Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (April 24, 1904)
Kemp in England and Jamaica By Joseph Conrad (Copyright, 1004, by MrClurc, Phillip A Cu.) CHAPTER Vl.-Contlnued. M kANUKI-DEL-I'OrOLO pushed the hair buck from his forehead. I had noticed that the lovelock were plaltnd with black braid and that he wore large, dirty ilk ruffles. "Tho caballero," lie continued, marking his words with a long, white finger a lap on the tahlo, "will represent my views to the notables. My position at present, as I have hud the honor to observe, is b come unbearable. Consider, too, how your worship and I would look together. What lightness for you and me. You will find this Castro unlearably gross. Hut I t assure you I am a mnn of taste un Im provlHador nn nrtlst. My songs are cele brated. And yet! . . ." llo folded hlx arms again, and waited; the:i ho said, employing his most impressive Yolce: "I have Influence with the men of Rio. I could ralno a riot. We Cubans are Jealous people; we do not love that for-cIkih-ih should take our best from us. Wa do not love It; we will not suffer it. Let this Castro bethink himself and go In peace, leaving us and our women. As the proverb 'It is well to build a bridge for a departing enemy.' " He lagan to pi-.r ut me more wl.ntfully, ami his eyeH grew more luminous tliua ever. This man, in spite of tils grotesque licss, wan quite in earnest. There was no doubting that. "I have a gentle spirit," he began again, "a gentle spirit. I am submissive to the legitimate authorities. What the Senor Juez O'Hrlen usks mo to do, I do. I would put a knife into anyone who inconvenienced the Senor Juei O'Brien; we would all do that, as is right and titling. Hut this Castro this Andalou, who is nearly as bad as a heretic! When my day conies, I will have his arms flayed and the soles of his feet, and I will rub red pepper Into them; and oil the men or Hlo who do not low foreigners' will applaud. And I will stick: llttlo thorns under his tongue, and I will cut off his eyelids with little scissors, and aet him facing the sun- Caballero, you would love me; I have a gentle spirit. I am a pleasant companion." He rose and so,uoescd round the table. "Listen" his eyes Ut up with rapture "you shall hear Bis. It is divine ah, il ut very pleasant, you will say." He seized his mandolin, slung It round his Bock, and leant against the bulkhead. Tha bright light from the porthole gilded tha outlines of his body, as be swayed about and moved his long ringers across tha Strings; they tinkled metallically. Ha sans; In a nasal voice: " 'IJstern!' the young girls say as they hasten to the barred window. TJsten! Ah, surely that U the guitar of Man-u-el-del-Popolo, As he glides along the wall in the twi light.' " It was a very long song. He gesticulated freely with his hands In between the scratching of the strings, which seemed to be a matter of luck. His eyes gnzed distantly at the wall above my head. The performance bewildered and Impressed me; I wondered If this was what they had enr ried me off for. It was like being mad. He made, a descresendo tinkling, and his lofty features lapsed into their normal mourn fulness. At that moment Castro put his face round the door, then entered altogether. Be sighed In a satisfied manner and had an air of having finished a laborious un dertaking. "We have arranged the confusion up above," he snld to Manuel-del-I'opolo; "you may go and see to the sailing. Hurry, it is growing late." Manuel biased silently, and stalked out Of the door as If he had an electric cloud round his head. Tomaa Custro turned toward tne. "You are betterT" he asked benevolently. Tou exerted yourself too much. l)ut still, If you liked " He picked up tho mando lin, and began negligently scratching tho strings. I noticed an alteration in htm; he had grown softer In the flesh In the past years: there were little threads of gray In the knotted curls of his beard. It was as If he bad lived well, on the whole. He bent tils head over the strings, plucked one, tightened a peg, plucked it ngnln, then set the Instrument on the table, and dropped onto the nutttreaa, "Will you have some rum?" he said. "You have grown broad and strong, like a bull. You made those men fly, sac re nom d'une pipe. One would have thought you were in earnest. Ah, wellj" He stretched himself at length on the mattress and closed his eyes. I looked nt him to discover traces of Irony. There weren't any. He was talking quietly; he even reproved me for having carried the pretense of resistance beyond a Joke. "You fought too much; you struck many men and hard. You will have made ene mies. The plcaros of this dirty little town are as conceited an pigs. You must take care or you will have a knife in your back." He lay with his hands across on his formation going; in here and there like the pieces of a puzzle mop. O'Brien had gone on to Havana in the ship from which f had escaped, to render an account of the plrstes that had been hung at Kingston; the Rlegos had been landed In boats at Rio Medio, of course. "That poor Don Carlos!" Castro moaned lamentably. "They had the barbarity to take him out in the night. In that raw fog. He coughed and coughed; It made me faint to hear him. He could not even speak to me his Tomas; It was pitiful. He could not speak when we got to the Casa." I could not really understand why I had been a second time kidnaped. Castro said that O'Brien had not been unwilling that I should reach Havana. It was Carlo I remembered, then, that Tomas cer tainly had resented my seeming to recog nize him. lie closed his eyes again. After a time he added: "Vaya. After all, It la foolishness to fear being compromised. You would never believe that his excellency Don Balthasar had led a riotous life to look at him with his silver head. It Is said he had three friars killed once In Seville, a very, very long time ago. It was dangerous In those days to come against our mother, tha church." He paused, and undid Ills shirt, laying bare an incredibly hairy chest; then slowly kicked off his shoes. "One stifles here," he Bald. "Ah, in the old days " Suddenly he turned to me and said, with "YOU WHJi BTAT HERB NOW UNTIL. I DIE, AND THEN AND THEN I UK KKLL BACK AMO.Nll THIS PILLOWS. stomach, which was round like a pudding. After a time he opened his eyes, and looked at the dancing white reflection of the wattr on the grimy celling. "To think of seeing you again, after all these years," he said. "I did not believe my ears when Don Carlos asked me to fe'.ch you like this. Who would have be lieved It? But, as they say," he added, philosophically, " 'the water flows to the tea and the little stones find their places.' " He paused to listen to the sounds that came from above. "That Manuel Is a fool," he sild, without rancor; "he Is mad with Jealousy because for this day I have com nrind here. But. all the same, they nre dangerous pigs, these slnves of the Senor O'Brien. I wish tho town were rid of them. One day there will be a riot a function with their Jealousies and mad ness." I sat and said nothing, and things fitted UssmseKes togethur, little patches of ln- that had ordered Tomas to take me out of the Breeze. He had come down in the raw morning, before the schooner had put out from behind the point, to Impress very elaborate directions upon Tomas Castro; Indeed, It was whilst talking to Tomas that he had burst a blood vessel. 'Tie said to me, 'Have a care now. Listen. He Is my dear friend, that Senor Junn. I love him as If he were my only brother. Bo very careful, Tomas Castro. Make It appear that he comes to us much against his will. I-et him be dragged on board by many men. You are to under stand. Tomas, that he is a youth of noble family, and that you are to be as careful of compromising htm as you are of the honor of Our Iady." Tomas Castro looked across at me. "You will bo uble to report well of me," he said; "I did my best. If yo.i nro com promised. It was you who did it by talk ing to me as if you knew me." WANT YOU TO PROTECT " an air of indescribable interest, as It ho were gloating over an obscene Idea: "So they would hang a gentleman Ilka you, if they caught you? What savages you English people are what savages. Like cannibals. You did well to make that comedy of resisting. Quel pays . . . What a people ... I dream of them still. . . . The eyes; the teeth. Ah, well, in an hour we shall be in Rio. I must sleep. CHAPTER VII. By 2 of the afternoon we were running Into the Inlet of IUo Medio. I had come on deck when Tomas Castro had started out of his doze. I wanted to see. We went round violently as I emerged, and, clinging to the side, I saw, In a whirl, tall, baked, brown hills dropping sheer down to a strip of flat land and belt of dark-green scrub at the water's edge; little pink squares of house-walls dropped here