Chapter 13 The Black Swan by Rafael Sabatini
Lacrimae Rerum
On the following morning, whilst Major Sands was sulking, like Achilles, in his tent, a shadow fell across the entrance, and Monsieur de Bernis stood before him in black silhouette against the sunlight. He carried his sheathed rapier tucked under his arm.
'I have observed, Major, that you grow too fat,' was the greeting with which he startled the soldier. 'You need to sweat a little, and to stretch your limbs. It will mend your humours. Take up your sword, and come with me.'
The Major, remembering the sharp words that had passed between them yesterday, conceived in this a derisory invitation to an adjustment of their differences. He got to his feet, with quickened breath and deepening colour.
'Blister me, sir! D'ye seek to put a quarrel on me? Have ye thought what will happen if I kill you?'
'I never build conjectures on the impossible.'
'By God, sir, your insolence is not to be borne! Not to be borne!' He snatched up sword and sword-belt. 'Have with you, then, whatever the consequences.'
Monsieur de Bernis sighed. 'Always will you be misunderstanding me. I propose exercise, and you talk of killing.'
'Whatever you propose, I am your man, stab me.' They went out together, the Major breathing gustily, de Bernis calm, and apparently amused.
Their departure was unwitnessed by Miss Priscilla, and so that it should go unperceived by others, de Bernis penetrated the woods for some little distance; then, under cover of the trees, led the way along a line parallel with the shore.
They went in silence until the Major, suspecting that they were being followed, halted to look behind him.
'It is only Pierre,' said de Bernis, without looking round. 'He comes to see that we are not interrupted.'
The Major plunged on, mystified, indignant, yet with no thought of avoiding an encounter upon which the other appeared determined, whatever might be the consequences. He panted up the rising ground that ran inwards from the bluff, and was bathed in perspiration by the time de Bernis had brought him out onto the little beach beyond it, and screened by it from the encampment of the buccaneers. On the summit of the bluff the Major saw now the figure of Pierre, and understood that he was posted there on guard.
Monsieur de Bernis removed his baldrick and drew his sword. The Major copied him in silence. Then from his pocket the Frenchman took a piece of wood that was shaped like a tiny pear, with a slot opened at its apex. Into this slot, under the Major's bulging, uncomprehending eyes, he fitted the point of his sword, then tapped down the little wooden pear securely with a stone which he picked up from the beach.
'What the devil's this?' quoth the Major.
Monsieur de Bernis brought forth a second wooden object like the first and proffered it.
'Did you suppose I brought you on a blood-letting? Our situation will hardly admit of it, whatever may be your feelings. I told you you need to breathe your lungs, and stretch your limbs, and sweat a little.'
But now the Major, who was already sweating freely and at every pore, and who conceived himself mocked, flung into a real passion.
'What the devil do you mean, sir? D'ye rally me? D'ye practise jests upon me?'
'Oh, but a little calm,' the other begged. 'The need for bloodletting may yet be thrust upon us. We rust for lack of practice. I do, if you do not, Major. That is all.' And more insistently he proffered the wooden pear again.
Between doubt and understanding the Major slowly took the object.
'I see,' he said, which was an obvious overstatement. 'It is for practice that you bring me here?' And he grumbled: 'You should have made it plainer.'
'Could I suppose that it was not plain?' De Bernis was beginning to remove his doublet.
The Major was glad enough to copy him in this. Then, as the thought of what they came to do grew upon him, a certain grim satisfaction grew with it. He had notions of himself as a swordsman. In younger days, at home, he had been the deadliest blade of his regiment. He would show this Frenchman something that would let him see that Major Sands was not a man with whom it was prudent to take liberties.
At last, stripped to the waist, they faced each other and came on guard.
The Major intent upon a brave display, attacked at once and fiercely. But whether he thrust or lunged, he remained always outside the guard of an opponent, who never once broke ground, however pressed. Notwithstanding this, the Frenchman remained so strictly upon the defensive as to leave the Major under the delusion that the ardour of his attack was so constraining his opponent. Thus until he found himself sharply admonished.
'More speed, Major. More speed, I beg. Press harder. You are giving me nothing to do.'
Goaded by what seemed a taunt, Major Sands momentarily increased the ferocity of his onslaught. But it spent itself idly against that guard, which, so swift, seemed yet so effortless.
Winded by his supreme exertion, the Major fell back to breathe, and lowered his point. The sweat ran from his cropped head--for they had removed their periwigs together with their upper garments. He dashed it from his brow with the back of his hand, and glared at the tall, lithe Frenchman, who remained so cool and whose breathing scarcely appeared to have quickened. Of what was the man made, that neither heat nor movement could leave an impression upon him?
He smiled into the Major's flushed, choleric face. 'You realize how urgent was your need to exercise yourself. I was right, you see. You are in even worse case than I. Lack of practice has made you slow.'
Sullenly the Major admitted it. And he knew it to be true. But he also began to suspect that at his speediest and best he would never have got past that guard, and the suspicion left his spirit wounded and resentful.
Presently when he had regained his breath they resumed. But now de Bernis' tactics were quite different. Again the Major opened by attacking. But this time, in meeting a low thrust with a counter-parry which restored the blades to the line of the original engagement, the Frenchman straightened his arm in a riposte that made the Major jump backwards so as to avoid the point.
Monsieur de Bernis laughed. 'Too much effort,' he criticized. 'Play closer, Major. Keep the elbow nearer to your flank.' He went in to engage him, deflected a thrust intended to stop him, extended himself in a lunge, and hit the Major full upon the stomach.
They fell on guard again, and again, with the same ease de Bernis touched him. After that a series of swift disengages reduced the Major to utter impotency, at the culmination of which de Bernis inside his guard touched him upon his defenceless breast with the utmost deliberation.
'Assez,' he said, straightening himself. His own breath was coming more quickly now. 'For today, it is enough. I am less rusty than I feared. But not as keen as I should be; as I may need to be. Tomorrow we will try again, as much for your sake as for mine, Major. In your present condition I should tremble for you if you were opposed to a swordsman of any force at all.'
The Major was trembling for himself; trembling with suppressed anger. He had the sense to perceive that the expression of it must merely render him ridiculous. He sat down upon the beach to let his overheated body cool before resuming his clothes whilst de Bernis, divesting himself of what garments he still retained, plunged into the sea to refresh himself.
They came back towards noon for dinner, with little said between them, the Major's indignation still simmering. It was not merely that he was under the humiliation of having been made to realize that the swordsmanship he had imagined so expert was rendered puerile by contrast with that of his opponent, but that he nourished a strong suspicion that Monsieur de Bernis had deliberately invited him to that passage at arms so as to intimidate him with an exposition of what must happen to him if he should permit acrimony seriously to embroil them.
By this conviction and the resentment springing from it, Major Sands added to the contempt in which he already held de Bernis for a thieving, cut-throat pirate, a further measure of contempt for being a posturing mountebank.
Fortunately, however, the indignation, which only their circumstances compelled him to repress, was diminished, together with that first impression of the Frenchman's motives, when on each of the next three mornings he was invited and went to repeat that practice in swordsmanship. Gradually he was brought to change his view and to believe that, after all, de Bernis had no object to serve beyond perfecting himself by practice against emergencies and inducing the Major to do the same. In this growing conviction he became more tolerant of the Frenchman's hints and criticisms, and even began to seek to profit by them. But underneath it all a certain resentment still remained at the manner which de Bernis had adopted at the outset, and this prevented any softening of the Major's deep-rooted dislike for him.
Oddly enough, the growing friendliness between de Bernis and Miss Priscilla contributed little or nothing to these feelings. The easy and, in the Major's view, impudent familiarity of the Frenchman's bearing towards her, and her own apparent lack of resentment of this, was an irritation to him, it is true. But this merely because he perceived it to spring from a less perfect dignity on the part of Priscilla than he desired in the lady who was destined one day to become his wife. Jealousy never even tinged his emotions. It was too inconceivable that Miss Priscilla should ever lose sight of the social abyss that separated her from such a man as de Bernis.
He did not know--for he slept soundly now--that ever since that first occasion when anxiety had urged her, it had become her nightly habit, when all was still, to slip out of the tent, and to sit and talk there with the guardian of her threshold. Possibly it would not deeply have exercised him if he had known of it, provided that he had known at the same time of what they talked. For certainly these interviews were innocent of obvious tenderness. Commonly they were concerned with the events of the day. Nor were these always as trivial as might be supposed. One day, for instance--it was a Saturday, their fourteenth day upon Maldita--a riot had broken out among the buccaneers, which at one moment had threatened to split them into two opposing factions. One of the men had stabbed another, as a result of a quarrel over dice. Sides had been taken, and anger spreading like wildfire amongst those lawless men, a battle had begun to rage upon the beach.
Leach and his officers had flung themselves into the melee, and with voice and fists had sought to quell the riot. If they had not completely succeeded in restoring peace, at least they had secured an armistice, during which Leach might hear the facts and pronounce upon them. But Leach had refused to do anything of the kind, refused to listen to the pleas either of those who demanded the life of the murderer, whose name was Shore, or of those who asserted that the murdered man was to blame for having accused Shore of cheating and smothered him in intolerable insult.
'It's no time to fall a-quarrelling among ourselves,' he had told them. 'Keep your tempers and your knives for the Spaniards. No more o' this now.'
But they surged angrily clamant about him. As their Captain it was his place to pass judgement. Unless he did so they would, themselves, do justice.
Leach's reluctance sprang from his perception that, however he delivered himself, he would have to face the hostility of the party opposed to his decision.
'There's a man dead,' he growled at them. 'Rot you in hell! Isn't that enough?'
Monsieur de Bernis, surging amongst them, no man knew whence, was speaking, and they fell silent to hear what he might have to say, the regard which he had known how to inspire in them asserting itself.
'There's a simple way of resolving the dispute, Tom,' said he.
'Ah! And what may that be?' Leach displayed no satisfaction at this uninvited intervention.
'The only fit judges are those who were witnesses to the quarrel.'
A roar approved him. When it had ceased, he continued:
'They are here, a full score of them. The dispute concerns none else. Let them decide whether Shore is to be hanged or not. Let it be decided on a show of hands, with the undertaking from the rest that they'll abide by the decision.'
It was a way out that commended itself to Leach, for it delivered him from the undesired responsibility. To his question based on de Bernis' suggestion, they readily gave their assent to abide by the decision of the majority, and by this they abode with that queer loyalty to a contract which the buccaneers could observe. The show of hands went against Shore. He was taken and hanged forthwith, and peace was at once restored in the encampment.
It was the mystery of this which Monsieur de Bernis expounded that night to Miss Priscilla, who could not understand the submissiveness of those who had so violently taken up the cudgels on the murderer's behalf.
'It was not his life that had concerned them,' he explained. 'Life is cheap enough amongst them at all times. It was the principle involved that mattered and over which they were quarrelling. The vote offered an equitable solution, and they had bound themselves to accept it.'
This led to questions from her and a lengthy dissertation from him upon the bonds and engagements recognized and respected by even the most lawless among buccaneers. Thus, since he was led into delving into past experiences of his own, she drew him into reminiscences which afforded her further glimpses of what his life had been. For always was it of himself that she contrived to make him talk.
One night--the seventeenth spent upon Maldita as he afterwards remembered, the date being fixed in his memory by that which happened on the morrow--she directly questioned him upon his future. Was it his intention indefinitely to prolong this dangerous roving life?
'Ah, that, no. Already you may account it closed. This business upon which I am now embarked will certainly see the end. I am troubled with nostalgy. It has been growing of late. It is quite true that I told Morgan my only desire is to quit the Caribbean and return home. At need I'll even change my religion, like Henry IV, so that I may tread the blessed soil of France again, see the vines and olives growing upon the hillside and hear the sweet accent of the Toulousain.'
He spoke in a softened, wistful voice, ended on a sigh, and fell silent, musing.
'I understand,' she said gently. 'But to change your religion? The call of country must be strong.'
He considered that, and suddenly laughed, but muting his mirth so as not to disturb the Major who slept in his tent a dozen yards away.
'It is as if a naked man were to speak of changing his coat. What hypocrites most of us are where faith is concerned. With the life that lies behind me I can still dwell on mine, and speak of changing it, as if some sacrifice were entailed.'
It was the first time that she had heard from him even an implied disparagement of his past. Hitherto he had spoken of it almost with complacency, as if piracy were a normal career, as if he saw in it nothing at which to take shame.
'You are still young enough,' she said, answering that thought of hers rather than his last words, 'to build anew.'
'But what shall I build me out of the materials I take with me from the Old World? Every man, remember, builds his future from the materials supplied him by his past.'
'Not entirely, surely. There are the materials he finds in his path as he advances. These may suffice him. You will make a family for yourself...'
He interrupted her at the very beginning of her picture of that future.
'A family? I?'
'But why not, then?'
'Do you conclude that all that may once have been decent and sound in me has been utterly stifled by the wild life I have lived?'
'I know the contrary.'
'How do you know it?'
'I have the evidence of my senses. I know you. I have come to know you a little, I think, in these few weeks. But what has that to do with my question?'
'This. What sort of a mother am I to find for my children?'
'I don't understand. That surely is matter for your own decision.'
'It is not. It has been decided for me. My past decides it. Unless I am to woo in disguise, pretending myself something that I am not. I have killed. I have plundered. I have done dreadful things, unutterable things. I have even amassed some wealth. I own lands, in Jamaica and elsewhere, with plantations and the like. My proper mate among women would be some unfortunate soulless drab who would be indifferent to the source of the money that will support us. I am not so lost--lost though I may be--as to give such a mother to my children. Nor yet am I so lost as to presume to woo any woman of another kind. It is the only honesty remaining me; the last frail link with honour. If that were to snap, then should I be damned, indeed. No, no, sweet lady, whatever I may find to build in the Old World if I reach it, certainly it will not be a family.'
He had spoken with a deep, moving bitterness, different far from his habitual manner which alternated between hardness and flippancy, and commonly presented a blend of the two. A silence followed, and endured for some time. It endured until something light and moist dropped upon his left hand where it rested on his knee.
Startled he turned to her, sitting so close to him and leaning a little forward and sideways.
'Priscilla!' he breathed, tremulously, touched in his turn to discover that he should so profoundly have moved her pity.
She rose swiftly, hastily, as if in confusion. 'Good night!' she murmured in a small, quick voice. The heavy curtain rustled, and he was alone.
But with his head turned to the entrance, he called softly after her.
'I thank you for that tear dropped on the grave of a lost soul.'
Then he bore that left hand of his to his lips, and held it there.
Long afterwards, he was to confess that when he fell asleep that night under the stars, it was with the feeling that some of the vileness had been washed from him by a woman's compassionate tear.
In the Toulousain a hundred and fifty years before there had been a de Bernis who was a poet of some merit. I suspect that something of his spirit survived in this buccaneering descendant of his.