Englishmen are justly proud of their birthright. The less they travel, moreover, the prouder they are, and the stronger is their conviction that England leads the world in thought and art and action.
They are quite unaware, for instance, that no country in the world is behind England (unless it be Scotland) in a small matter that affects very materially one-third of a human span of life, namely beds. In any town of France, Germany or Holland, the curious need not seek long for the mattress-maker. He is usually to be found in some open space at the corner of a market-place or beneath an arcade near the Maine exercising his health-giving trade in the open air. He lives, and lives bountifully, by unmaking, picking over and re-making the mattresses of the people. Good housewives, moreover, stand near him with their knitting to see that he does it well and puts back within the cover all the wool that he took out. In these backward countries the domestic mattress is remade once a year if not oftener. In our great land there is a considerable vagueness as to the period allowed to a mattress to form itself into lumps and to accumulate dust or germs. Moreover, there are thousands of exemplary housekeepers who throw up the eye of horror to their whitewashed ceiling at the thought of a foreign person's personal habits, who do not know what is inside their mattress and never think of looking to see from year's end to year's end.
In Spain, a country rarely visited by those persons who pride themselves upon being particular, the mattress-maker is a much more necessary factor in domestic life than is the sweep or the plumber in northern lands. No palace is too royal for him, no cottage is too humble to employ him.
He is, moreover, the only man allowed inside a nunnery. Which is the reason why he finds himself brought into prominence now. He is usually a thin, lithe man, somewhat of the figure of those northerners who supply the bull-ring with Banderilléros. He arrives in the early morning with a sheathe knife at his waist, a packet of cigarettes in his jacket pocket and two light sticks under his arm. All he asks is a courtyard and the sunshine that Heaven gives him.
In a moment he deftly cuts the stitches of the mattress and lays bare the wool which he never touches with his fingers. The longer stick in his right hand describes great circles in the air and descends with the whistle of a sword upon the wool of which it picks up a small handful. Then the shorter stick comes into play, picks the wool from the longer, throws it into the air, beats it this way and that, tosses it and catches it until every fibre is clear, when the fluffy mass is deftly cast aside. All the while, through the beating of the wool, the two sticks beaten against each other play a distinct air, and each mattress-maker has his own, handed down from his forefathers, ending with a whole chromatic scale as the shorter stick swoops up the length of the longer to sweep away the lingering wool. Thus the whole mattress is transferred from a sodden heap to a high and fluffy mountain of carded wool, all baked by the heat of the sun.
The man has a hundred attitudes, full of grace. He works with a skill which is a conscious pleasure; a pleasure unknown to those who have never had opportunity of acquiring a manual craft or appreciating the wondrous power that God has put into human limbs. He has complete control over his two thin sticks, can pick up with them a single strand of wool, or half a mattress. He can throw aside a pin that lurks in a ball of wool, or kill a fly that settles on his work, without staining the snowy mass. And all the while, from the moment that the mattress is open till the heap is complete, the two sticks never cease playing their thin and woody air so that any within hearing may know that the "colchonero" is at work.
When the mattress case is empty he pauses to wipe his brow (for he must needs work in the sun) and smoke a cigarette in the shade. It is then that he gossips.
In a Southern land such a worker as this must always have an audience, and the children hail with delight the coming of the mattress-maker. At the Convent School of the Sisters of the True Faith his services were required once a fortnight; for there were many beds; but his coming was none the less exciting for its frequency. He was the only man allowed inside the door. Father Muro was, it seemed, not counted as a man. And in truth a priest is often found to possess many qualities which are essentially small and feminine.
The mattress-maker of Pampeluna was a thin man with a ropy neck, and keen black eyes that flashed hither and thither through the mist of wool and dust in which he worked. He was considered so essentially a domestic and harmless person that he was permitted to go where he listed in the house and high-walled garden. For nuns have a profound distrust of man as a mass and a confiding faith in the few individuals with whom they have to deal.
The girls were allowed to watch the colchonero at his work, more especially the elder girls such as Juanita de Mogente and her friend Milagros of the red-gold hair. Juanita watched him so closely one spring afternoon that the keen black eyes kept returning to her face at each round of the long whistling stick. The other girls grew tired of the sight and moved away to another part of the garden where the sun was warmer and the violets already in bloom; but Juanita lingered.
She did not know that this was one of Marcos' friends--that in the summer this colchonero took the road with his packet of cigarettes and two sticks and wandered from village to village in the mountains beating the mattresses of the people and seeing the wondrous works of God as these are only seen by such as live all day and sleep all night beneath the open sky.
Quite suddenly the polished sticks ceased playing loudly and dropped their tone to pianissimo, so that if Juanita were to speak she could be heard.
"Hombre," she said, "do you know Marcos de Sarrion?"
"I know the chapel of Our Lady of the Shadows," he answered, glancing at her through a mist of wool.
"Will you give him a letter?"
"Fold it small and throw it in the wool," he said, and immediately the sticks beat loudly again.
Juanita's hand was already in her pocket seeking her purse.
"No, no," he said; "I am too much caballero to take money from a lady."
She walked away, dropping as she passed the uncarded heap, a folded paper which was lost amid the fluff. The sticks flew this way and that, and the twisted note shot up into the air with a bunch of wool which fell across the two sticks and was presently cast aside upon the carded heap. And peeping eyes from the barred windows of the convent school saw nothing.
Marcos and his father had returned to Saragossa. They were people of influence in that city, and Saragossa, strange to say, had a desire to maintain law and order within its walls. It was unlike Barcelona, which is at all times republican and frankly turbulent. Its other neighbour, Pampeluna, remains to this day clerical and mysterious. It is the city of the lost causes; Carlism and the Church. The Sarrions were not looked upon with a kindly eye within the walls of the Northern fortress and it is much too small a town for any to pass unobserved in its streets.
There was work to do in Saragossa. In Pampeluna there were only suspicions to arouse. Juanita was in Sor Teresa's care and could scarcely come to harm, holding in her hand as she did a strong card to be played on emergency.
All Spain seemed to be pausing breathlessly. The murder of Prim had shaken the land like an earthquake. The king had already made enemies. He had no enthusiasm. His new subjects would have preferred a few mistakes to this cautious pause. They were a people vaguely craving for liberty before they had cast off the habit of servitude.
No Latin race will ever evolve a great republic; for it must be ruled. But Spain was already talking of democracy and the new king had scarcely seated himself on the throne.
"We can do nothing," said Sarrion, "but try to keep order in our own small corner of this bear-garden."
So he remained at Saragossa and threw open his great house there, while Marcos passed to and fro into Navarre up the Valley of the Wolf to Torre Garda.
Where Evasio Mon might be, no man knew. Paris had fallen. The Commune was rife. France was wallowing in the deepest degradation. And in Bayonne the Carlist plotters schemed without let or hindrance.
"So long as he is away we need not be uneasy about Juanita," said Marcos. "He cannot return to Saragossa without my hearing of it."
And one evening a casual teamster from the North, whose great two-wheeled cart, as high as a house and as long as a locomotive, stood in the dusty road outside the Posada de los Reyes, dropped in, cigarette in mouth, to the Palacio Sarrion. In Spain, a messenger delivers neither message nor letter to a servant. A survival of mediaeval habits permits the humblest to seek the presence of the great at any time of day.
The Sarrions had just finished dinner and still sat in the vast dining-room, the walls of which glittered with arms and loomed darkly with great portraits of the Spanish school of painting.
The teamster was not abashed. It was a time of war, and war is a great leveler of social scales. He had brought his load through a disturbed country. He was a Guipuzcoan--as good as any man.
"It was about the Señor Mon," he said. "You wished to hear of him. He returned to Pampeluna two days ago."
The teamster thanked their Excellencies, but he could not accept their hospitality because he had ordered his supper at his hotel. It was only at the Posada de los Reyes in all Saragossa that one procured the real cuisine of Guipuzcoa. Yes, he would take a glass of wine.
And he took it with a fine wave of the arm, signifying that he drank to the health of his host.
"Evasio Mon will not leave us long idle," said Sarrion, when the man had gone, and he had hardly spoken when the servant ushered in a second visitor, a man also of the road, who handed to Marcos a crumpled and dirty envelope. He had nothing to say about it, so bowed and withdrew. He was a man of the newer stamp, for he was a railway worker, having that which is considered a better manner. He knew his place, and that knowledge had affected his manhood.
The letter he gave to Marcos bore no address. It was sealed, however, in red wax, which had the impress of Nature's seal, a man's thumb--unique and not to be counterfeited.
From the envelope Marcos took a twisted paper, not innocent of carded wool.
"We are going back to Saragossa," Juanita wrote. "I have refused to go into religion, but they say it is too late; that I cannot draw back now. Is this true?"
Marcos passed the note across to his father.
"I wish this was Barcelona," he said, with a sudden gleam in his grave eyes.
"Why?"
"Because then we could pull the school down about their ears and take Juanita away."
Sarrion smiled.
"Or get shot mysteriously from a window while attempting it," he said. "No, we fight with finer weapons than that. Mon has got his dispensation from Rome ... a few hours too late."
He handed back the note, and they sat in silence for a long time in the huge, dimly-lighted room. Success in life rests upon one small gift--the secret of the entry into another man's mind to discover what is passing there. The greatest general the world has known owed his success, by his own admission, to his power of guessing correctly what the enemy would do next. Many can guess, but few guess right.
"She has not dated her letter," said Sarrion, at length.
"No, but it was written on Thursday. That is the day that the colchonero goes to the Calle de la Dormitaleria."
He drew a strand of wool from the envelope and showed it to Sarrion.
"And the day that Mon returned to Pampeluna. He will be prompt to act. He always has been. That is what makes him different from other men. Prompt and restless."
Sarrion glanced across the table, as he spoke, at the face of his son, who was also a prompt man, but withal restful, as if possessing a reserve upon which to draw in emergency. For the restless and the uneasy are those who have all their forces in the field.
"Do not sit up for me," said Marcos, rising. He stood and thoughtfully emptied his glass. "I shall change my clothes," he said, "and go out. There will be plenty of Navarrese at the Posada de los Reyes. The nightdiligenciaswill be in before daylight. If there is any news of importance I will wake you when I come in."
It was a dark night, and the wind roared down the bed of the Ebro. For the spring was at hand with its wild march "solano" and hard, blue skies. There was no moon. But Marcos had good eyes, and those whom he sought were men who, after a long siesta, traveled or worked during half the night.
The dust was astir on the Paseo del Ebro, where it lies four inches deep on the broad space in front of the Posada de los Reyes where the carts stand. There were carts here now with dim, old-fashioned lanterns, and long teams of mules waiting patiently to be relieved of their massive collars.
The first man he met told him that Evasio Mon must have arrived in Saragossa at sunset, for he had passed him on the road, going at a good pace on horseback.
From another he heard the rumour that the Carlists had torn up the line between Pampeluna and Castéjon.
"Go to the station," this informant added. "They will tell you there, because you are a rich man. To me they will tell nothing."
At the station he learnt that this rumour was true; and one who was in the telegraph service gave him to understand that the Carlists had driven the outpost back from the mouth of the Valley of the Wolf, which was now cut off.
"He thinks I am at Torre Garda," reflected Marcos, as he returned to the city, fighting the wind on the bridge.
Chance favoured him, for a man with tired horses stopped his carriage to inquire if that were the Count Marcos de Sarrion. He had brought Juanita to Saragossa in his carriage, not with Sor Teresa, but with the Mother Superior of the school and two other pupils. He had been dismissed at the Plaza de la Constitucion, and the ladies had taken another carriage. He had not heard the address given to the driver.
By daylight Marcos returned to the Palacio Sarrion without having discovered the driver of the second carriage or the whereabouts of Juanita in Saragossa. But he had learnt that a carriage had been ordered by telegraph from a station on the Pampeluna line to be at Alagon at four o'clock in the morning. He learnt also that telegraphic communication between Pampeluna and Saragossa was interrupted.
The Carlists again.
At dawn the next morning, Marcos and Sarrion rode out of the city towards Alagón by the great high road many inches deep in dust which has always been the main artery of the capital of Aragon.
The pace was leisurely; for the carriage they were going to meet had been timed to leave Alagón fifteen miles away at four o'clock. There was but one road. They could scarcely miss it.
It was seven o'clock when they halted at a roadside inn. Sarrion quitted the saddle and went indoors to order coffee while Marcos sat on his tall black horse scanning the road in front of him. The valley of the Ebro is flat here, with bare, brown hills rising on either side like a gigantic mud-fence. Strings of carts were making their way towards Saragossa. Far away, Marcos could perceive a recurrent break in the dusty line. A cart or carriage traveling at a greater than the ordinary market pace was making its laborious way past the heavier traffic. It came at length within clearer sight; a carriage all white with dust and a pair of skinny, Aragonese horses such as may be hired on the road.
The driver seemed to recognise Marcos, for he smiled and raised his hand to his hat as he drew up at the inn, a recognised halting-place before the last stage of the journey.
Marcos caught sight of a white cap inside the carriage. He leant down on his horse's neck and perceived Sor Teresa, who had not seen him looking out of the carriage window towards the inn. He rode round to the other door and dropped out of the saddle. Then he turned the handle and opened the door. But Sor Teresa had no intention of descending. She leant forward to say as much and recognised her nephew.
"You!" she exclaimed. And her pale face flushed suddenly. She had been a nun for many years and was no doubt a conscientious one, but she had never yet learnt to remove all her love from earth to fix it on heaven.
"Yes."
"How did you know that I should be here?"
"I guessed it," answered Marcos, who was always practical. "You will like some coffee. It is ordered. Come in and warm yourself while the horses rest."
He led the way towards the inn.
"What did you say?" he asked, turning on the threshold; for he had heard her mutter something.
"I said, 'Thank God'!"
"What for?"
"For your brains, my dear," she answered. "And your strong heart."
Sarrion was making up the fire when they entered the room--lithe and young in his riding costume--and he turned, smiling, to meet her. She kissed him gravely. There was always something unexplained between these two, something to be said which made them both silent.
"There is the coffee," said Marcos, "on the table. We have no time to spare."
"Marcos means," explained Sarrion significantly, "that we have no time to waste."
"I think he is right," said Sor Teresa.
"Then if that is the case, let us at least speak plainly," said Sarrion, "with a due regard," he allowed, with a shrug of the shoulder, "to your vows and your position, and all that. We must not embroil you with your confessor; nor Juanita with hers."
"You need not think of that so far as Juanita is concerned," said Sor Teresa. "It is I who have chosen her confessor."
"Where is she?" asked Marcos.
"She is here, in Saragossa!"
"Why?" asked the man of few words.
"I don't know."
"Where is she in Saragossa?"
"I don't know. I have not seen her for a fortnight. I only learnt by accident yesterday afternoon that she had been brought to Saragossa with some other girls who have been postulants for six months and are about to become novices."
"But Juanita is not a postulant," said Sarrion, with a laugh.
"She may have been told to consider herself one."
"But no one has a right to do that," said Sarrion pleasantly.
"No."
"And even if she were a novice she could draw back."
"There are some Orders," replied Sor Teresa, slowly stirring her coffee, "which make it a matter of pride never to lose a novice."
"Excuse my pertinacity," said Sarrion. "I know that you prefer generalities to anything of a personal nature, but does Juanita wish to go into religion?"
"As much ..." She paused.
"Or as little," suggested Marcos, who was looking out of the window.
"As many who have entered that life." Sor Teresa completed the sentence without noticing Marcos' interruption.
"And these periods of probation," said Sarrion, reverting to those generalities which form the language of the cloister. "May they be dispensed with?"
"Anything can be dispensed with--by a dispensation," was the reply.
Sarrion laughed, and with an easy tact changed the subject which could scarcely be a pleasant one between a professed nun and two men known all over Spain as leaders in that party which was erroneously called Anti-Clerical, because it held that the Church should not have the dominant voice in politics.
"Have you seen our friend, Evasio Mon, lately?" he asked.
"Yes--he is on the road behind me."
"Behind you? I understood that he left Pampeluna yesterday for Saragossa," said Sarrion.
"Yes--but I heard at Alagón that he was delayed on the road at the Castejon side of Alagón--an accident to his carriage--a broken wheel."
"Ah!" said Sarrion sympathetically. He glanced at Marcos who was looking out of the window with a thoughtful smile.
"You yourself have had a hurried journey from Pampeluna," said Sarrion to his sister. "I hear the railway line is broken by the Carlists."
"The damage is being repaired," replied Sor Teresa. "My journey was not a pleasant one, but that is of no importance since I have arrived."
"Why did you come?" asked Marcos, bluntly. He was a plain-dealer in thought and word. If Sor Teresa should embroil herself with her confessor, as Sarrion had gracefully put it, by answering his questions, that was her affair.
"I came to prevent, if I could, a great mistake."
"You mean that Juanita is quite unfitted for the life into which, for the sake of his money, she is being forced or tricked."
"Force has failed," replied Sor Teresa. "Juanita has spirit. She laughed in the face of force and refused absolutely."
"And?" muttered Sarrion.
"One may presume that subtler means were used," answered the nun.
"You mean trickery," suggested Marcos. "You mean that her own words were twisted into another meaning; that she was committed or convicted out of her own lips; that she was brought to Saragossa by trickery, and that by trickery she will be dragged unwittingly into religion--you need not shake your head. I am saying nothing against the Church. I am a good Catholic. It is a question of politics. And in politics you must fight with the weapon that the adversary selects. We are only politicians ... my dear aunt."
"Is that all?" said Sor Teresa, looking at him with her deep eyes which had seen the world before they saw heaven. Things seen leave their trace behind the eyes.
Marcos made no answer, but turned away and looked out of the window again.
"It is a question of mutual accommodation," put in Sarrion in his lighter voice. "Sometimes the Church makes use of politics. And at another time it is politics making use of the Church. And each sullies the other on each occasion. We shall not let Juanita go into religion. The Church may want her and may think that it is for her happiness, but we also have our opinion on that point; we also ..."
He broke off with a laugh and threw out his hands in a gesture of deprecation; for Sor Teresa had placed her two hands over that part of her cap which concealed her ears.
"I can hear nothing," she said. "I can hear nothing."
She removed her hands and sat sipping her coffee in silence. Marcos was standing near the window. He could see the white road stretched out across the plain for miles.
"What did you intend to do on your arrival in Saragossa if you had not met us?" he asked.
"I should have gone to the Casa Sarrion to warn your father or yourself that Juanita had been taken from my control and that I did not know where she was."
"And then?" inquired Marcos.
"And then I should have gone to Torrero," she answered with a smile at his persistence; "where I intend to go now. Then I shall learn at what hour and in which chapel the ceremony is to take place to-day."
"The ceremony in which Juanita has been ordered to take part as a spectator only?"
Sor Toresa nodded her head.
"It cannot well take place without you?"
"No," she answered. "Neither can it take place without Evasio Mon. One of the novices is his niece, and, where possible, the near relations are necessarily present."
"Yes--I know," said Marcos. He had apparently studied the subject somewhat carefully. "And Evasio Mon is delayed on the road, which gives us a little more time to mature our plans."
Sor Teresa said nothing, but glanced towards Marcos who was watching the road.
"You need not be anxious, Dolores," said Sarrion, cheerfully. "Between politicians these matters settle themselves quietly enough in Spain."
"I ceased to be anxious," replied Sor Teresa, "from the moment that I saw Marcos in the inn yard."
It was Marcos who spoke next, after a short silence.
"Your horses are ready, if you are rested," he said. "We shall return to Saragossa by a shorter route."
"And I again assure you," added Sor Teresa's brother, "that there is no need for anxiety. We shall arrange this matter quite quietly with Evasio Mon. We shall take Juanita away from your school to-day. Our cousin Peligros is already at the Casa Sarrion waiting her arrival. Marcos has arranged these matters."
He made a gesture of the hand, presumably symbolic of Marcos' plans, for it was short and sharp.
"There will be nothing for you to do," said Marcos from the window. "Waste no time. I see a carriage some miles away."
So Sor Teresa went on her journey. Her dealings with men had been confined to members of that sex who went about their purpose in an indirect and roundabout way, speaking in generalities, attentive to insignificant detail, possessing that smaller sense of proportion which is a feminine failing and which must always make a tangled jumble of those public affairs in which women and priests may play a part. She had come into actual touch in this little room of an obscure inn with a force which seemed to walk calmly on its way over the petty tyranny that ruled her daily life, which seemed to fear no man, neither God as represented by man, but shaped for itself a Deity, large-minded and manly; Who considered the broad inner purpose rather than petty detail of outward observance.
The Sarrions returned to their gloomy house on the Paseo del Ebro and there awaited the information which Sor Teresa alone could give them. They had not waited long before the driver of her carriage, who had seemed to recognise Marcos on the road from Alagón, brought a note:
"It is at number five, Calle de la Merced, but they will await, E. M."
"And the other carriage that is on the road?" Marcos asked the man. "The carriage which brings the caballero--has it arrived in Saragossa?"
"Not yet," answered the driver. "I have heard from one who passed them on the road that they had a second mishap just after leaving the inn of The Two Trees, where their Excellencies took coffee--a little mishap this one, which will only delay them an hour or less. He has no luck, that caballero."
The man looked quite gravely at Marcos, who returned the glance as solemnly. For they were as brothers, these two, sons of that same mother, Nature, with whom they loved to deal, fighting her strong winds, her heat, her cold, her dust and rivers, reading her thousand and one secrets of the clouds, of night and dawn, which townsmen never know and never even suspect. They had a silent contempt for the small subtleties of a man's mind, and were half ashamed of the business on which they were now engaged.
As the man withdrew in obedience to Marcos' salutation, "Go with God," the clock struck twelve.
"Come," said Marcos to his father, "we must go to number five, Calle de la Merced. Do you know the house?"
"Yes; it is one of the many in Saragossa that stand empty, or are supposed to stand empty. It is an old religious house which was sacked in the disturbances of Christina's reign."
He walked to the window as he spoke and looked out.
The house had been thrown open for the first time for many years, and they now occupied one of the larger rooms looking across the garden to the Ebro.
"Ah! you have ordered the carriage," he said, seeing the brougham standing at the door, and the rusty gates thrown open, giving egress to the Paseo del Ebro.
"Yes," answered Marcos in an odd and restrained voice. "To bring Juanita back."
Number Five Calle de la Merced is to this day an empty house, like many in Saragossa, presenting to the passer-by a dusty stone face and huge barred windows over which the spiders have drawn their filmy curtain. For one reason or another there are many empty houses in the larger cities of Spain and many historical names have passed away. With them have faded into oblivion some religious orders and not a few kindred brotherhoods.
Number Five Calle de la Merced has its history like the rest of the monasteries, and the rounded cobblestones of the large courtyard bear to-day a black stain where, the curious inquirer will be told, the caretakers of the empty house have been in the habit of cooking their bread on a brazier of charcoal fanned into glow with a palm leaf scattering the ashes. But the true story of the black stain is in reality quite otherwise. For it was here that the infuriated people burnt the chapel furniture when the monasteries of Saragossa were sacked.
The Sarrions left their carriage at the corner of the Calle de la Merced, in the shadow of a tall house, for the sun was already strong at midday though the snow lay on the hills round Torre Garda. They found the house closely barred. The dust and the cobwebs were undisturbed on the huge windows. The house was as empty as it had been these forty years.
Marcos tried the door, which resisted his strength like a wall. It was a true monastic door with no crack through which even a fly could pass.
"That house stands empty," said an old woman who passed by. "It has stood empty since I was a girl. It is accursed. They killed the good fathers there."
Sarrion thanked her and walked on. Marcos was examining the dust on the road out of the corners of his eyes.
"Two carriages have stopped here," he said, "at this small door which looks as if it belonged to the next house."
"Ah!" answered Sarrion, "that is an old trick. I have seen doors like that before. There are several in the Calle San Gregorio. Sitting on my balcony in the Casa Sarrion I have seen a man go into one house and look out of the window of the next a minute later."
"Mon has not arrived," said Marcos, with his eye on the road. "He has the carriage of One-eyed Pedro whose near horse has a circular shoe."
"But we must not wait for him. The risk would be too great. They may dispense with his presence."
"No," answered Marcos thoughtfully, looking at the smaller door which seemed to belong to the next house. "We must not wait."
As he spoke a carriage appeared at the farther end of the Calle de la Merced, which is a straight and narrow street.
"Here they come," he added, and drew his father into a doorway across the street.
It was indeed the carriage of the man known as One-eyed Pedro, a victim to the dust of Aragon, and the near horse left a circular mark with its hind foot on the road.
Evasio Mon descended from the carriage and paid the man, giving, it would seem, a liberal "propina," for the One-eyed Pedro expectorated on the coin before putting it into his pocket.
Mon tapped on the door with the stick he always carried. It was instantly opened to give him admittance, and closed as quickly behind him.
"Ah!" whispered Sarrion, with a smile on his keen face. "I have heard them knock like that on the doors in the Calle San Gregorio. It is simple and yet distinctive."
He turned and illustrated the knock on the balustrade of the stairs up which they had hastened.
"We will try it," he added grimly, "on that door when Evasio has had time to go away from it."
They waited a few minutes, and then went out again into the Calle de la Merced. It was the luncheon hour, and they had the street to themselves. They stood for a moment in the doorway through which Mon had passed.
"Listen," said Marcos in a whisper.
It was the sound of an organ coming almost muffled from the back of the empty house, and it seemed to travel through long corridors before reaching them.
"They had," said Sarrion, "so far as I recollect, a large and beautiful chapel in the patio opposite to that great door, which has probably been built up on the inside."
Then he gave the peculiar knock on the door. At a gesture from Marcos he stood back so that he who opened the door would need to open it wide and almost come out into the street to see who had summoned him.
They heard the door opening, and the head that came round the door was that of the tall and powerful friar who had come to the assistance of Francisco de Mogente in the Calle San Gregorio. He drew back at once and tried to close the door, but both father and son threw their weight against it and slowly pressed him back, enabling Marcos at length to get his shoulder in. Both men were somewhat smaller than the friar, but both were quicker to see an advantage and take it.
In a moment the friar abandoned the attempt and ran down the long corridor, into which the light filtered dimly through cobwebs. Marcos gave chase while Sarrion stayed behind to close the door. At the corner of the corridor the friar slipped, and, finding himself out-matched, raised his voice to shout. But the cry was smothered by Marcos, who leapt at him like a cat, and they rolled on the floor together.
The friar was heavier and stronger. He had led a simple and healthy life, his muscles were toughened by his wanderings and the hardships of his calling. At first Marcos was underneath, but as Sarrion hurried up he saw his son come out on the top and heard at the same moment a dull thud. It was the friar's head against the floor, a Guipuzcoan trick of wrestling which usually meant death to its victim, but the friar's thick cloak happened to fall between his head and the hard floor. This alone saved him; for Marcos was a Spaniard and did not care at that moment whether he killed the holy man or not. Indeed Sarrion hastily leant down to hold him back and Marcos rose to his feet with blazing eyes and the blood trickling from a cut lip. The friar would have killed him if he could; for the blood that runs in Southern men is soon heated and the primeval instinct of fight never dies out of the human heart.
"He is not killed," said Marcos breathlessly.
"For which we may thank Heaven," added Sarrion with a short laugh. "Come, let us find the chapel."
They hurried on through the dimly lighted corridors guided by the sound of the distant organ. There seemed to be many closed doors between them and it; for only the deeper and more resonant notes reached their ears. They gained the large patio where the grass grew thickly, and the iron-work of the well in the centre was hidden by the trailing ropes of last year's clematis.
"The chapel is there, but the door is built up," said Sarrion pointing to a doorway which had been filled in. And they paused for a moment as all men must pause when they find sudden evidence that that Sword which was brought into the world nineteen hundred years ago is not yet sheathed.
Marcos had already found a second door leading from the cloister that surrounded the patio, back in the direction from which they had come. They entered the corridor which turned sharply back again--the handiwork of some architect skilful, not in the carrying of sound, but in killing it.
"It is the way to the organ loft," whispered Marcos.
"It is probably the only entrance to the chapel."
They opened a door and were faced by a second one covered and padded with faded felt. Marcos pushed it ajar and the notes of the organ almost deafened them. They were in the chapel, behind the organ, at the west end.
They passed in and stood in the dark, the notes of the great organ braying in their ears. They could hear the panting of the man working at the bellows. Marcos led the way and they passed on into the chapel which was dimly lighted by candles. The subtle odour of stale incense hung heavily in the atmosphere which seemed to vibrate as if the deeper notes of the organ shook the building in their vain search for an exit.
The chapel was long and narrow. Marcos and his father were alone at the west end, concealed by the font of which the wooden cover rose like a miniature spire almost to the ceiling. A group of people were kneeling on the bare floor by the screen which had never been repaired but showed clearly where the carving had been knocked and torn to make the bonfire in the patio.
Two priests were on the altar steps while the choristers were dimly visible through the broken railing of the screen. There seemed to be some nuns within the screen while others knelt without; four knelt apart, as if awaiting admission to the inner sanctum.
"That is Juanita," whispered Marcos, pointing with a steady finger. The girl kneeling next to her was weeping. But Juanita knelt upright, her face half turned so that they could see her clear-cut profile against the candle-light beyond. To those who study human nature, every attitude or gesture is of value; there were energy and courage in the turn of Juanita's head. She was listening.
Near to her the motionless black form of Sor Teresa towered among the worshippers. She was looking straight in front of her. Not far away a bowed figure all curved and cringing with weak emotion--a sight to make men pause and think--was Leon de Mogente. Behind him, upright with a sleek bowed head, was Evasio Mon. From his position and in the attitude in which he knelt, he could without moving see Juanita, and was probably watching her.
The chapel was carpeted with an old and faded matting of grass such as is made on all the coasts of the Mediterranean. Marcos and Sarrion went forward noiselessly. Instinctively they crossed themselves as they neared the chancel. Evasio Mon was nearest to them kneeling apart, a few paces behind Leon. He could see every one from this position, but he did not hear the Sarrions a few yards behind him.
At this moment Juanita turned round and perceiving them gave a little start which Mon saw. He turned his head to the left; Sarrion was standing in the semi-darkness at his shoulder. Then he turned to the right and there was Marcos, motionless, with a handkerchief held to his lips.
Evasio Mon reflected for a moment; then he turned to Sarrion with his ready smile.
"Do you come here to see me?" he whispered.
"I want you to get Juanita de Mogente away from this as quickly as possible," returned Sarrion in a whisper. "We need not disturb the service."
"But, my friend," protested Mon, still smiling, "by what right?"
"That you must ask of Marcos."
Mon turned to Marcos in silent inquiry and he received a wordless answer; for Marcos held under his eyes in the half light the certificate of marriage signed by that political bishop who was no Carlist, and was ever a thorn in the side of the Churchmen striving for an absolute monarchy.
Mon shook his head still smiling, more in sorrow than in anger, at the misfortune which his duty compelled him to point out.
"It is not legal, my dear Marcos; it is not legal."
He glanced round into Marcos' still face and perceived perhaps that he might as well try the effect of words upon the stone pillar behind him. He reflected again for a moment, while the service proceeded and the voices of the choir rose and fell like the waves of the sea in a deep cave. It was a simple enough ceremonial denuded of many of the mediaeval mummeries which have been revived by a newer emotional Church for the edification of the weak-minded.
Juanita glanced back again and saw Mon kneeling between the two motionless upright men, who were grave while he smiled ... and smiled.
Then at length he rose to his feet and stood for a moment. If he ever hesitated in his life it was at that instant. And Marcos' hand came forward beneath his eyes pointing inexorably at Juanita. There was a pause in the service, a momentary silence only broken by the smothered sobs of the novice who knelt next to Juanita.
The organ rolled out its deep voice again, and under cover of the sound Mon stepped forward and touched Juanita on the shoulder. She turned instantly, and he beckoned to her to follow him. If the priests at the altar perceived anything they made no sign. Sor Teresa, absorbed in prayer, never turned her head. The service went on uninterruptedly.
Sarrion led the way and Mon followed. Juanita glanced at Marcos, indicated with a nod Evasio Mon's back, and made a gay little grimace, suggestive of that schemer's discomfiture. Then she followed Mon, and Marcos came noiselessly behind her.
They passed out through the dark passage behind the organ into the old cloister.
There Mon turned to look at Juanita and from her to Marcos. He was distressed for them.
"It is illegal," he repeated, gently. "Without a dispensation."
And by way of reply Marcos handed him a second paper, bearing at its foot the oval seal of the Vatican. It was the usual dispensation, easy enough to procure, for the marriage of an orphan under age.
"I am glad," said Mon, and he tried to look it.
Sarrion went on into the narrow corridor. The friar was sitting on a worm-eaten bench there, leaning back against the wall, his hand over his eyes.
"He is hurt," explained Marcos, simply. "He tried to stop us."
Mon made no comment but accompanied them to the door, which he closed behind them, and then returned to the chapel, reflecting perhaps upon how small an incident the history of nations may turn. For if the friar had been able to withstand the Sarrions--if there had been a grating to the small door in the Calle de la Merced--Don Carlos de Borbone might have worn the three crowns of Spain.
The novitiate dress had been dispensed with, and Juanita wore her usual school-dress of black, with a black mantilla. They therefore walked the length of the Calle de la Merced without attracting undue attention.
Juanita's cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with excitement. She slipped her hand within Sarrion's arm and gave it a little squeeze of affection.
"How kind of you to come," she said. "I knew I could trust you. I was never afraid."
Sarrion smiled a little dryly and glanced towards Marcos, who had met and overcome all the difficulties, and who now walked quietly by his side, concealing the bloodstains on the handkerchief covering his lips.
Then Juanita let go Sarrion's left arm and ran round behind him to take the other, while with her right hand she took Marcos' left arm.
"There," she cried, with a laugh. "Now I am safe from all the world--from all the world! Is it not so?"
"Yes," answered Marcos, turning to look at her as she moved, her feet hardly touching the ground, between them.
"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked.
"I think you have grown."
"I know I have," she answered gravely. And she stopped in the street to stand her full height and to draw her slim bodice in at the waist. "I am an inch taller than Milagros, but Milagros is getting most preposterously fat. The girls tell her that she will soon be like Sor Dorothea who is so huge that she has to be hauled up from her knees like a sack that has been saying its prayers. That stupid Milagros cries when they say it."
"Is Milagros going to be a nun?" asked Sarrion, absent-mindedly. He was thinking of something else and looked at Juanita with a speculative glance. She was so gay and inconsequent.
"Heaven forbid!" was the reply. "She says she is going to marry a soldier. I can't think why. She says she likes the drums. But I told her she could buy a drum and hire a man to hit it. She is very rich, you know. It is not worth marrying for that, is it?"
"No," answered Marcos, to whom the question had been addressed.
"She may get tired of drums, you know. Just as we get tired saying our prayers at school. I am sure she ought to reflect before she marries a soldier. I wouldn't if I were she. Oh! but I forgot...."
She paused and turning to Marcos she gripped his arm with a confidential emphasis. "Do you know, Marcos, I keep on forgetting that we are married. You don't mind, do you? I am not a bit sorry, you know. I am so glad, because it gets me away from school. And I hate school. And there was always the dread that they would make me a nun despite us all. You don't know what it is to feel helpless and to have a dread; to wake up with it at night and wish you were dead and all the bother was over."
"It is all over now, without being dead," Marcos assured her, with his slow smile.
"Quite sure?"
"Quite sure," answered Marcos.
"And I shall never go back to school again. And they have no power over me; neither Sor Teresa, nor Sor Dorothea, nor the dear mother. We always call her the 'dear mother,' you know, because we have to; but we hate her. But that is all over now, is it not?"
"Yes," answered Marcos.
"Then I am glad I married you," said Juanita, with conviction.
"And I need not be afraid of Señor Mon, with his gentle smile?" asked Juanita, turning on Marcos with a sudden shrewd gravity.
"No."
She gave a great sigh of relief and shook back her mantilla. Then she laughed and turned to Sarrion.
"He always says 'yes' or 'no'--and only that," she remarked confidentially to him. "But somehow it seems enough."
They had reached the corner of the street now, and the carriage was approaching them. It was one of the heavy carriages used only on state occasions which had stood idle for many years in the stables of the Palacio Sarrion. The horses were from Torre Garda and the men in their quiet liveries greeted her with country frankness.
"It is one of the grand carriages," said Juanita.
"Yes."
"Why?" she asked.
"To take you home," replied Sarrion.
Juanita got into the carriage and sat down in silence. The man who closed the door touched his hat, not to the Sarrions but to her; and she returned the salutation with a friendly smile.
"Where are we going?" she asked after a pause.
"To the Casa Sarrion," was the reply.
"Is it open, after all these years?"
"Yes," answered Sarrion.
"But why?"
"For you," answered Sarrion.
Juanita turned and looked out of the window, with bright and thoughtful eyes. She asked no more questions and they drove to the Palacio Sarrion in silence.
There they found Cousin Peligros awaiting them.
Cousin Peligros was a Sarrion and seemed in some indefinite way to consider that in so being and so existing she placed the world under an obligation. That she considered the world bound, in return for the honour she conferred upon it, to support her in comfort and deference was a patent fact hardly worth putting into words.
"The old families," she was in the habit of saying with a sigh, "are dying out."
At the same time she made a little gesture with outspread palms, and folded her white hands complacently on her lap as if to indicate that society was not left comfortless--that she was still there. From her inferiors she looked for the utmost deference. Her white hands had never done an hour's work. She was ignorant and idle; but she was a lady and a Sarrion.
Cousin Peligros lived in a little apartment in Madrid, which she fondly imagined to be the hub of the social universe.
"They all come," she said, "to consult the Senorita de Sarrion upon points of etiquette."
And she patted the air condescendingly with her left hand. There are some people who seem to be created by a far-seeing Providence as a solemn warning.
"Cousin Peligros," said Juanita one day, after listening respectfully to a lecture on the care of the hands, "lives in a little field of her own."
"Like a scarecrow," added Marcos, the taciturn.
And this was the lady who awaited them at the Palacio Sarrion. She had been summoned from Madrid by Sarrion, who paid the expenses of the journey; no small item, by the way. For Cousin Peligros, like many people who live at the expense of others, sought to mitigate the bitterness of the bread of charity by spreading it very thickly with other people's butter.
She did not come down to the door to meet them when the carriage clattered over the cobble-stones of the echoing patio.
Such a proceeding might have lowered her dignity in the eyes of the servants, who, to do them justice, saw right through Cousin Peligros into the vacuum that lay behind her. She sat in state in the great drawing-room with her hands folded on her lap and placidly arranged her proposed mode of greeting the newcomers. She had been informed that Sarrion had found it necessary to take Juanita de Mogente away from the convent school and to assume the cares of that guardianship which had always been an understood obligation mutually binding between himself and Francisco de Mogente.
Cousin Peligros was therefore keenly alive to the fact, that Juanita required at this critical moment of her life a good and abiding example. Hers also was the blessed knowledge that no one in all Spain was better fitted to offer such an example than the Señorita Peligros de Sarrion.
She therefore sat in her best black silk dress in an attitude subtly combining, with a kind tolerance for all who were so unfortunate as not to be Sarrions, a complacent determination to do her duty.
It is to be regretted that she was for a time left sitting thus, for Perro was in the hall, and his greeting of Juanita had to be acknowledged with several violent hugs, which resulted in Juanita's mantilla getting mixed up with Perro's collar. Then there were the pictures and the armour to be inspected on the stairs. For Juanita had never seen the palace with its shutters open.
"Are they all Sarrions?" she exclaimed. "Oh mi alma! What a fierce company. That old gentleman with a spike on top of his hat is a crusader I suppose. And there is a helmet hanging on the wall beneath the portrait, with a great dent in it. But I expect he hit him back again. Don't you think so, Uncle Ramon, if he was a Sarrion?"
"I dare say he did," answered the Count.
"I wish I was a Sarrion," said Juanita, looking up at the armour with a light in her eyes.
"You are one," replied Sarrion, gravely.
She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder at him. Marcos was some way behind, and took no part in the conversation.
"So I am," she said. "I forgot."
And with a little sigh, as of a realised responsibility, she continued her way up the wide stairs. The sight of Cousin Peligros, upright on a chair, dispelled Juanita's momentary gravity, however.
"Oh, Cousin Peligros," she cried, running to her and taking both her hands. "Just think! I have left school. No more punishments--no more grammar--no more arithmetic!"
Cousin Peligros had risen and endeavoured to maintain that dignity which she felt to be so beneficial an example to the world. But Juanita emphasised each item of her late education with a jerk which gradually deranged Cousin Peligros' prim mantilla. Then she danced her round an impalpable mulberry bush until the poor lady was breathless.
"No more Primes at six o'clock in the morning," concluded Juanita, suddenly allowing Cousin Peligros to sit again. "Do you ever go to Primes at six o'clock in the morning, Cousin Peligros?"
"No," was the grave answer. "Such things are not expected of ladies."
"How thoughtful of Heaven!" exclaimed Juanita, with a light laugh. "Then I do not mind being grownup--and putting up my hair--if you will lend me two hairpins."
She fell on Cousin Peligros' mantilla and extracted two hairpins from it despite the resistance of the soft white hands. Then she twisted up the heavy plait that hung to her waist, threw back her mantilla and stood laughing before the old lady.
"There--I am grown-up! I am more grown-up than you, you know; for I am ..."
She broke off, and turning to Sarrion, asked,
"Does she know ... does she know the joke?"
"No," said Sarrion.
"We are married," she said, standing squarely in front of Cousin Peligros.
"Married ..." echoed the disciple of etiquette, faintly. "Married--to whom?"
"Marcos and I."
But Cousin Peligros only gasped and covered her face with her hands.
Marcos came into the room at this moment and scarcely looked at Cousin Peligros. Those white hands played so large a part in her small daily life that they were always in evidence, and it did not seem out of place that they should cover her foolish face.
"I found all your clothes ready packed at the school," he said, addressing Juanita. "Sor Teresa brought them with her from Pampeluna. You will find them in your room."
"Oh ..." groaned Cousin Peligros.
"What is it?" inquired Marcos practically. "What is the matter with her?"
"She has just been told that we are married," explained Juanita, airily. "And I think you shocked her by mentioning my clothes. You shouldn't do it, Marcos."
And she went and stood by Cousin Peligros with her hand upon her shoulder as if to protect her. She shook her head gravely at Marcos.
Cousin Peligros rose rigidly and walked towards the door.
"I will go," she said. "I will see that your room is in order. I have never before been made an object of ridicule in a gentleman's house."
"But we may surely laugh and be happy in a gentleman's house, may we not?" cried Juanita, running after her, and throwing one arm round her rather unbending and capacious waist. "You are an old dear, and you must not be so solemn about it. Marcos and I are only married for fun, you know."
And the door closed behind them, shutting off Juanita's voluble explanations.
"You see," said Sarrion, after a pause. "She is happy enough."
"Now," answered Marcos. "But she may find out some day that she is not."
Juanita came back before long and found Sarrion alone.
"Where is Marcos?" she asked.
"He is taking a siesta," answered Sarrion.
"Like a poor man."
"Yes, like a poor man. He was not in bed all last night. You had a narrower escape of being made a nun than you suspect."
Juanita's face fell. She went to the window and stood there looking out.
"When are we going to Torre Garda?" she asked, after a long silence. "I hate towns ... and people. I want to smell the pines ... and the bracken."