In Kedar's Tents
by Henry Seton Merriman · English · Gutenberg #5987 · 428,207 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of In Kedar's Tents
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: In Kedar's Tents
Author: Henry Seton Merriman
Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #5987]
Most recently updated: January 27, 2015
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5987
Credits: Transcribed from the 1909 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by Les Bowler
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN KEDAR'S TENTS ***
Transcribed from the 1909 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by Les Bowler.
[Picture: Book cover]
IN
KEDAR’S TENTS
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
BY
HENRY SETON MERRIMAN
* * * * *
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO.
15 WATERLOO PLACE
1909
* * * * *
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ONE SOWETH 1
II. ANOTHER REAPETH 11
III. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA 23
IV. LE PREMIER PAS 34
V. CONTRABAND 48
VI. AT RONDA 59
VII. IN A MOORISH GARDEN 70
VIII. THE LOVE LETTER 82
IX. A WAR OF WIT 94
X. THE CITY OF DISCONTENT 105
XI. A TANGLED WEB 117
XII. ON THE TOLEDO ROAD 129
XIII. A WISE IGNORAMUS 140
XIV. A WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE 151
XV. AN ULTIMATUM 163
XVI. IN HONOUR 174
XVII. IN MADRID 185
XVIII. IN TOLEDO 197
XIX. CONCEPÇION TAKES THE ROAD 208
XX. ON THE TALAVERA ROAD 220
XXI. A CROSS-EXAMINATION 231
XXII. REPARATION 242
XXIII. LARRALDE’S PRICE 254
XXIV. PRIESTCRAFT 265
XXV. SWORDCRAFT 276
XXVI. WOMANCRAFT 287
XXVII. A NIGHT JOURNEY 298
XXVIII. THE CITY OF STRIFE 309
XXIX. MIDNIGHT AND DAWN 320
XXX. THE DAWN OF PEACE 331
CHAPTER I
ONE SOWETH
‘If it be a duty to respect other men’s claims, so also is it a duty
to maintain our own.’
IT is in the staging of her comedies that fate shows herself superior to
mere human invention. While we, with careful regard to scenery, place
our conventional puppets on the stage and bid them play their old old
parts in a manner as ancient, she rings up the curtain and starts a
tragedy on a scene that has obviously been set by the carpenter for a
farce. She deals out the parts with a fine inconsistency, and the
jolly-faced little man is cast to play Romeo, while the poetic youth with
lantern jaw and an impaired digestion finds no Juliet to match his love.
Fate, with that playfulness which some take too seriously or quite amiss,
set her queer stage as long ago as 1838 for the comedy of certain lives,
and rang up the curtain one dark evening on no fitter scene than the high
road from Gateshead to Durham. It was raining hard, and a fresh breeze
from the south-east swept a salt rime from the North Sea across a tract
of land as bare and bleak as the waters of that grim ocean. A hard, cold
land this, where the iron that has filled men’s purses has also entered
their souls.
There had been a great meeting at Chester-le-Street of those who were at
this time beginning to be known as Chartists, and, the Act having been
lately passed that torchlight meetings were illegal, this assembly had
gathered by the light of a waning moon long since hidden by the clouds.
Amid the storm of wind and rain, orators had expounded views as wild as
the night itself, to which the hard-visaged sons of Northumbria had
listened with grunts of approval or muttered words of discontent. A
dangerous game to play—this stirring up of the people’s heart, and one
that may at any moment turn to the deepest earnest.
Few thought at this time that the movement awakening in the working
centres of the North and Midlands was destined to spread with the strange
rapidity of popular passion—to spread and live for a decade. Few of the
Chartists expected to see the fulfilment of half of their desires. Yet,
to-day, a moiety of the People’s Charter has been granted. These voices
crying in the night demanded an extended suffrage, vote by ballot, and
freedom for rich and poor alike to sit in Parliament. Within the scope
of one reign these demands have been granted.
The meeting at Chester-le-Street was no different from a hundred others
held in England at the same time. It was illegal, and yet the
authorities dared not to pronounce it so. It might prove dangerous to
those taking part in it. Lawyers said that the leaders laid themselves
open to the charge of high treason. In this assembly as in others there
were wirepullers—men playing their own game, and from the safety of the
rear pushing on those in front. With one of these we have to do. With
his mistake Fate raised the curtain, and on the horizon of several lives
arose a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand.
Geoffrey Horner lived before his time, insomuch as he was a
gentleman-Radical. He was clever, and the world heeded not. He was
brilliant, well educated, capable of great achievements, and the world
refused to be astonished. Here were the makings of a malcontent. A
well-born Radical is one whom the world has refused to accept at his own
valuation. A wise man is ready to strike a bargain with Fate. The
wisest are those who ask much and then take half. It is the coward who
asks too little, and the fool who imagines that he will receive without
demanding.
Horner had thrown in his lot with the Chartists in that spirit of pique
which makes a man marry the wrong woman because the right one will have
none of him. At the Chester-le-Street meeting he had declared himself an
upholder of moral persuasion, while in his heart he pandered to those who
knew only of physical force and placed their reliance thereon. He had
come from Durham with a contingent of malcontents, and was now returning
thither on foot in company with the local leaders. These were
intelligent mechanics seeking clumsily and blindly enough what they knew
to be the good of their fellows. At their heels tramped the rank and
file of the great movement. The assembly was a subtle foreshadowing of
things to come—of Newport and the march of twenty thousand men, of
violence and bloodshed, of strife between brethren, and of justice
nonplussed and hesitating.
The toil-worn miners were mostly silent, their dimly enlightened
intellects uneasily stirred by the words they had lately heard—their
stubborn hearts full of a great hope with a minute misgiving at the back
of it. With this dangerous material Geoffrey Horner proposed to play his
game.
Suddenly a voice was raised.
‘Mates,’ it cried, at the cross-roads, ‘let’s go and smash Pleydell’s
windows!’
And a muttered acquiescence to the proposal swept through the moving mass
like a sullen breeze through reeds.
The desire for action rustled among these men of few words and mighty
arms.
Horner hurriedly consulted his colleagues. Was it wise to attempt to
exert an authority which was merely nominal? The principles of Chartism
were at this time to keep within the limits of the law, and yet to hint,
when such a course was safe, that stronger measures lay behind mere
words. Their fatal habit was to strike softly.
In peace and war, at home and abroad, there is but one humane and safe
rule: Hesitate to strike—strike hard.
Sir John Pleydell was a member of that Parliament which had treated the
Charter with contempt. He was one of those who had voted with the
majority against the measures it embodied.
In addition to these damnatory facts, he was a local Tory of some
renown—an ambitious man, the neighbours said, who wished to leave his son
a peerage.
To the minds of the rabble this magnate represented the tyranny against
which their protest was raised. Geoffrey Horner looked on him as a
political opponent and a dangerous member of the winning party. The blow
was easy to strike. Horner hesitated—at the cross roads of other lives
than his own—and held his tongue.
The suggestion of the unknown humorist in the crowd commended itself to
the more energetic of the party, who immediately turned towards the
by-road leading to Dene Hall. The others—the minority—followed as
minorities do, because they distrusted themselves. Some one struck up a
song with words lately published in the ‘Northern Liberator’ and set to a
well-known local air.
The shooting party assembled at Dene Hall was still at the dinner table
when the malcontents entered the park, and the talk of coverts and guns
ceased suddenly at the sound of their rough voices. Sir John Pleydell,
an alert man still, despite his grey hair and drawn, careworn face,
looked up sharply. He had been sitting silently fingering the stem of
his wineglass—a habit of his when the ladies quitted the room—and,
although he had shot as well as, perhaps better than, any present, had
taken but little part in the conversation. He had, in fact, only half
listened, and when a rare smile passed across his grey face it invariably
owed its existence to some sally made by his son, Alfred Pleydell, gay,
light-hearted, _débonnaire_, at the far end of the table. When Sir
John’s thoughtful eyes rested on his motherless son, a dull and
suppressed light gleamed momentarily beneath his heavy lids. Superficial
observers said that John Pleydell was an ambitious man; ‘not for
himself,’ added the few who saw deeper.
When his quick mind now took in the import of the sound that broke the
outer silence of the night, Sir John’s glance sought his son’s face. In
moments of alarm the glance flies to where the heart is.
‘What is that?’ asked Alfred Pleydell, standing up.
‘The Chartists,’ said Sir John.
Alfred looked round. He was a soldier, though the ink had hardly dried
upon the parchment that made him one—the only soldier in the room.
‘We are eleven here,’ he said, ‘and two men downstairs—some of you
fellows have your valets too—say fifteen in all. We cannot stand this,
you know.’
As he spoke the first volley of stones crashed through the windows, and
the broken glass rattled to the floor behind the shutters. The cries of
the ladies in the drawing-room could be heard, and all the men sprang to
their feet. With blazing eyes Alfred Pleydell ran to the door, but his
father was there before him.
‘Not you,’ said the elder man, quiet but a little paler than usual; ‘I
will go and speak to them. They will not dare to touch me. They are
probably running away by this time.’
‘Then we’ll run after ’em,’ answered Alfred with a fine spirit, and
something in his attitude, in the ring of his voice, awoke that demon of
combativeness which lies dormant in men of the Anglo-Saxon race.
‘Come on, you fellows!’ cried the boy with a queer glad laugh, and
without knowing that he did it Sir John stood aside, his heart warm with
a sudden pride, his blood stirred by something that had not moved it
these thirty years. The guests crowded out of the room—old men who
should have known better—laughing as they threw aside their dinner
napkins. What a strange thing is man, peaceful through long years, and
at a moment’s notice a mere fighting devil.
‘Come on, we’ll teach them to break windows!’ repeated Alfred Pleydell,
running to the stick rack. The rain rattled on the skylight of the
square hall, and the wind roared down the open chimney. Among the men
hastily arming themselves with heavy sticks and cramming caps upon their
heads were some who had tasted of rheumatism, but they never thought of
an overcoat.
‘We’ll know each other by our shirt fronts,’ said a quiet man who was
standing on a chair in order to reach an Indian club suspended on the
wall.
Alfred was at the door leading through to the servants’ quarters, and his
summons brought several men from the pantry and kitchens.
‘Come on!’ he cried, ‘take anything you can find—stick or poker—yes, and
those old guns, use ’em like a club, hit very hard and very often. We’ll
charge the devils—there’s nothing like a charge—come on!’
And he was already out of the door with a dozen at his heels.
The change from the lighted rooms to the outer darkness made them pause a
moment, during which time the defenders had leisure to group themselves
around Alfred Pleydell. A hoarse shout, which indeed drowned Geoffrey
Horner’s voice, showed where the assailants stood. Horner had found his
tongue after the first volley of stones. It was the policy of the
Chartist leaders and wirepullers to suggest rather than demonstrate
physical force. Enough had been done to call attention to the
Chester-le-Street meeting, and give it the desired prominence in the eyes
of the nation.
‘Get back, go to your homes!’ he was shouting, with upraised arms, when
the hoarse cry of his adherents and the flood of light from the opened
door made him turn hastily. In a moment he saw the meaning of this
development, but it was too late.
With a cheer, Alfred Pleydell, little more than a boy, led the charge,
and seeing Horner in front, ran at him with upraised stick. Horner half
warded the blow, which came whistling down his own stick and paralysed
his thumb. He returned the stroke with a sudden fury, striking Pleydell
full on the head. Then, because he had a young wife and child at home,
he pushed his way through the struggling crowd, and ran away in the
darkness. As he ran he could hear his late adherents dispersing in all
directions, like sheep before a dog. He heard a voice calling:
‘Alfred! Alfred!’
And Horner, who an hour—nay, ten minutes—earlier had had no thought of
violence, ran his fastest along the road by which he had lately come.
His heart was as water within his breast, and his staring eyes played
their part mechanically. He did not fall, but he noted nothing, and had
no knowledge whither he was running.
Alfred Pleydell lay quite still on the lawn in front of his father’s
house.
CHAPTER II
ANOTHER REAPETH
‘Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt.’
DURING the course of a harum-scarum youth in the city of Dublin certain
persons had been known to predict that Mr. Frederick Conyngham had a
future before him. Mostly pleasant-spoken Irish persons these, who had
the racial habit of saying that which is likely to be welcome. Many of
them added, ‘the young divil,’ under their breath, in a pious hope of
thereby cleansing their souls from guilt.
‘I suppose I’m idle, and what is worse, I know I’m a fool,’ said
Conyngham himself to his tutor when that gentleman, with a toleration
which was undeserved, took him severely to task before sending him up for
the Bar examination. The tutor said nothing, but he suspected that this,
his wildest pupil, was no fool. Truth to tell, Frederick Conyngham had
devoted little thought to the matter of which he spoke, namely, himself,
and was perhaps none the worse for that. A young man who thinks too
often usually falls into the error of also thinking too much, of himself.
The examination was, however, safely passed, and in due course Frederick
was called to the Irish Bar, where a Queen’s Counsel, with an accent like
rich wine, told him that he was now a gintleman, and entitled so to call
himself.
All these events were left behind, and Conyngham, sitting alone in his
rooms in Norfolk Street, Strand, three days after the breaking of Sir
John Pleydell’s windows, was engaged in realising that the predicted
future was still in every sense before him, and in nowise nearer than it
had been in his mother’s lifetime.
This realisation of an unpleasant fact appeared in no way to disturb his
equanimity, for, as he knocked his pipe against the bars of the fire, he
murmured a popular air in a careless voice. The firelight showed his
face to be pleasant enough in a way that left the land of his birth
undoubted. Blue eyes, quick and kind; a square chin, closely curling
hair, and square shoulders bespoke an Irishman. Something, however, in
the cut of his lips—something close and firm—suggested an admixture of
Anglo-Saxon blood. The man looked as if he might have had an English
mother. It was perhaps this formation of the mouth that had led those
pleasant-spoken persons to name to his relatives their conviction that
Conyngham had a future before him. The best liars are those who base
their fancy upon fact. They knew that the ordinary thoroughbred Irishman
has usually a cheerful enough life before him, but not that which is
vaguely called a future. Fred Conyngham looked like a man who could hold
to his purpose, but at this moment he also had the unfortunate appearance
of not possessing one to hold to.
He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and held the hot briar bowl against
the ear of a sleeping fox terrier, which animal growled, without moving,
in a manner that suggested its possession of a sense of humour and a full
comprehension of the harmless practical joke.
A moment later the dog sat up and listened with an interest that
gradually increased until the door opened and Geoffrey Horner came into
the room.
‘Faith, it’s Horner!’ said Conyngham. ‘Where are you from?’
‘The North.’
‘Ah—sit down. What have you been doing up there—tub-thumping?’
Horner came forward and sat down in the chair indicated. He looked five
years older than when he had last been there. Conyngham glanced at his
friend, who was staring into the fire.
‘Edith all right?’ he asked carelessly.
‘Yes.’
‘And—the little chap?’
‘Yes.’
Conyngham glanced at his companion again. Horner’s eyes had the hard
look that comes from hopelessness; his lips were dry and white. He wore
the air of one whose stake in the game of life was heavy, who played that
game nervously. For this was an ambitious man with wife and child whom
he loved. Conyngham’s attitude towards Fate was in strong contrast. He
held his head up and faced the world without encumbrance, without a
settled ambition, without any sense of responsibility at all. The
sharp-eyed dog on the hearthrug looked from one to the other. A moment
before, the atmosphere of the room had been one of ease and comfortable
assurance—an atmosphere that some men, without any warrant or the
justification of personal success or distinction, seem to carry with them
through life. Since Horner had crossed the threshold the ceaseless hum
of the streets seemed to be nearer, the sound of it louder in the room;
the restlessness of that great strife stirred the air. The fox terrier
laid himself on the hearthrug again, but instead of sleeping watched his
two human companions.
Conyngham filled his pipe. He turned to the table where the matchbox
stood at his elbow, took it up, rattled it, and laid it down. He pressed
the tobacco hard with his thumb, and, turning to Horner, said sharply:
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know yet; ruin, I think.’
‘Nonsense, man!’ said Conyngham cheerily. ‘There is no such thing in
this world. At least, the jolliest fellows I know are bankrupts, or no
better. Look at me: never a brief; literary contributions returned with
thanks; balance at the bank, seventeen pounds ten shillings; balance in
hand, none; debts, the Lord only knows! Look at me! I’m happy enough.’
‘Yes, you’re a lonely devil.’
Conyngham looked at his friend with inquiry in his gay eyes.
‘Ah! perhaps so. I live alone, if that is what you mean. But as for
being lonely—no, hang it! I have plenty of friends, especially at
dividend time.’
‘You have nobody depending on you,’ said Horner with the irritability of
sorrow.
‘Because nobody is such a fool. On the other hand, I have nobody to care
a twopenny curse what becomes of me. Same thing, you see, in the end.
Come, man, cheer up. Tell me what is wrong. Seventeen pounds ten
shillings is not exactly wealth, but if you want it you know it is there,
eh?’
‘I do not want it, thanks,’ replied the other. ‘Seventeen hundred would
be no good to me.’
He paused, biting his under lip and staring with hard eyes into the fire.
‘Read that,’ he said at length, and handed Conyngham a cutting from a
daily newspaper.
The younger man read, without apparent interest, an account of the
Chester-le-Street meeting, and the subsequent attack on Sir John
Pleydell’s house.
‘Yes,’ he commented, ‘the usual thing. Brave words followed by a
cowardly deed. What in the name of fortune you were doing in that
_galère_ you yourself know best. If these are politics, Horner, I say
drop them. Politics are a stick, clean enough at the top, but you’ve got
hold of the wrong end. Young Pleydell was hurt, I see—“seriously, it is
feared.”’
‘Yes,’ said Horner significantly; and his companion, after a quick look
of surprise, read the slip of paper carefully a second time. Then he
looked up and met Horner’s eyes.
‘Gad!’ he exclaimed in a whisper.
Horner said nothing. The dog moved restlessly, and for a moment the
whole world—that sleepless world of the streets—seemed to hold its
breath.
‘And if he dies,’ said Conyngham at length.
‘Exactly so,’ answered the other with a laugh—of scaffold mirth.
Conyngham turned in his chair and sat with his elbows on his knees, his
face resting on his closed fists, staring at the worn old hearthrug.
Thus they remained for some minutes.
‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Horner at length.
‘Nothing—got nothing to think with. You know that, Geoffrey. Wish I
had—never wanted it as I do at this moment. I’m no good, you know that.
You must go to some one with brains—some clever devil.’
As he spoke he turned and took up the paper again, reading the paragraph
slowly and carefully. Horner looked at him with a breathless hunger in
his eyes. At some moments it is a crime to think, for we never know but
that thought may be transmitted without so much as a whisper.
‘“The miners were accompanied by a gentleman from London,”’ Conyngham
read aloud, ‘“a barrister, it is supposed, whose speech was a feature of
the Chester le-Street meeting. This gentleman’s name is quite unknown,
nor has his whereabouts yet been discovered. His sudden disappearance
lends likelihood to the report that this unknown agitator actually struck
the blow which injured Mr. Alfred Pleydell. Every exertion is being put
forth by the authorities to trace the man who is possibly a felon and
certainly a coward.”’
Conyngham laid aside the paper and again looked at Horner, who did not
meet his glance nor ask now of what he was thinking. Horner, indeed, had
his own thoughts, perhaps of the fireside—modest enough, but happy as
love and health could make it—upon which his own ambition had brought
down the ruins of a hundred castles in the air—thoughts he scarce could
face, no doubt, and yet had no power to drive away, of the young wife
whose world was that same fireside; of the child, perhaps, whose coming
had opened for a time the door of Paradise.
Conyngham broke in upon these meditations with a laugh.
‘I have it!’ he cried. ‘It’s as simple as the alphabet. This paper says
it was a barrister—a man from London—a malcontent, a felon, a coward.
Dammy, Geoff—that’s me!’
He leapt to his feet. ‘Get out of the way, Tim!’ he cried to the dog,
pushing the animal aside and standing on the hearthrug.
‘Listen to this,’ he went on. ‘This thing, like the others, will blow
over. It will be forgotten in a week. Another meeting will be held—say
in South Wales, more windows will be broken, another young man’s head
cracked, and Chester-le-Street (God-forsaken place, never heard of it!)
will be forgotten.’
Horner sat looking with hollow eyes at the young Irishman, his lips
twitching, his fingers interlocked—there is nothing makes so complete a
coward of a man as a woman’s love. Conyngham laughed as the notion
unfolded itself in his mind. He might, as he himself had said, be of no
great brain power, but he was at all events a man and a brave one. He
stood a full six foot, and looked down at his companion, who sat
whitefaced and shrinking.
‘It is quite easy,’ he said, ‘for me to disappear in such a manner as to
arouse suspicion. I have nothing to keep me here; my briefs—well, the
Solicitor-General can have ’em! I have no ties—nothing to keep me in any
part of the world. When young Pleydell is on his feet again, and a few
more windows have been broken, and nine days have elapsed, the wonder
will give place to another, and I can return to my—practice.’
‘I couldn’t let you do it.’
‘Oh yes, you could,’ said Conyngham with the quickness of his race to spy
out his neighbour’s vulnerable point. ‘For the sake of Edith and the
little devil.’
Horner sat silent, and after a moment Conyngham went on.
‘All we want to do is to divert suspicion from you now—to put them on a
false scent, for they must have one of some sort. When they find that
they cannot catch me they will forget all about it.’
Horner shuffled in his seat. This was nothing but detection of the
thoughts that had passed through his own mind.
‘It is easily enough done,’ went on the Irishman. ‘A paragraph here and
there in some of the newspapers; a few incriminating papers left in these
rooms, which are certain to be searched. I have a bad name—an Irish dog
goes about the world with a rope round his neck. If I am caught it will
not be for some time, and then I can get out of it somehow—an alibi or
something. I’ll get a brief at all events. By that time the scent will
be lost, and it will be all right. Come, Geoff, cheer up! A man of your
sort ought not to be thrown by a mischance like this.’
He stood with his legs apart, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, a
gay laugh on his lips, and much discernment in his eyes.
‘Oh, d—n Edith!’ he added after a pause, seeing that his efforts met with
no response. ‘D—n that child! You used to have some pluck, Horner.’
Horner shook his head and made no answer, but his very silence was a
point gained. He no longer protested nor raised any objection to his
companion’s hare-brained scheme. The thing was feasible, and he knew it.
Conyngham went on to set forth his plans, which with characteristic
rapidity of thought he evolved as he spoke.
‘Above all,’ he said, ‘we must be prompt. I must disappear to-night, the
paragraphs must be in to-morrow’s papers. I think I’ll go to Spain. The
Carlists seem to be making things lively there. You know, Horner, I was
never meant for a wig and gown—there’s no doubt about that. I shall have
a splendid time of it out there—’
He stopped, meeting a queer look in Horner’s eyes, who sat leaning
forward and searching his face with jealous glance.
‘I was wondering,’ said the other, with a pale smile, ‘if you were ever
in love with Edith.’
‘No, my good soul, I was not,’ answered Conyngham, with perfect
carelessness, ‘though I knew her long before you did.’
He paused, and a quick thought flashed through his mind that some men are
seen at their worst in adversity. He was ready enough to find excuses
for Horner, for men are strange in the gift of their friendship, often
bestowing it where they know it is but ill deserved.
He rattled on with unbroken gaiety, unfolding plans which in their
perfection of detail suggested a previous experience in outrunning the
constable.
While they were still talking a mutual friend came in—a quick-spoken man
already beginning to be known as a journalist of ability. They talked on
indifferent topics for some time. Then the new-comer said jerkily:
‘Heard the news?’
‘No,’ answered Conyngham.
‘Alfred Pleydell—young fellow who resisted the Chartist rioters at
Durham—died yesterday morning.’ Frederick Conyngham had placed himself
in front of Horner, who was still seated in the low chair by the fire.
He found Horner’s toe with his heel.
‘Is that so?’ he said gravely. ‘Then I’m off.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked the journalist with a quick look—the man had
the manner of a ferret.
‘Nothing, only I’m off, that’s all, old man. And I cannot ask you to
stay this evening, you understand, because I have to pack.’
He turned slowly on Horner, who had recovered himself, but still had his
hand over his face.
‘Got any money, Geoff?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I have twenty pounds if you want it,’ answered the other in a
hoarse voice.
‘I do want it—badly.’
The journalist had taken up his hat and stick. He moved slowly towards
the door, and, there pausing, saw Horner pass the bank-notes to
Conyngham.
‘You had better go too,’ said the Irishman. ‘You two are going in the
same direction, I know.’
Horner rose, and, half laughing, Conyngham pushed him towards the door.
‘See him home, Blake,’ he said. ‘Horner has the blues to-night.’
CHAPTER III
LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA
‘No one can be more wise than destiny.’
‘WHAT are we waiting for? why, two more passengers—grand ladies as they
tell me—and the captain has gone ashore to fetch them,’ the first mate of
the ‘Granville’ barque, of London, made answer to Frederick Conyngham,
and he breathed on his fingers as he spoke, for the north-west wind was
blowing across the plains of the Medoc, and the sun had just set behind
the smoke of Bordeaux.
The ‘Granville’ was lying at anchor in the middle of the Garonne river,
having safely discharged her deck cargo of empty claret casks and landed
a certain number of passengers. There are few colder spots on the
Continent than the sunny town of Bordeaux when the west wind blows from
Atlantic wastes in winter time. A fine powder of snow scudded across the
flat land, which presented a bleak brown face, patched here and there
with white. There were two more passengers on board the ‘Granville,’
crouching in the cabin—two French gentlemen who had taken passage from
London to Algeciras in Spain, on their way to Algiers.
Conyngham, with characteristic good-nature, had made himself so entirely
at home on board the Mediterranean trader that his presence was equally
welcomed in the forecastle and the captain’s cabin. Even the first mate,
his present interlocutor, a grim man given to muttered abuse of his
calling and a pious pessimism in respect to human nature, gradually
thawed under the influence of so cheerful an acceptance of heavy weather
and a clumsy deck cargo.
‘The ladies will be less trouble than the empty casks, at all events,’
said Conyngham, ‘because they will keep below.’
The sailor shook his head forebodingly and took an heroic pinch of snuff.
‘One’s as capable of carrying mischief as the other,’ he muttered in the
bigoted voice of a married teetotaller.
The ship was ready for sea, and this mariner’s spirit was ever uneasy and
restless till the anchor was on deck and the hawser stowed.
‘There’s a boat leaving the quay now,’ he added. ‘Seems she’s lumbered
up forr’ard wi’ women’s hamper.’
And indeed the black form of a skiff so laden could be seen approaching
through the driving snow and gloom. The mate called to the steward to
come on deck, and this bearded servitor of dames emerged from the galley
with uprolled sleeves and a fine contempt for cold winds. A boy went
forward with a coil of rope on his arm, for the tide was running hard and
the Garonne is no ladies’ pleasure stream. It is not an easy matter to
board a ship in mid-current when tide and wind are at variance, and the
fingers so cold that a rope slips through them like a log-line. The
‘Granville,’ having still on board her cargo of coals for Algeciras, lay
low in the water with both her anchors out and the tide singing round her
old-fashioned hempen hawsers.
‘Now see ye throw a clear rope,’ shouted the mate to the boy who had gone
forward. The proximity of the land and the approach of women—a _bête
noire_ no less dreaded—seemed to flurry the brined spirit of the
Granville’s’ mate.
Perhaps the knowledge that the end of a rope, not judged clear, would
inevitably be applied to his own person, shook the nerve of the boy on
the forecastle—perhaps his hands were cold and his faculties benumbed.
He cast a line which seemed to promise well at first. Two coils of it
unfolded themselves gracefully against the grey sky, and then Confusion
took the others for herself. A British oath from the deck of the ship
went out to meet a fine French explosion of profanity from the boat, both
forestalling the splash of the tangled rope into the water under the bows
of the ship, and a full ten yards out of the reach of the man who stood,
boathook in hand, ready to catch it. There were two ladies in the stern
of the boat, muffled up to the eyes, and betokening by their attitude the
hopeless despair and misery which seize the southern fair the moment they
embark in so much as a ferry boat. The fore part of the heavy craft was
piled up with trunks and other impedimenta of a feminine incongruity. A
single boatman had rowed the boat from the shore, guiding it into
mid-stream, and there describing a circle calculated to insure a gentle
approach on the lee side. This man, having laid aside his oars, now
stood, boathook in hand, awaiting the inevitable crash. The offending
boy in the bows was making frantic efforts to haul in his misguided rope,
but the possibility of making a second cast was unworthy of
consideration. The mate muttered such a string of foreboding expletives
as augured ill for the delinquent. The boatman was preparing to hold on
and fend off at the same moment—a sudden gust of wind gave the boat a
sharp buffet just as the man grappled the mizzen-chains—he overbalanced
himself, fell, and recovered himself, but only to be jerked backwards
into the water by the boathook, which struck him in the chest.
‘_À moi_!’ cried the man, and disappeared in the muddy water. He rose to
the surface under the ship’s quarter, and the mate, quick as lightning,
dumped the whole coil of the slack of the main sheet on to the top of
him. In a moment he was at the level of the rail, the mate and the
steward hauling steadily on the rope, to which he clung with the tenacity
and somewhat the attitude of a monkey. At the same instant a splash made
the rescuers turn in time to see Conyngham, whose coat lay thrown on the
deck behind them, rise to the surface ten yards astern of the ‘Granville’
and strike out towards the boat, now almost disappearing in the gloom of
night.
The water, which had flowed through the sunniest of the sunny plains of
France, was surprisingly warm, and Conyngham, soon recovering from the
shock of his dive, settled into a quick side-stroke. The boat was close
in front of him, and in the semi-darkness he could see one of the women
rise from her seat and make her way forward, while her companion crouched
lower and gave voice to her dismay in a series of wails and groans. The
more intrepid lady was engaged in lifting one of the heavy oars, when
Conyngham called out in French:
‘Courage, mesdames! I will be with you in a moment.’
Both turned, and the pallor of their faces shone whitely through the
gloom. Neither spoke, and in a few strokes Conyngham came alongside. He
clutched the gunwale with his right hand, and drew himself breast high.
‘If these ladies,’ he said, ‘will kindly go to the opposite side of the
boat, I shall be able to climb in without danger of upsetting.’
‘If mama inclines that way I think it will be sufficient,’ answered the
muffled form which had made its way forward. The voice was clear and
low, remarkably self-possessed, and not without a suggestion that its
possessor bore a grudge against some person present.
‘Perhaps mademoiselle is right,’ said Conyngham with becoming gravity,
and the lady in the stern obeyed her daughter’s suggestion, with the
result anticipated. Indeed, the boat heeled over with so much goodwill
that Conyngham was lifted right out of the water. He clambered on board
and immediately began shivering, for the wind cut like a knife.
The younger lady made her way cautiously back to the seat which she had
recently quitted, and began at once to speak very severely to her mother.
This stout and emotional person was swaying backwards and forwards, and,
in the intervals of wailing and groaning, called in Spanish upon several
selected saints to assist her. At times, and apparently by way of a
change, she appealed to yet higher powers to receive her soul.
‘My mother,’ said the young lady to Conyngham, who had already got the
oars out, ‘has the heart of a rabbit, but—yes—of a very young rabbit.’
‘Madame may rest assured that there is no danger,’ said Conyngham.
‘Monsieur is an Englishman—’
‘Yes, and a very cold one at the moment. If madame could restrain her
religious enthusiasm so much as to sit still, we should make better
progress.’
He spoke rather curtly, as if refusing to admit the advisability of
manning the boat with a crew of black-letter saints. The manner in which
the craft leapt forward under each stroke of the oars testified to the
strength of his arms, and madame presently subsided into whispers of
thankfulness, having reason, it would seem, to be content with mere
earthly aid in lieu of that heavenly intervention which ladies of her
species summon at every turn of life.
‘I wish I could help you,’ said the younger woman presently, in a voice
and manner suggestive of an energy unusual to her countrywomen. She
spoke in French, but with an accent somewhat round and full, like an
English accent, and Conyngham divined that she was Spanish. He thought
also that under their outer wraps the ladies wore the mantilla, and had
that graceful carriage of the head which is only seen in the Peninsula.
‘Thank you, mademoiselle, but I am making good progress now. Can you see
the ship?’
She rose and stood peering into the darkness ahead—a graceful, swaying
figure. A faint scent as of some flower was wafted on the keen wind to
Conyngham, who had already decided with characteristic haste that this
young person was as beautiful as she was intrepid.
‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘it is quite close. They are also showing lights to
guide us.’
She stood looking apparently over his head towards the ‘Granville,’ but
when she spoke it would seem that her thoughts had not been fixed on that
vessel.
‘Is monsieur a sailor?’
‘No, but I fortunately have a little knowledge of such matters—fortunate,
since I have been able to turn it to the use of these ladies.’
‘But you are travelling in the “Granville.”’
‘Yes; I am travelling in the “Granville.”’
Over his oars Conyngham looked hard at his interlocutrice, but could
discern nothing of her features. Her voice interested him, however, and
he wondered whether there were ever calms on the coast of Spain at this
time of the year.
‘Our sailors,’ said the young lady, ‘in Spain are brave, but they are
very cautious. I think none of them would have done such a thing as you
have just done for us. We were in danger. I knew it. Was it not so?’
‘The boat might have drifted against some ship at anchor and been upset.
You might also have been driven out to sea. They had no boat on board
the “Granville” ready to put out and follow you.’
‘Yes; and you saved us. But you English are of a great courage. And my
mother, instead of thanking you, is offering her gratitude to James and
John the sons of Zebedee, as if they had done it.’
‘I am no relation to Zebedee,’ said Conyngham with a gay laugh. ‘Madame
may rest assured of that.’
‘Julia,’ said the elder lady severely, and in a voice that seemed to
emanate from a chest as deep and hollow as an octave cask, ‘I shall tell
Father Concha, who will assuredly reprove you. The saints upon whom I
called were fishermen, and therefore the more capable of understanding
our great danger. As for monsieur, he knows that he shall always be in
my prayers.’
‘Thank you, madame,’ said Conyngham gravely.
‘And at a fitter time I hope to be able to tender him my thanks.’
At this moment a voice from the ‘Granville’ hailed the boat, asking
whether all was well and Mr. Conyngham on board. Being reassured on this
point, the mate apparently attended to another matter requiring his
attention, the mingled cries and expostulations of the cabin boy
sufficiently indicating its nature.
The boat, under Conyngham’s strong and steady strokes, now came slowly
and without mishap alongside the great black hull of the vessel, and it
soon became manifest that, although all danger was past, there yet
remained difficulty ahead; for when the boat was made fast and the ladder
lowered, the elder of the two ladies firmly and emphatically denied her
ability to make the ascent. The French boatman, shivering in a borrowed
great coat, and with a vociferation which flavoured the air with cognac,
added his entreaties to those of the mate and steward. In the small boat
Conyngham, in French, and the lady’s daughter, in Spanish, represented
that at least half of the heavenly host, having intervened to save her
from so great a peril as that safely passed through, could surely
accomplish this smaller feat with ease. But the lady still hesitated,
and the mate, having clambered down into the boat, grabbed Conyngham’s
arm with a large and not unkindly hand, and pushed him forcibly towards
the ladder.
‘You hadn’t got no business, Mr. Conyngham,’ he said gruffly, ‘to leave
the ship like that, and like as not you’ve got your death of cold. Just
you get aboard and leave these women to me. You get to your bunk,
mister, and stooard’ll bring you something hot.’
There was nought but obedience in the matter, and Conyngham was soon
between the blankets, alternately shivering and burning in the first
stages of a severe chill.
The captain having come on board, the ‘Granville’ presently weighed
anchor, and on the bosom of an ebbing tide turned her blunt prow towards
the winter sea. The waves out there beat high, and before the lights of
Pauillac, then a mere cluster of fishers’ huts, had passed away astern,
the good ship was lifting her bow with a sense of anticipation, while her
great wooden beams and knees began to strain and creak.
During the following days, while the sense of spring and warmth slowly
gave life to those who could breathe the air on deck, Conyngham lay in
his little cabin and heeded nothing; for when the fever left him he was
only conscious of a great lassitude, and scarce could raise himself to
take such nourishment as the steward, with a rough but kindly skill,
prepared for him.
‘Why the deuce I ever came—why the deuce I ever went overboard after a
couple of señoras—I don’t know,’ he repeated to himself during the hours
of that long watch below.
Why, indeed? except that youth must needs go forth into the world and
play the only stake it owns there. Nor is Frederick Conyngham the first
who, having no knowledge of the game of life, throws all upon the board
to wait upon the hazard of a die.
CHAPTER IV
LE PREMIER PAS
‘Be as one that knoweth and yet holdeth his tongue.’
THE little town of Algeciras lies, as many know, within sight of
Gibraltar, and separated from that stronghold by a broad bay. It is on
the mainland of Spain, and in direct communication by road with the great
port of Cadiz. Another road, little better than a bridle-path, runs
northward to Ximena and through the corkwood forests of that plain
towards the mountain ranges that rise between Ronda and the sea.
By this bridle-path, it is whispered, a vast smuggled commerce has ever
found passage to the mainland, and scarce a boatman or passenger lands at
Algeciras from Gibraltar but carries somewhere on his person as much
tobacco as he may hope to conceal with safety. Algeciras, with its fair
white houses, its prim church, and sleepy quay, where the blue waters lap
and sparkle in innocent sunlight, is, it is to be feared, a town of small
virtue and the habitation of scoundrels. For this is the stronghold of
those contrabandistas whom song and legend have praised as the boldest,
the merriest, and most romantic of law-breakers. Indeed, in this country
the man who can boast of a smuggling ancestry holds high his head and
looks down on honest folk.
The ‘Granville’ having dropped anchor to the north of the rough stone
pier, was soon disburdened of her passengers—the ladies going ashore with
undisguised delight, and leaving behind them many gracious messages of
thanks to the gentleman whose gallantry had resulted so disastrously; for
Conyngham was still in bed, though now nearly recovered. Truth to tell,
he did not hurry to make his appearance in the general cabin, and came on
deck a few hours after the departure of the ladies, whose gratitude he
desired to avoid.
Two days of the peerless sunshine of these southern waters completely
restored him to health, and he prepared to go ashore. It was afternoon
when his boat touched the beach, and the idlers, without whom no
Mediterranean seaboard is complete, having passed the heat of the day in
a philosophic apathy amounting in many cases to a siesta, now roused
themselves sufficiently to take a dignified and indifferent interest in
the new arrival. A number of boys, an old soldier, several artillerymen
from the pretty and absolutely useless fort, a priest and a female vendor
of oranges put themselves out so much as to congregate in a little knot
at the spot where Conyngham landed.
‘Body of Bacchus!’ said the priest, with a pinch of snuff poised before
his long nose, ‘an Englishman—see his gold watch chain.’
This remark called forth several monosyllabic sounds, and the onlookers
watched the safe discharge of Conyngham’s personal effects with a
characteristic placidity of demeanour which was at once tolerant and
gently surprised. That any one should have the energy to come ashore
when he was comfortable on board, or leave the shore when amply provided
there with sunshine, elbowroom, and other necessaries of life, presented
itself to them as a fact worthy of note but not of emulation. The
happiest man is he who has reduced the necessities of life to a minimum.
No one offered to assist Conyngham. In Spain the onlooker keeps his
hands in his pockets.
‘The English, see you, travel for pleasure,’ said the old soldier,
nodding his head in the direction of Gibraltar, pink and shimmering
across the bay.
The priest brushed some stray grains of snuff from the front of his faded
cassock—once black, but now of a greeny brown. He was a singularly tall
man, gaunt and grey, with deep lines drawn downwards from eye to chin.
His mouth was large and tender, with a humorous corner ever awaiting a
jest. His eyes were sombre and deeply shaded by grey brows, but one of
them had a twinkle lurking and waiting, as in the corner of his mouth.
‘Everyone stretches his legs according to the length of his coverlet,’ he
said, and, turning, he courteously raised his hat to Conyngham, who
passed at that moment on his way to the hotel. The little knot of
onlookers broke up, and the boys wandered towards the fort, before the
gate of which a game at bowls was in progress.
‘The Padre has a hungry look,’ reflected Conyngham. ‘Think I’ll invite
him to dinner.’
For Geoffrey Horner had succeeded in conveying more money to the man who
had taken his sins upon himself, and while Conyngham possessed money he
usually had the desire to spend it.
Conyngham went to the Fonda de la Marina, which stands to-day—a house of
small comfort and no great outward cleanliness; but, as in most Spanish
inns, the performance was better than the promise, and the bedroom
offered to the traveller was nothing worse than bare and ill furnished.
With what Spanish he at this time possessed the Englishman made known his
wants, and inquired of the means of prosecuting his journey to Ronda.
‘You know the Captain-General Vincente of Ronda?’ he asked.
‘But . . . yes—by reputation. Who does not in Andalusia?’ replied the
host, a stout man, who had once cooked for a military mess at Gibraltar,
and professed himself acquainted with the requirements of English
gentlemen.
‘I have a letter to General Vincente, and must go to Ronda as soon as
possible. These are stirring times in Spain.’
The man’s bland face suddenly assumed an air of cunning, and he glanced
over his shoulder to see that none overheard.
‘Your Excellency is right,’ he answered. ‘But for such as myself one
side is as good as another—is it not so? Carlist or Christino—the money
is the same.’
‘But here in the South there are no Carlists.’
‘Who knows?’ said the innkeeper with outspread hands. ‘Anything that his
Excellency requires shall be forthcoming,’ he added grandiosely. ‘This
is the dining-room, and here at the side a little saloon where the ladies
sit. But at present we have only gentlemen in the hotel—it being the
winter time.’
‘Then you have other guests?’ inquired Conyngham.
‘But . . . yes—always. In Algeciras there are always travellers.
Noblemen—like his Excellency—for pleasure. Others—for commerce, the
Government—the politics.’
‘No flies enter a shut mouth, my friend,’ said a voice at the door, and
both turned to see standing in the doorway the priest who had witnessed
Conyngham’s arrival.
‘Pardon, señor,’ said the old man, coming forward with his shabby hat in
his hand. ‘Pardon my interruption. I came at an opportune moment, for I
heard the word politics.’
He turned and shook a lean finger at the innkeeper, who was backing
towards the door with many bows.
‘Ah, bad Miguel,’ he said, ‘will you make it impossible for gentlemen to
put up at your execrable inn? The man’s cooking is superior to his
discretion, señor. I, too, am a traveller, and for the moment a guest
here. I have the honour. My name is Concha—the Padre Concha—a priest,
as you see.’
Conyngham nodded, and laughed frankly.
‘Glad to meet you,’ he said. ‘I saw you as I came along. My name is
Conyngham, and I am an Englishman, as you hear. I know very little
Spanish.’
‘That will come—that will come,’ said the priest, moving towards the
window. ‘Perhaps too soon, if you are going to stay any length of time
in this country. Let me advise you—do not learn our language too
quickly.’
He shook his head and moved towards the open window.
‘See to your girths before you mount, eh? Here is the verandah, where it
is pleasant in the afternoon. Shall we be seated? That chair has but
three legs—allow me! this one is better.’
He spoke with the grave courtesy of his countrymen. For every Spaniard,
even the lowest muleteer, esteems himself a gentleman, and knows how to
act as such. The Padre Concha had a pleasant voice, and a habit of
gesticulating slowly with one large and not too clean hand, that
suggested the pulpit. He had led the way to a spacious verandah, where
there were small tables and chairs, and at the outer corners orange trees
in square green boxes.
‘We will have a bottle of wine—is it not so?—yes,’ he said, and gravely
clapped his hands together to summon the waiter—an Oriental custom still
in use in the Peninsula.
The wine was brought and duly uncorked, during which ceremony the priest
waited and watched with the preoccupied air of a host careful for the
entertainment of his guest. He tasted the wine critically.
‘It might be worse,’ he said. ‘I beg you to excuse it not being better.’
There was something simple in the old man’s manner that won Conyngham’s
regard.
‘The wine is excellent,’ he said. ‘It is my welcome to Spain.’
‘Ah! Then this is your first visit to this country,’ the priest said
indifferently, his eyes wandering to the open sea, where a few feluccas
lay becalmed.
‘Yes.’
Conyngham turned and looked towards the sea also. It was late in the
afternoon, and a certain drowsiness of the atmosphere made conversation,
even between comparative strangers, a slower, easier matter than with us
in the brisk North. After a moment the Englishman turned with, perhaps,
the intention of studying his companion’s face, only to find the deep
grey eyes fixed on his own.
‘Spain,’ said the Padre, ‘is a wonderful country, rich, beautiful, with a
climate like none in Europe; but God and the devil come to closer
quarters here than elsewhere. Still for a traveller, for pleasure, I
think this country is second to none.’
‘I am not exactly a traveller for pleasure, my father.’
‘Ah!’ and Concha drummed idly on the table with his fingers.
‘I left England in haste,’ added Conyngham lightly.
‘Ah!’
‘And it will be inexpedient for me to return for some months to come. I
thought of taking service in the army, and have a letter to General
Vincente, who lives at Ronda, as I understand, sixty miles from here
across the mountains.’
‘Yes,’ said the priest thoughtfully, ‘Ronda is sixty miles from
here—across the mountains.’
He was watching a boat which approached the shore from the direction of
Gibraltar. The wind having dropped, the boatmen had lowered the sail and
were now rowing, giving voice to a song which floated across the smooth
sea sleepily. It was an ordinary Algeciras wherry built to carry a
little cargo, and perhaps a dozen passengers, a fishing boat that smelt
strongly of tobacco. The shore was soon reached, and the passengers,
numbering half a dozen, stepped over the gunwale on to a small landing
stage. One of them was better dressed than his companions, a smart man
with a bright flower in the buttonhole of his jacket, carrying the
flowing cloak brightly lined with coloured velvet without which no
Spaniard goes abroad at sunset. He looked towards the hotel, and was
evidently speaking of it with a boatman whose attitude was full of
promise and assurance.
The priest rose and emptied his glass.
‘I must ask you to excuse me. Vespers wait for no man, and I hear the
bell,’ he said with a grave bow, and went indoors.
Left to himself, Conyngham lapsed into the easy reflections of a man
whose habit it is to live for the present, leaving the future and the
past to take care of themselves. Perhaps he thought, as some do, that
the past dies—which is a mistake. The past only sleeps, and we carry it
with us through life, slumbering. Those are wise who bear it gently so
that it may never be aroused.
The sun had set, and Gibraltar, a huge couchant lion across the bay, was
fading into the twilight of the East when a footstep in the dining-room
made Conyngham turn his head, half expecting the return of Father Concha.
But in the doorway, and with the evident intention of coming towards
himself, Conyngham perceived a handsome dark-faced man of medium height,
with a smart moustache brushed upward, clever eyes, and the carriage of a
soldier. This stranger unfolded his cloak, for in Spain it is considered
ill-mannered to address a stranger and remain cloaked.
‘Señor,’ he said, with a gesture of the hat, courteous and yet manly
enough to savour more of the camp than the court, ‘señor, I understand
you are journeying to Ronda.’
‘Yes.’
‘I, too, intended to go across the mountains, and hoped to arrive here in
time to accompany friends who I learn have already started on their
journey. But I have received letters which necessitate my return to
Malaga. You have already divined that I come to ask a favour.’
He brought forward a chair and sat down, drawing from his pocket a silver
cigarette case, which he offered to the Englishman. There was a certain
picturesqueness in the man’s attitude and manner. His face and movements
possessed a suggestion of energy which seemed out of place here in the
sleepy South, and stamped him as a native not of dreamy Andalusia, but of
La Mancha perhaps, where the wit of Spain is concentrated, or of fiery
Catalonia, where discontent and unrest are in the very atmosphere of the
brown hills. This was a Spanish gentleman in the best sense of the word,
as scrupulous in personal cleanliness as any Englishman, polished,
accomplished, bright and fascinating, and yet carrying with him a subtle
air of melancholy and romance which lingers still among the men and women
of aristocratic Spain.
‘’Tis but to carry a letter,’ he explained, ‘and to deliver it into the
hand of the person to whom it is addressed. Ah, I would give five years
of life to touch that hand with my lips.’
He sighed, gave a little laugh which was full of meaning, and yet quite
free from self-consciousness, and lighted a fresh cigarette. Then, after
a little pause, he produced the letter from an inner pocket and laid it
on the table in front of Conyngham. It was addressed, ‘To the Señorita
J. B.,’ and had a subtle scent of mignonette. The envelope was of a
delicate pink.
‘A love letter,’ said Conyngham bluntly.
The Spaniard looked at him and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Ah! you do not understand,’ he said, ‘in that cold country of the North.
If you stay in Spain, perhaps some dark-eyed one will teach you. But,’
and his manner changed with theatrical rapidity, as he laid his slim hand
on the letter, ‘if, when you see her you love her, I will kill you.’
Conyngham laughed and held out his hand for the letter.
‘It is insufficiently addressed,’ he said practically. ‘How shall I find
the lady?’
‘Her name is Barenna, the Señorita Barenna; that is sufficient in Ronda.’
Conyngham took up the letter and examined it. ‘It is of importance?’ he
said.
‘Of the utmost.’
‘And of value?’
‘Of the greatest value in the world to me.’
The Spaniard rose and took up his cloak, which he had thrown over the
back of the nearest chair, not forgetting to display a picturesque corner
of its bright lining.
‘You swear you will deliver it, only with your own hand, only to the hand
of the Señorita Barenna? And—you will observe the strictest secrecy?’
‘Oh, yes,’ answered Conyngham carelessly, ‘if you like.’
The Spaniard turned, and, leaning one hand on the table, looked almost
fiercely into his companion’s face. ‘You are an Englishman,’ he said,
‘and an Englishman’s word—is it not known all the world over? In the
North, in my country, where Wellington fought, the peasants still say
“word of an Englishman” instead of an oath.’
He threw his cloak over his shoulder, and stood looking down at his
companion with a little smile as if he were proud of him.
‘There!’ he said. ‘Adios. My name is Larralde, but that is of no
consequence. Adios!’
With a courteous bow he took his leave, and Conyngham presently saw him
walking down to the landing stage. It seemed that this strange visitor
was about to depart as abruptly as he had come. Conyngham rose and
walked to the edge of the verandah, where he stood watching the departure
of the boat in which his new friend had taken passage.
While he was standing there, the old priest came quietly out of the open
window of the dining room. He saw the letter lying on the table where
Conyngham had left it. He approached, his shabby old shoes making no
sound on the wooden flooring, and read the address written on the pink
and scented envelope. When the Englishman at length turned, he was alone
on the verandah, with the wine bottle, the empty glasses, and the letter.
CHAPTER V
CONTRABAND
‘What rights are his that dares not strike for them?’
AN hour before sunrise two horses stood shuffling their feet and chewing
their bits before the hotel of the Marina at Algeciras, while their
owner, a short and thick-set man of an exaggeratedly villanous
appearance, attended to such straps and buckles as he suspected of latent
flaws. The horses were lean and loose of ear, with a melancholy
thoughtfulness of demeanour that seemed to suggest the deepest misgivings
as to the future. Their saddles and other accoutrements were frankly
theatrical, and would have been at once the delight of an artist and the
despair of a saddler. Fringes and tassels of bright-coloured worsted
depended from points where fringes and tassels were distinctly out of
place. Where the various straps should have been strong they looked
weak, and scarce a buckle could boast an innocence of knotted string.
The saddles were of wood, and calculated to inflict serious internal
injuries to the rider in case of a fall. They stood at least a foot
above the horse’s backbone, raised on a thick cushion upon the ribs of
the animal, and leaving a space in the middle for the secretion of
tobacco and other contraband merchandise.
‘I’ll take the smallest cut-throat of the crew,’ Conyngham had said on
the occasion of an informal parade of guides the previous evening. And
the host of the Fonda, in whose kitchen the function had taken place,
explained to Concepçion Vara that the English Excellency had selected him
on his—the host’s—assurance that Algeciras contained no other so honest.
‘Tell him,’ answered Concepçion with a cigarette between his lips and a
pardonable pride in his eyes, ‘that my grandfather was a smuggler and my
father was shot by the Guardia Civil near Algatocin.’
Concepçion, having repaired one girth and shaken his head dubiously over
another, lighted a fresh cigarette and gave a little shiver, for the
morning air was keen. He discreetly coughed. He had seen Conyngham
breakfasting by the light of a dim oil lamp of a shape and make unaltered
since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and, without appearing impatient,
wished to convey to one gentleman the fact that another awaited him.
Before long Conyngham appeared, having paid an iniquitous bill with the
recklessness that is only thoroughly understood by the poor. He appeared
as usual to be at peace with all men, and returned his guide’s grave
salutation with an easy nod.
‘These the horses?’ he inquired.
Concepçion Vara spread out his hands. ‘They have no equal in Andalusia,’
he said.
‘Then I am sorry for Andalusia,’ answered Conyngham with a pleasant
laugh.
They mounted and rode away in the dim cool light of the morning. The sea
was of a deep blue, and rippled all over as in a picture. Gibraltar,
five miles away, loomed up like a grey cloud against the pink of sunrise.
The whole world wore a cleanly look as if the night had been passed over
its face like a sponge, wiping away all that was unsightly or evil. The
air was light and exhilarating, and scented by the breath of aromatic
weeds growing at the roadside.
Concepçion sang a song as he rode—a song almost as old as his
trade—declaring that he was a smuggler bold. And he looked it, every
inch. The road to Ronda lies through the cork woods of Ximena, leaving
St. Roque on the right hand—such at least was the path selected by
Conyngham’s guide; for there are many ways over the mountains, and none
of them to be recommended. Beguiling the journey with cigarette and
song, calling at every venta on the road, exchanging chaff with every
woman and a quick word with all men, Concepçion faithfully fulfilled his
contract, and, as the moon rose over the distant snow-clad peaks of the
Sierra Nevada, pointed forward to the lights of Gaucin, a mountain
village with an evil reputation.
The dawn of the next day saw the travellers in the saddle again, and the
road was worse than ever. A sharp ascent led them up from Gaucin to
regions where foliage grew scarcer at every step, and cultivation was
unknown. At one spot they turned to look back, and saw Gibraltar like a
tooth protruding from the sea. The straits had the appearance of a
river, and the high land behind Ceuta formed the farther bank of it.
‘There is Africa,’ said Concepçion gravely, and after a moment turned his
horse’s head uphill again. The people of these mountain regions were as
wild in appearance as their country. Once or twice the travellers passed
a shepherd herding sheep or goats on the mountain side, himself clad in
goatskin, with a great brown cloak floating from his shoulders—a living
picture of Ishmael or those sons of his who dwelt in the tents of Kedar.
A few muleteers drew aside to let the horses pass, and exchanged some
words in an undertone with Conyngham’s guide. Fine-looking brigands were
these, with an armoury of knives peeping from their bright-coloured
waistbands. The Andalusian peasant is for six days in the week
calculated to inspire awe by his clothing and general appearance. Of a
dark skin and hair, he usually submits his chin to the barber’s office
but once a week, and the timid traveller would do well to take the road
on Sundays only. Towards the end of the week, and notably on a Saturday,
every passer-by is an unshorn brigand capable of the darkest deeds of
villany, while twenty-four hours later the land will be found to be
peopled by as clean and honest and smart, and withal as handsome, a race
of men as any on earth.
Before long all habitations were left behind, and the horses climbed from
rock to rock like cats. There was no suggestion of pathway or landmark,
and Concepçion paused once or twice to take his bearings. It was about
two in the afternoon when, after descending the bed of a stream long
since dried up, Concepçion called a halt, and proposed to rest the horses
while he dined. As on the previous day, the guide’s manner was that of a
gentleman, conferring a high honour with becoming modesty when he sat
down beside Conyngham and untied his small sack of provisions. These
consisted of dried figs and bread, which he offered to his companion
before beginning to eat. Conyngham shared his own stock of food with his
guide, and subsequently smoked a cigarette which that gentleman offered
him. They were thus pleasantly engaged when a man appeared on the rocks
above them in a manner and with a haste that spoke but ill of his
honesty. The guide looked up knife in hand, and made answer to a gesture
of the arm with his own hand upraised.
‘Who is this?’ said Conyngham. ‘Some friend of yours? Tell him to keep
his distance, for I don’t care for his appearance.’
‘He is no friend of mine, Excellency. But the man is, I dare say, honest
enough. In these mountains it is only of the Guardia Civil that one must
beware. They have ever the finger on the trigger and shoot without
warning.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said the Englishman, now thoroughly on the alert, ‘let
him state his business at a respectable distance. Ah! he has a comrade
and two mules.’
And indeed a second man of equally unprepossessing exterior now appeared
from behind a great rock leading a couple of heavily laden mules.
Concepçion and the first traveller, who was now within a dozen yards,
were already exchanging words in a patois not unlike the Limousin
dialect, of which Conyngham understood nothing.
‘Stop where you are,’ shouted the Englishman in Spanish, ‘or else I shoot
you! If there is anything wrong, Señor Vara,’ he added to the guide, ‘I
shoot you first, understand that.’
‘He says,’ answered Concepçion with dignity, ‘that they are honest
traders on the road to Ronda, and would be glad of our company. His
Excellency is at liberty to shoot if he is so disposed.’
Conyngham laughed.
‘No,’ he answered, ‘I am not anxious to kill any man, but each must take
care of himself in these times.’
‘Not against an honest smuggler.’
‘Are these smugglers?’
‘They speak as such. I know them no more than does his Excellency.’
The second new-comer was now within hail, and began at once to speak in
Spanish. The tale he told was similar in every way to that translated by
Concepçion from the Limousin dialect.
‘Why should we not travel together to Ronda?’ he said, coming forward
with an easy air of confidence, which was of better effect than any
protestation of honesty. He had a quiet eye, and the demeanour of one
educated to loftier things than smuggling tobacco across the Sierra,
though indeed, he was no better clad than his companion. The two guides
instinctively took the road together, Concepçion leading his horse, for
the way was such that none could ride over it. Conyngham did the same,
and his companion led the mule by a rope, as is the custom in Andalusia.
The full glare of the day shone down on them, the bare rock giving back a
puff of heat that dried the throat. Conyngham was tired and not too
trustful of his companion, who, indeed, seemed to be fully occupied with
his own thoughts. They had thus progressed a full half-hour when a shout
from the rocks above caused them to halt suddenly. The white linen head
coverings of the Guardia Civil and the glint of the sun on their
accoutrements showed at a glance that this was not a summons to be
disregarded.
In an instant Concepçion’s companion was leaping from rock to rock with
an agility only to be acquired in the hot fear of death. A report rang
out and echoed among the hills. A bullet went ‘splat’ against a rock
near at hand, making a frayed blue mark upon the grey stone. The man
dodged from side to side in the panic-stricken irresponsibility of a
rabbit seeking covert where none exists. There was not so much as to
hide his head. Conyngham looked up towards the foe in time to see a puff
of white smoke thrown up against the steely sky. A second report, and
the fugitive seemed to trip over a stone. He recovered himself, stood
upright for a moment, gave a queer spluttering cough, and sat slowly down
against a boulder.
‘He is killed!’ said Concepçion, throwing down his cigarette. ‘Mother of
God! these Guardias Civiles!’
The two guards came clambering down the face of the rock. Concepçion
glanced at his late companion writhing in the sharpness of death.
‘Here or at Ronda, to-day, or to-morrow, what matters it?’ muttered the
quiet-eyed man at Conyngham’s side. The Englishman turned and looked at
him.
‘They will shoot me too, but not now.’
Concepçion sullenly awaited the arrival of the guards. These men ever
hunt in couples of a widely different age, for the law has found that an
old head and a young arm form the strongest combination. The elder of
the two had the face of an old grey wolf. He muttered some order to his
companion, and went towards the mule. He cut away the outer covering of
the burden suspended from the saddle, and nodded his head wisely. These
were boxes of cartridges to carry one thousand each. The grey old man
turned and looked at him who lay on the ground.
‘A la longa,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘In the long run, Antonio.’
The man gave a sickly grin and opened his mouth to speak, but his jaw
dropped instead, and he passed across that frontier which is watched by
no earthly sentinel.
‘This gentleman,’ said the quiet-eyed man, whose guide had thus paid for
his little mistake in refusing to halt at the word of command, ‘is a
stranger to me—an Englishman, I think.’
‘Yes,’ answered Conyngham.
The old soldier looked from one to the other.
‘That may be,’ he said, ‘but he sleeps in Ronda prison to-night.
To-morrow the Captain-General will see to it.’
‘I have a letter to the Captain-General,’ said Conyngham, who drew from
his pocket a packet of papers. Among these was the pink scented envelope
given to him by the man called Larralde at Algeciras. He had forgotten
its existence, and put it back in his pocket with a smile. Having found
that for which he sought, he gave it to the soldier, who read the address
in silence and returned the letter.
‘You I know,’ he said, turning to the man at Conyngham’s side, who merely
shrugged his shoulders. ‘And Concepçion Vara, we all know him.’
Concepçion had lighted a cigarette, and was murmuring a popular air with
the indifferent patience and the wandering eye of perfect innocence. The
old soldier turned and spoke in an undertone to his comrade, who went
towards the dead man and quietly covered his face with the folds of his
own faja or waistcloth. This he weighted at the corners with stones,
carrying out this simple office to the dead with a suggestive
indifference. To this day the Guardias Civiles have plenary power to
shoot whomsoever they think fit—flight and resistance being equally
fatal.
No more heeding the dead body of the man whom he had shot than he would
have heeded the carcase of a rat, the elder of the two soldiers now gave
the order to march, commanding Concepçion to lead the way.
‘It will not be worth your while to risk a bullet by running away,’ he
said. ‘This time it is probably a matter of a few pounds of tobacco
only.’
The evening had fallen ere the silent party caught sight of the town of
Ronda, perched, as the Moorish strongholds usually are, on a height.
Ronda, as history tells, was the last possession of the brave and gifted
Moslems in Spain. The people are half Moorish still, and from the barred
windows look out deep almond eyes and patient faces that have no European
feature. The narrow streets were empty as the travellers entered the
town, and the clatter of the mules slipping and stumbling on the cobble
stones brought but few to the doors of the low-built houses. To enter
Ronda from the south the traveller must traverse the Moorish town, which
is divided from the Spanish quarter by a cleft in the great rock that
renders the town impregnable to all attack. Having crossed the bridge
spanning the great gorge into which the sun never penetrates even at
midday, the party emerged into the broader streets of the more modern
town, and, turning to the right through a high gateway, found themselves
in a barrack yard of the Guardias Civiles.
CHAPTER VI
AT RONDA
‘Le plus grand art d’un habile homme est celui de savoir cacher son
habileté.’
WHEN Conyngham awoke after a night conscientiously spent in that profound
slumber which waits on an excellent digestion and a careless heart, he
found the prison attendant at his bedside. A less easy-going mind would
perhaps have leapt to some nervous conclusion at the sight of this
fierce-visaged janitor, who, however, carried nothing more deadly in his
hand than a card.
‘It is the Captain-General,’ said he, ‘who calls at this early hour. His
Excellency’s letter has been delivered, and the Captain-General scarce
waited to swallow his morning chocolate.’
‘Very much to the Captain-General’s credit,’ returned Conyngham rising.
‘Cold water,’ he went on, ‘soap, a towel, and my luggage—and then the
Captain-General.’
The attendant, with an odd smile, procured the necessary articles, and
when the Englishman was ready led the way downstairs. He was a solemn
man from Galicia, this, where they do not smile.
In the patio of the great house, once a monastery, now converted into a
barrack for the Guardias Civiles, a small man of fifty years or more
stood smoking a cigarette. On perceiving Conyngham he came forward with
outstretched hand and a smile which can only be described as angelic. It
was a smile at once sympathetic and humorous, veiling his dark eyes
between lashes almost closed, parting moustached lips to disclose a row
of pearly teeth.
‘My dear sir,’ said General Vincente in very tolerable English, ‘I am at
your feet. That such a mistake should have been made in respect to the
bearer of a letter of introduction from my old friend General
Watterson—we fought together in Wellington’s day—that such a mistake
should have occurred overwhelms me with shame.’
He pressed Conyngham’s hand in both of his, which were small and
white—looked up into his face, stepped back and broke into a soft laugh.
Indeed his voice was admirably suited to a lady’s drawing-room, and
suggested nought of the camp or battle field. From the handkerchief
which he drew from his sleeve and passed across his white moustache a
faint scent floated on the morning air.
‘Are you General Vincente?’ asked Conyngham.
‘Yes—why not?’ And in truth the tone of the Englishman’s voice had
betrayed a scepticism which warranted the question.
‘It is very kind of you to come so early. I have been quite comfortable,
and they gave me a good supper last night,’ said Conyngham. ‘Moreover,
the Guardias Civiles are in no way to blame for my arrest. I was in bad
company, it seems.’
‘Yes; your companions were engaged in conveying ammunition to the
Carlists; we have wanted to lay our hands upon them for some weeks. They
have carried former journeys to a successful termination.’
He laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
‘The guide, Antonio something-or-other, died, as I understand.’
‘Well, yes; if you choose to put it that way,’ admitted Conyngham.
The General raised his eyebrows in a gentle grimace expressive of
deprecation, with, as it were, a small solution of sympathy, indicated by
a moisture of the eye, for the family of Antonio something-or-other in
their bereavement.
‘And the other man? Seemed a nice enough fellow . . .’ inquired
Conyngham.
The General raised one gloved hand as if to fend off some approaching
calamity.
‘He died this morning—at six o’clock.’
Conyngham looked down at this gentle soldier with a dawning light of
comprehension. This might after all be the General Vincente whom he had
been led to look upon as the fiercest of the Spanish Queen’s adherents.
‘Of the same complaint?’
‘Of the same complaint,’ answered the General softly. He slipped his
hand within Conyngham’s arm, and thus affectionately led him across the
patio towards the doorway where sentinels stood at attention. He
acknowledged the attitude of his subordinates by a friendly nod; indeed,
this rosy-faced warrior seemed to brim over with the milk of human
kindness.
‘The English,’ he said, pressing his companion’s arm, ‘have been too
useful to us for me to allow one of them to remain a moment longer in
confinement. You say you were comfortable. I hope they gave you a clean
towel and all that.’
‘Yes, thanks,’ answered Conyngham, suppressing a desire to laugh.
‘That is well. Ronda is a pleasant place, as you will find. Most
interesting—Moorish remains, you understand. I will send my servant for
your baggage, and of course my poor house is at your disposal. You will
stay with me until we can find some work for you to do. You wish to take
service with us, of course?’
‘Yes,’ answered Conynghamn. ‘Rather thought of it—if you will have me.’
The General glanced up at his stalwart companion with a measuring eye.
‘My house,’ he said, in a conversational way, as if only desirous of
making matters as pleasant as possible in a life which nature had
intended to be peaceful and sunny, and perhaps trifling, but which the
wickedness of men had rendered otherwise, ‘my house is, as you would
divine, only an official residence, but pleasant enough—pleasant enough.
The garden is distinctly tolerable; there are orange trees now in
bloom—so sweet of scent.’
The street into which they had now emerged was no less martial in
appearance than the barrack yard, and while he spoke the General never
ceased to dispense his kindly little nod on one side or the other in
response to military salutations.
‘We have quite a number of soldiers in Ronda at present,’ he said, with
an affectionate little pressure of Conyngham’s arm, as if to indicate his
appreciation of such protection amid these rough men. ‘There is a great
talk of some rising in the South—in Andalusia—to support Señor Cabrera,
who continually threatens Madrid. A great soldier, they tell me, this
Cabrera, but not—well, not perhaps quite, eh?—a caballero, a gentleman.
A pity, is it not?’
‘A great pity,’ answered Conyngham, taking the opportunity at last
afforded him of getting a word in.
‘One must be prepared,’ went on the General with a good-natured little
sigh, ‘for such measures. There are so many mistaken enthusiasts—is it
not so? Such men as your countryman, Señor Flinter. There are so many
who are stronger Carlists than Don Carlos himself, eh?’
The secret of conversational success is to defer to one’s listener. A
clever man imparts information by asking questions, and obtains it
without doing so.
‘This is my poor house,’ continued the soldier, and as he spoke he beamed
on the sentries at the door. ‘I am a widower, but God has given me a
daughter who is now of an age to rule my household. Estella will
endeavour to make you comfortable, and an Englishman—a soldier—will
surely overlook some small defects.’
He finished with a good-natured laugh. There was no resisting the sunny
good-humour of this little officer, or the gladness of his face. His
attitude towards the world was one of constant endeavour to make things
pleasant, and acquit himself to his best in circumstances far beyond his
merits or capabilities. He was one who had had good fortune all his
days. Those who have greatness thrust upon them are never much impressed
by their burden. And General Vincente had the air of constantly assuring
his subordinates that they need not mind him.
The house to which he conducted Conyngham stood on the broad main street,
immediately opposite a cluster of shops where leather bottles were
manufactured and sold. It was a large gloomy house with a patio devoid
of fountain and even of the usual orange trees in green boxes.
‘Through there is the garden—most pleasant and shady,’ said the General,
indicating a doorway with the riding-whip he carried.
A troop of servants awaited them at the foot of the broad Moorish
staircase open on one side to the patio and heavily carved in balustrade
and cornice. These gentlemen bowed gravely—indeed, they were so numerous
that the majority of them must have had nothing to do but cultivate this
dignified salutation.
‘The señorita?’ inquired the General.
‘The señorita is in the garden, Excellency,’ answered one with the air of
a courtier.
‘Then let us go there at once,’ said General Vincente, turning to
Conyngham, and gripping his arm affectionately.
They passed through a doorway whither two men had hurried to open the
heavy doors, and the scent of violets and mignonette, of orange in bloom,
and of a hundred opening buds swept across their faces. The brilliant
sunlight almost dazzled eyes that had grown accustomed to the cool shade
of the patio, for Ronda is one of the sunniest spots on earth, and here
the warmth is rarely oppressive. The garden was Moorish, and running
water in aqueducts of marble, yellow with stupendous age, murmured in the
shade of tropical plants. A fountain plashed and chattered softly, like
the whispering of children. The pathways were paved with a fine white
gravel of broken marble. There was no weed amid the flowers. It seemed
a paradise to Conyngham, fresh from the grey and mournful northern
winter, and no part of this weary, busy world. For here were rest and
silence, and that sense of eternity which is only conveyed by the
continuous voice of running or falling water. It was hard to believe
that this was real and earthly. Conyngham rubbed his eyes and
instinctively turned to look at his companion, who was as unreal as his
surroundings—a round-faced, chubby little man, with a tender mouth and
moist dark eyes looking kindly out upon the world, who called himself
General Vincente; and the name was synonymous in all Spain with
bloodthirstiness and cruelty, with daring and an unsparing generalship.
‘Come,’ said he, ‘let us look for Estella.’
He led the way along a path winding among almond and peach trees in full
bloom, in the shadow of the weird eucalyptus and the feathery pepper
tree. Then with a little word of pleasure he hurried forward. Conyngham
caught sight of a black dress and a black mantilla, of fair golden hair,
and a fan upraised against the rays of the sun.
‘Estella, here is a guest: Mr. Conyngham, one of the brave Englishmen who
remember Spain in her time of trouble.’
Conyngham bowed with a greater ceremony than we observe to-day, and stood
upright to look upon that which was for him from that moment the fairest
face in the world. As, to some men, success or failure seems to come
early and in one bound, so, for some, Love lies long in ambush, to shoot
at length a single and certain shaft. Conyngham looked at Estella
Vincente, his gay blue eyes meeting her dark glance with a frankness
which was characteristic, and knew from that instant that his world held
no other woman. It came to him as a flash of lightning that left his
former life grey and neutral, and yet he was conscious of no surprise,
but rather of a feeling of having found something which he had long
sought.
The girl acknowledged his salutation with a little inclination of the
head and a smile which was only of the lips, for her eyes remained grave
and deep. She had all the dignity of carriage famous in Castilian women,
though her figure was youthful still, and slight. Her face was a
clean-cut oval, with lips that were still and proud, and a delicately
aquiline nose.
‘My daughter speaks English better than I do,’ went on the General in the
garrulous voice of an exceedingly domesticated man. ‘She has been at
school in England—at the suggestion of my dear friend Watterson—with his
daughters, in fact.’
‘And must have found it dull and grey enough compared with Spain,’ said
Conyngham.
‘Ah! Then you like Spain?’ said the General eagerly. ‘It is so with all
the English. We have something in common, despite the Armada, eh?
Something in manner and in appearance, too; is it not so?’
He left Conyngham, and walked slowly on with one hand at his daughter’s
waist.
‘I was very happy in England,’ said Estella to Conyngham, who walked at
her other side; ‘but happier still to get home to Spain.’
Her voice was rather low, and Conyngham had an odd sensation of having
heard it before.
‘Why did you leave your home?’ she continued in a leisurely
conversational way which seemed natural to the environments.
The question rather startled the Englishman, for the only answer seemed
to be that he had quitted England in order to come to Ronda and to her,
following the path in life that fate had assigned to him.
‘We have troubles in England also—political troubles,’ he said, after a
pause.
‘The Chartists,’ said the General cheerfully. ‘We know all about them,
for we have the English newspapers. I procure them in order to have
reliable news of Spain.’
He broke off with a little laugh, and looked towards his daughter.
‘In the evening Estella reads them to me. And it was on account of the
Chartists that you left England?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah, you are a Chartist, Mr. Conyngham.’
‘Yes,’ admitted the Englishman after a pause, and he glanced at Estella.
CHAPTER VII
IN A MOORISH GARDEN
‘When love is not a blasphemy, it is a religion.’
THERE is perhaps a subtle significance in the fact that the greatest, the
cruellest, the most barbarous civil war of modern days, if not of all
time, owed its outbreak and its long continuance to the influence of a
woman. When Ferdinand VII. of Spain died, in 1833, after a reign broken
and disturbed by the passage of that human cyclone, Napoleon the Great,
he bequeathed his kingdom, in defiance of the Salic law, to his daughter
Isabella. Ferdinand’s brother Charles, however, claimed the throne under
the very just contention that the Salic law, by which women were excluded
from the heritage of the crown, had never been legally abrogated.
This was the spark that kindled in many minds ambition, cruelty,
bloodthirstiness, self-seeking and jealousy—producing the _morale_, in a
word, of the Spain of sixty years ago. Some sided with the Queen Regent
Christina, and rallied round the child-queen because they saw that that
way lay glory and promotion. Others flocked to the standard of Don
Carlos because they were poor and of no influence at Court. The Church
as a whole raised its whispering voice for the Pretender. For the rest,
patriotism was nowhere, and ambition on every side. ‘For five years we
have fought the Carlists, hunger, privation, and the politicians at
Madrid! And the holy saints only know which has been the worst enemy,’
said General Vincente to Conyngham when explaining the above related
details.
And indeed the story of this war reads like a romance, for there came
from neutral countries foreign legions as in the olden days. From
England an army of ten thousand mercenaries landed in Spain, prepared to
fight for the cause of Queen Christina, and very modestly estimating the
worth of their services at the sum of thirteenpence per diem. After all,
the value of a man’s life is but the price of his daily hire.
‘We did not pay them much,’ said General Vincente with a deprecating
little smile, ‘but they did not fight much. Their pay was generally in
arrear, and they were usually in the rear as well. What will you, my
dear Conyngham? You are a commercial people—you keep good soldiers in
the shop window, and when a buyer comes you serve him with second-class
goods from behind the counter.’
He beamed on Conyngham with a pleasant air of benign connivance in a very
legitimate commercial transaction.
This is no time or place to go into the history of the English Legion in
Spain, which, indeed, had quitted that country before Conyngham landed
there, horrified by the barbarities of a cruel war where prisoners
received no quarter and the soldiers on either side were left without pay
or rations. In a half-hearted manner England went to the assistance of
the Queen Regent of Spain, and one error in statesmanship led to many.
It is always a mistake to strike gently.
‘This country,’ said General Vincente in his suavest manner, ‘owes much
to yours, my dear Conyngham; but it would have been better for us both
had we owed you a little more.’
During the five years prior to Conyngham’s arrival at Ronda the war had
raged with unabated fury, swaying from the west to the east coast as
fortune smiled or frowned on the Carlist cause. At one time it almost
appeared certain that the Christino forces were unable to stem the rising
tide which bade fair to spread over all Spain—so unfortunate were their
generals, so futile the best endeavours of the bravest and most patient
soldiers. General Vincente was not alone in his conviction that had the
gallant Carlist leader Zumalacarreguy lived he might have carried all
before him. But this great leader at the height of his fame—beloved of
all his soldiers, worshipped by his subordinate officers—died suddenly,
by poison, as it was whispered, the victim of jealousy and ambition.
Almost at once there arose in the East of Spain one, obscure in birth and
unknown to fame, who flashed suddenly to the zenith of military glory—the
ruthless, the wonderful Cabrera. The name is to this day a household
word in Catalonia, while the eyes of a few old men still living, who
fought with or against him, flash in the light of other days at the mere
mention of it.
Among the many leaders who had attempted in vain to overcome by skill and
patriotism the thousand difficulties placed in their way by successive
unstable, insincere Ministers of War, General Vincente occupied an
honoured place. This mild-mannered tactician enjoyed the enviable
reputation of being alike unconquerable and incorruptible. His smiling
presence on the battlefield was in itself worth half a dozen battalions,
while at Madrid the dishonest politicians, who through those years of
Spain’s great trial systematically bartered their honour for immediate
gain, dreaded and respected him.
During the days that followed his arrival at Ronda and release from the
prison there, Frederick Conyngham learnt much from his host and little of
the man himself, for General Vincente had that in him with which no great
leader in any walk of life can well dispense—an unsoundable depth.
Conyngham learnt also that the human heart is capable of rising at one
bound above differences of race or custom, creed and spoken language. He
walked with Estella in that quiet garden between high walls on the trim
Moorish paths, and often the murmur of the running water which ever
graced the Moslem palaces was the only sound that broke the silence. For
this thing had come into the Englishman’s life suddenly, leaving him
dazed and uncertain. Estella, on the other hand, had a quiet
_savoir-faire_ that sat strangely on her young face. She was only
nineteen, and yet had a certain air of authority, handed down to her from
two great races of noble men and women.
‘Do all your countrymen take life thus gaily?’ she asked Conyngham one
day; ‘surely it is a more serious affair than you think it.’
‘I have never found it very serious, señorita,’ he answered. ‘There is
usually a smile in human affairs if one takes the trouble to look for
it.’
‘Have you always found it so?’
He did not answer at once, pausing to lift the branch of a mimosa tree
that hung in yellow profusion across the pathway.
‘Yes, señorita, I think so,’ he answered at length, slowly. There was a
sense of eternal restfulness in this old Moorish garden which acted as a
brake on the thoughts, and made conversation halt and drag in an Oriental
way that Europeans rarely understand.
‘And yet you say you remember your father’s death?’
‘He made a joke to the doctor, señorita, and was not afraid.’
Estella smiled in a queer way, and then looked grave again.
‘And you have always been poor, you say, sometimes almost starving?’
‘Yes—always poor, deadly poor, señorita,’ answered Conyngham with a gay
laugh; ‘and since I have been on my own resources frequently—well, very
hungry. The appetite has been large and the resources have been small.
But when I get into the Spanish army they will no doubt make me a
general, and all will be well.’
He laughed again, and slipped his hand into his jacket pocket.
‘See here,’ he said, ‘your father’s recommendation to General Espartero
in a confidential letter.’
But the envelope he produced was that pink one which the man called
Larralde had given him at Algeciras.
‘No—it is not that,’ he said, searching in another pocket. ‘Ah! here it
is—addressed to General Espartero, Duke of Vittoria.’
He showed her the superscription, which she read with a little
inclination of the head, as if in salutation of the great name written
there. The greatest names are those that men have made for themselves.
Conyngham replaced the two letters in his pocket and almost immediately
asked:
‘Do you know anyone called Barenna in Ronda, señorita?’ thereby proving
that General Espartero would do ill to give him an appointment requiring
even the earliest rudiments of diplomacy.
‘Julia Barenna is my cousin. Her mother was my mother’s sister. Do you
know them, Señor Conyngham?’
‘Oh no,’ answered Conyngham, truthfully enough. ‘I met a man who knows
them. Do they live in Ronda?’
‘No; their house is on the Cordova road, about half a league from the
Customs station.’
Estella was not by nature curious, and asked no questions. Some who knew
the Barennas would have been glad to claim acquaintance with General
Vincente and his daughter, but could not do so. For the Captain-General
moved in a circle not far removed from the Queen Regent herself, and
mixed but little in the society of Ronda, where, for the time being, he
held a command.
Conyngham required no further information, and in a few moments dismissed
the letter from his mind. Events seemed for him to have moved rapidly
within the last few days, and the world of roadside inns and casual
acquaintance into which he had stepped on his arrival in Spain was quite
another from that in which Estella moved at Ronda.
‘I must set out for Madrid in a few days at the latest,’ he said a few
moments afterwards; ‘but I shall go against my will, because you tell me
that you and your father will not be coming North until the spring.’
Estella shook her head with a little laugh. This man was different from
the punctilious aides-de-camp and others who had hitherto begged most
respectfully to notify their admiration.
‘And three days ago you did not know of our existence,’ she said.
‘In three days a man may be dead of an illness of which he ignored the
existence, señorita. In three days a man’s life may be made miserable or
happy—perhaps in three minutes.’
And she looked straight in front of her in order to avoid his eyes.
‘Yours will always be happy, I think,’ she said, ‘because you never seem
to go below the surface, and on the surface life is happy enough.’
He made some light answer, and they walked on beneath the orange trees,
talking of these and other matters—indulging in those dangerous
generalities which sound so safe, and in reality narrow down to a little
world of two.
They were thus engaged when the servant came to announce that the horse
which the General had placed at Conyngham’s disposal was at the door in
accordance with the Englishman’s own order. He went away sorrowfully
enough, only half consoled by the information that Estella was about to
attend a service at the Church of Santa Maria, and could not have stayed
longer in the garden.
The hour of the siesta was scarce over, and as Conyngham rode through the
cleanly streets of the ancient town more than one idler roused himself
from the shadow of a doorway to see him pass. There are few older towns
in Andalusia than Ronda, and scarce anywhere the habits of the Moors are
so closely followed. The streets are clean, the houses whitewashed
within and without. The trappings of the mules and much of the costume
of the people are Oriental in texture and brilliancy.
Conyngham asked a passer-by to indicate the way to the Cordova road, and
the polite Spaniard turned and walked by his stirrup until a mistake was
no longer possible.
‘It is not the most beautiful approach to Ronda,’ said this garrulous
person, ‘but well enough in the summer, when the flowers are in bloom and
the vineyards green. The road is straight and dusty until one arrives at
the possession of the Señora Barenna—a narrow road to the right leading
up into the mountain. One can perceive the house—oh, yes—upon the
hillside, once beautiful, but now old and decayed. Mistake is now
impossible. It is a straight way. I wish you a good journey.’
Conyngham rode on, vaguely turning over in his mind a half-matured plan
of effecting a seemingly accidental entry to the house of Señora Barenna,
in the hope of meeting that lady’s daughter in the garden or grounds.
Once outside the walls of the town he found the country open and bare,
consisting of brown hills, of which the lower slopes were dotted with
evergreen oaks. The road soon traversed a village which seemed to be
half deserted, for men and women alike were working in the fields. On
the balcony of the best house a branch of palm bound against the ironwork
balustrade indicated the dwelling of the priest, and the form of that
village despot was dimly discernible in the darkened room behind. Beyond
the village Conyngham turned his horse’s head towards the mountain, his
mind preoccupied with a Macchiavellian scheme of losing his way in this
neighbourhood. Through the evergreen oak and olive groves he could
perceive the roof of an old grey house which had once been a mere
hacienda or semi-fortified farm.
Conyngham did not propose to go direct to Señora Barenna’s house, but
described a semicircle, mounting from terrace to terrace on his
sure-footed horse.
When at length he came in sight of the high gateway where the ten-foot
oaken gates still swung, he perceived someone approaching the exit. On
closer inspection he saw that this was a priest, and on nearing him
recognised the Padre Concha, whose acquaintance he had made at the Hotel
of the Marina at Algeciras.
The recognition was mutual, for the priest raised his shabby old hat with
a tender care for the insecurity of its brim.
‘A lucky meeting, Señor Englishman,’ he said; ‘who would have expected to
see you here?’
‘I have lost my way.’
‘Ah!’ And the grim face relaxed into a smile. ‘Lost your way?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it is lucky that I have met you. It is so easy to lose one’s
way—when one is young.’
He raised his hand to the horse’s bridle.
‘You are most certainly going in the wrong direction,’ he said; ‘I will
lead you right.’
It was said and done so quietly that Conyngham had found no word to say
before his horse was moving in the opposite direction.
‘This is surely one of General Vincente’s horses,’ said the priest; ‘we
have few such barbs in Ronda. He always rides a good horse, that Miguel
Vincente.’
‘Yes, it is one of his horses. Then you know the General?’
‘We were boys together,’ answered the Padre; ‘and there were some who
said that he should have been the priest and I the soldier.’
The old man gave a little laugh.
‘He has prospered, however, if I have not. A great man, my dear Miguel,
and they say that his pay is duly handed to him. My own—my princely
twenty pounds a year—is overdue. I am happy enough, however, and have a
good house. You noticed it, perhaps, as you passed through the village,
a branch of palm against the rail of the balcony—my sign, you understand.
The innkeeper next door displays a branch of pine, which, I notice, is
more attractive. Every man his day. One does not catch rabbits with a
dead ferret. That is the church—will you see it? No? Well, some other
day. I will guide you through the village. The walk will give me
appetite, which I sometimes require, for my cook is one whose husband has
left her.’
CHAPTER VIII
THE LOVE LETTER
‘I must mix myself with action lest I wither by despair.’
‘NO one,’ Conyngham heard a voice exclaiming as he went into the garden
on returning from his fruitless ride, ‘no one knows what I have
suffered.’
He paused in the dark doorway, not wishing to intrude upon Estella and
her visitors; for he perceived the forms of three ladies seated within a
miniature jungle of bamboo, which grew in feathery luxuriance around a
fountain. It was not difficult to identify the voice as that of the
eldest lady, who was stout, and spoke in deep, almost manly tones. So
far as he was able to judge, the suffering mentioned had left but small
record on its victim’s outward appearance.
‘Old lady seems to have stood it well,’ commented the Englishman in his
mind.
‘Never again, my dear Estella, do I leave Ronda, except indeed for
Toledo, where, of course, we shall go in the summer if this terrible Don
Carlos is really driven from the country. Ah! but what suffering! My
mind is never at ease. I expect to wake up at night and hear that Julia
is being murdered in her bed. For me it does not matter; my life is not
so gay that it will cost me much to part from it. No one would molest an
old woman, you think? Well, that may be so; but I know all the anxiety,
for I was once beautiful—ah! more beautiful than you or Julia; and my
hands and feet—have you ever noticed my foot, Estella?—even now—!’
And a sonorous sigh completed the sentence. Conyngham stepped out of the
doorway, the clank of his spurred heel on the marble pavement causing the
sigh to break off in a little scream. He had caught the name of Julia,
and hastily concluded that these ladies must be no other than Madame
Barenna and her daughter. In the little bamboo grove he found the elder
lady lying back in her chair, which creaked ominously, and asking in a
faint voice whether he were Don Carlos.
‘No,’ answered Estella, with a momentary twinkle in her grave, dark eyes;
‘this is Mr. Conyngham—my aunt, Señora Barenna, and my cousin Julia.’
The ladies bowed.
‘You must excuse me,’ said Madame Barenna volubly, ‘but your approach was
so sudden. I am a great sufferer—my nerves, you know. But young people
do not understand.’
And she sighed heavily, with a side glance at her daughter, who did not
even appear to be trying to do so. Julia Barenna was darker than her
cousin, quicker in manner, with an air of worldly capability which
Estella lacked. Her eyes were quick and restless, her face less
beautiful, but expressive of a great intelligence, which, if brought to
bear upon men in the form of coquetry, was likely to be infinitely
dangerous.
‘It is always best to approach my mother with caution,’ she said with a
restless movement of her hands. This was not a woman at her ease in the
world or at peace with it. She laughed as she spoke, but her eyes were
grave, even while her lips smiled, and watched the Englishman’s face with
an air almost of anxiety. There are some faces that seem to be watching
and waiting. Julia Barenna’s had such a look.
‘Conyngham,’ said Madame Barenna reflectively. ‘Surely I have heard that
name before. You are not the Englishman with whom Father Concha is so
angry—who sells forbidden books—the Bible, it is said?’
‘No, señora,’ answered Conyngham with perfect gravity; ‘I have nothing to
sell.’
He laughed suddenly, and looked at the elder lady with that air of good
humour which won for him more friends than he ever wanted; for this
Irishman had a ray of sunshine in his heart which shone upon his path
through life, and made that uneven way easier for his feet. He glanced
at Julia, and saw in her eyes the look of expectancy which was, in
reality, always there. The thought flashed through his mind that by some
means, or perhaps feminine intuition beyond his comprehension, she knew
that he possessed the letter addressed to her, and was eagerly awaiting
it. This letter seemed to have been gaining in importance the longer he
carried it, and this opportunity of giving it to her came at the right
moment. He remembered Larralde’s words concerning the person to whom the
missive was addressed, and the high-flown sentiments of that somewhat
theatrical gentleman became in some degree justified. Julia Barenna was
a woman who might well awaken a passionate love. Conyngham realised
this, as from a distance, while Julia’s mother spoke of some trivial
matter of the moment to unheeding ears. That distance seemed now to
exist between him and all women. It had come suddenly, and one glance of
Estella’s eyes had called it into existence.
‘Yes,’ Señora Barenna was saying, ‘Father Concha is very angry with the
English. What a terrible man! You do not know him, Señor Conyngham?’
‘I think I have met him, señora.’
‘Ah, but you have never seen him angry. You have never confessed to him!
A little, little sin—no larger than the eye of a fly—a little bite of a
calf’s sweetbread on Friday in mere forgetfulness, and Sancta Maria! what
a penance is required! What suffering! It is a purgatory to have such a
confessor.’
‘Surely madame can have no sins,’ said Conyngham pleasantly.
‘Not now,’ said Señora Barenna with a deep sigh. ‘When I was young it
was different.’
And the memory of her sinful days almost moved her to tears. She glanced
at Conyngham with a tragic air of mutual understanding, as if drawing a
veil over that blissful past in the presence of Julia and Estella. ‘Ask
me another time,’ that glance seemed to say.
‘Yes,’ the lady continued, ‘Father Concha is very angry with the English.
Firstly, because of these bibles. Blessed Heaven! what does it matter?
No one can read them except the priests, and they do not want to do so.
Secondly, because the English have helped to overthrow Don Carlos—’
‘You will have a penance,’ interrupted Miss Julia Barenna quietly, ‘from
Father Concha for talking politics.’
‘But how will he know?’ asked Señora Barenna sharply; and the two young
ladies laughed.
Señora Barenna looked from one to the other, and shrugged her shoulders.
Like many women she was a strange mixture of foolishness and worldly
wisdom. She adjusted her mantilla and mutely appealed to Heaven with a
glance of her upturned eyes. Conyngham, who was no diplomatist, nor
possessed any skill in concealing his thoughts, looked with some interest
at Julia Barenna, and Estella watched him. ‘Julia is right,’ Señora
Barenna was saying, though nobody heeded her; ‘one must not talk nor even
think politics in this country. You are no politician, I trust, Señor
Conyngham—Señor Conyngham, I ask you, you are no politician?’
‘No, señora,’ replied Conyngham hastily; ‘no; and if I were, I should
never understand Spanish politics.’
‘Father Concha says that Spanish politics are the same as those of any
other country—each man for himself,’ said Julia with a bitter laugh.
‘And he is, no doubt, right.’
‘Do you really think so?’ asked Julia Barenna, with more earnestness than
the question would seem to require; ‘are there not true patriots who
sacrifice all—not only their friends, but themselves—to the cause of
their country?’
‘Without the hope of reward?’
‘Yes.’
‘There may be, señorita—a few,’ answered Conyngham with a laugh, ‘but not
in my country. They must all be in Spain.’
She smiled and shook her head in doubt. But it was a worn smile.
The Englishman turned away and looked through the trees. He was
wondering how he could get speech with Julia alone for a moment.
‘You are admiring the garden,’ said that young lady; and this time he
knew that there had in reality been that meaning in her eyes which he had
imagined to be there.
‘Yes, señorita, I think it must be the most beautiful garden in the
world.’
He turned as he spoke, and looked at Estella, who met his glance quietly.
Her repose of manner struck him afresh. Here was a woman having that air
of decision which exacts respect alike from men and women. Seen thus,
with the more vivacious Julia at her side, Estella gained suddenly in
moral strength and depth—suggesting a steady fire in contrast with a
flickering will-o’-the-wisp blown hither and thither on every zephyr.
Yet Julia Barenna would pass anywhere as a woman of will and purpose.
Julia had risen, and was moving towards the exit of the little grove in
which they found themselves. Conyngham had never been seated.
‘Are the violets in bloom, Estella? I must see them,’ said the visitor.
‘We have none at home, where all is dry and parched.’
‘So bad for the nerves—what suffering!—such a dry soil that one cannot
sleep at night,’ murmured Madame Barenna, preparing to rise from her
seat.
Julia and Conyngham naturally led the way. The paths winding in and out
among the palms and pepper trees were of a width that allowed two to walk
abreast.
‘Señorita, I have a letter for you.’
‘Not yet—wait!’
Señora Barenna was chattering in her deep husky tones immediately behind
them. Julia turned and looked up at the windows of the house, which
commanded a full view of the garden. The dwelling rooms were as usual
upon the first floor, and the windows were lightly barred with curiously
wrought iron. Each window was curtained within with lace and muslin.
The paths wound in and out among the trees, but none of these were large
enough to afford a secure screen from the eye of any watcher within the
house. There was neither olive nor ilex in the garden to afford shelter
with their heavy leaves. Julia and Conyngham walked on, out-distancing
the elder lady and Estella. From these many a turn in the path hid them
from time to time, but Julia was distrustful of the windows and
hesitated, in an agony of nervousness. Conyngham saw that her face was
quite colourless, and her teeth closed convulsively over her lower lip.
He continued to talk of indifferent topics, but the answers she made were
incoherent and broken. The course of true love did not seem to run
smooth here.
‘Shall I give you the letter? No one can see us, señorita. Besides, I
was informed that it was of no importance except to yourself. You have
doubtless had many such before, unless the Spanish gentlemen are blind.’
He laughed and felt in his pocket.
‘Yes!’ she whispered. ‘Quickly—now.’
He gave her the letter in its romantic pink, scented envelope with a
half-suppressed smile at her eagerness. Would anybody—would Estella—ever
be thus agitated at the receipt of a letter from himself? They were at
the lower end of the inclosure, which was divided almost in two by a
broader pathway leading from the house to the centre of the garden, where
a fountain of Moorish marble formed a sort of carrefour, from which the
narrower pathways diverged in all directions.
Descending the steps into the garden from the house were two men, one
talking violently, the other seeking to calm him.
‘My uncle and the Alcalde—they have seen us from the windows,’ said Julia
quickly. All her nervousness of manner seemed to have vanished, leaving
her concentrated and alert. Some men are thus in warfare—nervous until
the rifle opens fire, and then cool and ready.
‘Quick!’ whispered Julia. ‘Let us turn back.’
She wheeled round, and Conyngham did the same.
‘Julia!’ they heard General Vincente call in his gentle voice.
Julia, who was tearing the pink envelope, took no heed. Within the first
covering a second envelope appeared, bearing a longer address. ‘Give
that to the man whose address it bears, and save me from ruin,’ said the
girl, thrusting the letter into Conyngham’s hand. She kept the pink
envelope.
When, a minute later, they came face to face with General Vincente and
his companion, a white-faced, fluttering man of sixty years, Julia
Barenna received them with a smile. There are some men who, conscious of
their own quickness of resource, are careless of danger, and run into it
from mere heedlessness, trusting to good fortune to aid them should peril
arise. Frederick Conyngham was one of these. He now suspected that this
was no love letter which the man called Larralde had given him in
Algeciras.
‘Julia,’ said the General, ‘the Alcalde desires to speak with you.’
Julia bowed with that touch of hauteur which in Spain the nobles ever
observe in their manner towards the municipal authorities.
‘Mr. Conyngham,’ continued the General, ‘this is our brave Mayor, in
whose hands rests the well-being of the people of Ronda.’
‘Honoured to meet you,’ said Conyngham, holding out his hand with that
frankness of manner which he accorded to great and small alike. The
Alcalde, a man of immense importance in his own estimation, hesitated
before accepting it.
‘General,’ he said, turning and bowing very low to Señora Barenna and
Estella, who now joined them, ‘General, I leave you to explain to your
niece the painful duties of my office.’
The General smiled and raised a deprecating shoulder.
‘Well, my dear,’ he said kindly to Julia, ‘it appears that our good
Alcalde has news of a letter which is at present passing from hand to
hand in Andalusia. It is a letter of some importance. Our good Mayor,
who was at the window a minute ago, saw Mr. Conyngham hand you a letter.
Between persons who only met in this garden five minutes ago such a
transaction had a strange air. Our good friend, who is all zeal for
Spain and the people of Ronda, merely asks you if his eyes deceived him.
It is a matter at which we shall all laugh presently over a lemonade—is
it not so? A trifle, eh?’ He passed his handkerchief across his
moustache, and looked affectionately at his niece.
‘A letter!’ exclaimed Julia. ‘Surely the Alcalde presumes. He takes too
much upon himself.’ The official stepped forward.
‘Señorita,’ he said, ‘I must be allowed to take that risk. Did this
gentleman give you a letter three minutes ago?’
Julia laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Yes.’
‘May I ask the nature of the letter?’
‘It was a love letter.’
Conyngham bit his lip and looked at Estella.
The Alcalde looked doubtful, with the cunning lips of a cheap country
lawyer.
‘A love letter from a gentleman you have never seen before?’ he said with
a forced laugh.
‘Pardon me, Señor Alcalde, this gentleman travelled in the same ship with
my mother and myself from Bordeaux to Algeciras, and he saved my life.’
She cast a momentary glance at Conyngham; which would have sealed his
fate had the fiery Mr. Larralde been there to see it. The Prefect
paused, somewhat taken aback. There was a momentary silence, and every
moment gave Julia and Conyngham time to think. Then the Alcalde turned
to Conyngham.
‘It will give me the greatest pleasure,’ he said, ‘to learn that I have
been mistaken. I have only to ask this gentleman’s confirmation of what
the señorita has said. It is true, señor, that you surreptitiously
handed to the Señorita Barenna a letter expressing your love?’
‘Since the señorita has done me the honour of confessing it, I must ask
you to believe it,’ answered Conyngham steadily and coldly.
CHAPTER IX
A WAR OF WIT
‘La discrétion est l’art du mensonge.’
THE Alcalde blew out his cheeks and looked at General Vincente. Señora
Barenna would with small encouragement have thrown herself into
Conyngham’s arms; but she received none whatever, and instead frowned at
Julia. Estella was looking haughtily at her father, and would not meet
Conyngham’s glance.
‘I feel sure,’ said General Vincente in his most conciliating manner,
‘that my dear Julia will see the necessity of satisfying the good Alcalde
by showing him the letter—with, of course, the consent of my friend
Conyngham.’
He laughed, and slipped his hand within Conyngham’s arm.
‘You see, my dear friend,’ he said in English, ‘these local magnates are
a trifle inflated; local magnitude is a little inclined to inflate, eh?
Ha! ha! And it is so easy to conciliate them. I always try to do so
myself. Peace at any price—that is my motto.’
And he turned aside to arrange his sword, which dragged on the ground.
‘Tell her, my dear Conyngham, to let the old gentleman read the letter.’
‘But it is nothing to do with me, General.’
‘I know that, my friend, as well as you do,’ said Vincente with a sudden
change of manner, which gave the Englishman an uncomfortable desire to
know what he meant. But General Vincente, in pursuit of that peace which
had earned him such a terrible reputation in war, turned to Señora
Barenna with his most reassuring smile.
‘It is nothing, my dear Iñez,’ he said. ‘In these times of trouble the
officials are so suspicious, and our dear Alcalde knows too much. He
remembers dear Julia’s little affair with Esteban Larralde, now long
since lived down and forgotten. Larralde is, it appears, a malcontent,
and on the wrong side of the wall. You need have no uneasiness. Ah!
your nerves—yes, I know! A great sufferer—yes, I remember. Patience,
dear Iñez, patience!’
And he patted her stout white hand affectionately.
The Alcalde was taking snuff with a stubborn air of disbelief, glancing
the while suspiciously at Conyngham, who had eyes for none but Estella.
‘Alcalde,’ said General Vincente, ‘the incident is past, as we say in the
diplomatic service; a lemonade now?’
‘No, General, the incident is not past, and I will not have a lemonade.’
‘Oh!’ exclaimed General Vincente in gentle horror.
‘Yes, this young lady must give me the letter, or I call in my men.’
‘But your men could not touch a lady, my dear Alcalde.’
‘You may be the Alcalde of Ronda,’ said Conyngham cheerfully, in
continuation of the General’s argument; ‘but if you offer such an insult
to Señorita Barenna, I throw you into the fountain, in the deepest part,
where it is wettest, just there by the marble dolphin.’
And Conyngham indicated the exact spot with his riding-whip.
‘Who is this gentleman?’ asked the Alcalde. The question was in the
first place addressed to space and the gods—after a moment the speaker
turned to General Vincente.
‘A prospective aide-de-camp of General Espartero.’
At the mention of the great name the Mayor of Ronda became beautifully
less and half bowed to Conyngham.
‘I must do my duty,’ he said with the stubbornness of a small mind.
‘And what do you conceive that to be, my dear Alcalde?’ inquired the
General.
‘To place the Señorita Barenna under arrest unless she will hand to me
the letter she has in her possession.’ Julia looked at him with a smile.
She was a brave woman, playing a dangerous game with consummate courage,
and never glanced at Conyngham, who with an effort kept his hand away
from the pocket where the letter lay concealed. The manner in which she
trusted him unreservedly and entirely was in itself cunning enough, for
it appealed to that sense of chivalry which is not yet dead in men.
‘Place me under arrest, Señor Alcalde,’ she said indifferently, ‘and when
you have satisfied me that you have a right to inspect a lady’s private
correspondence I will submit to be searched—but not before.’
She made a little signal to Conyngham not to interfere.
Señora Barenna took this opportunity of asserting herself and her nerves.
She sat heavily down on a stone seat and wept. She could hardly have
done better, for she was a countess in her own right, and the sight of
high-born tears distinctly unnerved the Alcalde.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the señorita has made her own choice. In these times’
(he glanced nervously at the weeping lady) ‘one must do one’s duty.’
‘My dear Julia,’ protested the General, ‘you who are so sensible—’
Julia shrugged her shoulders and laughed. She not only trusted Conyngham
but relied upon his intelligence. It is as a rule safer to confide in
the honesty of one’s neighbour than in his wit; better still, trust in
neither. Conyngham, who was quick enough when the moment required it,
knew that she was fostering the belief that the letter at that moment in
his pocket was in her possession. He suspected also that he and Julia
Barenna were playing with life and death. Further, he recognised her and
her voice. This was the woman who had showed discrimination and calmness
in face of a great danger on the Garonne. Had this Englishman, owning as
he did to a strain of Irish blood, turned his back on her and danger at
such a moment he would assuredly have proved himself untrue to the annals
of that race which has made a mark upon the world that will never be
wiped out. He looked at the Alcalde and smiled, whereupon that official
turned and made a signal with his hand to a man who, dressed in a quiet
uniform, had appeared in the doorway of the house.
‘What the deuce we are all trying to do I don’t know,’ reflected
Conyngham, who indeed was sufficiently at sea to awake the most dormant
suspicions.
The Alcalde, now thoroughly aroused, protested his inability to neglect a
particle of his duty at this troubled period of Spain’s history, and
announced his intention of placing Julia Barenna under surveillance until
she handed him the letter she had received from Conyngham.
‘I am quite prepared,’ he added, ‘to give this caballero the benefit of
the doubt, and assume that he has been in this matter the tool of
unscrupulous persons. Seeing that he is a friend of General Vincente’s,
and has an introduction to his Excellency the Duke of Vittoria, he is
without the pale of my jurisdiction.’
The Alcalde made Conyngham a profound bow and proceeded to conduct Julia
and her indignant mother to their carriage.
‘There goes,’ said General Vincente with his most optimistic little
chuckle, ‘a young woman whose head will always be endangered by her
heart.’ And he nodded towards Julia’s retreating form.
Estella turned and walked away by herself.
‘Come,’ said the General to Conyngham, ‘let us sit down. I have news for
you. But what a susceptible heart—my dear young friend—what a
susceptible heart! Julia is, I admit, a very pretty girl—_la beauté du
diable_, eh! But on so short an acquaintance—rather rapid, rather
rapid!’
As he spoke he was searching among some letters which he had produced
from his pocket, and at length found an official envelope that had
already been opened.
‘I have here,’ he said, ‘a letter from Madrid. You have only to proceed
to the capital, and there I hope a post awaits you. Your duties will at
present be of a semi-military character, but later I hope we can show you
some fighting. This pestilential Cabrera is not yet quelled, and Morella
still holds out. Yes, there will be fighting.’
He closed the letter and looked at Conyngham. ‘If that is what you
want,’ he added.
‘Yes, that is what I want.’
The General nodded and rose, pausing to brush a few grains of dust from
his dapper riding-breeches.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘I have seen a horse which will suit you at the cavalry
quarters in the Calle de Bobadilla. Shall we go and look at him?’
Conyngham expressed his readiness to do as the General proposed.
‘When shall I start for Madrid?’ he asked.
‘Oh, to-morrow morning will be time enough,’ was the reply, uttered in an
easy-going, indolent tone, ‘if you are early astir. You see, it is now
nearly five o’clock, and you could scarcely be in saddle before sunset.’
‘No,’ laughed Conyngham, ‘scarcely, considering that I have not yet
bought the saddle or the horse.’
The General led the way into the house, and Conyngham thought of the
letter in his pocket. He had not yet read the address. Julia relied
upon him to deliver it, and her conduct towards the Alcalde had the
evident object of gaining time for him to do so. She had unhesitatingly
thrust herself into a position of danger to screen him and further her
own indomitable purpose. He thought of her—still as from a distance at
which Estella had placed him—and knew that she not only had a disquieting
beauty, but cleverness and courage, which are qualities that outlast
beauty and make a woman powerful for ever.
When he and his companion emerged from the great doorway of the house
into the sunlight of the Calle Mayor, a man came forward from the shade
of a neighbouring porch. It was Concepçion Vara, leisurely and
dignified, twirling a cigarette between his brown fingers. He saluted
the General with one finger to the brim of his shabby felt hat as one
great man might salute another. He nodded to Conyngham.
‘When does his Excellency take the road again?’ he said. ‘I am ready.
The Guardia Civil was mistaken this time—the judge said there was no
stain on my name.’
He shrugged his shoulders and waved away the slight with the magnanimity
of one who can forgive and forget.
‘I take the road to-morrow; but our contract ceased at Ronda. I had no
intention of taking you on.’
‘You are not satisfied with me?’ inquired Concepçion, offering his
interlocutor the cigarette he had just made.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Buen! We take the road together.’
‘Then there is nothing more to be said?’ inquired Conyngham with a
good-natured laugh.
‘Nothing, except the hour at which your Excellency starts.’
‘Six o’clock,’ put in General Vincente quietly. ‘Let me see, your name
is Concepçion Vara.’
‘Yes, Excellency—of Algeciras.’
‘It is well. Then serve this gentleman well, or else—’ The General
paused, and laughed in his most deprecating manner.
Concepçion seemed to understand, for he took off his hat and turned
gravely away. The General and Conyngham walked rapidly through the
streets of Ronda, than which there are none cleaner in the whole world,
and duly bought a great black horse at a price which seemed moderate
enough to the Englishman, though the vendor explained that the long war
had made horseflesh rise in value. Conyngham, at no time a keen
bargainer, hurried the matter to an end, and scarce examined the saddle.
He was anxious to get back to the garden of the great house in the Calle
Mayor before the cool of evening came to drive Estella indoors.
‘You will doubtless wish to pack your portmanteau,’ said the General
rather breathlessly, as he hurried along with small steps beside
Conyngham.
‘Yes,’ answered the Englishman ingenuously, ‘yes, of course.’
‘Then I will not detain you,’ said General Vincente. ‘I have affairs at
headquarters. We meet at dinner, of course.’
He waved a little salutation with his whip and took a side turning.
The sun had not set when Conyngham with a beating heart made his way
through the house into the garden. He had never been so serious about
anything in his life. Indeed, his life seemed only to have begun in that
garden. Estella was there. He saw her black dress and mantilla through
the trees, and the gleam of her golden hair made his eyes almost fierce
for the moment.
‘I am going to-morrow morning,’ he said bluntly when he reached her where
she sat in the shade of a mimosa.
She raised her eyes for a moment—deep velvet eyes with something in them
that made his heart leap within his breast.
‘And I love you, Estella,’ he added. ‘You may be offended—you may
despise me—you may distrust me. But nothing can alter me. I love
you—now and ever.’
She drew a deep breath and sat motionless.
‘How many women does an Englishman love at once?’ she asked coldly at
length.
‘Only one, señorita.’
He stood looking at her for a moment. Then she rose and walked past him
into the house.
CHAPTER X
THE CITY OF DISCONTENT
‘En paroles ou en actions, être discret, c’est s’abstenir.’
‘THERE is,’ observed Frederick Conyngham to himself as he climbed into
the saddle in the grey dawn of the following morning, ‘there is a certain
picturesqueness about these proceedings which pleases me.’
Concepçion Vara indeed supplied a portion of this romantic atmosphere,
for he was dressed in the height of contrabandista fashion, with a
bright-coloured handkerchief folded round his head underneath his black
hat, a scarlet waistcloth, a spotless shirt, and a flower in the ribbon
of his hat.
He was dignified and leisurely, but so far forgot himself as to sing as
he threw his leg across his horse. A dark-eyed maiden had come to the
corner of the Calle Vieja, and stood there watching him with mournful
eyes. He waved her a salutation as he passed.
‘It is the waiting-maid at the venta where I stay in Ronda—what will
you?’ he explained to Conyngham with a modest air as he cocked his hat
farther on one side.
The sun rose as they emerged from the narrow streets into the open
country that borders the road to Bobadilla. A pastoral country this,
where the land needs little care to make it give more than man requires
for his daily food. The evergreen oak studded over the whole plain
supplies food for countless pigs and shade where the herdsmen may dream
away the sunny days. The rich soil would yield two or even three crops
in the year, were the necessary seed and labour forthcoming.
Underground, the mineral wealth outvies the richness of the surface, but
national indolence leaves it unexplored.
‘Before General Vincente one could not explain oneself,’ said Concepçion,
urging his horse to keep pace with the trot of Conyngham’s huge mount.
‘Ah!’
‘No,’ pursued Concepçion. ‘And yet it is simple. In Algeciras I have a
wife. It is well that a man should travel at times. So,’ he paused and
bowed towards his companion with a gesture of infinite condescension,
‘so—we take the road together.’
‘As long as you are pleased, Señor Vara,’ said Conyngham, ‘I am sure I
can but feel honoured. You know I have no money.’
The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders.
‘What matter?’ he said. ‘What matter? We can keep an account—a mere
piece of paper—so: “Concepçion Vara, of Algeciras, in account current
with F. Conyngham; Englishman. One month’s wages at one hundred
pesetas.” It is simple.’
‘Very,’ acquiesced Conyngham. ‘It is only when pay-day comes that things
will get complicated.’
Concepçion laughed.
‘You are a caballero after my own heart,’ he said. ‘We shall enjoy
ourselves in Madrid. I see that.’
Conyngham did not answer. He had remembered the letter and Julia
Barenna’s danger. He rose in his stirrups and looked behind him. Ronda
was already hidden by intervening hills, and the bare line of the roadway
was unbroken by the form of any other traveller.
‘We are not going to Madrid yet,’ said Conyngham. ‘We are going to
Xeres, where I have business. Do you know the road to Xeres?’
‘As well that as any other, Excellency.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know no roads north of Ronda. I am of Andalusia, I,’ replied
Concepçion easily, and he looked round about him with an air of interest
which was more to the credit of his intelligence as a traveller than his
reliability as a guide.
‘But you engaged to guide me to Madrid.’
‘Yes, Excellency—by asking the way,’ replied Concepçion with a light
laugh, and he struck a sulphur match on the neck of his horse to light a
fresh cigarette.
Thus with an easy heart Frederick Conyngham set out on his journey,
having for companion one as irresponsible as himself. He had determined
to go to Xeres, though that town of ill repute lay far to the westward of
his road towards the capital. It would have been simple enough to
destroy the letter entrusted to him by Julia Barenna, a stranger whom he
was likely never to see again—simple enough and infinitely safer as he
suspected, for the billet-doux of Mr. Larralde smelt of grimmer things
than love. But Julia Barenna wittingly, or in all innocence, appealed to
that sense of chivalry which is essentially the quality of lonely men who
have never had sisters, and Conyngham was ready to help Julia where he
would have refused his assistance to a man, however hard pressed.
‘Cannot leave the girl in a hole,’ he said to himself, and proceeded to
act upon this resolution with a steadiness of purpose for which some may
blame him.
It was evening when the two travellers reached Xeres after some weary
hours of monotonous progress through the vine-clad plains of this
country.
‘It is no wonder,’ said Concepçion, ‘that the men of Xeres are
malcontents, when they live in a country as flat as the palm of my hand.’
It happened to be a fête day, which in Spain, as in other countries
farther North, is synonymous with mischief. The men of Xeres had taken
advantage of this holiday to demonstrate their desire for more. They had
marched through the streets with banner and song, arrayed in their best
clothes, fostering their worst thoughts. They had consumed marvellous
quantities of that small Amontillado which is as it were a thin fire to
the blood, heating and degenerating at once. They had talked much
nonsense and listened to more. Carlist or Christino—it was all the same
to them, so long as they had a change of some sort. In the meantime they
had a desire to break something, if only to assert their liberty.
A few minutes before Conyngham and his guide rode into the market-place,
which in Xeres is as long as a street, some of the free sons of Spain had
thought fit to shout insulting remarks to a passer-by. With a fire too
bright for his years this old gentleman, with fierce white moustache and
imperial, had turned on them, calling them good-for-nothings and sons of
pigs.
Conyngham rode up just in time to see the ruffians rise as one man and
rush at the victim of their humour. The old man with his back to the
wall repelled his assailants with a sort of fierce joy in his attitude
which betokened the soldier.
‘Come on, Concepçion!’ cried Conyngham, with a dig of the spurs that made
his tired horse leap into the air. He charged down upon the gathering
crowd, which scattered right and left before the wild onslaught. But he
saw the flash of steel, and knew that it was too late. The old man, with
an oath and a gasp of pain, sank against the wall with the blood
trickling through the fingers clasped against his breast. Conyngham
would have reined in, but Concepçion on his heels gave the charger a cut
with his heavy whip that made him bound forward and would have unseated a
short-stirruped rider.
‘Go on,’ cried the Spaniard; ‘it is no business of ours. The police are
behind.’
And Conyngham, remembering the letter in his pocket, rode on without
looking back. In the day of which the present narrative treats, the
streets of Xeres were but ill paved, and the dust lay on them to the
depth of many inches, serving to deaden the sound of footsteps and
facilitate the commission of such deeds of violence as were at this time
of daily occurrence in Spain. Riding on at random, Conyngham and his
companion soon lost their way in the narrow streets, and were able to
satisfy themselves that none had followed them. Here in a quiet alley
Conyngham read again the address of the letter of which he earnestly
desired to rid himself without more ado.
It was addressed to Colonel Monreal at No. 84 Plaza de Cadiz.
‘Let his Excellency stay here and drink a glass of wine at this venta,’
said Concepçion. ‘Alone, I shall be able to get information without
attracting attention. And then, in the name of the saints, let us shake
the dust of Xeres off our feet. The first thing we see is steel, and I
do not like it. I have a wife in Algeciras to whom I am much attached,
and I am afraid—yes, afraid. A gentleman need never hesitate to say so.’
He shook his head forebodingly as he loosened his girths and called for
water for the horses.
‘I could eat a cocida,’ he went on, sniffing the odours of a neighbouring
kitchen, ‘with plenty of onions and the mutton as becomes the
springtime—young and tender. Dios! this quick travelling and an empty
stomach, it kills one.’
‘When I have delivered my letter,’ replied Conyngham, ‘we shall eat with
a lighter heart.’
Concepçion went away in a pessimistic humour. He was one of those men
who are brave enough on good wine and victuals, but lack the stamina to
fight when hungry. He returned presently with the required information.
The Plaza de Cadiz was, it appeared, quite close. Indeed, the town of
Xeres is not large, though the intricacies of its narrow streets may well
puzzle a new-comer. No. 84 was the house of the barber, and on his first
floor lived Colonel Monreal, a retired veteran who had fought with the
English against Napoleon’s armies.
During his servant’s absence, Conyngham had written a short note in
French, conveying, in terms which she would understand, the news that
Julia Barenna doubtless awaited with impatience; namely, that her letter
had been delivered to him whose address it bore.
‘I have ordered your cocida and some good wine,’ he said to Concepçion.
‘Your horse is feeding. Make good use of your time, for when I return I
shall want you to take the road again at once. You must make ten miles
before you sleep to-night, and then an early start in the morning.’
‘For where, señor?’
‘For Ronda.’
Concepçion shrugged his shoulders. His life had been spent upon the
road, his wardrobe since childhood had been contained in a saddle-bag,
and Spaniards, above all people, have the curse of Ishmael. They are a
homeless race, and lay them down to sleep, when fatigue overtakes them,
under a tree or in the shade of a stone wall. It often happens that a
worker in the fields will content himself with the lee side of a haystack
for his resting-place when his home is only a few hundred yards up the
mountain side.
‘And his Excellency?’ inquired Concepçion.
‘I shall sleep here to-night and proceed to Madrid to-morrow, by way of
Cordova, where I will wait for you. I have a letter here which you must
deliver to the Señorita Barenna at Ronda without the knowledge of anyone.
It will be well that neither General Vincente nor any other who knows you
should catch sight of you in the streets of Ronda.’
Concepçion nodded his head with much philosophy.
‘Ah! these women,’ he said, turning to the steaming dish of mutton and
vegetables which is almost universal in the South, ‘these women, what
shoe leather they cost us!’
Leaving his servant thus profitably employed, Conyngham set out to find
the barber’s shop in the Plaza de Cadiz. This he did without difficulty,
but on presenting himself at the door of Colonel Monreal’s apartment
learnt that that gentleman was out.
‘But,’ added the servant, ‘the Colonel is a man of regular habits. He
will return within the next fifteen minutes, for he dines at five.’
Conyngham paused. He had no desire to make Colonel Monreal’s
acquaintance, indeed preferred to remain without it, for he rightly
judged that Señor Larralde was engaged in affairs best left alone.
‘I have a letter for the Colonel,’ he said to the servant, a man of
stupid countenance. ‘I will place it here upon his table, and can no
doubt trust you to see that he gets it.’
‘That you can, Excellency,’ replied the man, with a palm already half
extended to receive a gratuity.
‘If the Colonel fails to receive the letter I shall certainly know of
it,’ said Conyngham, stumbling down the dark staircase, and well pleased
to have accomplished his mission.
He returned with all speed to the inn in the quiet alley where he had
elected to pass the night, and found Concepçion still at table.
‘In half an hour I take the road,’ said the Spaniard. ‘The time for a
cup of coffee, and I am ready to ride all night.’
Having eaten, Concepçion was in a better frame of mind, and now
cheerfully undertook to carry out his master’s instructions. In little
more than half an hour he was in the saddle again, and waved an airy
adieu to Conyngham as he passed under the swinging oil lamp that hung at
the corner of the street.
It was yet early in the evening, and Conyngham, having dined, set out to
explore the streets of Xeres, which were quiet enough now, as the cafes
were gayer and safer than the gloomy thoroughfares where a foe might lurk
in every doorway. In the market-place, between rows of booths and tents,
a dense crowd walked backwards and forwards with that steady sense of
promenading which the Spaniard understands above all other men. The
dealers in coloured handkerchiefs from Barcelona or mantillas from
Seville were driving a great trade, and the majority of them had long
since shouted themselves hoarse. A few quack dentists were operating
upon their victims under the friendly covert of a big drum and a bassoon.
Dealers in wonderful drugs and herbs were haranguing the crowd, easily
gaining the attention of the simple peasants by handling a live snake or
a crocodile which they allowed to crawl upon their shoulders.
Conyngham lingered in the crowd, which was orderly enough, and amused
himself by noting the credulity of the country folk, until his attention
was attracted by a solemn procession passing up the market-place behind
the tents. He inquired of a bystander what this might be.
‘It is the police carrying to his apartment the body of Colonel Monreal,
who was murdered this afternoon in the Plaza Mayor,’ was the answer.
Conyngham made his way between two tents to the deserted side of the
market-place, and, running past the procession, reached the barber’s shop
before it. In answer to his summons a girl came to the door of the
Colonel’s apartment. She was weeping and moaning in great mental
distress.
Without explanation Conyngham pushed past her into the room where he had
deposited the letter. The room was in disorder, and no letter lay upon
the table.
‘It is,’ sobbed the girl, ‘my husband, who, having heard that the good
Colonel had been murdered, stole all his valuables and papers and has run
away from me.’
CHAPTER XI
A TANGLED WEB
‘Wherein I am false, I am honest—not true to be true.’
‘AND—would you believe it?—there are soldiers in the house, at the very
door of Julia’s apartments.’ Señora Barenna, who made this remark,
heaved a sigh and sat back in her canework chair with that jerkiness of
action which in elderly ladies usually betokens impatience with the ways
of young people.
‘Policemen—policemen, not soldiers,’ corrected Father Concha patiently,
as if it did not matter much. They were sitting in the broad vine-clad
verandah of the Casa Barenna, that grim old house on the Bobadilla road,
two miles from Ronda. The priest had walked thither, as the dust on his
square-toed shoes and black stockings would testify. He had laid aside
his mournful old hat, long since brown and discoloured, and was wiping
his forehead with a cheap pocket-handkerchief of colour and pattern
rather loud for his station in life.
‘Well, they have swords,’ persisted the lady.
‘Policemen,’ said Father Concha, in a stern and final voice, which caused
Señora Barenna to cast her eyes upwards with an air of resigned
martyrdom.
‘Ah, that Alcalde!’ she whispered between her teeth.
‘A little dog, when it is afraid, growls,’ said Concha philosophically.
‘The Alcalde is a very small dog, and he is at his wit’s end. Such a
thing has not occurred in Ronda before, and the Alcalde’s world is Ronda.
He does not know whether his office permits him to inspect young ladies’
love letters or not.’
‘Love letters!’ ejaculated Señora Barenna. She evidently had a keen
sense of the romantic, and hoped for something more tragic than a mere
flirtation begotten of idleness at sea.
‘Yes,’ said Concha, crossing his legs and looking at his companion with a
queer cynicism. ‘Young people mostly pass that way.’
He had had a tragedy, this old man. One of those grim tragedies of the
cassock which English people rarely understand. And his tragedy sat
beside him on the cane chair, stout and eminently worldly, while he had
journeyed on the road of life with all his illusions, all his
half-fledged aspirations, untouched by the cold finger of reality. He
despised the woman now, the contempt lurked in his cynical smile, but he
clung with a half-mocking, open-eyed sarcasm to his memories.
‘But,’ he said reassuringly, ‘Julia is a match for the Alcalde, you may
rest assured of that.’
Señora Barenna turned with a gesture of her plump hand indicative of
bewilderment.
‘I do not understand her. She laughs at the soldiers—the policemen, I
mean. She laughs at me. She laughs at everything.’
‘Yes, it is the hollow hearts that make most noise in the world,’ said
Concha, folding his handkerchief upon his knee. He was deadly poor, and
had a theory that a folded handkerchief remains longer clean. His whole
existence was an effort to do without those things that make life worth
living.
‘Why did you send for me?’ he asked.
‘But to advise me—to help me. I have been, all my life, cast upon the
world alone. No one to help me—no one to understand. No one knows what
I have suffered—my husband—’
‘Was one of the best and most patient of mortals, and is assuredly in
heaven, where I hope there are a few mansions reserved for men only.’
Señora Barenna fetched one of her deepest sighs. She had a few lurking
in the depth of her capacious being, reserved for such occasions as this.
It was, it seemed, no more than her life had led her to expect.
‘You have had,’ went on her spiritual adviser, ‘a life of ease and
luxury, a husband who denied you nothing. You have never lost a child by
death, which I understand is—one of the greatest sorrows that God sends
to women. You are an ungrateful female.’
Señora Barenna, whose face would have graced one of the very earliest of
the martyrs, sat with folded hands waiting until the storm should pass.
‘Do you wish me to see Julia?’ asked Concha abruptly.
‘Yes—yes! And persuade her to conciliate the Alcalde—to tell him some
story or another. It does not surely matter if it be not the strict
truth. Anything to get these men out of the house. My maid Maria is so
flighty. Ah—these young people! What a trial—my dear Padre, what a
trial!’
‘Of course,’ said Father Concha. ‘But what a dull world it would be if
our neighbour knew how to manage his own affairs! Shall we go to Julia?’
The perturbed lady preferred that the priest should see her daughter
alone. A military-looking individual in white trousers and a dark green
tunic stood guard over the door of Julia’s apartment, seeking by his
attitude and the curl of his moustache to magnify his office in the eyes
of a maid who happened to have an unusual amount of cleaning to do in
that particular corridor.
‘Ah!’ said Father Concha, by no means abashed by the sentinel’s sword.
‘Ah, it is you, Manuel. Your wife tells me you have objections to the
christening of that last boy of yours, number five, I think. Bring
number five on Sunday, after vespers—eh? You understand—and a little
something for the poor. It is pay day on Saturday. And no more nonsense
about religion, Manuel, eh?’
He shook his lean finger in the official’s face and walked on
unchallenged.
‘May I come in?’ he said, tapping at the door; and Julia’s voice bade him
enter.
He closed the door behind him and laid aside his hat. Then he stood
upright, and slowly rubbing his hands together looked at Julia with the
humorous twinkle lurking in his eye and its companion dimple twitching in
his lean cheek. Then he began to feel his pockets, passing his hands
down his worn cassock.
‘Let me see, I had a love letter—was it from Don Carlos? At all events,
I have lost it!’
He laughed, made a perfunctory sign of the cross and gave her his
blessing. Then, his face having become suddenly grave as if by machinery
at the sound of the solemn Latin benediction, he sat down.
Julia looked worn and eager. Her eyes seemed to search his face for
news.
‘Yes, my dear child,’ he said. ‘Politics are all very well as a career.
But without a distinct profit they are worth the attention of few men,
and never worth the thought of a woman.’
He looked at her keenly, and she turned to the window, which was open to
admit the breath of violets and other flowers of the spring. She
shrugged her shoulders and gave a sharp sigh.
‘See here, my child,’ said Padre Concha abruptly. ‘For reasons which
concern no one, I take a great interest in your happiness. You resemble
some one whose welfare was once more important to me than my own. That
was long ago, and I now consider myself first, as all wise men should. I
am your friend, Julia, and much too old to be over-scrupulous. I peep
and pry into my neighbours’ affairs, and I am uneasy about you, my
child.’
He shook his head and drummed upon the table with his dirty fingers.
‘Thank you,’ answered the girl with her defiant little laugh, ‘but I can
manage my own affairs.’
The priest nodded reflectively.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is natural that you should say that. One of the
chief blessings of youth is self confidence. Heaven forbid that I should
shake yours. But, you see, there are several people who happen to be
anxious that this little affair should blow over and be forgotten. The
Alcalde is a mule, we know that, and anything that serves to magnify
himself and his office is likely to be prolonged. Do not play into his
hand. As I tell you, there are some who wish to forget this incident,
and one of them is coming to see you this afternoon.’
‘Ah!’ said the girl indifferently.
‘General Vincente.’
Julia changed colour and her eyelids flickered for a moment as she looked
out of the open window.
‘A good friend,’ continued Concha, ‘but—’
He finished the phrase with an eloquent little gesture of the hand. At
this moment they both heard the sound of an approaching carriage.
‘He is coming now,’ said Concha. ‘He is driving, so Estella is with
him.’
‘Estella is of course jealous.’
The priest looked at her with a slow wise smile and said nothing.
‘She—’ began Julia, and then closed her lips—true to that _esprit de
sexe_ which has ruled through all the ages. Then Julia Barenna gave a
sharp sigh as her mind reverted from Estella’s affairs to her own.
Sitting thus in silence, the two occupants of the quiet room heard the
approach of steps and the clink of spurs in the corridor.
‘It is the reverendo who visits the señorita,’ they heard the voice of
the sentinel explain deprecatingly.
The priest rose and went to the door, which he opened.
‘Only as a friend,’ he said. ‘Come in, General.’
General Vincente entered the room followed by Estella. He nodded to
Concha and kissed his niece affectionately.
‘Still obdurate?’ he said, with a semi-playful tap on her shoulder.
‘Still obdurate? My dear Julia, in peace and war the greatest quality in
the strong is mercy. You have proved yourself strong—you have worsted
that unfortunate Alcalde—be merciful to him now, and let this incident
finish.’
He drew forward a chair, the others being seated, and laid aside his
gloves. The sword which he held upright between his knees, with his two
hands resting on the hilt, looked incongruously large and reached the
level of his eyes. He gave a little chuckling laugh.
‘I saw him last night at the Café Real—the poor man had the air of a
funeral, and took his wine as if it were sour. Ah! these civilians, they
amuse one—they take life so seriously.’
He laughed and looked round at those assembled as if inviting them to
join him in a gayer and easier view of existence. The Padre’s furrowed
face answered the summons in a sudden smile, but it was with grave eyes
that he looked searchingly at the most powerful man in Andalusia; for
General Vincente’s word was law south of the Tagus.
The two men sat side by side in strong contrast. Fate indeed seems to
shake men together in a bag, and cast them out upon the world heedless
where they may fall; for here was a soldier in the priest’s habit, and
one carrying a sword who had the keen heart and sure sympathy for joy or
sorrow that should ever be found within a black coat if the Master’s work
is to be well done.
General Vincente smiled at Estella with _sang-froid_ and an unruffled
good nature, while the Padre Concha, whose place it surely was to take
the lead in such woman’s work as this, slowly rubbed his bony hands
together, at a loss and incompetent to meet the urgency of the moment.
‘Our guest left us yesterday morning,’ said the General, ‘and of course
the Alcalde placed no hindrance on his departure.’
He did not look at Julia, who drew a deep breath and glanced at Estella.
‘I do not know if Señor Conyngham left any message for you with
Estella—to me he said nothing,’ continued Estella’s father; and that
young lady shook her head.
‘No,’ she put in composedly.
‘Then it remains for us to close this foolish incident, my dear Julia;
and for me to remind you, seeing that you are fatherless, that there are
in Spain many adventurers who come here seeking the sport of love or war,
who will ride away when they have had their fill of either.’
He ceased speaking with a tolerant laugh, as one who, being a soldier
himself, would beg indulgence for the failings of his comrades, examined
the hilt of his sword, and then looked blandly round on three faces which
resolutely refused to class the absent Englishman in this category.
‘It remains, my dear niece, to satisfy the Alcalde—a mere glance at the
letter—sufficient to satisfy him as to the nature of its contents.’
‘I have no letter,’ said Julia quietly, with her level red lips set hard.
‘Not in your possession, but perhaps concealed in some place near at
hand—unless it is destroyed.’
‘I have destroyed no letter, I have concealed no letter, and I have no
letter,’ said the girl quietly. Estella moved uneasily in the chair.
Her face was colourless and her eyes shone. She watched her cousin’s
face intently, and beneath his shaggy brows the old priest’s eyes went
from one fair countenance to the other.
‘Then,’ cried the General, rising to his feet with an air of relief, ‘you
have but to assure the Alcalde of this, and the whole incident is
terminated. Blown over, my dear Concha—blown over!’
He tapped the priest on the shoulder with great good nature. Indeed, the
world seemed sunny enough and free from cares when General Vincente had
to deal with it.
‘Yes—yes,’ said the Padre, snuff-box in hand. ‘Blown over—of course.’
‘Then I may send the Alcalde to you, Julia—and you will tell him what you
have told us? He cannot but take the word of a lady.’
‘Yes—if you like,’ answered Julia.
The General’s joy knew no bounds.
‘That is well,’ he cried, ‘I knew we could safely rely upon your good
sense. Kiss me, Julia—that is well! Come, Estella—we must not keep the
horses waiting.’
With a laugh and a nod he went towards the door. ‘Blown over, my dear
Concha,’ he said over his shoulder.
A few minutes later the priest walked down the avenue of walnut trees
alone. The bell was ringing for vespers, but the Padre was an autocratic
shepherd and did not hurry towards his flock. The sun had set, and in
the hollows of the distant mountains the shades of night already lay like
a blue veil.
The priest walked on and presently reached the high road. A single
figure was upon it—the figure of a man sitting in the shadow of an ilex
tree half a mile up the road towards Bobadilla. The man crouched low
against a heap of stones and had the air of a wanderer. His face was
concealed in the folds of his cloak.
‘Blown over,’ muttered the Padre as he turned his back upon Bobadilla and
went on towards his church. ‘Blown over, of course; but what is
Concepçion Vara doing in the neighbourhood of Ronda to-night?’
CHAPTER XII
ON THE TOLEDO ROAD
‘Une bonne intention est une échelle trop courte.’
CONYNGHAM made his way without difficulty or incident from Xeres to
Cordova, riding for the most part in front of the clumsy diligencia
wherein he had bestowed his luggage. The road was wearisome enough, and
the last stages, through the fertile plains bordering the Guadalquivir,
dusty and monotonous.
At Cordova the traveller found comfortable quarters in an old inn
overlooking the river. The ancient city was then, as it is now, a great
military centre, and the headquarters of the picturesque corps of
horse-tamers, the ‘Remonta,’ who are responsible for the mounting of the
cavalry and the artillery of Spain. Conyngham had, at the suggestion of
General Vincente, made such small changes in his costume as would serve
to allay curiosity and prevent that gossip of the stable and kitchen
which may follow a traveller to his hurt from one side of a continent to
the other.
‘Wherever you may go learn your way in and out of every town, and you
will thus store up knowledge most useful to a soldier,’ the General had
said in his easy way.
‘See you,’ Concepçion had observed, wagging his head over a cigarette;
‘to go about the world with the eyes open is to conquer the world.’
From his guide, moreover, whose methods were those that Nature teaches to
men who live their daily lives in her company, Conyngham learnt much of
that road craft which had raised Concepçion Vara to such a proud eminence
among the rascals of Andalusia. Cordova was a good object upon which to
practise, for Roman and Goth, Moor and Christian, have combined to make
its tortuous streets well-nigh incomprehensible to the traveller’s mind.
Here Conyngham wandered, or else he sat somnolently on a seat in the
Paseo del Gran Capitan in the shade of the orange trees, awaiting the
arrival of Concepçion Vara. He made a few acquaintances, as every
traveller who is not a bear must needs do in a country where politeness
and hospitality and a grave good fellowship are the natural habit of high
and low alike. A bullfighter or two, who beguiled the long winter
months, when the rings are closed, by a little innocent horse dealing,
joined him quietly in the streets and offered him a horse—as between
gentlemen of undoubted honour—at a price much below the current value.
Or it was perhaps a beggar who came to him on the old yellow marble seat
under the orange trees, and chatted affably about his business as being
bad in these times of war. Once, indeed, it was a white-haired
gentleman, who spoke in English, and asked some very natural questions as
to the affairs that brought an Englishman to the town of Cordova. This
sweet-spoken old man explained that strangers would do well to avoid all
questions of politics and religion, which he classed together in one
dangerous whole. Nevertheless, Conyngham thought that he perceived his
ancient friend the same evening hurrying up the steps of the Jesuit
College of La Campania.
Two days elapsed and Concepçion Vara made neither appearance nor sign.
On the second evening Conyngham decided to go on alone, prosecuting his
journey through the sparsely populated valley of the Alcadia to Ciudad
Real, Toledo, and Madrid.
‘You will ride,’ the innkeeper told him, ‘from the Guadalquivir to the
Guadiana, and if there is rain you may be a month upon the road.’
Conyngham set out in the early morning, and as he threw his leg across
the saddle the sun rose over the far misty hills of Ronda, and Concepçion
Vara awoke from his night’s rest under the wall of an olive terrace above
the Bobadilla road, to begin another day of patient waiting and watching
to get speech with the maid or the mistress; for he had already
inaugurated what he lightly called ‘an affair’ with Julia’s flighty
attendant. The sun rose also over the plains of Xeres, and lighted up
the picturesque form of Esteban Larralde, in the saddle this hour and
more, having learnt that Colonel Monreal’s death took place an hour
before Conyngham’s arrival in the town of Xeres de la Frontera. The
letter, therefore, had not been delivered to Colonel Monreal, and was
still in Conyngham’s possession.
Larralde bestrode a shocking steed, and had but an indifferent seat in
the saddle. Nevertheless, the dust rose beneath his horse’s feet, and
his spurs flashed in the sunlight as this man of many parts hurried on
towards Utrera and Cordova.
In the old Moorish palace in Ronda, General Vincente, summoned to a great
council of war at Madrid, was making curt military preparations for his
journey and the conveyance of his household to the capital. Señora
Barenna was for the moment forgetful of her nerves in the excitement of
despatching servants in advance to Toledo, where she owned a summer
residence. Julia was nervously anxious to be on the road again, and
showed by every word and action that restlessness of spirit which is the
inheritance of hungry hearts. Estella, quiet and self-contained,
attended to the details of moving a vast and formal household with a
certain eagerness which in no way resembled Julia’s feverish haste.
Estella seemed to be one of those happy people who know what they want.
Thus Frederick Conyngham, riding northward alone, seemed to be a pilot to
all these persons into whose lives he had suddenly stepped as from a side
issue, for they were one and all making ready to follow him to the colder
plains of Castile, where existence was full of strife and ambition, of
war and those inner wheels that ever jar and grind where politicians
contend together for the mastery of a moment.
As he rode on, Conyngham left a message from time to time for his
self-appointed servant. At the offices of the diligencias in various
towns on the great road from Cordova to Madrid he left word for
Concepçion Vara to follow, should the spirit of travel be still upon him,
knowing that at these places where travellers were ever passing, the
tittle-tattle of the road was on the tongue of every ostler and stable
help. And truly enough there followed one who made careful inquiries as
to the movements of the Englishman, and heard his messages with a grim
smile. But this was not Concepçion Vara.
It was late one evening when Conyngham, who had quitted Toledo in the
morning, began to hunger for the sight of the towers and steeples of
Madrid. He had ridden all day through the bare country of Cervantes,
where to this day Spain rears her wittiest men and plainest women. The
sun had just set behind the distant hills of Old Castile, and from the
east, over Aranjuez, where the great river cuts Spain in two parts from
its centre to the sea, a grey cloud—a very shade of night—was slowly
rising. The aspect of the brown plains was dismal enough, and on the
horizon the rolling unbroken land seemed to melt away into eternity and
infinite space.
Conyngham reined in and looked around him. So far as eye could reach, no
house arose to testify to the presence of man. No labourer toiled home
to his lonely hut. For, in this country of many wars and interminable
strife, it has, since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, been the custom of the
people to congregate in villages and small townships, where a common
danger secured some protection against a lawless foe. The road rose and
fell in a straight line across the table-land without tree or hedge, and
Madrid seemed to belong to another world, for the horizon, which was
distant enough, bore no sign of cathedral spire or castle height.
Conyngham turned in his saddle to look back, and there, not a mile away,
the form of a hurrying horseman broke the bare line of the dusty road.
There was something weird and disturbing in this figure, a suggestion of
pursuit in every line. For this was not Concepçion Vara. Conyngham
would have known him at once. This was one wearing a better coat; indeed
Concepçion preferred to face life and the chances of the world in shirt
sleeves.
Conyngham sat in his saddle awaiting the new-comer. To meet on such a
road in Spain without pausing to exchange a salutation would be a
gratuitous insult, to ride in solitude within hail of another traveller
were to excite or betray the deepest distrust. It was characteristic of
Conyngham that he already waved his hand in salutation, and was prepared
to hail the new-comer as the jolliest companion in the world.
Esteban Larralde, seeing the salutation, gave a short laugh, and jerked
the reins of his tired horse. He himself wore a weary look, as if the
fight he had in hand were an uphill one. He had long recognised
Conyngham; indeed the chase had been one of little excitement, but rather
an exercise of patience and dogged perseverance. He raised his hat to
indicate that the Englishman’s gay salutations were perceived, and pulled
the wide brim well forward again.
‘He will change his attitude when it becomes apparent who I am,’ he
muttered.
But Conyngham’s first word would appear to suggest that Esteban Larralde
was a much less impressive person than he considered himself.
‘Why, it’s the devout lover!’ he cried. ‘Señor Larralde, you remember
me, Algeciras, and your pink love letter—deuced fishy love letter, that;
nearly got me into a devil of a row, I can tell you. How are you, eh?’
And the Englishman rode forward with a jolly laugh and his hand held out.
Larralde took it without enthusiasm. It was rather difficult to pick a
picturesque quarrel with such a person as this. Moreover, the true
conspirator never believes in another man’s honesty.
‘Who would have expected to meet you here?’ went on Conyngham jovially.
‘It is not so surprising as you think.’
‘Oh!’
There was no mistaking Larralde’s manner, and the Englishman’s gay blue
eyes hardened suddenly and rather surprisingly.
‘No, I have followed you. I want that letter.’
‘Well, as it happens, Señor Larralde, I have not got your letter, and if
I had I am not quite sure that I would give it to you. Your conduct in
the matter has not been over-nice, and, to tell you the truth, I don’t
think much of a man who gets strangers and women to do his dirty work for
him.’
Larralde stroked his moustache with a half-furtive air of contempt.
‘I should have given the confounded letter to the Alcalde of Ronda if it
had not been that a lady would have suffered for it, and let you take
your chance, Señor Larralde.’
Larralde shrugged his shoulders.
‘You would not have given it to the Alcalde of Ronda,’ he said in a
sneering voice, ‘because you want it yourself. You require it in order
to make your peace with Estella Vincente.’
‘We are not going to talk of Señorita Vincente,’ said Conyngham quietly.
‘You say you followed me because you wanted that letter. It is not in my
possession. I left it in the house of Colonel Monreal at Xeres. If you
are going on to Madrid, I think I will sit down here and have a
cigarette. If, on the other hand, you propose resting here, I shall
proceed, as it is getting late.’
Conyngham looked at his companion with a nod and a smile which was not in
the least friendly and at the same time quite cheerful. He seemed to
recognise the necessity of quarrelling, but proposed to do so as
light-heartedly as possible. They were both on horseback in the middle
of the road, Larralde a few paces in the direction of Madrid.
Conyngham indicated the road with an inviting wave of the hand.
‘Will you go on?’ he asked.
Larralde sat looking at him with glittering eyes, and said nothing.
‘Then I will continue my journey,’ said the Englishman, touching his
horse lightly with the spur. The horse moved on and passed within a yard
of the other. At this moment Larralde rose in his stirrups and flung
himself on one side.
Conyngham gave a sharp cry of pain and threw back his head. Larralde had
stabbed him in the back. The Englishman swayed in the saddle as if
trying to balance himself, his legs bent back from the knee in the
sharpness of a biting pain. The heavy stirrups swung free. Then,
slowly, Conyngham toppled forward and rolled out of the saddle, falling
to the road with a thud.
Larralde watched him with a white face and staring eyes. Then he looked
quickly round over the darkening landscape. There was no one in sight.
This was one of the waste places of the world. Larralde seemed to
remember the Eye that seeth even there, and crossed himself as he slipped
from the saddle to the ground. He was shaking all over. His face was
ashen, for it is a terrible thing to kill a man and be left alone with
him.
Conyngham’s eyes were closed. There was blood on his lips. With hands
that shook like leaves Esteban Larralde searched the Englishman, found
nothing, and cursed his ill fortune. Then he stood upright, and in the
dim light his face shone as if he had dipped it in water. He crept into
the saddle and rode on towards Madrid.
It was quite dark when Conyngham recovered consciousness. In turning him
over to search his pockets Larralde had perhaps, unwittingly, saved his
life by placing him in a position that checked the internal hæmorrhage.
What served to bring back the Englishman’s wandering senses was the
rumbling of heavy wheels and the crack of a great whip as a cart laden
with hay and drawn by six mules approached him from the direction of
Toledo.
The driver of the team was an old soldier, as indeed were most of the
Castilians at this time, and knew how to handle wounded men. With great
care and a multitude of oaths he lifted Conyngham on to his cart and
proceeded with him to Madrid.
CHAPTER XIII
A WISE IGNORAMUS
‘God help me! I know nothing—can but pray.’
IT was Father Concha’s custom to attend, at his church between the hours
of nine and ten in the morning, to such wants spiritual or temporal as
individual members of his flock chose to bring to him.
Thus it usually happened that the faithful found the old priest at nine
o’clock sunning himself at the front door of the sacred edifice, smoking
a reflective cigarette and exchanging the time of day with passers-by or
such as had leisure to pause a moment.
‘Whether it is body or soul that is in trouble—come to me,’ he would say.
‘For the body I can do a little—a very little. I have twenty pounds a
year, and it is not always paid to me, but I sometimes have a trifle for
charity. For the soul I can do a little more.’ After a storm of wind
and rain, such as come in the winter-time, it was no uncommon sight to
see the priest sweeping the leaves and dust from the church steps and
using the strongest language at the bootmaker over the way whose business
this was supposed to be.
‘See!’ he would cry to some passer-by. ‘See!—it is thus that our
sacristan does his work. It is for this that the Holy Church pays him
fifteen—or is it twenty?—pesetas each year.’
And the bootmaker would growl and shake his head over his last; for, like
most who have to do with leather, he was a man of small humour.
Here, too, mothers would bring their children—little girls cowering under
their bright handkerchiefs, the mantilla of the poor, and speak with the
Padre of the Confirmation and first Communion which had lately begun to
hang like a cloud over the child’s life. Father Concha would take the
child upon his knee as he sat on the low wall at the side of the steps,
and when the mother had left them, would talk quietly with the lines of
his face wonderfully softened, so that before long the little girl would
run home quite happy in mind and no longer afraid of the great unknown.
Here, in the spring time, came the young men with thoughts appropriate to
the season, and sheepish exceedingly; for they knew that Father Concha
knew all about them, and would take an unfair advantage of his
opportunities, refusing probably to perform the ceremony until he was
satisfied as to the ways and means and prudence of the contracting
parties—which of course he had no right to do. Here came the halt, the
lame, the blind, the poor, and also the rich. Here came the unhappy.
They came naturally and often. Here, so the bootmaker tells, came one
morning a ruined man, who after speaking a few words to the Padre,
produced a revolver and tried to shoot himself. And the Padre fell on
him like a wild beast. And they fought, and fell, and rolled down the
steps together into the road, where they still fought till they were
white like millers with dust. Then at last the Padre got the strong man
under him and took the revolver away and threw it into the ditch. Then
he fell to belabouring the would-be suicide with his fists, until the big
man cried for mercy and received it not.
‘You saved his life,’ the people said.
‘It was his soul that I was caring for,’ replied the Padre with his grim
smile.
Concha was not a clever man, but he was wise. Of learning he had but
little. It is easy, however, to be wise without being learned. It is
easier still to be learned without being wise. The world is full of such
persons to-day when education is too cheap. Concha steered his flock as
best he could through the stormy paths of insurrection and civil war. He
ruled with a rod of iron whom he could, and such as were beyond his reach
he influenced by ridicule and a patient tolerance. True to his cloth, he
was the enemy of all progress and distrusted every innovation.
‘The Padre,’ said the barber, who was a talker and a radical, ‘would have
the world stand still.’
‘The Padre,’ replied Concha, tenderly drying his chin with a towel,
‘would have all barbers attend to their razors. Many are so busy
shouting “Advance!” that they have no breath to ask whither they are
going.’
On the whole, perhaps, his autocratic rule was a beneficent one, and
contributed to the happiness of the little northern suburb of Ronda over
which it extended. At all events, he was a watchful guardian of his
flock, and knew every face in his parish.
It thus happened one morning that a strange woman, who had come quietly
into church to pray, attracted his attention as he passed out after
matins. She was a mere peasant and ill clad. The child seated on a
chair by her side and staring with wondering eyes at the simple altar and
stained-glass window had a hungry look.
Concha sat down on the low wall without the doors and awaited the exit of
this devotee who was not of his flock. For though, as he often said, the
good God had intended him for a soldier, his own strong will and simple
faith had in time produced a very passable priest who, with a grim face,
went about doing good.
The woman presently lifted the heavy leathern curtain and let out into
the sunlight a breath of cool, incense-laden air.
She curtsied and paused as if expecting recognition. Concha threw away
his cigarette and raised his hand to his hat. He had not lifted it
except to ladies of the highest quality for some years, out of regard to
symptoms of senile decay which had manifested themselves at the junction
of the brim and the crown.
‘Have I not seen your face before, my child?’ he said.
‘Yes, reverendo. I am of Ronda but have been living in Xeres.’
‘Ah! then your husband is no doubt a malcontent?’
The woman burst into tears, burying her face in her hands and leaning
against the wall in an attitude that was still girlish. She had probably
been married at fifteen.
‘No, reverendo! He is a thief.’
Concha merely nodded his head. He never had been a man to betray much
pious horror when he heard of ill-doing.
‘The two are almost identical,’ he said quietly. ‘One does what the
other fears to do. And is your husband in prison? Is that why you have
come back? Ah! you women—in foolishness you almost equal the men!’
‘No, reverendo. I am come back because he has left me. Sebastian has
run away, and has stolen all his master’s property. It was the Colonel
Monreal of Xeres—a good man, reverendo, but a politician.’
‘Ah!’
‘Yes, and he was murdered, as your reverence has no doubt seen in the
newspapers. A week ago it was—the day that the Englishman came with a
letter.’
‘What Englishman was that?’ inquired Father Concha, brushing some grains
of snuff from his sleeve. ‘What Englishman was that, my child?’
‘Oh, I do not know! His name is unknown to me, but I could tell he was
English from his manner of speaking. The Colonel had an English friend
who spoke so—one engaged in the sherry in Xeres.’
‘Ah yes! And this Englishman, what was he like?’
‘He was very tall and straight, like a soldier, and had a moustache quite
light in colour, like straw.’
‘Ah yes. The English are so. And he left a letter?’
‘Yes, reverendo.’
‘A rose-coloured letter—?’
‘Yes,’ said the woman, looking at him with surprise.
‘And tell me what happened afterwards. I may perhaps be able to help
you, my child, if you tell me all you know.’
‘And then, reverendo, the police brought back the Colonel who had been
murdered in the streets—and I who had his Excellency’s dinner on the
table waiting for him!’
‘And—’
‘And Sebastian ate the dinner, reverendo.’
‘Your husband appears to be a man of action,’ said Concha with a queer
smile. ‘And then—’
‘Sebastian sent me on a message to the town, and when I came back he was
gone and all his Excellency’s possessions were gone—his papers and
valuables.’
‘Including the letter which the Englishman had left for the Colonel?’
‘Yes, reverendo. Sebastian knew that in these times the papers of a
politician may perhaps be sold for money.’
Concha nodded his head reflectively and took a pinch of snuff with
infinite deliberation and enjoyment.
‘Yes—assuredly, Sebastian is one of those men who get on in the world—up
to a certain point—and at that point they get hanged. There is in the
universe a particular spot for each man—where we all think we should like
to go if we had the money. For me it is Rome. Doubtless Sebastian had
some such spot, of which he spoke when he was intoxicated. Where is
Sebastian’s earthly paradise, think you, my child?’
‘He always spoke of Madrid, reverendo.’
‘Yes—yes, I can imagine he would.’
‘And I have no money to follow him,’ sobbed the woman, breaking into
tears again. ‘So I came to Ronda, where I am known, to seek it.’
‘Ah, foolish woman!’ exclaimed the priest severely, and shaking his
finger at her. ‘Foolish woman to think of following such a person. More
foolish still is it to weep for a worthless husband, especially in
public, thus, on the church steps, where all may see. All the other
women will be so pleased. It is their greatest happiness to think that
their neighbour’s husband is worse than their own. Failure is the royal
road to popularity. Dry your tears, foolish one, before you make too
many friends.’
The woman obeyed him mechanically with a sort of dumb hopelessness.
At this moment a horseman clattered past, coming from Ronda and hastening
in the direction of Bobadilla or perhaps to the Casa Barenna. He wore
his flat-brimmed hat well forward over the eyes, and kept his gaze fixed
upon the road in front. There was a faint suggestion of assumed
absorption in his attitude, as if he knew that the priest was usually at
the church door at this hour, and had no desire to meet his eye. It was
Larralde.
A few minutes later Julia Barenna, who was sitting at her window watching
and waiting—her attitude in life—suddenly rose with eyes that gleamed and
trembling hands. She stood and gazed down into the valley below, her
attention fixed on the form of a horseman slowly making his way through
the olive groves. Then breathlessly she turned to her mirror.
‘At last!’ she whispered, her fingers busy with her hair and mantilla, a
thousand thoughts flying through her brain, her heart throbbing in her
breast. In a moment the aspect of the whole world had changed—in a
moment Julia herself was another woman. Ten years seemed to have rolled
away from her heart, leaving her young and girlish and hopeful again.
She gave one last look at herself and hurried to the door.
It was yet early in the day, and the air beneath the gnarled and ancient
olive trees was cool and fresh as Julia passed under them to meet her
lover. He threw himself out of the saddle when he saw her, and, leaving
his horse loose, ran to meet her. He took her hands and raised her
fingers to his lips with a certain fervour which was sincere enough. For
Larralde loved Julia according to his lights, though he had another
mistress, Ambition, who was with him always and filled his thoughts,
sleeping or waking. Julia, her face all flushed, her eyes aglow,
received his gallant greeting with a sort of breathless eagerness. She
knew she had not Larralde’s whole heart, and, woman-like, was not content
with half.
‘I have not seen you for nearly a fortnight,’ she said.
‘Ah!’ answered Larralde, who had apparently not kept so strict an account
of the days. ‘Ah! yes—I know. But, dearest, I have been burning the
high-roads. I have been almost to Madrid. Ah! Julia, why did you make
such a mistake?’
‘What mistake?’ she asked with a sudden light of coquetry in her eyes.
She thought he was about to ask her why she loved him. In former days he
had had a pretty turn for such questions.
‘In giving the letter to that scoundrel Conyngham—he has betrayed us, and
Spain is no longer safe for me.’
‘Are you sure of this?’ asked Julia, alert. Had she possessed Larralde’s
whole heart she would have been happy enough to take part in his
pursuits.
Larralde gave a short laugh and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Heaven only knows where the letter is now,’ he answered. Julia unfolded
a note and handed it to him. She had received it three weeks earlier
from Concepçion Vara, and it was from Conyngham, saying that he had left
her note at the house of the Colonel.
‘The Colonel was dead before Conyngham arrived at Xeres,’ said Larralde
shortly. ‘And I do not believe he ever left the letter. I suspected
that he had kept it as a little recommendation to the Christinos under
whom he takes service. It would have been the most natural thing to do.
But I have satisfied myself that the letter is not in his possession.’
‘How?’ asked Julia with a sudden fear that blanched her face.
Larralde smiled in rather a sickly way and made no answer. He turned and
looked down the avenue.
‘I see Father Concha approaching,’ he said; ‘let us go towards the
house.’
CHAPTER XIV
A WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE
‘The woman who loves you is at once your detective and accomplice.’
THE old priest was walking leisurely up the avenue towards the Casa
Barenna when the branches of a dwarf ilex were pushed aside, and there
came to him from their leafy concealment, not indeed a wood-nymph, but
Señora Barenna, with her finger at her lips.
‘Hush!’ she said; ‘he is here.’
And from the anxious and excited expression of her face it became
apparent that madame’s nerves were astir.
‘Who is here?’
‘Why, Esteban Larralde, of course.’
‘Ah!’ said Concha patiently. ‘But need we for that hide behind the
bushes and walk on the flower borders? Life would be much simpler,
señora, if people would only keep to the footpath. Less picturesque, I
allow you, but simpler. Shall I climb up a tree?’
The lady cast her eyes up to heaven and heaved an exaggerated sigh.
‘Ah—what a tragedy life is!’ she whispered, apparently to the angels, but
loud enough for her companion to hear.
‘Or a farce,’ said Concha, ‘according to our reading of the part. Where
is Señor Larralde?’
‘Oh, he has gone to the fruit garden with Julia—there is a high wall all
round, and one cannot see. She may be murdered by this time. I knew he
was coming from the manner in which she ran downstairs. She walks at
other times.’
Concha smiled rather grimly.
‘She is not the first to do that,’ he said, ‘and many have stumbled on
the stairs in their haste.’
‘Ah! You are a hard man—a terrible man with no heart. And I have no one
to sympathise with me. No one knows what I suffer. I never sleep at
night—not a wink—but lie and think of my troubles. Julia will not obey
me. I have warned her not to rouse me to anger—and she laughs at me.
She persists in seeing this terrible Esteban Larralde—a Carlist, if you
please.’
‘We are all as God made us,’ said Concha—’with embellishments added by
the Evil One,’ he added, in a lower tone.
‘And now I am going to see General Vincente. I shall tell him to send
soldiers. This man’s presence is intolerable—I am not obeyed in my own
house,’ cried the lady. ‘I have ordered the carriage to meet me at the
lower gate. I dare not drive away from my own door. Ah! what a
tragedy!’
‘I will go with you, since you are determined to go,’ said Concha.
‘What! And leave Julia here with that terrible man?’
‘Yes,’ answered the priest. ‘Happiness is a dangerous thing to meddle
with. There is so little of it in the world, and it lasts so short a
time.’
Señora Barenna indicated by a sigh and her attitude that she had had no
experience in the matter. As a simple fact, she had been enabled all
through her life to satisfy her own desires—the subtlest form of
misfortune.
‘Then you would have Julia marry this terrible man,’ said the lady,
shielding her face from the sun with the black fan which she always
carried.
‘I am too old and too stupid to take any active part in my neighbours’
affairs. It is only the young and inexperienced who are competent to do
that,’ answered the priest.
‘But you say you are fond of Julia.’
‘Yes,’ said the priest quietly.
‘I wonder why.’
‘So do I,’ he said in a tone that Señora Barenna never understood.
‘You are always kinder to her than you are to me,’ went on the lady in
her most martyred manner. ‘Her penances are always lighter than mine.
You are patient with her and not with me. And I am sure I have never
done you any injury—’
The old Padre smiled. Perhaps he was thinking of those illusions which
she had during the years pulled down one by one—for the greater peace of
his soul.
‘There is the carriage,’ he said. ‘Let us hasten to General Vincente—if
you wish to see him.’
In a few minutes they were rattling along the road, while Esteban
Larralde and Julia sat side by side in the shade of the great wall that
surrounded the fruit garden. And one at least of them was gathering that
quick harvest of love which is like the grass of the field, inasmuch as
to-day it is, and to-morrow is not.
General Vincente was at home. He was one of those men who are happy in
finding themselves where they are wanted. So many have, on the contrary,
the misfortune to be always absent when they are required, and the world
soon learns to progress without them.
‘That man—that Larralde is in Ronda,’ said Señora Barenna, bursting in on
the General’s solitude. Vincente smiled, and nevertheless exchanged a
quick glance with Concha, who confirmed the news by a movement of his
shaggy eyebrows.
‘Ah, these young people!’ exclaimed the General with a gay little sigh.
‘What it is to be young and in love! But be seated, Iñez—be seated.
Padre—a chair.’
‘What do you propose to do?’ asked Señora Barenna breathlessly, for she
was stout and agitated and had hurried up the steps.
‘When, my dear Iñez—when?’
‘But now—with this man in Ronda. You know quite well he is dangerous.
He is a Carlist. It was only the other day that you received an
anonymous letter saying that your life was in danger. Of course it was
from the Carlists, and Larralde has something to do with it; or that
Englishman—that Señor Conyngham with the blue eyes. A man with blue
eyes—bah! Of course he is not to be trusted.’
The receiver of the anonymous warning seemed to be amused.
‘A little sweeping, your statements, my dear Iñez. Is it not so? Now, a
lemonade! the afternoon is warm.’
He rose and rang the bell.
‘My nerves,’ whispered the Señora to Concha. ‘My nerves—they are so
easily upset.’
‘The liqueurs,’ said the General to the servant with perfect gravity.
‘You must take steps at once,’ urged Señora Barenna when they were alone
again. She was endowed with a magnificent imagination without much
wisdom to hold it in check, and at times persuaded herself that she was
in the midst, and perhaps the leader, of a dangerous whirl of political
events.
‘I will, my dear Iñez; I will. And we will take a little maraschino, to
collect ourselves, eh?’
And his manner quite indicated that it was he and not Madame Barenna who
was upset. The lady consented, and proceeded to what she took to be a
consultation, which in reality was a monologue. During this she imparted
a vast deal of information, and received none in return, which is the
habit of voluble people, and renders them exceedingly dangerous to
themselves and useful to others.
Presently the two men conducted her to her carriage, with many
reassurances.
‘Never fear, Iñez; never fear. He will be gone before you return,’ said
the General, with a wave of the hand. He had consented to invite Julia
to accompany Estella and himself to Madrid, where she would be out of
harm’s way.
The two men then returned to the General’s study, and sat down in that
silence which only grows to perfection on the deep soil of a
long-standing friendship. Vincente was the first to speak.
‘I have had a letter from Madrid,’ he said, looking gravely at his
companion. ‘My correspondent tells me that Conyngham has not yet
presented his letter of introduction, and, so far as is ascertainable,
has not arrived in the capital. He should have been there six weeks
ago.’
The Padre took a pinch of snuff, and held the box out towards his
companion, who waved it aside. The General was too dainty a man to
indulge in such a habit.
‘He possessed no money, so he cannot have fallen a victim to thieves,’
said Concha.
‘He was accompanied by a good guide, and an honest enough scoundrel, so
he cannot have lost his way,’ observed the General, with a queer
expression of optimistic distress on his face.
‘His movements were not always above suspicion—’ the priest closed his
snuff-box and laboriously replaced it in the pocket of his cassock.
‘That letter—it was a queer business!’ and the General laughed.
‘Most suspicious.’
There was a silence, during which Concha sneezed twice with enjoyment and
more noise than is usually considered necessary.
‘And your letter,’ he said, carefully folding his handkerchief into
squares; ‘that anonymous letter of warning that your life is
threatened—is that true? It is the talk of Ronda.’
‘Ah, that!’ laughed Vincente. ‘Yes, it is true enough. It is not the
first time—a mere incident, that is all.’
‘That which the Señora Barenna said just now,’ observed the priest
slowly, ‘about our English friend—may be true. Sometimes thoughtless
people arrive at a conclusion which eludes more careful minds.’
‘Yes—my dear Padre—yes.’
The two grey-headed men looked at each other for a moment in silence.
‘And yet you trust him,’ said Concha.
‘Despite myself, despite my better judgment, my dear friend.’
The priest rose and went to the window which overlooked the garden.
‘Estella is in the garden?’ he asked, and received no answer.
‘I know what you are thinking,’ said the General. ‘You are thinking that
we should do well to tell Estella of these distressing suspicions.’
‘For you it does not matter,’ replied the priest. ‘It is a mere
incident, as you say. Your life has been attempted before, and you
killed both the men with your own hand, if I recollect aright.’
Vincente shrugged his shoulders and looked rather embarrassed.
‘But a woman,’ went on Concha, ‘cannot afford to trust a man against her
better judgment.’
By way of reply the General rose and rang the bell, requesting the
servant when he answered the summons to ask the señorita to spare a few
moments of her time.
They exchanged no further words until Estella came hurrying into the room
with a sudden flush on her cheeks and something in her dark eyes that
made her father say at once—
‘It is not bad news that we have, my child.’
Estella glanced at Concha and said nothing. His wise old eyes rested for
a moment on her face with a little frown of anxiety.
‘We have had a visit from the Señora Barenna,’ went on the General, ‘and
she is anxious that we should invite Julia to go to Madrid with us. It
appears that Esteban Larralde is still attempting to force his attentions
on Julia, and is at present in Ronda. You will not object to her coming
with us?’
‘Oh no,’ said Estella without much interest.
‘We have also heard rather disquieting news about our pleasant friend,
Mr. Conyngham,’ said the General, examining the tassel of his sword.
‘And I think it is only right to tell you that I fear we have been
deceived in him.’
There was silence for a few moments, and then Vincente spoke again.
‘In these times, one is almost compelled to suspect one’s nearest
friends. Much harm may be done by being over-trustful, and appearances
are so consistently against Mr. Conyngham that it would be folly to
ignore them.’
The General waited for Estella to make some comment, and after a pause
continued:
‘He arrived in Ronda under singularly unfortunate circumstances, and I
was compelled to have his travelling companion shot. Then occurred that
affair of the letter, which he gave to Julia—an affair which has never
been explained. Conyngham would have to show me that letter before I
should be quite satisfied. I obtained for him an introduction to General
Espartero in Madrid. That was six or seven weeks ago. The introduction
has not been presented, nor has Conyngham been seen in Madrid. In
England, on his own confession, he was rather a scamp; why not the same
in Spain?’
The General spread out his hands in his favourite gesture of deprecation.
He had not made the world, and while deeply deploring that such things
could be, he tacitly admitted that the human race had not been,
creatively speaking, a complete success.
Father Concha was brushing invisible grains of snuff from his cassock
sleeve and watching Estella with anxious eyes.
‘I only tell you, my dear,’ continued the General, ‘so that we may know
how to treat Mr. Conyngham should we meet him in Madrid. I liked him. I
like a roving man—and many Englishmen are thus wanderers—but appearances
are very much against him.’
‘Yes,’ admitted Estella quietly. ‘Yes.’
She moved towards the door, and there turning looked at Concha.
‘Does the Padre stay to dinner?’ she asked.
‘No, my child, thank you. No; I have affairs at home.’
Estella went out of the room, leaving a queer silence behind her.
Presently Concha rose.
‘I, too, am going to Madrid,’ he said. ‘It is an opportunity to press my
claim for the payment of my princely stipend, now two years overdue.’
He walked home on the shady side of the street, exchanging many
salutations, pausing now and then to speak to a friend. Indeed, nearly
every passer-by counted himself as such. In his bare room, where the
merest necessities of life scarce had place, he sat down thoughtfully.
The furniture, the few books, his own apparel, bespoke the direst
poverty. This was one who in his simplicity read his Master’s words
quite literally, and went about his work with neither purse nor scrip.
The priest presently rose and took from a shelf an old wooden box
quaintly carved and studded with iron nails. A search in the drawer of
the table resulted in the finding of a key and the final discovery of a
small parcel at the bottom of the box which contained letters and other
papers.
‘The rainy day—it comes at last,’ said the Padre Concha, counting out his
little stock of silver with the care that only comes from the knowledge
that each coin represents a self-denial.
CHAPTER XV
AN ULTIMATUM
‘I do believe yourself against yourself.’
NEITHER Estella nor her father had a great liking for the city of Madrid,
which indeed is at no time desirable. In the winter it is cold, in the
summer exceedingly hot, and during the changes of the seasons of a
treacherous weather difficult to surpass. The social atmosphere was no
more genial at the period with which we deal. For it blew hot and cold,
and treachery marked every change.
Although the Queen Regent seemed to be nearing at last a successful issue
to her long and eventful struggle against Don Carlos, she had enemies
nearer home whose movements were equally dangerous to the throne of the
child queen.
‘I cannot afford to have an honest soldier so far removed from the
capital,’ said Christina, who never laid aside the woman while playing
the Queen, as Vincente kissed her hand on presenting himself at Court.
The General smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
‘What did she say? What did she say?’ the intriguers whispered eagerly
as the great soldier made his way towards the door, with the haste of one
who was no courtier. But they received no answer.
The General had taken a suite of rooms in one of the hotels on the Puerta
del Sol, and hurried thither, well pleased do have escaped so easily from
a palace where self-seeking—the grim spirit that haunts the abodes of
royalty—had long reigned supreme. There was, the servants told him, a
visitor in the salon—one who had asked for the General, and on learning
of his absence had insisted on being received by the señorita.
‘That sounds like Conyngham,’ muttered the General, unbuckling his
sword—for he had but one weapon, and wore it in the presence of the Queen
and her enemies alike.
It was indeed Conyngham, whose gay laugh Vincente heard before he crossed
the threshold of Estella’s drawing-room. The Englishman was in uniform,
and stood with his back turned towards the door by which the General
entered.
‘It is Señor Conyngham,’ said Estella at once, in a quiet voice, ‘who has
been wounded and six weeks in the hospital.’
‘Yes,’ said Conyngham. ‘But I am well again now! And I got my
appointment while I was still in the Sisters’ care.’
He laughed, though his face was pale and thin, and approached the General
with extended hand. The General had come to Madrid with the intention of
refusing to take that hand, and those who knew him said that this soldier
never swerved from his purpose. He looked for a moment into Conyngham’s
eyes, and then shook hands with him. He did not disguise the hesitation,
which was apparent to both Estella and the Englishman.
‘How were you wounded?’ he asked.
‘I was stabbed in the back on the Toledo road, ten miles from here.’
‘Not by a robber—not for your money?’
‘No one ever hated me or cared for me on that account,’ laughed
Conyngham.
‘Then who did it?’ asked General Vincente, unbuttoning his gloves.
Conyngham hesitated.
‘A man with whom I quarrelled on the road,’ he made reply; but it was no
answer at all, as hearers and speaker alike recognised in a flash of
thought.
‘He left me for dead on the road, but a carter picked me up and brought
me to Madrid, to the hospital of the Hermanas, where I have been ever
since.’
There were flowers on the table, and the Genera
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/5987