The Velvet Glove Part 21

"Yes," explained Marcos. "It is a friend of mine, an officer of the garrison who has ridden over. We require two witnesses, you know."

"He is saying his own prayers," said Juanita, looking at him.

"He has not much opportunity," explained Marcos. "He is in command of an outpost at the outlet of the valley of the Wolf."

As they looked at him he rose and came towards them, his spurs clanking and his great sword swinging against the prie-dieu chairs of the devout.

He bowed formally to Juanita, and stood, upright and stiff, looking at Marcos.

The old cura came from the sacristy and lighted two candles on the altar.

Then he turned with the taper in his hand and beckoned to Marcos and Juanita to come forward to the rails where two stools had been placed in readiness. The cura went back to the sacristy and returned, followed by the bishop in his vestments.

So Juanita de Mogente was married in a little mountain chapel by the light of two candles and a waning moon, while Sarrion and the officer in his dusty uniform stood like sentinels behind them, and the bishop recited the office by heart because he could not see to read. He was a political bishop and no great divine, but he knew his business, and got through it quickly.

He splashed down his historic name with a great flourish of the quill pen in the register and on the certificate which he handed with a bow to Juanita.

"What shall I do with it?" she asked.

"Give it to Marcos," was the answer.

And Marcos put the paper in his pocket.

They pa.s.sed out of the chapel and stood on the little terrace in the moonlight amid the shadows of the twelve pine trees while the bishop disrobed in the sacristy.

"What are those lights?" asked Juanita, breaking the silence before it grew irksome.

"That is Pampeluna," replied Marcos.

"And the light in the mountains?" she asked, pointing to the north.

"That is a Carlist watch-fire, Senorita," answered the officer briskly, and no one seemed to notice his slip of the tongue except Sarrion, who glanced at him and then decided not to remind him that the t.i.tle no longer applied to Juanita.

In a few moments the bishop joined them, and they all made their way down the winding path. The bishop and Sarrion were to go by the midnight train to Saragossa, while the carnage and horses were housed for the night at the inn near the station, a mile from the gates; for this was a time of war, and Pampeluna was a fenced city from nightfall till morning.

Marcos and Juanita reached the Calle de la Dormitaleria in safety, however, and Juanita gave a little sigh of fatigue as they hurried down the narrow alley.

"To-morrow," she said, "I shall think this has all been a dream."

"So shall I," said Marcos gravely.

He lifted her into the window, and she stood listening for a moment while she took from her finger the wedding ring she had worn for half an hour and gave it back to him.

"It is of no use to me," she said; "I cannot wear it at school."

She laughed, and held up one finger to command his attention.

"Listen!" she whispered. "Sor Teresa is still snoring."

She watched him bend the bars back again to their proper place.

"By the way," she asked him. "What was the name of the chapel where we were married--I should like to know?"

Marcos hesitated a moment before replying.

"It is called Our Lady of the Shadows."

CHAPTER XVI

THE MATTRESS BEATER Englishmen are justly proud of their birthright. The less they travel, moreover, the prouder they are, and the stronger is their conviction that England leads the world in thought and art and action.

They are quite unaware, for instance, that no country in the world is behind England (unless it be Scotland) in a small matter that affects very materially one-third of a human span of life, namely beds. In any town of France, Germany or Holland, the curious need not seek long for the mattress-maker. He is usually to be found in some open s.p.a.ce at the corner of a market-place or beneath an arcade near the Maine exercising his health-giving trade in the open air. He lives, and lives bountifully, by unmaking, picking over and re-making the mattresses of the people.

Good housewives, moreover, stand near him with their knitting to see that he does it well and puts back within the cover all the wool that he took out. In these backward countries the domestic mattress is remade once a year if not oftener. In our great land there is a considerable vagueness as to the period allowed to a mattress to form itself into lumps and to acc.u.mulate dust or germs. Moreover, there are thousands of exemplary housekeepers who throw up the eye of horror to their whitewashed ceiling at the thought of a foreign person's personal habits, who do not know what is inside their mattress and never think of looking to see from year's end to year's end.

In Spain, a country rarely visited by those persons who pride themselves upon being particular, the mattress-maker is a much more necessary factor in domestic life than is the sweep or the plumber in northern lands. No palace is too royal for him, no cottage is too humble to employ him.

He is, moreover, the only man allowed inside a nunnery. Which is the reason why he finds himself brought into prominence now. He is usually a thin, lithe man, somewhat of the figure of those northerners who supply the bull-ring with Banderilleros. He arrives in the early morning with a sheathe knife at his waist, a packet of cigarettes in his jacket pocket and two light sticks under his arm. All he asks is a courtyard and the sunshine that Heaven gives him.

In a moment he deftly cuts the st.i.tches of the mattress and lays bare the wool which he never touches with his fingers. The longer stick in his right hand describes great circles in the air and descends with the whistle of a sword upon the wool of which it picks up a small handful.

Then the shorter stick comes into play, picks the wool from the longer, throws it into the air, beats it this way and that, tosses it and catches it until every fibre is clear, when the fluffy ma.s.s is deftly cast aside.

All the while, through the beating of the wool, the two sticks beaten against each other play a distinct air, and each mattress-maker has his own, handed down from his forefathers, ending with a whole chromatic scale as the shorter stick swoops up the length of the longer to sweep away the lingering wool. Thus the whole mattress is transferred from a sodden heap to a high and fluffy mountain of carded wool, all baked by the heat of the sun.

The man has a hundred att.i.tudes, full of grace. He works with a skill which is a conscious pleasure; a pleasure unknown to those who have never had opportunity of acquiring a manual craft or appreciating the wondrous power that G.o.d has put into human limbs. He has complete control over his two thin sticks, can pick up with them a single strand of wool, or half a mattress. He can throw aside a pin that lurks in a ball of wool, or kill a fly that settles on his work, without staining the snowy ma.s.s. And all the while, from the moment that the mattress is open till the heap is complete, the two sticks never cease playing their thin and woody air so that any within hearing may know that the "colchonero" is at work.

When the mattress case is empty he pauses to wipe his brow (for he must needs work in the sun) and smoke a cigarette in the shade. It is then that he gossips.

In a Southern land such a worker as this must always have an audience, and the children hail with delight the coming of the mattress-maker. At the Convent School of the Sisters of the True Faith his services were required once a fortnight; for there were many beds; but his coming was none the less exciting for its frequency. He was the only man allowed inside the door. Father Muro was, it seemed, not counted as a man. And in truth a priest is often found to possess many qualities which are essentially small and feminine.

The mattress-maker of Pampeluna was a thin man with a ropy neck, and keen black eyes that flashed hither and thither through the mist of wool and dust in which he worked. He was considered so essentially a domestic and harmless person that he was permitted to go where he listed in the house and high-walled garden. For nuns have a profound distrust of man as a ma.s.s and a confiding faith in the few individuals with whom they have to deal.

The girls were allowed to watch the colchonero at his work, more especially the elder girls such as Juanita de Mogente and her friend Milagros of the red-gold hair. Juanita watched him so closely one spring afternoon that the keen black eyes kept returning to her face at each round of the long whistling stick. The other girls grew tired of the sight and moved away to another part of the garden where the sun was warmer and the violets already in bloom; but Juanita lingered.

She did not know that this was one of Marcos' friends--that in the summer this colchonero took the road with his packet of cigarettes and two sticks and wandered from village to village in the mountains beating the mattresses of the people and seeing the wondrous works of G.o.d as these are only seen by such as live all day and sleep all night beneath the open sky.

Quite suddenly the polished sticks ceased playing loudly and dropped their tone to pianissimo, so that if Juanita were to speak she could be heard.

"Hombre," she said, "do you know Marcos de Sarrion?"

"I know the chapel of Our Lady of the Shadows," he answered, glancing at her through a mist of wool.

"Will you give him a letter?"

"Fold it small and throw it in the wool," he said, and immediately the sticks beat loudly again.

Juanita's hand was already in her pocket seeking her purse.

"No, no," he said; "I am too much caballero to take money from a lady."