"Of course--but in the meantime..."
"Yes," said Marcos with a slow smile ... "in the meantime." He left the room as he spoke, but turned on the threshold to look back over his shoulder. His eyes were alight with anger and the smile had lapsed into a grin.
Sarrion went down to the verandah to entertain the unsought guest.
"They have given us coffee," he said, "in the library. It is too hot in the sun, although we are still in March! Will you come?"
"And what has Juanita decreed?" asked Mon, when they were seated and Sarrion had lighted his cigarette.
"The verdict has gone against you," replied Sarrion. "Juanita has decreed most emphatically that you are not to be allowed to see Marcos."
Mon laughed and spread out his hands with a characteristic gesture of bland acceptance of the inevitable. The man, it seemed, was a philosopher; a person, that is to say, who will play to the end a game which he knows he cannot win.
"Aha!" he laughed. "So we arrive at the point where a woman holds the casting vote. It is the point to which all men travel. They have always held the casting vote--ces dames--and we can only bow to the inevitable.
And Juanita is grown up. One sees it. She is beginning to record her vote."
"Yes," answered Sarrion with a narrow smile. "She is beginning to record her vote."
With a Spanish formality of manner, Sarrion placed his horse at the disposition of Evasio Mon, should the traveller feel disposed to pa.s.s the night at Torre Garda. But Mon declined.
"I am a bird of pa.s.sage," he explained. "I am due in Pampeluna again to-night. I shall enjoy the ride down the valley now that your hospitality has so well equipped me for the journey----"
He broke off and looked towards the open window, listening.
Sarrion had also been listening. He had heard the thud of Marcos" horse as it pa.s.sed across the wooden bridge below the village.
"Guns again?" he suggested, with a short laugh.
"I certainly heard something," Mon answered. And rising briskly from his chair, he went to the window. Sarrion followed him, and they stood side by side looking out over the valley. At that moment that which was more of a vibration than a sound came to their ears across the mountains--deep and foreboding.
"I thought I was right," said Mon, in little more than a whisper. "The Carlists are abroad, my friend, and I, who am a man of peace must get within the city walls."
With an easy laugh he said good-bye. In a few minutes he was in the saddle riding leisurely down the valley of the Wolf after Juanita--with Marcos de Sarrion in between them on the road.
CHAPTER XXV
WAR"S ALARM Juanita"s carriage emerged from the valley of the Wolf into the plain at sunset. She could see that the driver paid but little heed to his horses.
His attention wandered constantly to the mountains. For, instead of looking to the road in front, his head was ever to the right, and his eyes searched the plain and the bare brown hills.
At last he pulled up and, turning on his box, held up one finger.
"Listen, Senorita," he said, and his dark eyes were alight with excitement.
Juanita stood up and listened, looking westward as he did. The sound was like the sound of thunder, but shorter and sharper.
"What is it?"
"The Carlists--the sons of dogs!" he answered, with a laugh, and he shook his whip towards the mountains. "See," he said, gathering up the reins again, "that dust on the road to the west--that is the troops marching out from Pampeluna. We are in it again--in it again!"
At the gate of the city there was a crowd of people. The carriage had to stand aside against the trees to let pa.s.s the guns which clattered down the slope. The men were laughing and shouting to each other. The officers, erect on their horses, seemed to think only of the safety of the guns as a woman entering a ballroom reviews her jewelery with a quick comprehensive glance.
At the guard-house, beneath the second gateway, there occurred another delay. The driver was a Pampeluna man and well-known to the sentries. But they did not recognise his pa.s.senger and sent for the officer on duty.
"The Senorita Juanita de Mogente," he muttered, as he came into the road--a stout and grizzled warrior smoking a cigarette. "Ah, yes!" he said, with a grave bow at the carriage door. "I remember you as a schoolgirl. I remember now. Forgive the delay and pa.s.s in--Senora de Sarrion."
Juanita was ushered into the little bare waiting-room in the convent school of the Sisters of the True Faith in the Calle de la Dormitaleria.
It is a small, square apartment at the end of a long and dark pa.s.sage.
The day filters dimly into it through a barred window no larger than a pocket-handkerchief. Juanita stood on tiptoe and looked into a narrow alley. On the sill of this window Marcos had stood to wrench apart the bars of the window immediately overhead, through which he had lifted her one cold night--years and years ago, it seemed.
Nothing had changed in this gloomy house.
"The dear Sister Superior is at prayer in the chapel," the doorkeeper had whispered. The usual formula; for a nun must always be given the benefit of the doubt. If she is alone in her cell or in the chapel it is always piously a.s.sumed that she is at prayer. Juanita smiled at the familiar words.
"Then I will wait," she said, "but not very long."
She gave the nun a familiar little nod of warning as if to intimate that no tricks of the trade need be tried upon her.
She stood alone in the little gray, dim room now, and waited with brooding eyes. Within, all was quiet with that air of awesome mystery peculiar to the cloister, which so soon gives place with increasing familiarity, to a sense of deadly monotony. It is only from outside that the mystery of the cloister continues to interest. Juanita knew every stone in this silent house. Its daily round of artificial duties appeared small to her eyes.
"They have nothing to do all day in a nunnery," she once said to Marcos in jest. "So they rise up very early in the morning to do it."
She had laughed on first seeing the mark of Marcos" heel on the window-sill. She turned and looked at it again now--without laughing. And she thought of Torre Garda with its keen air, cool to the cheek like spring water; with the scent of the bracken that she loved; with the tall, still pines, upright against the sky, motionless, whispering with the wind.
She had always thought that the cloister represented safety and peace in a world of strife. And now that she was back within the walls she felt that it was better to be in the world, to take part in the strife, if necessary; for Heaven had given her a proud and a fierce heart. She would rather be miserable here all her life than go back to Marcos, who had dared to marry her without loving her.
The door of the waiting-room opened and Sor Teresa stood on the threshold.
"I have come back," said Juanita. "I think I shall go into religion. I have left Torre Garda."
She gave a short laugh and looked curiously at Sor Teresa--impa.s.sive in her straight-hanging robes.
"So you have got me back," she said. "Back to the convent."
"Not to this convent," replied Sor Teresa, quietly.
"But I have come back. I shall come back--the Mother Superior..."
"The Mother Superior is in Saragossa. I am mistress here," replied Sor Teresa, standing still and dark, like one of the pines at Torre Garda.
The Sarrion blood was rising to her pale cheek. Her eyes glowed darkly beneath her overshadowing head-dress. Command--that indefinable spirit which is vouchsafed to gentle people, while rough and strong men miss it--was written in every line of her face, every fold of her dress, in the quiet of her small, white hands, resting motionless against her skirt.
Juanita stood looking at her with flashing eyes, with her head thrown back, with clenched hands,
"Then I will go somewhere else. But I do not understand you. You always wanted me to go into religion."
Sor Teresa held up one hand and cut short her speech. For the habit of obedience is so strong that clear-headed men will deliberately go to their death rather than relinquish it. The gesture was known to Juanita.