Such was the story substantially told to Hurlstone and confirmed on his debarkation with the ladies at Todos Santos, the Excelsior being now in the hands of the authorities. Hurlstone did not hesitate to express to Padre Esteban his disgust at the treachery which had made a scapegoat of Señor Perkins. But to his surprise the cautious priest only shrugged his shoulders as he took a complacent pinch of snuff.
“Have a care, Diego! You are of necessity grateful to this man for the news he has brought—nay, more, for possibly being the instrument elected by Providence to precipitate the denouement of that miserable woman’s life—but let it not close your eyes to his infamous political career. I admit that he was opposed to the revolt of the heathen against us, but it was his emissaries and his doctrines that poisoned with heresy the fountains from which they drank. Enough! Be grateful! but do not expect me to intercede for Baal and Ashtaroth!”
“Intercede!” echoed Hurlstone, alarmed at the sudden sacerdotal hardness that had overspread the old priest’s face. “Surely the Council will not be severe with the man who was betrayed into their power by others equally guilty?”
Padre Esteban avoided Hurlstone’s eyes as he answered with affected coolness,—“Quien sabe? There will be expulsados, no doubt. The Excelsior, which is confiscated, will be sent to Mexico with them.”
“I must see Señor Perkins,” said Hurlstone suddenly.
The priest hesitated.
“When?” he asked cautiously.
“At once.”
“Good.” He wrote a hurried line on a piece of paper, folded it, sealed it, and gave it to Hurlstone. “You will hand that to the Comandante. He will give you access to the prisoner.”
In less than half an hour Hurlstone presented himself before the Commander. The events of the last twenty-four hours had evidently affected Don Miguel, for although he received Hurlstone courteously, there was a singular reflection of the priest’s harshness in his face as he glanced over the missive. He took out his watch.
“I give you ten minutes with the prisoner, Don Diego. More, I cannot.”
A little awed by the manner of the Commander, Hurlstone bowed and followed him across the courtyard. It was filled with soldiers, and near the gateway a double file of dragoons, with loaded carbines, were standing at ease. Two sentries were ranged on each side of an open door which gave upon the courtyard. The Commander paused before it, and with a gesture invited him to enter. It was a large square apartment, lighted only by the open door and a grated enclosure above it. Seated in his shirtsleeves, before a rude table, Señor Perkins was quietly writing. The shadow of Hurlstone’s figure falling across his paper caused him to look up.
Whatever anxiety Hurlstone had begun to feel, it was quickly dissipated by the hearty, affable, and even happy greeting of the prisoner.
“Ah! what! my young friend Hurlstone! Again an unexpected pleasure,” he said, extending his white hands. “And again you find me wooing the Muse, in, I fear, hesitating numbers.” He pointed to the sheet of paper before him, which showed some attempts at versification. “But I confess to a singular fascination in the exercise of poetic composition, in instants of leisure like this—a fascination which, as a man of imagination yourself, you can appreciate.”
“And I am sorry to find you here, Señor Perkins,” began Hurlstone frankly; “but I believe it will not be for long.”
“My opinion,” said the Señor, with a glance of gentle contemplation at the distant Comandante, “as far as I may express it, coincides with your own.”
“I have come,” continued Hurlstone earnestly, “to offer you my services. I am ready,” he raised his voice, with a view of being overheard, “to bear testimony that you had no complicity in the baser part of the late conspiracy,—the revolt of the savages, and that you did your best to counteract the evil, although in doing so you have sacrificed yourself. I shall claim the right to speak from my own knowledge of the Indians and from their admission to me that they were led away by the vague representations of Martinez, Brace, and Winslow.”
“Pardon—pardon me,” said Señor Perkins deprecatingly, “you are mistaken. My general instructions, no doubt, justified these young gentlemen in taking, I shall not say extreme, but injudicious measures.” He glanced meaningly in the direction of the Commander, as if to warn Hurlstone from continuing, and said gently, “But let us talk of something else. I thank you for your gracious intentions, but you remember that we agreed only yesterday that you knew nothing of politics, and did not concern yourself with them. I do not know but you are wise. Politics and the science of self-government, although dealing with general principles, are apt to be defined by the individual limitations of the enthusiast. What is good for himself he too often deems is applicable to the general public, instead of wisely understanding that what is good for them must be good for himself. But,” said the Señor lightly, “we are again transgressing. We were to choose another topic. Let it be yourself, Mr. Hurlstone. You are looking well, sir; indeed, I may say I never saw you looking so well! Let me congratulate you. Health is the right of youth. May you keep both!”
He shook Hurlstone’s hand again with singular fervor.
There was a slight bustle and commotion at the door of the guard-room, and the Commander’s attention was called in that direction. Hurlstone profited by the opportunity to say in a hurried whisper:
“Tell me what I can do for you;” and he hesitated to voice his renewed uneasiness—“tell me if—if—if your case is—urgent!”
Señor Perkins lifted his shoulders and smiled with grateful benevolence.
“You have already promised me to deliver those papers and manuscripts of my deceased friend, and to endeavor to find her relations. I do not think it is urgent, however.”
“I do not mean that,” said Hurlstone eagerly. “I”—but Perkins stopped him with a sign that the Commander was returning.
Don Miguel approached them with disturbed and anxious looks.
“I have yielded to the persuasions of two ladies, Dona Leonor and the Señora Markham, to ask you to see them for a moment,” he said to Señor Perkins. “Shall it be so? I have told them the hour is nearly spent.”
“You have told them—nothing more?” asked the Señor, in a whisper unheard by Hurlstone.
“No.”
“Let them come, then.”
The Commander made a gesture to the sentries at the guard-room, who drew back to allow Mrs. Markham and Eleanor to pass. A little child, one of Eleanor’s old Presidio pupils, who, recognizing her, had followed her into the guard-room, now emerged with her, and momentarily disconcerted at the presence of the Commander, ran, with the unerring instinct of childhood, to the Señor for protection. The filibuster smiled, and lifting the child with a paternal gesture to his shoulder by one hand, he extended the other to the ladies.
“The Commander,” said Mrs. Markham briskly, “says it’s against the rules; that visiting time is up; and you’ve already got a friend with you, and all that sort of thing; but I told him that I was bound to see you, if only to say that if there’s any meanness going on, Susannah and James Markham ain’t in it! No! But we’re going to see you put right and square in the matter; and if we can’t do it here, we’ll do it, if we have to follow you to Mexico!—that’s all!”
“And I,” said Eleanor, grasping the Señor’s hand, and half blushing as she glanced at Hurlstone, “see that I have already a friend here who will help me to put in action all the sympathy I feel.”
Señor Perkins drew himself up, and cast a faint look of pride towards the Commander.
“To hear such assurances from beautiful and eloquent lips like those before me,” he said, with his old oratorical wave of the hand, but a passing shadow across his mild eyes, “is more than sufficient. In my experience of life I have been favored, at various emergencies, by the sympathy and outspoken counsel of your noble sex; the last time by Mrs. Euphemia M‘Corkle, of Peoria, Illinois, a lady of whom you have heard me speak—alas! now lately deceased. A few lines at present lying on yonder table—a tribute to her genius—will be forwarded to you, dear Mrs. Markham. But let us change the theme. You are looking well—and you, too, Miss Keene. From the roses that bloom on your cheeks—nourished by the humid air of Todos Santos—I am gratified in thinking you have forgiven me your enforced detention here.”
At a gesture from the Commander he ceased, stepped back, bowed gravely, and the ladies recognized that their brief audience had terminated. As they passed through the gateway, looking back they saw Perkins still standing with the child on his shoulder and smiling affably upon them. Then the two massive doors of the gateway swung to with a crash, the bolts were shot, and the courtyard was impenetrable.
A noise like the cracking and fall of some slight scaffolding behind them arrested their attention. Hurlstone turned quickly. A light smoke, drifting from the courtyard, was mingling with the fog. A faint cry of “Dios y Libertad!” rose with it.
With a hurried excuse to his companions, Hurlstone ran rapidly back, and reached the gate as it slowly rolled upon its hinges to a file of men that issued from the courtyard. The first object that met his eyes was the hat of Señor Perkins lying on the ground near the wall, with a terrible suggestion in its helpless and pathetic vacuity. A few paces further lay its late owner, with twenty Mexican bullets in his breast, his benevolent forehead bared meekly to the sky, as if even then mutely appealing to the higher judgment. He was dead! The soul of the Liberator of Quinquinambo, and of various other peoples more or less distressed and more or less ungrateful, was itself liberated!
“I said that you were a dama de grandeza, you remember,” said the youthful Mrs. Keene to Mrs. Hurlstone, “and, you see, you are!”