Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/813

Rh had scarcely noticed the slip of the tongue by which he had included himself with Luiz de Guardiola and his ministers.

"Well He lay there, indeed, and called upon God, and now and then he cried to men and women we knew not of. But when he saw that De Guardiola was in the room he fell silent—like that!

Tell me this—and this—and this,' says Don Luiz, at his side. 'Then shall you go free. You are your Admiral's dearest friend; you are high in the English council. Even before you became my prisoner was there not a general attack planned for to-night? Tell me its nature and the hour. What force will be left upon the ships? What will be the word of the night? Tell me if you know aught of a secret way by which the battery may be flanked?'

"Well, he was silent, and Don Luiz stamped upon the floor. 'You are too slow of speech, señor. Miguel, make him speak. I have no time to loiter here!

Mexia moistened his lips with his wine. "What do you ask with your white faces and great eyes, señors? Oh yes, he was made to speak—to cry out to the Lutheran's God, to gasp his defiance to Don Luiz, waiting with folded arms,—to wander, as they sometimes do, thinking friends about him, making appeal to the living and the dead to pluck him out of hell! at last, with froth upon his lips, to murmur like a child who knows not war nor one of its usages! like a heretic who communes with God direct I am no better than I am, but I know courage when I see it, and I tell you, Don Alonzo, that in his torment and his weakness that man was strong to sweep clear his mind of aught that was to De Guardiola's purpose. If nature must give voice to her anguish, then, with bound hands, he kept her far from the garden of his honor. This until the very last, when he lost knowledge, indeed, of what the tongue might say, and bit at his bound arms, struggling to hold his peace. Then De Guardiola signed for the turn of the screw."

At the end of the table, a few moments before, a man had left his place with no noise, and stooping, was now slowly making his way behind the forward-bent row of guests toward the table of honor. Mexia, making full stop, drank his wine, and leaning back in his chair, stared thoughtfully before him. Amongst his auditors there was an instant of breathless expectation, then Drake cried, impatiently, "Make a finish, man!"

"There is no more," said Mexia. "He never told, never betrayed. When he awoke from that momentary swoon there was surcease of torment, there were Miguel and his fellows making ready to take leave of the day's work; his bonds were loosed, wine held to his lips; Don Luiz stood over him with a smile, and still smiling, sent for the commandant of the battery. All that Desmond had brought to Don Luiz was told over, orders were written and sent in haste, naught was left undone that De Guardiola's guile might suggest. He believed—he could not choose but to believe—that in his madness of words and half-conscious utterances, from very failure of will and weakness of soul and lack of knightly honor, he had refused to endure, and had betrayed the English to surprise and death."

The man who had moved from his seat was now so near to the notable guests that when, drawing himself up, he placed his hand upon Arden's shoulder, he came face to face with Pedro Mexia. The latter, uttering a strangled cry, threw up his hands as though to ward off an apparition. With a sudden spring, one booted foot upon Arden's heavy chair, the figure leaped upon the table, disarranging all its glittering array, and for a second facing the company, which had arisen with excitement and outcry. The next, like a dart, he crossed the intervening space and threw himself upon Mexia, dragging the bulky form from the table and hurling it to the floor. Weaponless, the assaulter had used his hands, and now, with a knee upon Mexia's breast, he strove to throttle him. When, Spanish and English, those that were nearest of Don Alonzo's guests were upon him, the face that he turned over his shoulder showed an intolerable white fury of wrath. "Thy sword, John Nevil!" he gasped. "Thou seest I wear none! Arden, thou'rt no friend of mine if thou flingest me not thy dagger! Ah, dog! that companied with the hell-hound of the pack, loll thy tongue out now! let thy eyeballs start from the socket—"