Hearts of Three 12

Hearts of Three 12

And what plan was being broached around the corner of the ell by her men

and Francis Morgan? Her mind strayed on, deaf to the suitor at her feet.

Francis! Ah—she almost sighed, and marveled, what of her self-known love

for Henry, why this stranger Gringo so enamored her heart. Was she a

wanton? Was it one man? Or another man? Or any man? No! No! She was not

fickle nor unfaithful. And yet?... Perhaps it was because Francis and

Henry were so much alike, and her poor stupid loving woman’s heart

failed properly to distinguish between them. And yet—while it had seemed

she would have followed Henry anywhere over the world, in any luck or

fortune, it seemed to her now that she would follow Francis even

farther. She did _love_ Henry, her heart solemnly proclaimed. But also

did she love Francis, and almost did she divine that Francis loved

her—the fervor of his lips on hers in his prison cell was inerasable;

and there was a difference in her love for the two men that confuted her

powers of reason and almost drove her to the shameful conclusion that

she, the latest and only woman of the house of Solano, was a wanton.

 

A severe pinch of her flesh against Henry’s ring, caused by the

impassioned grasp of Torres, brought her back to him, so that she could

hear the spate of his speech pouring on:

 

“You have been the delicious thorn in my side, the spiked rowel of the

spur forever prodding the sweetest and most poignant pangs of love into

my breast. I have dreamed of you ... and for you. And I have my own name

for you. Ever the one name I have had for you: the Queen of my Dreams.

And you will marry me, my Leoncia. We will forget this mad Gringo who is

as already dead. I shall be gentle, kind. I shall love you always. And

never shall any vision of him arise between us. For myself, I shall not

permit it. For you ... I shall love you so that it will be impossible

for the memory of him to arise between us and give you one moment’s

heart-hurt.”

 

Leoncia debated in a long pause that added fuel to Torres’ hopes. She

felt the need to temporise. If Henry were to be saved ... and had not

Torres offered his services? Not lightly could she turn him away when a

man’s life might depend upon him.

 

“Speak!—I am consuming!” Torres urged in a choking voice.

 

“Hush! Hush!” she said softly. “How can I listen to love from a live

man, when the man I loved is yet alive?”

 

_Loved!_ The past tense of it startled her. Likewise it startled Torres,

fanning his hopes to fairer flames. Almost was she his. She had said

_loved_. She no longer bore love for Henry. She _had_ loved him, but no

longer. And she, a maid and woman of delicacy and sensibility, could

not, of course, give name to her love for him while the other man still

lived. It was subtle of her. He prided himself on his own subtlety, and

he flattered himself that he had interpreted her veiled thought aright.

And ... well, he resolved, he would see to it that the man who was to

die at ten next morning should have neither reprieve nor rescue. The one

thing clear, if he were to win Leoncia quickly, was that Henry Morgan

should die quickly.

 

“We will speak of it no more ... now,” he said with chivalric

gentleness, as he gently pressed her hand, rose to his feet, and gazed

down on her.

 

She returned a soft pressure of thanks with her own hand ere she

released it and stood up.

 

“Come,” she said. “We will join the others. They are planning now, or

trying to find some plan, to save Henry Morgan.”

 

The conversation of the group ebbed away as they joined it, as if out of

half-suspicion of Torres.

 

“Have you hit upon anything yet?” Leoncia asked.

 

Old Enrico, straight and slender and graceful as any of his sons despite

his age, shook his head.

 

“I have a plan, if you will pardon me,” Torres began, but ceased at a

warning glance from Alesandro, the eldest son.

 

On the walk, below the piazza, had appeared two scarecrows of beggar

boys. Not more than ten years of age, by their size, they seemed much

older when judged by the shrewdness of their eyes and faces. Each wore a

single marvelous garment, so that between them it could be said they

shared a shirt and pants. But such a shirt! And such pants! The latter,

man-size, of ancient duck, were buttoned around the lad’s neck, the

waistband reefed with knotted twine so as not to slip down over his

shoulders. His arms were thrust through the holes where the side-pockets

had been. The legs of the pants had been hacked off with a knife to suit

his own diminutive length of limb. The tails of the man’s shirt on the

other boy dragged on the ground.

 

“Vamos!” Alesandro shouted fiercely at them to be gone.

 

But the boy in the pants gravely removed a stone which he had been

carrying on top of his bare head, exposing a letter which had been thus

carried. Alesandro leaned over, took the letter, and with a glance at

the inscription passed it to Leoncia, while the boys began whining for

money. Francis, smiling despite himself at the spectacle of them, tossed

them a few pieces of small silver, whereupon the shirt and the pants

toddled away down the path.

 

The letter was from Henry, and Leoncia scanned it hurriedly. It was not

precisely in farewell, for he wrote in the tenour of a man who never

expected to die save by some inconceivable accident. Nevertheless, on

the chance of such inconceivable thing becoming possible, Henry did

manage to say good-bye and to include a facetious recommendation to

Leoncia not to forget Francis, who was well worth remembering because he

was so much like himself, Henry.

 

Leoncia’s first impulse was to show the letter to the others, but the

portion about Francis with-strained her.

 

“It’s from Henry,” she said, tucking the note into her bosom. “There is

nothing of importance. He seems to have not the slightest doubt that he

will escape somehow.”

 

“We shall see that he does,” Francis declared positively.

 

With a grateful smile to him, and with one of interrogation to Torres,

Leoncia said:

 

“You were speaking of a plan, Senor Torres?”

 

Torres smiled, twisted his mustache, and struck an attitude of

importance.

 

“There is one way, the Gringo, Anglo-Saxon way, and it is simple,

straight to the point. That is just what it is, straight to the point.

We will go and take Henry out of jail in forthright, brutal and direct

Gringo fashion. It is the one thing they will not expect. Therefore, it

will succeed. There are enough unhung rascals on the beach with which to

storm the jail. Hire them, pay them well, but only partly in advance,

and the thing is accomplished.”

 

Leoncia nodded eager agreement. Old Enrico’s eyes flashed and his

nostrils distended as if already sniffing gunpowder. The young men were

taking fire from his example. And all looked to Francis for his opinion

or agreement. He shook his head slowly, and Leoncia uttered a sharp cry

of disappointment in him.

 

“That way is hopeless,” he said. “Why should all of you risk your necks

in a madcap attempt like that, doomed to failure from the start?” As he

talked, he strode across from Leoncia’s side to the railing in such way

as to be for a moment between Torres and the other men, and at the same

time managed a warning look to Enrico and his sons. “As for Henry, it

looks as if it were all up with him——”

 

“You mean you doubt me?” Torres bristled.

 

“Heavens, man,” Francis protested.

 

But Torres dashed on: “You mean that I am forbidden by you, a man I have

scarcely met, from the councils of the Solanos who are my oldest and

most honored friends.”

 

Old Enrico, who had not missed the rising wrath against Francis in

Leoncia’s face, succeeded in conveying a warning to her, ere, with a

courteous gesture, he hushed Torres and began to speak.

 

“There are no councils of the Solanos from which you are barred, Senor

Torres. You are indeed an old friend of the family. Your late father and

I were comrades, almost brothers. But that—and you will pardon an old

man’s judgment—does not prevent Senor Morgan from being right when he

says your plan is hopeless. To storm the jail is truly madness. Look at

the thickness of the walls. They could stand a siege of weeks. And yet,

and I confess it, almost was I tempted when you first broached the idea.

Now when I was a young man, fighting the Indians in the high

Cordilleras, there was a very case in point. Come, let us all be seated

and comfortable, and I will tell you the tale....”

 

But Torres, busy with many things, declined to wait, and with soothed

amicable feelings shook hands all around, briefly apologized to Francis,

and departed astride his silver-saddled and silver-bridled horse for San

Antonio. One of the things that busied him was the cable correspondence

maintained between him and Thomas Regan’s Wall Street office. Having

secret access to the Panamanian government wireless station at San

Antonio, he was thus able to relay messages to the cable station at Vera

Cruz. Not alone was his relationship with Regan proving lucrative, but

it was jibing in with his own personal plans concerning Leoncia and the

Morgans.

 

“What have you against Senor Torres, that you should reject his plan and

anger him?” Leoncia demanded of Francis.

 

“Nothing,” was the answer, “except that we do not need him, and that I’m

not exactly infatuated with him. He is a fool and would spoil any plan.

Look at the way he fell down on testifying at my trial. Maybe he can’t

be trusted. I don’t know. Anyway, what’s the good of trusting him when

we don’t need him? Now his plan is all right. We’ll go straight to the

jail and take Henry out, if all you are game for it. And we don’t need

to trust to a mob of unhung rascals and beach-sweepings. If the six men

of us can’t do it, we might as well quit.”