“Your Excellency, it would be a thousand pities!”
“Hey?”
“There has not been a finer burning these two
years, they tell me. And that old blasphemer’s
beard, when they set a light to it! . . . I am
a poor Gallego, your Excellency, and at home get so
few chances of enjoyment. Also I have dropped
my whip, and it is trodden on, broken. In the
crowd at the Terreiro de Paco I may perchance borrow
another.”
Ruth alighted in a blaze of wrath.
“Wretched man,” she commanded, “climb
down!”
“Your Excellency—”
“Climb down! You shall go, as your betters
have gone, to feed your eyes with these abominations.
. . . Nay, how shall I scold you, who do what
your betters teach? But climb down. I will
drive the mules myself.”
“His Excellency will murder me when he hears
of it. But, indeed, was ever such a thing heard
of?” Nevertheless the man was plainly in two
minds.
“It is not for you to argue, but to obey my
orders.”
He descended, still protesting. She mounted
to his seat, and took the reins and whip.
“The brutes are spirited, your Excellency.
For the love of God have a care of them!”
For answer she flicked them with the whip—he
had lied about the broken whip—and left
him staring.
The streets were deserted. All Lisbon had trooped
to the auto-da-fe. If any saw and wondered at
the sight of a lady driving like a mere bolhero,
she heeded not. The mules trotted briskly, and
she kept them to it.
She had ceased to be amused, even scornfully.
As she drove up the slope of Buenos Ayres—the
favourite English suburb, where his villa stood overlooking
Tagus—a deep disgust possessed her.
It darkened the sunshine. It befouled, it tarnished,
the broad and noble mirror of water spread far below.
“Were all men beasts, then?”
DONNA MARIA.
They would dine at four o’clock. On Sundays
Sir Oliver chose to dine informally with a few favoured
guests; and these to-day would make nine, not counting
Mr. Langton, who might be reckoned one of the household.
By four o’clock all had arrived—the
British envoy, Mr. Castres, with his lady; Lord Charles
Douglas, about to leave Lisbon after a visit of pleasure;
Mrs. Hake, a sister of Governor Hardy of New York—she,
with an invalid husband and two children, occupied
a villa somewhat lower down the slope of Buenos Ayres;
white-haired old Colonel Arbuthnot, doyen of
the English residents; Mr. Hay, British Consul, and
Mr. Raymond, one of the chiefs of the English factory,
with their wives. . . . Ruth looked at the clock.
All were here save only their host, Sir Oliver.
Mr. Langton, with Lord Charles Douglas, had returned
from the auto-da-fe. Like his friend George
Selwyn—friend these many years by correspondence
only—Mr. Langton was a dilettante in executions
and like horrors, and had taken Lord Charles to the
show, to initiate him. He reported that they
had left Sir Oliver in a press of the crowd, themselves
hurrying away on foot. He would doubtless arrive
in a few minutes. Mr. Langton said nothing of
the executions.
