The devils mountain, p.14
The Devil's Mountain, page 14
They had set on for the picnic ground, a picturesque spot some two miles away, admist the foothills and close to the sea. There was a little house on the ground, and this Mr. Phipps had borrowed from its owner. Here they would lunch, the lunch being packed in a light motor lorry; here, too, they could change for bathing in the river that flowed through the property, or in the sea if they preferred sea-bathing. Arrived at this place, the party separated into groups, each group going its own way, or coalescing with another as it thought fit, during the couple of hours that preceded luncheon. Thus each group followed the bent of its own collective mind, and pursued its own idea of pleasure. When they all reassemble at sometime after one o’ clock, it was evident that they had all exceedingly enjoyed themselves.
They were not so much inclined to strenuous exercises after lunch as they had previously been; indeed; the tendency of the younger people particularly was to stroll off in pairs and lose themselves among the surrounding trees. One of the first couples to do so was Nora Hamilton and Stephen Braeme, thanks to Major Fellspar, who called to Inspector Harmsworth just when the latter was about to ask Nora to accompany him for a walk. He would probably have made a party of three, for Stephen had shown clearly that he too was determined to be as much as possible with Nora that day. But Major Fellspar imagined that he had something to say to Harmsworth just then, and Major Fellspar was precisely the one man in the party whom Harmsworth could not put off for another occasion. By the time the Major had finished his remarks—he had merely intended to be nice to Harmsworth, who had executed so neatly the task entrusted to him—Nora and Stephen had disappeared from view, and Harmsworth could not bring himself to hurry purposely after them: that would have been much too marked. Marian and Lawrence too were among those who went off soon after luncheon; so in a little while there were only about half a dozen of the more elderly people remaining in and about the little house.
Lady Rosedale has decided that too much movement just then would be bad for her digestion; she was therefore holding a sort of court just where she was, and was duly being made as much of as though she were a scion of royalty. Major Fellspar, also, saw no sufficient reason why he should perambulate about. Mr. Phipps had lingered behind, his eye on all his guests and ready to anticipate their wants. He had in the meantime kept a particular watch on Inspector Harmsworth, and as soon as he could join them and, after a few commonplaces, casually turned the conversation to the subject of amateur photography.
Mr. Phipps asked to be allowed to look at Harmsworth’s camera, and loudly admired it. He spoke of different makes of cameras; in a little while Inspector Harmsworth discovered that Mr. Phipps knew a good deal about photography: far more indeed than Harmsworth knew himself.
“Do you often take pictures?” enquired Mr. Phipps carelessly; “but I suppose you don’t get much opportunity for that sort of thing in Kingston?”
“No,” admitted the younger man; “when I was stationed in the country I did more photographing in a month than I have done in Kingston during the last year. I am very much of an amateur, I am afraid.”
“Then you don’t develop your own photographs?”
“I don’t know how to,” Harmsworth candidly confessed, “and it isn’t really necessary, you know. You can get developing work done quite well and cheaply in Kingston.”
“Quite true,” admitted Mr. Phipps; “but there’s some drawback: sometimes you may have to wait long for your pictures. The photographers are so busy that they may keep you any length of time before giving you the negatives. I guess we shan’t see those photographs you took today for quite sometime.”
“I have already promised to show them to you tomorrow evening,” said Harmsworth, “and I’ll do it. These are for the old man, you see,”—he indicated Major Fellspar, whose short, sturdy figure could be seen through an open window in the house. “He seems to be keen upon photographs just now: every now and then he has a new hobby. He asked me to take those I got this morning. They’ll be a memento of a very pleasant day with you.”
“That’s kind of you to say so,” said Mr. Phipps heartily, but his eyes were narrowed and his look piercing. “You can get those photographs developed in a very short time, then?” he asked, returning to the subject.
“Naturally; if the old man wants them, and he usually wants everything in a hurry. Any photographer in Kingston will finish them in a few hours.”
“What does he want them for?” demanded Mr. Phipps sharply, as if to surprise Harmsworth into a truthful answer before he could pause to think.
“Blest if I know,” replied the young man; “just wants them, I suppose. He’s a man of moods, you know.”
“I suppose so,” agreed Mr. Phipps. “Shall we go for a stroll? We are certain to meet some of the others.”
Inspector Harmsworth consented, saying that he would be able to get some pictures of the scenery for his chief, which remark caused Mr. Phipps to smile.
They went by easy ways, Harmsworth now and then stopping to take some particularly pretty or striking bit of scenery. Mr. Phipps talked, and Harmsworth listened with a preoccupied air, and whenever they saw some couple or group of persons in the distance the younger man’s eyes scanned them closely, then left them with a disappointed expression. They must have spent an hour thus, when, their steps having taken them southwards among the rising ground, they came suddenly to the verge of a bluff overlooking a little glade forty or fifty feet below and surrounded by great leafy trees. Paths from the bluff led downwards to this glade. Mr. Phipps’s eyes swept over the ground beneath them. He saw, at the same time Inspector Harmsworth saw, Nora Hamilton and Stephen Braeme.
XVI
“I SPEAK AS A SPANIARD”
They were seated on a fallen tree trunk, side by side; Nora had taken off her wide-brimmed hat and her bronze hair gleamed in the tempered sunlight. Her face was directed towards the ground; Stephen, in stooping posture, was talking to her eagerly; his attitude, the movement of his lips, showed that. Her left arm hung loosely by her side, and, as they stared Inspector Harmsworth and Mr. Phipps saw Stephen’s hand steal slowly towards it.
Harmsworth rapped out an ugly oath, and stiffening himself. “What—what is that damned moving picture man saying to Miss Hamilton?” he exclaimed: “what right has he—”
“We seem to be spying upon a scene that is not intended for our eyes,” said Mr. Phipps. “You don’t approve of it, Harmsworth?”
“What’s going on down there? No! By God, I don’t. And I am going to stop it.”
“You can easily join them,” suggested Mr. Phipps, indicating one of the downward paths; but Inspector Harmsworth had already seen it. Mr. Phipps did not look at him as he dashed off; instead, his gaze fastened itself on a spot on the opposite side of the glade, where a flutter of white had a moment before indicated the advent of someother unwitting intruder. There were two persons there; his keen glance identified them: they too must be spectators of the little love scene—for there could be no doubt it was a love scene—that was being enacted in the glade. Mr. Phipps was deeply interested.
Inspector Harmsworth made no effort to conceal his swift approach as he strode down the path which led from the bluff into the open space below. Stephen heard the noise and loosened his clasp of Nora’s hand; she looked up, a little startled; there was a fluttering of her eyelids, a slight quivering of her nostrils, a mantling of her cheeks with pink, as Inspector Harmsworth marched up to them, endeavouring to appear as if he had noticed nothing, but with a brusque constraint of manner that was not lost on Stephen.
“I thought you would find us,” exclaimed Nora quickly. “We saw that you were with Major Fellspar, and so did not wait for you.”
“How did you find us,” asked Stephen haughtily. “Followed us?”
“You promised to go for a motor ride along the seashore this afternoon,” said Harmsworth, ignoring Stephen altogether, and addressing Nora. “You haven’t forgotten, have you?”
“No,” answered Nora, who was already recovering from her surprise of a moment before. “We, the three of us, can go: when do you propose to start?”
“Perhaps Mr. Braeme might not want to go,” said Harmsworth directly, and even rudely. “I thought we could go together and take some pictures.”
“May I ask why I should not want to go for the ride?” demanded Stephen, and there was an angry note in his voice. “I do not think my going depends upon you. As Miss Hamilton has suggested that I might do so, I am certainly accompanying her.”
“Yes,” cried Nora, with a nervous little laugh, for the anger in both men’s faces was plain for her to see, the antagonism in their tones and attitude patent. “A lot of us can go together: here’s Marian and Mr. Beaman now: let’s get a big car and go together.”
Mr. Phipps, from his point of observation, had watched Marian and Lawrence as they entered the glade, unseen by those already there. Lawrence and Marian, he was quite sure, had been witnesses of what both he and Harmsworth had observed, and probably would have withdrawn unnoticed had not Inspector Harmsworth made his sudden appearance. Maybe something in the attitude of Harmsworth and Stephen had suggested to Lawrence that a quarrel, disagreeable to Nora, would be averted if he and Marian joined the group. Whatever their reason, Mr. Phipps saw them emerge into the open, and decided that he also would go below.
“Quite a pleasant reunion,” he called out, as he stepped briskly towards them; “we have all been wandering round and about, and yet we are not much more than a furlong from our headquarters.”
He was speaking to everyone, but it was on Marian’s face that his gaze was fixed. It was absolutely bloodless, and her eyes held in them a strange and angry look. He remembered what she had said to him about Stephen’s lack of earnestness, about his being able to love none but himself. She was looking at Stephen with the bitterest, most scornful expression he had ever seen on her face. Stephen was staring stormily at her, while Harmsworth was eyeing Stephen in a very unpleasant and challenging fashion. But Nora had already recovered her pose and was her bright and cheerful self again. She looked from one wrathful face to the other, then burst into laughter.
“Well, aren’t we all serious!” she cried. “What is the matter? I have had a very pleasant time walking and talking with Mr. Braeme, and we are going for a motor ride later on. Won’t you all come? You, dear Mr. Phipps, will, I know. You won’t refuse me anything, will you?”
“Not even in my life!” returned Mr. Phipps, in the same spirit. “A motor ride is just what I myself was going to suggest. We’ll take my car, and do an hour’s spin: those who want to follow the good example can do so. But, say, we had better be going back now to look after that car. You must come with me, Miss Nora; you and I are the bosses of this particular show.”
“I am coming,” said Nora, taking Mr. Phipps’s arm gaily.
They moved off in a bunch, but Mr. Phipps was to Nora’s left and Inspector Harmsworth to her right. There seemed no place exactly for Stephen, who showed no disposition to join his sister and Lawrence. Constraint was visible in everyone’s attitude, for even Nora’s buoyancy could not successfully contend against the glumness of the others, and Mr. Phipps appeared to be thinking seriously. Fortunately they had no far to go, and as soon as they came to the house, Mr. Phipps began giving directors to his chauffeur to get ready for a drive along the sea coast.
They started soon after, going westward; they went at a moderate speed, and every now and then stopped for a few minutes if anything striking caught their attention. But the drive, from the viewpoint of genuine enjoyment, was not a success. There were many angry passions at work, and these inhibited any feeling or expression of pleasure. It was with a view to interesting the others in something, and so taking their minds off their several annoyances, that Mr. Phipps ordered Arthur to stop when they came to a little bay in which a few boats, tied with ropes to the shore, swung idly to the motion of the sea. He suggested that they should take a walk about this bay. “It is interesting,” he said, “for here are the last of the old masters of this island made his escape; they call the place Runaway Bay.”
They looked about them curiously. The little inlet was almost completely surrounded on the landside with trees and shrubs; the few natives about, fishermen and boatmen obviously, were taking their ease in the boats or on shore; there was nothing particular, nothing significant about this spot, save that the last Spanish Governor of the island had embarked from here for Cuba after his final attempt to drive the English conquerors out.
“Runaway Bay,” laughed Nora, “prosaic but true.”
“Runaway Bay,” repeated Stephen, “prosaic and uncomplimentary, señorita.” For the first time since he had known her he spoke to her as he would have addressed a lady of Spain or of Peru.
He was now no longer angry or sulky. Stephen was by profession an actor, and he had an instinct for the dramatic. The scene, and especially its historic associations, seemed now to stir that instinct into vivid life; he was standing erect, dark, handsome, with flashing eyes, and surveying land and water with a mingled expression of pride and regret. “And not only uncomplimentary, but untrue,” he urged, fixing Nora with his eyes. “Think of it, señorita: an old man—for he was old, as I have heard—comes over the sea from Cuba with but a handful of followers to win back a land won generations before by his own people, and which had been wrested from him, not by superior bravery, but by superior fore and by surprise. He struggles hard, he does his utmost; he is unfortunate, but still he strives; the dice are loaded against him, but he fights with fate itself. Then, foot by foot, fighting always, he is forced backwards, and at last realises that the task of regaining Jamaica is beyond him. He comes to this little spot, with a mere handful of men. Here they make their last stand, but they know that the enemy pursuing them is in overwhelming numbers. So they depart—these few—in an open boat, braving the storms of the sea and the other perils of the deep, preferring death from the elements rather than capture and humiliation at the hands of the English. In Peru we should not have given such a spot as this so poor a name as Runaway Bay. We would have called it something like ‘The Last Stand of the Spaniard’—El ultimo parada del Español! ”
He spoke with fire and eloquence, and as he spoke admiration flashed from Nora’s eyes. Unconsciously, Marian also had drawn her form erect, while her cheeks glowed and her delicate head was proudly poised. Mr. Phipps recognised that the Spanish blood was stirring in both of them; Inspector Harmsworth felt that Stephen was appealing to the romantic in Nora’s disposition and was posing almost as a hero of Spain just then, as one who in a desperate emergency could also make a last stand and make it bravely.
“Well,” said Mr. Phipps, “your poet has asked, ‘what’s in a name?’ So why quarrel about ‘Runaway Bay’?”
“My poet, señor?”
“Sure. Bill Shakespeare, you know; he said that and a good many other questionable things, and since your father was English you should have no kick about the English calling this place Runaway Bay. It don’t seem to be in the nature of the ordinary Englishman to be over-poetic in the naming anything; and, anyhow, if one half of you was driven out of this country, the other half was the driver. So you can sympathise with both side.”
“I confess I am that I am thinking of my Spanish side just now,” replied Stephen a trifle coldly. “The side which has so often been unfortunate, but which has covered itself with imperishable glory. You may wonder that a Peruvian should say this, remembering that Peru revolted against Spain and declared her independence under the great Bolivar. But Peru revolted against the Spanish Government, not against the Spaniards and the Spanish blood: that had been impossible. Besides, I come of the blood of the Spaniards in Peru, of the blood of the conquistadores, the men who conquered the New World for Spain, and did so much to make her glorious. I speak as a Spaniard! You understand now what I feel about Don Arnaldo de Sassi and his last stand here. ‘Runaway Bay,’ indeed!”
He was striking to look at as he spoke; and even Mr. Phipps, not easily impressed by anything, felt that there was true fervour in the tribute this young man was paying to Spain and her wonderful past. Mr. Phipps saw Nora’s eyes meet Stephen’s, and there was a look of deep sympathy and admiration in them.
“Runaway Bay, indeed!” Mr. Phipps repeated with a little laugh, not offensive, but sufficiently derisive to discount some of the heroics of Stephen: “I don’t think, friends, that there is so much ‘indeed’ about it as you say, or perhaps it is ‘indeed’ in a very literal sense. I am talking now to the son of an Englishman, and talking merely as a hundred percent American who would have fought on the side of George Washington in the Revolution if he couldn’t have avoided doing so, fighting not being much in my line. And, believe me, there wasn’t much of a ‘last stand’ about old man Sassi when he got to this spot in those historical times you’ve been reciting about. Sassi was running all right enough, and the only question with him was whether he could run faster than the English folk who wanted to get him. He made a beeline for this spot, having been careful to map out his retreat beforehand, in case o accident. When he reached it, he stood not upon the order of his going, but went at once. I guess it was a real runaway and no mistake. And I don’t blame him: I should fancy that the fellows behind him were one almighty terror and had precious little use for a Don.”
“That’s your version,” said Stephen, “but if he had been a coward would he have come back to try to reconquer the country, and would he have left it at last in an open boat, as I have read in one of your local publications that he did?”
“No, I allow he wasn’t a coward,” returned Mr. Phipps, “but his valour was liberally tempered with discretion. As for the open boat, he did escape in one, it is true, but what else could he do? Wait for a caravel? I am afraid he would have waited forever!”
