He dragged himself up and tried to get nearer to Berlyng. And I helped him. They were close alongside each other. Berlyng was lying on his back, staring up at the blue patches between the pine trees.
Noon turned on his left elbow and began whispering into the smoke-grimed ear.
“Berlyng,” I heard him say, “I was a blackguard. I am sorry, old man. I played it very low down. It was a dirty trick. It was my money—and her people were anxious for her to marry a rich man. I worked it through her people. I wanted her so badly that I forgot I—was supposed—to be a—gentleman. I found out—that it was you—she cared for. But I couldn't make up my mind to give her up. I kept her—to her word. And now it's all up with me—but you'll pull through and it will all—come right. Give her my—love—old chap. You can now—because I'm—done. I'm glad they brought you in—because I've been able—to tell you—that it is you she cares for. You—Berlyng, old chap, who used to be a chum of mine. She cares for you—God! you're in luck! I don't know whether she's told you—but she told me—and I was—a d—d blackguard.”
His jaw suddenly dropped, and he rolled forward with his face against Berlyng's shoulder.
Berlyng was dead when they brought him in. He had heard nothing. Or perhaps he had heard and understood—everything.
FOR JUANITA'S SAKE
Cartoner, of the Foreign Office, who is still biding his time, is not tired of Spain yet—and it must be remembered that Cartoner knows the Peninsula. He began to know it twenty years ago, and his knowledge is worthy of the name, inasmuch as it moves with the times. Some day there will be a war in Spain, and we shall fight either for or against the Don, which exercise Englishmen have already enjoyed more than once. Cartoner hopes that it may come in his time, when, as he himself puts it, he will be “there or thereabouts.” Had not a clever man his opportunity when the Russian war broke out, and he alone of educated Britons knew the Crimea? That clever man had a queer temper, as we all know, and so lost his opportunity; but, if he gets it, Cartoner will take his chance coolly and steadily enough. In the mean time he is, if one may again borrow his own terse expression, “by no means nowhere,” for in the Foreign Office those who know Spain are a small handful; and those who, like Cartoner, can cross the Pyrenees and submerge themselves unheeded in the quiet, sleepy life of Andalusia, are to be numbered on two fingers, and no more. When a question of Spain or of, say, Cuba, arises, a bell is rung in the high places of the Foreign Office, and a messenger in livery is despatched for Cartoner, who, as likely as not, will be discovered reading El Imparcial in his room. It is always pleasant to be able to ring a bell and summon a man who knows the difference between Andalusia and Catalonia—and can without a moment's hesitation say where Cuba is and to what Power it belongs, such matters not always being quite clear to the comprehension of a Cabinet Minister who has been brought up to the exclusive knowledge of the Law, or the manufacture of some article of daily domestic consumption.
While possessing his knowledge in patience, Cartoner naturally takes a mean advantage of those in high places who have it not, nor yet the shadow of it. About once in six months he says that he thinks he ought to go to Spain, and raps out a few technicalities relating to the politics of the Peninsula. A couple of days later he sets off for the land of sun and sleep with what he calls his Spanish kit in a portmanteau. This he purchased in the “Sierpe” for forty pesetas at a ready-made tailor's, where it was labelled “Fantasia.” It is merely a tweed suit, but, wearing it, Cartoner is safe from the reproach that doggeth the step of the British tourist abroad.
It was during one of these expeditions that Cartoner, in his unobtrusive way, found himself in Toledo, where, the guide-books tell us, the traveller will obtain no fit accommodation. It was evening, and the company who patronized the Cafe of the New Gate were mostly assembled at small tables in the garden of that house of entertainment. The moon was rising over the lower lands across the Tagus, behind the gate which gives its name to this cafe. It is very rightly called the New Gate. Did not Wemba build it in the sixth century, as he has cheerfully written upon its topmost stone?