In Kedar's Tents Part 43

Without further comment he extracted from inside his smart tunic a letter--the famous letter in a pink envelope--which he handed to Concha.

'Yes,' said the priest, turning it over. 'You and I first saw this in the Hotel de la Marina at Algeciras, when we were fools not to throw it into the nearest brazier. We should have saved a good man's life, my friend.'

He handed the letter back, and thoughtfully dusted his ca.s.sock where it was worn and shiny with constant dusting, so that the snuff had nought to cling to.

'And you have got it--at last. Holy saints--these Englishmen! Do you always get what you want, my son?'

'Not always,' replied Conyngham, with an uneasy laugh. 'But I should be a fool not to try.'

'a.s.suredly,' said Concha, 'a.s.suredly. And you have come to Ronda-- to try?'

'Yes.'

They walked on in silence, on the shady side of the street, and presently pa.s.sed and saluted a priest--one of Concha's colleagues in this city of the South.

'There walks a tragedy,' said Concha, in his curt way. 'Inside every ca.s.sock there walks a tragedy--or a villain.'

After a pause it was Concha who again broke the silence. Conyngham seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts.

'And Larralde--?' said the priest.

'I come from him--from Barcelona,' answered Conyngham, 'where he is in safety. Catalonia is full of such as he. Sir John Pleydell, before leaving Spain, bought this letter for two hundred pounds--a few months ago--when I was a poor man and could not offer a price for it. But Larralde disappeared when the plot failed, and I have only found him lately in Barcelona.'

'In Barcelona?' echoed Concha.

'Yes; where he can take a pa.s.sage to Cuba, and where he awaits Julia Barenna.'

'Ah!' said Concha, 'so he also is faithful--because life is not long, my son. That is the only reason. How wise was the great G.o.d when He made a human life short! '

'I have a letter,' continued Conyngham, 'from Larralde to the Senorita Barenna.'

'So you parted friends in Barcelona--after all--when his knife has been between your shoulders?'

'Yes.'

'G.o.d bless you, my son!' said the priest, in Latin, with his careless, hurried gesture of the Cross.

After they had walked a few paces he spoke again.

'I shall go to Barcelona with her,' he said, 'and marry her to this man. When one has no affairs of one's own there always remain--for old women and priests--the affairs of one's neighbour. Tell me--'

he paused and looked fiercely at him under s.h.a.ggy brows--'tell me why you came to Spain.'

'You want to know who and what I am--before we reach the Calle Mayor?' said Conyngham.

'I know what you are, amigo mio, better than yourself, perhaps.'

As they walked through the narrow streets Conyngham told his simple history, dwelling more particularly on the circ.u.mstances preceding his departure from England, and Concha listened with no further sign of interest than a grimace or a dry smile here and there.

'The mill gains by going, and not by standing still,' he said, and added, after a pause, 'But it is always a mistake to grind another's wheat for nothing.'

They were now approaching the old house in the Calle Mayor, and Conyngham lapsed into a silence which his companion respected. They pa.s.sed under the great doorway into the patio, which was quiet and shady at this afternoon hour. The servants, of whom there are a mult.i.tude in all great Spanish houses, had apparently retired to the seclusion of their own quarters. One person alone was discernible amid the orange trees and in the neighbourhood of the murmuring fountain. She was asleep in a rocking-chair, with a newspaper on her lap. She preferred the patio to the garden, which was too quiet for one of her temperament. In the patio she found herself better placed to exchange a word with those engaged in the business of the house, to learn, in fact, from the servants the latest gossip, to ask futile questions of them, and to sit in that idleness which will not allow others to be employed. In a word, this was the Senora Barenna, and Concha, seeing her, stood for a moment in hesitation.

Then, with a signal to Conyngham, he crept noiselessly across the tessellated pavement to the shadow of the staircase. They pa.s.sed up the broad steps without sound and without awaking the sleeping lady.

In the gallery above, the priest paused and looked down into the courtyard, his grim face twisted in a queer smile. Then, at the woman sitting there--at life and all its illusions, perhaps--he shrugged his shoulders and pa.s.sed on.

In the drawing-room they found Julia, who leapt to her feet and hurried across the floor when she saw Conyngham. She stood looking at him breathlessly, her whole history written in her eyes.

'Yes,' she whispered, as if he had called her. 'Yes--what is it?

Have you come to tell me--something?'

'I have come to give you a letter, senorita,' he answered, handing her Larralde's missive. She held out her hand, and never took her eyes from his face.

Concha walked to the window--the window whence the Alcalde of Ronda had seen Conyngham hand Julia Barenna another letter. The old priest stood looking down into the garden, where, amid the feathery foliage of the pepper trees and the bamboos, he could perceive the shadow of a black dress. Conyngham also turned away, and thus the two men who held this woman's happiness in the hollow of their hands stood listening to the crisp rattle of the paper as she tore the envelope and unfolded her lover's letter. A great happiness and a great sorrow are alike impossible of realisation. We only perceive their extent when their importance has begun to wane.

Julia Barenna read the letter through to the end, and it is possible (for women are blind in such matters) failed to perceive the selfishness in every line of it. Then, with the message of happiness in her hand, she returned to the chair she had just quitted, with a vague wonder in her mind, and the very human doubt that accompanies all possession, as to whether the price paid has not been too high.

Concha was the first to move. He turned and crossed the room towards Conyngham.

'I see,' he said, 'Estella in the garden.'

And they pa.s.sed out of the room together, leaving Julia Barenna alone with her thoughts. On the broad stone balcony Concha paused.

'I will stay here,' he said. He looked over the bal.u.s.trade. Senora Barenna was still asleep.

'Do not awake her,' he whispered. 'Let all sleeping things sleep.'

Conyngham pa.s.sed down the stairs noiselessly, and through the doorway into the garden.

'And at the end--the Gloria is chanted,' said Concha, watching him go.

The scent of the violets greeted Conyngham as he went forward beneath the trees planted there in the Moslems' day. The running water murmured sleepily as it hurried in its narrow channel towards the outlet through the grey wall, whence it leapt four hundred feet into the Tajo below.

Estella was seated in the shade of a gnarled fig tree, where tables and chairs indicated the Spanish habit of an out-of-door existence.

She rose as he came towards her, and met his eyes gravely. A gleam of sun glancing through the leaves fell on her golden hair, half hidden by the mantilla, and showed that she was pale with some fear or desire.

'Senorita,' he said, 'I have brought you the letter.' He held it out, and she took it, turning over the worn envelope absent- mindedly.

'I have not read it myself, and am permitted to give it to you on one condition--namely, that you destroy it as soon as you have read it.'

She looked at it again.

'It contains the lives of many men--their lives and the happiness of those connected with them,' said Conyngham. 'That is what you hold in your hand, senorita--as well as my life and happiness.'

She raised her dark eyes to his for a moment, and their tenderness was not of earth or of this world at all. Then she tore the envelope and its contents slowly into a hundred pieces, and dropped the fluttering papers into the stream pacing in its marble bed towards the Tajo and the oblivion of the sea.

'There--I have destroyed the letter,' she said, with a thoughtful little smile. Then, looking up, she met his eyes.

'I did not want it. I am glad you gave it to me. It will make a difference to our lives. Though--I never wanted it.'