"Some say," she went on, apparently with reluctance, "that Julia is- -well--has some advantages over Estella. But _I_ do not, of course.
I admire Estella, excessively--oh yes, yes."
And the senora"s dark eyes searched Sir John"s face. They might have found more in sculptured marble.
"Do you know where she is?" asked Sir John, almost bluntly. Like a workman who has mistaken his material, he was laying aside his finer conversational tools.
"Well, I believe they arrive in Toledo this evening. I cannot think why. But with General Vincente one never knows. He is so pleasant, so playful--such a smile--but you know him. Well, they say in Spain that he is always where he is wanted. Ah!" Madame paused and cast her eyes up to the ceiling, "what it is to be wanted somewhere, senor."
And she gave him the benefit of one of her deepest sighs. Sir John mentally followed the direction of her glance, and wondered what the late Count thought about it.
"Yes, I am deeply interested in Estella--as indeed is natural, for she is my niece. She has no mother, and the General has such absurd ideas. He thinks that a girl is capable of choosing a husband for herself. But to you--an Englishman--such an idea is naturally not astonishing. I am told that in your country it is the girls who actually propose marriage."
"Not in words, Madame--not more in England than elsewhere."
"Ah," said Madame, looking at him doubtfully, and thinking, despite herself, of Father Concha.
Sir John rose from the chair he had taken at the senora"s silent invitation.
"Then I may expect the General to arrive at my hotel this evening,"
he said. "I am staying at the Comercio, the only hotel, as I understand, in Toledo."
"Yes, he will doubtless descend there. Do you know Frederick Conyngham, senor?"
"Yes."
"But everyone knows him!" exclaimed the lady vivaciously. "Tell me how it is. A most pleasant young man, I allow you--but without introductions and quite unconnected. Yet he has friends everywhere."
She paused and, closing her fan, leant forward in an att.i.tude of intense confidence and secrecy.
"And how about his little affair?" she whispered.
"His little affair, Madame?"
"De coeur," explained the lady, tapping her own breast with an eloquent fan.
"Estella," she whispered after a pause.
"Ah!" said Sir John, as if he knew too much about it to give an opinion. And he took his leave.
"That is the sort of woman to break one"s heart in the witness box,"
he said as he pa.s.sed out into the deserted street, and Senora Barenna, in the great room with the armour, reflected complacently that the English lord had been visibly impressed.
General Vincente and Estella arrived at the hotel in the evening, but did not of course appear in the public rooms. The dusty old travelling carriage was placed in a quiet corner of the courtyard of the hotel, and the General appeared on this, as on all occasions, to court retirement and oblivion. Unlike many of his brothers-in-arms, he had no desire to catch the public eye.
"There is doubtless something astir," said the waiter, who, in the intervals of a casual attendance on Sir John, spoke of these things, cigarette in mouth. "There is doubtless something astir, since General Vincente is on the road. They call him the Stormy Petrel, for when he appears abroad there usually follows a disturbance."
Sir John sent his servant to the General"s apartment about eight o"clock in the evening asking permission to present himself. In reply, the General himself came to Sir John"s room.
"My dear sir," he cried, taking both the Englishman"s hands in an affectionate grasp, "to think that you were in the hotel and that we did not dine together. Come, yes, come to our poor apartment, where Estella awaits the pleasure of renewing your acquaintance."
"Then the senorita," said Sir John, following his companion along the dimly-lighted pa.s.sage, "has her father"s pleasant faculty of forgetting any little contretemps of the past?"
"Ask her," exclaimed the General in his cheery way. "Ask her." And he threw open the door of the dingy salon they occupied.
Estella was standing with her back to the window, and her att.i.tude suggested that she had not sat down since she had heard of Sir John"s presence in the hotel.
"Senorita," said the Englishman, with that perfect knowledge of the world which usually has its firmest basis upon indifference to criticism, "senorita, I have come to avow a mistake and to make my excuses."
"It is surely unnecessary," said Estella, rather coldly.
"Say rather," broke in the General in his smoothest way, "that you have come to take a cup of coffee with us and to tell us your news."
Sir John took the chair which the General brought forward.
"At all events," he said, still addressing Estella, "it is probably a matter of indifference to you, as it is merely an opinion expressed by myself which I wish to retract. When I first had the pleasure of meeting you, I took it upon myself to speak of a guest in your father"s house, fortunately in the presence of that guest himself, and I now wish to tell you that what I said does not apply to Frederick Conyngham himself, but to another whom Conyngham is screening. He has not confessed so much to me, but I have satisfied myself that he is not the man I seek. You, General, who know more of the world than the senorita, and have been in it almost as long as I have, can bear me out in the statement that the motives of men are not so easy to discern as younger folks imagine. I do not know what induced Conyngham to undertake this thing; probably he entered into it in a spirit of impetuous and reckless generosity, which would only be in keeping with his character. I only know that he has carried it out with a thoroughness and daring worthy of all praise. If such a tie were possible between an old man and a young, I should like to be able to claim Mr. Conyngham as a friend. There, senorita--thank you, I will take coffee. I made the accusation in your presence. I retract it before you. It is, as you see, a small matter."
"But it is of small matters that life is made up," put in the General in his deferential way. "Our friend," he went on after a pause, "is unfortunate in misrepresenting himself. We also have a little grudge against him--a little matter of a letter which has not been explained. I admit that I should like to see that letter."
"And where is it?" asked Sir John.
"Ah!" replied Vincente, with a shrug of the shoulders and a gay little laugh, "who can tell? Perhaps in Toledo, my dear sir-- perhaps in Toledo."
CHAPTER XXIII. LARRALDE"S PRICE.
"It is as difficult to be entirely bad as it is to be entirely good."
To those who say that there is no Faith, Spain is in itself a palpable answer. No country in the world can show such cathedrals as those of Granada, Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Burgos. In any other land any one of these great structures would suffice. But in Spain these huge monuments to that Faith which has held serenely through war and fashion, through thought and thoughtlessness, are to be found in all the great cities. And the queen of them all is Toledo.
Father Concha, that sour-visaged philosopher, had a queer pride in his profession and in the history of that Church which is to-day seen in its purest form in the Peninsula, while it is so entangled with the national story of Spain that the two are but one tale told from a different point of view. As a private soldier may take pleasure in standing on a great battlefield noting each spot of interest--here a valley of death, there the scene of a cavalry charge of which the thunder will echo down through all the ages--so Concha, a mere country priest, liked to pace the aisles of a great cathedral, indulging the while in a half-cynical pride. He was no great general, no leader, of no importance in the ranks. But he was of the army, and partook in a minute degree in those victories that belonged to the past. It was his habit thus to pay a visit to Toledo Cathedral whensoever his journeys led him to Castile. It was, moreover, his simple custom to attend the early ma.s.s which is here historical; and, indeed, to walk through the church, grey and cool, with the hush that seems to belong only to buildings of stupendous age, is in itself a religious service.
Concha was pa.s.sing across the nave, hat in hand, a gaunt, ill-clad, and somewhat pathetic figure, when he caught sight of Sir John Pleydell. The Englishman paused involuntarily and looked at the Spaniard. Concha bowed.
"We met," he said, "for a moment in the garden of General Vincente"s house at Ronda."
"True," answered Sir John. "Are you leaving the Cathedral? We might walk a little way together. One cannot talk idly--here."
He paused and looked up at the great oak screen--at the towering masonry.
"No," answered Concha gravely. "One cannot talk idly here."
Concha held back the great leathern portiere, and the Englishman pa.s.sed out.
"This is a queer country, and you are a queer people," he said presently. "When I was at Ronda I met a certain number of persons-- I can count them on my fingers. General Vincente, his daughter, Senora Barenna, Senorita Barenna, the Englishman Conyngham, yourself, Senor Concha. I arrived in Toledo yesterday morning; in twenty-four hours I have caught sight of all the persons mentioned, here in Toledo."
"And here, in Toledo, is another of whom you have not caught sight,"