In Kedar's Tents Part 20

It was indeed Conyngham, whose gay laugh Vincente heard before he crossed the threshold of Estella's drawing-room. The Englishman was in uniform, and stood with his back turned towards the door by which the General entered.

'It is Senor Conyngham,' said Estella at once, in a quiet voice, 'who has been wounded and six weeks in the hospital.'

'Yes,' said Conyngham. 'But I am well again now! And I got my appointment while I was still in the Sisters' care.'

He laughed, though his face was pale and thin, and approached the General with extended hand. The General had come to Madrid with the intention of refusing to take that hand, and those who knew him said that this soldier never swerved from his purpose. He looked for a moment into Conyngham's eyes, and then shook hands with him. He did not disguise the hesitation, which was apparent to both Estella and the Englishman.

'How were you wounded?' he asked.

'I was stabbed in the back on the Toledo road, ten miles from here.'

'Not by a robber--not for your money?'

'No one ever hated me or cared for me on that account,' laughed Conyngham.

'Then who did it?' asked General Vincente, unb.u.t.toning his gloves.

Conyngham hesitated.

'A man with whom I quarrelled on the road,' he made reply; but it was no answer at all, as hearers and speaker alike recognised in a flash of thought.

'He left me for dead on the road, but a carter picked me up and brought me to Madrid, to the hospital of the Hermanas, where I have been ever since.'

There were flowers on the table, and the General stooped over them with a delicate appreciation of their scent. He was a great lover of flowers, and indeed had a sense of the beautiful quite out of keeping with the colour of his coat.

'You must beware,' he said, 'now that you wear the Queen's uniform.

There is treachery abroad, I fear. Even I have had an anonymous letter of warning.'

'I should like to know who wrote it,' exclaimed Conyngham, with a sudden flash of anger in his eyes. The General laughed pleasantly.

'So should I,' he said. 'Merely as a matter of curiosity.'

And he turned towards the door, which was opened at this moment by a servant.

'A gentleman wishing to see me--an Englishman, as it would appear,'

he continued, looking at the card.

'By the way,' said Conyngham, as the General moved away, 'I am instructed to inform you that I am attached to your staff as extra aide-de-camp during your stay in Madrid.'

The General nodded and left Estella and Conyngham alone in the drawing-room. Conyngham turned on Estella.

'So that I have a right to be near you,' he said, 'which is all that I want.'

He spoke lightly enough, as was his habit; but Estella, who was wise in those matters that women know, preferred not to meet his eyes, which were grave and deep.

'Such things are quickly said,' Estella retorted.

'Yes--and it takes a long time to prove them.'

The General had left his gloves on the table. Estella took them up and appeared to be interested in them. 'Perhaps a lifetime,' she suggested.

'I ask no less, senorita.'

'Then you ask much.'

'And I give all--though that is little enough.'

They spoke slowly--not bandying words but exchanging thoughts.

Estella was grave. Conyngham's att.i.tude was that which he ever displayed to the world--namely, one of cheerful optimism, as behoved a strong man who had not yet known fear.

'Is it too little, senorita?' he asked.

She was sitting at the table and would not look up--neither would she answer his question. He was standing quite close to her-- upright in his bright uniform, his hand on his sword--and all her attention was fixed on the flowers which had called forth the General's unspoken admiration. She touched them with fingers hardly lighter than his.

'Now that I think of it,' said Conyngham after a pause, 'what I give is nothing.'

Estella's face wore a queer little smile, as of a deeper knowledge.

'Nothing at all,' continued the Englishman. 'For I have nothing to give, and you know nothing of me.'

'Three months ago,' answered Estella, 'we had never heard of you-- and you had never seen me,' she added, with a little laugh.

'I have seen nothing else since,' Conyngham replied deliberately; 'for I have gone about the world a blind man.'

'In three months one cannot decide matters that affect a whole lifetime,' said the girl.

'This matter decided itself in three minutes, so far as I am concerned, senorita, in the old palace at Ronda. It is a matter that time is powerless to affect one way or the other.'

'With some people; but you are hasty and impetuous. My father said it of you--and he is never mistaken.'

'Then you do not trust me, senorita?'

Estella had turned away her face so that he could only see her mantilla and the folds of her golden hair gleaming through the black lace. She shrugged her shoulders.

'It is not due to yourself, nor to all who know you in Spain, if I do,' she said.

'All who know me?'

'Yes,' she continued; 'Father Concha, Senora Barenna, my father, and others at Ronda.'

'Ah! And what leads them to mistrust me?'

'Your own actions,' replied Estella.

And Conyngham was too simple-minded, too inexperienced in such matters, to understand the ring of anxiety in her voice.

'I do not much mind what the rest of the world thinks of me,' he said; 'I have never owed anything to the world nor asked anything from it. They are welcome to think what they like. But with you it is different. Is it possible, senorita, to make you trust me?'