Tne river known as the Wolf finds its source in the eternal snows of the Pyrenees. Amid the solitary grandeur of the least known mountains in Europe it rolls and tumbles--tossed hither and thither in its rocky bed, fed by this and that streamlet from stony gorges--down to the green valley of Torre Garda.
Here there is a village crouched on either side of the river-bed, and above it on a plateau surrounded by chestnut trees and pines, stands the house of the Sarrions. In winter the wholesome smell of wood smoke rising from the chimneys pervades the air. In summer the warm breath of the pines creeps down the mountains to mingle with the cooler air that stirs the bracken.
Below all, summer and winter, at evening and at dawn, night and day, growls the Wolf--so named from the continuous low-pitched murmur of its waters through the defile a mile below the village. The men of the valley of the Wolf have a hundred tales of their river in its different moods, and firmly believe that the voice which is ever in their ears speaks to such as have understanding, of every change in the weather. The old women have no doubt that it speaks also of those things that must affect the prince and the peasant alike; of good and ill fortune; of life and of death; of hope and its slow, slow dying in the heart. Certain it is that the river had its humours not to be accounted for by outward things--seeming to be gay without reason, like any human heart, in dull weather, and murmuring dismally when the sun shone and the birds were singing in the trees.
In clearest summer weather, the water would sometimes run thick and yellow for days, the result of some landslip where the snow and ice were melting. Sometimes the Wolf would hurl down a mass of debris--a forest torn from the mountainside by avalanche, the dead bodies of a few stray sheep, or a fox or a wolf or the dun corpse of a mountain bear. Many in the valley had seen tables and chairs and the roof, perhaps, of a house caught in the timbers of the old bridge below the village. And the river, of course, had exacted its toll from more than one family. It was jocularly said at the Venta that the Wolf was Royalist; for in the first Carlist war it had fought for Queen Christina, doing to death a whole company of insurgents at that which is known as the False Ford, where it would seem that a child could pass while in reality no horseman might hope to get through.
The house of Torre Garda was not itself ancient though it undoubtedly stood on the site of some mediaeval watch-tower. It had been built in the days of Ferdinand VII at the period when French architecture was running rife over the world, and had the appearance of a Gascon chateau. It was a long low house of two stories. Every room on the ground floor opened with long French windows to a terrace built to the edge of the plateau, where a fountain splashed its clear spring water into a stone basin, where gray stone urns stood on lichen-covered pillars amid flower-beds.
Every room on the first floor had windows opening on a wide balcony which ran the length of the house and was protected from the rain and midday sun by the far-stretching eaves of the roof. The house was of gray stone, roofed with slabs of the same, such as peel off the slopes of the Pyrenees and slide one over the other to the valleys below. The pointed turrets at each corner were roofed with the small green tiles that the Moors loved. The winds and the snow and the rain had toned all Torre Garda down to a cool gray-green against which the four cypress trees on the terrace stood rigid like sentinels keeping eternal guard over the valley.
Above the house rose a pine-slope where the snow lingered late into the summer. Above this again were rocks and broken declivities of sliding stones; and, crowning all, the everlasting snow.
From the terrace of Torre Garda a strong voice could make itself heard in the valley where tobacco grew and ripened, or on the height where no vegetation lived at all. The house seemed to hang between sky and earth, and the air that moved the cypress trees was cool and thin--a very breath of heaven to make thinkers wonder why any who can help it should choose to live in towns.
The green shutters had been closed across the windows for nearly three months, when on one spring morning the villagers looked up to see the house astir and the windows opened wide.
There had been much to detain the Sarrions at Saragossa and Juanita had to wait for the gratification of her desire to smell the pines and the bracken again.
It seemed that it was no one's business to question the validity of the strange marriage in the chapel of Our Lady of the Shadows. Evasio Mon who was supposed to know more about it than any other, only smiled and said nothing. Leon de Mogente was absorbed in his own peculiar selfishness which was not of this world but the next. He fell into the mistake common to ecstatic minds that thoughts of Heaven justify a deliberate neglect of obvious duties on earth.
"Leon," said Juanita gaily to Cousin Peligros, "will assuredly be a saint some day: he has so little sense of humour."
For Leon it seemed could not be brought to understand Juanita's sunny view of life.
"You may look solemn and talk of great mistakes as much as you like," she said to her brother. "But I know I was never meant for a nun. It will all come right in the end. Uncle Ramon says so. I don't know what he means. But he says it will all come right in the end."
And she shook her head with that wisdom of the world which is given to women only; which may live in the same heart as ignorance and innocence and yet be superior to all the knowledge that all the sages have ever put in books.
There were lawyers to be consulted and moreover paid, and Juanita gaily splashed down her name in a bold schoolgirl hand on countless documents.
There is a Spanish proverb warning the unwary never to drink water in the dark or sign a paper unread. And Marcos made Juanita read everything she signed. She was quick enough, and only laughed when he protested that she had not taken in the full meaning of the document.
"I understand it quite enough," she answered. "It is not worth troubling about. It is only money. You men think of nothing else. I do not want to understand it any better."
"Not now; but some day you will."
Juanita looked at him, pen in hand, momentarily grave.
"You are always thinking of what I shall do ... some day," she said.
And Marcos did not deny it.
"You seem to hedge me around with precautions against that time," she continued, thoughtfully, and looked at him with bright and searching eyes.
At length all the formalities were over, and they were free to go to Torre Garda. Events were moving rapidly in Spain at this time, and the small wonder of Juanita's marriage was already a thing half forgotten. Had it not been for her great wealth the whole matter would have passed unnoticed; for wealth is still a burden upon its owners, and there are many who must perforce go away sorrowful on account of their great possessions. Half the world guessed, however, at the truth, and every man judged the Sarrions from his own political standpoint, praising or blaming according to preconceived convictions. But there were some in high places who knew that a great danger had been averted.
Cousin Peligros had consented to Sarrion's proposal that she should for a time make her home with him, either at Torre Garda or at Saragossa. She had lived in troublous times, but was convinced that the Carlists, like Heaven, made special provision for ladies.
"No one," said she, "will molest me," and she folded her hands in complacent serenity on her lap.
She had a profound distrust of railways, in which common mode of conveyance she suspected a democratic spirit, though to this day the Spanish ticket collector presents himself, hat in hand, at the door of a first-class carriage, and the time-table finds itself subservient to the convenience of any Excellency who may not have finished his coffee in the refreshment-room.
Cousin Peligros was therefore glad enough to quit the train at Pampeluna, where the carriage from Torre Garda awaited them. There were saddle horses for Sarrion and Marcos, and a handful of troops were waiting in the shadow of the trees outside of the station yard. An officer rode forward and paid his respects to Juanita.
"You do not recognise me, Senorita," he said. "You remember the chapel of Our Lady of the Shadows?"
"Yes. I remember," she answered, shaking hands. "We caught you saying your prayers when we arrived."
He blushed as he laughed; for he was a simple man leading a hard and lonely life.
"Yes, Senorita; why not?"
"I have no doubt," said Juanita, looking at him shrewdly, "that the saints heard you."
"Marcos," he explained, "wrote to ask me for a few men to take your carriage through the danger zone. So I took the liberty of riding with them myself. I am the watch-dog, Señorita, at the gate of your valley. You are safe enough once you are within the valley of the Wolf."
They talked together until Sarrion rode forward to announce that all were ready to depart, while Cousin Peligros sat with pinched lips and disapproving face. She took an early opportunity of mentioning that ladies should not talk to gentlemen with such familiarity and freedom; that, above all, a smile was sufficient acknowledgment for any jest except those made by the very aged, when to laugh was a sign of respect. For Cousin Peligros had been brought up in a school of manners now fortunately extinct.
"He is Marcos' friend," explained Juanita. "Besides, he is a nice person. I know a nice person when I see one," she concluded, with a friendly nod towards the watch-dog of the valley of the Wolf, who was talking in the shade of the trees with Marcos.
The men rode together in advance of the carriages and the luggage carts. The journey was uneventful, and the sun was setting in a cloudless west when the mouth of the valley was reached. It was Cousin Peligros' happy lot to consider herself the centre of any party and the pivot upon which social events must turn. She bowed graciously to Captain Zeneta when he came forward to take his leave.
"It was most considerate of Marcos," she said to Juanita in his hearing, "to provide this escort. He no doubt divined that, accustomed as I am to living in Madrid, I might have been nervous in these remote places."
Juanita was tired. They were near their journey's end. She did not take the trouble to explain the situation to Cousin Peligros. There are some fools whom the world allows to continue in their folly because it is less trouble. Marcos and Sarrion were riding together now in silence. From time to time a peasant waiting at the roadside came forward to exchange a few words with one or the other. The road ascended sharply now, and the pace was slow. The regular tramp of the horses, the quiet evening hour, the fatigue of the journey were conducive to contemplation and silence.
When Marcos helped Cousin Peligros and Juanita to descend from the high-swung traveling carriage, Juanita was too tired to notice one or two innovations. When, as a schoolgirl, she had spent her holidays at Torre Garde no change had been made in the simple household. But now Marcos had sent from Saragossa such modern furniture as women need to-day. There were new chairs on the terrace. Her own bedroom at the western corner of the house, next door to the huge room occupied by Sarrion, had been entirely refurnished and newly decorated.
"Oh, how pretty!" she exclaimed, and Marcos lingering in the long passage perhaps heard the remark.
Later, when they were all in the drawing-room awaiting dinner, Juanita clasped Sarrion's arm with her wonted little gesture of affection.
"You are an old dear," she said to him, "to have my room done up so beautifully, so clean, and white, and simple--just as you know I should like it. Oh, you need not smile so grimly. You know it was just what I should like--did he not, Marcos?"
"Yes," answered Marcos.
"And it is the only room in the house that has been done. I looked into the others to see--into your great barrack, and into Marcos' room at the end of the balcony. I have guessed why Marcos has that room ..."
"Why?" he asked.
"So that you can see down the valley--so that Perro who sleeps on the balcony outside the open window has merely to lift his head to look right down to where the other watch-dogs are, ten miles away."
After dinner, Juanita discovered that there was a new piano in the drawing-room, in addition to a number of those easier chairs which our grandmothers never knew. Cousin Peligros protested that they were unnecessary and even conducive to sloth and indolence. Still protesting, she took the most comfortable and sat with folded hands listening to Juanita finding out the latest waltz, with variations of her own, on the new piano.
Sarrion and Marcos were on the terrace smoking. The small new moon was nearing the west. The night would be dark after its setting. They were silent, listening to the voice of their ancestral river as it growled, heavy with snow, through the defile. Presently a servant brought coffee and told Marcos that a messenger was waiting to deliver a note. After the manner of Spain the messenger was invited to come and deliver his letter in person. He was a traveling knife-grinder, he explained, and had received the letter from a man on the road whose horse had gone lame. One must be mutually helpful on the road.
The letter was from Zeneta at the end of the valley; written hastily in pencil. The Carlists were in force between him and Pampeluna; would Marcos ride down to the camp and hear details?
Marcos rose at once and threw his cigarette away. He looked towards the lighted windows of the drawing-room.
"No good saying anything about it," he said. "I shall be back by breakfast time. They will probably not notice my absence."
He was gone--the sound of his horse's feet was drowned in the voice of the river--before Juanita came out to the terrace, a slim shadowy form in her white evening dress. She stood for a minute or two in silence, until, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, she perceived Sarrion and an empty chair. Perro usually walked gravely to her and stood in front of her awaiting a jest whenever she came. She looked round. Perro was not there.
"Where is Marcos?" she asked, taking the empty chair.
"He has been sent for to the valley. He has gone."
"Gone!" echoed Juanita, standing up again. She went to the stone balustrade of the terrace and looked over into the darkness.
"I heard him cross the bridge a few minutes ago," Sarrion said quietly.
"He might have said good-bye."
Sarrion turned slowly in his chair and looked at her.
"He probably did not wish his comings and goings to be talked of by Cousin Peligros," he suggested.
"Still, he might have said good-bye ... to me."
She turned again and leaning her arms on the gray stone she stood in silence looking down into the valley.
Marcos' horse, the Moor, had performed the journey to Pampeluna once in the last twelve hours. He was a strong horse accustomed to long journeys. But Marcos chose another, an older and staider animal of less value, better fitted for night work.
He wished to do the journey quickly and return by breakfast-time; he was not in a mood to spare his beast. Men who live in stirring times and meet death face to face quite familiarly from day to day, as Englishmen meet the rain, soon acquire the philosophy which consists in taking the good things the gods send them, unhesitatingly and thankfully.
Juanita was at Torre Garda at last--after months of patient waiting and watching, after dangers foreseen and faced--that was enough for Marcos de Sarrion.
He therefore pressed his horse. Although he was alert and watchful because it was his habit to be so, he was less careful perhaps than usual; he rode at a greater pace than was prudent on such a road, by so dark a night.
The spring comes early on the Southern slope of the Pyrenees. It was a warm night and there had been no rain for some days. The dust lay thickly on the road, muffling the beat of the horse's feet. The Wolf roared in its narrow bed. The road, only recently made practicable for carriages at Sarrion's expense, was not a safe one. It hung like a cornice on the left-hand bank of the river and at certain corners the stones fell from the mountain heights almost continuously. In other places the heavy stone buttresses had been undermined by the action of the river. It was a road that needed continuous watching and repair. But Marcos had ridden over it a few hours earlier and there had been no change of weather since.
He knew the weak places and passed them carefully. Three miles below the village, the river passes through a gorge and the road mounts to the lip of the overhanging cliffs. There is no danger here; for there are no falling stones from above. It is to this passage that the Wolf owes its name and in a narrow place invisible from the road the water seems to growl after the manner of a wild beast at meat.
Marcos' horse knew the road well enough, which, moreover, was easy here. For it is cut from the rock on the left-hand side, while its outer boundary is marked at intervals by white stones. The horse was perhaps too cautious. By night a rider must leave to his mount the decision as to what hills may be descended at a trot. Marcos knew that the old horse beneath him invariably decided to walk down the easiest declivity. At the summit of the road the horse was trotting at a long, regular stride. On the turn of the hill he proposed to stop, although he must have known that the descent was easy. Marcos touched him with the spur and he started forward. The next instant he fell so suddenly and badly that his forehead scraped the road.
Marcos was thrown so hard and so far that he fell on his head and shoulder three feet in front of the horse. It was the narrowest place in the whole road, and the knowledge of this flashed through Marcos' mind as he fell. He struck one of the white stones that mark the boundary of the road, and heard his collar-bone snap like a dry stick. Then he rolled over the edge of the precipice into the blackness filled by the roar of the river.
He still had one hand whole and ready, though the skin was scraped from it, and the fingers of this hand were firmly twisted into the bridle. He hung for a moment jerked hither and thither by the efforts of the horse to pick himself up on the road above. A stronger jerk lifted him to the edge of the road, and Marcos, hanging there for an instant, found an insecure foothold for one foot in the root of an overhanging bush. But the horse was nearer to the edge now; he was half over and might fall at any moment.
It flashed through Marcos' mind that he must live at all costs. There was no one to care for Juanita in the troubled times that were coming. Juanita was his only thought. And he fought for his life with skill and that quickness of perception which is the real secret of success in human affairs.
He jerked on the bridle with all the strength of his iron muscle; jerked himself up on the road and the horse over into the gorge. As the horse fell it lashed out wildly; its hind foot touched the back of Marcos' head and seemed almost to break his spine.
He rolled over on his side, choking. He did not lose consciousness at once, but knew that oblivion was coming. Perro, the dog, had been excitedly skirmishing round, keeping clear of the horse's heels and doing little else. He now looked over after the horse and Marcos saw his lean body outlined against the sky. He had let the reins go and found that he was grasping a stone in his bleeding fingers instead. He threw the stone at Perro and hit him. The surprised yelp was the last sound he heard as the night of unconsciousness closed over him.
Juanita had gone to bed very tired. She slept the profound sleep of youth and physical fatigue for an hour. In the ordinary way she would have slept thus all night. But at midnight she found herself wide-awake again. The first fatigue of the body was past, and the busy mind asserted its rights again. She was not conscious of having anything to think about. But the moment she was half awake the thoughts leapt into her mind and awoke her completely.
She remembered again the startling silence of Torre Garda, which was in some degree intensified by the low voice of the river. She lifted her head to listen and caught her breath at the instant realisation of the sound quite near at hand. It was the patter of feet on the terrace below her window. Perro had returned. Marcos must therefore be back again. She dropped her head sleepily on the pillow, expecting to hear some sound in the house indicative of Marcos' return, but not intending to lie awake to listen for it.
She did not fall asleep again, however, and Perro continued to patter about on the terrace below as if he were going from window to window seeking an entrance. Juanita began to listen to his movements, expecting him to whimper, and in a few moments he fulfilled her anticipation by giving a little uneasy sound between his teeth. In a moment Juanita was out of bed and at the open window. Perro would awake Sarrion and Marcos, who must be very tired. It was a woman's instinct. Juanita was growing up.
Perro heard her, and in obedience to her whispered injunction stood still, looking up at her and wagging his uncouth tail slowly. But he gave forth the uneasy sound again between his teeth.
Juanita went back into her room; found her slippers and dressing-gown. But she did not light a candle. She had acquired a certain familiarity with the night from Marcos, and it seemed natural at Torre Garda to fall into the habits of those who lived there. She went the whole length of the balcony to Marcos' room, which was at the other end of the house, while Perro conscientiously kept pace with her on the terrace below.
Marcos' window was shut, which meant that he was not there. When he was at home his window stood open by night or day, winter or summer.
Juanita returned to Sarrion's room, which was next to her own. The window was ajar. The Spaniards have the habit of the open air more than any other nation of Europe. She pushed the window open.
"Uncle Ramon," she whispered. But Sarrion was asleep. She went into the room, which was large and sparsely furnished, and, finding the bed, shook him by the shoulder.
"Uncle Ramon," she said, "Perro has come back ... alone."
"That is nothing," he replied, reassuringly, at once. "Marcos, no doubt, sent him home. Go back to bed."
She obeyed him, going slowly back to the open window. But she paused there.
"Listen," she said, with an uneasy laugh. "He has something on his mind. He is whimpering. That is why I woke you."
"He often whimpers when Marcos is away. Tell him to be quiet, and then go back to bed," said Sarrion.
She obeyed him, setting the window and the jalousie ajar after her as she had found them. But Sarrion did not go to sleep again. He listened for some time. Perro was still pattering to and fro on the terrace, giving from time to time his little plaint of uneasiness between his closed teeth.
At length Sarrion rose and struck a light. It was one o'clock. He dressed quickly and noiselessly and went down-stairs, candle in hand. The stable at Torre Garda stands at the side of the house, a few feet behind it against the hillside. In this remote spot, with but one egress to the outer world, bolts and locks are not considered a necessity of life. Sarrion opened the door of the house where the grooms and their families lived, and went in.
In a few moments he returned to the stable-yard, accompanied by the man who had driven Juanita and Cousin Peligros from Pampeluna a few hours earlier. Together they got out the same carriage and a pair of horses. By the light of a stable lantern they adjusted the harness. Then Sarrion returned to the house for his cloak and hat. He brought with him Marcos' rifle which stood in a rack in the hall and laid it on the seat of the carriage. The man was already on the box, yawning audibly and without restraint.
As Sarrion seated himself in the carriage he glanced upwards. Juanita was standing on the balcony, at the corner by Marcos' window, looking down at him, watching him silently. Perro was already out of the gate in the darkness, leading the way.
They were not long absent. Perro was no genius, but what he did know, he knew thoroughly, which for practical purposes is almost as good. He led them to the spot little more than three miles down the valley, where Marcos lay at the side of the road, which is white and dusty. It was quite easy to perceive the dark form lying there, and Perro's lean limbs shaking over it.
When the carriage returned Juanita was standing at the open door. She had lighted the lamp in the hall and carried in her hand a lantern which she must have found in the kitchen. But she had awakened none of the servants, and was alone, still in her dressing-gown, with her dark hair flying in the breeze.
She came forward to the carriage and held up the lantern.
"Is he dead?" she asked quietly.
Sarrion did not answer at once. He was sitting in one corner of the carriage, with Marcos' head and shoulders resting on his knees.
"I do not know how badly he is hurt," he answered at length. "We called at the chemist's as we came through the village and awoke him. He has been an army servant and is as good as a doctor--"
"If the Señorita will hold the horses," interrupted the coachman, pushing Juanita gently aside, "we will carry him up-stairs."
And something in the man's manner made her think that Marcos was dead. She was compelled to wait there at least ten minutes, holding the horses. When at length he returned she did not wait to ask questions, but left him and ran up-stairs.
In Marcos' room she found Sarrion lighting a lamp. Marcos had been laid on the bed. She glanced at him, holding her lower lip between her teeth. His face was covered with dust and blood. One blood-stained hand lay across his chest, the other was stretched by his side, unnaturally straight.
Sarrion looked up at her and was about to speak when she forestalled him.
"It is no good telling me to go away," she said, "because I won't."
Then she turned to get a sponge and water. Sarrion was already busy at Marcos' collar, which he had unbuttoned. Suddenly he changed his mind and turned away.
"Undo his collar," he said. "I will go down-stairs and get some warm water."
He took the candle and left Juanita alone with Marcos. She did as she was told and bent over him. Her fingers had caught in a string fastened round Marcos' neck. She brought the lamp nearer. It was her own wedding ring, which she had returned to him after so brief a use of it through the bars of the little window looking on to the Calle de la Dormitaleria at Pampeluna.
She tried to undo the knot, but failed to do so. She turned quickly, and took the scissors from the dressing-table and cut the cord, which was a piece of old fishing-line, frayed and worn by friction against the rocks of the river. Juanita hastily thrust the cord into her pocket and drew the ring less quickly on to that finger for which it had been destined.
When Sarrion returned to the room a minute later she was carefully and slowly cutting the sleeve of the injured arm.
"Do you know, Uncle Ramon," she said cheerfully, "I am sure--I am positively certain he will recover, poor old Marcos."
Sarrion glanced at her sharply, as if he had detected a new note in her voice. And his eye fell on her left hand. He made no answer.
Marcos recovered consciousness at daybreak. It was a sign of his great strength and perfect health that he regained all his faculties at once. He moved, opened his eyes, and was fully conscious, like a child awakening from sleep. As soon as his eyes were open they showed surprise; for Juanita was sitting beside him, watching him.
"Ah!" she said, and rose at once to give him some medicine that stood ready in a glass. She glanced at the clock as she did so. The room had been rearranged. It was orderly and simple like a hospital ward.
"Do not try to lift your head," she said. "I will do that for you."
She did it with skill and laid him back again with a gay laugh.
"There," she said. "There is one thing, and one only, that they teach in covents."
As she spoke she turned to write on a sheet of paper the exact hour and minute at which he recovered consciousness. For her knowledge was fresh enough in her mind to be half mechanical in its result.
"Will that drug make me sleep?" asked Marcos, alertly.
"Yes."
"How soon?"
"That depends upon how stale the little apothecary's stock-in-trade may be," answered Juanita. "Probably a quarter of an hour. He is a queer little man and unwashed. But he set your collar-bone like an angel. You have to do nothing but keep quiet. I fancy you will have to be content with a quiet seat in the background for some weeks, amigo mio."
She busied herself as she spoke, with some duties of a sick-nurse which had been postponed during his unconsciousness.
"It is nearly six o'clock," she said, without appearing to look in his direction. "So you need not try to peep round the corner at the clock. Please do not manage things, Marcos. It is I who am manager of this affair. You and Uncle Ramon think that I am a child. I am not. I have grown up--in a night, like a mushroom, and Uncle Ramon has been sent to bed."
She came and sat down at the bedside again.
"And Cousin Peligros has not been disturbed. She has not left her room. She will tell us to-morrow morning that she scarcely slept at all. A real lady never sleeps well, you know. She must have heard us but she did not come out of her room. For which we may thank the Saints. There are some people one would rather not have in an emergency. In fact, when you come to think of it--how many are there in the world whose presence would be of the slightest use in a crisis--one or two at the most."
She held up her finger to emphasise the smallness of this number, and withdrew it again, hastily. But she was not quick enough, for Marcos had seen the ring and his eyes suddenly brightened. She turned away towards the window, holding her lip between her teeth, as if she had committed an indiscretion. She had been talking against time slowly and continuously to prevent his talking or thinking, to give the apothecary's soothing drug time to take effect. For the little man of medicine had spoken very clearly of concussion and its after-effects. He had posted off to Pampeluna to fetch a doctor from there, leaving instructions that should Marcos recover his reason he should not be permitted to make use of it.
And here in a moment, was Marcos fully in possession of his senses and making a use of them, which Juanita resented without knowing why.
"I must see my father," he said, stirring the bedclothes, "before I go to sleep again."
Juanita turned on her heel, but did not approach him or seek to rearrange the sheets.
"Lie still," she said. "Why do you want to see him? Is it about the war?"
"Yes."
Juanita reflected for a moment.
"Then you had better see him," she said conclusively. "I will go and fetch him."
She went to the window and passed out on to the balcony. Sarrion had, in obedience to her wishes, gone to his room. He was now sitting on a long chair on the balcony, apparently watching the dawn.
"Of what are you thinking as you sit there watching the new light in the mountains?" she asked gaily.
He looked at her with a softness in the eyes which usually expressed a tolerant cynicism.
"Of you," he answered. "I heard the murmur of your voices. You need not tell me that he has recovered consciousness."
"He wants to see you," she said. "I think he was surprised not to see you--to see only me--when he regained his senses."
There was the faintest suspicion of resentment in her voice.
"But I thought that the apothecary said that he was to be kept absolutely quiet," said Sarrion, rising.
"So he did. But he is only a man, you know, just like you and Marcos--and he doesn't understand."
"Oh!" said Sarrion meekly, as he followed her. She led the way into Marcos' room. She was as fresh and rosy as the morning itself, with the delicate pink and white of the convent still in her cheeks. It was on Sarrion's face that the night's work had left its mark.
"Here he is," she said. "He was not asleep. Is it a secret? I suppose it is--you have so many, you two."
She laughed, and looked from one to the other. But neither answered her.
"Shall I go away, Marcos?" she asked abruptly, turning towards the bed, as if she knew at all events that from him she would get a plain answer. And it came, uncompromisingly.
"Yes," he said.
She went to the door with a curt laugh and closed it behind her, with decision. Sarrion looked after her with a sudden frown. He looked for an instant as if he were about to suggest that Marcos might have made a different reply, and then decided to hold his peace. He was perhaps wise in his generation. Politeness never yet won a woman's love.
Marcos had noted Juanita's lightness of heart. On recovering his senses the first use he had made of them was to observe her every glance and silence. There was no sign of present anxiety or of great emotion. The incident of the ring had no other meaning therefore, than a girlish love of novelty or a taste not hitherto made manifest, for personal ornament. It might have deceived any one less observant than Marcos; less in the habit of watching Nature and dumb animals. He was patient, however, and industrious in the collection of evidence against himself. And she had startled him by saying that she was grown-up; though he perceived soon after, that it was only a manner of speaking; for she was still careless and happy, without a thought of the future, as children are.
These things, however, he kept to himself. He had not sent for his father to talk to him of Juanita. Men never discuss a woman in whom they are really interested, though fools do.
"That horse didn't fall," said Marcos to his father. "He was thrown. There was a wire across the road."
"There was none when I got there," replied Sarrion.
"Then it had been removed. I saw it as we fell. My foot caught in it or I could have thrown myself clear in the usual way."
Sarrion reflected a moment.
"Let me look at the note that Zeneta wrote you," he said.
"You will find it in my pocket, hanging behind the door. I was a fool. I was in too great a hurry. Now that I think of it, Zeneta would not have written a note like that."
"Then he never wrote it at all," said Sarrion, who had found the paper and was reading it near the window. The clear morning light brought out the wrinkles and the crow's-feet with inexorable distinctness on his keen narrow face.
"What does it mean?" he asked at length, folding the letter and replacing it in the pocket from which he had taken it.
Marcos roused himself with an effort. He was sleepy.
"I think it means that Evasio Mon is about," he answered.
"No man in the valley would have done it," suggested Sarrion.
"If any man in the valley had done it he would have put his knife into me when I lay on the road, which would have been murder."
He gave a short laugh and was silent.
"And the hand inside the velvet glove does not risk murder," reflected Sarrion, "They have not given up the game yet. We must be careful of ourselves."
"And of Juanita."
"I count her as one of ourselves," replied Sarrion quickly, for he heard her voice in the passage. With a brief tap on the door she came in. She was struggling with Perro.
"You have had long enough for your secrets," she said. "And now Marcos must go to sleep. I have brought Perro to see him. He is so uneasy in his canine mind."
Perro, low-born and eager, needed restraint to keep him from the bed where his master lay, and Juanita continued to hold him while she spoke.
"You must remember," she said, "that it is owing to Perro that you are here at all. If he had not come back and awakened us all you would have been on the road still."
Sarrion glanced sharply at her, his attention caught by her version of that which had really happened. She did not want Marcos to know that it was she who had heard Perro; she, who had insisted that something had happened to Marcos.
"And some Jesuit coming along the road might have found you there," she said, "and pushed you over. It would have been so easy."
Marcos and Sarrion glanced at each other, and possibly Juanita saw the glance as she held Perro back from his master.
"You do not know, Marcos, how they hate you. They could not hate you more if you were a heretic. I have always known it, because Father Muro was always trying to find things out about you in confession. He asked questions about you--who your confessor was; if you did a pilgrimage. I said--be quiet, Perro!--I said you never did a pilgrimage, and you were always changing your confessor because no holy father could stand the strain for long."
She forcibly ejected Perro from the room, and came back breathless and laughing. "She has not a care in the world," thought Marcos, who knew well enough the danger that he had passed through.
"But Father Muro is such an innocent old love," she went on, "that he did it badly. He had been told to do it by the Jesuits and he made a bungle of it. He thought that he could make a schoolgirl answer a question if she did not want to. And no one was afraid of him. He is a dear, good, old saint, and will assuredly go to Heaven. He is not a Jesuit, you know, but he is afraid of them, as everybody else is, I think--" She paused and closed the shutters to soften the growing day.
"Except Marcos," she threw back over her shoulder towards the bed, with some far-off suggestion of anger still in her voice.
"And now he must be allowed to sleep until the doctor comes from Pampeluna," she concluded.
She left the room as she spoke to warn the servants, who were already astir, to do their work as noiselessly as possible. When she returned Marcos was asleep.
"The doctor cannot be here for another hour, at least," whispered Sarrion, who was standing by the window watching Marcos. "It is too far for a man of his age to ride, and he has no carriage. There may be some delay in finding one to do so great a distance at this time in the morning. You must take the opportunity to get some sleep."
But Juanita only shook her head and laughed.
Sarrion did not persuade her, but turned to quit the room. His hand was on the door when some one tapped on the other side of it. It was Marcos' servant.
"The doctor, Excellency," he announced briefly.
In the passage stood a man of middle height, hard and wiry, with those lines in his face that time neither obliterates nor deepens; the parallels of hunger. He had been through the first Carlist war nearly thirty years earlier. He had starved in Pampeluna, the hungry, the impregnable.
Sarrion shook hands with him and passed into the room.
"Ah!" he said, in the quiet voice of one who is accustomed to speak in the presence of sleep, when he saw Juanita, "Ah--you!"
"Yes," said Juanita.
"So you are nursing your husband," he murmured abstractedly, as he bent over the bed.
And Juanita made no answer.
"How long has he been asleep?" he asked, after a few moments, and in reply received the written paper which he read quickly, with a practised eye, and laid it aside.
"We must wait," he said, turning to Sarrion, "until he awakes. But it is all right. I can see that while he sleeps. He is a strong man; none stronger in all Navarre."
As he spoke, he was examining the bottles left by the village apothecary, tasting one, smelling another. He nodded approval. In medicine, as in war, one expert may know unerringly what another will do. Then he looked round the room, which was orderly as a hospital ward.
"One sees," he said, "that he has a nun to care for him."
He smiled faintly, so that his features fell into the lines that hunger draws. But Juanita looked at him with grave eyes and did not answer to his pleasantry.
Then he turned to Sarrion.
"It was only by the kindness of a mere acquaintance," he said, "that I was enabled to get here so soon. My own horses were tired out with a hard day yesterday, and I was going out to seek others in Pampeluna--no easy task on market-day--when I met a travelling carriage on the Plaza de la Constitution Its owner must have divined my haste, for he offered assistance, and on hearing my story, and whither I was bound, he gave up his intended journey, decided to remain a few days longer in Pampeluna and placed his carriage at my disposal. I hardly know the man at all--though he tells me that he is an old friend of yours. He lives in Saragossa."
"Ah!" said Sarrion, who was listening with rather marked attention.
Juanita had moved away, but she was standing now, listening also, looking back over her shoulder with waiting eyes.
"It was the Senior Evasio Mon," said the doctor. And in the silence that followed, Marcos stirred in his sleep, as if he, too, had heard the name.
For the next fortnight Juanita remained in supreme command at Torre Garda, exercising that rule which she said she had acquired at the convent school. It had, in reality, come to her straight from Heaven, as it comes to all women. Is it not part of the gentler soul to care for the helpless and the sick? Just as it is in a man's heart to fight the world for a woman's sake.
Marcos made a quick recovery. His broken bones knit together like the snapped branch of a young tree. His cuts and bruises healed themselves unaided.
"He has no nerves," said Juanita. "You should see a nun when she is ill! St. Luke and all the saints have their hands full, I can tell you."
With returning health came energy. Indeed, the patient had never lost his grip of the world. Many from the valley came to make inquiry. Some left a message of condolence. Some departed with a grunt, indicative of satisfaction. A few of the more cultivated gave their names to the servant as they drank a glass of red wine in the kitchen.
"Say it was Pedro from the mill."
"Tell him that Three Fingered Thomas passed by," muttered another, grudgingly.
"It is I, so-called Short Knife, who came to ask," explained a third, tapping the sheath of his baptismal weapon.
"How far have you come?" asked Juanita, who found these gentlemen entertaining.
"Seventeen miles from the mountain," was the reply.
"All your friends are calling to inquire after your health," said Juanita to Marcos. "They are famous brigands, and make one think fondly of the Guardia Civile. There are not many razors in the valley, and I am sure there is no soap."
"They are honest enough, though their appearance may be disquieting."
"Oh! I am not afraid of them," answered Juanita, with a shrewd and mystic smile. "It is Cousin Peligros who fears them. She scolded me for speaking to one of them on the verandah. It undermines the pedestal upon which a lady should always stand. Am I on a pedestal, Marcos?"
She looked back at him over her shoulder, through the fold of her mantilla. It was an opportunity, perhaps, which a skillful lover would have seized. Marcos was silent for a moment. Then he spoke in a repressed voice.
"If they come again," he said, "I should like to see them."
But Juanita had already put into the apothecary's lips a command that no visitors should be admitted.
She kept this up for some days, but was at length forced to give way. Marcos was so obviously on the high road to recovery. There was no suggestion of an after-effect of the slight concussion of the brain which had rendered him insensible.
It was Short Knife who first gained admittance to the sick-room. He was quite a simple person, smelling of sheep, and endowed with a tact which is as common among the peasantry as amid the great. There was no sign of embarrassment in his manner, and he omitted to remove his beret from his close-cropped head until he saw Juanita whom he saluted curtly, replacing his cap with a calm unconsciousness before he nodded to Marcos.
"It was you I heard singing the Basque songs as I climbed the hill," he said, addressing Juanita first with the instinct of a gentleman. "You speak Basque?"
"I understand it, at all events, though I cannot speak it as well as Marcos."
"Oh, he!" said the man, glancing towards the bed. "He is one of us--one of us. Do you know the song that the women of the valley sing to their babies? I cannot sing to you for I have no voice except for the goats. They are not particular, the goats--they like music. They stand round me and listen. But if you are passing in the mountain my wife will sing it to you--she knows it well. We have many round the table--God be thanked. It makes them sleep when they are contrary. It tells how easy it is to kill a Frenchman."
Then, having observed the conventionalities, he turned eagerly to Marcos.
Juanita listened to them for a short time while they spoke together in the Basque tongue. Then she went to the balcony and stood there, leaning her arms on the iron rail, looking out over the valley with thoughtful eyes. She had seen clearly a hundred devices to relieve her of her watch at the bedside. Marcos made excuses for her to absent herself. He found occupations for her elsewhere. With his returning strength came anxiety that she should lead her own life--apart from him.
"You need not try to get rid of me," she said to him one day. "And I do not want to go for a walk with Cousin Peligros. She thinks only of her shoes and her clothes while she walks. I would go for a walk with Perro if I went with any one. He has a better understanding of what God made the world for than Cousin Peligros. But I am not going to walk with any one, thank you."
Nevertheless she absented herself. And Marcos' attempts to find diversions for her, ceased with a suspicious suddenness. She fell into the habit of using the drawing-room which was immediately beneath the sick-room, and spent much of her time at the piano there.
"It keeps Marcos quiet," she explained airily to Sarrion, and vouchsafed nothing further on the subject.
Chiefly because the music of Handel and Beethoven alone had been encouraged by her professors, Juanita had learnt with some enthusiasm the folk songs of the Basques, considered worthy only of the attention of the people. She had a pretty voice, round and young with strange low notes in it that seemed to belong not to her but to some woman who had yet to live and suffer, or, perhaps, be happy as some few are in this uneven world. She had caught, moreover, the trick of slurring from one note to the other, which must assuredly have been left in Spain by the Moors. It comes from the Far East. It was probably characteristic of those songs that they could not sing by the waters of Babylon, when they hanged their harps upon a tree in the strange land. For it gives to songs, sad or gay, the minor, low clear note of exile. It rings out unexpectedly in strange places. The boatmen of the Malabar Coast face the surf singing no other than the refrain that the Basque women murmur over the cradle. "It keeps Marcos quiet," said Juanita.
"I suppose," she suggested to Marcos one day when she returned to his room and found him quiet, "that when you are well enough to ride you will begin your journeys up and down the valley."
"Yes."
"And your endless watch over the Carlists?"
"They are making good use of their time, I hear," replied Marcos, with the grave appreciation of a good fighter for a worthy foe.
Juanita remembered this now as she stood on the balcony. For he of the Short Knife and Marcos were talking politics--those rough and ready politics of the valley of the Wolf, which dealt but little in words and very considerably in deeds of a bloody nature.
She could hear Marcos talking of the near future when he should be in the saddle again. And her eyes grew gloomy and dark with those velvet depths that lie in hazel eyes when they are grave. Her kingdom was slipping away from her.
She was standing thus when the sound of a horse's feet caught her attention. A horseman was coming up the slope from the village to the castle of Torre Garda.
She looked at him with eyes that had been trained by Marcos in the holiday times to see great distances in the mountains. Then she turned and reentered the sick man's room.
"There is another visitor coming to make inquiry into your welfare--it is Senor Mon."
And she looked for the gleam that immediately lighted Marcos' dark eyes.
Sarrion was out. He had ridden to a distant hamlet earlier in the day. The tidings of this journey might well have reached Evasio Mon's ears. Cousin Peligros was taking the siesta by which she sought to forestall a possible fatigue later in the day. There are some people who seem to have the misfortune to be absent on the rare occasions when they are wanted.
"He is not coming into this room," said Juanita, coolly. "I will go down and see him."
Evasio Mon greeted her with a gay smile.
"I am so glad," he said, "to hear that all goes well with Marcos. We heard of his accident at Pampeluna. I had a day of leisure so I rode out to pay my respects."
He glanced at her, but did not specify whether he had come to pay his respects to her as a bride or to Marcos as an invalid.
"It is a long way to come for a mere politeness," replied Juanita, who could meet smile with smile if need be. But the eyes before which Evasio Mon turned aside were grave enough.
"It is not a mere politeness," he answered. "I have known Marcos since he was a child; and have watched his progress in the world--not always with a light heart."
"That is kind of you," replied Juanita. "But why watch him if it gives you pain?"
Mon laughed. He was quick to see a joke and Juanita, he knew, was a gay soul.
"One cannot help taking an interest in one's friends and is naturally sorry to see them drifting..."
"Into what...?" asked Juanita turning to the table where a servant had placed coffee for the visitor.
"Politics."
"Are politics a crime?"
"They lead to many--but do not let us talk of them--" he broke off with a light gesture dismissing as it were an unpleasant topic. "Since you are happy," he concluded, looking at her with benevolent eyes.
He was a man of quick gesture and slow precise speech. He always seemed to mean much more than was conveyed by the mere words he enunciated. Juanita looked quickly at him. What did he know of her happiness? Was she happy--when she came to think of it? She remembered her gloomy thoughts of a few minutes earlier on the balcony. When we are young we confound thoughts with facts. When the heart is young it makes for itself a new heaven and a new earth from a word, a glance, a silence. It is a different earth from this one, but who can tell that it is not the same heaven as that for which men look?
Marcos was talking politics in the room overhead, forgetting her perhaps by now. Evasio Mon's suggestion had come at an opportune moment.
"Leon is much exercised on your account," said Mon, quietly, as if he had divined her thoughts. It was unlike Leon, perhaps, to be exercised about anything but his own soul; for he was a very devout man. But Juanita was not likely to pause and reflect on that point.
"Why?" she asked.
"He naturally dislikes the idea of your being dragged into politics," answered Mon, gently.
"I? Why should I be dragged into politics?"
Mon made a deprecatory gesture. It seemed that he found himself drawn again to speak of a subject that was distasteful to him. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
"Well," he said, half to himself, "we live in a practical age. Let us be practical. But he would have preferred that you should marry for love. Come, let us change the subject, my child. How is Sarrion? In good health, I hope."
"It is very kind of Leon to exercise his mind on my account," said Juanita steadily. "But I can manage my own affairs."
"Those are my own words," answered Mon soothingly. "I said to him: 'Juanita is no longer a child; Marcos is honest, he will not have deceived her; he must have told her that such a marriage is a mere question of politics; that there is no thought of love.'"
He glanced sharply at her. It was almost prophetic; for Marcos had used the very words. It is not difficult to be prophetic if one can sink self sufficiently to cloak one's thoughts with the mind of another and thus divine the workings of his brain. Juanita remembered that Marcos had told her that this was a matter of politics. Mon was only guessing; but he guessed right. The greatest men the world has produced only guessed after all; but they did not guess wrong.
"Such a fortune as yours," he said, with an easy laugh, "would make or mar any cause you see. Your fortune is perhaps your misfortune--who knows?"
Juanita laughed also, as at a pleasant conceit. The wit that had baffled Father Muro was ready for Evasio Mon. A woman will take her stand before her own heart and defy the world. Juanita's eyes flashed across the man's gentle face.
"But," she said, "if the fortune is my own; if I prefer that Marcos should have it--to the church?"
Evasio Mon smiled gently.
"Of course," he murmured. "That is what I said to Leon, and to Sor Teresa also, who naturally is troubled about you. Though there are other alternatives. Neither Marcos nor the Church need have it. You could have it yourself as your father, my old and dear friend, intended it."
"How could I have it myself?" asked Juanita, whose curiosity was aroused.
Mon shrugged his shoulders.
"The Pope could annul such a marriage as yours by a stroke of the pen if he wished." He paused, looking at her beneath his light lashes. "And I am told he does wish it. What the Pope wishes--well, one must try to be a good Catholic if one can."
Juanita smiled. She did not perhaps consider herself called upon to admit the infallibility of his Holiness in matters of the heart. She knew better than the Pope. Mon saw that he had struck a false note.
"I am a sentimentalist myself," he said, with a frank laugh. "I should like every girl to marry for love. I should like love to be treated as something sacred--not as a joke. But I am getting to be an old man, Juanita. I am behind the times. Do I hear Sarrion in the passage?"
He rose as he spoke and went towards the door. Sarrion came in at that moment. The Spanish sense of hospitality is strongly Arabic. Mon had ridden many miles. Sarrion greeted him almost eagerly.