第61章

``Let me be!'' she moaned.``Don't touch me; let me die.My God, what have I to live for now?'' She shook off Hope's supporting arm, and stood before them, all her former courage gone, trembling and shivering in agony.``I do not care what they do to me!'' she cried.She tore her lace mantilla from her shoulders and threw it on the floor.``I shall not leave this place.He is dead.Why should I go? He is dead.They have murdered him; he is dead.''

``She is fainting,'' said Hope.Her voice was strained and hard.

To her brother she seemed to have grown suddenly much older, and he looked to her to tell him what to do.

``Take hold of her,'' she said.``She will fall.'' The woman sank back into the arms of the men, trembling and moaning feebly.

``Now carry her to the carriage,'' said Hope.``She has fainted;it is better; she does not know what has happened.''

Clay, still bearing the body in his arms, pushed open the first door that stood ajar before him with his foot.It opened into the great banqueting hall of the palace, but he could not choose.

He had to consider now the safety of the living, whose lives were still in jeopardy.

The long table in the centre of the hall was laid with places for many people, for it had been prepared for the President and the President's guests, who were to have joined with him in celebrating the successful conclusion of the review.From outside the light of the sun, which was just sinking behind the mountains, shone dimly upon the silver on the board, on the glass and napery, and the massive gilt centre-pieces filled with great clusters of fresh flowers.It looked as though the servants had but just left the room.Even the candles had been lit in readiness, and as their flames wavered and smoked in the evening breeze they cast uncertain shadows on the walls and showed the stern faces of the soldier presidents frowning down on the crowded table from their gilded frames.

There was a great leather lounge stretching along one side of the hall, and Clay moved toward this quickly and laid his burden down.He was conscious that Hope was still following him.He straightened the limbs of the body and folded the arms across the breast and pressed his hand for an instant on the cold hands of his friend, and then whispering something between his lips, turned and walked hurriedly away.

Hope confronted him in the doorway.She was sobbing silently.

``Must we leave him,'' she pleaded, ``must we leave him--like this?''

From the garden there came the sound of hammers ringing on the iron hinges, and a great crash of noises as the gate fell back from its fastenings, and the mob rushed over the obstacles upon which it had fallen.It seemed as if their yells of exultation and anger must reach even the ears of the dead man.

``They are calling Mendoza,'' Clay whispered, ``he must be with them.Come, we will have to run for our lives now.''

But before he could guess what Hope was about to do, or could prevent her, she had slipped past him and picked up Stuart's sword that had fallen from his wrist to the floor, and laid it on the soldier's body, and closed his hands upon its hilt.She glanced quickly about her as though looking for something, and then with a sob of relief ran to the table, and sweeping it of an armful of its flowers, stepped swiftly back again to the lounge and heaped them upon it.

``Come, for God's sake, come!'' Clay called to her in a whisper from the door.

Hope stood for an instant staring at the young Englishman as the candle-light flickered over his white face, and then, dropping on her knees, she pushed back the curly hair from about the boy's forehead and kissed him.Then, without turning to look again, she placed her hand in Clay's and he ran with her, dragging her behind him down the length of the hall, just as the mob entered it on the floor below them and filled the palace with their shouts of triumph.

As the sun sank lower its light fell more dimly on the lonely figure in the vast diningDhall, and as the gloom deepened there, the candles burned with greater brilliancy, and the faces of the portraits shone more clearly.

They seemed to be staring down less sternly now upon the white mortal face of the brother-in-arms who had just joined them.

One who had known him among his own people would have seen in the attitude and in the profile of the English soldier a likeness to his ancestors of the Crusades who lay carved in stone in the village church, with their faces turned to the sky, their faithful hounds waiting at their feet, and their hands pressed upward in prayer.

And when, a moment later, the half-crazed mob of men and boys swept into the great room, with Mendoza at their head, something of the pathos of the young Englishman's death in his foreign place of exile must have touched them, for they stopped appalled and startled, and pressed back upon their fellows, with eager whispers.The Spanish-American General strode boldly forward, but his eyes lowered before the calm, white face, and either because the lighted candles and the flowers awoke in him some memory of the great Church that had nursed him, or because the jagged holes in the soldier's tunic appealed to what was bravest in him, he crossed himself quickly, and then raising his hands slowly to his visor, lifted his hat and pointed with it to the door.And the mob, without once looking back at the rich treasure of silver on the table, pushed out before him, stepping softly, as though they had intruded on a shrine.