The Velvet Glove Part 4

CHAPTER IV

THE JADE--CHANCE The same evening, by the light of his solitary lamp, in the small room--which had been a lady's boudoir in olden days--the Count de Sarrion sat down to write a letter to his son. He despatched it at once by a rider to Torre Garda, far beyond Pampeluna, on the southern slope of the Pyrenees.

"I am growing too old for this work," he said to himself as he sealed the letter. "It wants a younger man. Marcos will do it, though he hates the pavement. There is something of the chase in it, and Marcos is a hunter."

At his call a man came into the room, all dusty and sunburnt, a typical man of Aragon, dry and wrinkled, burnt like a son of Sahara. His clothing, like his face, was dust-coloured. He wore knee-breeches of homespun, brown stockings, a handkerchief that had once been coloured bound round his head, with the knot over his left ear. He was startlingly rough and wild in appearance, but his features, on examination, were refined, and his eyes intelligent.

"I want you to go straight to Torre Garda with this letter, and give it into the hand of my son with your own hand. It is important. You may be watched and followed; you understand?"

The man nodded. They are a taciturn people in Aragon and Navarre--so taciturn that in politely greeting the pa.s.ser on the road they cut down the curt good-day. "Buenas," they say, and that is all.

"Go with G.o.d," said the Count, and the messenger left the room noiselessly, for they wear no shoe-leather in this dry land.

There was a train in those days to Pampeluna and a daily post, but then, as now, a letter of any importance is better sent by hand, while the railway is still looked upon with suspicion by the authorities as a means of circulating malcontents and spreading crime. Every train is still inspected at each stopping place by two of the civil guards.

The Count was early astir the next morning. He knew that a man such as Marcos, possessing the instinct of the chase and that deep insight into the thoughts and actions of others, even into the thoughts and actions of animals, which makes a great hunter or a great captain, would never have let slip the feeble clue that he had of the incident in the Calle San Gregorio. The Count had been a politician in his youth, and his position entailed a pa.s.sive continuance of the policy he had actively advocated in earlier days. But as an old sailor, weary with the battle of many storms, learns at last to treat the thunder and the tempest with a certain tolerant contempt, so he, having pa.s.sed through evil monarchies and corrupt regencies, through the storm of anarchy and the humiliation of a brief and ridiculous republic, now stood aside and watched the waves go past him with a semi-contemptuous indifference.

He was too well known in the streets of Saragossa to wander hither and thither in them, making inquiry as to whether any had seen his lifelong friend Francisco de Mogente back in the city of his birth from which he had been exiled in the uncertain days of Isabella. Francisco de Mogente had been placed in one of those vague positions of Spanish political life where exile had never been commuted, though friend and enemy would alike have welcomed the return of a scapegoat on their own terms. But Mogente had never been the man to make terms--any more than this grim Spanish n.o.bleman who now sat wondering what his next move must be.

After his early coffee Sarrion went out into the Calle San Gregorio. The sound of deep voices chanting the matins came to him through the open doors of the Cathedral of the Seo. A priest hurried past, late, and yet in time to save his record of services attended. The beggars were leisurely making their way to the cathedral doors, too lazy to make an earlier start, philosophically reflecting that the charitable are as likely to give after matins as before.

The Count went over the ground of the scene that he had witnessed in the fitful moonlight. Here the man who might have been Francisco de Mogente had turned on his heel. Here, at the never opened door of a deserted palace, he had stood for a moment fighting with his back to the wall.

Here he had fallen. From that corner had come aid in the person--Sarrion was sure--of a friar. It was an odd coincidence, for the Church had never been the friend of the exiled man, and it was in the days of a priest-ridden Queen that his foes had triumphed.

They had carried the stricken man back to the corner of the Calle San Gregorio and the Plazuela San Bruno, and from the movements of the bearers Sarrion had received the conviction that they had entered the house immediately beyond the angle of the high building opposite to the Episcopal Palace.

Sarrion followed his memory step by step. He determined to go into the house--a huge building--divided into many small apartments. The door had never particularly attracted his attention. Like many of the doorways of these great houses, it was wide and high, giving access to a dark stairway of stone. The doors stood open night and day. For this stairway was a common one, as its dirtiness would testify.

There was some one coming down the stairs now. Sarrion, remembering that his face was well known, and that he had no particular business in any of the apartments into which the house was divided, paused for a moment, and waited on the threshold. He looked up the dark stairs, and slowly distinguished the form and face of the newcomer. It was his old friend Evasio Mon--smart, well-brushed, smiling a good-morning to all the world this sunny day.

They had not met for many years. Their friendship had been one of those begun by parents, and carried on in after years by the children more from habit than from any particular tie of sympathy. For we all find at length that the nursery carpet is not the world. Their ways had parted soon after the nursery, and, though they had met frequently, they had never trodden the same path again. For Evasio Mon had been educated as a priest.

"I have often wondered why I have never clashed--with Evasio Mon,"

Sarrion once said to his son in the reflective quiet of their life at Torre Garda.

"It takes two to clash," replied Marcos at length in his contemplative way, having given the matter his consideration. And perhaps that was the only explanation of it.

Sarrion looked up now and met the smile with a grave bow. They took off their hats to each other with rather more ceremony than when they had last met. A long, slow friendship is the best; a long, slow enmity the deadliest.

"One does not expect to see you in Saragossa," said Mon gently. A man bears his school mark all through life. This layman had learnt something in the seminary which he had never forgotten.

"No," replied the other. "What is this house? I was just going into it."

Mon turned and looked up at the building with a little wave of the hand, indicating lightly the stones and mortar.

"It is just a house, my friend, as you see--a house, like another."

"And who lives in it?"

"Poor people, and foolish people. As in any other. People one must pity and cannot help despising."

He laughed, and as he spoke he led the way, as it were, unconsciously away from this house which was like another.

"Because they are poor?" inquired Sarrion, who did not move a step in response to Evasio Mon's lead.

"Partly," admitted Mon, holding up one finger. "Because, my friend, none but the foolish are poor in this world."

"Then why has the good G.o.d sent so many fools into the world?"

"Because He wants a few saints, I suppose."

Mon was still trying to lead him away from that threshold and Sarrion still stood his ground. Their half-bantering talk suddenly collapsed, and they stood looking at each other in silence for a moment. Both were what may be called "ready" men, quick to catch a thought and answer.

"I will tell you," said Sarrion quietly, "why I am going into this house.

I have long ceased to take an interest in the politics of this poor country, as you know."

Mon's gesture seemed to indicate that Sarrion had only done what was wise and sensible in a matter of which it was no longer any use to talk.

"But to my friends I still give a thought," went on the Count. "Two nights ago a man was attacked in this street--by the usual street cutthroats, it is to be supposed. I saw it all from my balcony there.

See, from this corner you can perceive the balcony."

He drew Mon to the corner of the street, and pointed out the Sarrion Palace, gloomy and deserted at the further end of the street.

"But it was dark, and I could not see much," he added, seeming unconsciously to answer a question pa.s.sing in his companion's mind; for Mon's pleasant eyes were measuring the distance.

"I thought they brought him in here; for before I could descend help came, and the cutthroats ran away."

"It is like your good, kind heart, my friend, to interest yourself in the fate of some rake, who was probably tipsy, or else he would not have been abroad at that hour."

"I had not mentioned the hour."

"One presumes," said Mon, with a short laugh, "that such incidents do not happen in the early evening. However, let us by all means make inquiries after your dissipated protege."

He moved with alacrity to the house, leading the way now.

"By an odd chance," said Sarrion, following him more slowly, "I have conceived the idea that this man is an old friend of mine."

"Then, my good Ramon, he must be an old friend of mine, too."

"Francisco de Mogente."

Mon stopped with a movement of genuine surprise, followed instantly by a quick sidelong glance beneath his lashes.

"Our poor, wrong-headed Francisco," he said, "what made you think of him after all these years? Have you heard from him?"

He turned on the stairs as he asked this question in an indifferent voice and waited for the answer; but Sarrion was looking at the steps with a deep attention.

"See," he said, "there are drops of blood on the stairs. There was blood in the street, but it had been covered with dust. This also has been covered with dust--but the dust may be swept aside--see!"