She walked away, dropping as she pa.s.sed the uncarded heap, a folded paper which was lost amid the fluff. The sticks flew this way and that, and the twisted note shot up into the air with a bunch of wool which fell across the two sticks and was presently cast aside upon the carded heap. And peeping eyes from the barred windows of the convent school saw nothing.
Marcos and his father had returned to Saragossa. They were people of influence in that city, and Saragossa, strange to say, had a desire to maintain law and order within its walls. It was unlike Barcelona, which is at all times republican and frankly turbulent. Its other neighbour, Pampeluna, remains to this day clerical and mysterious. It is the city of the lost causes; Carlism and the Church. The Sarrions were not looked upon with a kindly eye within the walls of the Northern fortress and it is much too small a town for any to pa.s.s un.o.bserved in its streets.
There was work to do in Saragossa. In Pampeluna there were only suspicions to arouse. Juanita was in Sor Teresa"s care and could scarcely come to harm, holding in her hand as she did a strong card to be played on emergency.
All Spain seemed to be pausing breathlessly. The murder of Prim had shaken the land like an earthquake. The king had already made enemies. He had no enthusiasm. His new subjects would have preferred a few mistakes to this cautious pause. They were a people vaguely craving for liberty before they had cast off the habit of servitude.
No Latin race will ever evolve a great republic; for it must be ruled.
But Spain was already talking of democracy and the new king had scarcely seated himself on the throne.
"We can do nothing," said Sarrion, "but try to keep order in our own small corner of this bear-garden."
So he remained at Saragossa and threw open his great house there, while Marcos pa.s.sed to and fro into Navarre up the Valley of the Wolf to Torre Garda.
Where Evasio Mon might be, no man knew. Paris had fallen. The Commune was rife. France was wallowing in the deepest degradation. And in Bayonne the Carlist plotters schemed without let or hindrance.
"So long as he is away we need not be uneasy about Juanita," said Marcos.
"He cannot return to Saragossa without my hearing of it."
And one evening a casual teamster from the North, whose great two-wheeled cart, as high as a house and as long as a locomotive, stood in the dusty road outside the Posada de los Reyes, dropped in, cigarette in mouth, to the Palacio Sarrion. In Spain, a messenger delivers neither message nor letter to a servant. A survival of mediaeval habits permits the humblest to seek the presence of the great at any time of day.
The Sarrions had just finished dinner and still sat in the vast dining-room, the walls of which glittered with arms and loomed darkly with great portraits of the Spanish school of painting.
The teamster was not abashed. It was a time of war, and war is a great leveler of social scales. He had brought his load through a disturbed country. He was a Guipuzcoan--as good as any man.
"It was about the Senor Mon," he said. "You wished to hear of him. He returned to Pampeluna two days ago."
The teamster thanked their Excellencies, but he could not accept their hospitality because he had ordered his supper at his hotel. It was only at the Posada de los Reyes in all Saragossa that one procured the real cuisine of Guipuzcoa. Yes, he would take a gla.s.s of wine.
And he took it with a fine wave of the arm, signifying that he drank to the health of his host.
"Evasio Mon will not leave us long idle," said Sarrion, when the man had gone, and he had hardly spoken when the servant ushered in a second visitor, a man also of the road, who handed to Marcos a crumpled and dirty envelope. He had nothing to say about it, so bowed and withdrew. He was a man of the newer stamp, for he was a railway worker, having that which is considered a better manner. He knew his place, and that knowledge had affected his manhood.
The letter he gave to Marcos bore no address. It was sealed, however, in red wax, which had the impress of Nature"s seal, a man"s thumb--unique and not to be counterfeited.
From the envelope Marcos took a twisted paper, not innocent of carded wool.
"We are going back to Saragossa," Juanita wrote. "I have refused to go into religion, but they say it is too late; that I cannot draw back now.
Is this true?"
Marcos pa.s.sed the note across to his father.
"I wish this was Barcelona," he said, with a sudden gleam in his grave eyes.
"Why?"
"Because then we could pull the school down about their ears and take Juanita away."
Sarrion smiled.
"Or get shot mysteriously from a window while attempting it," he said.
"No, we fight with finer weapons than that. Mon has got his dispensation from Rome ... a few hours too late."
He handed back the note, and they sat in silence for a long time in the huge, dimly-lighted room. Success in life rests upon one small gift--the secret of the entry into another man"s mind to discover what is pa.s.sing there. The greatest general the world has known owed his success, by his own admission, to his power of guessing correctly what the enemy would do next. Many can guess, but few guess right.
"She has not dated her letter," said Sarrion, at length.
"No, but it was written on Thursday. That is the day that the colchonero goes to the Calle de la Dormitaleria."
He drew a strand of wool from the envelope and showed it to Sarrion.
"And the day that Mon returned to Pampeluna. He will be prompt to act. He always has been. That is what makes him different from other men. Prompt and restless."
Sarrion glanced across the table, as he spoke, at the face of his son, who was also a prompt man, but withal restful, as if possessing a reserve upon which to draw in emergency. For the restless and the uneasy are those who have all their forces in the field.
"Do not sit up for me," said Marcos, rising. He stood and thoughtfully emptied his gla.s.s. "I shall change my clothes," he said, "and go out.
There will be plenty of Navarrese at the Posada de los Reyes. The night diligencias will be in before daylight. If there is any news of importance I will wake you when I come in."
It was a dark night, and the wind roared down the bed of the Ebro. For the spring was at hand with its wild march "solano" and hard, blue skies.
There was no moon. But Marcos had good eyes, and those whom he sought were men who, after a long siesta, traveled or worked during half the night.
The dust was astir on the Paseo del Ebro, where it lies four inches deep on the broad s.p.a.ce in front of the Posada de los Reyes where the carts stand. There were carts here now with dim, old-fashioned lanterns, and long teams of mules waiting patiently to be relieved of their ma.s.sive collars.
The first man he met told him that Evasio Mon must have arrived in Saragossa at sunset, for he had pa.s.sed him on the road, going at a good pace on horseback.
From another he heard the rumour that the Carlists had torn up the line between Pampeluna and Castejon.
"Go to the station," this informant added. "They will tell you there, because you are a rich man. To me they will tell nothing."
At the station he learnt that this rumour was true; and one who was in the telegraph service gave him to understand that the Carlists had driven the outpost back from the mouth of the Valley of the Wolf, which was now cut off.
"He thinks I am at Torre Garda," reflected Marcos, as he returned to the city, fighting the wind on the bridge.
Chance favoured him, for a man with tired horses stopped his carriage to inquire if that were the Count Marcos de Sarrion. He had brought Juanita to Saragossa in his carriage, not with Sor Teresa, but with the Mother Superior of the school and two other pupils. He had been dismissed at the Plaza de la Const.i.tucion, and the ladies had taken another carriage. He had not heard the address given to the driver.
By daylight Marcos returned to the Palacio Sarrion without having discovered the driver of the second carriage or the whereabouts of Juanita in Saragossa. But he had learnt that a carriage had been ordered by telegraph from a station on the Pampeluna line to be at Alagon at four o"clock in the morning. He learnt also that telegraphic communication between Pampeluna and Saragossa was interrupted.
The Carlists again.
CHAPTER XVII
AT THE INN OF THE TWO TREES At dawn the next morning, Marcos and Sarrion rode out of the city towards Alagon by the great high road many inches deep in dust which has always been the main artery of the capital of Aragon.
The pace was leisurely; for the carriage they were going to meet had been timed to leave Alagon fifteen miles away at four o"clock. There was but one road. They could scarcely miss it.