The Velvet Glove Part 39

"Ah!" she said. "It is you. I thought it was the voice of a friend. And you have your pretty wife there. What are you doing abroad at this hour ... the Carlists?"

"Yes," answered Marcos, rather quickly, "the Carlists. We cannot pa.s.s by the road, so have sent the carriage back and are going across the mountains."

The woman held up her hands and shook them from side to side in a gesture of horror.

"Ah! but there!" she cried, "I know what you are. There is no turning your back on your road. If you say you will go--you will go though it rain rocks. But this child--ah, dear, dear! You do not know what you have married--with your bright eyes. Sit down, my child. I will get you what I can. Some coffee. I am alone in the house. All my men have gone to the high valley, now that the snow is gone, to collect wood and to see what the winter has done for our hut up in the mountain."

Marcos thanked her, and explained that they wanted nothing but a roof under which to leave his horse.

"We are going up to the higher valley to-night," he said, "where we shall find your husband and sons. And at daylight we must hurry on to Torre Garda. But I want to borrow a dress and handkerchief belonging to one of your daughters. See, the Senora cannot walk in that one, which is too fine and too long."

"Oh, but my daughters ..." exclaimed the old woman, with deprecating hands.

"They are very pretty girls," answered Marcos, with a laugh. "All the valley knows that."

"They are not bad," admitted the mother, "but it is a flower compared to a cabbage. Still, we can hide the flower in the cabbage leaves if you like."

And she laughed heartily at her own conceit.

"Then see to it while I put my horse away," said Marcos. He quitted the hut and overheard the woman pointing out to Juanita that she had lost her mantilla coming through the trees in the dark. While he attended to his horse he could hear their laughter and gay conversation over the change of clothes; for Juanita understood these people as well as he did, and had grown through childhood to the age of thought in their midst. The peasant was still pressing a simple hospitality upon Juanita when Marcos returned to the cottage and found her ready for the journey.

"I was telling the Senora," explained the woman volubly, "that she must not so much as look inside the cottage in the mountains. I have not been there for six months and the men--you know what they are. They are no better than dogs I tell them. There is plenty of clean hay and dry bracken in the sheds up there and you can well make a soft bed for her to get some sleep for a few hours. And here I have unfolded a new blanket for the lady. See, it is white as I bought it. She can use it. It has never been worn--by us others," she added with perfect simplicity.

Marcos took the blanket while Juanita explained that having slept soundly every night of her life without exception, she could well now accommodate herself with a rest of two hours in the hay. The woman pressed upon them some of her small store of coffee and some new bread.

"He can well prepare your breakfast for you," she said, confidentially to Juanita. "He is like one of us. All the valley will tell you that. A great gentleman who can yet cook his own breakfast--as the good G.o.d meant them to be."

They set forth at once in the yellow light of the waning moon, Marcos leading the way up a pathway hardly discernible amid the rocks and undergrowth. Once or twice he turned to help Juanita over a hard or a dangerous place. But they did not talk, as conversation was not only difficult but inexpedient. They had climbed for two hours, slowly and steadily, when the barking of a dog on the mountainside above them notified them that they were nearing their destination.

"Who is it?" asked a voice presently.

"Marcos de Sarrion," replied Marcos. "Strike no lights."

"We have no candles up here," answered the man with a laugh. He only spoke Basque and it was in this language that Marcos gave a brief explanation. Juanita sat on a rock. She was tired out. There were three men--short, thick-set and silent, a father and two sons. They stood in front of Marcos and spoke in monosyllables after the manner of old friends. Under his directions they brought a heap of dried bracken and hay. In a shed, little more than a roof and four uprights, they made a rough couch for Juanita which they hedged round with heaps of bracken to protect her from the wind.

"You will see the stars," said the old man shaking out the blanket which Marcos had carried up from the cottage at the ford. "It is good to see the stars when you awake in the night. One remembers that the saints are watching."

In a few minutes Juanita was sleeping, like a child, curled up beneath her blanket, and heard through her dreams the low voices of Marcos and the peasants talking hurriedly in the half-ruined cottage. For Marcos and these three were the only men who knew the way over the mountains to Torre Garda.

The dawn was just breaking when Marcos awoke Juanita.

"Oh," she said plaintively. "I have only been asleep ten minutes."

"You have slept three hours," replied Marcos in that hushed voice in which it seems natural to speak before the dawn. "I am making coffee--come when you are ready."

Juanita found a pail of water and a piece of last year's yellow soap which had been carefully sc.r.a.ped clean with a knife. A clean towel had also been provided. Juanita noted the manly simplicity of these attentions with a little tender and wise smile.

"I know what it is that makes men gipsies," she said, when she joined Marcos who was attending to a fire of sticks on the ground at the cottage door. "I shall always have a kindly feeling for them now. They get something straight from heaven which is never known to people who sleep in stuffy houses and get up to wash in warm water."

She gave a little shiver at the recollection of her ablutions, and laughed a clear, low laugh, as fresh as the morning itself.

"Where are the men?" she asked.

"One has gone to Pampeluna, one has taken a note to the officer commanding the reinforcements sent for by Zeneta. The third has gone down to fetch his mother up here to bake bread all day. There will be a little army here to-night."

Juanita stood watching Marcos who seemed entirely absorbed in blowing up the fire with a pair of dilapidated bellows.

"I suppose," she said lightly, "that it was of these things that you were thinking when you were so silent as we climbed up here last night."

"I suppose so," answered Marcos.

Juanita looked at him with a little frown as if she did not quite believe him. The day had now come and a pink light suffused the topmost peaks. A faint warmth spread itself like a caress across the valley and turned the cold air into a pearly mist.

"Of what are you thinking?" asked Marcos suddenly; for Juanita had stood motionless, watching him.

"I was thinking what a comfort it is that you are not an indoor man," she replied with a careless laugh.

The peasants had brought their cows to the high pastures. So there was plenty of milk in the cottage which was little more than a dairy; for it had no furniture beyond a few straw mattresses thrown on the floor in one corner. Marcos served breakfast.

"Pedro particularly told me to see that you had the cup which has a handle," he said, pouring the coffee from a battered coffee-pot. During their simple breakfast they were silent. There was a subtle constraint.

Juanita who had a quick and direct mind, decided that the moment had come for that explanation for which Marcos did not ask. An explanation does not improve by keeping. They were alone here--alone in the world it seemed--for the cows had strayed away. The dogs had gone to the valley with their masters. She and Marcos had always known each other. She knew his every thought; she was not afraid of him; she never had been. Why should she be now?

"Marcos," she said.

"Yes."

"I want you to give me the letter I wrote to you at Torre Garda."

He felt in his pocket and handed her the first paper he found without particularly looking at it. Juanita unfolded it. It was the note, all crumpled, which she had thrust through the wall of the convent school at Saragossa. She had forgotten it, but Marcos had kept it all this time.

"That is the wrong one," she said gravely, and handed it back to Marcos, who took it with a little jerk of the head as of annoyance at his own stupidity. He was usually very accurate in details. He gave her in exchange the right paper, which had been torn in two. The other half is in the military despatch office in Madrid to-day. Juanita had arranged in her own mind what to say. She was quite mistress of the situation, and was ready to move serenely and surely in her own sphere, taking the lead in such subtle matters with the capability and mastery which characterised Marcos' lead in affairs of action. But Marcos' mistake seemed to have put out her prearranged scheme.

She slowly tore the letter into pieces and threw it on the fire.

"Do you know why I came back?" she asked, which question can hardly have formed part of the plan of action.

"No."

"Because you never pretended that you cared. If you had pretended that you cared for me, I should never have forgiven you."

Marcos did not answer. He looked up slowly, expecting perhaps to find her looking elsewhere. But her eyes met his and she shrank back with an involuntary movement that seemed to be of fear. Her face flushed all over and then the colour faded from it, leaving her white and motionless as she sat staring into the flickering wood-fire.

Presently she rose and walked to the edge of the plateau upon which the hut was built. She stood there looking across to the mountains.

Marcos busied himself with the simple possessions of his host, setting them in order where he had found them and treading out the smouldering embers of the fire. Juanita turned and watched him over her shoulder with a mystic persistency. Beneath her lashes lurked a smile--triumphant and tender.