Amedeo, as the world knows, landed at Carthagena to be met by the news that Prim was dead. The man who had summoned him hither to assume the crown, he who alone in all Spain had the power and the will to maintain order in the riven kingdom, had himself been summoned to appear before a higher throne. "There will be no republic in Spain while I live," Prim had often said. And Prim was dead.
"Every dog has his day," a deputy sneeringly observed to the Marshall himself a few hours before he was shot, in response to Prim's plain-spoken intention of striking with a heavy hand all those who should manifest opposition to the Duke of Aosta.
So Amedeo of Spain rode into his capital one snowy day in January, 1871, carrying high his head and looking down with courageous, intelligent eyes upon the faces of the people who refused to cheer him, as upon a sea of hidden rocks through which he must needs steer his hazardous way without a pilot.
Before receiving the living he visited the dead man who may be assumed to have been honest in his intention, as he undoubtedly proved himself to be brave in action; the best man that Spain produced in her time of trouble.
Among the first to bow before the King were the two Sarrions, and as they returned into an anteroom they came face to face with Evasio Mon, waiting his turn there.
"Ah!" said Sarrion, who did not seem to see the hand that Mon had half extended, "I did not know that you were a courtier."
"I am not," replied Mon; "but I am here to see whether I am too old to learn."
He turned towards Marcos with his pleasant smile, but did not attempt the extended hand here.
"I shall take a lesson from Marcos," he said.
Marcos made no reply, but passed on. And Mon, turning on his heel, looked after him with a sudden misgiving, like one who hears the sound of a distant drum.
"Judging from the persons in his immediate vicinity, our friend has money in his pocket," said Sarrion, as they descended those palace stairs which had streamed with blood a few years earlier.
"Or promises in his mouth. Was that General Pacheco who turned away as we came?"
"Yes," answered Sarrion. "Why do you ask?"
"I have heard that he is to receive a command in the army of the North."
Sarrion made a grimace, uncomplimentary to that very smart soldier General Pacheco, and at the foot of the stairs he stopped to speak to a friend. He spoke in French and named the man by his baptismal name; for this was a Frenchman, named Deulin, a person of mystery, supposed to be in the diplomatic service in some indefinite position. With him was an Englishman, who greeted Marcos as a friend.
"What do you make of all this?" asked Sarrion, addressing himself to the Englishman, who, however, rather cleverly passed the question on to the older man with a slow, British gesture.
"I make of it--that they only want a little money to make Don Carlos king," said Deulin.
"What is Evasio Mon doing in Madrid?" asked Sarrion.
"Raising the money, or spending it," replied the Frenchman, with a shrug of the shoulders, as if it were no business of his.
They passed up-stairs together, but had not gone far when Marcos said the Englishman's name without raising his voice.
"Cartoner."
He turned, and Marcos ran up three steps to meet him.
"Who is the prelate with the face of a fox-terrier?" he asked.
"He represents the Vatican. Is he with Mon?"
Marcos nodded an affirmative, and, turning, descended the stairs.
"I had better get back to Pampeluna," he said to his father.
The train for the Northern frontier leaves Madrid in the evening, and at this time no man knew who might be the next to take a ticket for France. The Sarrions made their preparations to depart the same evening, and, arriving early, secured a compartment to themselves. Marcos, however, did not take his seat, but stood on the platform looking towards the gate through which the passengers must come.
"Are you looking for some one?" asked Sarrion.
"General Pacheco," was the reply; and then, after a pause, "Here he comes. He is attended by three aides-de-camp and a squadron of orderlies. He carries his head very high."
"But his feet are on the ground," commented Sarrion, who was rolling himself a cigarette. "Shall we invite him to come with us?"
"Yes."
General Pacheco was one of those soldiers of the fifties who owed their success to a handsome face. He wore a huge moustache, curling to his eyes, and had the air of an invincible conqueror--of hearts. He had dined. He was going to take up his new command in the North. He walked, as the French say, on air, and he certainly swaggered in his gait on that thin base. He was hardly surprised to see the Count Sarrion, one of the exclusives who had never accepted Queen Isabella's new military aristocracy, with his hat in one hand and the other extended towards him, on the platform awaiting his arrival.
"You will travel with us," said Sarrion. And the General accepted, looking round to see that his attendants were duly impressed.
"I find," he said, seating himself and accepting a cigarette from Sarrion, "that each new success in life brings me new friends."
"Making it necessary to abandon the old ones," suggested Sarrion.
"No, no," laughed the General, with a cackle, and a patronising hand upheld against the mere thought. "One only adds to the number as one goes on; just as one adds to a little purse against the change of fortune, eh?"
And he looked from one to the other still, brown face with a cunning twinkle. Sarrion was a man of the world. He knew that this expansiveness would not last. It would probably give way to melancholy or somnolence in the course of half an hour. These things are a matter of the digestion. And many vows of friendship are made by perfectly sober persons who have dined, with a sincerity which passes off next morning. The milk of human kindness should be allowed to stand overnight in order to prove its quality.
"Ah," said Sarrion, "you speak from a happy experience."
"No, no," protested the other, gravely. "It is a small thing--a mere bagatelle in the French Rentes--but one sees one's opportunities, one sees one's opportunities."
He made a gesture with the two fingers that held his cigarette, which seemed to be a warning to the Sarrions not to make any mistake as to the shrewdness of him who spoke to them.
"Speak for yourself," said Sarrion, with a laugh.
"I do," insisted the other, leaning forward. "I speak essentially for myself. One does not mind admitting it to a man like yourself. All the world knows that you are a Carlist at heart."
"Does it?"
"Yes--and you must take comfort. I think you are on the right road now."
"I hope we are."
"I am sure of it. Money. That is the only way. To go to the right people with money in both hands."
He sat back and looked at the Sarrions with his little, cunning eyes twinkling beneath his gold laced cap. The expansiveness would not last much longer. Sarrion's dark glance was diagnosing the man with a deadly skill.
"The thing," he said slowly, "is to strike while the iron is hot."
He spoke in the symbolic way of a people much given to proverbial wisdom and the dark uses of allegory. He might have meant much or nothing. As it happened, the Count de Sarrion meant nothing; for he knew nothing.
"That is what I say. Give me a couple of months, I want no more."
"No?" said Sarrion, looking at him with much admiration. "Is that so?"
"Two months--and the sum of money I named."
"Ah! In two months," reflected Sarrion. "Rome, you know, was not built in a day."
The General gave his cackling laugh.
"Aha! " he cried, "I see that you know all about it. You gave me my cue--the word Rome, eh? To see how much I know!"
And the great soldier-statesman leant back in his seat again, well pleased with himself.
"I understand," he said, "that it amounts to this; the sanction of the Vatican is required to the remittance of the usual novitiate in the case of a young person who is in a great hurry to take the veil; once that is obtained the money is set at liberty and all goes merrily. There is enough to--well, let us say--toconvincemy whole army corps, and my humble self. And the Vatican will, of course, consent. I fancy that is how it stands."
He tapped his pocket as if the golden "piecès de conviction" were already there, and closed his eye like any common person; like, for instance, his own father, who was an Andalusian innkeeper.
"I fancy that is how it is," said Sarrion, turning gravely to Marcos. "Is it not so?"
"That is how it is," replied Marcos.
The effect of the good dinner was already wearing off. The train had started, and General Pacheco found himself disinclined for further conversation. He begged leave to ease some of the tighter straps and hooks of his smart tunic, opening the collar of solid gold lace that encircled his thick neck. In a few minutes he was asleep beneath the speculative eye of Marcos, who sat in the far corner of the carriage.
The General was going to Saragossa, so they parted from him in the cold, early morning at Castèjon, where an icy wind swept over the plain, and the snow lay thick on the ground.
"It will be cold at Pampeluna!" muttered the General from within the hood of his military cloak. "I pity you! yes, good-bye; close the door."
The station was full of soldiers, and their high peaked caps were at every window of the trains. It was barely yet daylight when the Sarrions alighted at the fortified station in the plain below Pampeluna.
The city stands upon a hill which falls steeply on the northeast side to the bed of the river Arga, a green-coloured stream deep enough to give additional strength to the walls which tower above like a cliff. Pampeluna is rightly reckoned to be the strongest city in Europe. It is approached from the southwest by a table-land, across which run the high roads from Madrid and the French frontier.
The station lies in the plain across which the railway meanders like a stream. Both bridges across the Arga are commanded, as is the railway station, by the guns of the city. Every approach is covered by artillery.
The sun was rising as the Sarrions' carriage slowly climbed the incline and clanked across the double drawbridges into the city. In the Plaza de la Constitucion, the centre of the town, troops of hopeful dogs followed each other from dust heap to dust heap, but seemed to find little of succulence, whilst what they did find appeared to bring on a sudden and violent indisposition. Perro gazed at them sadly from the carriage window remembering perhaps his own dust heap days.
The Sarrions had no house in Pampeluna. Unlike the majority of the Navarrese nobles they lived in their country house which was only twenty miles away. They made use of the hotel in the corner of the Plaza de la Constitucion when business or war happened to call them to Pampeluna.
They went there now and took their morning coffee.
"Two months," said Sarrion, warming himself at the stove in their simply furnished sitting-room. "Two months, they have given that scoundrel Pacheco to make his preparations."
"Yes--"
"So that Juanita must make her choice at once."
"They go to vespers in the Cathedral," said Marcos. "It is dusk by that time. They cross the Calle de la Dormitaleria and go through the two patios into the cloisters and enter the Cathedral by the cloister door. If Juanita could forget something and go back for it, I could see her for a few minutes in the cloisters which are always deserted in winter."
"Yes," said Sarrion, "but how?"
"Sor Teresa must do it," said Marcos. "You must see her. They cannot prevent you from seeing your own sister."
"But will she do it?"
"Yes," answered Marcos without any hesitation at all.
"I shall try to see Juanita also," said Sarrion, throwing his cloak round his shoulders twice so that its bright lining was seen at the back, hanging from the left shoulder. "You stay here."
He went out into the cold air. Pampeluna lies fourteen hundred feet above the sea-level, and is subject to great falls of snow in its brief winter season.
Sarrion walked to the Calle de la Dormitaleria, a little street running parallel with the city walls, eastward from the Cathedral gates. There he learnt that Sor Teresa was out. The lay-sister feared that he could not see Juanita de Mogente. She was in class: it was against the rules. Sarrion insisted. The lay-sister went to make inquiries. It was not in her province. But she knew the rules. She did not return and in her place came Father Muro, the spiritual adviser of the school; Juanita's own confessor. He was a stout man whose face would have been pleasant had it followed the lines that Nature had laid down. But there was something amiss with Father Muro--the usual lack of naturalness in those who lead a life that is against Nature.
Father Muro was afraid that Sarrion could not see Juanita. It was not within his province, but he knew that it was against the rules. Then he remembered that he had seen a letter addressed to the Count de Sarrion. It was lying on the table at the refectory door, where letters intended for the post were usually placed. It was doubtless from Juanita. He would fetch it.
Sarrion took the letter and read it, with a pleasant smile on his face, while Father Muro watched him with those eyes that seemed to want something they could not have.
"Yes," said the Count at length, "it is from Juanita de Mogente."
He folded the paper and placed it in his pocket.
"Did you know the contents of this letter, my father?" he asked.
"No, my son. Why should I?"
"Why, indeed?"
And Sarrion passed out, while Father Muro held the door open rather obsequiously.
On returning to the hotel in the corner of the Plaza de la Constitution, Sarrion threw down on the table before Marcos the note that Father Muro had given him. He made no comment.
"My dear uncle," the letter ran, "I am writing to advise you of my decision to go into religion. I am prompted to communicate this to you without delay by the remembrance of your many kindnesses to me. You will, I know, agree with me that this step can only be for my happiness in this world and the next. Your grateful niece.--JUANITA DE MOGENTE."
Marcos read the letter carefully, and then seeking in his pocket, produced the note that Juanita had passed to him through the hole in the wall of the convent school at Saragossa. It seemed that he carried with him always the scrap of paper that she had hidden within her dress until the moment that she gave it to him.
He laid the two letters side by side and compared them.
"The writing is the writing of Juanita," he said; "but the words are not. They are spelt correctly!"
He folded the letters again, with his determined smile, and placed them in his pocket. Sarrion, smoking a cigarette by the stove, glanced at his son and knew that Juanita's fate was fixed. For good or ill, for happiness or misery, she was destined to marry Marcos de Sarrion if the whole church of Rome should rise up and curse his soul and hers for the deed.
Sarrion appeared to have no suggestions to make. He continued to smoke reflectively while he warmed himself at the stove. He was wise enough to perceive that his must now be the secondary part. To possess power and to resist the temptation to use it, is the task of kings. To quietly relinquish the tiller of a younger life is a lesson that gray hairs have to learn.
"I think," said Marcos at length, "that we must see Leon. He is her guardian. We will give him a last chance."
"Will you warn him?" inquired Sarrion.
"Yes," replied Marcos, rising. "He may be here in Pampeluna. I think it likely that he is. They are hard pressed. If they get the dispensation from Rome they will hurry events. They will try to rush Juanita into religion at once. And Leon's presence is indispensable. They are probably ready and only awaiting the permission of the Vatican. They are all here in Pampeluna, which is better than Saragossa for such work--better than any city in Spain. They probably have Leon waiting here to give his formal consent when required."
"Then let us go and find out," said Sarrion.
The Plaza de la Constitucion is the centre of the town, and beneath its colonnade are the offices of the countless diligences that connect the smaller towns of Navarre with the capital, which continued to run even in time of war to such places as Irun, Jaca, and even Estella, where the Carlist cause is openly espoused. Marcos made the round of the diligence offices. He had, it seemed, a hundred friends among the thick-set muleteers in breeches, stockings, and spotless shirt, who looked at him with keen, dust-laden eyes from beneath the shade of their great berets. The drivers of the diligences, which were now arriving from the mountain villages, paused in their work of unloading their vehicles to give him the latest news.
They were soft spoken persons with a repressed manner, which characterises both men and women of their ancient race, and they spoke to him in Basque. Some freed their hands from the folds of the long blanket, which each wore according to his fancy, to shake hands with him; others nodded curtly. Men from the valley of Ebro muttered "Buenas"--the curt salutation of Aragon the taciturn.
Marcos seemed to know them by their baptismal names. He even knew their horses by name also, and asked after each, while Perro, affable alike with rich and poor, exchanged the time of day with traveled dogs, all lean and dusty from the road, who limped on sore feet and probably told him of the snow while they lay in the sun and licked their paws. Like his master, he was not proud, but took a wide view of life, so that all varieties of it came within his field of vision.
Then master and dog took a walk down the Calle del Pozo Blanco, where the saddle and harness-makers congregate; where muleteers must come to buy those gay saddle-bags which so soon lose their bright colour in the glaring sun; where theguardias civilesstep in to buy their paste and pipe-clay; where the great man's groom may chat with the teamster from the mountain while both are waiting on the saddler's needle.
Finally Marcos passed through the wide Calle de San Ignacio to the drawbridges across the double fosse, where the rope-makers are always at work, walking backwards with an ever decreasing bundle of hemp at their waists and one eye cocked upwards towards the roadway so that they know all who come and go better even than the sentry at the gate. For the sentries are changed three or four times a day, while the rope-maker goes on forever.
Just beyond the second line of fortifications is a halting-place by a low wall where the country women (whom one may meet riding in the plain--dignified, cloaked and hooded figures, startlingly suggestive of a sacred picture) on mule or donkey, stop to descend from their perch between the saddle-bags or panniers. It is a sort ofal frescocloakroom where these ladies repair the ravages of wind or storm, where they assemble in the evening to pack their purchases on their beasts of burden, and finally climb to the top of all themselves. For it is not etiquette to ride in or out of the gates upon one's wares; and a breach of this unwritten law would immediately arouse the suspicion of the courteous toll-officer, who fingers delicately with a tobacco-stained hand the bundles and baskets submitted to his inspection.
Here also Marcos had friends, and was able to tell the latest news from Cuba, where some had husband, son or lover; a so-called volunteer to put down the hopeless rebellion, attracted to a miserable death, by the forty-pound bounty paid by Government. There were old women who chaffed him, and young ones with fine-cut classic features and crinkled hair, who lay in wait for a glance from his grave eyes.
"It is a pity there are not more like you, Señor Conde," said one old peasant; "for it is you that keeps the men from fighting among themselves and makes them tend the sheep or take in the crops. Carlist or Royalist, the land comes before either, say I."
"For it is the land that feeds the children," added another, who carried a pair of small espradrillas in her apron pocket.
Marcos went back to his father with such information as he had been able to gather.
"Leon is here," he said. "He is in Retreat at the monastery of the Redemptionists, which stands half-empty on the road to Villaba. Sor Teresa and Juanita are both well and in the school in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. Mon has been here for some weeks, but went to Madrid four days ago. It is an open secret that Pacheco will go over to the Carlists with his whole army corps for cash down--but he will not take a promise. The Carlists think that their opportunity has come."
"And so do I," said Sarrion. "The Duke of Aosta is the son of Victor Emmanuel, we must remember that. And no son of the man who overthrew the Pope can hope to be tolerated by the clerical party here. The new king will be assassinated, Marcos. I give him six months."
"Will you come this afternoon to the old monastery on the Villaba road and see Leon?" asked Marcos.
"Oh, yes," laughed his father. "I shall enjoy it." It was the hour of the siesta when they quitted the town on horseback by the Puerta de Rochapea which gives exit to the city on the northern side. It had been sunny since morning, and the snow had melted from the roads, but the hills across the plain were still white and great drifts were piled against the ramparts, forming a natural buttress from the summit of the steep river bank almost to the deep embrasures of the wall.
Marcos turned in his saddle and looked up at these as they rode down the slope. Sarrion saw the action and glanced at Marcos and then at the towering walls. But he made no comment and asked no questions.
There are two old monasteries on the Villaba road; huge buildings within a high wall, each owning a chapel which stands apart from the dwelling-house. It is a known fact that the Carlists have never threatened these buildings which stand far outside the town. It is also a fact that the range of them has been carefully measured by the artillery officers, and the great guns on the city walls were at this time trained on the isolated buildings to batter them to the ground at the first sign of treachery.
Marcos pulled the bell-rope swinging in the wind outside the great door of the monastery, while Sarrion tied the horses to a post. The door was opened by a stout monk whose face fell when he perceived two laymen in riding costume. Humbler persons, as a rule, rang this bell.
"The Marquis de Mogente is here?" said Marcos, and the monk spread out his hands in a gesture of denial.
"Whoever is here," he said, "is in Retreat. One does not disturb the devout."
He made a movement to close the door, but Marcos put his thickly booted foot in the interstice. Then he placed his shoulder against the weather-worn door and pushed it open, sending the monk staggering back. Sarrion followed and was in time to place himself between the monk and the bell towards which the devotee was running.
"No, my friend," he said, "we will not ring the bell."
"You have no business here," said the holy man, looking from one to the other with sullen eyes.
"So far as that goes, no more have you," said Marcos. "There are no monasteries in Spain now. Sit down on that bench and keep quiet."
He turned and glanced at his father.
"Yes," said Sarrion, with his grim smile, "I will watch him."
"Where shall I find Leon de Mogente?" said Marcos to the monk. "I do not wish to disturb other persons."
The monk reflected for a moment.
"It is the third door on the right," he said at length, nodding his shaven head towards a long passage seen through the open door.
Marcos went in, his spurred heels clanking loudly in the half-empty house. He knocked at the door of the third cell on the right; for in his way he was a devout person and wished to disturb no man at his prayers. The door was opened by Leon himself, who started back when he saw who had knocked. Marcos went into the room which was small and bare and whitewashed, and closed the door behind him. A few religious emblems were on the wall above the narrow bed. A couple of books lay on the table. One was open. It was a very old edition of à Kempis. Leon de Mogente's religion was of the sort that felt itself able to learn more from an old edition than a new one. There are many in these days of cheap imitation of the mediaeval who feel the same.
Leon sat down on the plain wooden bench and laid his hand on the open book. He looked with weak eyes at Marcos and waited for him to speak. Marcos obliged him at once.
"I have come to see you about Juanita," he said. "Have you given your consent to her taking the veil?"
Leon reflected. He had the air of a man who having been carefully taught a part, loses his place at the first cue.
"What business is it of yours?" he asked, rather hesitatingly at length.
"None."
Leon made a hopeless gesture of the hand and looked at his book with a face of distress and embarrassment. Marcos was sorry for him. He was strong, and it is the strong who are quickest to detect pathos.
"Will you answer me?" he asked.
And Leon shook his head.
"I have come here to warn you," said Marcos, not unkindly. "I know that Juanita has inherited a fortune from her father. I know that the Carlist cause is falling for want of money. I know that the Jesuits will get the money if they can. Because Don Carlos is their last chance in their last stronghold in Europe. They will get Juanita's money if they can--and they can only do it by forcing Juanita into religion. And I have come to warn you that I shall prevent them."
Leon looked at Marcos and gulped something down in his throat. He was not afraid of Marcos, but he was in terror of some one or of something else. Marcos studied the white face, the shrinking, hunted eyes, with the quiet persistence learnt from watching Nature.
"Are you a Jesuit?" he asked bluntly.
But Leon only drew in a gasping breath and made no answer.
Then Marcos went out and closed the door behind him.
Marcos and Sarrion went back to Pampeluna in the dusk of the winter evening, each meditating over that which they had seen and heard. Leon had become a Jesuit. And Juanita was worse--infinitely worse than alone in the world.
Marcos needed no telling of all that lay behind Leon's scared silence; for his father had brought him up in an atmosphere of plain language and wide views of mankind. Sarnon himself had seen Navarre ruined, its men sacrificed, its women made miserable by a war which had lasted intermittently for thirty years. He had seen the simple Basques, who had no means of verifying that which their priests told them, fighting desperately and continuously for a lie. The Carlist war has always been the war of ignorance and deceit against enlightenment and the advance of thought. It is needless to say upon which side the cassock has ranged itself.
The Basques were promised their liberty; they should be allowed to live as they had always lived, practically a republic, if they only succeeded in forcing an absolute monarchy on the rest of Spain. The Jesuits made this promise. The society found itself in the position that no promise must be allowed to stick in the throat.
Sarrion, like all who knew their strange story, was ready enough to recognise the fact that the Jesuit body must be divided into two parts of head and heart. The heart has done the best work that missionaries have yet accomplished. The head has ruined half Europe.
It was the political Jesuit who had earned Sarrion's deadly hatred.
The political Jesuit has, moreover, a record in history which has only in part been made manifest.
William the Silent was assassinated by an emissary of the Jesuits. Maurice of Orange, his son, almost met the same fate, and the would-be murderer confessed. Three Jesuits were hanged for attempting the life of Elizabeth, Queen of England; and later, another, Parry, was drawn and quartered. Two years later another was executed for participating in an attempt on the Queen's life; and at later periods four more met a similar just fate. Ravaillac, the assassin of Henry IV of France was a Jesuit.
The Jesuits were concerned in the Gunpowder Plot of England and two of the fathers were among the executed.
In Paraguay the Jesuits instigated the natives to rebel against Spain and Portugal; and the holy fathers, taking the field in person, proved themselves excellent leaders.
Pope Clement XIV was poisoned by the Jesuits. He had signed a Bull to suppress the order, which Bull was to "be forever and to all eternity valid." The result of it was "acqua tofanaof Perugia," a slow and torturing poison.
Down to our own times we have had the hand of the Society of Jesus gently urging the Fenians. O'Farrell, who in 1868 attempted the life of the Duke of Edinburgh in Australia, was a Jesuit sent out to the care of the society in Australia.
The great days of Jesuitism are gone but the society still lives. In England and in other Protestant countries they continue to exist under different names. The "Adorers of Jesus," the Redemptionists, the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, the Brothers of the Congregation of the Holy Virgin, the Fathers of the Faith, the Order of St. Vincent de Paul--are Jesuits. How far they belong to the heart and not to the head, is a detail only known to themselves. Those who have followed the contemporary history of France may draw their own conclusions from the trials of the case of the Assumptionist Fathers.
"Los mismos perros, con nuevos cuellos"--said Sarrion to any who sought to convince him that Spain owed her downfall to other causes, and that the Jesuits were no longer what they had been. "The same dogs with new collars." And he held that they were not a progressive but a retrogressive society; that their statutes still held good.
"It is allowable to take an oath without intending to keep it when one has good grounds for so acting."
"In the case of one unjustifiably making an attack on your honour, when you cannot otherwise defend yourself than by impeaching the integrity of the person insulting you, it is quite allowable to do so."
"In order to cut short calumny most quickly, one may cause the death of the calumniator, but as secretly as possible to avoid observation."
"It is absolutely allowable to kill a man whenever the general welfare or proper security demands it."
If any man has committed a crime, St. Liguori and other Jesuit writers hold that he may swear to a civil authority that he is innocent of it provided that he has already confessed it to his spiritual father and received absolution. It is, they say, no longer on his conscience.
"Pray," said the founder of the society, "as if everything depended on prayer, and act as if everything depended on action."
"Of what are you thinking?" Sarrion asked suddenly, when they had ridden almost to the city gates in silence.
"I was wondering what Juanita will say, some day, when she knows and understands everything."
"I was not wondering what Juanita will say," confessed Sarrion with a laugh, "but what Evasio Mon will do."
For Sarrion persisted in taking an optimistic view of Juanita and that which must supervene when she had grown into understanding and knowledge.
Marcos went back to the hotel. He had many arrangements to make. Sarrion rode to the large house in the Calle de la Dormitaleria where the school of the Sisters of the True Faith is located to this day. In an hour he joined Marcos in the little sitting-room looking on to the Plaza de la Constitucion.
"All is going well," he said, "I have seen Dolores. They go across to the Cathedral for vespers at five o'clock. It will be almost dark. You have only to wait in the inner patio, adjoining the cloisters. They pass through that way. Juanita will be sent back for something that is forgotten. And then is your time. You can have ten minutes. It is not long."
"It will do," said Marcos rather gloomily. He was not afraid of the whole Society of Jesuits, of the king, nor yet of Don Carlos. But he feared Juanita.
"We need not inquire who will send her back. But she will come. She will not expect to see you. Remember that and do not frighten her."
So Marcos set out at dusk to await Juanita. The entrance to the two patios that give entrance to the Cathedral cloister is immediately opposite to the door of the school of the Sisters of the True Faith. A lamp swings over the doorway in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. There is no lamp in the first patio but another hangs in the vaulted arch leading from one patio to the other. In the cloister itself, which is the most beautiful in Spain, there are two dim lamps.
Marcos sat down on the wooden bench which runs right round the quadrangle of the inner patio. He had not long to wait. The girls passed through whispering and laughing among themselves. Two nuns led the way. Sor Teresa followed the last two girls, looking straight in front of her between the wings of her great cap. One of the last pair was Juanita. She walked listlessly, Marcos thought. He rose and went towards the archway leading from the inner patio to the cloisters. The moon was rising and cast a white light down upon the delicate stone-work of the cloister windows.
Almost immediately Juanita came hurrying back and instinctively drew her mantilla closer at the sight of his shadowy form. Then she recognised him.
"Oh, Marcos," she whispered. "At last. I thought you had forgotten all about me."
"Quick," he answered. "This way. We have only ten minutes."
He took her hand and hurried her back into the cloisters. He led her to the right, to the corner of the quadrangle farthest removed from the Cathedral where by daylight few pass, and at night none.
"What do you mean?" she asked, "Only ten minutes."
"It has all been arranged," he answered. "I met you here on purpose. You have only ten minutes in which to settle."
"To settle what?" she asked with a laugh.
"Your whole life."
"But one cannot settle one's life in an Ave Maria," she said, which means in the twinkling of an eye. And she looked at him by the dim light and laughed again. For she was young and they had always made holiday together, and laughed.
"Did you mean that letter which you wrote to my father about going into religion?"
"Oh, I don't know. I suppose so. I meant it at the time, Marcos. It seems to be the only thing to do. Everything seems to point to it. Every sermon I hear. Everything I read. Everything any one ever says to me. But now--" she turned and looked at him, "--now that I see you again I cannot think how I did it."
"Am I so very worldly?"
"Of course you are. And yet I suppose you have some chance of salvation. It seems to me that you have--a little chance, I give you. But it seems hard on other people. Oh, Marcos, I hate the idea of it. And yet they are so kind to me--all except Sor Teresa. If anybody could make me hate it, she would. She is so unkind and gives me all the punishments she can."
Marcos smiled slowly and with great pity, of which men have a better understanding than any woman. He thought he knew why Sor Teresa was cruel.
"They are all so kind. And I know they are good. And they take it for granted that the religious life is the only possible one. One cannot help becoming convinced even against one's will."
She turned to him suddenly and laid her two hands on his arm.
"Oh, Marcos," she whispered, with a sort of sob of apprehension. "Can you not do something for me?"
"Yes," he answered. "That is why I am here. But it must be done at once."
"Why?" she asked. And she was grave enough now.
"Because they have sent to Rome for a dispensation of your novitiate. They wish to hurry you into religion at once."
"Yes," she said. "I know. But why?"
"Because they want your money."
"But I have none, or very little. They have told me so."
"That is a lie," said Marcos, bluntly.
"Oh, but you must not say that," she whispered, with a sort of horror. "Father Muro told me so. He represents Heaven on earth. We are told he does."
"He does it badly," said Marcos, quietly.
Juanita reflected for a moment. Then suddenly she stamped her foot on the pavement worn by the feet of generations of holy men.
"I will not go into religion," she said. "I will not. I always feel that there is something wrong in all they say. And with you and Uncle Ramon it is different. I know at once that what you say is quite simple and plain and honest; that you have no other meaning in what you say but that which the words convey. Marcos--you and Uncle Ramon must take me away from here. I cannot get away. I am hemmed in on every side."
"We can take you away," answered Marcos slowly, "if you like."
She turned and looked at him, her attention caught by some tense note in his voice.
"What do you mean?" she asked. "Your face is so odd and white. What do you mean, Marcos?"
"We can take you away, but you must marry me."
She gave a short laugh and stopped suddenly.
"Oh--you must not joke," she said. "You must not laugh. It is my whole life, remember."
"I am not laughing. It is no joke," said Marcos steadily.
"What...?"
For a moment they sat in silence. The low chanting of vespers came to their ears through the curtained doors of the Cathedral.
"Listen to them," said Juanita suddenly. "They are half asleep. They are not thinking of what they are singing. They are taking snuff surreptitiously behind their hands to keep themselves awake. And it is we, poor wretched schoolgirls and nuns who have to keep the saints in a good humour by attending to every word and being most preposterously devout whether we feel inclined to be or not. No, I will not go into religion. That is certain. Marcos, I would rather marry you than that--if it is necessary."
"It is necessary."
"But they can have all the money; every real,'" suggested Juanita hopefully.
"No; they have tried that way. They cannot do it in these times. The only way they can get the money is for you to go of your own free will into religion and to bequeath of your own free will all your worldly possessions to the Order you join."
"Yes, I know," said Juanita. Her spirits had risen every minute. She was gay again now. His presence seemed to restore to her the happy gift of touching life lightly which is of the heart. And the heart knows no age, neither is it subject to the tyranny of years.
"Well, I will marry you if there is no help for it. But..."
"But..." echoed Marcos.
"But of course it is only a sort of game, is it not?"
"Yes," he answered. "A sort of game."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
They were sitting on the steps of one of the chapels. Juanita swung round and peered through the railings as if to see what Saint had his habitation there.
"It is only St. Bartholomew," she said, airily. "But he will do. You have promised, remember that. And St. Bartholomew has heard you. It is only to save me from being a nun that we are being married. And I am to be just the same as I am now. We can go fishing, I mean, as we used to, and climb the mountains and have jokes just as we always do in the holidays."
"Yes," said Marcos.
She held out her hand as she had seen the peasants in Torre Garda when they had struck a bargain and would seal it irrevocably.
"Touch it," she said with a gay laugh, as she had heard them say.
And they shook hands in the dark cloisters.
"There is a window at the end of the passage in which is your room," said Marcos. "It looks out on to a small courtyard and is quite near the ground. Come to that window to-morrow night at ten o'clock and I shall be there."
"What for?" she asked.
"To be married," he answered. "My father and I will arrange it. We shall both be there. If you do not come to-morrow night I shall come again the next night. You will be back in your room by half-past eleven."
"Married?" asked Juanita.
"Yes."
He had risen and was standing in front of her.
"And now you must go back to the Cathedral."
"But Sor Teresa's breviary?"
"She has it in her pocket," said Marcos.
There were great clouds in the sky when the moon rose the next night and one of them threw Pampeluna into dark shadows when Marcos took his place in the little passage between the School in the Calle de la Dormitaleria and the next building. The window at the end of the passage where Juanita and Sor Teresa and some of the more favoured of the girls had their rooms, was about six feet above the ground.
Marcos took his post immediately underneath and stretching his arm up took hold of one of the two bars, and waited. Juanita looking from the door of her room could thus see his clenched hand and must know that he was waiting. The clocks of the city struck ten. Immediately afterwards the watchmen began their cry. The city was already asleep.
It was very cold. Marcos changed his hand from time to time and breathed on his fingers. He carried a cloak for Juanita. The striking of the quarter found him still waiting beneath the window. But, soon after, Marcos' heart gave a leap to his throat at the touch of cold fingers on his wrist. It was Juanita. He threw the cloak down and placing his heel on the sill of a lower window near the ground he raised himself to the level of the bars.
"Oh, Marcos!" whispered Juanita in his ear, through the open window.
He edged his shoulder in between the two bars which were fixed perpendicularly, and being strongly built he only found room to introduce his two thumbs within that which pressed against his chest. He slowly straightened his arms and the iron gave an audible creak. It was a hundred years old, all rust-worn and attenuated.
"There," he said, "you can get through that."
"Yes," she answered. She was shivering and yet half laughing.
"Listen," she whispered, drawing him towards her. "Sor Teresa's door is open. You can hear her snoring. Listen!"
She gave a half hysterical laugh.
"Quick," said Marcos--dropping to the ground.
Juanita turned sideways and pushed her head and shoulders through the bars. She leant down towards him holding out her arms and her thick plait of hair struck him across the eyes. A moment later he had lifted her to the ground.
"Quick," he said again, breathlessly. He threw the cloak round her and drew the hood forward over her head. Then he took her hand and they ran together down the narrow passage into the Calle de la Domitaleria. She ran as quickly as he did with her long, schoolgirl legs, unhampered by a woman's length of skirt. At the corner Perro, who had been keeping watch there, joined them and trotted by their side.
"What cloak is this?" she asked. "It smells of tobacco."
"It is my old military cloak."
"And this is my wedding dress!" she said, with a breathless laugh. "And Perro is my bridesmaid."
They turned sharply to the left and in a moment stood on the deserted ramparts close under the shadow of the Episcopal Palace. Below them was darkness. To the right, beneath them, the white falls of the river gleamed dimly above the bridge, and the roar of it came to their ears like the roar of the sea.
Far across the plain, the Pyrenees rose, range behind range, a white wall in the moonlight. At their feet the walls of the ramparts, bastion below bastion, broken and crenelated, a triumph of mediaeval fortification, faded into the shadow where the river ran.
"There is a snow-drift in this corner," whispered Marcos. "It is piled up against the rampart by the north wind. I will drop you over the wall on to it and then follow you. You remember how to hold to my hand?"
"Yes," she answered, very quick and alert. There was good blood in her veins, which was astir now, in the presence of danger. "Yes--as we used to do it in the mountains--my hand round your wrist and your fingers round mine."
They were standing on the wall now. She knelt down and looked over; then she turned, still on her knees, and clasped her right hand round his wrist while he held hers in his strong grip. She leant forward and without hesitation swung out, suspended by one arm, into the darkness. He stooped, then knelt, and finally lay face downwards on the wall, lowering her all the while.
"Go!" he whispered. And she dropped lightly on to the snow-slope beaten by the wind into an icy buttress against the wall. A moment later he dropped beside her.
"My father is at the bridge," he said, as they scrambled down to the narrow path that runs along the river bank beneath the walls. "He is waiting for us there with a carriage and a priest."
Juanita stopped short.
"Oh, I wish I had not come!" she exclaimed.
"You can go back," said Marcos slowly; "it is not too late. You can still go back if you want to."
But Juanita only laughed at him.
"And know for the rest of my life that I am a miserable coward. And it is of cowards that nuns are made; no, thank you. I will carry it through now. Come along. Come and get married."
She gave a laugh as she led the way. When they reached the road they were in the full moonlight, and for the first time could see each other.
"What is the matter?" said Juanita suddenly. "Your face looks white; there is something I do not understand in it."
"Nothing," answered Marcos. "Nothing. We must be quick."
"You are sure you are keeping nothing back from me?" she asked, glancing shrewdly at him as she walked by his side.
"Nothing," he answered, for the first time, and very conscientiously telling her an untruth. For he was keeping back the crux of the whole affair which he thought she was too young to be told or to understand.
The carriage was waiting on the high road just across the old Roman bridge. Sarrion came forward in the moonlight to meet them. Juanita ran towards him, kissed him and clung to his arm with a little movement of affection.
"I am so glad to see you," she said. "It feels safer. They almost made me a nun, you know. And that horrid old Sor Teresa--oh, I beg your pardon! I forgot she was your sister."
"She is hardly my sister," answered Sarrion with a cynical laugh. "It is against the rules you know to permit oneself any family affection when one is in religion."
"You mustn't blame her for that," said Juanita. "One never knows. You cannot tell why she went into religion. Perhaps she never meant to. You do not understand."
"Oh, yes I do," answered Sarrion bitterly.
They were hurrying towards the carriage and a man waiting at the open door took a step forward and raised his hat, showing in the moonlight a high bald forehead and a clean shaven face. He was slight and neat.
"This is an old school friend of mine," said Sarrion by way of introduction. "He is a bishop," he added.
And Juanita knelt on the road while he laid his hand on her hair with a smile half amused and half pathetic. He looked twenty years younger than Sarrion, and laying aside his sacerdotal manner as suddenly as he had assumed it on Juanita's instinctive initiation, he helped her into the carriage with a grave and ceremonious courtesy.
"This is your own carriage," she said when they were all seated.
"Yes--from Torre Garda," answered Sarrion. "And it is Pietro who is driving. So you are among friends."
"And dear old Perro running at the side," exclaimed Juanita, jumping up and putting her head out of the window to encourage Perro with a greeting. Her mantilla flying in the wind blew across the bishop's face which that youthful-looking dignitary endured with patience.
"And there is a hot-water tin for our feet. I feel it through my slippers; for my feet are wet with the snow. How delightful!"
And Juanita stooped down to warm her hands.
"You have thought of everything--you and Marcos," she said. "You are so kind to me. I am sure I am very grateful ... to every one."
She turned towards the bishop, kindly including him in this expression of thanks; which she could not do more definitely because she did not know his name. It was obvious that she was not a bit afraid of him seeing that he had no vestments with him.
"At one time, on the ramparts, I was sorry I had come," she explained in a friendly way to him, "but now I am not. Of course it is all very well for me. It is great fun. But for you it is different; on such a cold night. I do not know why everybody takes so much trouble about me."
"Half of Spain is taking trouble about you, my child," was the answer.
"Ah! that is about my money. That is quite different. But Marcos, you know, and Uncle Ramon are the only people who take any trouble about me, for myself you understand."
"Yes, I understand," answered the great man humbly, as if he were trying to, but was not quite sure of success.
Marcos sat silently in his corner of the carriage. Indeed Juanita exercised the prerogative of her sex and led the conversation, gaily and easily. But when the carriage stopped beneath some trees by the roadside she suddenly lapsed into silence too.
She stood on the road in the bright moonlight and looked about her. She had thrown back the hood of Marcos' military cloak and now set her mantilla in order. Which was all the preparation this light-hearted bride made for the supreme moment. And perhaps she never knew all that she had missed.
"I see no church and no houses," said Juanita to Marcos. "Where are we?"
"The chapel is above us in the darkness," replied Marcos. And he led the way up a winding path.
The little chapel stood on a sort of table-land looking out over the plain that lay to the south of it. In front of it were twelve pines planted in a row at irregular intervals. The shadow of each tree in succession fell upon a low stone cross set on the ground before the door at each successive hour of the twelve; a fantasy of some holy man long dead.
The chapel door stood open and just within it a priest in his short white surplice awaited their arrival. Juanita recognised the sunburnt old cura of Torre Garda.
But he only had time to bow rather formally to her; for a bishop was behind.
"I have only lighted one candle," he said to Marcos. "If we make an illumination they can see it from Pampeluna."
The bishop followed the old priest into the sacristy where the one candle gave a flickering light. There they could be heard whispering together. Sarrion, Marcos and Juanita stood near the door. The moonlight gleamed through the windows and a certain amount of reflected light found its way through the open doorway.
Suddenly Juanita gave a start and clutched at Marcos' arm.
"Look," she said, pointing to the right.
A kneeling figure was there with something that gleamed dully at the shoulders.
"Yes," explained Marcos. "It is a friend of mine, an officer of the garrison who has ridden over. We require two witnesses, you know."
"He is saying his own prayers," said Juanita, looking at him.
"He has not much opportunity," explained Marcos. "He is in command of an outpost at the outlet of the valley of the Wolf."
As they looked at him he rose and came towards them, his spurs clanking and his great sword swinging against theprie-dieuchairs of the devout. He bowed formally to Juanita, and stood, upright and stiff, looking at Marcos.
The old cura came from the sacristy and lighted two candles on the altar. Then he turned with the taper in his hand and beckoned to Marcos and Juanita to come forward to the rails where two stools had been placed in readiness. The cura went back to the sacristy and returned, followed by the bishop in his vestments.
So Juanita de Mogente was married in a little mountain chapel by the light of two candles and a waning moon, while Sarrion and the officer in his dusty uniform stood like sentinels behind them, and the bishop recited the office by heart because he could not see to read. He was a political bishop and no great divine, but he knew his business, and got through it quickly.
He splashed down his historic name with a great flourish of the quill pen in the register and on the certificate which he handed with a bow to Juanita.
"What shall I do with it?" she asked.
"Give it to Marcos," was the answer.
And Marcos put the paper in his pocket.
They passed out of the chapel and stood on the little terrace in the moonlight amid the shadows of the twelve pine trees while the bishop disrobed in the sacristy.
"What are those lights?" asked Juanita, breaking the silence before it grew irksome.
"That is Pampeluna," replied Marcos.
"And the light in the mountains?" she asked, pointing to the north.
"That is a Carlist watch-fire, Senorita," answered the officer briskly, and no one seemed to notice his slip of the tongue except Sarrion, who glanced at him and then decided not to remind him that the title no longer applied to Juanita.
In a few moments the bishop joined them, and they all made their way down the winding path. The bishop and Sarrion were to go by the midnight train to Saragossa, while the carnage and horses were housed for the night at the inn near the station, a mile from the gates; for this was a time of war, and Pampeluna was a fenced city from nightfall till morning.
Marcos and Juanita reached the Calle de la Dormitaleria in safety, however, and Juanita gave a little sigh of fatigue as they hurried down the narrow alley.
"To-morrow," she said, "I shall think this has all been a dream."
"So shall I," said Marcos gravely.
He lifted her into the window, and she stood listening for a moment while she took from her finger the wedding ring she had worn for half an hour and gave it back to him.
"It is of no use to me," she said; "I cannot wear it at school."
She laughed, and held up one finger to command his attention.
"Listen!" she whispered. "Sor Teresa is still snoring."
She watched him bend the bars back again to their proper place.
"By the way," she asked him. "What was the name of the chapel where we were married--I should like to know?"
Marcos hesitated a moment before replying.
"It is called Our Lady of the Shadows."