The Velvet Glove Part 29

"Oh, how pretty!" she exclaimed, and Marcos lingering in the long pa.s.sage perhaps heard the remark.

Later, when they were all in the drawing-room awaiting dinner, Juanita clasped Sarrion's arm with her wonted little gesture of affection.

"You are an old dear," she said to him, "to have my room done up so beautifully, so clean, and white, and simple--just as you know I should like it. Oh, you need not smile so grimly. You know it was just what I should like--did he not, Marcos?"

"Yes," answered Marcos.

"And it is the only room in the house that has been done. I looked into the others to see--into your great barrack, and into Marcos' room at the end of the balcony. I have guessed why Marcos has that room ..."

"Why?" he asked.

"So that you can see down the valley--so that Perro who sleeps on the balcony outside the open window has merely to lift his head to look right down to where the other watch-dogs are, ten miles away."

After dinner, Juanita discovered that there was a new piano in the drawing-room, in addition to a number of those easier chairs which our grandmothers never knew. Cousin Peligros protested that they were unnecessary and even conducive to sloth and indolence. Still protesting, she took the most comfortable and sat with folded hands listening to Juanita finding out the latest waltz, with variations of her own, on the new piano.

Sarrion and Marcos were on the terrace smoking. The small new moon was nearing the west. The night would be dark after its setting. They were silent, listening to the voice of their ancestral river as it growled, heavy with snow, through the defile. Presently a servant brought coffee and told Marcos that a messenger was waiting to deliver a note. After the manner of Spain the messenger was invited to come and deliver his letter in person. He was a traveling knife-grinder, he explained, and had received the letter from a man on the road whose horse had gone lame. One must be mutually helpful on the road.

The letter was from Zeneta at the end of the valley; written hastily in pencil. The Carlists were in force between him and Pampeluna; would Marcos ride down to the camp and hear details?

Marcos rose at once and threw his cigarette away. He looked towards the lighted windows of the drawing-room.

"No good saying anything about it," he said. "I shall be back by breakfast time. They will probably not notice my absence."

He was gone--the sound of his horse's feet was drowned in the voice of the river--before Juanita came out to the terrace, a slim shadowy form in her white evening dress. She stood for a minute or two in silence, until, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, she perceived Sarrion and an empty chair. Perro usually walked gravely to her and stood in front of her awaiting a jest whenever she came. She looked round. Perro was not there.

"Where is Marcos?" she asked, taking the empty chair.

"He has been sent for to the valley. He has gone."

"Gone!" echoed Juanita, standing up again. She went to the stone bal.u.s.trade of the terrace and looked over into the darkness.

"I heard him cross the bridge a few minutes ago," Sarrion said quietly.

"He might have said good-bye."

Sarrion turned slowly in his chair and looked at her.

"He probably did not wish his comings and goings to be talked of by Cousin Peligros," he suggested.

"Still, he might have said good-bye ... to me."

She turned again and leaning her arms on the gray stone she stood in silence looking down into the valley.

CHAPTER XXI

JUANITA GROWS UP Marcos' horse, the Moor, had performed the journey to Pampeluna once in the last twelve hours. He was a strong horse accustomed to long journeys.

But Marcos chose another, an older and staider animal of less value, better fitted for night work.

He wished to do the journey quickly and return by breakfast-time; he was not in a mood to spare his beast. Men who live in stirring times and meet death face to face quite familiarly from day to day, as Englishmen meet the rain, soon acquire the philosophy which consists in taking the good things the G.o.ds send them, unhesitatingly and thankfully.

Juanita was at Torre Garda at last--after months of patient waiting and watching, after dangers foreseen and faced--that was enough for Marcos de Sarrion.

He therefore pressed his horse. Although he was alert and watchful because it was his habit to be so, he was less careful perhaps than usual; he rode at a greater pace than was prudent on such a road, by so dark a night.

The spring comes early on the Southern slope of the Pyrenees. It was a warm night and there had been no rain for some days. The dust lay thickly on the road, m.u.f.fling the beat of the horse's feet. The Wolf roared in its narrow bed. The road, only recently made practicable for carriages at Sarrion's expense, was not a safe one. It hung like a cornice on the left-hand bank of the river and at certain corners the stones fell from the mountain heights almost continuously. In other places the heavy stone b.u.t.tresses had been undermined by the action of the river. It was a road that needed continuous watching and repair. But Marcos had ridden over it a few hours earlier and there had been no change of weather since.

He knew the weak places and pa.s.sed them carefully. Three miles below the village, the river pa.s.ses through a gorge and the road mounts to the lip of the overhanging cliffs. There is no danger here; for there are no falling stones from above. It is to this pa.s.sage that the Wolf owes its name and in a narrow place invisible from the road the water seems to growl after the manner of a wild beast at meat.

Marcos' horse knew the road well enough, which, moreover, was easy here.

For it is cut from the rock on the left-hand side, while its outer boundary is marked at intervals by white stones. The horse was perhaps too cautious. By night a rider must leave to his mount the decision as to what hills may be descended at a trot. Marcos knew that the old horse beneath him invariably decided to walk down the easiest declivity. At the summit of the road the horse was trotting at a long, regular stride. On the turn of the hill he proposed to stop, although he must have known that the descent was easy. Marcos touched him with the spur and he started forward. The next instant he fell so suddenly and badly that his forehead sc.r.a.ped the road.

Marcos was thrown so hard and so far that he fell on his head and shoulder three feet in front of the horse. It was the narrowest place in the whole road, and the knowledge of this flashed through Marcos' mind as he fell. He struck one of the white stones that mark the boundary of the road, and heard his collar-bone snap like a dry stick. Then he rolled over the edge of the precipice into the blackness filled by the roar of the river.

He still had one hand whole and ready, though the skin was sc.r.a.ped from it, and the fingers of this hand were firmly twisted into the bridle. He hung for a moment jerked hither and thither by the efforts of the horse to pick himself up on the road above. A stronger jerk lifted him to the edge of the road, and Marcos, hanging there for an instant, found an insecure foothold for one foot in the root of an overhanging bush. But the horse was nearer to the edge now; he was half over and might fall at any moment.

It flashed through Marcos' mind that he must live at all costs. There was no one to care for Juanita in the troubled times that were coming.

Juanita was his only thought. And he fought for his life with skill and that quickness of perception which is the real secret of success in human affairs.

He jerked on the bridle with all the strength of his iron muscle; jerked himself up on the road and the horse over into the gorge. As the horse fell it lashed out wildly; its hind foot touched the back of Marcos' head and seemed almost to break his spine.

He rolled over on his side, choking. He did not lose consciousness at once, but knew that oblivion was coming. Perro, the dog, had been excitedly skirmishing round, keeping clear of the horse's heels and doing little else. He now looked over after the horse and Marcos saw his lean body outlined against the sky. He had let the reins go and found that he was grasping a stone in his bleeding fingers instead. He threw the stone at Perro and hit him. The surprised yelp was the last sound he heard as the night of unconsciousness closed over him.

Juanita had gone to bed very tired. She slept the profound sleep of youth and physical fatigue for an hour. In the ordinary way she would have slept thus all night. But at midnight she found herself wide-awake again.

The first fatigue of the body was past, and the busy mind a.s.serted its rights again. She was not conscious of having anything to think about.

But the moment she was half awake the thoughts leapt into her mind and awoke her completely.

She remembered again the startling silence of Torre Garda, which was in some degree intensified by the low voice of the river. She lifted her head to listen and caught her breath at the instant realisation of the sound quite near at hand. It was the patter of feet on the terrace below her window. Perro had returned. Marcos must therefore be back again. She dropped her head sleepily on the pillow, expecting to hear some sound in the house indicative of Marcos' return, but not intending to lie awake to listen for it.

She did not fall asleep again, however, and Perro continued to patter about on the terrace below as if he were going from window to window seeking an entrance. Juanita began to listen to his movements, expecting him to whimper, and in a few moments he fulfilled her antic.i.p.ation by giving a little uneasy sound between his teeth. In a moment Juanita was out of bed and at the open window. Perro would awake Sarrion and Marcos, who must be very tired. It was a woman's instinct. Juanita was growing up.

Perro heard her, and in obedience to her whispered injunction stood still, looking up at her and wagging his uncouth tail slowly. But he gave forth the uneasy sound again between his teeth.

Juanita went back into her room; found her slippers and dressing-gown.

But she did not light a candle. She had acquired a certain familiarity with the night from Marcos, and it seemed natural at Torre Garda to fall into the habits of those who lived there. She went the whole length of the balcony to Marcos' room, which was at the other end of the house, while Perro conscientiously kept pace with her on the terrace below.

Marcos' window was shut, which meant that he was not there. When he was at home his window stood open by night or day, winter or summer.

Juanita returned to Sarrion's room, which was next to her own. The window was ajar. The Spaniards have the habit of the open air more than any other nation of Europe. She pushed the window open.

"Uncle Ramon," she whispered. But Sarrion was asleep. She went into the room, which was large and spa.r.s.ely furnished, and, finding the bed, shook him by the shoulder.

"Uncle Ramon," she said, "Perro has come back ... alone."

"That is nothing," he replied, rea.s.suringly, at once. "Marcos, no doubt, sent him home. Go back to bed."

She obeyed him, going slowly back to the open window. But she paused there.