She turned and looked at him, her attention caught by some tense note in his voice.
"What do you mean?" she asked. "Your face is so odd and white. What do you mean, Marcos?"
"We can take you away, but you must marry me."
She gave a short laugh and stopped suddenly.
"Oh--you must not joke," she said. "You must not laugh. It is my whole life, remember."
"I am not laughing. It is no joke," said Marcos steadily.
"What...?"
For a moment they sat in silence. The low chanting of vespers came to their ears through the curtained doors of the Cathedral.
"Listen to them," said Juanita suddenly. "They are half asleep. They are not thinking of what they are singing. They are taking snuff surrept.i.tiously behind their hands to keep themselves awake. And it is we, poor wretched schoolgirls and nuns who have to keep the saints in a good humour by attending to every word and being most preposterously devout whether we feel inclined to be or not. No, I will not go into religion. That is certain. Marcos, I would rather marry you than that--if it is necessary."
"It is necessary."
"But they can have all the money; every real,"" suggested Juanita hopefully.
"No; they have tried that way. They cannot do it in these times. The only way they can get the money is for you to go of your own free will into religion and to bequeath of your own free will all your worldly possessions to the Order you join."
"Yes, I know," said Juanita. Her spirits had risen every minute. She was gay again now. His presence seemed to restore to her the happy gift of touching life lightly which is of the heart. And the heart knows no age, neither is it subject to the tyranny of years.
"Well, I will marry you if there is no help for it. But..."
"But..." echoed Marcos.
"But of course it is only a sort of game, is it not?"
"Yes," he answered. "A sort of game."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
They were sitting on the steps of one of the chapels. Juanita swung round and peered through the railings as if to see what Saint had his habitation there.
"It is only St. Bartholomew," she said, airily. "But he will do. You have promised, remember that. And St. Bartholomew has heard you. It is only to save me from being a nun that we are being married. And I am to be just the same as I am now. We can go fishing, I mean, as we used to, and climb the mountains and have jokes just as we always do in the holidays."
"Yes," said Marcos.
She held out her hand as she had seen the peasants in Torre Garda when they had struck a bargain and would seal it irrevocably.
"Touch it," she said with a gay laugh, as she had heard them say.
And they shook hands in the dark cloisters.
"There is a window at the end of the pa.s.sage in which is your room," said Marcos. "It looks out on to a small courtyard and is quite near the ground. Come to that window to-morrow night at ten o"clock and I shall be there."
"What for?" she asked.
"To be married," he answered. "My father and I will arrange it. We shall both be there. If you do not come to-morrow night I shall come again the next night. You will be back in your room by half-past eleven."
"Married?" asked Juanita.
"Yes."
He had risen and was standing in front of her.
"And now you must go back to the Cathedral."
"But Sor Teresa"s breviary?"
"She has it in her pocket," said Marcos.
CHAPTER XV
OUR LADY OF THE SHADOWS There were great clouds in the sky when the moon rose the next night and one of them threw Pampeluna into dark shadows when Marcos took his place in the little pa.s.sage between the School in the Calle de la Dormitaleria and the next building. The window at the end of the pa.s.sage where Juanita and Sor Teresa and some of the more favoured of the girls had their rooms, was about six feet above the ground.
Marcos took his post immediately underneath and stretching his arm up took hold of one of the two bars, and waited. Juanita looking from the door of her room could thus see his clenched hand and must know that he was waiting. The clocks of the city struck ten. Immediately afterwards the watchmen began their cry. The city was already asleep.
It was very cold. Marcos changed his hand from time to time and breathed on his fingers. He carried a cloak for Juanita. The striking of the quarter found him still waiting beneath the window. But, soon after, Marcos" heart gave a leap to his throat at the touch of cold fingers on his wrist. It was Juanita. He threw the cloak down and placing his heel on the sill of a lower window near the ground he raised himself to the level of the bars.
"Oh, Marcos!" whispered Juanita in his ear, through the open window.
He edged his shoulder in between the two bars which were fixed perpendicularly, and being strongly built he only found room to introduce his two thumbs within that which pressed against his chest. He slowly straightened his arms and the iron gave an audible creak. It was a hundred years old, all rust-worn and attenuated.
"There," he said, "you can get through that."
"Yes," she answered. She was shivering and yet half laughing.
"Listen," she whispered, drawing him towards her. "Sor Teresa"s door is open. You can hear her snoring. Listen!"
She gave a half hysterical laugh.
"Quick," said Marcos--dropping to the ground.
Juanita turned sideways and pushed her head and shoulders through the bars. She leant down towards him holding out her arms and her thick plait of hair struck him across the eyes. A moment later he had lifted her to the ground.
"Quick," he said again, breathlessly. He threw the cloak round her and drew the hood forward over her head. Then he took her hand and they ran together down the narrow pa.s.sage into the Calle de la Domitaleria. She ran as quickly as he did with her long, schoolgirl legs, unhampered by a woman"s length of skirt. At the corner Perro, who had been keeping watch there, joined them and trotted by their side.
"What cloak is this?" she asked. "It smells of tobacco."