"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 Concepcion 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.
Concepcion 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, senorita."
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, etre 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."
Concepcion 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 pa.s.sed.
"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 c.o.c.ked 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 Concepcion, urging his horse to keep pace with the trot of Conyngham"s huge mount.
"Ah!"
"No," pursued Concepcion. "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, Senor 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: "Concepcion 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."
Concepcion 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 Concepcion 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 Concepcion 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 a.s.sistance 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 Concepcion, "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 fete 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 quant.i.ties 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 a.s.sert their liberty.