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Page 139
"Oh, many, many times," said the girl, shudderingly.
"And at last they succeeded," added Madame, bitterly. "God! the black
villains! Let me not think of it."
She clenched her hands and closed her eyes entirely, but presently
resumed again:
"If they had killed me I should have been glad, but they only made of
me a cripple. M. de St�mer had been killed a few weeks before this. I
am sorry I forgot to mention it. I was a widow. And when after this
catastrophe I could be moved, I went to a little villa belonging to my
husband at Nice, to gain strength, and this child came with me, like a
ray of sunshine.
"Here, to wake the fire in my heart, came Juan, deserted, broken,
wounded in soul, but most of all in pride, in that evil pride which
belongs to his race, which is so different from the pride of France,
but for which all the same I could never hate him.
"Ysola de Valera had run away from his great house in Cuba. Yes! A
woman had dared to leave him, the man who had left so many women. To me
it was pathetic. I was sorry for him. He had been searching the world
for her. He loved this little golden-haired girl as he had never loved
me. But to me he came with his broken heart, and I"--her voice
trembled--"I took him back. He still cared for me, you understand. Ah!"
She laughed. "I am not a woman who is lightly forgotten. But the great
passion that burned in his Spanish soul was revenge.
"He was a broken man not only in mind, but in body. Let me tell you. In
that island which I have not named there is a horrible disease called
by the natives the Creeping Sickness. It is supposed to come from a
poisonous place named the Black Belt, and a part of this Black Belt is
near, too near, to the hacienda in which Juan sometimes lived."
Paul Harley started and glanced at me significantly.
"They think, those simple negroes, that it is witchcraft, Voodoo, the
work of the Obeah man. It is of two kinds, rapid and slow. Those who
suffer from the first kind just decline and decline and die in great
agony. Others recover, or seem to do so. It is, I suppose, a matter of
constitution. Juan had had this sickness and had recovered, or so the
doctors said, but, ah!"
She lay back, shaking her finger characteristically.
"In one year, in two, three, a swift pain comes, like a needle, you
understand? Perhaps in the foot, in the hand, in the arm. It is
exquisite, deathly, while it lasts, but it only lasts for a few
moments. It is agony. And then it goes, leaving nothing to show what
has caused it. But, my friends, it is a death warning!
"If it comes here"--she raised one delicate white hand--"you may have
five years to live; if in the foot, ten, or more. But"--she sank her
voice dramatically--"the nearer it is to the heart, the less are the
days that remain to you of life."
"You mean that it recurs?" asked Harley.
"Perhaps in a week, perhaps not for another year, it comes again, that
quick agony. This time in the shoulder, in the knee. It is the second
warning. Three times it may come, four times, but at last"--she laid
her hand upon her breast--"it comes here, in the heart, and all is
finished."
She paused as if exhausted, closing her eyes again, whilst we three who
listened looked at one another in an awestricken silence, until the
vibrant voice resumed:
"There is only one man in Europe who understands this thing, this
Creeping Sickness. He is a Frenchman who lives in Paris. To him Juan
had been, and he had told him, this clever man, 'If you are very quiet
and do not exert yourself, and only take as much exercise as is
necessary for your general health, you have one year to live--'"
"My God!" groaned Harley.
"Yes, such was the verdict. And there is no cure. The poor sufferer
must wait and wait, always wait, for that sudden pang, not knowing if
it will come in his heart and be the finish. Yes. This living death,
then, and revenge, were the things ruling Juan's life at the time of
which I tell you. He had traced Ysola de Valera to England. A chance
remark in a London hotel had told him that a Chinaman had been seen in
a Surrey village and of course had caused much silly chatter. He
enquired at once, and he found out that Colin Camber, the man who had
taken Ysola from him, was living with her at the Guest House, here, on
the hill. How shall I tell you the rest?"
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