In Kedar's Tents Part 21

Estella did not answer at once. After a pause she gave an indifferent jerk of the head.

'Perhaps,' she said.

'If it is possible, I will do it.'

'It is quite easy,' she answered, raising her head and looking out of the window with an air that seemed to indicate that her interests lay without and not in this room at all.

'How can I do it?'

She gave a short, hard laugh, which to experienced ears would have betrayed her instantly.

'By showing me the letter you wrote to Julia Barenna,' she said.

'I cannot do that.'

'No,' she said significantly. A woman fighting for her own happiness is no sparing adversary.

'Will nothing else than the sight of that letter satisfy you, senorita?'

Her profile was turned towards him--delicate and proud, with the perfect chiselling of outline that only comes with a long descent, and bespeaks the blood of gentle ancestors. For Estella Vincente had in her veins blood that was counted n.o.ble in Spain--the land of a bygone glory.

'Nothing,' she answered. 'Though the question of my being satisfied is hardly of importance. You asked me to trust you, and you make it difficult by your actions. In return I ask a proof, that is all.'

'Do you want to trust me?'

He had come a little closer to her, and was grave enough now.

'Why do you ask that?' she inquired in a low voice.

'Do you want to trust me?' he asked, and it is to be supposed that he was able to detect an infinitesimal acquiescent movement of her head.

'Then, if that letter is in existence, you shall have it,' he said.

'You say that my actions have borne evidence against me. I shall trust to action and not to words to refute that evidence. But you must give me time--will you do that?'

'You always ask something.'

'Yes, senorita, from you; but from no one else in the world.'

He gave a sudden laugh and walked to the window, where he stood looking at her.

'I suppose,' he said, 'I shall be asking all my life from you.

Perhaps that is why we were created, senorita--I to ask, you to give. Perhaps that is happiness, Estella.'

She raised her eyes but did not meet his, looking past him through the open window. The hotel was situated at the lower end of the Puerta del Sol--the quiet end, and farthest removed from the hum of the market and the busy sounds of traffic. These only came in the form of a distant hum, like the continuous roar of surf upon an unseen sh.o.r.e. Below the windows a pa.s.sing waterseller plied his trade, and his monotonous cry of 'Agua-a-a! Agua-a-a!' rose like a wail--like the voice of one crying in that human wilderness where solitude reigns as surely as in the desert.

For a moment Estella glanced at Conyngham gravely, and his eyes were no less serious. They were not the first, but only two out of many millions, to wonder what happiness is and where it hides in this busy world.

They had not spoken or moved when the door was again opened by a servant, who bowed towards Conyngham and then stood aside to allow ingress to one who followed on his heels. This was a tall man, white-haired, and white of face. Indeed, his cheeks had the dead pallor of paper, and seemed to be drawn over the cheekbones at such tension as gave to the skin a polish like that of fine marble. One sees many such faces in London streets, and they usually indicate suffering, either mental or physical.

The stranger came forward with a perfect lack of embarra.s.sment, which proved him to be a man of the world. His bow to Estella clearly indicated that his business lay with Conyngham. He was the incarnation of the Continental ideal of the polished cold Englishman, and had the air of a diplomate such as this country sends to foreign Courts to praise or blame, to declare friendship or war with the same calm suavity and imperturbable politeness.

'I come from General Vincente,' he said to Conyngham, 'who will follow in a moment, when he has despatched some business which detains him. I have a letter to the General, and am, in fact, in need of his a.s.sistance.'

He broke off, turning to Estella, who was moving towards the door.

'I was especially instructed,' he said quickly to her, 'to ask you not to leave us. You were, I believe, at school with my nieces in England, and when my business, which is of the briefest, is concluded, I have messages to deliver to you from Mary and Amy Mainwaring.'

Estella smiled a little and resumed her seat. Then the stranger turned to Conyngham.

'The General told me,' he went on in his cold voice, without a gleam of geniality or even of life in his eyes, 'that if I followed the servant to the drawing-room I should find here an English aide-de- camp who is fully in his confidence, and upon whose good-nature and a.s.sistance I could rely.'

'I am for the time General Vincente's aide-de-camp, and I am an Englishman,' answered Conyngham.

The stranger bowed.

'I did not explain my business to General Vincente,' said he, 'who asked me to wait until he came, and then tell the story to you both at one time. In the meantime I was to introduce myself to you.'

Conyngham waited in silence.

'My name is Sir John Pleydell,' said the stranger quietly.

CHAPTER XVI. IN HONOUR.

'He makes no friend who never made a foe.'

Conyngham remembered the name of Pleydell well enough, and glanced sharply at Estella, recollecting that the General received the 'Times' from London. Before he had time to make an answer, and indeed he had none ready, the General came into the room.

'Ah!' said Vincente in his sociable manner, 'I see you know each other already--so an introduction is superfluous. And now we will have Sir John's story. Be seated, my dear sir. But first--a little refreshment. It is a dusty day--a lemonade?'

Sir John declined, his manner strikingly cold and reserved beside the genial empress.e.m.e.nt of General Vincente. In truth the two men seemed to belong to opposite poles--the one of cold and the other of heat. Sir John had the chill air of one who had mixed among his fellow men only to see their evil side; for the world is a cold place to those that look on it with a chilling glance. General Vincente, on the other hand, whose life had been pa.s.sed in strife and warfare, seemed ready to welcome all comers as friends and to hold out the hand of good-fellowship to rich and poor alike.

Conyngham shrugged his shoulders with a queer smile. Here was a quandary requiring a quicker brain than his. He did not even attempt to seek a solution to his difficulties, and the only thought in his mind was a characteristic determination to face them courageously. He drew forward a chair for Sir John Pleydell, his heart stirred with that sense of exhilaration which comes to some in moments of peril.

'I will not detain you long,' began the new-comer, with an air slightly suggestive of the law court, 'but there are certain details which I am afraid I must inflict upon you, in order that you may fully understand my actions.'

The remark was addressed to General Vincente, although the speaker appeared to be demanding Conyngham's attention in the first instance. The learned gentlemen of the Bar thus often address the jury through the ears of the judge.

General Vincente had seated himself at the table and was drawing his scented pocket-handkerchief across his moustache reflectively. He was not, it was obvious, keenly interested, although desirous of showing every politeness to the stranger. In truth, such Englishmen as brought their affairs to Spain at this time were not as a rule highly desirable persons or a credit to their country. Estella was sitting near the window, rather behind her father, and Conyngham stood by the fireplace, facing them all.

'You perhaps know something of our English politics,' continued Sir John Pleydell, and the General making a little gesture indicative of a limited but sufficient knowledge, went on to say--'of the Chartists more particularly?'

The General bowed. Estella glanced at Conyngham, who was smiling.

'One cannot call them a party, as I have heard them designated in Spain,' said Sir John parenthetically. 'They are quite unworthy of so distinguished a name. These Chartists consist of the most ignorant people in the land--the rabble, in fact, headed by a few scheming malcontents: professional agitators who are not above picking the pockets of the poor. Many capitalists and landowners have suffered wrong and loss at the hands of these disturbers of the peace, none--' He paused and gave a sharp sigh which seemed to catch him unawares, and almost suggested that the man had, after all, or had at one time possessed, a heart. 'None more severely than myself,' he concluded.