The Spanish Jade Part 17

The girl coloured and hung her head. She was still quivering with the shame of her public torture. She could still see Manvers' eyes stare chilly at the wall before them, and believe them to grow colder with each stave of her admissions. Her one consolation lay in the thought that she could please him by amendment and save him by a conviction; so it was hard to be petted by Sister Chucha. She would have welcomed the whip, would have hugged it to her bosom--the rod of Salvation, she would have called it; but compliments on her beauty, caresses of cheek and chin--was she not to be allowed to be good? As for escape, she had no desire for that. She could love her Don Osmundo best from a distance. What was to be gained, but shame, by seeing him?

Her shining hair was cut off; the cap, the straight prison garb were put on. She stood up, slim-necked, an arrowy maid, with her burning face and sea-green eyes chastened by real humility. She made a good confession to Father Vicente, and took her place among her mates.

It was true, what Sister Chucha had told her. Every penitent in that great and gaunt building was thrilled with one persistent hope, worked patiently with that in view, and under its spell refrained from violence or clamour. There was not one face of those files of grey-gowned girls which, at stated hours, entered the chapel, knelt at the altar, or stooped at painful labour through the stifling days, which did not show a gleam. Stupid, vacant, vicious, morose, pretty, sparkling, whatever the face might be, there was that expectation to redeem or enhance it, to make it human, to make it womanish. There was, or there would be, some day, any day, a lover outside--to whom it would be the face of all faces.

Manuela had not been two hours in the company of her fellow-prisoners before she was told that there were two ways of escape from the Recogidas. Religion or marriage these were; but the religious alternative was not discussed.

Sister Chucha, it transpired, had chosen that way--"But do you wonder?"

cried the girl who told Manuela, with shrill scorn. Most of the sisters had once been penitents--"_Vaya_! Look at them, my dear!"

cried this young Amazon, conscious of her own charms.

She was a plump Andalusian, black-eyed, merry, and quick to change her moods. Love had sent her to Saint Mary Magdalene, and love would take her out again.

That Chucha, she owned, was a kind soul. She always put the pretty ones to housework--"it gives us a chance at the windows. I have Fernando, who works at the sand-carting in the river. He never fails to look up this way. Some day he will ask for me." She peered at herself in a pail of water, and fingered her cap daintily. "How does my skirt hang now, Manuela? Too short, I fancy. Did you ever see such shoes as they give you here! Lucky that n.o.body can see you."

This was the strain of everybody's talk in the House of Las Recogidas--in the whitewashed galleries where they walked in squads under the eye of a nun who sat reading a good book against the wall, in the court where they lay in the shade to rest, p.r.o.ne, with their faces hidden in their arms, or with knees huddled up and eyes fixed in a stare. They talked to each other in the hoa.r.s.e, tearful staccato of Spain, which, beginning low, seems to gather force and volume as it runs, until, like a beck in flood, it carries speaker and listener over the bar and into tossing waves of yeasty water.

Manuela, through all, kept her thoughts to herself, and spoke nothing of her own affairs. There may have been others like her, fixed to the great achievement of justifying themselves to their own standard: she had no means of knowing. Her standard was this, that she had purged herself by open confession to the man whom she loved. She was clean, sweetened and full of heart. All she had to do was to open wide her house that holiness might enter in.

Besides this she had, at the moment, the consciousness of a good action; for she firmly believed that by her surrender to the law she had again saved Manvers from a.s.sa.s.sination. If Don Luis could only cleanse his honour by blood, he now had her heart's blood. That should suffice him. She grew happier as the days went on.

Meanwhile it was remarked upon by Mercedes and Dolores, and half a dozen more, that distinguished strangers came to the gallery of the chapel. The outlines of them could be descried through the _grille_; for behind the _grille_ was a great white window which threw them into high relief.

It was the fixed opinion of Mercedes and Dolores that Manuela had a _novio_.

CHAPTER XVII

THE NOVIO

It is true that Manvers had gone to the Chapel of the Recogidas to look for, or to look at, Manuela. This formed the one amusing episode in his week's round in Madrid, where otherwise he was extremely bored, and where he only remained to give Don Luis a chance of waging his war.

To be shot at in the street, or stabbed in the back as you are homing through the dusk are, to be sure, not everybody's amus.e.m.e.nts, and in an ordinary way they were not those of Mr. Manvers. But he found that his life gained a zest by being threatened with deprivation, and so long as that zest lasted he was willing to oblige Don Luis. The weather was insufferably hot, one could only be abroad early in the morning or late at night--both the perfection of seasons for the a.s.sa.s.sin's game.

Yet nothing very serious had occurred during the week following the declaration of war. Gil Perez could not find Tormillo, and had to declare that his suspicions of a Manchegan teamster, who had jostled his master in the Puerta del Sol and made as if to draw his knife, were without foundation. What satisfied him was that the Manchegan, that same evening, stabbed somebody else to death. "That show 'e is good fellow--too much after 'is enemy," said Gil Perez affably. So Manvers felt justified in his refusal to wear mail or carry either revolver or sword-stick; and by the end of the week he forgot that he was a marked man.

On Sunday he told Gil Perez that he intended to visit the Chapel of the Recogidas.

The rogue's face twinkled. "Good, sir, good. We go. I show you Manuela all-holy like a nun. I know whata she do. Look for 'eaven all day. That Chucha she tell me something--and the _portero_, 'e damgood fellow."

Resplendent in white duck trousers, Mr. Manvers was remarked upon by a purely native company of sightseers. Quick-eyed ladies in mantillas were there, making play with their fans and scent-bottles; attendant cavaliers found something of which to whisper in the cool-faced Englishman with his fair beard, blue eyes, and eye-gla.s.s, his air of detachment, which disguised his real feelings, and of readiness to be entertained, which they misinterpreted.

The facts were that he was painfully involved in Manuela's fate, and uncomfortably near being in love again with the lovely unfortunate.

She was no longer a pretty thing to be kissed, no longer even a handsome murderess; she was become a heroine, a martyr, a thing enskied and sainted.

He had seen more than he had been meant to see during his ordeal in the Audiencia--her consciousness of himself, for instance, as revealed in that last dying look she had given him, that long look before she turned and followed her gaolers out of court. He guessed at her agonies of shame, he understood how it was that she had courted it; in fine, he knew very well that her heart was in his keeping--and that's a dangerous possession for a man already none too sure of the whereabouts of his own.

When the organ music thrilled and opened, and the Recogidas filed in--some hundred of them--his heart for a moment stood still, as he scanned them through the gloom. They were dressed exactly alike in dull clinging grey, all wore close-fitting white caps, were nearly all dead-white in the face. They all shuffled, as convicts do when they move close-ordered to their work afield.

It shocked him that he utterly failed to identify Manuela--and it brought him sharply to his better senses that Gil Perez saw her at once. "See her there, master, see there my beautiful," the man groaned under his breath, and Manvers looked where he pointed, and saw her; but now the glamour was gone. Gil was her declared lover. The Squire of Somerset could not stoop to be his valet's rival.

The Squire of Somerset, however, observed that she held herself more stiffly than her co-mates, and shuffled less. The prison garb clothed her like a weed; she had the trick of wearing clothes so that they draped the figure, not concealed it, were as wax upon it, not a cerement. That which fell shapeless and heavily from the shoulders of the others, upon her seemed to grow rather from the waist--to creep upwards over the shoulders, as ivy steals clinging over a statue in a park. Here, said he, is a maiden that cannot be hid. Call her a murderess, she remains perfect woman; call her convict, Magdalen, she is some man's solace. He looked: at Gil Perez, motionless and intent by his side, and heard his short breath: There is her mate, he thought to himself, and was saved.

They filed out as they had come in. They all stood, turned towards the exit, and waited until they were directed to move. Then they followed each other like sheep through a gateway, looking, so far as he could see, at nothing, expecting nothing, and remembering nothing. A down-trodden herd, he conceived them, their wits dulled by toil. He was not near enough to see the gleam which kept them alive. Nuns gave them their orders with authoritative hands, quick always, and callous by routine, probably not intended to be so harsh as they appeared. He saw one girl pushed forward by the shoulder with such suddenness that she nearly fell; another flinched at a pa.s.sionate command; another scowled as she pa.s.sed her mistress. He watched to see how Manuela, who had come in one of the first and must go out one of the last, would bear herself, and was relieved by a pretty and enheartening episode.

Manuela, as she pa.s.sed, drew her hand along the top of the bench with a lingering, trailing touch. It encountered that of the nun in command, and he saw the nun's hand enclose and press the penitent's. He saw Manuela's look of grat.i.tude, and the nun's smiling affection; he believed that Manuela blushed. That gratified him extremely, and enlarged his benevolent intention.

Had Gil Perez seen it? He thought not. Gil Perez' black eyes were fixed upon Manuela's form. They glittered like a cat's when he watches a bird in a shrubbery. The valet was quite unlike himself as he followed his master homewards and asked leave of absence for the evening--for the first time in his period of service. Manvers had no doubt at all how that evening was spent--in rapt attention below the barred windows of the House of the Recogidas.

That was so. Gil Perez "played the bear," as they call it, from dusk till the small hours--perfectly happy, in a rapture of adoration which the Squire of Somerset could never have realised. All the romance which, if we may believe Cervantes, once transfigured the life of Spain, and gilded the commonest acts till they seemed confident appeals for the applause of G.o.d, feats boldly done under Heaven's thronged barriers, is nowadays concentred in this one strange vigil which all lovers have to keep.

Gil Perez the quick, the admirable servant, the jaunty adventurer, the a.s.sured rogue, had vanished. Here he stood beneath the stars, breathing prayers and praises--not a little valet sighing for a convicted Magdalen, but a young knight keeping watch beneath his lady's tower. And he was not alone there: at due intervals along the frowning walls were posted other servants of the sleeping girls behind them; other knights at watch and ward.

The prayer he breathed was the prayer breathed too for Dolores or Mercedes in prison. "Virgin of Atocha, Virgin of the Pillar, Virgin of Sorrow, of Divine Compa.s.sion, send happy sleep to thy handmaid Manuela, shed the dew of thy love upon her eyelids, keep smooth her brows, keep innocent her lips. Dignify me, thy servant, Gil Perez, more than other men, that I may be worthy to sustain this high honour of love."

His eyes never wavered from a certain upper window. It was as blank as all the rest, differed in no way from any other of a row of five-and-twenty. To him if was the pride of the great building.

"O fortunate stars!" he whispered to himself, "that can look through these and see my love upon her bed. O rays too much blessed, that can kiss her eyelids, and touch lightly upon the scented strands of her hair! O breath of the night, that can fan in her white neck and stroke her arm stretched out over the coverlet! To you, night-wind, and to you, stars, I give an errand; you shall take a message from me to lovely Manuela of the golden tresses. Tell her that I am watching out the dark; tell her that no harm shall come to her. Whisper in her ear, mingle with her dreams, and tell her that she has a lover. Tell her also that the nights in Madrid are not like those in Valencia, and that she would do well to cover her arm and shoulder up lest she catch cold, and suffer."

There spoke the realist, the romantic realist of Spain; for it is to be observed that Gil Perez did not know at all whereabouts Manuela lay asleep, and could not, naturally, know whether her arm was out of bed or in it. He had forgotten also that her hair had been cut off--but these are trifles. Happy he! he had forgotten much more than that.

When Manvers told him that he intended to pay Manuela a visit on the day allowed, Gil Perez suffered the tortures of the d.a.m.ned. Jealous rage consumed his vitals like a corroding acid, which reason and loyalty had no power to a.s.suage. Yet reason and loyalty played out their allotted parts, and it had been a fine sight to see Gil grinning and gibbering at his own white face in the looking-gla.s.s, shaking his finger at it and saying to it, in English (since it was his master's shaving-gla.s.s), "Gil Perez, my fellow, you shut up!" He said it many times, for he had nothing else to say--jealousy deprived him of his wits; and he felt better for the discipline. When Manvers returned there was no sign upon Gil's brisk person of the stormy conflict which had ravaged it.

Manvers had seen her and, by Sister Chucha's charity, had seen her alone. The poor girl had fallen at his feet and would have kissed them if he had not lifted her up. "No, my dear, no," he said; "it is I who ought to kneel. You have done wonders for me. You are as brave as a lion, Manuela; but I must get you away from this place."

"No, no, Don Osmundo," she cried, flushing up, "indeed I am better here." She stood before him, commanding herself, steeling herself in the presence of this man she loved against any hint of her beating heart.

He had himself well in hand. Her beauty, her distress and misfortune could not touch him now. All that he had for her was admiration and pure benevolence. Fatal offerings for a woman inflamed: so soon as she perceived it her courage was needed for another tussle. Her blood lay like lead in her veins, her heart sank to the deeps of her, and she must screw it back again to the work of the day.

He took her hand, and she let him have it. What could it matter now what he had of hers? "Manuela," he said, "there is a way of freedom for you, if you will take it. A man loves you truly, and asks nothing better than to work for you. I know him; he's been a good friend to me. Will you let me pay you off my debt? His name is Gil Perez. You have seen him, I know. He's an honest man, my dear, and loves you to distraction. What are you going to say to him if he asks for you?"

She stood, handfasted to the man who had kissed her--and in kissing her had drawn out her soul through her lips; who now was pleading that another man might have her dead lips. The mockery of the thing might have made a worse woman laugh horribly; but this was a woman made pure by love. She saw no mockery, no discrepancy in what he asked her. She knew he was in earnest and wished her nothing but good.

And she could see, without knowing that she saw, how much he desired to be rid of his obligation to her. Therefore, she reasoned, she would be serving him again if she agreed to what he proposed. Here--if laughing had been her mood--was matter for laughter, that when he tried to pay her off he was really getting deeper into debt. Look at it in this way. You owe a fine sum, princ.i.p.al and interest, to a Jew; you go to him and propose to borrow again of him in order that you may pay off the first debt and be done with it. The Jew might laugh but he would lend; and Manuela, who h.o.a.rded love, hugged to her heart the new bond she was offered. The deeper he went into debt the more she must lend him! There was pleasure in this--shrill pleasure not far off from pain; but she was a child of pleasure, and must take what she could get.

Her grave eyes, uncurtained, searched his face. "Is this what you desire me to do? Is this what you ask of me?"

"My dear," said he, "I desire your freedom. I desire to see you happy and cared for. I must go away. I must go home. I shall go more willingly if I know that I have provided for my friend."

She urged a half-hearted plea. "I am very well here, Don Osmundo. The sisters are kind to me, the work is light. I might be happy here----"

"What!" he cried, "in prison!"

"It is what I deserve," she said; but he would not hear of it.