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Файл:The Dynamiter. More new arabian nights
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THE DYNAMITER
episode of my unfortunate marriage, why, I’ll carry you home
aboard the Nemorosa.” I eagerly accepted his conditions.
“One thing more,” said he. “My late wife was some sort of
a sorceress among the blacks; and they are all persuaded she
has come alive again in your agreeable person. Now, you
will have the goodness to keep up that fancy, if you please;
and to swear to them, on the authority of Hoodoo or whatever his name may be, that I am from this moment quite
a sacred character.”
“I swear it,” said I, “by my father’s memory; and that is a vow
that I will never break.”
“I have considerably better hold on you than any oath,”
returned Sir George, with a chuckle; “for you are not only
an escaped slave, but have, by your own account, a considerable amount of stolen property.”
I was struck dumb; I saw it was too true; in a glance, I recognised that these jewels were no longer mine; with similar
quickness, I decided they should be restored, ay, if it cost me
the liberty that I had just regained. Forgetful of all else, forgetful of Sir George, who sat and watched me with a smile, I drew
out Mr. Caulder’s pocket-book and turned to the page on which
the dying man had scrawled his testament. How shall I describe the agony of happiness and remorse with which I read
it! for my victim had not only set me free, but bequeathed to
me the bag of jewels.
My plain tale draws towards a close. Sir George and I, in my
character of his rejuvenated wife, displayed ourselves arm-inarm among the negroes, and were cheered and followed to
the place of embarkation. There, Sir George, turning about,
221
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
made a speech to his old companions, in which he thanked
and bade them farewell with a very manly spirit; and towards
the end of which he fell on some expressions which I still remember. “If any of you gentry lose your money,” he said, “take
care you do not come to me; for in the fi rst place, I shall do my
best to have you murdered; and if that fails, I hand you over to
the law. Blackmail won’t do for me. I’ll rather risk all upon
a cast, than be pulled to pieces by degrees. I’ll rather be found
out and hang, than give a doit to one man-jack of you.” That
same night we got under way and crossed to the port of New
Orleans, whence, as a sacred trust, I sent the pocket-book to
Mr. Caulder’s son. In a week’s time, the men were all paid off;
new hands were shipped; and the Nemorosaweighed her anchor for Old England.
A more delightful voyage it were hard to fancy. Sir George, of
course, was not a conscientious man; but he had an unaffected
gaiety of character that naturally endeared him to the young;
and it was interesting to hear him lay out his projects for
the future, when he should be returned to Parliament, and
place at the service of the nation his experience of marine affairs. I asked him, if his notion of piracy upon a private yacht
were not original. But he told me, no. “A yacht, Miss Valdevia,”
he observed, “is a chartered nuisance. Who smuggles? Who
robs the salmon rivers of the West of Scotland? Who cruelly beats the keepers if they dare to intervene? The crews and
the proprietors of yachts. All I have done is to extend the line
a trifl e, and if you ask me for my unbiassed opinion, I do not
suppose that I am in the least alone.”
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THE DYNAMITER
In short, we were the best of friends, and lived like father
and daughter; though I still withheld from him, of course, that
respect which is only due to moral excellence.
We were still some days’ sail from England, when Sir
George obtained, from an outward-bound ship, a packet of
newspapers; and from that fatal hour my misfortunes recommenced. He sat, the same evening, in the cabin, reading
the news, and making savoury comments on the decline of
England and the poor condition of the navy, when I suddenly
observed him to change countenance.
“Hullo!” said he, “this is bad; this is deuced bad, Miss Valdevia. You would not listen to sound sense, you would send that
pocket-book to that man Caulder’s son.”
“Sir George,” said I, “it was my duty.”
“You are prettily paid for it, at least,” says he; “and much
as I regret it, I, for one, am done with you. This fellow Caulder
demands your extradition.”
“But a slave,” I returned, “is safe in England.”
“Yes, by George!” replied the baronet; “but it’s not a slave,
Miss Valdevia, it’s a thief that he demands. He has quietly
destroyed the will; and now accuses you of robbing your father’s bankrupt estate of jewels to the value of a hundred
thousand pounds.”
I was so much overcome by indignation at this hateful
charge and concern for my unhappy fate that the genial baronet made haste to put me more at ease.
“Do not be cast down,” said he. “Of course, I wash my
hands of you myself. A man in my position – baronet, old
family, and all that – cannot possibly be too particular about
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
the company he keeps. But I am a deuced good-humoured old
boy, let me tell you, when not ruffl ed; and I will do the best
I can to put you right. I will lend you a trifl e of ready money,
give you the address of an excellent lawyer in London, and fi nd
a way to set you on shore unsuspected.”
He was in every particular as good as his word. Four days
later, the Nemorosa sounded her way, under the cloak of a dark
night, into a certain haven of the coast of England; and a boat,
rowing with muffl ed oars, set me ashore upon the beach within a stone’s throw of a railway station. Thither, guided by Sir
George’s directions, I groped a devious way; and fi nding a bench
upon the platform, sat me down, wrapped in a man’s fur greatcoat, to await the coming of the day. It was still dark when a light
was struck behind one of the windows of the building; nor had
the east begun to kindle to the warmer colours of the dawn, before a porter carrying a lantern, issued from the door and found
himself face to face with the unfortunate Teresa. He looked
all about him; in the grey twilight of the dawn, the haven was
seen to lie deserted, and the yacht had long since disappeared.
“Who are you?” he cried.
“I am a traveller,” said I.
“And where do you come from?” he asked.
“I am going by the fi rst train to London,” I replied.
In such manner, like a ghost or a new creation, was Teresa
with her bag of jewels landed on the shores of England; in this
silent fashion, without history or name, she took her place
among the millions of a new country.
Since then, I have lived by the expedients of my lawyer, lying
concealed in quiet lodgings, dogged by the spies of Cuba, and
not knowing at what hour my liberty and honour may be lost.
THE BROWN BOX
(CONCLUDED)
The effect of this tale on the mind of Harry Desborough
was instant and convincing. The Fair Cuban had been already
the loveliest, she now became, in his eyes, the most romantic,
the most innocent, and the most unhappy of her sex. He was
bereft of words to utter what he felt: what pity, what admiration, what youthful envy of a career so vivid and adventurous.
“O madam!” he began; and fi nding no language adequate to
that apostrophe, caught up her hand and wrung it in his own.
“Count upon me,” he added, with bewildered fervour; and getting somehow or other out of the apartment and from the circle of that radiant sorceress, he found himself in the strange
out-of-doors, beholding dull houses, wondering at dull passersby, a fallen angel. She had smiled upon him as he left, and with
how signifi cant, how beautiful a smile! The memory lingered
in his heart; and when he found his way to a certain restaurant
where music was performed, fl utes (as it were of Paradise) accompanied his meal. The strings went to the melody of that
parting smile; they paraphrased and glossed it in the sense that
he desired; and for the fi rst time in his plain and somewhat
dreary life, he perceived himself to have a taste for music.
225
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The next day, and the next, his meditations moved to that
delectable air. Now he saw her, and was favoured; now saw
her not at all; now saw her and was put by. The fall of her foot
upon the stair entranced him; the books that he sought out
and read were books on Cuba, and spoke of her indirectly; nay,
and in the very landlady’s parlour, he found one that told of
precisely such a hurricane, and, down to the smallest detail,
confi rmed (had confi rmation been required) the truth of her
recital. Presently he began to fall into that prettiest mood of
a young love, in which the lover scorns himself for his presumption. Who was he, the dull one, the commonplace unemployed, the man without adventure, the impure, the untruthful, to aspire to such a creature made of fi re and air, and
hallowed and adorned by such incomparable passages of life?
What should he do, to be more worthy? by what devotion, call
down the notice of these eyes to so terrene a being as himself?
He betook himself, thereupon, to the rural privacy of
the square, where, being a lad of a kind heart, he had made
himself a circle of acquaintances among its shy frequenters, the half-domestic cats and the visitors that hung before
the windows of the Children’s Hospital. There he walked, considering the depth of his demerit and the height of the adored
one’s super-excellence; now lighting upon earth to say a pleasant word to the brother of some infant invalid; now, with
a great heave of breath, remembering the queen of women,
and the sunshine of his life.
What was he to do? Teresa, he had observed, was in the habit of leaving the house towards afternoon: she might, perchance,
run danger from some Cuban emissary, when the presence of
226
THE DYNAMITER
a friend might turn the balance in her favour: how, then, if
he should follow her? To offer his company would seem like
an intrusion; to dog her openly were a manifest impertinence;
he saw himself reduced to a more stealthy part, which, though
in some ways distasteful to his mind, he did not doubt that he
could practise with the skill of a detective.
The next day he proceeded to put his plan in action. At
the corner of Tottenham Court Road, however, the Señorita
suddenly turned back, and met him face to face, with every
mark of pleasure and surprise.
“Ah, Señor, I am sometimes fortunate!” she cried. “I was
looking for a messenger;’ and with the sweetest of smiles, she
despatched him to the East End of London, to an address which
he was unable to fi nd. This was a bitter pill to the knight-errant; but when he returned at night, worn out with fruitless
wandering and dismayed by his fi asco, the lady received him
with a friendly gaiety, protesting that all was for the best, since
she had changed her mind and long since repented of her
message.
Next day he resumed his labours, glowing with pity and
courage, and determined to protect Teresa with his life. But
a painful shock awaited him. In the narrow and silent Hanway
Street, she turned suddenly about and addressed him with
a manner and a light in her eyes that were new to the young
man’s experience.
“Do I understand that you follow me, Señor?” she cried.
“Are these the manners of the English gentleman?”
Harry confounded himself in the most abject apologies and prayers to be forgiven, vowed to offend no more,
227
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
and was at length dismissed, crestfallen and heavy of heart.
The check was fi nal; he gave up that road to service; and began
once more to hang about the square or on the terrace, fi lled
with remorse and love, admirable and idiotic, a fi t object for
the scorn and envy of older men. In these idle hours, while
he was courting fortune for a sight of the beloved, it fell out
naturally that he should observe the manners and appearance of such as came about the house. One person alone was
the occasional visitor of the young lady: a man of considerable
stature, and distinguished only by the doubtful ornament of
a chin-beard in the style of an American deacon. Something
in his appearance grated upon Harry; this distaste grew upon
him in the course of days; and when at length he mustered
courage to inquire of the Fair Cuban who this was, he was yet
more dismayed by her reply.
“That gentleman,” said she, a smile struggling to her face,
“that gentleman, I will not attempt to conceal from you, desires my hand in marriage, and presses me with the most respectful ardour. Alas, what am I to say? I, the forlorn Teresa,
how shall I refuse or accept such protestations?”
Harry feared to say more; a horrid pang of jealousy transfi xed him; and he had scarce the strength of mind to take his
leave with decency. In the solitude of his own chamber, he gave
way to every manifestation of despair. He passionately adored
the Señorita; but it was not only the thought of her possible
union with another that distressed his soul, it was the indefeasible conviction that her suitor was unworthy. To a duke, a bishop, a victorious general, or any man adorned with obvious qualities, he had resigned her with a sort of bitter joy; he saw himself
228
THE DYNAMITER
follow the wedding party from a great way off; he saw himself
return to the poor house, then robbed of its jewel; and while he
could have wept for his despair, he felt he could support it nobly. But this affair looked otherwise. The man was patently no
gentleman; he had a startled, skulking, guilty bearing; his nails
were black, his eyes evasive; his love perhaps was a pretext; he
was perhaps, under this deep disguise, a Cuban emissary!
Harry swore that he would satisfy these doubts; and
the next evening, about the hour of the usual visit, he posted himself at a spot whence his eye commanded the three issues of the square.
Presently after, a four-wheeler rumbled to the door, and
the man with the chin-beard alighted, paid off the cabman, and
was seen by Harry to enter the house with a brown box hoisted on his back. Half an hour later, he came forth again without
the box, and struck eastward at a rapid walk; and Desborough,
with the same skill and caution that he had displayed in following Teresa, proceeded to dog the steps of her admirer. The man
began to loiter, studying with apparent interest the wares of
the small fruiterer or tobacconist; twice he returned hurriedly upon his former course; and then, as though he had suddenly conquered a moment’s hesitation, once more set forth
with resolute and swift steps in the direction of Lincoln’s Inn.
At length, in a deserted by-street, he turned; and coming up to
Harry with a countenance which seemed to have become older
and whiter, inquired with some severity of speech if he had not
had the pleasure of seeing the gentleman before.
“You have, sir,” said Harry, somewhat abashed, but with
a good show of stoutness; “and I will not deny that I was fol-
229
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
lowing you on purpose. Doubtless,” he added, for he supposed
that all men’s minds must still be running on Teresa, “you can
divine my reason.”
At these words, the man with the chin-beard was seized
with a palsied tremor. He seemed, for some seconds, to seek
the utterance which his fear denied him; and then whipping sharply about, he took to his heels at the most furious
speed of running.
Harry was at fi rst so taken aback that he neglected to
pursue; and by the time he had recovered his wits, his best
expedition was only rewarded by a glimpse of the man with
the chin-beard mounting into a hansom, which immediately
after disappeared into the moving crowds of Holborn.
Puzzled and dismayed by this unusual behaviour, Harry
returned to the house in Queen Square, and ventured for
the fi rst time to knock at the fair Cuban’s door. She bade him
enter, and he found her kneeling with rather a disconsolate
air beside a brown wooden trunk.
“Señorita,” he broke out, “I doubt whether that man’s character is what he wishes you to believe. His manner, when he
found, and indeed when I admitted that I was following him,
was not the manner of an honest man.”
“Oh!” she cried, throwing up her hands as in desperation, “Don Quixote, Don Quixote, have you again been tilting against windmills?” And then, with a laugh, “Poor soul!”
she added, “how you must have terrifi ed him! For know that
the Cuban authorities are here, and your poor Teresa may
soon be hunted down. Even yon humble clerk from my so-
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