The Velvet Glove Part 34

CHAPTER XXIV

THE STORMY PETREL As Juanita quitted the room she heard Sarrion ask Evasio Mon if he had lunched. And Mon admitted that he had as yet omitted that meal. Juanita shrugged her shoulders. It is only in later life that we come to realise the importance of meals. If Mon was hungry he should have said so. She gave no further thought to him. She hated him. She was glad to think that he should have suffered, even if his pain was only hunger. What was hunger, she asked herself, compared with a broken heart? One was a pa.s.sing pang that could be alleviated, could be confessed to the first comer, while a broken heart must be hidden at any cost from all the world.

She met Cousin Peligros coming towards the drawing-room in her best black silk dress, and in what might have been called a fl.u.s.ter of excitement at the thought of a visitor, if such a word had been applicable to her placid life of self-deception. Juanita made some small jest and laughed rather eagerly at it as she pa.s.sed the pattern lady on the stairs.

She was very calm and collected; being a determined person, as many seemingly gay and light-hearted people are. She was going to leave Torre Garda and Marcos, who had married her for her money. It is characteristic of determined people that they are restricted in their foresight. They look in front with eyes so steady and concentrated that they perceive no side issues, but only the one path that they intend to tread. Juanita was going back to Pampeluna, to Sor Teresa at the convent school in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. She recked nothing of the Carlists, of the disturbed country through which she had to pa.s.s.

She had never lacked money, and had sufficient now for her needs. The village of Torre Garda could a.s.suredly provide a carriage for the journey; or, at the worst, a cart. Anything would be better than remaining in this house--even the hated school in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. She had always known that Sor Teresa was her friend, though the Sister Superior's manner of indicating friendship had not been invariably comprehensible.

Juanita took a cloak and what money she could find. She was not a very tidy person, and the money had to be collected from odd trinket-boxes and discarded purses. Marcos was still talking politics with his friend from the mountains when she pa.s.sed beneath his window. Sarrion and Evasio Mon had gone to the dining-room, where, it was to be presumed, Cousin Peligros had followed them. She professed a great admiration for Evasio Mon, who was on familiar terms with people of the highest distinction. An hour's start would be sufficient. In that time she could be half-way to Pampeluna. Secrecy was of course out of the question.

The drawing-room window was open. Juanita paused on the threshold for a moment. Then she went into the room and scribbled a hurried note--not innocent of blots--which she addressed to Marcos. She left it on the writing-table and carrying her cloak over her arm she hurried down a zigzag path concealed in a thicket of scrub-oak to the village of Torre Garda.

Before reaching the village she overtook a traveling-carriage going at a walking pace down the hill. The carriage, which was old-fashioned in build, and set high upon its narrow wheels, was empty.

"Where are you going?" asked Juanita, of the man who took off his hat to her, almost as if he had expected her.

"I am returning to Pampeluna, empty, Excellency," he answered. "I have brought the baggage of Senor Mon, who is traveling over the mountains on horseback. I am hoping to get a fare from Torre Garda back to Pampeluna, if I have the good fortune."

The coincidence was rather startling. Juanita had always been considered a lucky girl, however; one for whom the smaller chances of daily existence were invariably kind. She accepted this as another instance of the indulgence of fate in small things. She was not particularly glad or surprised. A dull indifference had come over her. The small things of daily life had never engrossed her mind. She was quite indifferent to them now. It was her intention to get to Pampeluna, through all difficulties, and the incidents of the road occupied no place in her thoughts. She was vaguely confident that no one could absolutely stand in her way. Had not Evasio Mon said that the Pope would willingly annul her marriage?

She was thinking these thoughts as she drove through the little mountain village.

"What is that--it sounds like thunder or guns?" inquired Evasio Mon, pausing in his late and simple luncheon in the dining-room.

"A clerical ear like yours should not know the sound of guns," replied Sarrion with a curt laugh. "It is not that, however. It is a cart or a carriage crossing the bridge below the village."

Mon nodded his head and continued to give his attention to his plate.

"Juanita looks well--and happy," he said, after a pause.

Sarrion looked at him and made no reply. He was borrowing from the absent Marcos a trick of silence which he knew to be effective in a subtle war of words.

"Do you not think so?"

"I am sure of it, Evasio."

Sarrion was wondering why he had come to Torre Garda--this stormy petrel of clerical politics--whose coming never boded good. Mon was much too wise to be audacious for audacity's sake. He was not a theatrical man, but one who had worked consistently and steadily for a cause all through his life. He was too much in earnest to consider effect or heed danger.

"I am not on the winning side, but I am sure that I am on the right one,"

he had once said in public. And the speech went the round of Spain.

After he had finished luncheon he spoke of taking his leave, and asked if he might be allowed to congratulate Marcos on his escape.

"It should be a warning to him," he went on, "not to ride at night. To do so is to court mishap in these narrow mountain roads."

"Yes," said Sarrion, slowly.

"Will his nurse allow me to see him?" asked the visitor.

"His nurse is Juanita. I will go and ask her," replied Sarrion, looking round him quite openly to make sure that there were no letters lying about on the tables of the terrace that Mon might be tempted to read in his absence.

He hurried to Marcos' room. Marcos was out of bed. He was dressing, with the help of his servant and the visitor from the mountains. With a quick gesture, Marcos indicated the open window, through which the sound of any exclamation might easily reach the ear of Evasio Mon.

"Juanita has gone," he said, in French. "Read that note. It is his doing, of course."

"I know now," wrote Juanita, "why you were afraid of my growing up. But I am grown up--and I have found out why you married me."

"I knew it would come sooner or later," said Marcos, who winced as he drew his sleeve over his injured arm. He was very quiet and collected, as people usually are in face of a long antic.i.p.ated danger which when it comes at last brings with it a dull sense of relief.

Sarrion made no reply. Perhaps he, too, had antic.i.p.ated this moment. A girl is a closed book. Neither knew what might be written in the hidden pages of Juanita's heart.

A crisis usually serves to accentuate the weakness or strength of a man's character. Marcos was intensely practical at this moment--more practical than ever. He had only one thought--the thought that filled his life--which was Juanita's welfare. If he could not make her happy he could, at all events, shield her from harm. He could stand between her and the world.

"She can only have gone down the valley," he said, continuing to speak in French, which was a second mother tongue to him. "She must have gone to Sor Teresa. He has induced her to go by some trick. He would not dare to send her anywhere else."

"I heard a carriage cross the bridge," replied Sarrion. "He heard it also, and asked what it was. The next moment he spoke of Juanita. The sound must have put the thought of Juanita into his mind."

"Which means that he provided the carriage. He must have had it waiting in the village. Whatever he may undertake is always perfectly organised; we know that. How long ago was that?"

"An hour ago and more."

Marcos nodded and glanced at the clock.

"He will no doubt have made arrangements for her to get safely through to Pampeluna."

"Then where are you going?" asked Sarrion, perceiving that Marcos was slipping into his pocket the arm without which he never traveled in the mountains.

"After her," was the reply.

"To bring her back?"

"No."

Marcos paused for a moment, looking from the window across the valley to the pine-clad heights with thoughtful eyes. He held odd views--now deemed chivalrous and old-fashioned--on the question of a woman's liberty to seek her own happiness in her own way. Such views are unnecessary to-day when woman is, so to speak, up and fighting. They belong to the days of our grandmothers, who had less knowledge and much more wisdom; for they knew that it is always more profitable to receive a gift than demand a right. The measure will be fuller.

"No. Not unless it is her own wish," he said.

Sarrion made no answer. In human difficulties there is usually nothing to be said. There is nearly always one clear course to steer and the deviations are only found by too much talk and too much licence given to crooked minds. If happiness is not to be found in the straight way nothing is gained by turning into by-paths to seek it. A few find it and a great number are not unhappy who have seen it down a side-path and have yet held their course in the straight way.

"Will you keep him in the library--make the excuse that the sun is too hot on the verandah--until I am gone?" said Marcos. "I will follow and, at all events, see that she arrives safely at Pampeluna."

Sarrion gave a curt laugh.

"We may be able," he said, "to turn to good account Evasio's conviction that you are ill in bed, when in reality you are in the saddle."

"He will soon find out."