reminds me, Jupe. I do want another service at your hands, but it is an entirely temporal service this time, so your conscience need have no further qualms. With your help, Birch and I intend to leave this valley now, with the smallest possible delay.”

“You have seen how the pass is guarded; you can guess what orders the men there hold from my brother.”

“Precisely,” said Carew. ” So I should suggest that we make our exit by the other road. I think you’ll understand me, Jupe, when I say the other road?”

Now as I guessed at the time, and as Carew owned to me afterwards, this was neither more nor less than a bluff on his part; he guessed there might be a second exit from the valley, and if there was not, no harm had been done by the suggestion. However, Jupe’s face made suspicion a certainty. He was visibly startled. And then he tried to sneer the proposal away. “If you and Birch have wings,” he said, ” I shall be delighted to help the valley be rid of you.”

“I should think fins would be more to the point,” said Carew. He told me later that he suddenly remembered to have seen a flowing stream as we rode across the valley floor, which certainly must have an exit beyond the mountain chain somewhere, and which certainly did not flow out through the defended cafion. ” But we should prefer,” he added, “to be your debtors for a boat.”

“There is no boat,” said Jupe sulkily. ” I believe only one man has ever got down the rapids, and he did it by swimming. How many have been drowned there, I can’t tell. A man must be pretty hard pressed to try it.”

“Let me flatter you,” said Carew, ” by admitting that Birch and I are pretty hard pressed, and I must ask you to hurry. It amazes me that we have been left undisturbed so long.”

“Oh,” said Jupe ruefully, ” my brother knows I’m here, and he thinks I am quite able to take care of myself and you, too.”

“Your brother, I take it, is a revengeful man. Perhaps a change of air would be as good for your health as it will be for ours.”

“Yes,” said Jupe. ” I don’t think my brother will ever forgive me for this last few minutes’ work so long as it stands, that is. Yes, I will come with you, gentlemen.”

“And try and kill us when you have an opportunity, and earn your pardon by taking back the news? Well, Jupe, we are two to your one, and we are neither of us squeamish, and we understand your feelings to a nicety. If you don’t get us clear of the hacienda, one or other of us will kill you whatever else happens; and if you try any unpleasant pranks afterwards, we’ll knock you on the head as cheerfully as we’d_ shoot that, old goat of a brother of yours. And so on the whole, you see, we shall make delightful travelling companions. Let’s shake hands over the bargain.” Which, oddly enough, we did.

“We mustn’t waste any more time,” said the priest. ” I must take you away from this at once.”

“Yes, go, go,” said Donna Delicia. ” I shall I shall faint, or do something silly if you keep me on this strain much longer. Good-bye, Mr. Birch.” (She pressed my hand in both of hers.) “Good-bye, Sir William.”

“Has my bride got no warmer a farewell than that?” asked Carew whimsically.

With an effort she pulled herself together, and shot a glance at him from her eyes. ” You may kiss my hand.”

He knelt on one knee, and did it, with a courtly reverence.

Her face flushed a sudden pink. ” You shall do more,” she said. ” You are a brave man, and I like brave men; you are a better man, too, than you think; and, after all, you are my husband. You may kiss my lips once.”

He drew her gently to him; and leaned down over her face. Father Jupe turned towards the door. I did the same. ” Good-bye, Delicia,” he said, very quietly.

“Good-bye, Billy,” I heard her whisper back.

Father Jupe thrust back the bar in its socket, and gingerly opened the door and stepped into the empty echoing corridor. I followed, with a short machete I had taken from underneath his cassock, quite ready to cut him down if his game was treachery, and treading on my heels came Carew, with revolver muzzle upwards, level with his cheek, ready to shoot on the instant.

A chatter of talk rattled down the corridor from the portico beyond, and Jupe led on towards it, treading with niceness, so as not to let his footsteps sound. On ahead there was no light; above, below, and on each side of us were bare plastered walls; the tiny glow from the room we had left soon died away, and the darkness was almost solid. Did this devil of a priest think to give us the slip in the gloom? I doubted him perfectly. But I had no notion that he should sell us without paying the price, and so I laid hold of the slack of his cassock behind, and cleared my right arm so that I could split his skull with the heavy machete the moment I decided he was betraying us.

I suppose I ought to feel ashamed of myself now for distrusting the man when after all he was really doing what he had contracted, but on the whole I do not. Personally I am quite convinced that Jupe Maxillo would have sold the pair of us gladly if he could have done it with advantage to himself and would not most certainly have been knocked into the next world in the progress. He understood that he had two coolly desperate men to deal with, who would risk a good deal to escape his brother’s sugar boilers, and so he accepted the inevitable, and saved his own life by doing as he was told. There are not many men in this world who, when it came to the point, would have done anything else.

However, as it was, he stopped when we had crept some fifteen yards down the corridor, and turned the handle of a door in the wall. I pressed the flat of the machete against his head as a hint to be wary, but he pushed the door open confidently enough and went inside. We followed. We were in another room, much the same as the one we had left, except that this held a staircase. It was lit by the moonlight, and, being whitewashed, showed up plainly enough. The moonlight showed also another thing, and that was a table covered with books and papers. This gave Carew an idea.

He cautiously closed-to the door behind him, and then said he, ” By Jove, we’ve forgotten a very serious item in the wedding. The bride hasn’t got her marriage lines.”

Father Jupe nodded, and seated himself at the table. ” I’m willing to convince you of my bona fides in every reasonable way I can, Carew. I will write out the usual form if you like, and we can go back and get the lady to sign it.”

But this was a bit too much extra risk even for him. There seemed a glimmer of a chance now that we might escape, and no one but a madman would have delayed for such a triviality. So he said: ” Well, write this ‘ For reasons of my own I have formally and legally married Donna Delicia to Sir William Carew/ and then sign it with your own name.”

The priest bit his lip; it was clear the form of words jarred upon him; but he probably reflected that Maxillo’s enmity would be so great against him anyhow that this document could scarcely add to it. So he wrote what was dictated, and signed his name at the foot with a regular Spaniard’s maze of flourishes. He peppered sand over it to dry the ink, ran the sand back into its castor, and handed on the document to the bridegroom.

“Much obliged,” said