For Nicholas it was like sunshine after rain, to be allowed to dress and come downstairs, to have breakfast in the dining-room with his father and Professor Halevy, to be spared that utter solitude where, with the chilly tray rim pressed against his chest, he chewed without taste, his ears continually on the alert for new and formidable occurrences below. And although he was conscious of something hidden, a sense of conspiracy between them, that disturbing tension of the past few days seemed eased, as by some peculiar and unexpected intermission, and they were pleasant to him, in a distant sort of way. The Professor, nibbling at buttered toast, spoke down to him a good deal, in a smiling, non-committal fashion, as though the inquisition of the day before had never occurred. His father, from behind the pages of the Echo de Paris, bent one or two covert glances towards him which, although still aloof, held a hint of reconciliation. And when the meal was over, and Nicholas sat very straight, waiting for his orders, the Consul actually declared, with only a pretence of stiffness:
“You may wish to go into the garden this morning … you have been rather confined lately.” He turned to Halevy in that same measured, rather studied manner. “ I shall not go to the office until noon. If it does not altogether bore you, perhaps you might run through the final section of my manuscript.”
“Delighted, my friend,” Halevy replied, patting his lips delicately with his napkin.
They stood up. Nervous thrills were running all over Nicholas—these sessions upstairs had left him strangely shaken, and his legs, especially, did not perform too steadily. But with an effort he subdued his agitation, moved quietly to the front door and the next minute was standing on the portico.
Oh, how good it was to be outside again, to be free after the miseries of his detention—he sniffed the fresh, scented breeze with expanding nostrils. It would never do, of course, to rush at once towards José. With his hands by his sides, he strolled, very slowly and inconspicuously, down the herbaceous border, pausing every few steps to bend forward and smell the flowers. One of the pink curly rolls which edged the path had been displaced—carefully he put it back. Then he stood to study a snail as, with horns extended, it bore forward the domed burden of its castle, leaving behind a silvered trail. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Professor Halevy emerge from the villa, carrying a plaid rug and the precious bundle of the Malbranche manuscript. When the psychologist had settled himself comfortably in a long chair by the arbour, Nicholas edged off towards the cobbled stable-yard, whither, for some time now, the sound of wood-chopping had enticed him.
But it was Garcia who, with rolled-up sleeves, wielded the whirling machete, and in a flurry of disappointment and alarm the boy scurried round the gable of the coach-house towards the new rockery. The rockery looked well; the hart’s-tongue ferns were already spreading their tender green fronds over the mica-scaled stones. Yet José was not here. Hastening his steps, Nicholas passed beyond the oleanders, through the old myrtle patch, then back by the empty tool-shed and the catalpa tree until, finally, having completed the tour, he drew up, disconsolately, beside the arbour.
The Professor, comfortably enwrapped, balancing the heavy pile of sheets neatly clasped by metal strips, seemed too engrossed to be disturbed. But after some hesitation Nicholas ventured to approach. Halevy looked up, over the rim of his pince-nez.
“Excuse me, sir … have you seen the large watering-can?”
“No,” said the Professor agreeably. “Have you?”
“I haven’t,” Nicholas answered. “And all the petunias want watering, very badly.”
“Do they? … then perhaps you will find it.”
“I don’t know where it has been put … and even if I did, it’s too heavy for me to lift.”
“Then you had better dismiss it from your mind.”
“But the petunias … someone should attend to them.”
“I dare say they will survive.”
There was a pause. Nicholas gazed about him dismally. The Professor’s eyes were now fixed upon the priceless manuscript. Without raising his head, he replied:
“Dear child, I suggest you continue your stroll. I propose to have a conversation with you this evening. Meantime, I should be glad not to be disturbed.”
Dashed, the little boy moved off. As the hatchet strokes still rang out he decided he might reach the back premises unobserved. Despite her unbelievable behaviour on the day before, which in any case seemed unreal and remote, he believed that Magdalena was still, more or less, his friend.
Yes, there she was, seated on the step of the open kitchen door, plucking the feathers from a chicken that lay across her knees. In the dark interior of the kitchen copper pans glinted on the shelves and a bunch of rosemary twigs crackled on the hearth. With his hands in his pockets, he stood watching her through the little snowstorm which enveloped her. From her abrupt, violent movements, he knew she was in a bad humour, yet after a moment, in a low, coaxing voice, he said:
“Magdalena … where is José?”
She gave her head an angry shake and slapped the limp fowl over on its back so that its breast showed blue and tense.
“Go away. I don’t know anything. I do not wish to know anything. I only work hard morning, noon, and night … work hard like a slave.” Her voice rose suddenly to a high note and almost broke. “Do you hear me? Go away.”
Nicholas went away. He went through the faded mimosa hedge, his feet pressing into the carpet of spent blossoms which lay beneath the bushes, and came out at the cliff wall. Here, on a flat stone, he seated himself and, with drooping lip, stared out at the empty bay. It was nothing, he told himself … perfectly all right … José would turn up in the afternoon, probably he had been sent somewhere on an errand.
A whiff of cigarette smoke made him turn his head, then, with a start, he almost toppled over. Garcia had come down from the stable yard, noiseless in his rope-soled sandals, and was now standing beside him, a burning stub between yellow fingers, sharing his admiration of the view.
“The sea,” he remarked. “ Is it not superb? Lying there, like a great beast, licking its paws?”
Nicholas, after an involuntary shiver, sat, contracted, on the stone. Yet he perceived that Garcia was in a mood of unusual content, suffused, it seemed, by some strange, unnatural felicity. The man’s long slanting eyes were drowsy and his pin-point pupils sparkled with a sort of inner pleasure as he inhaled deeply from the cigarette.
“It is good to get away from people … mediocre, ridiculous people … and be at one with the eternal. I know the sea. I have sailed the oceans of the world. I have been becalmed in the blazing Sargasso. Weeds, weeds … green weeds clinging under the surface scum, clinging like the tentacles of octopi.” He threw away the spent cigarette and, pulling from his hip pocket a librillo of papers and a canvas bag, he tugged at the string with his sharp teeth, and began, with one hand, to roll himself another.
“I thought you were a soldier.” Nicholas broke the silence in a quavering tone.
“Bah! I have been everything. A sailor too. Shanghaied. Two years before the mast. You do not believe me?” He slipped an arm from his open shirt and with a vehement gesture exposed his back, the smooth bare skin all seamed with whitish scars. “Now you can see where I was flogged … flogged till the blood ran like a red river. Is that a crime? They could not make me yield. Never. When they brought bread and water, I sat like a king on his throne, in my cell.”
“Cell?” gasped Nicholas, sitting there like a little scared bird, yet fascinated, too. “Were you in prison?”
Garcia, suddenly motionless, stared at Nicholas in a hard kind of way. The match he had just struck burned down to his fingers, yet he did not seem to feel it.
“Do not meddle with my affairs,” he threatened. Then, lighting the cigarette, he burst into a fit of laughter. “Prison … do you think it would be nice in prison?”
“No …” stammered Nicholas.
“No?” Garcia laughed. “ My God, you have said something true at last. Do you know the Spanish prisons, where the damp trickles down the walls and the cockroaches, big as rats, run over you at night? Where the stinking darkness is enough to shrivel up your heart? And the wall, the high wall, where men stand with rifles, seems to separate you even from the sky. Don’t let yourself be trapped in there, little master. Be smart, like me, and stay outside.”
“I will. I will,” Nicholas fervently agreed. “No one would want to go to such a place.”
“Ho, ho!” Garcia threw back his head in greater merriment. “You are more amusing than ever, little master. Of course no one wants to go. But sometimes one is made to go. The guardia comes, clicks on the handcuffs, and drags one away.” He paused, and added softly: “Like he did yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” echoed Nicholas in a puzzled voice.
“You did not know?” Garcia, no longer laughing, fixed upon the boy his ironic and inhuman gaze, his pupils shrunk to nothing, quite invisible, the full-flecked irises, bathed in greenish light, shifting and shimmering with a naked rancour, like weed beneath the surface of a muddy pool. “ José was taken yesterday to the cuartel … for stealing from your father.”
As though the man had struck him, Nicholas shrank back, lost his balance, and actually fell from the wall.
“No … no,” he whispered, scrambling to his knees.
“It is true,” Garcia declared in an indescribable tone, a whisper almost, yet so sinister it froze the child’s heart. “He is in prison. Five years they will give him, at the least. Your José is a thief.” His voice rose, he flung out his chest and with clenched fist thumped himself fiercely as though beating on a drum. “ Don’t get in Garcia’s way. It is not wise. He will vanquish you. A man amongst men. A king upon his throne. Let all who hear take warning.”
He stood a moment, his head thrown back, outlined against the opalescent sky; then, without further speech, he darted towards Nicholas a furtive glance, shot with a hidden threat, then turned and went off.
As though turned into stone, yet with a fierce throbbing in his chest, Nicholas remained motionless, lost and abandoned to despair. Now, indeed, he could understand his father’s indulgence, the Professor’s arch complaisance, Garcia’s exalted mood … the pattern of the morning was complete. José in prison … a thief … oh, no, never, never, he thought, with a rending of his breast, never would they make him believe it. Small and useless though he might be, at least he would hold fast. They would never make him lose faith in his friend.
The sound of voices disturbed him, caused him to spin round and peer across the wall. Two men were coming down the lane towards the villa. They came slowly, for they were old, both dressed in black with dusty boots, hobbling along like a pair of aged, bedraggled crows. The taller carried a faded black umbrella and wore a long soutane, and Nicholas made out, with a stifled cry of surprise, that he was a priest. Suddenly the little boy jumped up. He saw now, quite plainly, that the second old man was Pedro. Instinctively, he started to run and, skirting the formal garden, taking care not to be observed, he broke through the shrubbery in time to meet the two visitors in the drive.
“Pedro,” he panted. “How are you? How is José? What are you doing here?”
The old man made a gesture, grave and sorrowful, with his hand.
“We are calling upon your worthy father.”
“But why, Pedro? Oh, tell me, where, is José?”
The priest had walked on slowly, limping a little, leaning on the old umbrella. Pedro glanced towards him, answered hurriedly:
“It is not wise that I talk to you, Nicco. It compromises our position. Things are extremely bad. But I pray God they may be better.” Again he looked ahead and added, in a hasty undertone: “Take this, little amigo. Do not say a word.”
He thrust a screw of paper into the boy’s hot hand, then the next minute had rejoined his companion and was advancing towards the door.
In a flash Nicholas darted back into the bushes. Crouching unseen, with pounding heart, he opened the paper.
Dear Nicco,—I hope this may reach you. They have shut me up in the cuartel. Is it not a joke? I can’t say I am crazy about this place. To obtain exercise I am obliged to stand on my head. But it makes little difference. I shall soon be out, and we shall laugh together at whoever has made this great mistake. Should you have the opportunity, please water the new plants. Also it is better if you keep away from Garcia. Be of good cheer, amigo. We shall yet go fishing again. I think it better if you destroy this note.
Your friend , José.
Nicholas read the letter three times, then, with glistening eyes, he placed it between his teeth and tore it into tiny shreds which, with a constriction of his throat, he bravely swallowed. Then, peering through the bushes to ascertain if he might come out safely, he saw, with a twinge of pain, that Pedro and the priest had not been admitted to the house. Instead, Garcia had thought fit to keep them standing at the door and now, coldly frowning, the Consul had appeared to interview them on the portico.
For a moment Nicholas watched the scene, then, conquering his fear, he crept on his hands and knees, scratching them badly but not minding in the least, through the shrubbery until he was near enough to hear.
“We are sorry to intrude upon you, señor,” Pedro was saying in a tone of such humility it made the boy’s heart bleed. “We know that your time is occupied by affairs of the highest importance.…”
“I am, indeed, extremely busy,” the Consul snapped.
“That is what I say, señor. Nevertheless, the matter upon which we venture to approach you is of much importance to us. I myself am a poor and ignorant man. Perhaps I would not dare to come alone. But Father Limaza has been kind enough to promise that he will speak for me.”
“Pray come to the point.”
Nicholas could scarcely bear it. Parting the bushes, he made out his father, towering above him, strangely magnified, and Pedro, his withered cheeks quite pale, pressing his hands nervously together, as though in supplication.
“It is José, señor, my grandson. You are aware that he is in serious trouble.”
The Consul moved impatiently, with a restive lift of his fleshy chin.
“Naturally I am aware of it. The matter is out of my hands. Why don’t you go to the police?”
“Poor people have little influence with the police, señor. But if you, with your high position, were to speak one word …”
“I have no power to interfere with the course of justice, nor any desire to do so. Your grandson must suffer the consequences of his own act.”
“But, señor … his act,” Pedro stammered. “That is just what we cannot understand …”
“José is a good boy, señor.” It was Father Limaza who spoke at last, in a quiet and pacifying tone. “I can assure you of that, and I have known him all his life.”
Thrilled by these words of intercession, Nicholas, craning his little neck upwards, could just see the spare, bowed figure of José’s champion. Then his heart sank. The old priest, draped in his rusty soutane, spotted in front with food-stains, clutching the ridiculous umbrella, his heavy, solid boots cracked in the uppers and foul with dried mud, seemed a sorry advocate indeed. His simple face, yellow and wrinkled, was marred by a purplish growth that sprang from the corner of his lips and which, by causing him to talk from the other side of his mouth, slurred his speech to the point of absurdity.
“It was I who baptised him, señor … gave him his first Communion … administered Confirmation.…”
The triteness of these words, uttered by such a scarecrow, actually infuriated the Consul.
“Most touching,” he sneered with heavy sarcasm. “You seem to have prepared him admirably for a life of crime.”
“Of course, we are all sinners.” The old priest took not the least offence, nor did his gentle gaze stir from the Consul’s face. “Yet I cannot conceive that José is a thief.”
“Then my jewellery has simply vanished into thin air?”
“It is not impossible, señor. Stranger things have happened under Heaven.”
“What a pity Heaven permitted the cufflinks to remain in his pocket.”
“Ah, yes, señor; that is a damaging fact. But José maintains he did not place them there.”
Harrington Brande smiled with haughty bitterness.
“He will find it difficult to convince the judge.”
“No doubt, señor. But we are not his judges.” He paused as though offering himself, and all his humble experience, with supreme simplicity. “ I do not believe that José is guilty. But even if he were … if he had done this bad and stupid thing … would it not be an act of charity to forgive him?”
“Do you take me for a fool?” Brande answered harshly, moved to unexpected vindictiveness by this old idiot’s attitude. “ The articles he stole from me are extremely valuable. Several things … my sapphire ring … the watch I got from the Swiss Ambassador, to mention only two of them … are quite irreplaceable. Am I to let myself be robbed of these without a word?”
“Naturally, señor, your loss would be great. But would not the loss of a human soul be greater still? I have told you I know José. If he is sent to prison … he who loves the freedom of the open air … I will not answer for what might come to him … in his bitterness.…”
“That is no concern of mine.”
“And again, señor,” persisted the old priest, undeterred, with the gentle conciliation he might have used to persuade a stubborn child. “There are others to consider … weak and defenceless creatures, who, although unquestionably innocent, would, if you do not relent, be plunged into sorrow and want. You are aware that José supports his sisters … and my good friend, Pedro.…”
“Then your good friend Pedro must now work for himself,” the Consul interrupted cruelly. “ If his purpose in coming here was to perpetuate himself in idleness, I must tell you it has failed.”
There was an immediate pause. Pedro, with bowed head, a deep flush spreading round his wrinkled neck, mumbled to his companion:
“What is the use? … Let us go.”
Father Limaza’s gentle eyes were sombre. He drew himself up, as though summoning a final effort from his very soul.
“I ask you, señor, for the last time, to be generous. As you expect it from above, do not be parsimonious of mercy to us. Pride is such a poor illusion. Are we not all of us suspended in the will of God? In the name of that God, withdraw your charge against José. If you do not, I fear that grave evil will come of it.”
“I refuse,” the Consul answered brutally.
A mortal silence followed. Then, from the old priest, a profound sigh. Nicholas, cowering in the bushes, could bear to gaze no longer. With tightly shut fists pressed against his eyes, he sank down in the dank earth, fighting, fighting to stifle his sobs. Blind and almost senseless, like a bird caught in a snare, he still heard the sharp slam of the door as his father returned to the house. Then, slowly, heavily, as though treading a measure of sadness, of inexorable pain, came the crunch of boots, the dragging of a lame leg, upon the gravel as the two old men retreated down the drive.