As Juanita quitted the room she heard Sarrion ask Evasio Mon if he had lunched. And Mon admitted that he had as yet omitted that meal. Juanita shrugged her shoulders. It is only in later life that we come to realise the importance of meals. If Mon was hungry he should have said so. She gave no further thought to him. She hated him. She was glad to think that he should have suffered, even if his pain was only hunger. What was hunger, she asked herself, compared with a broken heart? One was a passing pang that could be alleviated, could be confessed to the first comer, while a broken heart must be hidden at any cost from all the world.
She met Cousin Peligros coming towards the drawing-room in her best black silk dress, and in what might have been called a fluster of excitement at the thought of a visitor, if such a word had been applicable to her placid life of self-deception. Juanita made some small jest and laughed rather eagerly at it as she passed the pattern lady on the stairs.
She was very calm and collected; being a determined person, as many seemingly gay and light-hearted people are. She was going to leave Torre Garda and Marcos, who had married her for her money. It is characteristic of determined people that they are restricted in their foresight. They look in front with eyes so steady and concentrated that they perceive no side issues, but only the one path that they intend to tread. Juanita was going back to Pampeluna, to Sor Teresa at the convent school in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. She recked nothing of the Carlists, of the disturbed country through which she had to pass.
She had never lacked money, and had sufficient now for her needs. The village of Torre Garda could assuredly provide a carriage for the journey; or, at the worst, a cart. Anything would be better than remaining in this house--even the hated school in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. She had always known that Sor Teresa was her friend, though the Sister Superior's manner of indicating friendship had not been invariably comprehensible.
Juanita took a cloak and what money she could find. She was not a very tidy person, and the money had to be collected from odd trinket-boxes and discarded purses. Marcos was still talking politics with his friend from the mountains when she passed beneath his window. Sarrion and Evasio Mon had gone to the dining-room, where, it was to be presumed, Cousin Peligros had followed them. She professed a great admiration for Evasio Mon, who was on familiar terms with people of the highest distinction. An hour's start would be sufficient. In that time she could be half-way to Pampeluna. Secrecy was of course out of the question.
The drawing-room window was open. Juanita paused on the threshold for a moment. Then she went into the room and scribbled a hurried note--not innocent of blots--which she addressed to Marcos. She left it on the writing-table and carrying her cloak over her arm she hurried down a zigzag path concealed in a thicket of scrub-oak to the village of Torre Garda.
Before reaching the village she overtook a traveling-carriage going at a walking pace down the hill. The carriage, which was old-fashioned in build, and set high upon its narrow wheels, was empty.
"Where are you going?" asked Juanita, of the man who took off his hat to her, almost as if he had expected her.
"I am returning to Pampeluna, empty, Excellency," he answered. "I have brought the baggage of Señor Mon, who is traveling over the mountains on horseback. I am hoping to get a fare from Torre Garda back to Pampeluna, if I have the good fortune."
The coincidence was rather startling. Juanita had always been considered a lucky girl, however; one for whom the smaller chances of daily existence were invariably kind. She accepted this as another instance of the indulgence of fate in small things. She was not particularly glad or surprised. A dull indifference had come over her. The small things of daily life had never engrossed her mind. She was quite indifferent to them now. It was her intention to get to Pampeluna, through all difficulties, and the incidents of the road occupied no place in her thoughts. She was vaguely confident that no one could absolutely stand in her way. Had not Evasio Mon said that the Pope would willingly annul her marriage?
She was thinking these thoughts as she drove through the little mountain village.
"What is that--it sounds like thunder or guns?" inquired Evasio Mon, pausing in his late and simple luncheon in the dining-room.
"A clerical ear like yours should not know the sound of guns," replied Sarrion with a curt laugh. "It is not that, however. It is a cart or a carriage crossing the bridge below the village."
Mon nodded his head and continued to give his attention to his plate.
"Juanita looks well--and happy," he said, after a pause.
Sarrion looked at him and made no reply. He was borrowing from the absent Marcos a trick of silence which he knew to be effective in a subtle war of words.
"Do you not think so?"
"I am sure of it, Evasio."
Sarrion was wondering why he had come to Torre Garda--this stormy petrel of clerical politics--whose coming never boded good. Mon was much too wise to be audacious for audacity's sake. He was not a theatrical man, but one who had worked consistently and steadily for a cause all through his life. He was too much in earnest to consider effect or heed danger.
"I am not on the winning side, but I am sure that I am on the right one," he had once said in public. And the speech went the round of Spain.
After he had finished luncheon he spoke of taking his leave, and asked if he might be allowed to congratulate Marcos on his escape.
"It should be a warning to him," he went on, "not to ride at night. To do so is to court mishap in these narrow mountain roads."
"Yes," said Sarrion, slowly.
"Will his nurse allow me to see him?" asked the visitor.
"His nurse is Juanita. I will go and ask her," replied Sarrion, looking round him quite openly to make sure that there were no letters lying about on the tables of the terrace that Mon might be tempted to read in his absence.
He hurried to Marcos' room. Marcos was out of bed. He was dressing, with the help of his servant and the visitor from the mountains. With a quick gesture, Marcos indicated the open window, through which the sound of any exclamation might easily reach the ear of Evasio Mon.
"Juanita has gone," he said, in French. "Read that note. It is his doing, of course."
"I know now," wrote Juanita, "why you were afraid of my growing up. But I am grown up--and I have found out why you married me."
"I knew it would come sooner or later," said Marcos, who winced as he drew his sleeve over his injured arm. He was very quiet and collected, as people usually are in face of a long anticipated danger which when it comes at last brings with it a dull sense of relief.
Sarrion made no reply. Perhaps he, too, had anticipated this moment. A girl is a closed book. Neither knew what might be written in the hidden pages of Juanita's heart.
A crisis usually serves to accentuate the weakness or strength of a man's character. Marcos was intensely practical at this moment--more practical than ever. He had only one thought--the thought that filled his life--which was Juanita's welfare. If he could not make her happy he could, at all events, shield her from harm. He could stand between her and the world.
"She can only have gone down the valley," he said, continuing to speak in French, which was a second mother tongue to him. "She must have gone to Sor Teresa. He has induced her to go by some trick. He would not dare to send her anywhere else."
"I heard a carriage cross the bridge," replied Sarrion. "He heard it also, and asked what it was. The next moment he spoke of Juanita. The sound must have put the thought of Juanita into his mind."
"Which means that he provided the carriage. He must have had it waiting in the village. Whatever he may undertake is always perfectly organised; we know that. How long ago was that?"
"An hour ago and more."
Marcos nodded and glanced at the clock.
"He will no doubt have made arrangements for her to get safely through to Pampeluna."
"Then where are you going?" asked Sarrion, perceiving that Marcos was slipping into his pocket the arm without which he never traveled in the mountains.
"After her," was the reply.
"To bring her back?"
"No."
Marcos paused for a moment, looking from the window across the valley to the pine-clad heights with thoughtful eyes. He held odd views--now deemed chivalrous and old-fashioned--on the question of a woman's liberty to seek her own happiness in her own way. Such views are unnecessary to-day when woman is, so to speak, up and fighting. They belong to the days of our grandmothers, who had less knowledge and much more wisdom; for they knew that it is always more profitable to receive a gift than demand a right. The measure will be fuller.
"No. Not unless it is her own wish," he said.
Sarrion made no answer. In human difficulties there is usually nothing to be said. There is nearly always one clear course to steer and the deviations are only found by too much talk and too much licence given to crooked minds. If happiness is not to be found in the straight way nothing is gained by turning into by-paths to seek it. A few find it and a great number are not unhappy who have seen it down a side-path and have yet held their course in the straight way.
"Will you keep him in the library--make the excuse that the sun is too hot on the verandah--until I am gone?" said Marcos. "I will follow and, at all events, see that she arrives safely at Pampeluna."
Sarrion gave a curt laugh.
"We may be able," he said, "to turn to good account Evasio's conviction that you are ill in bed, when in reality you are in the saddle."
"He will soon find out."
"Of course--but in the meantime..."
"Yes," said Marcos with a slow smile ... "in the meantime." He left the room as he spoke, but turned on the threshold to look back over his shoulder. His eyes were alight with anger and the smile had lapsed into a grin.
Sarrion went down to the verandah to entertain the unsought guest.
"They have given us coffee," he said, "in the library. It is too hot in the sun, although we are still in March! Will you come?"
"And what has Juanita decreed?" asked Mon, when they were seated and Sarrion had lighted his cigarette.
"The verdict has gone against you," replied Sarrion. "Juanita has decreed most emphatically that you are not to be allowed to see Marcos."
Mon laughed and spread out his hands with a characteristic gesture of bland acceptance of the inevitable. The man, it seemed, was a philosopher; a person, that is to say, who will play to the end a game which he knows he cannot win.
"Aha!" he laughed. "So we arrive at the point where a woman holds the casting vote. It is the point to which all men travel. They have always held the casting vote--ces dames--and we can only bow to the inevitable. And Juanita is grown up. One sees it. She is beginning to record her vote."
"Yes," answered Sarrion with a narrow smile. "She is beginning to record her vote."
With a Spanish formality of manner, Sarrion placed his horse at the disposition of Evasio Mon, should the traveller feel disposed to pass the night at Torre Garda. But Mon declined.
"I am a bird of passage," he explained. "I am due in Pampeluna again to-night. I shall enjoy the ride down the valley now that your hospitality has so well equipped me for the journey----"
He broke off and looked towards the open window, listening.
Sarrion had also been listening. He had heard the thud of Marcos' horse as it passed across the wooden bridge below the village.
"Guns again?" he suggested, with a short laugh.
"I certainly heard something," Mon answered. And rising briskly from his chair, he went to the window. Sarrion followed him, and they stood side by side looking out over the valley. At that moment that which was more of a vibration than a sound came to their ears across the mountains--deep and foreboding.
"I thought I was right," said Mon, in little more than a whisper. "The Carlists are abroad, my friend, and I, who am a man of peace must get within the city walls."
With an easy laugh he said good-bye. In a few minutes he was in the saddle riding leisurely down the valley of the Wolf after Juanita--with Marcos de Sarrion in between them on the road.
Juanita's carriage emerged from the valley of the Wolf into the plain at sunset. She could see that the driver paid but little heed to his horses. His attention wandered constantly to the mountains. For, instead of looking to the road in front, his head was ever to the right, and his eyes searched the plain and the bare brown hills.
At last he pulled up and, turning on his box, held up one finger.
"Listen, Señorita," he said, and his dark eyes were alight with excitement.
Juanita stood up and listened, looking westward as he did. The sound was like the sound of thunder, but shorter and sharper.
"What is it?"
"The Carlists--the sons of dogs!" he answered, with a laugh, and he shook his whip towards the mountains. "See," he said, gathering up the reins again, "that dust on the road to the west--that is the troops marching out from Pampeluna. We are in it again--in it again!"
At the gate of the city there was a crowd of people. The carriage had to stand aside against the trees to let pass the guns which clattered down the slope. The men were laughing and shouting to each other. The officers, erect on their horses, seemed to think only of the safety of the guns as a woman entering a ballroom reviews her jewelery with a quick comprehensive glance.
At the guard-house, beneath the second gateway, there occurred another delay. The driver was a Pampeluna man and well-known to the sentries. But they did not recognise his passenger and sent for the officer on duty.
"The Señorita Juanita de Mogente," he muttered, as he came into the road--a stout and grizzled warrior smoking a cigarette. "Ah, yes!" he said, with a grave bow at the carriage door. "I remember you as a schoolgirl. I remember now. Forgive the delay and pass in--Señora de Sarrion."
Juanita was ushered into the little bare waiting-room in the convent school of the Sisters of the True Faith in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. It is a small, square apartment at the end of a long and dark passage. The day filters dimly into it through a barred window no larger than a pocket-handkerchief. Juanita stood on tiptoe and looked into a narrow alley. On the sill of this window Marcos had stood to wrench apart the bars of the window immediately overhead, through which he had lifted her one cold night--years and years ago, it seemed.
Nothing had changed in this gloomy house.
"The dear Sister Superior is at prayer in the chapel," the doorkeeper had whispered. The usual formula; for a nun must always be given the benefit of the doubt. If she is alone in her cell or in the chapel it is always piously assumed that she is at prayer. Juanita smiled at the familiar words.
"Then I will wait," she said, "but not very long."
She gave the nun a familiar little nod of warning as if to intimate that no tricks of the trade need be tried upon her.
She stood alone in the little gray, dim room now, and waited with brooding eyes. Within, all was quiet with that air of awesome mystery peculiar to the cloister, which so soon gives place with increasing familiarity, to a sense of deadly monotony. It is only from outside that the mystery of the cloister continues to interest. Juanita knew every stone in this silent house. Its daily round of artificial duties appeared small to her eyes.
"They have nothing to do all day in a nunnery," she once said to Marcos in jest. "So they rise up very early in the morning to do it."
She had laughed on first seeing the mark of Marcos' heel on the window-sill. She turned and looked at it again now--without laughing. And she thought of Torre Garda with its keen air, cool to the cheek like spring water; with the scent of the bracken that she loved; with the tall, still pines, upright against the sky, motionless, whispering with the wind.
She had always thought that the cloister represented safety and peace in a world of strife. And now that she was back within the walls she felt that it was better to be in the world, to take part in the strife, if necessary; for Heaven had given her a proud and a fierce heart. She would rather be miserable here all her life than go back to Marcos, who had dared to marry her without loving her.
The door of the waiting-room opened and Sor Teresa stood on the threshold.
"I have come back," said Juanita. "I think I shall go into religion. I have left Torre Garda."
She gave a short laugh and looked curiously at Sor Teresa--impassive in her straight-hanging robes.
"So you have got me back," she said. "Back to the convent."
"Not to this convent," replied Sor Teresa, quietly.
"But I have come back. I shall come back--the Mother Superior..."
"The Mother Superior is in Saragossa. I am mistress here," replied Sor Teresa, standing still and dark, like one of the pines at Torre Garda. The Sarrion blood was rising to her pale cheek. Her eyes glowed darkly beneath her overshadowing head-dress. Command--that indefinable spirit which is vouchsafed to gentle people, while rough and strong men miss it--was written in every line of her face, every fold of her dress, in the quiet of her small, white hands, resting motionless against her skirt.
Juanita stood looking at her with flashing eyes, with her head thrown back, with clenched hands,
"Then I will go somewhere else. But I do not understand you. You always wanted me to go into religion."
Sor Teresa held up one hand and cut short her speech. For the habit of obedience is so strong that clear-headed men will deliberately go to their death rather than relinquish it. The gesture was known to Juanita. It was dreaded in the school.
"Think--" said Sor Teresa. "Think before you say that."
"Well," argued Juanita, "if you did not urge me in words, you used every means in your power to induce me to take the veil--to make it impossible for me to do anything else."
"Think!" urged Sor Teresa. "Think again. Do not include me in such generalities without thinking."
Juanita paused. She ran back in her mind over a hundred incidents of school life, remembered, as such are, with photographic accuracy.
"Well," she admitted at length. "You did your best to make me hate it--at all events."
"Ah!" said Sor Teresa, with a slow smile.
"Then you did not want me to go into religion--" Juanita came a step nearer and peered into Sor Teresa's face. She might as well have sought an answer in a face of stone.
"Answer me," she said impatiently.
"All are not suited for the religious life," answered the Sister Superior after the manner of her teaching. "I have known many such, and I have seen much sorrow arising from a mistaken sense of duty. I have heard of lives wrecked by it--I have known of two."
Juanita who had moved away impatiently, now turned and looked at Sor Teresa. The gloom of evening was gathering in the little bare room. The stillness of the convent was oppressive.
"Wereyousuited to the religious life?" asked the girl suddenly.
But Sor Teresa made no answer.
Juanita sat suddenly down. Her movements were quick and impulsive still, as they had been when she was a schoolgirl. When she had arrived at the convent she had felt hungry and tired. The feelings came back to her with renewed intensity now. She was sick at heart. The gray twilight within these walls was like the gloom of a hopeless life.
"I wonder who the other was," she said, half to herself. For the world was opening out before her like a great book hitherto closed. The lives of men and women had gained depth and meaning in a flash of thought.
She rose and impulsively kissed Sor Teresa.
"I used to be afraid of you," she said, with a laugh which seemed to surprise her, as if the voice that had spoken was not her own. Then she sat down again. It was almost dark in the room now, and the window glimmered a forlorn gray.
"I am so hungry and tired," said Juanita in rather a faint voice, "but I am glad I came. I could not stay in Torre Garda another hour. Marcos married me for my money. The money was wanted for political purposes. They could not get it without me--so I was thrown in."
She dropped her two hands heavily on the table and looked up as if expecting some exclamation of surprise or horror. But her hearer made no sign.
"Did you know this?" she asked, in an altered voice after a pause. "Are you in the plot, too, as well as Marcos and Uncle Ramon? Have you been scheming all this time as well, that I should marry Marcos?"
"Since you ask me," said Sor Teresa, slowly and coldly, "I think you would be happier married to Marcos than in religion. It is only my opinion, of course, and you must decide for yourself. It is probably the opinion of others, however, as well. There are plenty of girls who ..."
"Oh! are there?" cried Juanita, passionately. "Who--I should like to know?"
"I am only speaking in generalities, my child."
Juanita looked at her suspiciously, her April eyes glittering with a new light.
"I thought you meant Milagros. He once said that he thought her pretty, and liked her hair. It is red, everybody knows that. Besides, we are married."
She dropped her tired head upon her folded arms--a schoolgirl attitude which returned naturally to her amid the old surroundings.
"I don't care what becomes of me," she said wearily. "I don't know what to do. It is very hard that papa should be dead and Leon ... Leon such a preposterous stupid. You know he is."
Sor Teresa did not deny this sisterly truth; but stood motionless, waiting for Juanita's decision.
"I am so hungry and tired," she said at length. "I suppose I can have something to eat ... if I pay for it."
"Yes; you can have something to eat."
"And I may be allowed to stay here to-night, at all events."
"No, you cannot do that," answered the Sister Superior.
Juanita looked up in surprise.
"Then what am I to do? Where am I to go?"
"Back to your husband," was the reply in the same gentle, inexorable voice. "I will take you back to Marcos--that is all I will do for you. I will take you myself."
Juanita laughed scornfully and shook her head. She had plenty of that spirit which will fight to the end and overcome fatigue and hunger.
"You may be mistress here," she said. "But I do not think you can deny me a lodging. You cannot turn me out into the street."
"Under exceptional circumstances I can do both."
"Ah!" muttered Juanita, incredulously.
"And those circumstances have arisen. There, you can satisfy yourself."
She laid before Juanita, on the bare table, a paper which it was not possible to read in the semi-darkness. She turned to the mantelpiece, where two tall candles added to the sacerdotal simplicity of the room. While the sulphur match burnt blue, Juanita looked indifferently at the printed paper.
"It is a siege notice," said Sor Teresa, seeing that her hearer refused to read. "It is signed by General Pacheco, who arrived here with a large army to-day. It is expected that Pampeluna may be besieged by to-morrow evening. The investment may be a long one, which will mean starvation. Every householder must make a return of those dwelling under his roof. He must refuse domicile to any strangers; and I refuse to take you into this house."
Juanita read the paper now by the light of the candles which Sor Teresa set on the table. It was a curt, military document without explanation or unnecessary mitigation of the truth. For Pampeluna had seen the like before and understood this business thoroughly.
"You can think about it," said Sor Teresa, folding the paper and placing it in her pocket. "I will send you something to eat and drink in this room."
She closed the door, leaving Juanita to realise the grim fact that--shape our lives how we will, with all foresight--every care--the history of the world or of a nation will suddenly break into the story of the single life and march over it with a giant stride.
Presently a lay-sister brought refreshments and set the tray on the table without speaking. Juanita knew her well--and she, doubtless, knew Juanita's story; for her pious face was drawn into lines indicative of the deepest disapproval.
Juanita ate heartily enough, not noticing the cold simplicity of the fare. She had finished before Sor Teresa returned and without thinking of what she was doing, had rearranged the tray after the manner of the refectory. She was standing by the window which she had opened. The sounds of war came into the room with startling distinctness. The boom of the distant guns disputing the advance of the Carlists; while nearer, the bugles called the men to arms and the heavy tramp of feet came and went in the Calle de la Dormitaleria.
"Well," asked Sor Teresa. "What have you decided to do?"
Juanita listened to the alarm of war for a moment before turning from the window.
"It is not a false alarm?" she inquired. "The Carlists are really out?"
For she had fallen into the habit of the Northern Provinces, of speaking of the insurrection as if it were a recurrent flood.
"They have been preparing all the winter," answered Sor Teresa.
"And Pampeluna is to be invested?"
"Yes."
"And Torre Garda?..."
"Torre Garda," answered the nun, "is to be taken this time. The Carlists have decided to besiege it. It is at the mouth of the valley that the fighting is taking place."
"Then I will go back to Torre Garda," said Juanita.
"They will allow two nuns to pass anywhere," said Sor Teresa with her chilling smile as she led the way to her own cell in the corridor overhead. She provided Juanita with that dress which is a passport through any quarter of a town, across any frontier; to any battlefield. So Juanita took the veil at last--in order to return to Marcos.
Sor Teresa's words proved true enough at the city gates where the sentinels recognised her and allowed her carriage to pass across the drawbridge by a careless nod of acquiescence to the driver.
It was a clear dark night without a moon. The prevailing wind which hurries down from the Pyrenees to the warmer plains of Spain stirred the budding leaves of the trees that border the road below the town walls.
"I suppose," said Sor Teresa suddenly, "that Evasio Mon was at Torre Garda to-day."
"Yes."
"And you left him there when you came away."
"Yes."
"We shall meet him on the road," said Sor Teresa with a note of anxiety in her voice. Presently she stood up in the carriage which was an open one on high wheels and spoke to the driver in a low voice into his ear. He was a stout and respectable man with a good ecclesiastical clientèle in the pious capital of Navarre. He had a confidential manner.
The distant firing had ceased now and a great stillness reigned over the bare land. There are no trees here to harbour birds or to rustle in the wind. The man, nursing his horses for the long journey, drove at an easy pace. Juanita, usually voluble enough, seemed to have nothing to say to Sor Teresa. The driver could possibly overhear the conversation of his passengers. For this, or for another reason, Sor Teresa was silent.
As they approached the hills, they found themselves in a more broken country. They climbed and descended with a rather irritating regularity. The spurs of the Pyrenees keep their form right down to the plains and the road to Torre Garda passes over them. Juanita leant sideways out of the carnage and stared upwards into the pine trees.
"Do you see anything?" asked Sor Teresa.
"No--I can see nothing."
"There is a chapel up there, on the slope."
"Our Lady of the Shadows," answered Juanita and lapsed into silence again. She knew now why the name had struck her with such foreboding, when she had learnt it from the lips of the laughing young captain of infantry.
It told of calamity--the greatest that can happen to a woman--to be married without love.
The driver turned in his seat and tried to overhear. He seemed uneasy and looked about him with quick turns of the head. At last, when his horses were mounting a hill, he turned round.
"Did these sainted ladies hear anything?" he asked.
"No," answered Sor Teresa. "Why do you ask?"
"There has been a man on horseback on the road behind us," he answered with assumed carelessness, "all the way from Pampeluna. He has now taken a short cut and is in front on the road above us; I can hear him; that is all."
And he gave a little cry to his horses; the signal for them to trot. They were approaching the mouth of the Valley of the Wolf, and could hear the sound of its wild waters in the darkness below them. The valley opens out like a fan with either slope rising at an easy angle to the pine woods. The road is a cornice cut on the western bank upon which side it runs for ten miles until the bridge below the village of Torre Garda leads it across the river to the sunny slope where the village crouches below the ancient castle from which the name is taken.
The horses were going at a walking pace now, and the driver to show, perhaps, his nonchalance and fearlessness was humming a song beneath his breath, when suddenly the hillside burst into flame and a deafening roar of musketry stunned both horses and driver. Juanita happened to be looking up at the hillside and she saw the fire run along like a snake of flame in the grass. In a moment the carriage had swung round and the horses were going at a gallop down the hill again. The driver stood up. He had a rein in either hand and he hauled the horses round each successive corner with consummate skill. All the while he used language which would have huddled Cousin Peligros shrieking in the bottom of the carriage.
Juanita and Sor Teresa stood up and looked back. By the light of the firing they saw a man lying low on his horse's neck galloping headlong through the zone of death after them.
"Did you hear the bullets?" said Juanita breathlessly. "They were like the wind through the telegraph-wires. Oh, I should like to be a man; I should like to be a soldier!"
And she gave a low laugh of thrilling excitement.
The driver was now pulling up his horses. He too laughed aloud.
"It is the troops," he cried. "They thought we were the Carlists. But, who is this, Señoras? It is that man again."
He leant back and hastily twisted one of the carriage-lamps round in its socket so as to show a light behind him towards the newcomer.
As the rider pulled up he came within the rays of the lamp which was a powerful one; and at the sight of him Juanita gave a sharp cry which neither she nor any that heard it forgot to the end of their lives.
"It is Marcos," she cried, clutching Sor Teresa's arm. "And he came through that--he came through that!"
"No one hurt?" asked Marcos' deep voice.
"No one hurt, Señor," answered the driver who had recognised him.
"And the horses?"
"The horses are safe. A malediction upon them; they nearly had us over the cliff. Those are the troops. They took us for Carlists."
"No," said Marcos. "They are the Carlists. The troops have been driven farther up the valley where they are entrenched. They have sent to Pampeluna for help. This is a Carlist trap to catch the reinforcements as they approach. They thought your carriage was a gun."
The driver scratched his head and made known his views as to the ancestory of the Carlists.
"There is no getting into the valley to-night," said Marcos to Sor Teresa and Juanita. "You must return to Pampeluna."
"And what will you do?" asked Juanita in a hard voice.
"I will go on to Torre Garda on foot," answered Marcos speaking in French so that the driver should not hear and understand. "There is a way over the mountains which is known to two or three only."
"Uncle Ramon is at Torre Garda?" asked Juanita in the same curt, quick way.
"Yes."
"Then I will go with you," she said with her hand already on the door.
"It is sixteen miles," said Marcos, "over the high mountains. The last part can only be done by daylight. I shall be in the mountains all night."
Juanita had opened the door. She stood on the step looking up at him as he sat on the tall black horse,
"If you will take me," she said in French, "I will come with you."
Sor Teresa was silent still. She had not spoken since Marcos had pulled up his sweating horse in the lamplight. What a simple world this would be if more of its women knew when to hold their tongues!
Marcos, fresh from a bed of sickness was not fit to undertake this journey. He must already be tired out; for she knew that it was Marcos who had followed their carriage from Pampeluna. She guessed that finding no troops where he expected to find them he had ridden ahead to discover the cause of it and had passed unheard through the Carlist ambush and back again through the zone of fire. That Juanita could accomplish the journey on foot to Torre Garda seemed doubtful. The country was unsafe; the snows had hardly melted. It was madness for a wounded man and a girl to attempt to reach Torre Garda through a pass held by the enemy. But Sor Teresa said nothing.
Marcos sat motionless in the saddle. His face was above the radius of the reversed carriage-lamp, while Juanita standing on the dusty road in her nun's dress looking up at him, was close to the glaring light. It is to be presumed that he was watching her descend from the carriage and then turn to shut the door on Sor Teresa. By his silence, Marcos seemed to consent to this arrangement.
He came forward into the light now. In his hand he held a paper which he was unfolding. Juanita recognised the letter she had written to him in the drawing-room at Torre Garda. He tore the blank sheet off and folding the letter closely, replaced it in his pocket. Then he laid the blank sheet on the dusty splash-board of the carriage and wrote a few words in pencil.
"You must get back to Pampeluna," he said to the driver in that tone of command which is the only survival of feudal days now left in Europe--and even the modern Spaniards are losing it--"at any cost--you understand. If you meet the reinforcements on the road give this note to the commanding officer. Take no denial; give it into his own hand. If you meet no troops go straight to the house of the commandant at Pampeluna and give the letter to him. You will see that it is done," he said in a lower voice, turning to Sor Teresa.
The man protested that nothing short of death would prevent his carrying out the instructions.
"It will be worth your while," said Marcos. "It will be remembered afterwards."
He paused deep in thought. There were a hundred things to be considered at that moment; quickly and carefully. For he was going into the Valley of the Wolf, cut off from all the world by two armies watching each other with a deadly hatred.
The quiet voice of Sor Teresa broke the silence, softly taking its place in his thoughts. It seemed that the Sarrion brain had the power--the secret of so much success in this world--of thrusting forth a sure and steady hand to grasp the heart of a question and tear it from the tangle of side-issues among which the majority of men and women are condemned to flounder.
"Where is Evasio Mon?" she asked.
Marcos answered with a low, contented laugh.
"He is trapped in the valley," he said in French. "I have seen to that."
The firing had ceased as suddenly as it had commenced, and a silence only broken by the voice of the river, now hung over the valley.
"Are you ready?" Sor Teresa asked her driver.
"Yes, Excellency."
"Then go."
She may have nodded a farewell to Marcos and Juanita. But that they could not see in the blackness of the night. She certainly gave them no spoken salutation. The carriage moved away at a sharp trot, leaving Marcos and Juanita alone.
"We can ride some distance and must ford the river higher up," said Marcos at once. He did not seem to want any explanation. The excitement of the moment seemed to have wiped out the events of the last few months like writing off a slate. Juanita was young again, ready to throw herself headlong into an adventure in the mountains with Marcos such as they had had together many times during the holidays. But this was better than the dangers of mere snow and ice. For Juanita had tasted that highest of emotions, the excitement of battle. She had heard that which some men having once heard cannot live without, the siren song of a bullet.
"Are we going nearer to the Carlists?" she asked hurriedly. There was fighting blood in her veins, and the tones of her voice told clearly enough that it was astir at this moment.
"Yes," answered Marcos. "We must pass underneath them; for the ford is there. We must be quite noiseless. We must not even whisper."
He edged his horse towards one of the rough stones laid on the outer edge of the road to mark its limit at night.
"I can only give you one hand," he said. "Can you get up from this stone?"
"Behind you?" asked Juanita; "as we used to ride when I was--little?"
For Marcos had, like most Spaniards, grown from boyhood to manhood in the saddle, and Juanita had no fear of horses. She clambered to the broad back of the Moor and settled herself there, sitting pillion fashion and holding herself in position with both hands round Marcos.
"If he trots, I fall off," she said, with an eager laugh.
They soon quitted the road and began to descend the steep slope towards the river by a narrow path only made visible by the open space in the high brushwood. It was the way down to a ford leading to a cottage by courtesy called a farm, though the cultivated land was scarcely an acre in extent, reclaimed from the river-bed.
The ground was soft and mossy and the roar of the river covered the tread of the careful horse. In a few minutes they reached the water's edge, and after a moment's hesitation the Moor stepped boldly in. On the other bank Marcos whispered to Juanita to drop to the ground.
"The cottage is here," he said. "I shall leave the horse in their shed."
He descended from the saddle and they stood for a moment side by side.
"Let us wait a few moments, the moon is rising," said Marcos. "Perhaps the Carlists have been here."
As he spoke the sky grew lighter. In a minute or two a waning moon looked out over the sharp outline of hill and flooded the valley with a reddish light.
"It is all right," he said; nothing is disturbed here. They are asleep in the cottage; the noise of the river must have drowned the firing. They are friends of mine; they will give us some food for to-morrow morning and another dress for you. You cannot go in that."
"Oh!" laughed Juanita, "I have taken the veil. It is done now and cannot be undone."
She raised her hands to the wings of her spreading cap as if to defend it against all comers. And Marcos, turning, suddenly threw his uninjured arm round her, imprisoning her struggling arms. He held her thus a prisoner while with his injured hand he found the strings of the cap. In a moment the starched linen fluttered out, fell into the river, and was carried swirling away.
Juanita was still laughing, but Marcos did not answer to her gaiety. She recollected at that instant having once threatened to dress as a nun in order to alarm Marcos, and Sarrion's grave remark that it would of a certainty frighten him.
They were silent for a moment. Then Juanita spoke with a sort of forced lightness.
"You may have only one arm," she said, "but it is an astonishingly strong one!"
And she looked at him surreptitiously beneath her lashes as she stood with her hands on her hair.
Marcos tied his horse to a tree and led the way towards the cottage. It seemed to be innocent of bars and bolts. The ford, known to so few, and the evil name of the Wolf, served instead. The door opened at a push, and Marcos went in. A wood-fire smouldered on an open hearth, while the acrid smoke half-filled the room, blackened by the fumes of peat and charcoal.
Marcos stood on the threshold and called the owner by name. There was a shuffling sound in an inner room and the scraping of a match. A minute later a door was opened and an old woman stood in the aperture, fully dressed and carrying a lamp above her head.
"Ah!" she said. "It is you. I thought it was the voice of a friend. And you have your pretty wife there. What are you doing abroad at this hour ... the Carlists?"
"Yes," answered Marcos, rather quickly, "the Carlists. We cannot pass by the road, so have sent the carriage back and are going across the mountains."
The woman held up her hands and shook them from side to side in a gesture of horror.
"Ah! but there!" she cried, "I know what you are. There is no turning your back on your road. If you say you will go--you will go though it rain rocks. But this child--ah, dear, dear! You do not know what you have married--with your bright eyes. Sit down, my child. I will get you what I can. Some coffee. I am alone in the house. All my men have gone to the high valley, now that the snow is gone, to collect wood and to see what the winter has done for our hut up in the mountain."
Marcos thanked her, and explained that they wanted nothing but a roof under which to leave his horse.
"We are going up to the higher valley to-night," he said, "where we shall find your husband and sons. And at daylight we must hurry on to Torre Garda. But I want to borrow a dress and handkerchief belonging to one of your daughters. See, the Señora cannot walk in that one, which is too fine and too long."
"Oh, but my daughters ..." exclaimed the old woman, with deprecating hands.
"They are very pretty girls," answered Marcos, with a laugh. "All the valley knows that."
"They are not bad," admitted the mother, "but it is a flower compared to a cabbage. Still, we can hide the flower in the cabbage leaves if you like."
And she laughed heartily at her own conceit.
"Then see to it while I put my horse away," said Marcos. He quitted the hut and overheard the woman pointing out to Juanita that she had lost her mantilla coming through the trees in the dark. While he attended to his horse he could hear their laughter and gay conversation over the change of clothes; for Juanita understood these people as well as he did, and had grown through childhood to the age of thought in their midst. The peasant was still pressing a simple hospitality upon Juanita when Marcos returned to the cottage and found her ready for the journey.
"I was telling the Señora," explained the woman volubly, "that she must not so much as look inside the cottage in the mountains. I have not been there for six months and the men--you know what they are. They are no better than dogs I tell them. There is plenty of clean hay and dry bracken in the sheds up there and you can well make a soft bed for her to get some sleep for a few hours. And here I have unfolded a new blanket for the lady. See, it is white as I bought it. She can use it. It has never been worn--by us others," she added with perfect simplicity.
Marcos took the blanket while Juanita explained that having slept soundly every night of her life without exception, she could well now accommodate herself with a rest of two hours in the hay. The woman pressed upon them some of her small store of coffee and some new bread.
"He can well prepare your breakfast for you," she said, confidentially to Juanita. "He is like one of us. All the valley will tell you that. A great gentleman who can yet cook his own breakfast--as the good God meant them to be."
They set forth at once in the yellow light of the waning moon, Marcos leading the way up a pathway hardly discernible amid the rocks and undergrowth. Once or twice he turned to help Juanita over a hard or a dangerous place. But they did not talk, as conversation was not only difficult but inexpedient. They had climbed for two hours, slowly and steadily, when the barking of a dog on the mountainside above them notified them that they were nearing their destination.
"Who is it?" asked a voice presently.
"Marcos de Sarrion," replied Marcos. "Strike no lights."
"We have no candles up here," answered the man with a laugh. He only spoke Basque and it was in this language that Marcos gave a brief explanation. Juanita sat on a rock. She was tired out. There were three men--short, thick-set and silent, a father and two sons. They stood in front of Marcos and spoke in monosyllables after the manner of old friends. Under his directions they brought a heap of dried bracken and hay. In a shed, little more than a roof and four uprights, they made a rough couch for Juanita which they hedged round with heaps of bracken to protect her from the wind.
"You will see the stars," said the old man shaking out the blanket which Marcos had carried up from the cottage at the ford. "It is good to see the stars when you awake in the night. One remembers that the saints are watching."
In a few minutes Juanita was sleeping, like a child, curled up beneath her blanket, and heard through her dreams the low voices of Marcos and the peasants talking hurriedly in the half-ruined cottage. For Marcos and these three were the only men who knew the way over the mountains to Torre Garda.
The dawn was just breaking when Marcos awoke Juanita.
"Oh," she said plaintively. "I have only been asleep ten minutes."
"You have slept three hours," replied Marcos in that hushed voice in which it seems natural to speak before the dawn. "I am making coffee--come when you are ready."
Juanita found a pail of water and a piece of last year's yellow soap which had been carefully scraped clean with a knife. A clean towel had also been provided. Juanita noted the manly simplicity of these attentions with a little tender and wise smile.
"I know what it is that makes men gipsies," she said, when she joined Marcos who was attending to a fire of sticks on the ground at the cottage door. "I shall always have a kindly feeling for them now. They get something straight from heaven which is never known to people who sleep in stuffy houses and get up to wash in warm water."
She gave a little shiver at the recollection of her ablutions, and laughed a clear, low laugh, as fresh as the morning itself.
"Where are the men?" she asked.
"One has gone to Pampeluna, one has taken a note to the officer commanding the reinforcements sent for by Zeneta. The third has gone down to fetch his mother up here to bake bread all day. There will be a little army here to-night."
Juanita stood watching Marcos who seemed entirely absorbed in blowing up the fire with a pair of dilapidated bellows.
"I suppose," she said lightly, "that it was of these things that you were thinking when you were so silent as we climbed up here last night."
"I suppose so," answered Marcos.
Juanita looked at him with a little frown as if she did not quite believe him. The day had now come and a pink light suffused the topmost peaks. A faint warmth spread itself like a caress across the valley and turned the cold air into a pearly mist.
"Of what are you thinking?" asked Marcos suddenly; for Juanita had stood motionless, watching him.
"I was thinking what a comfort it is that you are not an indoor man," she replied with a careless laugh.
The peasants had brought their cows to the high pastures. So there was plenty of milk in the cottage which was little more than a dairy; for it had no furniture beyond a few straw mattresses thrown on the floor in one corner. Marcos served breakfast.
"Pedro particularly told me to see that you had the cup which has a handle," he said, pouring the coffee from a battered coffee-pot. During their simple breakfast they were silent. There was a subtle constraint. Juanita who had a quick and direct mind, decided that the moment had come for that explanation for which Marcos did not ask. An explanation does not improve by keeping. They were alone here--alone in the world it seemed--for the cows had strayed away. The dogs had gone to the valley with their masters. She and Marcos had always known each other. She knew his every thought; she was not afraid of him; she never had been. Why should she be now?
"Marcos," she said.
"Yes."
"I want you to give me the letter I wrote to you at Torre Garda."
He felt in his pocket and handed her the first paper he found without particularly looking at it. Juanita unfolded it. It was the note, all crumpled, which she had thrust through the wall of the convent school at Saragossa. She had forgotten it, but Marcos had kept it all this time.
"That is the wrong one," she said gravely, and handed it back to Marcos, who took it with a little jerk of the head as of annoyance at his own stupidity. He was usually very accurate in details. He gave her in exchange the right paper, which had been torn in two. The other half is in the military despatch office in Madrid to-day. Juanita had arranged in her own mind what to say. She was quite mistress of the situation, and was ready to move serenely and surely in her own sphere, taking the lead in such subtle matters with the capability and mastery which characterised Marcos' lead in affairs of action. But Marcos' mistake seemed to have put out her prearranged scheme.
She slowly tore the letter into pieces and threw it on the fire.
"Do you know why I came back?" she asked, which question can hardly have formed part of the plan of action.
"No."
"Because you never pretended that you cared. If you had pretended that you cared for me, I should never have forgiven you."
Marcos did not answer. He looked up slowly, expecting perhaps to find her looking elsewhere. But her eyes met his and she shrank back with an involuntary movement that seemed to be of fear. Her face flushed all over and then the colour faded from it, leaving her white and motionless as she sat staring into the flickering wood-fire.
Presently she rose and walked to the edge of the plateau upon which the hut was built. She stood there looking across to the mountains.
Marcos busied himself with the simple possessions of his host, setting them in order where he had found them and treading out the smouldering embers of the fire. Juanita turned and watched him over her shoulder with a mystic persistency. Beneath her lashes lurked a smile--triumphant and tender.