«It would not weary me,» exclaimed his Excellency, forgetting his dignity in his interest.
But Don Pedro waved aside the implied request for details. «Later! Later, perhaps, if you care to hear of it. It is not important. What is important on your Excellency's account is that I escaped. I was picked up by the San Tomas, which has brought me here, and so I am happily able to discharge my mission.» He held up the folded parchment. «I but mention it to explain how this has come to suffer by sea–water, though not to the extent of being illegible. It is a letter from his Majesty's Secretary of State informing you that our Sovereign, whom God preserve, has been graciously pleased to create you, in recognition of the services I have mentioned, a knight of the most noble order of Saint James of Compostella.»
Don Jayme went first white, then red, in his incredulous excitement. With trembling fingers he took the letter and unfolded it. It was certainly damaged by sea–water. Some words were scarcely legible. The ink in which his own surname had been written had run into a smear, as had that of his government of Porto Rico, and some other words here and there. But the amazing substance of the letter was indeed as Don Pedro announced, and the royal signature was unimpaired.
As Don Jayme raised his eyes at last from the document, Don Pedro, proffering the leather case, touched a spring in it. It flew open, and the Governor gazed upon rubies that glowed like live coals against their background of black velvet.
«And here,» said Don Pedro, «is the insignia; the cross of the most noble order in which you are invested.»
Don Jayme took the case gingerly as if it had been some holy thing, and gazed upon the smouldering cross. The friar came to stand beside him, murmuring congratulatory words. Any knighthood would have been an honourable, an unexpected reward for Don Jayme's services to the crown of Spain. But that of all orders this most exalted and coveted order of Saint James of Compostella should have been conferred upon him was something that almost defied belief. The Governor of Porto Rico was momentarily awed by the greatness of the thing that had befallen him.
And yet, when a few minutes later the room was entered by a little lady, young and delicately lovely. Don Jayme had already recovered his habitual poise of self–sufficiency.
The lady, beholding a stranger, an elegant, courtly stranger, who rose instantly upon her advent, paused in the doorway, hesitating, timid. She addressed Don Jayme.
«Pardon. I did not know you occupied.»
Don Jayme appealed, sneering, to the friar. «She did not know me occupied! I am the King's representative in Porto Rico, his Majesty's Governor of this island, and my wife does not know that I am occupied, conceives that I have leisure. It is unbelievable. But come in, Hernanda. Come in.» He grew more playful. «Acquaint yourself with the honours the King bestows upon his poor servant. This may help you to realize what his Majesty does me the justice to realize, although you may have failed to do so: that my occupations here are onerous.»
Timidly she advanced, obedient to his invitation. «What is it, Jayme?»
«What is it?» He seemed to mimic her. «It is merely this.» He displayed the order. «His Majesty invests me with the cross of Saint James of Compostella. That is all.»
She grew conscious that she was mocked. Her pale, delicate face flushed a little. But there was no accompanying sparkle of her great, dark, wistful eyes, to proclaim it a flush of pleasure. Rather, thought Don Pedro, she flushed from shame and resentment at being so contemptuously used before a stranger and at the boorishness of a husband who could so use her.
«I am glad, Jayme,» she said, in a gentle, weary voice. «I felicitate you. I am glad.»
«Ah! You are glad! Frey Alonso, you will observe that Dona Hernanda is glad.» Thus he sneered at her without even the poor grace of being witty. «This gentleman, by whose hand the order came, is a kinsman of yours, Hernanda.»
She turned aside, to look again at that elegant stranger. Her gaze was blank. Yet she hesitated to deny him. Kinship when claimed by gentlemen charged by kings with missions of investiture is not lightly to be denied in the presence of such a husband as Don Jayme. And, after all, hers was a considerable family, and must include many with whom she was not personally acquainted.
The stranger bowed until the curls of his periwig met across his face. «You will not remember me, Dona Hernanda. I am, nevertheless, your cousin, and you will have heard of me from our other cousin Rodrigo. I am Pedro de Queiroz.»
«You are Pedro?» She stared the harder. «Why, then …» She laughed a little. «Oh, but I remember Pedro. We played together as children, Pedro and I.»
Something in her tone seemed to deny him. But he confronted her unperturbed.
«That would be at Santarem,» said he.
«At Santarem it was.» His readiness appeared now to bewilder her. «But you were a fat, sturdy boy then, and your hair was golden.»
He laughed. «I have become lean in growing, and I favour a black periwig.»
«Which makes your eyes a startling blue. I do not remember that you had blue eyes.»
«God help us, ninny,» croaked her husband. «You never could remember anything.»
She turned to look at him, and for all that her lip quivered, her eyes steadily met his sneering glance. She seemed about to speak; checked herself, and then spoke at last, very quietly. «Oh, yes. There are some things a woman never forgets.»
«And on the subject of memory,» said Don Pedro, addressing the Governor with cold dignity, «I do not remember that there are any ninnies in our family.»
«Faith, then, you needed to come to Porto Rico to discover it,» his Excellency retorted with his loud, coarse laugh.
«Ah!» Don Pedro sighed. «That may not be the end of my discoveries.»
There was something in his tone which Don Jayme did not like. He threw back his big head, and frowned. «You mean?» he demanded.
Don Pedro was conscious of an appeal in the little lady's dark, liquid eyes. He yielded to it, laughed, and answered:
«I have yet to discover where your Excellency proposes to lodge me during the days in which I must inflict myself upon you. If I might now withdraw …»
The Governor swung to Dona Hernanda. «You hear? Your kinsman needs to remind us of our duty to a guest. It will not have occurred to you to make provision for him.»
«But I did not know … I was not told of his presence until I found him here.»
«Well, well. You know now. And we dine in half an hour.»
At dinner Don Jayme was in high spirits, which is to say that he was alternately pompous and boisterous, and occasionally filled the room with his loud, jarring laugh.
Don Pedro scarcely troubled to dissemble his dislike of him. His manner became more and more frigidly aloof, and he devoted his attention and addressed his conversation more and more exclusively to the despised wife.
«I have news for you,» he told her, when they had come to the dessert, «of our cousin Rodrigo.»
«Ah!» sneered her husband. «She'll welcome news of him. She ever had a particular regard for her cousin Rodrigo, and he for her.»
She flushed, keeping her troubled eyes lowered. Don Pedro came to the rescue, swiftly, easily. «Regard for one another is common among the members of our family. Every Queiroz owes a duty to every other, and is at all times ready to perform it.» He looked very straightly at Don Jayme as he spoke, as if inviting him to discover more in the words than they might seem to carry. «And that is at the root of what I am to tell you, Cousin Hernanda. As I have already informed his Excellency, the ship in which Don Rodrigo and I sailed from Spain together was set upon and sunk by that infamous pirate Captain Blood. We were both captured, but I was so fortunate as to make my escape.»