The Velvet Glove Part 28

"Yes, like a poor man. He was not in bed all last night. You had a narrower escape of being made a nun than you suspect."

Juanita's face fell. She went to the window and stood there looking out.

"When are we going to Torre Garda?" she asked, after a long silence. "I hate towns ... and people. I want to smell the pines ... and the bracken."

CHAPTER XX

AT TORRE GARDA

The river known as the Wolf finds its source in the eternal snows of the Pyrenees. Amid the solitary grandeur of the least known mountains in Europe it rolls and tumbles--tossed hither and thither in its rocky bed, fed by this and that streamlet from stony gorges--down to the green valley of Torre Garda.

Here there is a village crouched on either side of the river-bed, and above it on a plateau surrounded by chestnut trees and pines, stands the house of the Sarrions. In winter the wholesome smell of wood smoke rising from the chimneys pervades the air. In summer the warm breath of the pines creeps down the mountains to mingle with the cooler air that stirs the bracken.

Below all, summer and winter, at evening and at dawn, night and day, growls the Wolf--so named from the continuous low-pitched murmur of its waters through the defile a mile below the village. The men of the valley of the Wolf have a hundred tales of their river in its different moods, and firmly believe that the voice which is ever in their ears speaks to such as have understanding, of every change in the weather. The old women have no doubt that it speaks also of those things that must affect the prince and the peasant alike; of good and ill fortune; of life and of death; of hope and its slow, slow dying in the heart. Certain it is that the river had its humours not to be accounted for by outward things--seeming to be gay without reason, like any human heart, in dull weather, and murmuring dismally when the sun shone and the birds were singing in the trees.

In clearest summer weather, the water would sometimes run thick and yellow for days, the result of some landslip where the snow and ice were melting. Sometimes the Wolf would hurl down a ma.s.s of debris--a forest torn from the mountainside by avalanche, the dead bodies of a few stray sheep, or a fox or a wolf or the dun corpse of a mountain bear. Many in the valley had seen tables and chairs and the roof, perhaps, of a house caught in the timbers of the old bridge below the village. And the river, of course, had exacted its toll from more than one family. It was jocularly said at the Venta that the Wolf was Royalist; for in the first Carlist war it had fought for Queen Christina, doing to death a whole company of insurgents at that which is known as the False Ford, where it would seem that a child could pa.s.s while in reality no horseman might hope to get through.

The house of Torre Garda was not itself ancient though it undoubtedly stood on the site of some mediaeval watch-tower. It had been built in the days of Ferdinand VII at the period when French architecture was running rife over the world, and had the appearance of a Gascon chateau. It was a long low house of two stories. Every room on the ground floor opened with long French windows to a terrace built to the edge of the plateau, where a fountain splashed its clear spring water into a stone basin, where gray stone urns stood on lichen-covered pillars amid flower-beds.

Every room on the first floor had windows opening on a wide balcony which ran the length of the house and was protected from the rain and midday sun by the far-stretching eaves of the roof. The house was of gray stone, roofed with slabs of the same, such as peel off the slopes of the Pyrenees and slide one over the other to the valleys below. The pointed turrets at each corner were roofed with the small green tiles that the Moors loved. The winds and the snow and the rain had toned all Torre Garda down to a cool gray-green against which the four cypress trees on the terrace stood rigid like sentinels keeping eternal guard over the valley.

Above the house rose a pine-slope where the snow lingered late into the summer. Above this again were rocks and broken declivities of sliding stones; and, crowning all, the everlasting snow.

From the terrace of Torre Garda a strong voice could make itself heard in the valley where tobacco grew and ripened, or on the height where no vegetation lived at all. The house seemed to hang between sky and earth, and the air that moved the cypress trees was cool and thin--a very breath of heaven to make thinkers wonder why any who can help it should choose to live in towns.

The green shutters had been closed across the windows for nearly three months, when on one spring morning the villagers looked up to see the house astir and the windows opened wide.

There had been much to detain the Sarrions at Saragossa and Juanita had to wait for the gratification of her desire to smell the pines and the bracken again.

It seemed that it was no one's business to question the validity of the strange marriage in the chapel of Our Lady of the Shadows. Evasio Mon who was supposed to know more about it than any other, only smiled and said nothing. Leon de Mogente was absorbed in his own peculiar selfishness which was not of this world but the next. He fell into the mistake common to ecstatic minds that thoughts of Heaven justify a deliberate neglect of obvious duties on earth.

"Leon," said Juanita gaily to Cousin Peligros, "will a.s.suredly be a saint some day: he has so little sense of humour."

For Leon it seemed could not be brought to understand Juanita's sunny view of life.

"You may look solemn and talk of great mistakes as much as you like," she said to her brother. "But I know I was never meant for a nun. It will all come right in the end. Uncle Ramon says so. I don't know what he means.

But he says it will all come right in the end."

And she shook her head with that wisdom of the world which is given to women only; which may live in the same heart as ignorance and innocence and yet be superior to all the knowledge that all the sages have ever put in books.

There were lawyers to be consulted and moreover paid, and Juanita gaily splashed down her name in a bold schoolgirl hand on countless doc.u.ments.

There is a Spanish proverb warning the unwary never to drink water in the dark or sign a paper unread. And Marcos made Juanita read everything she signed. She was quick enough, and only laughed when he protested that she had not taken in the full meaning of the doc.u.ment.

"I understand it quite enough," she answered. "It is not worth troubling about. It is only money. You men think of nothing else. I do not want to understand it any better."

"Not now; but some day you will."

Juanita looked at him, pen in hand, momentarily grave.

"You are always thinking of what I shall do ... some day," she said.

And Marcos did not deny it.

"You seem to hedge me around with precautions against that time," she continued, thoughtfully, and looked at him with bright and searching eyes.

At length all the formalities were over, and they were free to go to Torre Garda. Events were moving rapidly in Spain at this time, and the small wonder of Juanita's marriage was already a thing half forgotten.

Had it not been for her great wealth the whole matter would have pa.s.sed unnoticed; for wealth is still a burden upon its owners, and there are many who must perforce go away sorrowful on account of their great possessions. Half the world guessed, however, at the truth, and every man judged the Sarrions from his own political standpoint, praising or blaming according to preconceived convictions. But there were some in high places who knew that a great danger had been averted.

Cousin Peligros had consented to Sarrion's proposal that she should for a time make her home with him, either at Torre Garda or at Saragossa. She had lived in troublous times, but was convinced that the Carlists, like Heaven, made special provision for ladies.

"No one," said she, "will molest me," and she folded her hands in complacent serenity on her lap.

She had a profound distrust of railways, in which common mode of conveyance she suspected a democratic spirit, though to this day the Spanish ticket collector presents himself, hat in hand, at the door of a first-cla.s.s carriage, and the time-table finds itself subservient to the convenience of any Excellency who may not have finished his coffee in the refreshment-room.

Cousin Peligros was therefore glad enough to quit the train at Pampeluna, where the carriage from Torre Garda awaited them. There were saddle horses for Sarrion and Marcos, and a handful of troops were waiting in the shadow of the trees outside of the station yard. An officer rode forward and paid his respects to Juanita.

"You do not recognise me, Senorita," he said. "You remember the chapel of Our Lady of the Shadows?"

"Yes. I remember," she answered, shaking hands. "We caught you saying your prayers when we arrived."

He blushed as he laughed; for he was a simple man leading a hard and lonely life.

"Yes, Senorita; why not?"

"I have no doubt," said Juanita, looking at him shrewdly, "that the saints heard you."

"Marcos," he explained, "wrote to ask me for a few men to take your carriage through the danger zone. So I took the liberty of riding with them myself. I am the watch-dog, Senorita, at the gate of your valley.

You are safe enough once you are within the valley of the Wolf."

They talked together until Sarrion rode forward to announce that all were ready to depart, while Cousin Peligros sat with pinched lips and disapproving face. She took an early opportunity of mentioning that ladies should not talk to gentlemen with such familiarity and freedom; that, above all, a smile was sufficient acknowledgment for any jest except those made by the very aged, when to laugh was a sign of respect.

For Cousin Peligros had been brought up in a school of manners now fortunately extinct.

"He is Marcos' friend," explained Juanita. "Besides, he is a nice person.

I know a nice person when I see one," she concluded, with a friendly nod towards the watch-dog of the valley of the Wolf, who was talking in the shade of the trees with Marcos.

The men rode together in advance of the carriages and the luggage carts.

The journey was uneventful, and the sun was setting in a cloudless west when the mouth of the valley was reached. It was Cousin Peligros' happy lot to consider herself the centre of any party and the pivot upon which social events must turn. She bowed graciously to Captain Zeneta when he came forward to take his leave.

"It was most considerate of Marcos," she said to Juanita in his hearing, "to provide this escort. He no doubt divined that, accustomed as I am to living in Madrid, I might have been nervous in these remote places."

Juanita was tired. They were near their journey's end. She did not take the trouble to explain the situation to Cousin Peligros. There are some fools whom the world allows to continue in their folly because it is less trouble. Marcos and Sarrion were riding together now in silence. From time to time a peasant waiting at the roadside came forward to exchange a few words with one or the other. The road ascended sharply now, and the pace was slow. The regular tramp of the horses, the quiet evening hour, the fatigue of the journey were conducive to contemplation and silence.

When Marcos helped Cousin Peligros and Juanita to descend from the high-swung traveling carriage, Juanita was too tired to notice one or two innovations. When, as a schoolgirl, she had spent her holidays at Torre Garde no change had been made in the simple household. But now Marcos had sent from Saragossa such modern furniture as women need to-day. There were new chairs on the terrace. Her own bedroom at the western corner of the house, next door to the huge room occupied by Sarrion, had been entirely refurnished and newly decorated.